Happy New Year

I'm going skiing for a week. I don't think there is any snow. We shall see.

If you want to get angry and laugh at the same time this holiday season, check out George Bush's press conference from yesterday (regarding the tsunami). At least when Clinton said he cared, you could half believe him. Bush just fucks up the emphasis in his speech and sounds insincere (you can't says "we really care" with the same inflection and tone as "we're gonna hunt down and kill those bastards"....its just not credible). Also humorous is when he answered that he has no idea if the USA's West Coast is adequately protected for Tsunami's...he notes that he's "asking people that" right now. Its not that I expect him to know this stuff a month ago off the top of his head, but you'd think he could interrupt his vacation long enough to read some talking points.

Oh yeah, everyone getting back to New York should check out the new building at Houston and Broadway....I like it...Robert Mosses's giant axe wounds to lower Manhattan are finally sprouting life. If New York can learn from Berlin how to balance modern, open structures with older buildings it would be a very good thing.

RIP: Susan Sontag

I was raised by a feminist (my mom), and all the other women on both sides of my family are strong-willed and don’t take crap from anyone. My mom’s friends were either lesbians or radicals and I never really experienced “traditional” wives and mothers. My friend’s moms who might be more “traditional” seemed to be either ignorant or naïve. So, I never understood the retrograde douchebags in my conservative suburban hometown who worried that feminists were going too far…cause none of this stuff ever bothered my dad.

Then I started dating and loving women and realized that many, many of them want to be pampered and have stuff fixed for them (sometimes?). My first reaction- that ain’t me babe. Then I started to accuse these women of betraying feminism. After many slaps in the face…usually instigated by me arguing that women can’t have their cake and eat it too…I have realized that lots of smart, intelligent, and strong women sometimes want to be treated like the ladies of Little Women. I’m starting to learn that nowadays women can be truly feminists and expect to be treated a certain way. I don’t get it, but I’m learning.

But, what I’ll never understand is the way women denigrate first-wave feminists like Sontag. We are one generation removed from a time when women who wanted to work were expected to be nurses or teachers. We are half a generation away from a time when women with professional careers were expected to also cook and clean. Sontag and a handful of other women broke down centuries of barriers. I can conceptualize why men might have a knee-jerk reaction to this change and accuse all the feminists of being bra burning bull dykes. But, I’ll never understand why many women dismiss these liberators as freaks. The sad reality is that most women my age (26) are not comfortable calling themselves feminists. This may just be a question of terminology, because I know that most of the women I know certainly act like feminists. But, in dismissing the word “feminists” they are also dismissing women like Sontag who fought their entire lives so that we, as a society, can get to where we are today.

Part of the dismissal of first-wave feminists may be that women are not a minority and therefore don’t see the need for a “minority mindset.” That’s fine, but that doesn’t mean that at one point in our recent past women were a functional minority (even as a majority of the population) and that it took people like Sontag to change that. Respecting those that created the world we live in does not mean anything more than that…respect. Its not political, or at least it doesn’t have to be.

So, as much as she was a “high priest of the avant-garde” or “one of America’s leading intellectuals,” why can’t we remember Sontag as, first and foremost, a FEMINIST.

Real World

Man, just when you get away, they pull you back in.

Sarah, the oversexed Florida trashy-ish child, is Jewish! And we only find out while they are talking about the Passion of the Christ. Wow.

M.J. and Shavondah fighting over phone use is great too. Shavondah cries. All because of the free long distance. What's the cell phone policy on the show?

Willie gets the cops called on him for not paying for a cab. Karamo has to deal with them. They are both black. I think Karamo was profiled. He couldn't have been frisked there (Florida v. J.L). Earlier in the season, Karamo had an anonymous tip induced frisk (at a bar...tipster said he had a gun), but I think at that point the cops had first-hand corroboration (as opposed to the facts of Florida v. J.L), Karamo was wearing a mobile mic which has a receiver that bulges around his waist). Good enough for a frisk. That's a lot of casebook 4th amendment in one person's life, but he is a black man in Philadelphia.

Finally (I'm killing a bunch of fantasy TV birds here)...I'm definitely watching the new season of Bachelorette. Or at least the first episode because ABC told us (five times?) during Monday Night Football that one of the dudes is gonna pass out during the rose ceremony. I was looking for a a witty and polemic web-tome about the concept of the "rose ceremony," I couldn't find one, if you can, let me know. Anyway, I have a policy of liking all reality shows involving panic attacks.

