new york... i'm embarrassed.

iowa. who'd a thunk?!

now THAT'S more like it!

a study finds that 1/3 of all americans are "chronically overworked." and it looks like over 50% of all cnn readers are overworked, according to the survey. according to the survey i'm completely off balance, which is frightening, because i work a lot less than some of my friends.

that piece of shit fortune editor can shove it. hey, he went to our alma mater. can we petition our alma mater to revoke his degree for being a fucking moron?

castro "blah blah blah"

castro allegedly opines about a clinton-obama ticket in 2008. okay, the guy hasn't been seen live or had a picture taken of him for over a year. he was whisked away to a hospital for surgery and never seen again. he's probably on life support or dead.

ooooh! boy band naming contest!!!

Pam from "Pam's House Blend" blogs:

Craig also has a 0% rating in HRC's 2006 Congressional Scorecard.

The senator from Idaho, along with John Ashcroft and Trent Lott, formed The Singing Senators. He should think about hooking up with some of these guys to form a new group: Bob Allen, David Vitter, Mark Foley, Glenn Murphy, Jr., Tommy Tester, Ted Haggard...the list goes on and on.

Any suggestions for a name for the group and additional members?

my suggestions: The Cruisers, The Commodes, and more simply... the 'Public Cans.

What are your band name nominations for the group of prominent "conservatives" in public office who vote for anti gay legislation but who are caught with their pants down soliciting some man love?

idaho?

no, he da ho.

(ooh, he was arrested in the minneapolis-st. paul airport? that is a nice airport. it has a rock bottom brewery and a wolfgang puck express, and vending machines that sell ipod nanos and bang and olufsen headphones. and apparently, hanky panky going on in the men's rooms. good food / high end designer toys and da ghey = correlated? just kidding.)

obesity crisis.

may i hypothesize? could it be that we're actually working longer and tied to our desks all day, despite what dipshit claims to report?

Jukebox Heaven

i'm on the threshold of finishing a task that has taken over eight months so far. since early december of last year, i've been converting my CD collection into a digital jukebox on my hard drive. of course, like the linux geek that i am, i chose ogg vorbis as the compression format.

i've now got a library of 524 albums, many of them box sets, on my hard drive's audio partition. that's double the size of the library since the last time i created a backup of my collection. i hate that part because it takes forever and Ubuntu's incomplete support for reading, writing and viewing DVDs makes it painful.

i would be much happier if i had an external hard drive where i could dump everything. even so, my archivist's sense of duty (and my laziness) would dictate that i burn regular backups to DVD. ripping my entire collection again would take a million times longer than burning eight or ten DVDs of ogg files. it would also be a million times more tedious the second time through.

i get physically ill when i think about losing all that work in a massive hard drive failure. it's only going to get worse when i start ripping all my records and cassette tapes. digitizing a large collection of analog recordings is an enormous pain in the ass. especially if you have to clean the recordings beforehand, like many of the records i get for a dollar apiece in my local goodwill store.

it's a certainty that i will be obsessively backing up everything much more frequently and storing multiple copies in different locations to guard against total loss in the event of a catastrophe that involves losing not just the hard drive, but the collection of the originals as well. i can't begin to describe the sheer joy of having hundreds of recordings instantly available. currently, i have my pick of half a dozen genres. my fondest wish is to have all of it available for listening at home and at work, so the external hard drive will eventually be in the picture. the ability to access a large library of music so effortlessly is the most lovely development in audio technology in my entire life.

i'm horrified at the big music companies' reaction to it. they show a remarkable lack of imagination, but what else can one expect from paper-pushing warriors? they are such fools. since i embarked on this project, i've acquired fistfuls of new music. listening to so much of it has the strange and inexplicable effect of making me want more of it. who would have guessed?

today, the second copy of Heart Shaped World i've ever bought arrived in the mail. i owned it in the past, but sold it because my unschooled ear couldn't appreciate it. i'm so happy to have it back in my collection again. it only intensifies my desire to get a guitar. god, how that eats at me. for now, i content myself with memorizing the guitar parts of the music i listen to all day. being able to hum the tune from memory will give me a big head start when i finally take the plunge and buy a guitar to play them.

