Fear Finland

Vote or die

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:24:14 -0400

Food contamination scares, global warming worries, and rising...

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:03:36 -0400

Food contamination scares, global warming worries, and rising transportation costs are making people think about where exactly their produce comes from. More Americans are now deciding to get it straight from the farmer — not by going to a farmer’s market, but through a kind of farm “subscription” system known as a CSA.

Of Firearms and Fieros

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:43:57 -0400

In the wake of Thursday’s Supreme Court decision on gun rights, it seems more likely that America will never have a policy that can control the unchecked spread of guns and the tens of thousands of deaths they cause every year. But the decision could actually be an opportunity to greatly reduce gun violence — if it’s taken advantage of in the right way.

That’s because the opinion specifically said that guns could still be regulated — it’s just a question how. Banning guns in certain cities wasn’t doing the job anyway, because there are so many places where there are virtually no limits on gun ownership. That is what must change, and it can be done with an idea that rings of common sense: treat guns like cars. Both are loved by their owners, but they can both be deadly.

Here’s how it would work:

Just as everyone must have a license to drive a car, everyone must have a license to own a gun. The licensing exam would test gun safety knowledge to help reduce accidents, which are extremely common. The licensing process would also help officials weed out those who should not be allowed to purchase guns, such as felons and the mentally unstable. Like drivers licenses, gun licenses would have to be renewed every few years, and could be suspended for violations.

Once you have your gun license, you’re all set: just like buying cars, you can go out and get as many guns as you like. But, just as cars must be registered to a person, so must each individual firearm be registered to an individual, complete with a title of ownership. If a person — any person — wants to sell his or her gun to someone else, that’s no problem. Just as with selling your car, you check the license of the buyer, transfer the title of ownership, and go on your merry way. The process would be the same whether the transaction is at a gun shop, a gun show, or your front yard.

Yes, there could be phony licenses — but this would still be a great improvement over what we have now, which is nothing. And if the government can come up with a super-sophisticated ID card in the name of fighting illegal immigration, surely they could do it for this as well.

But what if people don’t want to follow the rules? That’s where tracing and accountability comes in. When people are held accountable, they are far less likely to act recklessly, like when gun dealers sell guns to straw-man buyers.

Every vehicle in America has a Vehicle Identification Number engraved on various parts. The VIN is very difficult to get rid of. In fact, a VIN found on the axel of the truck blown up in the 1993 World Trade Center attack helped lead the FBI to the terrorists responsible.

Guns have serial numbers, but they can be easily filed off (and often are). To remedy this, gun manufacturers would have to implement mircostamping in their guns, which basically lets police match a recovered bullet to the gun that fired it. California will require microstamping beginning in 2010, and congress is considering a bill to make the requirement national. Microstamping is not a perfect technology, but it would be a huge improvement over today’s limited ballistics databases.

The NRA opposes gun registration, saying it will lead to the government taking away people’s guns. But in light of the high court’s decision, that now seems impossible — so what are they still afraid of? After all, every car is registered, and those seem pretty safe from government designs.

Manufacturers will complain about the cost of new safety features, just as automakers did when they were required to make seatbelts standard. Indeed, this system would cost a lot of money — but the human and economic costs of doing nothing are far greater.

Screwing Brad Pitt is good for sex life

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:29:11 -0400

“It’s great for the sex life,” she tells Entertainment Weekly magazine. “It just makes you a lot more creative. So you have fun, and as a woman you’re just so round and full.”

I’m going to have to go with Samantha on this one.

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:38:59 -0400

I’m going to have to go with Samantha on this one.

The thumb

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 19:50:32 -0400

The thumb

U.S. Teens Having Less Fun

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:15:14 -0400

“US teens are having less sex, doing fewer drugs and smoking fewer cigarettes than those who grew up in the 1990s, a study released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found. - AFP “

Real Estate History Repeats Itself, Again and Again

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:51:00 -0400

I found this old article about gentrification in the New York Times archive. Check out this excerpt, then click the link to see when it’s from and where it’s about. It all just sounds so eerily familiar. (I scrubbed the text a bit to keep the mystery alive):

“When Susan Kelley looks out her window she sees a beginning. ”There are so many young professionals sitting on the stoops, ties undone, just talking,” said the 24-year-old Wall Street real-estate broker as she surveyed her street, where she has lived for two years. ”There’s a feeling of togetherness, of movement. A feeling that things are different every day.”

When Barbara Shaum looks out her window she sees an end. ”I see them walking down the street in identical blue suits with their briefcases and I think, ‘There goes the neighborhood,’ ” said the leathercrafts maker who has lived in a loft behind her studio for 21 years. ”Why are all these people coming here, where they’re so riotously out of place? I don’t want my neighborhood to change.”