P.S. Rod Stewart is rich.

Tsunami

Here's a really interesting article about all the web responses to the Tsunami. Especially worth checking out are the relief blog and wikipedia entry. (as a side note, I think wikipedia is the best thing to happen to the internet in a long time....I'm old enough to remember Lynx and Gopher and when the Net was an information source rather than a porn machine...I been blogging for 3 weeks now and can safely say that blogging is closer to masturbation than journalism)

My dad and sister are in Bombay (Mumbai) right now. They are fine, and the city seemed to have been spared because its on the West Coast and there is a sea wall that shelters the bay. Unfortunately, an aftershock or whatever caused ocean levels to rise enough to flood a slum on the other side of the island. My grandparents cook lived there and her house was completely destroyed. Its scary to me because whenever you see those reports on global warming, Mumbai is always top of the list as far as cites that will no longer exist when the ocean's rise.

Here's a decent map of Mumbai, with links to Lonely Planet blurbs about the sites. My grandparents and aunt live a block off the water in between where it says "Gateway of India" and "Colaba." The slums that were flooded are on the Arabian Sea near where it says "Colaba Woods," I think. The part labeled "Back Bay" with "Marine Drive" "Nariman Point" and "Malabar Hill" are the heart of what is South Bombay...where most of the tourist attractions are. Here's a bigger map so you can see that the place is actually much bigger. Mumbai today sprawls almost as far as the Tri-State NYC Metro Region with probably twice as many people. Rents are actually really high...most people still pay for their homes under rent control, but the commercial office space market has been liberalized, leading to Mumbai now being ranked the 4th costliest city for office space in the world.

WOW, this is the coolest internet map, EVER. No joke, its a fully zoomable map of the entire world. I didn't even know that the Lena River existed before randomly zooming in on the sleepy Siberian town of Yakutsk. And to think, I just wanted to travel the Volga River...what the hell was I thinking. Places on maps are fun cause sometimes you get to go there and it really fucks with your mind....like when I was in Punta Arenas and got to dip my hand in the Straits of Magellan (yes, its cold!). I don't know why, I saw some amazing stuff in South America, but the Straits of Magellan really did it for me more than anything else cause it really resonated with the 12-year old nerd inside of me. Its like in fifth grade when you spin the globe and stop it with your finger to find out where you'll live one day. Too bad from now on I'm just going to be a shitty lawyer.

Get rich or die trying...

One of the nice things about being around my old friends is that they help me put things in perspective. I've finally been able to pin down my ambitions as a lawyer- to get close enough to the vibrating black core of the global economy that my entire being begins to vibrate at the same frequency. Hopefully I'll be able to stay detached enough to resist the dark side and figure out what crucial piece of the machine I can pull out so that the whole shithouse comes crashing down. Fighting from the inside, like Daniel Ellsberg.

Dust off the Monroe Doctrine...its time to wage some HEARTS AND MINDS.

My friend was in South America this past semester, this was in his photos. Further support for my theory that Osama is in Paraguay- the most lawless place on earth. I guess its not just me any more.

This photo is from Peru (I think), but that doesn't change the fact that Paraguay is the Nation-State equivalent of the Mos Eisley Cantina . There are no tourist sites to speak of in Paraguay, and the natural "scenery" is the chaco, which is a lifeless high-plain covered in thorny bushes and tumbleweed. (On the flip side, here are some positive reports). There have been almost 50 coups in Paraguay in the last 100 years. (I was in Chile during this coup, it wasn't even major news down there). Paraguay is the Western Hemisphere's capital of counterfeit currency and knock-off electronics. It is also a major drug processing center. The "Tri-Boarder Region" of Paraguay/Brazil/Argentina is one of the most dangerous places on earth. All I can say for sure is that if I was Osama, I couldn't think of a better place to call home.

Deep Thoughts...by Mike Tyson??

"You look at old pictures and then you look in the mirror and you don't even know who that person is."

