One for the spank bank?

http://www.spiritlessons.com/Documents/BillWiese_23MinutesInHell_Text.htm

You only need to do one click-click and stay for just a moment...but the shorter version is this: Hell is really bad Web pages hand-coded by someone's nephew.

Ways to spend your hard-earned dollars

Some days I wish Andrew Sullivan would just eat a bag of dicks

I spent way too much time this afternoon trying to translate "non ad iterandum sed ad continuandum". Which is, I believe, Latin for: "I'm a hairy, less erudite, sober version of Christopher Hitchens."

Um...where was I? All this news about tortured pigs, gay flu, and Mexican marriage must be getting to me. I'd move back to following celebrity gossip, but I have NO IDEA who any of these people are. Is The Hills a sit-com?

p.s. I think it means "it wasn't twice, but a continuation"

Don't Worry Dear

I'll be back, soon.

International Fiction Issue

It's a double-sized New Yorker - a vacation- sized one. It says "international fiction issue" on the spine, which means I don't have to read too much. I avoid short fiction. Even if there's a Nabokov story? Can't say I'm too interested in a story written in 1925.

Talk of the Town:

The first bit is about the War on Christmas...which, really? I think only affect those who listen to morning shows on the radio and those who watch Fox News. I believe the polls have demonstrated that, too. But, Bill O'Reilly is making himself such a delicious, juicy target....why not?

This is followed by an interesting, though clunky story about a college web station that interviews Iraquis to find out what's going on. The reporting is sloppy with an eye on keeping things so short the rambling final paragraph almost derails the whole thing. One has an idea Ben McGrath is working on a much longer piece and he's keeping his cards close to his chest.

Froth follows the global, right? So something about Rod Stewart's biggest fan and how she got his star on the Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame. The Talk concludes with a piece about the plague of illegal guns on the streets of New York.

Number of racial modifiers used in this issue's Talk of the Town? None.

The Philip Pullman piece benefits from a good subject, although the writer doesn't seem very familiar with Pullman's body of work. No mention is made of the radical nature of his fiction: that the protagonists are intelligent, resourceful, and flawed girls who must live by their wits. Even his lighter pieces (Count Karlstein) have a sophisticated structure and vocabulary - and pave the way for reading Victorian and Edwardian literature. It's sad that Laura Miller hasn't read the Sally Lockhart Trilogy, with its historical sweep and complicated morality. Or didn't even read enough of the His Dark Materials trilogy to pick up on its juiciest and controversial pieces: gay angels and the death of God.
Yes: God dies. My advice to parents would be to make as big of fuss as possible about how depraved and evil these books are, in order to make them irresistable to young readers.

Pullman does get to represent himself well, however. I particularly liked his opposition of the Theocracy - "...which he defined as encompassing everything from Khomeini's Iran to explicitly atheistic states such as Stalin's Soviet Union. He listed some characteristics of such states -- among them, 'a scripture whose word is inerrant,' a priesthood whose authority 'tends to concentrate in the hands of elderly men,' and 'a secret police force with the powers on an Inquisition.' Theocracies,
he said, demonstate 'the tendence of human beings to gather power to themselves in the name of something that may not be questioned.'"

A slippery slope.

"Yorick", a personal history is...uh...it started out and then I read it and then it ended. A bit too stylized to make an impression. Translated from Russian and includes the v. sad life of Grandmother.

So. For the past couple of issues there has been this half-page color ad for a book called "Fictoids" by Bill Dutcher. Illustrated by NEW YORKER CARTOONIST JACK ZIEGLER! The humor it posits underwhelms to the point of causing physical pain:

AN UNAUTHORIZED AUTOBIOGRAPHY
In 1975, 'I Did What?', a somewhat confused trip down a foggy memory
lany by Sixties drug guru Iben Stoned, became the first unauthorized
autobiography to sell more than one million copies, despite the author's
claim that the book was written by his alter ego without his consent.

The joke fails on so many levels...that "unauthorized autobiography" has been used by everyone from Lemony Snicket to Larry Rivers...Iben Stoned is a heavy-handed groaner, and the final twist has already been done by Woody Allen.