Huh?

"Hey, WTF did I ever do to you?! Uh, can I has Milk Bone?"


"Unfortunately, legions of today's youths are being sold the lie that fighting dogs is a way to prove their bravery and machismo."

All right. How is standing behind the safety of a gate while an animal fights in your place a sign of "bravery"? So, if your little doggy chews off the face of someone else's little doggy, that makes you an alpha male? If you want to be a macho man, put your own ass on the line. Sign up for Ultimate Fighting, and leave Fido out of it.

I have an idea. Let's make it a rule that if your dog gets bitten in the leg, you have to stab yourself in the leg. If your dog's eyes get gouged out, you have to gouge out your own eye with a pencil. If your dog's face gets mauled, you have to stick your head in a meat grinder. If your dog dies, you have to jump off a twenty story building into a wrought iron gate with spike railheads.

If these rules were implemented and had to be followed, dog fighting would end.

a post of no significance.

wtf... tegan and sara already sold out their november show at webster hall? WTF?! (they're also playing the cat's cradle in carrboro, north carolina, which is a well-known but small venue, and it's not sold out.) how can this show be sold out?!

another way to pay off your law school loans.

become an escort. true story!

what's the big fuss about "kid nation"?

sounds like any old summer camp to me.

at what point does generation x lead into generation y?

i think it boils down to two words: "star wars."

for our torts exam, our professor had us watch "star wars." (don't ask. the reason is not important.) a couple of people in my study group were born in the early 80s, and much to my surprise and horror, they had never watched "star wars." in fact, they didn't even grasp the extent of the cultural phenomenon known as "star wars." it was "just an old movie." and after watching it, their response was "this is dumb" as if it were a disposable made for tv sci fi channel movie.

if you understand the cultural phenomenon known as star wars and lived through the madness of begging your parents for x-wing fighters and darth vader figurines, you're in generation x. if you saw "star wars," "the empire strikes back," or "return of the jedi" in theaters with your dad, you're in generation x. if you thought the people who kept repeating lines from star wars as a kid were complete geeks, but you remember passing by the star wars figurines on the way to the cabbage patch kids aisle, you're still in generation x.

no, learning about "star wars" from your older brother or sister or your parents doesn't count. you had to have lived through the time period and experienced it. seeing the film on VHS a few years after it came out in theaters doesn't count.

if the star wars trilogy phenomenon happened when you were alive, and you remembered it, you're in generation x.

if you don't remember it as it was happening, you're in generation y.

lesson over.

totally out of it.

maybe it's because i'm in the "out group" with respect to the campaign ad being referenced in this blog post, but i would have never picked up on the racial overtones. had i seen the ad, i probably would have come to the conclusion that harold ford was being portrayed as a womanizer in the vein of clinton and kennedy. harold (not to be confused with gerald) ford is a democrat, and had i seen the ad, i would have assumed that the republican smear machine was trying to equate being a democrat with being an immoral man-ho.

the white woman / black man thing would have never crossed my mind.

how interesting.

All Cat Owners Understand

from commenter B1 Bummer at The Eschaton:

One day, I was in the cats' room without my glasses. The little black cat was dancing around, and I saw an object flitting around her backside. I was afraid that a wasp was after her, so I rushed to her rescue. It was a small piece of shit attached to a string of dental floss dangling from her butt. Dear lord.

stupidest law ever: fashion police!

i believe that every american has the right dress like an imbecile if he/she so chooses.

**Censored For Excessive Profanity**

i think we should find this guy and kick the crap out of him and then make him work the 14 hour days and enjoy the measly vacations that we've all become accustomed to before he's ever allowed to bitch about the american work ethic. i'm _sick_ of hearing about how lazy american workers are as an answer to why we're losing ground in the global economy. we get less time off and fewer benefits than workers in other first world nations. we also don't get affordable college and graduate educations like people in other first world nations. we're used to graduating with debts larger than the down payment on a house. a house we can no longer afford because the federal reserve has been the finance industry's bitch for the last 8 years.