How you see the neighborhood seems to depend on where you stand. It is one of contrasts and contradictions. The chrome and glass facade of a newly renovated co-op is a block away from a corner known for prostitution. There is a sushi bar across the street from an abandoned warehouse and a neoned art gallery stands across from a restaurant closed by spiraling rents after 32 years. On the top floor of a weather-worn walkup is a white-walled, slate-floored loft. Some windows frame ”For Sale” signs, others hold posters warning ”Speculators, Hands Off.”

There are perhaps as many reactions to the changes as there are people who call the area home. Some of the disputes are over the physical - such as the mayor’s plan to sell city-owned abandoned buildings to private developers for a mixture of low-income and market-rate housing.

”It’s called ‘cross-subsidy,’ ” said Joseph Shuldiner, deputy commissioner of the city’s Office of Property Management, ”because we are selling some things to generate money for other projects.”

”We’ve named it ‘double-cross subsidy,’ ” said Frances Goldin, vice chairman of the CS Development Committee, which is fighting gentrification. ”I think the Mayor, more than anything, wants to turn the neighborhood over to the developers.”

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D01E7DA1038F931A3575AC0A962948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

Sick wall animation done in what looks like Buenos Aires. Thanks...

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 20:58:52 -0400

Sick wall animation done in what looks like Buenos Aires. Thanks to Marc for sending this along.

If Sex and the City were running for president, women would vote for it

Thu, 29 May 2008 22:19:00 -0400

On the entertainment section of the Daily News website, there is a whole section just for the Sex & the City movie — as in “Movies, TV/Radio, Arts, Music, Sex and the City.” For reals:

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/index.html

As for other newspapers, here are some highlights from Manohla Dargis’ uber-bitchy New York Times review (spoiler alert! the movie is a cosmo-swilling piece of crap… a crapatini, if you will):

“A little Botox goes a long way in ‘Sex and the City,’ but a little decent writing would have gone even further… I wish Ms. Parker had let that bee in her bonnet go silent, because the movie that she and Mr. King have come up with is the pits, a vulgar, shrill, deeply shallow — and, at 2 hours and 22 turgid minutes, overlong — addendum to a show that had, over the years, evolved and expanded in surprising ways.”

Maybe Manohla is just pissed because her name is so similar to “Manolos,” and once the show made them so popular she never heard the end of it.

Bachelor party post mortem

Fri, 23 May 2008 10:49:00 -0400

By George Labeouf

I’m hungry.

This is because I’m determined to lose weight. My
fatness gets in the way of my drinking. The more
tissue across which you diffuse the alcohol - the less
of it is brought to bear on the brain. No good.

Recently however, on May 3rd - I managed to overcome
my bloated lipid deposits through determined effort.
And, for the benefit of those of us who weren’t there,
I will provide a first-person account - replete with
personal observations - of the events of the day.

Friday night.

I decide it’s a good idea to follow Jack’s wife Sophie
down the Tequila-and-soda road. Now then, I’ve been
subjected to people drinking vodka and soda for a few
years now. Low-cal way to smash your brain.
Personally I never saw the point. Have a fucking
martini. If you want to go slower alternate with a
club soda with lime. Tequila with soda is a different
thing however, and it made me think about the
possibility of bubbles delivering the tequila payload
quicker. Who knows? Regardless, I like the tequila
with soda, a little lime - it’s an actual drink.

Saturday Morning.

The tequila and soda was maybe not the best idea. I
hate Jack’s wife. My brain hurts. I drink water.
Tommy calls. Blah blah blah - we need to buy booze,
come meet me, blah blah. Tommy and I buy a lot of
booze after I drag my sorry ass through the shower.
Then it’s off to the 9th avenue Pizzeria, which is on
9th avenue between 52nd and 53rd streets. Amazingly,
everyone except for Joe Fedora is there ahead of us.
Tommy and I get out of the cab and have a slice
courtesy of Geoff Wexler.

At this point, we encounter our first fuck-up of the
day. Somebody, who organized the Krav Maga segment of
the day, forgot to ask just exactly where the hell it
was. It did give everybody a chance to catch up and
whatnot.

We make it to Krav Maga, and we warm up a bit, and
then are treated to the following wisdoms:

“I don’t want to teach you anything except how to hurt
people. Quickly.”

“If you’re in a fight for 15 minutes, you aren’t
coming into work the next morning. I don’t care if you
beat the fuck out of the other guy.”

“Just snap your foot. You only need his balls to move
about two inches up.”

“Did I hurt you Joe? No? Okay, next time.”

Puts his hand on Tommy’s forhead “Okay push against
me.” Tommy pushes.
Puts his finger on Tommy’s eyeball “Okay push against
me.” Point taken.