Maybe its that I'm home now, but Iron Mike really touched a nerve there. It makes you wonder how people like Mike Tyson and Michael Jackson go on. Its sad to watch people who have been destroyed by society and the roles society puts them flounder about pathetically. WE hook them on the spotlight, WE give them all that love and attention...and then WE just turn the faucet off. WE reward them for their eccentricities, even love them for it, and then inevitably they take it one step too far and suddenly it gets all weird. Its cruel. Does anyone really expect these people to be normal? I'm waiting for the day when 5-minute-of-fame victims actually outnumber straight society. That's going to a be a shitstorm of misfunction.

I'll admit- free choice exists and the two people I mentioned above are a rapist and a child molester respectively....BUT there's a broader point. I think it comes down to how we want to treat our fallen greek heroes- are we happier to see them blinded wandering the countryside forever serving as a reminder of man's folly OR are we at a point as a society where we can say, "thank you Oedipus, we learned a lot from you, we don't need to see you suffer any more."

Anyone who's seen Jake the Snake Roberts in Beyond the Mat (a truly excellent documentary) knows what I'm talking about. As a side note, how fucking weird is it that Jake the Snake decided to use "dirty truck stop bathroom" as the motif for his website??

I'm re-reading this now, and I just want to say that I'm not at all advocating that all of fame's misfits need to find chocolate chip cookies and santa claus like Robert Downey Junior. Where have you gone buddy? What happened to the man who danced naked in a Wall Street water fountain in The Last Party (another GREAT movie, thank you NYUTV for turning me on to that).

I'm just saying, as much as the world needs pathetic washed up celebrities, sometimes it gets a bit too cruel... even for me. I mean, lets beat the crap out of Don King for 15 years and see what happens to him.

Senator John Corzine...Professor Steven Schulhofer. YOU ARE THE SAME PERSON.

Zissou!

I really need a pair of these limited edition (discontinued) Team Zissou Adidas. Eat your heart out Rod Laver!

I saw The Life Aquatic on Friday. It is hysterical. The thing that I love about Wes Anderson movies is the detail that goes into his sets, background paintings, and general weird milieus.

Anybody who has seen a Jacque Cousteau movie and laughed will love Life Aquatic, as it is basically a running gag on the glory years of underwater documentaries. Better yet, its the first comedy I've seen that integrates computer generated images successfully.

Svelte

This is the funniest thing I've seen in a long, long time. For more, go here.

This has been my computer background for almost two years. Its the middle panel of a three-panel Bosch painting. Demons are dragging a pile of hay through earth to hell, and the miserable peasants trying to grab hay are getting caught in the wheels or dragged along to hell.

Google and me

Back before the internet ruled the world I got kicked out of my lunch table in high school because I said that I though I was the only person with my first and last name in the world. The girls I ate with thought this was presumptuous and rude. Now that I look back, I'm pretty sure that's how I want to remember the incident. I probably said something embarrassing or did something embarrassing like drop a pencil under the table to look up a girl's skirt.

Flash forward to the present. I'm still pretty sure I'm still the only person with my name in the world (I'll explain why some other time, basically my father is from a long line of Zoroastrian priests, so there). I'm pretty happy with my google presence...it fluctuates between 4 or 5 permanent links and maybe 3 or 4 more that pop up every now and then, all of which are respectable. Mike Oliver added a new one this week by posting the names of all his friends on his blog. I think that's cool.

The freaky thing for me is that I just realized all I have to do is type my name on this page in this message right now and it will become part of my google pedigree. I've noticed that "jsanjana" is showing up a bunch now. That's cool. I just can't bring myself to corrupt my austere and somewhat ghost-like google presence with this blog (which I've noticed- I'm sorry- has devolved into serious of profanity-laced diatribes). Call it cold feet, sound judgment, whatever....those of us with a "unique" name bare a constant google burden. As much as I like having a one-in-the-world name, sometimes I pine to be just another David Cohen or Chris Smith.

