Hope the deal with the devil was worth it, pal!
Alternatively:
Happy 100th Birthday, Zombie Robert Johnson!
– May 8, 2011
Archive for May, 2011
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The Week is Over
– May 6, 2011
Sunny today. Warm. 70 plus? You betcha. I spent most of my time in a basement surrounded by books. At work. I listened to the classic rock station this time. Allman Brothers. Too much Allman Brothers. That is all I will say about that.
I got into the habit today of throwing books more violently than I had allowed myself to previously. “Honestly,” I thought as I cheerfully threw them across the room in the general direction of a trash bin (which had overflowed anyway), “who thinks anyone wants three decades worth of model train magazines?” I could not figure it out. Three decades worth of model train magazines! I would like to see this gentleman’s basement!
Really I would. It would probably be teeming with model trains. That would be cool.
I had five high school seniors to help me today. They were volunteering — to fill out some sort of New Age high school graduation requirement, I guess. They were helpful, but I am not a very good manager.
“Thanks for moving those boxes.”
“Sure. Is there anything else we can do?”
“Uh. Not really.”
Of course, there was plenty for them to do, but the larger part of me was wondering why they didn’t just go outside and smoke cigarettes and wait in the gorgeous, gorgeous sun for the day to end. Why were they asking me what to do? Other than throwing books around, I barely know what to do! They didn’t want to be there, I didn’t want them there — Hey guys, let’s make a deal: you just leave now and we’ll pretend none of this ever happened! Deal of the century. I would have taken that deal at 18. Hell, I would take that deal at 27.
But I never offered it.
Anyway. Here is what you missed this week:
- We showed you more of what we’ll be bringing to Antiques Roadshow in fifty years.
- We shook our fists at clouds.
- We donned the garb of the international traveler.
- We coasted through school.
- We got philosophical about gender identity and personal history.
- We picked a fight with a HuffPo writer. And he admitted defeat.
- We talked about Canada.
- We noted that CNN is a rather hackish news organization.
- We fondly remembered days when we were drinking alcohol.
Other things, too.
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Not Something One Is, But Something One Has Done (UPDATED A LOT, YO)
– May 6, 2011
A friend I’d been talking to about Sam’s “Transgender, Cliché, and Nomenclature“ post from a couple months back sent me a really great blog post he spotted, a quote from which made something click almost audibly in my head:
As much as I talk about myself being a trans woman, I don’t honestly think of my being trans as an “identity”… so much as a description of my personal history.
Not that what she’s describing is necessarily universal, but I imagine people for whom trans is more of an identity are very differently constituted in the lifeworld (not to be jargony) than people like the author, deserving of a different categorization putting them closer to drag culture or “chicks with dicks” where the problematization of gender is put kind of front and centre. (I guess that’s what the author is getting at when she insists in the post on the significance of the distinction between “trans person” and “trans-person.”)
“Gay” is also a description of personal history (one of coming into a sexual identity that’s not “normal,” coming out about it, etc.), but it really is undeniably experienced through life as an identity too, and one that is “other” to traditional norms (at least in most contexts within our culture). Conversely, transitioning in the way the author has is transitioning into the established / dominant identity categories of man or woman.
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Before Vin Diesel took steroids and “Fast Five” broke box office records for an April release, he could actually sort of breakdance.
– May 5, 2011
Here he is busting a move with, let’s say, that kid from Everybody Hates Chris (who, you know, traveled back in time to 1986 to dance with young Vin Diesel. I mean, why not?).
(h/t)
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Neither an Intellectual Nor a Visionary
– May 5, 2011
I lived in Portland, Oregon for three years, and for two of those years I lived at a flop house in deep South East. During my time there we subscribed to three perodicals: The New Yorker, Harper’s, and The Economist. One summer I was laid out with a broken foot (fifth metatarsal, ripped out of place when my right foot hit a mud puddle rounding second base — snap!) and I drank beers and read magazines from cover to cover (and books — lots and lots of books, though I never did get started on the Critique of Pure Reason) on the front porch all day every day, and even though it was really quite terrible not being able to walk, I managed to make the best of it.