Okay. So. Jeffrey Frank is the Critic at Large, providing an overview of Norwegian writer and famed Nazi collaborator Knut Hamsun. A nice, lengthy piece. And you know what? I'll never feel the need to read anything by him.

Louis Menand takes on the Economics of Literature in his reivew of "The Economy of Prestige." The not-so-shocking revelation is that awards for literature drive sales and can elevate otherwise unworthy works. The piece isn't edited beyond checking to make sure everything is spelled right. On page 140:

"Literature is conventionally taught as a person-to-person aesthetic experience: the writer (or the poem) addressing the reader."

Or, even, perhaps, poet?

Paul Goldberger turns his eye to the Xintiandi district in Shanghai. It was designed by American James Wood and brings the colonial style of old Shanghi up-to-date by making it a boutique shopping area.


If you don't read the New York Times every day, it's hard to figure out what's going on in the world of opera. Alex Ross provides a tidy, elegant summary (Joseph Volpe is leaving as the Met's general manager; Peter Gelb is his replacement) and provides a great review of "An American Tragedy." The review is nice because it goes over the performances and the music, without requiring you to sit through the thing. We're also introduced to a new term: "opera hot". Those bloggers came up with it - it means someone is hot, for opera. But don't necessarily confuse being hot in Operaland as being hot Elsewhere.

Anthony Lane not so impressed by "Munich", liked "Hidden", and enjoyed "The New World" just to make fun of it.

The Winning Caption, while not profoundly un -funny, isn't worth repeating.

New Yorker, April 25. And a Small Rant

In the first Talk of the Town piece, a damning quote from Tom DeLay in the New Yorker (April 25, 2005), taken from an interview with him in the Washington Times:

“I blame Congress over the last fifty to a hundred years for not standing up and taking its responsibility given to it by the Constitution. The reason the judiciary has been able to impose a separation of church and state that’s nowhere in the Constitution is that Congress didn’t stop them. The reason we had judicial review is because Congress didn’t stop them. The reason we had a right to privacy is because Congress didn’t stop them.”

We should have children in school start practicing their stiff-armed salutes and goose stepping for Congressman DeLay’s glorious new Reich.

Also, in Talk of the Town, there is a wonderful little piece about a South Korean director, Shin Sang Ok, who was kidnapped by Kim Jong Il in 1978 and forced to direct a movie. The movie? Pulgasari. A monster movie about a beast that grows as he eats cannons and saves a group of farmers oppressed by an evil king. The monster was played by Kenpachiro Satsuma, who played Godzilla several times. Shin and his wife, Choi Un Hui (who was also kidnapped), managed to escape while they were traveling to Vienna in 1986. Why does North Korea have such a difficult time being taken seriously? Because it lives in a political reality that exists only in 3^rd-rate political thrillers and…North Korea.

When was the last time Shouts and Murmurs was…uh…funny? I used to love Paul Rudnick, and Social Disease was a favorite book of mine in high school and college. I think he started to decline when he started writing plays. My Living Will is a type-by-numbers affair, influenced by a Fran Leibowitz piece read long ago. I did like the last entry, though: “At my memorial service, I would like my clergyman to begin his eulogy with the words ‘I suppose, in a way, we all killed him.’”

A fun history essay by Ian Frazier about Baghdad’s history, and if Arab nations are correct in comparing America to the Mongols. Followed by a solid piece of investigative science reporting by Elizabeth Kolbert about global warming. Pretty picture, too. It’s the first of a three-part article.

Phillip Roth remembers Saul Bellow by reprinting several long letters Bellow wrote him. Mr Roth didn’t see any need to edit them, and the editors didn’t see any need to, you know, edit (getting their portfolios ready for some kind of job over at Vanity Fair?), so the result is a lot of repeated paragraphs and no dates to anchor when these letters were written (which could have helped demonstrate why Bellow recounted the same scenes over and over again).

Hilton Als writes about Martin McDonagh, a hot new playwright who’s latest is “The Pillowman”. The name of the play comes at the bottom of the third column. Either McDonagh is thrillingly obtuse, or Als had restless fingers. And, I think, he gives away the ending of the play? I don’t know. Some of these theatre reviews have a hard time holding my attention. And half of the time they don’t talk much about the effing play.

