I think Holly and I might have been the only Annie Hall / DJ Steve Aoki pair in New York this year.
Bloggy Blog
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Culture Clash
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Solomon’s Slump
Wow. Awkward.
There are so many things wrong with this interview.
First of all, it’s way too meta. Instead of drawing a profile, more than anything it accentuates the interview process, which happened to be characterized by extremely poor rapport. From "None of your business." to "Is that a question?" to "You’re done."
(I have to wonder if Solomon was trying to echo the dynamic that inspired this week’s choice of subject to begin with.)
I think there may have been lack of good material too. Why did they print the stuff about Tony Snow? How is Wallace’s parents’ divorce and his brother’s death 40 years ago relevant? Maybe if he had offered insightful answers to those questions, but… he misses his brother sometimes, and his dad in proud of him. Groundbreaking.
And then there’s: Solomon: "Are you friends with Bill O’Reilly, the station’s emblematic conservative personality?" Wallace: "I don’t see him. He’s in New York. I am in Washington." LAME.
It’s pretty much filler after "You weren’t in the room."
(I’m also reminded of Ali G’s painful interview with Wallace’s father’s colleague, Andy Rooney, which ends after two and a half minutes of grammar corrections with "I don’t want to do this anymore.")
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Gift of Gab
While reading about Willams syndrome, I found this:One thing [Salk Institute neurolinguist Ursula] Bellugi has documented is the peculiar richness of the Williams child’s vocabulary. For example, when she asked a child with Down syndrome to name all the animals he could think of, the reply was "Dogs, cats, fish, bird, fish." A Williams child of the same age and IQ answered, "Brontosaurus, tyranadon, brontasaurus rex, dinosaurs, elephant, dog, cat, lion, baby hippopotamus, ibex, whale, bull, yak, zebra, puppy, kitten, tiger, koala, dragon."
If I ever build a zoo I will hire a zoo director with Williams syndrome.
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In a eugenic world…
This would not be a book. -
Kall and Response
Yesterday the New York Times science section asked, "What is vitamin K good for, and where can it be found?"As if reading their minds, on the same day the Washington Post style section wrote, "Ketamine, sweet ketamine, answer to our glutamatergic dreams."
Let me elaborate. What is K good for?
A. Chillaxing / Seeing God (depending on dosage.)
B. Anesthetizing animals, children, and the elderly. (It’s very safe because it doesn’t depress respiration. It’s not used more widely because of occasional side effects; see above.)
C. Here’s the news: Treating depression.A paper published in the August issue of Archives of General Psychiatry shows that administering sub-psychedelic amounts of ketamine can have antidepressant effects that begin within two hours and last two weeks. Wickid.
At first I didn’t notice that paper when the August Archives came across my desk. Either because it was unremarkably titled "A randomized trial of an N-methyl-D-aspartate antagonist in treatment-resistant major depression" instead of "Injecting fucking special K makes you trip balls AND totally puts you on cloud nine." Or because we got Oprah Magazine that day. (My job requires that I cast a wide eye on news and trends. Have you seen Oprah’s new hair? OMG.)
Once I read the study I spotted a mighty confusing line though: "Adverse effects [included]… perceptual disturbances… euphoria… and increased libido." Reminded me of that old Ali G segment where he asks a narcotics agent about hash:
Ali G: And what is its effects?
Guy: You can go paranoid, which means you think people or things are coming at you. It makes your heart race. Your blood pressure can go low, so you can feel a bit woozy sometimes. It’s got a lot of medical effects on the body.
Ali G: And is there any negative effects?Bottom line: I’m not sure I’m getting my biweekly recommended dosage of vitamin K. I can’t wait for the chewable Flinstoner version to come out.
Related: The side effects of vitamin R.
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Furries are made, not born.
I’m tempted to let that just sit there, without comment.
But all you furries out there might waste countless hours searching the nets for the missing frames that would show this "gorping" action more explicitly.
