"The prostitute likes kimchi".
Morland, 2003.
Silkscreen on canvas.
Not for sale.
The cracked skin of the onion evokes the lurid grandeur of tectonic rifts while the ironic captioning of the black beans as "premium" underscores the quixotic spell of modern marketing.
The artist, posthumously given the sobriquet "Dimplecheeks McMilquetoast" later consumed the pictured food for dinner.
One of the first uses to which I put my digicam last year was taking Thanksgiving pictures. Now, amongst largely the same cast of characters, I do so once more.
Some ATMs do not ask whether the user desires a receipt. At one such machine yesterday afternoon, I removed the dangling slip of paper left over, in a moment of hastiness, flippancy, or cluelessness, from the previous transaction so that I could grab my own. I glanced at it.
INNOVUS INCORPORATED
THANKS FOR TRYING US
1-800-753-2274
181-189 2nd Ave
New York NY US
11/27/03 12:52 F21746
XXXXXXXXXXXX9383
SEQ NUMB 2628
WITHDRAW $60.00
FROM CHK SURCHARGE:
$2.00 [bastards]
AVAIL $109535.45
That's not a typo. Who the hell keeps 110k just lying around in their checking account?
"It's very healthy to be free and be honest about it," says Sam Shahid, an A&F board member, and head of Shahid & Co. in New York, the firm that designs the racy ad campaigns. The cover of the Christmas issue promises "280 pages of moose, ice hockey, chivalry, group sex & more." There wasn't a whole lot of ice hockey or chivalry, unless, by "ice hockey" they mean bare asses, and by "chivalry" they mean nipples.
...
In the catalog, the first sweater doesn't show up until Page 122 and by then, you're too tired from masturbating to shop. But I'm missing the point. The catalog isn't about the clothes. Huh?
Cole Kazdin, writing about Abercrombie & Fitch's new winter catalog in Salon. The sad part of all this hullabaloo is that no one is thinking of the moose. Poor, naked, defenseless moose.
In 1777, the Continental Congress created a system for handling “dead letters,” pieces of mail rendered undeliverable by incomplete, improper, or even missing addresses. Employees of the Dead Letter Office were–and still are–allowed to break the sanctity of the mail by opening and reading mail only as far as needed to ascertain the proper recipient. If they are unable to make to determine either who the letter came from, or to whom it was intended, the letter is destroyed.
“Sanctity” - interesting choice of wording. Couple this with the use of retired clergy in the DLO (for their perceived, ahem, rectitude - couldn’t risk sticky fingers with all those valuable errant goods and documents) and one begins to glean just how sacred and protected private communications used to be. I’m not filtering out the intentions of miscreants with the rose-colored glasses of nostalgic retrospection, as I’m sure thievery and snooping were commonplace amongst the more nefarious elements, but the general public perception was one of entrusting the delivery service with a Hermetic task indeed: that of disinterested and reliable delivery. After all, breaking this covenant was, and continues to be, a federal offense.
And all the Socratic method singers say:
Would we dare hold ISPs, mail providers, or workplaces to the same standard with the modern electronic counterpart? Better yet, should we? Do we not trade-off security and privacy for low transmission costs and delivery which is faster by several orders of magnitude? Have we debased ourselves through willing capitulation to efficiency, accepting lax security as a cost, or instead divested ourselves of the delusion that privacy can coexist with the wants of human nature?
Tyrants of all varieties have always known about the value of providing the masses with amusements as a means of pacifying discontent. But most of them could not have even hoped for a situation in which the masses would ignore that which does not amuse. That is why tyrants have always relied, and still do, on censorship. Censorship, after all, is the tribute tyrants pay to the assumption that a public knows the difference between serious discourse and entertainment-and cares. How delighted would be all the kings, czars and fuhrers of the past and commissars of the present to know that censorship is not a necessity when all political discourse takes the form of a jest.
(a) photographed by a professional photographer.
(b) obsessed with Viscount Palmerston.