when asshat editors of magazines for the economic elite start bitching about the american work ethic, what they mean is that they expect americans to give up their puny 2 week vacations, their 40 hour work weeks (hah!), their weekends (as if they really exist anymore) and work 14 hours a day every day of the week with no holidays like factory workers in china. fuck that. i say we raise this asshole's taxes and then offshore his job to india. they speak english there, so they can write articles about how much american workers suck for a lot less money.

illegal immigration.

you know what i can't stand about the articles about illegal immigration floating around? they seem to focus more on xenophobia rather than the obvious economic implications. you know what? i don't care about the racial or cultural makeup of the united states. i don't care about this mythical "american culture" everyone seems to be prattling about. american culture is not static, it has never been static, and it will never be static. i don't care if the united states is 1% white or 99% white. i don't care if the majority of the people in this country speak spanish or chinese or afrikaans or a patois of all of the above.

however, i do care if american jobs will be protected. that's it. nothing more.

let's focus on the real issue, okay?

tick, tock...

more on shipping attorney work overseas.

first, it was the call centers (low skill). then it was the tech jobs (high skill). then it was the patent prosecutors (high skill with licensing prerequisites). now it's the entire legal profession (high skill with schooling and licensing prerequisites).

junior bankers, accountants, and physicians, you're next.

- bankers: a foreign worker can populate and run excel models just as well as you can, without the need for that 100% salary bonus.

- accountants: foreign workers can count beans too.

- physicians: once the medical tests are ordered, anyone with medical training can read the charts. radiologists, be especially afraid.

goodbye, middle class!

ah, wikipedia.

it seems that i missed the rapture. that's too bad. a home movie of people floating around in the air would have sold for a pretty penny on ebay.

RATS!

another angry biatch video.

"You know, I just want to let you know that I never felt this way about anybody else /
I, I, I think I love you /
So don't think I'm crazy when I tell you this but, /
If you ever hurt me /
I'll f'uckin kill you!!!!"

hysterical. worth a viewing. but make sure no coworkers are around.

m.i.a. "kala" review

as quite a few of you know, i am generally not a fan of music labeled "avant garde." i like my music with hooks, a catchy melody, and a bangin' beat. i like a certain level of ambition, but if it's too off the beaten path, i generally can't stand it. i hated the "art rock" portion of the course i had to suffer through in order to get my own radio show in college. but man, did i love the straightforward rhythm and melodies of the ramones, bad religion, and jawbreaker. and i am an unabashed fan of mainstream producers like timbaland, who constantly pull hits out of their asses while gently pushing the envelope. remember when justin timberlake's "sexyback" first came out, and the quirky and slightly discordant sound took people by surprise, but then the song ended up being the anthem of 2006? brilliant.

with that being said, one would imagine that i would find m.i.a.'s new album unlistenable. her new album "kala" deviates even further from the mainstream than her debut "arular." after the department of homeland security banned her from the country, thereby preventing timbaland from producing her album, m.i.a. recorded her album in recording studios all over the world, in developed and undeveloped countries, with a variety of producers. what resulted was a world music mashup of epic proportions. despite the often non-linear and the frenetic cacophony of the tracks, i can't stop listening to the album. it's unlike anything i've heard before, yet it doesn't turn me off. strangely enough, the one timbaland produced track is the weakest on the album.

so, thank you, department of homeland security for inadvertently creating this masterpiece.

so here's my conclusion: get this album and challenge yourself. close your eyes and be prepared to hear fusions of sound that will blow your mind.

who thought subprime was a good idea anyway?

let's see here... so-called "sophisticated" banks offered mortgages to individuals with bad or no credit histories and/or dicey jobs or crappy income... in an attempt to turn a profit. was there a collective synapse misfire here, did their analysts' microsoft excel spreadsheets all crash at once, or am i just not sophisticated enough to follow the logic?

just wondering.

doc review is being outsourced to india.

it's happening. if this trend continues, 50% of all law school graduates will be shit outta luck.

this all ties in with my previous tantrums about the middle class squeeze. if we don't get off our high horse and if we don't start seeing what we really are - fungible wage slaves - we are doomed.

outsourcing is occurring just as tuitions are reaching the $40k a year mark. wake up, people! time to lobby the ABA! if this practice is officially labeled the "unauthorized practice of law" this nonsense will stop. it's your ass on the line, folks.