Cool your jets (and put your dry cleaner on hold.) It’s merely a depiction of a video shown to a set of two-year-old test subjects: Fig. 1 from a paper titled "Learning Words and Rules: Abstract Knowledge of Word Order in Early Sentence Comprehension" in the August issue of Psychological Science. Who knew grammar could be so kinky?
But seriously, if you want to find gorping, just ask Moby.
Update: My dear advice-giving friend Liz has now opined on the origin of the furry friend trend. More generally, she advocates:
I Would Vote for a president who runs on anti-meme. How does it work? It works on the same principle as a hybrid — it stores up potential energy. Every time you stop yourself from creating a delightful and idiotic social trend, the energy gets stored in a battery. That battery is around eight pounds, and the presidential hopeful runs around with it, hitting people.
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Chuck Norris is the poor man’s Cormac McCarthy.
Unless you live in Topeka you're aware that Chuck Norris is no longer the hotness. It turns out that all those facts about him distributed on the webness were total falseness. A marketing ploy for tshirts. But for those of us left yearning for a new beacon of superlatives, I have found a replacement: Cormac McCarthy. Not much is known about this elusive Southwestern author of rugged, austere fiction. According to a 1994 article in The Atlantic: -
Hapless Self-Help
In the book review section of Psychology Today we have a page called Road Test. A writer takes a self-help book out for a test drive and reports the results. Last month a man named Sheraton G. Munford sent us his book, Confirming Theories. The brief intro ends with: "please read with an open mind and give serious thought to the theories of Sheraton G. Munford." The book's not quite right for PT, so I decided to road test it for SJ!Confirming Theories is a list of 35 theories, each about a page long, and each followed by a page with blank lines for answering three questions: "How was the research on the theory completed?" "What were the results of the research?" "Please explain why you do or do not support the theory." Munford lays out his theories and we get to test them for him! Awesome! Let's get to work.
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No, You Choose.
What's that noise? A siren? Do y'all hear the Language Police about to bring the beatdown?Okay, so, what's the deal with giving two titles to things and placing "or" in between them? Example: A photo labeled "Second attempt to clone mental disorder or How one philosophizes with a hammer." Now, I did write a whole post about how great that photo caption is, but it's great because what comes before "or" and what comes after work together. I have to translate "or" into "and" or a simple colon; otherwise, the synergy dissipates.
Read "or" literally and it's like, well what's the fucking title of your piece? Is it A or B? Let's look at the inverse scenario. You wouldn't pick a single title and then put two separate paintings on the wall and say "Um, 'Dancing Daisies' is this one or that one." You wouldn't publish two novels in the same volume with a big page that says "or" in between and a single title slapped on the cover.
So take a look at this article headline: "The End of Originality Or, why Michael Bay's The Island failed at the box office." Oh, I get to pick what the article is titled? Wheee!
It's like these titles are fucking choose your own adventures. So, yeah, screw the simple "or"; here are selected excerpts from the title of my next abstract expressionist painting: "…Skip To Title 34 for a More Wry Interpretation of This Piece… If You Are Currently Feeling Incensed by Life's Great Injustices You Might Like Something in a… Otherwise Jump to… Not Feeling Any of These Titles Yet? Try… Oh Screw It, Buy the Fucking Thing and Name It What the Hell You Want."
God, why do creative types have to ruin everything?
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Little Buttery Sunshine
At a movie theater on Saturday night my sister suggested that I ingest the Olivio Buttery Spray on the counter, sans popcorn. In the course of my response I realized–with frustration–that one cannot pantomime such an act while simultaneously mimicking the "chh chh" sound that the act’s requisite dispenser would make. Foiled!Is that observation worth a blog post? Eh, fuck it.
BTW, the movie was Little Miss Sunshine, which I saw with the fam, appropriately. In my recollection, it’s the only movie that has ever made me cry the normal way and then cry from laughter–like, actual tears on cheeks. Good times. (As you know, I’m a big fan of entertainment that elicits bodily functions.)