(c) for a brief period working at my desk completely surrounded by visiting businessmen, each talking individually on a cellphone w/ headset in Italian, abbastanza che ho sviluppato craving profondo per il gellato.
(d) stupid enough to put on wet socks.
(e) resplendent.
Wow, I didn't know when I wrote that tirade about David Brooks that it coincidentally preceeded a flurry of coverage (more likely: I have a lower threshold for noticing anything on the topic). Draw your own conclusions from this Observer piece.
Kevin Werbach has a good article in The Feature about the evolution of converged devices, and how they're approaching a consumer-friendly price/feature-set um... convergence. Unfortunately the Treo 600 he mentions as an example has a dollar value about as high as its model number, so I can only long for one. Holiday gift anyone?
It should be known that long prior to his famous ride, Paul Revere placed the following ad in the Boston Gazette in 1768:
Whereas many persons are so unfotunate as to lose their Fore-Teeth by Accident, and otherways, to their great Detriment, not only in Looks, but Speaking both in Public and Private: --This is to inform all such, that they may have them re-placed with false Ones, that look as well as the Natural, and Answers the End of Speaking to all Intents, by Paul Revere, Goldsmith, near the Head of Dr. Clarke's Wharf, Boston.
From Presbrey, Frank. The History and Development of Advertising. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1929.
A good take on the average-joe-feels-the-hurt persuasion ads being shown before motion pictures. Not to condone piracy, but since when have film executives and producers started caring about the gaffers, best boys, and grips? Does this mean they're going to start inviting them to the orgiastic back-room coke fiestas?
:: Prelude to the climax of the best play I could conjure while vacationing from sobriety at 3am
VAN: And the chase will... and then, Cuthbert, there'll be no need to pretend that we're asleep in the massage chair. There won't be any erstwhile benefactors hunting us down. It's not like we're slaves or anything so hideous as that, we're just harried. And as if the pressures of leapfrogging from one day to the next weren't enough, now we have to deal with... look it's not like we don't deserve this, but that won't stop me from indulging in a little fantasy I call liberty.
CUTHBERT: Listening to your blather is enslavement enough. I call upon the four elements of disillusionment! Certainly, you must be familiar with them.
[VAN, CUTHBERT, and THE GOLDENROD GOLFBALL MONKEY enter the Pachinko factory.]
VAN: Sure, just heap your derision on me. That's ok, I'm used to being the martyr. Can't say I didn't want this burden. I just wish you'd admit to some culpability in the matter.
CUTHBERT: Oh, I'm to blame.
[CUTHBERT giggles and staggers forward, casting a glance towards THE GOLDENROD GOLFBALL MONKEY, who is trailing behind indolently, exuding the petulant angst of lovers left unkissed.]
CUTHBERT: In a lot of ways I'm more to blame than our little friend here.
VAN [truculent]: Come off it. You haven't -
[VAN is stopped short by a loud thud coming from the escarpment behind the structure. The three voyagers stop dead in their tracks as the facility's rear twin doors are flung open and THE CUTTING CREW enter, clad in their customary periwinkle jumpsuits, eyes and feeding orifices a-glitter. THE GOLDENROD GOLFBALL MONKEY instinctively fortifies his psychic carapace with the ambitions of the undead. THE DECORATIVE OVOID MEAD CHALICE, leader of THE CUTTING CREW, cautiously approaches the persecuted trio, brandishing his extensive collection of cured meats and flatware. Agony is his trade and anarchy his remuneration. Somewhere, a songbird chirps in a meadow.]
VAN: This...
CUTHBERT: ends...
THE GOLDENROD GOLFBALL MONKEY [softly, like the footfalls of a kitten, but less tentative]: tonight.
Julian Dibbell asks Pay Pal why they will refund money for a failed transaction involving tickets to a sporting match, but not for a 'ticket' to an online game.
Twin dangers approach: more solar flares, and a Bruce Willis movie about solar flares. Man must make a solemn decision whether to accept the Faustian bargain of sitting in a UV-protected theater in exchange for forfeiting his soul.