I'm not naive enough to think that this blog isn't part of my "file" forever, but I like having less than 10 webpages in the world with my name on them...it makes me feel like I can pack up and go live off the grid someday.

on Fatwah's

chuck: btw, a fatwah is like a papal encyclical. i think you ahve to declare a fatwah condemning someone, not just a fatwah on them. you could declare jihad on her, though.
js: are YOU QUESTIONING my ability to declare a fatwah
chuck: hahahaha
chuck: no sir
chuck: sorry
js: ....you're geting close to one yourself
chuck: forget i said it, sir
js: haha
chuck: jared's blog for rob silvers is great.
js: i just saw that new tokoyo times has it linked
js: i'm getting affriad...somebody is going stop Rob in the halls and call him an ass
chuck: new tokoy times?
js: some 1L's blog
js: he linked everyone but mine
js: PUNK
chuck: hahah
js: I smell a FATWAH
chuck: hahahaha, indeed

WOW

The Dutch are an amazing and fascinating people. Terror strikes (Murder of Theo Van Gogh and subsequent grenade wars in the streets)....then there is a lot of extreme right backlash and hand wringing on the part of the everyday citizen who finally feels comfortable, but still shy, saying that they hate the Moroccans and Arabs and wish they didn't live in the their neighborhoods and that things had gone "too far."

Yet, their government as Prsident of the EU starts the path to Turkish membership. Can we trade governments? we'll throw in cash. A government that actually doesn't pander to the lowest common denominator...I can't even imagine that happening here anymore, and that's sad.

I found this too. Its an example of why I too am ambivalent about the Turks for my own reasons. 1) they deserve to be in the EU for historic reasons 2) they are horrible soccer fans and pretending to not hate their national side was difficult during the US world cup 3) my old landlord in Washington was a founding member of the US Turkish pride society...he was also a slime-ball who has a basement full of leftover furniture in a huge DC mansion. He showed me a scar on his leg fromVietnam and talked about Israel when we first met.

But I digress, good for Turkey and good for the EU!! Huzzah! Why do I suspect that in nine years the EU will have a new immigration policy worked out?

The OC

I don't know if there's a single socially acceptable setting for these. But I do love The OC. They do their own product-placement, which is kind of insane if you think about it. But, its still awesome.

What is not awesome is the commercial for Remicade.

I declare a fatwah on....

....NANCY GRACE. What a bitch. Most prosecutors are raging assholes. But, the good ones (who do a great service to society etc., etc.) can turn off the bombastic crap when they are out the courtroom. Nancy, on the other hand, has made a career out of being a moralizing, pandering CUNT. And now she does it on TV.

How did NYU give a degree to this woman? (Even if it was a LLM)

She's spent the last year telling anyone who will listen about the baby inside of Lacy Peterson's tummy (she calls it Conner). Not once, not even once, could she muster up the intellectual capacity to consider that a fetus is a fetus. Nevermind that, but how do you think a suffering young woman who just had an abortion feels having to watch this plastic-faced blow-hard talk about how its murder to take the life of that little baby boy WHO WASN'T EVEN BORN YET. I understand the desire on the part of legislatures to make murder of pregnant women double-homicide. But, to pretend like this is because the baby was actually murdered rather than just to raise the punishment of the fucked up people who do a horrible thing like kill a pregnant women is to CHEAPEN THE LAW. Cheap formalism like Ms. Grace's started World War I.

Also, I don't usually support the declaration of fatwahs, pogroms, etc.....they've never been good for my people (neither the Zoroastrians or the Jews). But, she really deserves to be impaled.

Larry is A MACHINE!

It's like Larry is some debauch old fart trying to pimp on Oprah's territory, and failing miserably. Yesterday he has the Peterson jury. Tomorrow is Merle Haggard. I don't get it, is he human? Who sits down and says, OK the publishing company is paying us to have this stupid relationship book, SO CALL UP DILLER AND VICTORIA GOTTI? He does...because he can.


Larry

Victoria

Tonights guests on Larry King: The authors of "He's Just not In to you" (or as others say, a book about "all the excuses women come up with to justify a bad relationship"....scroll down to see Cum Slut's advice..I'm not kidding) ; victoria gotti; phylis diller ; and andrew firestone....WTF???

Poll Question!!

More likely: A) Pedro Martinez pitches more than 10 games in year 4 of his new contract OR B) The pipedream that is the US missile defense shield actually becomes operational in our lifetime. NEITHER is not an acceptable answer.

Full disclosure, my dad worked on "star wars" in the 80s and said that every single defense contractor in the country knew it was a physically impossible undertaking. Things like friction and aerodynamics make the whole idea about as plausible as shooting down a balloon floating above Harlem using a sniper rifle attached to a rocking Staten Island Ferry.