Rounding things out is a big, juicy essay on the new biography John Brown, Abolitionist by David S Reynolds. Many of us got a leg up on this subject thanks to Sara Vowell’s This American Life essay on the history of The Battle Hymn of the Republic. The tune came from a Civil War song with lyrics like “John Brown’s body is a-moulderin’ in the grave.” Which is where the title of the review “John Brown’s Body” comes from.

Notes on Politics.

The President is back from a visit to Central and Eastern Europe celebrating the 60^th anniversary of VE day. It’s a dicey thing for anyone, since the end of World War II, for many countries, meant the Nazis were replaced with Stalin. The President used every opportunity to grandstand for “Democracy” and “Freedom” and indicated this was something that has blossomed under His administration. Witness: the Rose Revolution, elections in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Uh…okay. The elections in Afghanistan and Iraq were not triumphs of democracy: they came about because the US invaded and toppled the existing regimes. And Central Europe’s democratic revolutions have been hard-fought and hard-won by people over the last decade and a half. You’d need to read a newspaper to know that, though. Oh, and about that democracy thing? The President keeps forgetting he lost the popular vote in when he first got his job, and activist judges in the Supreme Court handed him the victory.

The Gray Lady drinks too.

The problem with Science and Vice is, well, how does one remain scientific? The article Raw Eggs? Hair of the Dog? New Options for the Besotted (Science Times, 12/7/04) does, actually address this, but in a way that lets us know that any sort of Self Pleasure that does not involve cardiovascular activity is, ultimately, bad, bad, bad.

A summary:

We all hate hangovers. There are two new products which claim to cure hangovers. What causes hangovers? And, more specifically, what is a hangover? Some think hangovers are caused by molecules called congeners. Brown liquors have the more of these than clear liquors. These cause stronger hangovers! The best way to avoid hangovers is not to drink alcohol to get drunk. If we found a way of getting rid of hangovers, airline pilots’ and bus drivers’ [sic] would feel free to drink. The manufacturers or hanover cures feel their products are proven cures.

Mmm…okay. If there are two products for sale which claim to cure hangovers, they shouldn’t be getting press in the Science pages. That’s what advertising space is for. The hangovers addressed are only from liquor, and don’t even approach the most deadly of hangovers: red wine. How do I know this? Anecdotal evidence based on personal experience. Material for a science article? Nope. Material for a mediocre personal essay? Perhaps. Giving column inches to research conducted by companies selling snake oil? Kind of irresponsible. Mr. Glater didn't really go out of his way to research his story which could have made so many people so happy.

The line I found most interesting was: “The development of a fool-proof hanover cure, for example, might encourage people to drink more, knowing they could take a pill to avoid suffering the next day.” The implication being: people might think it is okay to drink. I think.

Oh, and in case one was wondering: there is no good hangover cure. Once one has a hangover you can drink water, or sleep, or wait it out. The damage has already been done. Even the “cures” require them to be taken before drinking. And those people who take a break and drink water in the middle of the festivities? They’re the smart ones. Dehydration caused by the diuretic effects of alcohol is something that can be warded off by drinking water in addition to drinking cocktails.

This time, last year

"Work continues to, if not suck, then, annoy. Still buying Lotto tickets (on Wednesday: $31 million!). Human resources came out for its Biannual Revelation. They, it turns out, have not been spending their time in isolation watching soaps and eating BonBons. They have devised Job Leveling: a tiered system that gives each position at Corporate a letter from A-J. A is '[the founder of The Company] and [Chief Operating Officer].' The pamphlet distributed to the plebians only graphs the hierarchy of G-J. Those who are at the bottom of whatever pile onto which they've been heaped are called 'Individual Contributors'.

"My esprit d'escalier has struck two weeks late, but I doubt my comment about the system seeming too Lamarckian would have been either appreciated or understood."


And last week there was another presentation: they have moved on to the Next Level: pay levels have been determined for all positions. The promise is that all job postings will include this pay level. Hee! As if.