I first encountered his smug soapbox stylings a few years back when my brother received a copy of Bobos in Paradise. I "borrowed" it (yyyyyoink!) for a couple days and read through it. It was a fast read, sped along by copious and complex faux-anecdotes intended to drive home just how plausible his observations on this new elite class were. Though I couldn't pinpoint then what it was that irked me other than his compulsive penchant for fleshing out points with absurdly detailed hypothetical examples, and equally abrasive overuse of the word meritocracy (I later discovered the guy wrote an article entitled "The Merits of Meritocracy" for Jove's sake), I knew something was off. It slowly came to me.
BIP isn't written as a detached cataloging of some new demographic but as an apology; a defense; some sort of preemptive, narcissistic exculpation. Sure, he lobs a few criticisms their way, but they fizzle from contrivance and ineffectuality. The worst failing Brooks allots his beloved Bobos is that they spend too much money on their kitchens - the kind of spurious self-effacement akin to "Gosh, my worst fault? Well, to be frank sir, sometimes I just work too damn hard!". It's framed as a failing in his writing, but cleverly enough that no one would really take issue, especially after he diffuses what little shame there might have been with his complacent mea culpa.
The overall tone is one of how these wretches take themselves a little too seriously (his caricatures often take friendly potshots at some of the more ridiculous, outlandish, or ostentatious traits - of which there is no shortage in the invented farce of a world he uses to prove his points), but probably have a right to do so; after all, they deserve to be there, you can be sure of that. Brooks drills the concept of lifestyle-commensurate-with-merit into the reader's skull on every page. In his unbiased libertarian wet-dream of a universe, the sum of one's efforts, skills, and intellectual acumen directly equates to compensation and prestige. Work hard, get good scores on those standardized tests, write a killer dissertation and/or legal brief and/or business plan and/or literary critique, and you'll find yourself freed from the rat-race, watching it from above in the luxury boxes (probably paid for by your firm/company/university/think-tank), sipping meritocracy martinis with a twist of egalitarianism to quell any guilt.
Look, I'm no class-warrior, and I think those who have legitimately earned their station in life have every reason to be proud. I have nothing a priori against wealth, success, or prestige. But Brooks' describes, and I would posit he adores it as well, a sickening kind of Reagan-era avarice combined with Roosevelt-era elitism, all predicated on having the phrase "mitigating circumstances" stricken from society's vernacular.
And now he's written a deplorable foray into the constant hum of chatter surrounding the anything-goes world of internet dating. Let's review some choice quotes.
Online dating puts structure back into courtship. For generations Americans had certain courtship rituals. The boy would call the girl and ask her to the movies. He might come in and meet the father. After a few dates he might ask her to go steady. Sex would progress gradually from kissing to petting and beyond.
But over the past few decades that structure dissolved. And human beings, who are really good at adapting, found that the Internet, of all places, imposes the restraints they need to let relationships develop gradually. So now 40 million Americans look at online dating sites each month, and we are seeing a revolution in the way people meet and court one another.
I see. While that certainly is the case oftentimes, the internet has also enabled a fantastically shallow quick-sex revolution, whereby lonely hearts looking for a little loin-slammin' sans attachments can find someone who will reciprocate their lascivious wants anytime of the day and night, with little effort. While this may be no quicker than picking up someone at a bar, it's certainly more efficient. Far from extending it, the internet has in many instances totally annihilated what little courtship was left.
Most of the sites have programs that link you up with people like yourself. One of the side effects of online dating is that it is bound to accelerate social stratification, as highly educated people become more efficient at finding and marrying one another.
I suppose that's true, because the highly-educated always go for mates with equal academic backgrounds, and refuse to compromise for looks, wealth, or... wait. No, hold on, that's totally wrong. It does, however, have a clear subtext: "and ye shall know my name is Snob".