update: "disgruntledjd" posts at 3:21pm PT:

Outsourcing the legal profession to India will glut the entry level associate market further lowering entry level salaries. This will hurt everybody in the long run, but will temporarily increase the bottom line for all law firm partners. Well, be assured of one thing: as the middle class dwindles in numbers, and more professionals are poor, even fewer will be able to afford the products corporations produce thus reducing demand in the marketplace, seriously damaging corporate earnings which will in turn obliterate the price of corporate stocks. This along with other contributing factors such as the increased default in sub-prime mortgages, the terrible real estate market, and the drain of all our taxdollars being spent to rebuild Iraq will lead our country into a downward spiral, and probably to a depression. If a depression causes corporation's stock prices go down, they will no longer have the money to fund BIGLAW and all these fat cats will have to take out second mortgages on their second and third homes. The good part of the looming depression is that it will cause the rich to lose lots of money because their assets will lose value (e.g. homes, stocks). If I'm going to be poor at least I'm taking these bastards with me.

i ain't the only one thinking this way!

i know i shouldn't get excited about other people's misfortune, but...

...if the super high end real estate market in the greater new york city area is also beginning to tank, HALLEFUCKINGLUJAH! there is still hope!

new dalek james marshall paintings

the artist formerly known as dalek has a show in los angeles, and the paintings can be viewed here. the space monkey is history, as is the "dalek" moniker. let's see where this new direction takes him. hopefully up up and up!

(i've seen his works in person, and the computer screen does not do justice to the impeccable line work and the almost impossibly vibrant colors.)

new m.i.a. album drops tuesday

so m.i.a. managed to record her album after all, despite being barred from entering the u.s. originally, timbaland was supposed to produce her album, which would have created hit single after hit single and would have catapulted the quirky rapper with a rabid cult following to superstardom, but the department of homeland security put an end to that. indie music purists were heard emitting a collective sigh of relief, and sadly, i don't get to see them cry*. her style is a bit too off-the-beaten-path to please mainstream listeners, but... next time, m.i.a! i'm hoping the next album gets the timbaland treatment, and her wacky raps gets picked up on every mainstream station in the nation.

rolling stone has already raved about this album. i'm going to download it from itunes on tuesday.

* really, i'm not an asshole. you all know, as well as i do, that when indie rock purists cry and bleat "sellout!", it means the artist is at least making a living wage doing what she loves. and possibly, hopefully, she will have a fighting chance in recouping her advance.

(p.s. speaking of timbaland, check out this remix of timbaland's current radio hit "the way i are" by danish band nephew. very new wave. i like.)

oh get over it...

pam spaulding on mervgate.

so some people at the hollywood reporter pulled an article that stated that merv griffin was gay. why was that story such a big deal that the editors pulled it? the hollywood reporter is based in california, where legal rights are recognized for gays. it is not illegal to be gay anywhere in the united states. so why were they trippin'? after all, it's "liberal hollywood."

the same liberal hollywood that showed anna nicole smith a drugged up mess after she died. doing drugs is illegal. being gay is perfectly legal. it's not a disease. it's not a sign of weakness. it's just an internal compass.

it's 2007. get with the program, ya chickenshits.

the bloodletting continues.

tony snow is going... going...

will bush even have an administration left?

harold and kumar 2 teaser trailer

not so unbelievable.

people are pitching a fit that a staffer at oprah's company racked up $65,000 in overtime in four months? why is this news? i don't think it's that crazy at all. when i was a legal temp right after i graduated, there were people who would willingly work 100 hour weeks just to cash in on that time-and-a-half overtime gravy train. this oprah staffer clocked in 800 hours of overtime in four months. assuming a regular 40 hour work week, that's 50 hours of overtime a week. there is a certain type of person who will put in the hours if they are available. i have friends doing temp doc review at large law firms who work 12 to 14 hour days, including weekends, and collect handsome amounts of overtime pay.

this chica at oprah worked 90 hour weeks. that's not "astounding, nearly impossible-to-accumulate overtime." remember, there are people who work 90 hour weeks WITHOUT overtime pay, such as, oh... most people in the bottom rungs of the investment banking industry, associates at large law firms, and resident physicians (who make a paltry $40k a year). wait, that's pretty much EVERYONE I KNOW.

so, more power to this oprah assistant. you go girl!

i don't know which one is more ridiculous...