After Krav Maga, came the gang showers. I could have
passed on that. But it was nice to be clean. In true
first-world gross excess, we left our K-Mart purchased
towels
in the locker room. I tell you, it feels good to take
cotton
from Turkey, woven in China, shipped to the US, wipe
your ass with it once and leave it on the floor
somewhere. Now that, my friends, is true wealth.
When you don’t even think about that shit.

Saturday Afternoon.

Life Drawing. I was late to life drawing too. This is
what we did:

http://www.drsketchy.com/blog/?m=200805

Except we had to score our own venue, which posed its
own problems, and there was a drink beforehand, which
Tommy and I missed because we were transporting booze
somewhere. Regardless, because of this experience I
am now determined to attend this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtOUAkyCnEM

Which is one of the performances at the “Miss Exotic
World Contest” held annually in Las Vegas. Frankly,
there are a lot of chicks out there who want to show
me their junk, and I’m just the guy to look at
aaaalllll of them.

Post Life Drawing,

We went to an Irish bar on Houston. Where we had a
beer and a shot,
and decompressed. It was nice. I will go back there.
At this point Schuman joined us, and I had been
wrong about telling him where to go. Sorry it took us
a while to get over there Schuman, but hey, you lay
down with the bitches, you come up smelling like dog.
Or teen spirit. I forget which….

Then it was time to put the booze in the Hotel room
and to get the keys. That worked out well. I went to
drop off the art supplies and have a drink and a smoke
in my apartment with Jack. I met back up with the
gang somewhere. Was it the….?

Japanese Restaurant

Yes it was. There we sampled six different kinds of
Sake (None of which was called “Wandering Poet” -
which is my new favorite name for a brand of alcohol)
and ate some of the best Fried Chicken I’ve ever had.
Also drank a lot of Sake. Too much food. But
definitely had a good time. And learned. About Sake.
And how it affects your brain.

Then it was off to the hotel. I wanted to walk, but I
think we took cabs to

The Hotel Suite

Which was a good setup, but we had probably overshot
ourselves a bit. If we hadn’t done the physical
challenge first up, and we hadn’t drunk as much Sake
as we did (neither of which thing I would trade) we
might have made it deeper into the night. As it was,
we took our time, played some poker, enjoyed the view
from the balcony, and fucked two strippers in the
bathroom
(or Mike and I did anyway, we may have forgotten to
tell everyone else about that) (very drunk).

Eventually we wandered out to the bar, which took one
look at us and promptly closed down. Turns out only
one guy with a key was downstairs, so in the confusion
people started to drop off, and then Jack, Tommy, and
I
made the long walk home. Tommy declined to join me
and Jack for 4AM Shawarma at [redacted] (big mistake
by
the way, Tommy)

and missed a painted heifer bellowing at the top of
her lungs:

“Speak to me sir! I’m trying to resolve this!” while
her cohort barfs in the gutter and the bar manager
thinks to himself “I’m 40 years old - this is not
where I should be at this point in my life” he perked
up though when I started urinating on the heifer’s
leg. She was too busy mooing at him to notice, and I
was coming at her from about 11 o’clock, so she didn’t
have the best angle on my stream. Maybe she thought
it was her friend. Maybe she liked it.

Anyhoo, that was the long and the short of it. A good
time was had by most if not all, and Tommy was
surrounded by his round table, left at the end of the
evening to ponder the idea that maybe he should have
gone ahead and pounded the snot out of some mediocre
whore - but I can tell him that the vague empty
feeling of not having pounded the whore is less than
the vague empty, dirty feeling of having pounded the
whore. I say this not from present marital
experience, but because I’m a professional writer, and
it’s up to me to know the inner workings of man’s
mind.

Well, okay, not really - but I think we’ve all banged
enough mediocre whores to know that it can’t compete
with random afternoon sex about two months into the
relationship. Random afternoon sex two months into
the relationship, especially if you’re putting it to
her from behind as she’s bent over the kitchen counter
and she’s grabbed two steak knives out of the drawer
and jammed them into the butcher block so she’s got
something to hold onto with both hands while she
screams “Rape me harder!” and “You’re ripping me
apart!” and you can see that the camera is still
recording - we all know that it never really gets any
better than that. Although I’m told that co-worker
jealousy sex from your wife can approach it, but I
think that’s a fucking lie because I’ve gotta believe
the wife is waaaaaay more likely to just complain
about “your slutty co-worker” than she is to fuck you
into submission. Women nowadays shirk their duties
like crazy…….

But I digress. That is the summary. I got up the
next morning, missed church with my parents, had lunch
with them, fell asleep on their couch, went to dinner
with them, and then hoofed it back home - flew back to
LA the next day. As far as I know, Tommy spent most
of Sunday investigating Jane’s overnight bag with a
blacklight and cotton swabs.

If there’s anything I missed, feel free to chime in
boys.

love,
George

CBS buys CNET

Thu, 15 May 2008 11:15:26 -0400

In an effort to own all things “C” CBS announced they will be buying CNET for 1.8 bil. Not exactly sure what they are smoking over there, apparently they feel CBS news brand can withstand anything.