Amazing

I'm a Pirates fan...but I've always liked the Mets and their drug problems...it really is a long and glorious tradition. They welcome yet another crazy mofo to the family today. However, I'm guessing Pedro won't have to bury his stash in any motel parking lots.

The picture on the right is the Mets prospect pitcher Grant Roberts taking bong hits. The phot0 was released to the media by a lady-wh0-likes-baseball-players-and-sleeps-with-a-lot-of-them (another example being Alyssa Milano) during the pot scandal that errupted in the Mets organization last year. On the left is Pedro Martinez and his midget friend. Hopefully, if Roberts recovers from shoulder surgery and Pedro passes his physical, they can hang out together next year.

Coase's List

Law Lush just posted this on her site. SWEET! The depths of NYU Law depravity (actually one student's depravity, but whatever) is now REAL NEWS. I also just heard today from someone writing an article about the Coase's List debacle for Legal Affairs. (I am gunning big time to get my "For Sale: My Left Pinky" email written up in the story). Speaking of which, I found out today that some kind soul at Yale picked my email as one several "favorites" from the whole thing!

Louisiana is LAWLESS

Not only do they have wacky civil law and the horribly misguided 5th circuit, but now this....A judge who thought it would be funny to dress in blackface and a prisoner outfit while his wife dressed as a police officer. The extra touch was his brother-in-law dressing as Buckwheat.

This old bastard was probably around for the original The Jazz Singer. Speaking of which, how badly do I want to see the 1980 version. I really do.

[story via Drudge]

Not that there's anything wrong with that...

This picture (I can't call it art, sorry) was hanging in the bedroom of the Amsterdam apartment we rented for my buddy's bachelor party last winter. My friend Adam should have known when the apartment was advertised on the internet as "discrete and in the heart of the red light district."

The funniest thing about the place was that there was similarly terrible over-the-top gay art in every room (I really wish I took a picture of the poem in the bathroom titled "Yellow Heat" and framed next to a picture of a naked man walking down a beach). What was great was that everyone arrived sort of staggered over a few days, and each time a new person arrived it took them about half an hour or so to come out of their stoned haze and actually focus on the art. This moment of stoned awareness was priceless.

Aint no media love-fest like a sports media love-fest

Peter Gammons is going to the Hall of Fame. He totally deserves it. But, reading through these comments, you'd think we were dealing with the Dali Lama. I mean, were there "talking points" distributed to these guys before the "comments" or did they all decide to compare Gammons to Babe Ruth on their own? And, aren't we forgetting what an annoying asshole Gammons can be when he's irritated.

Also, the Mets might actually end up with Pedro Martinez. If anyone really thinks he has 4 years left in him, they are fools.

Finally, I really hope Carlos Beltran fires Scott Boras (his slimy agent) and says in Houston. It would so awesome for baseball if a player realized there is actually no difference between $100 and $200 million dollars in the real world. However, this won't happen. If I had the time would make up a cut-and-paste picture of him in pinstripes, I would. But, I said the same thing about Vladimir Guererro and he's an Angel now...so one never knows.

OK, now that I've thoroughly alienated my female readership, peace out.

Halfback pass!!

Here is the "now" picture

I am from Pittsburgh, here are some pictures of my hometown- then and now.

My margin notes

One of the only fun things about studying is finding old gems of margin notes. Two goodies: "fucking travesty" and "Absolute bullshit: these people have no business administering criminal justice." Both referring to McKune v. Lile, 536 U.S. 24.

Microsoft's hidden agenda?

When one incorrectly enters the word "Natzi" into Microsoft Word, the spell checker offers three suggested spellings: "Nazi" "Nazis" and "matzo."

Coincidence...I THINK NOT!

I would also like to point out that these take home exam are not the bowl of peaches I expected them to be. I'm not the type of person who gets things done early. So, I spend 40 out of 48 hours puttering around my room reading random bits and pieces for the exam and watching the best that NYU Movie Channel has to offer- "Love Actually" "The Terminal" and "A Cinderella Story." ALL TWICE. I AM NOT FUCKING KIDDING. I'm starting to notice continuity errors in fucking "A Cinderella Story." THAT IS NOT RIGHT.