...the thread itself, or the ad that google picked for the thread, namely one for a service offering bovine artificial insemination.

possibly the oddest legal opinion ever.

read this all the way through. it's only a page or two... but DEEAAAAYYYMMN... wtf?!

the end is near!

we can bitch and whine about middle class troubles and ain't no one gonna listen, but you know shit has hit the fan when bloated hedge funds are falling apart because of the subprime crisis. (sorry, harvard, but you just lost $350,000,000! oops!!!)

when rich folks lose their shirts, there is a fighting chance that something is gonna get fixed.

hey in the meantime maybe we can buy their estates in connecticut at a fire sale. "hey, i'll offer you this bag of potato chips for shytacre!"

in these times of market uncertainty...

...might i suggest an alternative?

pro se lawsuits by crazy people rule!

a pro se plaintiff filed a complaint in federal court alleging that michael vick stole his pit bulls, sold them on ebay and used the proceeds to purchase missiles from iran. the man also alleges that michael vick pledged allegiance to al qaeda.

more pessimism. awesome!

we're living in an age of endarkenment.

good times.

my dad told me that a bunch of rabbits ate his lilies and vegetables, so he complained to a retired catholic priest in the neighborhood, who lives in a huge house purchased by the parish - damn, i should have been born asexual and male... oh well. anyway, said priest suggested they go hunting rabbits. my dad thought this was a great idea. so my dad and the priest started went around hunting rabbits with bb guns in suburbia, and now a few of them are in the freezer for stew.

you can put a dude in a lab coat, a suit or whatever those things priests wear, and you can stick them in a suburban home, but eventually, the biological imperative to hunt critters will come out, often in bizarre ways...

I Want The Financial Industry To Die. Now.

what the fuck?! why should any student have to pay a convenience fee to use a credit card to pay tuition and fees? full-time enrollment bills are about 4000-4500 dollars at Umass Boston. a student would have to pay a fee of over a hundred dollars for the privilege of paying their bill with a credit card. what the hell has happened to people that they silently and willingly take a royal ass-raping for the privilege of paying bills? i won't be taking it, but then i'm able to sport the cash for my classes up front. poor students who have to use credit cards because they don't have all the money right away are the ones who are getting raped. i am sick of the credit industry. i want to see it strangled, drowned, hanged and burned in effigy.

Rove Is Still Dangerous

a beheaded rattlesnake can still deliver a deadly bite.

is it true?

i'm on vacation this week, so internet access is sporadic, but i noticed that KARL ROVE IS GOING THE WAY OF THE DODO.

i don't know what precipitated this event, and i have to go do family things now, so fill me in!

Remember When I Was Thumping The Depression Drum

... on our old, now long gone blog about a second global depression in the offing? i am surprised the housing bubble lasted as long as it did, but it's finally deflating, and it's taking down economies around the world.

old news, with an obvious twist.

you've heard about the robo-johns the mayor of ft. lauderdale plans to install to deter gay sex - these robotic stalls only allow a user to be inside for a short period of time before the door opens.

okay forget the obvious absurdity of spending $250,000 of taxpayers' money to curb an insignificant problem.

here's the real problem: the only thing it's going to deter is people trying to take a shit. people like to relax when they take a shit. they don't want to feel stressed out when they're trying to drop a log, okay? the process of taking a crap is often not a speedy one, and the last thing you want is the door flying open in the middle of pinching a loaf, thereby exposing your unfinished endeavor to the public. if you're particularly backed up, you can be in there for ten minutes. you can be red-faced, straining, hoping something material will be ejected from your ass, and then WHOOOSH!!! the door flies open - and you STILL haven't produced anything but a fart. furthermore, added stress often tenses sphincter muscles - you install a timer, and i guarantee that many people will be unable to crap.

the fundamental purpose of a toilet is to allow people to take a dump. people cannot take dumps when there's a clock ticking. therefore, automatic timers frustrate the fundamental purpose of a toilet.

with the robo-john, nothing will be going in your ass - but nothing will be coming out of it either.

thank you all for listening. please forward this to the mayor of ft. lauderdale.