Now that I'm dragging up Brooks quotes, I figure I'll jump around, ADD-style, to some of my favorites from his vaunted career. Here's one from an article in The Atlantic Monthly in which he compares the coastal regions of the U.S. with the interior:
On my journeys to Franklin County, I set a goal: I was going to spend $20 on a restaurant meal. But although I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu—steak au jus, "slippery beef pot pie," or whatever—I always failed. I began asking people to direct me to the most-expensive places in town. They would send me to Red Lobster or Applebee's. I'd go into a restaurant that looked from the outside as if it had some pretensions—maybe a "Les Desserts" glass cooler for the key-lime pie and the tapioca pudding. I'd scan the menu and realize that I'd been beaten once again. I went through great vats of chipped beef and "seafood delight" trying to drop twenty dollars. I waded through enough surf-and-turfs and enough creamed corn to last a lifetime. I could not do it.
He's trying to paint this as a good thing, but that tapioca pudding he mentions seems to be smothered in a nice, thick layer of condescension syrup.
What about Brooks' thoughts on an important contemporary political issue?
The fact is that unlike the Congressional pork barrel machine, the federal procurement system is a highly structured process, which is largely insulated from crass political pressures. The idea that a Bush political appointee can parachute down and persuade a large group of civil servants to risk their careers by steering business to a big donor is the stuff of fantasy novels, not reality.
Hmm... just about every administration I've ever read about has exerted a handy bit of influence on these civil servants.
Anyway, I'm too worn out and ineloquent to formulate a good finish here, so I'll just quote the Buffalo Beast, who named Brooks (#45) one of the 50 most loathsome people of 2003:
Misdeeds: The author of a lengthy self-love letter entitled Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, Brooks has arrived as the official autobiographer of the new elite. His vision of the new upper class—"Bobos" stands for "Bourgeois Bohemians"—is that of the end result of a grand historical effort at meritocracy, i.e., everyone who is rich deserves to be rich, not because of any Social-Darwinist superiority, but mainly because they have... good taste. In an amusing twist on Fukuyama's End of History, he claimed that the Bobos' taste in furniture represented the apex of the human effort at interior design, one that would never need to be improved upon.
Aggravating Factor: On Bobo mating: "[On] the Times weddings page, you can almost feel the force of the mingling SAT scores. It's Dartmouth marries Berkeley, MBA weds PhD... and summa cum laude embraces summa cum laude (you rarely see a summa settling for a magna—the tension in such a marriage would be too great)."
Aesthetic: Turbocharged IKEA customer.
And yes, I know that line about summas marrying magnas is a joke, but honestly, it's more revealing than funny.
On Gothamist's advice, I checked out Kidrobot's SoHo store yesterday. While surreally browsing alongside Will Ferrell, my eyes feasted on some of the most awesomest little trinkets. Favorites include:
I wrote last February of the conflicts arrising when more and more people are presented with a chance to take naughty pictures with their mobile phones. Now some are taking action.
I don't know what they're doing right, but my alma mater was selected once again to host the presidential debates, marking the third time it's been chosen in a four-election window (1992, 2000, 2004). I'm sure there will be a big hoopla in the alumni magazine to which I don't subscribe (too cool for school! disaffection rules!).
The pep-squad side of me wants to be proud, but the Judd-Nelson-from-The-Breakfast-Club side of me is perplexed: three out of four elections is unusual. Either the past two went off so smoothly that the administration cultivated an impeccable reputation for logistics (having attended this institution, I will rate this as unlikely), or strings were pulled / pockets were lined with cash-money / favors were exchanged (for the same reason, I will rate this as likely). It was probably nothing illegal, just obsequious.
I must admit to having a blast at the last debate though, printing up fake Secret Service IDs, contributing to the special debate issue of The Potato Listings, and mocking, to their faces, the myriad journalists overrunning the campus (I've seen more meaningful reporting in Psoriasis Connections).