This just in...

Thu, 15 May 2008 11:04:38 -0400

Someone stole a “for sale” sign from the front lawn of a house on the 800 block of South Greenwood Avenue overnight between May 1 and 2. Link

Spotted: Jake

Thu, 15 May 2008 10:19:00 -0400

Ran into Jake from “Jake and Amir” on the 6 plaform last week. It’s sad when running into an Cewebrity constitutes a blog post… or maybe not. Anyway, he’s taller than me, which I never approve of.

Arts and Letters

Thu, 15 May 2008 10:06:22 -0400

Arts and Letters:

Interesting aggregator for lit nerds.

Gearing up for the new Diet Kong album, here’s a video off...

Thu, 15 May 2008 09:46:00 -0400

Gearing up for the new Diet Kong album, here’s a video off their first one.

OK, it’s a blog, so when I find something, I may as well...

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 09:05:38 -0400

OK, it’s a blog, so when I find something, I may as well post it…this is another video, this time of the Boss and band filmed on 11/28/07 in Milan, Italy, and one of the best live recordings—both video and audio—I have seen on YouTube. Whitey, not sure if they will continue to play this one in C’ville—and yes, I am actually looking for tix and may actually roll for 4/30—but it’s a worthy view, replete with a “My Generation” stutter on the vocals at the end. By the way, the Euro crowds are ridiculous with Bruce…(7:00).

- billk128

Google street view shares embarrassing wipe-out with the world

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 11:33:15 -0400

This ding-dong was accidentally caught dumping his bike on Google street view.

4/18/08 - No choice but to...

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:34:05 -0400

…blog. Whatever this actually means, I am now doing it. What I really need is some software that channels my thoughts as I drive, trusty Golden Retriever (Molly) standing above me on the console between the front seats of my tiny Honda Civic, through the sprightly coiffed suburban streets of Florham Park, NJ, listening loudly to new records and/or the various sports talk and/or alternative-listening radio stations that pepper the aural (…if you will) landscape of this sleepy speck off the world’s largest metropolis.

And yeah, REM has a new record out (Accelerate). It potentially has several things going for it, to wit:

A. Its 11 songs clock in at under 35 minutes. As an old fart in a digitized musical universe, I don’t really know if folks other than myself consider actual CD length of any discernible value, but if something is represented as a viable whole, let’s just say that 45 minutes and under is preferred.

B. Then again, I’m listening to the 55-minutes plus Real Emotional Trash by Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks as I write this. C’mon, you all know Malkmus as the psuedo-leader of alt-rock “pioneer” Pavement from the back in the day, right? Maybe not, but as good as Malkmus’ record could be, it can’t be, because it’s too long.

C. Meaning, mainly, that older bands like REM need to cut the product back to have any chance beyond fans they garnered years ago. It’s an interesting scene these days, where artists/bands stick around a lot longer than back in the day.

D. Enough already with the sidebars, here are the facts:

D1: “Living Well Is the Best Revenge” blows out to open, and features a bass riff that ranks with the likes of John Entwistle…

D2: ”Man-Sized Wreath” concludes one of the most bitter opening two song sets of Stipe’s long lyrical career, but there is too much energy in the music to be concerned…

D3: In the middle third here, I’d like to say that the single (“Supernatural Superserious”) has hooks to spare, “Hollow Man” has a sharp-sounding credibility that hopefully extends beyond us 40+ geezers out there, and “Houston” has razor’s edge vibe suitable to scare (and if that’s the old Southern kudzu that you think you hear here, Jason, consider it again with its modern sounds), while “Until the Day is Done” wins you over eventually with its common sense.

D4: The record ends with one of REM’s best songs “Horse to Water” - a near-punk rave -and then “I’M Gonna DJ.” Both rock beyond what one might expect from REM or any “old” band these days, but I’ve lost track of what any of this might mean overall.

But it should mean some well-paced live gigs from an old friend that has conjured up some passion in the twilight of their career.

-billk128

A small tribute to a dead rocker: Springsteen bandmate Danny...

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:34:02 -0400

A small tribute to a dead rocker: Springsteen bandmate Danny Federici passed on 4/17/08 from melanoma, a vicious cancer not to be ignored, and in tribute, check out a little-heard track written by another deceased rocker, Warren Zevon, as covered by his son Jordan (from the posthumously released Enjoy Every Sandwich: Songs of Warren Zevon (Artemis)), with many of Warren’s varied sidemen in tow. Of course Warren passed from lung cancer, another insidious version of that disease, and this tune has an appropriate air and classic Zevon sound, without mentioning the prescient symbolism of the title…or the constant humor (“…and with only half a half pint of vodka left”…).

- billk128