Go To Hillbilly Days in Pikeville, Kentucky Instead

i repeat: go to Hillbilly Days in Pikeville, Kentucky instead. Hillbilly Days doesn't make country people look like jackasses.

ROFL!

there is apparently a town council meeting tonight in hoboken, and residents are encouraging each other to show up to address the flooding problem in um... creative ways.

97. gmac17 | August 8th, 2007 at 4:12 pm

Would it be in bad form if I presented the city council with a plastic bag containing the used condoms that are currently sitting on my sidewalk after being flushed up from the sewer?

just curious….

98. rag246 | August 8th, 2007 at 4:45 pm

gmac, go for it. Take a dump in the bag too…they’ll never know.

99. Colonblow | August 8th, 2007 at 5:04 pm Quote

Talk about trash, there were open bags of trash floating in the water, cars just running over full bags of garbage, wine bottles crunching under tires, and this flood was more sewage than I’ve ever smelled in recent floods. It was disgusting.

i would like to be a fly on the wall at that meeting. shit will be flying. possibly literally. unfortunately, i'll be at work until midnight.

oh my!

young republican national federation chair accused of sexually assaulting sleeping man.

three hour commute!

well, that was fun!



and that was when i managed to get INTO manhattan. how about before that?

lovely pictures here.

mmmm... toilet water in the streets!

okay, this is just amusing:

I heard on 1010 wins [ed: 1010 wins is a news station] that the manhole covers were floating off on First and Clinton. Cars were getting stuck in the holes.

I def seen few manhole covers floating on Madison

hello.

hi readers. lately, i've been suffering from a malady that can can only be described as a thirty-something crisis. okay, i won't even call it that. it's more like "annoying yupster angst." if yuppie angst ticks you off, i would advise skipping this post.

it's the realization that my parents were right about more things that i'd like to admit. it's the observation that i'm losing my liberal guilt and becoming guilty about losing it. it's the understanding that living in this part of the country is a royal pain, and the dream that i had as a kid in north carolina of moving to nyc and being a media mogul (or at least being in the cast of saturday night live) is simply becoming "cute". it's the weird desire to move back to my hometown. it's the weird feeling that i get that said desire is somehow a concession of defeat. it's the weird feeling that i get that said concession isn't such a bad thing. it's the wake-up call that my fiancee wants a family in two years, with or without me. it's the completely uncharacteristic response of mine, namely "all right, why not?" and then the resulting panic that chilluns are serious shit, and i have 730... no... 729 days of being selfish left. i don't know. i'm too old to fuck around, but a little voice in my head is telling me that i'm also too young to tie myself down. "hey, you still have a shot. don't burden yourself any more responsibilities than you already have." but is it worth risking what i already have for possibilities that may never happen?

please stand by. this too shall pass. hopefully.

in the meantime, check out women running races in high heels.

epiphany.

stream of consciousness to follow. not going to check for grammar. be forewarned.

without delving into a long, meandering, philosophical discussion/fight with my fiancee about getting to that "next stage" in life, which includes putting down roots, owning a home and having chilluns, let's just say that it became increasingly clear that doing such things in this part of the country is pretty much unattainable unless you're (1) pulling down a quarter million dollars a year, taking into account our current obligation of student loans and providing financial assistance to disabled family members (HAHAHAAHAAH!), (2) making what the fiancee and i currently make WITHOUT student loans and other financial obligations (this is moot of course), or (3) not doing anything fun, ever and eating ramen (doable, but totally unpleasant).

we looked at a one bedroom in jersey city. it was next to a housing project surrounded by barbed wire and dilapidated brownstones. we still couldn't afford it. that's right... an intellectual property attorney and a manager at an IT firm CAN'T afford a one bedroom condo in the 'hood in jersey city.

i thought my friend was insane when she told me a managing director at morgan stanley couldn't afford a condo in manhattan. i've decided to retract my diagnosis of insanity. the only thing insane around here is the nyc area condo market, which still hasn't gotten the memo from the rest of the housing market. get this - i was just given a link to an affordable housing lottery for people with incomes between $75,000 to $120,000. yes, this is a real program. when people making $90,000 need affordable housing programs, you know shit is fucked.

