Secretly Ironic

Simon Rich got a lot of buzz in some circles with a piece in the New Yorker detailing what kids think grownup dinner-table conversation is all about. That story is included in Ant Farm, along with a couple dozen others covering similar ground. The title story, for example, is a conversation between the ants trapped in an ant farm. Other vignettes focus on childhood trauma and triumph: how trigonometry might possibly be useful (answer: only when confronted with madmen), and what it must be like to be one of the enemies inside a shoot-em-up video game (answer: it sucks). One of the best stories mines the emotional vein of parents trying to make up for embarrassing mistakes– but in this case, it’s Abraham trying to convince Isaac that he shouldn’t tell his mother about that whole sacrifice thing.

Ant Farm is the sort of book that shy people shouldn’t read on the subway, because they’ll laugh and attract attention to themselves. They should read it at home. Non-shy people can read it anywhere.

Who knew that The Financial Times could be so funny?:

This doctrine… recalls the classic episode of the TV comedy Seinfeld, “The Opposite”, in which George Costanza temporarily improves his fortunes by rejecting all the principles according to which he has lived his life and doing the opposite of what his training indicates he should do…. The Iraq policy pursued by the Bush administration satisfies the Costanza criterion: it is the opposite of every foreign policy the world has ever met.

E! has had a bomb threat called in, possibly against Ryan Seacrest, possibly in relation to the fact that the uber-cute but not uber-talented Sanjaya Malakar has remained on Idol.

No wonder the pandas of the world don’t want to get it on, with or without the encouraging videos:

I’ve been forced to squeal for the FBI, and I’m not allowed to talk about it!

As Brad Delong and others have said numerous times, “I’ll stop calling it Orwellian when they stop using 1984 as a playbook.”

According to the tests, you have cancer of the feelings.

As you might or might not know, the Pakistani national team’s cricket coach was murdered after his team’s surprising loss in the Cricket World Cup.

Michelle Malkin, of all people, has mentioned it (I came across her post while putting together a TTS page on cricket). Now, everything else on her blog is vitriolic and politically charged, but this is just a note about what happened. Where’s the racism? Where’s the insulting Pakistan, cricket, and Muslims? It’s totally out of character! I’m totally confused.

The Too Much Beyonce? video conversation hasn’t stopped– and it’s spilled over to this blog, too, where someone has said: “Remember, homosexuality IS NOT A RACE OF PEOPLE. They’re mentally twisted individuals that pray upon the weak-minded innocent mislead youth. Unfortunately, that young boy in that video is already halfway to being a full fledged homosexual because His MOTHER made him that way.”

Many of the comments argue that it is only right and just to beat any gender-ambiguity out of our young. Others lament the “decline of the African-American male,” and combine it with the persistent fallacy that absent fathers cause homosexuality. Whatever they do, they need to blame someone for how that kid dances, because any kind of gender ambiguity makes them feel really uncomfortable.

All this just because he danced funny for five minutes– I imagine he’s going to get scolded and beaten and mocked until he acts just like everyone else. Just a reminder of how people don’t handle difference well… and specifically, the way it is a double burden to be both black and gay.

The whole attorney case is bringing up a lot of questions. Questions like Is Tony Snow ashamed of his flip-flop now that the shoe is on the other foot, and what other legal issues has the Bush Administration deliberately forfeited?
The one I haven’t heard yet is “why the hell are US attorneys appointed by patronage, anyway? Shouldn’t this be a job with a nonpartisan hiring process based on skills and experience?”

Finally, We’ll be getting subpoenas of White House staff on the issue of politically motivated prosecutor firings. And while on the subject of Bush administration crimes, we’ve got some interesting clues on CIA torture and the Iraq war– not enough to indict or impeach, I’m afraid, but at least a neurological explanation: a specific kind of brain damage that affects moral reasoning.

Perez Hilton will appear on Courteney Cox’s show Dirt tonight. This is a real milestone for him. He’s been working steadily toward this moment of apotheosis, when he sloughs off the carapace of a celebrity-obsessed blogger and becomes a celebrity in his own right. He’s already abandoned his brains and ethics– the only thing left is botox and surgery to make him look like all the other Ken dolls in LA.