The only even passably entertaining one of the three is "Love Actually" and I'm only saying that because I'm very tired. The one plotline in "Love Actually" which wins me over is...this down-on-his-luck British lad can't get laid in England so he decides to sell everything he has and fly to America because in America chicks dig English men. So he buys a ticket to Wisconsin, and flies off with a rucksack full of johnnies. His friend is like "you're insane." Anyway, he goes to America, has the cab drop him off at a "normal American bar." He goes into the dive bar, orders a beer and is immediately assaulted by a group of 3 super model babes who live together, share a bed, and totally love English men. They invite him home, and he's happy. Bollocks! That's good stuff. Its funny cause its true.

Is this English...??

Juergen Habermas on his relationship with Derrida:

"Actually, over and beyond all the politics, what connects me to Derrida is the philosophical reference to an author like Kant. Admittedly – and though we’re roughly the same age, our life histories have been very different – what separates us is the later Heidegger. Derrida’s thinking has appropriated the Jewish-inspired perceptions of a Levinas. In Heidegger, I confront a philosopher who failed as a citizen – in 1933 and especially after 1945. But even as a philosopher, he is suspect to me because, in the 1930s, he received Nietzsche precisely as a neo-pagan, as it was then the fashion to do. Unlike Derrida, whose reading of “Andenken” accords with the spirit of monotheistic tradition, I take Heidegger’s botch-job “Seinsdenken” as a leveling of that epochal threshold in the history of consciousness that Jaspers had called the “axial age.” According to my understanding, Heidegger committed treason against that caesura which is marked, in various ways, by the prophetic-awakening Word from Mount Sinai, and by the Enlightenment of a Socrates."

If you want more, check it out.

My parent's friends are great...but odd

I just got the following email exchange forwarded from my mom...its between my mom's friend and her daughter.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Email plea:

Mom, Get ready to pray for me tomorrow around 1 or 2. . . on second thought, start now. . I need all the help I can get. -X

Reply:

Mother's prayer for a statistics exam: Dear Lord, Bless thy servant, X, during her most painful trial. Shelter her under the normal curve, let her distributions be normal and let not her variance exceed two standard deviations. Let her statistical significance be high and her standard error be low. Yeah though she walk through the valley of the path of Y on X, lead her not into multiple regressions. Thy confidence intervals shall comfort her and she will, in all probability, exceed the population mean and dwell in the land with no further statistics classes forever and ever. Amen

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P.S. The mom here is a MacArthur Grant "Genius".... they know how to pick em.

I saw a shadow touch a shadow's hand

So, one of my favorite songs ever is Simon and Garfunkel's "Bleeker Street." But, as I've become more and more of a knit-picky bastard lawyer-in-training, its the little things bother me more and more.

So, here's the thing. The first line of the song is "A Fog's rollin' in off the East River bank..." WHAT THE FUCK? The East River is nowhere close to Bleeker Street. While I understand the hood has changed a lot since the Weather Underground days, this is too much. Did they live here? Or just ride around on a tour bus?

Further research does little to clear up the issue:

Art says: I confess that Bleecker Street (finished in October 1963), was too much for me at first. The song is highly intellectual, the symbolism extremely challenging The opening line in which the fog comes like a "shroud" over the city introduces the theme of "creative sterility". But it is the second verse which I find particularly significant:

Voices leaking from a sad cafe Smiling faces try to understand I saw a shadow touch a shadow's hand On Bleecker Street

The first line is a purely poetic image. The second line touches poignantly on human conditions of our time. To me, it shows the same perceptive psychological characterization as Sparrow - the "golden wheat" ("I would it I could but I cannot, I know"). The third line marks the first appearance of a theme that is to occupy great attention in later work - " lack of communication" .

The author says that the poets have "sold out" ("the poet writes his crooked rhyme"). The line "Thirty dollars pays your rent" reminds one of Judas Iscariot's betrayal of Christ for thirty pieces of silver. Admittedly, the song is difficult to understand, but worth the effort.

Paul says: Bleecker street is a street in New York in Greenwich Village, and it's come to be more than just a street, it's come to be a metaphor for Greenwich Village which is unfortunate because Bleecker street is littered with bad art galleries and pizza stands and it obscures some of the good things, some of the creative things that are happening.

I say: The Pizza is just about the only good thing left on Bleeker Street. And, DID YOU VOYEURISTIC BASTARDS EVER LIVE HERE??

Fancis Fukuyama: Satan or Satan's Tool??