which leads me back to my original topic - how the hell is a young couple supposed to get their start and raise chilluns? our criteria - (1) gay friendly and generally progressive (2) cheap (3) not culturally bankrupt (4) good public schools (because they're FREE, dammit) (5) not cold (this rules out canada). urban centers usually have crappy ass schools and are ridiculously expensive. but suburbia is generally filled with strip malls and aren't terribly gay friendly. oh what to do...

well... DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

let's see.

upsides. non-psychotic standard of living. gay friendly - had its own feature on LOGO. crime free. nationally ranked public schools. excellent public universities. laid back. great arts and music scene. close to the beach and mountains. the best gourmet food market in the country, natch. and believe it or not, a pretty good restaurant scene - had several features on the Food Network.

downsides. the north carolina bar, which is one of the quirkiest in the nation.

i can't believe i'm seriously considering this.

The Wheels Are Coming Off

ummm.... anyone know a good industry to target for employment during the second great depression?

jdunderground is going down the tubes.

it seems that some posters of xoxohth discovered jdunderground and are taking it over. whereas the rude posts were mostly contained in the past, about a week ago several racially tinged (and homophobic and misogynistic) posts designed to cause flame wars appeared on the site, and now the board has more distracting content than useful material.

the admin has a tough job. on one hand, you don't want to be a fascist and start deleting posts en masse, because that will anger people. and the types of people who would be angered by such content control are generally the types of people who will then try to flood the board with vicious comments in an attempt to bring it down. also, selective enforcement ticks people off, and as a human being, it's almost impossible to be completely objective when it comes to content control. offensiveness is essentially subjective.

but on the other hand, the spate of racist, homophobic and misogynistic comments will drive away half the people who would otherwise post, and furthermore, if someone crosses the line and another person is hurt, the admin could go the way of anthony ciolli, which would be sad because the admin of jdunderground stays far away from the offensive posts and doesn't encourage them. however, being associated with rude, offensive, and unprofessional activity could affect your employment down the line. that's just a fact.

trolls are just bad news.

there have been several attempts by jdunderground posters to limit the inflammatory threads by calling out the xoxo trolls but to limited success.

Inexplicable And Massive Irritation Caused By Other People's Language

dear blogosphere,

first, i am writing to express my displeasure with the increasingly common habit of attaching the word 'roots' to some other word in order to give a populist flair to whatever opinion you're spouting. you're not allowed to do that anymore. i am revoking permission to use the word 'netroots' from now until the end of time.

this is an electronic medium and nothing on the internet has any 'roots'. your computer is not a plant. your website is not a damned walnut tree. 'netroots' is a mixed metaphor and your high school english teacher would have given you detention for using it in a paper. yes, i know that i am addressing all of you with an equally made up word, but i've given myself special permission to be a hypocrite. in other words, it's okay for me, but not for thee. get with the program.

second, i hereby revoke permission to use the phrase 'speak truth to power' from everyone everywhere in the world. it's a cheesy ass phrase that makes you look like a wide-eyed political neophyte trying to sound sophisticated. you may, however, use the phrase 'call bullshit' because it is less personally annoying for me to read it as well as infinitely less pretentious.

sincerely,
emily1

warhol v banksy!

read about it here.

falling apart.

ya know, i've posted about the flooding and water main issues in hoboken and the exploding steam pipe in midtown new york that created a 40-foot crater near grand central station. now an entire bridge in minneapolis collapsed during rush hour.

it's time to fix the decaying infrastructures of our cities. i'm just sayin'...

Attention co-bloggers!

Labor Day weekend I'm going to Provincetown, and all of you Massholes should drive on by that weekend.

There is still lodging available at the Masthead, the Cape Inn, and the Inn at the Moors. All less than $150 a night. But I just snagged the last possible room in a guest house in the middle of town. (I called around sixty places, and finally I got a place where someone cancelled.)

(When I told a co-worker I was attempting to get lodging for Labor Day weekend in Provincetown, she burst into laughter and said, "GOOD LUCK, SISTER!")

Lodging for the entire three day weekend costs half as much as a normal weekend at Fire Island.