September 2009
3 posts
Zooey Deschanel's cotton commercial
I’m generally not one to spaz out that much when some underground gem that I thought was just mine gets used in Madden 08 or whatever, nor am I particularly obsessive about Zooey Deschanel (never seen any of her movies or listened to any of her music). I don’t ride bikes (can you even ride a bike in heels?), go to thrift stores, or buy records. But I still somehow feel like I’m...
How is Peggy Olson both Norwegian and Catholic?
August 2009
16 posts
"I'm Peggy Olson and i want to smoke some...
stooooooookkkked
ohhhh shit
http://awal.tumblr.com/post/63950729/a-prediction
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/weekinreview/23baker.html
The Hobo Code: Drifters a twitter.
madmenfootnotes:
When a hobo comes to teeny-flashback Don’s farm in during season 1, the hobo scribbles some drifter-grlyphics in chalk to other vagabonds passing by. Did you know that an official Hobo Code was put into writing? At the Annual Convention Congress of the Hoboes of America held on August 8, 1894 at the Hotel Alden, 917 Market St., Chicago Illinois, the ‘boes came up with some rules...
Matthew Weiner interview →
re everybody’s favorite fertility goddess:
I still think she could have had the best relationship of her life with that roommate.
That, by the way, is probably not the first time that happened to Joan. I realized that at the end of that first season. I’ve heard from many fans that they have no leanings that way but could probably not keep their hands off her.
Foreign Policy magazine’s new “Afpak channel” has this constantly updated impossible to remove or ignore twitter feed sidebar next to the articles. It’s not even new tweets, it seems to be on a continuous loop. Either you scrunch up the screen to eliminate it or a new 120 character block will force your eye toward it just when you’ve started to get back into the...
ahahah this is great →
looooool Spackerman →
By the way, there’s an apocryphal anecdote about me and an incident in which I used the word “skullfucking.” You can Google it if you’re unfamiliar. I’m asked way, way, way too often about it. So, for the record: you see the blockquote above? That’s what I was expressing during that blown-way-out-of-proportion episode. And I was right, God damn it.
I...
this sucks →
file-sharing →
I feel bad for this kid but who still uses Kazaa in this day and age?
this would be PERFECT freshman dorm room decor. →
July 2009
16 posts
truth →
message board repeals 17th amendment →
via BCO. My impression is that these days Free Republic is basically its own little cult without much connection to conservatism in general but still, amazing.
the new york times book review best sellers in...
shorterexcerpts:
ragbag:
MIND STRETCH, by Pamela McLaughlin. (Warner, $24.95.) Trang Martinez suspects her Pilates instructor may also be a vicious serial killer.
SAGEKNIGHTS OF DARKHORN, by Gerry Banion. (Morrow, $26.95.) Astrid Soulblighter attempts to reclaim the throne from the wicked Scarkrig clan. The fifteenth volume of the “Bloodrealms” series.
THE BALTHAZAR TABLET, by Tim Drew....
microhistory book waiting to happen →
Obama's vetting regime is still a terrible idea →
I mean, this is a high-level person in his own administration saying it’s “ridiculous” and preventing good people from being hired. Six months without a USAID head.
good xkcd today →
lol →
via Jihadica
Great Ken MacLeod post →
Presumably this is bullshit like feminist myths about Minoa and the prehistoric world, anarchoprimitivist ideas of tribal societies, etc. But maybe…
FP magazine →
By insisting that U.S. troops exit the main stage despite all this, Maliki [and, presumably, Obama] has put politics first. The prime minister’s eye is on national elections scheduled for the end of the year. Maliki knows that his “repulsion of the occupiers” could win him political clout and campaign ammunition. He enjoys little support in Mosul, which is perhaps why it has...
I hear they have tanks too. →
great idea for a reality show →
Viewers of Turkish television will soon get the punchline when a new gameshow begins that offers a prize arguably greater than that offered by Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
Contestants will ponder whether to believe or not to believe when they pit their godless convictions against the possibilities of a new relationship with the almighty on Penitents Compete (Tovbekarlar Yarisiyor in...
Andrew Sullivan →
It seems to me that the Iranian regime has murdered Jews in Buenos Aires, is infected with pathological anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah murder Jews, and its Jewish citizens are relegated to second-class status - but Iran is not Nazi Germany and less dangerous for Jews who live there than, say, Iraq or Saudi Arabia.
Pretty unenlightening comparison. Iraq is...
June 2009
44 posts
The Hurt Locker
Great movie; also there’s already a dvd leak of it on the internet somehow. If you haven’t already don’t read any reviews of it, they give away some crucial plot points.
nyt →
Update | 8:34 a.m. An Iranian-American reader of The Lede, who witnessed some of Wednesday’s opposition rally, wrote this morning in an e-mail message from Tehran that he has doubts about the account of yesterday’s events given to CNN in a telephone interview on Wednesday. According to our reader:
When I was over there at the quasi-rally I realized that the repression of protests have...
"They also said they hope the rest of the world,... →
"You should stop this" →
Look how uncomfortable the anchor is after she says this. The Weekly Standard jumped on this, Andrew Sullivan quoted this woman’s account but ended the quote right before she says this. I don’t know what the US could do that would be effective/not counterproductive and wouldn’t carry an unacceptable cost for us, but it’s worth acknowledging that some people in Iran...
Iran →
Matt Frost tries to find a way to “support” the protesters while acknowledging that they don’t represent “the Iranian people” as a whole or even necessarily the majority, and Mousavi himself is not MLK:
We like and we admire the minority of relatively liberal, cosmopolitan Iranians protesting against their odious president and his supporters. To deserve our...
Anna Karenina →
Stepan Arkadyevich took in and read a liberal paper, not an extreme one, but one advocating the views held by the majority. And in spite of the fact that science, art and politics had no special interest for him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects which were held by the majority and by his paper, and he only changed them when the majority changed them - or, more strictly speaking,...
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=9908703760... →
I don’t know how real Mousavi’s facebook page is but if the answer is “real” then it seems like this (via Yglesias via Kombiz Lavasany) deserves more attention than it’s gotten (i.e. none) since it would mean that Mousavi or his supporters are (surprisingly) not afraid to associate themselves with Obama.
Stratfor →
All of this is not to say there are not tremendous tensions within the Iranian political elite. That no revolution broke out does not mean there isn’t a crisis in the political elite, particularly among the clerics. But that crisis does not cut the way Western common sense would have it. Many of Iran’s religious leaders see Ahmadinejad as hostile to their interests, as threatening their...
http://blog.newvoices.org/?p=561 →
But seriously, a snide and sarcastic tone, and an ironic disposition does not a Jew make, and, let’s be real, though there is plenty of humor to be mined from the over-the-top pageantry of the modern Bar and Bat Mitzvah, and in making fun of our geriatric, Florida-dwelling grandparents, we cannot expect that such an amorphous “cultural Judaism” (which is quite frankly parasitic rather than...
http://washingtonindependent.com/47766/iranian-demo... →
Concede that no one in the United States truly understands what the opposition wants, and no one in the United States truly understands all the intricacies or the internal disputes and everything that makes a movement the multiplicity of voices it really is. But what we’re able to see is that the opposition wants the outside world not to respect the results of the election and not to treat...