We subscribed to The Economist, is where I’m going with this, and that summer one of my favorite rituals on Saturday mornings (Economist arrival day in Portland) was to open it up, skip to the letters to the editor, read the last one (the last one is always their “joke” letter, and is often charming in a peculiar British way), then flip to the back and read the obituary. The Economist does a proper obituary, and they only do one a week, so they make it count.
(I’m not of the age where I scan the obituaries in newspapers for dead friends, but I’m getting older all the time.)
Anyway. Here you can find The Economist’s obituary for Osama bin Laden.
His mind and approach were those of a businessman. The same caution that characterised his fugitive existence in Afghanistan and Pakistan—avoiding phones, the internet, even watches, anything that might be used to track him, slipping from cave to safe house to compound—featured in his investments, which were profitable and practical. No political ideology guided him, though he might lie for hours at night thinking, or read for most of the day. The polite, pious rich boy, who had left university without a degree, became neither an intellectual nor a visionary.
[snip]
Somewhere, according to one of his five wives, was a man who loved sunflowers, and eating yogurt with honey; who took his children to the beach, and let them sleep under the stars; who enjoyed the BBC World Service and would go hunting with friends each Friday, sometimes mounted, like the Prophet, on a white horse. He liked the comparison. Yet the best thing in his life, he said, was that his jihads had destroyed the myth of all-conquering superpowers.
The price set on his head for more than a decade never bothered him, for Allah determined every breath in his body, and could ensure that the bombs dropped on his hideout at Tora Bora, or on his convoy through the mountains, never touched him. His martyr’s time would come when it came. The difference between pure Muslims and Americans, he said, was that Americans loved life, whereas Muslims loved death. Whether or not he resisted when the Crusaders’ special forces arrived, their bullets could only exalt him.
As I said, they do a good obituary.
[via]
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From Buckles to Chuckles: last WWI combat veteran dies at 110
– May 5, 2011
No, he's not dead in this picture (it was taken in 2009), but you'd be forgiven for thinking so.
It looks like 110 is the not-so-magic number for remaining World War One veterans. Last February, we noted the death of America’s last WWI veteran, Frank Buckles. Today, we acknowledge the passing of Claude “Chuckles” Choules, The Great War’s last known combat veteran period, who died this morning at a nursing home in the Western Australia city of Perth.
Beloved for his wry sense of humor and humble nature, the British-born Choules — nicknamed “Chuckles” by his comrades in the Australian Navy — never liked to fuss over his achievements, which included a 41-year military career and the publication of his first book at the age of 108.
To me, however, the most notable characteristic displayed by Mr. Choules was the fact that:
Despite the fame he achieved because of his military service, Choules grew to become a pacifist who was uncomfortable with anything that glorified war. He disagreed with the celebration of Anzac Day, Australia’s most important war memorial holiday, and refused to march in parades held each year to commemorate the holiday.
“He didn’t believe in war,” Edinger said.
“He always said that the old men make the decisions that send the young men into war,” said his son Adrian Choules.
“He used to say, if it was the other way around, and the old … were off fighting, then there would never be any wars,” Adrian Choules told local media.
Amen to that, Chuckles. Amen to that.
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“Live [PRODUCT NAME REDACTED IN PROTEST] Clear Today” Was Just Written Over Toronto In Clouds
– May 5, 2011
Photo (in which the product name, at left, won’t be picked up by Google):
Not sure exactly what it was that was doing it. Really high planes was kindof what it looked like, but that seems unlikely, and I don’t know. What’s significant is that now that they have this ability / technology / infrastructure in the city, you can bet Toronto’s blue sky’s going to be advertisers’ new slate. All I can say is that we better be taxing the shit out of them for the right (though I bet we’re not).
PS – There have always been plane-dragged sky signs (ALWAYS), but they’re sooo innocuous by comparison to the slogan effectively dominating the view out my office window (not any more, it drifted out of frame in like a minute, but still). I’m gonna do my best to never buy anything from Merck, which owns [PRODUCT NAME REDACTED IN PROTEST], again. Probably going to fail. Those assholes own everything. But at least I can buy less. And I can at least not ever use or buy [PRODUCT NAME REDACTED IN PROTEST] again. That’s right, Merck. Don’t fuck with me.
UPDATE: Look at this fucking pollution:
(hat tip)