Check this out. There is no other global theorist I know of who so easily and constantly posits the end of the world is around the corner. His new thing seems to shooting down anybody who even tries to propose a peaceful future.

Here he is reviewing a book that argues, "Although Europe is largely devoid of anyone resembling a Republican, and America has no socialists, both Europe and America have the equivalent of American Democrats. It is in that intersecting space that Ash sees the “surprising future” he proclaims in the subtitle of this book—the space where John Kerry’s America makes common cause with Euro-Atlanticists. These two forces can, he believes, nudge the U.S. toward greater multilateralism and Europe toward closer trans-Atlantic cooperation." Unsurprisingly, he finds the thesis unconvincing.

I will say this, Fukuyama's observation that, "Americans tend to believe that September 11 represents only the beginning of a new age of nihilistic, mass-casualty terrorism, while Europeans tend to think of it as a single lucky shot, of a kind familiar to them through their experience with the IRA or the Baader-Meinhoff gang" is very perceptive.

My point would be that maybe the Europeans are right on this one. And further, maybe Fukuyama is guilty of the same nihilist millennialism he attributes to Americans.

RIP: Prince Bernhard 1911-2004

Prince Bernhard ... a love of life and a fresh carnation every day

The power behind the Dutch throne? Read about him here. He even worked for IG Farben....Coincidence?? I think NOT.

WILD AT HEART

One of my favorite movies has finally been released on DVD!

I've never understood why Wild at Heart gets so little respect. Wild at Heart certainly isn't Blue Velvet, but its a hell of a lot better than Lost Highway. Come on, does anyone really think there's going to be another Blue Velvet in our lifetime?? Its like criticizing Vineland because it isn't Gravity's Rainbow.

Vineland is super, you all should read it. Brock Vond, the out of control federal prosecutor, is a great character with a great name. And, the central premise (that at some point in 1984 the Reagan administration realized they could close down all their hippy re-education programs because kids were coming out of high school ready for square office jobs) is hysterical. Plus, its a hell of a lot easier to read than any of his other works.

Speaking of Pynchon... here's an expensive (and expansive) little gift for that insane acid-freak who already has everything.

Man, Lynch and Pynchon...and within the first 3 days of my blog. I am such a dweeb.

When the NFL gets creative... everyone Loses

In case you missed them. Both (Sunday Night and Monday Night) of the nationally televised NFL games this weekend were fantastic. So, why fix what is not broken?

no comment.

Hearts and Minds

I thought this was interesting. I'm not sure of the authenticity, or the source. But what the hell, this is the internet.

What's the Defense Science Board? And how can they be so intrasigent in sticking with "reality"? Didn't they get the memo? At least it wasn't leaked before the election, that would have made too much sense.

Did anyone really think that the republican foreign policy wonks could actually turn people on to our side? I mean, come on...these people use the word "inculcate" when talking about 3rd graders.

Here is one of my favorite pictures

Welcome to the 21st century

Its the rare news story that makes one start a blog. So here you go....

It seems that obese Americans are too big for the fancy-pants French furniture on the Queen Mary 2.

Many thoughts come to mind:

1) When I was in elementary school I provoked a classmate to pull out the stool from under our enormous librarian as she sat down....she fell to the floor, seemed to be in actual physical pain, and all the nearby shelves actually seemed to bounce up and down. I didn't get in trouble...did I mention that I'm now a law student?

2) The saddest thing for me upon returning to America after a while abroad is seeing the dangerously fat people in the airport. Its only sad because you get used to it so quickly.

3) I don't want to push the fat thing much further. I'm actually on the more fat-tolerant end of the spectrum (or so I learned upon coming to school and hanging with people who are at least, if not more, judgmental than me). I've heard people say that they don't trust fat people...why would you trust someone who can't take care of themselves? I think that's absolutely hysterical. My problem isn't fat people per se...only fat women with insanely long fingernails who work at computers all day long. Its not attractive OR functional. In India, non-manual laborers (men) will grow out their pinky fingernails to disgusting lengths. At least in that context the scrolled fingernail is a badge of honor which shows the world that one doesn't have to labor in the sun all day.

So, yes Virginia, I am what you hate: A relativist law student who is exceedingly critical of the people around him but accepts the same crap in people half a world away because there it fits into some half-baked anthropological non-theory. FGM anyone? http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/moolaade/