Soon, three companies will control 80% of all music sold domestically. I'm sure this will result in a better quality product for everyone: the more checks and balances are instated to stave off financial risk, the more likely these companies are to release new and innovative acts. I eagerly await the new musical golden age.
:: The immolating spinach harbingers a time of great and searing isolation
And lo, I did inquire, "Kindly purveyor of Pakistani fare, mayhaps is there some sag paneer to accompany this feast of fowl?"
And the shopkeeper did regretfully lower his head in a gesture that said: no dice, home-slice. "If my friend it is spinach you crave," he did counter, "I have something you might enjoy in its stead."
And I did produce a freshly-printed $100 bill, the telephone numbers of several women of questionable sexual rectitude, a strawberry, and a platinum-plated Rubik's Cube as tacit endorsements of his proposal. He did scurry to retrieve the spinach.
And I did carry the verdant bounty back to my office, its unholy warmth emanating from within the styrofoam container, where I did skewer myself on the sword that was my appetite for spice. And this did beget unenviable sequestration in a tiny room with good plumbing.
Epilogue: I remain undeterred, and will myopically return for more.
Guide to Friendster pictures. It's the second part in a two-part series, but the first part is so dripping with adulation it's a little scary.
UPDATE: This link is totally played out. I did beat gawker, kottke, and lindsayism by a few days though, so that makes me feel good, in a really petty way.
A review of what the current presidential candidates are using to run their websites. I like the fact that the majority use software named for a tribe which that office (in the form of Andrew Johnson) helped to mostly eradicate - a nice karmic punctuation mark.
Today is Guy Fawkes day! Celebrate by burning something in effigy.
I will burn a little doll bearing a unmistakable resemblance to Boss Tweed. I will sit in my darkened cellar and gloat at his fall. I will revel at justice served. But secretly, I will wish it was I who crassly plundered the city and state to satisfy the avarice of Tammany Hall.
Only then will tears flow down my face, tiny rivulets of proud shame, and shameful pride.
I don't get it... why is an administration claiming to be a free-market proponent mandating broadcast regulation of such clear favoritism?
"Technology always marches on, but that's normally because new devices offer consumers better features and more flexibility to woo buyers in the marketplace, not because government fiat has rendered a particular technology obsolete,'' Murray said.
:: "Who's hot? Who's not?" this week in Norse mythology
This has been a frenetic (or should I say Frey-netic?) week, with some notable break-ups and some sizzling shockers. We put the myth back in "Man. Myth. Morland" and tell you who's at the top of the lot, and who's nearing their own personal Ragnarok!
HOT: Nanna
Don't be fooled by the runes that she got, she's still Nanna from the Breidablik! The more buxom half of the formerly sizzling-hot couple BaNanna, she's out to prove to everybody that her love don't cost a thing, and bury all the uncertainty over her on-again-off-again marriage to Balder once and for all. Couple that with recent rumors of a tell-all book deal and upcoming album "Pyre-works", and this independent goddess is a triple-threat!
NOT: Balder
The rumor around town is that this hunk's repeated night-terrors (about his impending death at the hands of his own brother) were the cause of the now-infamous "BaNanna split". We loved him in "Praised and Denude", but he hasn't had a hit since, and this new moribund air tends to remind people of their own mortality a little too much. Talk about the death of a party.
PURGATORIAL: Frey
It's the question all Asgard wants to know: just how deep are this god's pockets? After all, he can fit a whole impeccably-accurate flying ship in there. No wonder this patron of bountiful harvests is so lauded. We hear there might be a little rain falling into the sun deity's life though - the word on the street is of Surt-ain peril.
PURGATORIAL: Loki
Bad boys are in, and none are badder than this wily cad. Having the dubious title of king of pranks isn't saying much in a town where antiquated notions of honor make people particularly gullible, but we're smitten with his devilishly good looks and trickster ethos. A word of warning ladies: the fruits of his loins tend to be wolves, girls with the legs of a corpse, or serpents so large they encompass the world, so start those Lamaze classes early!
HOT: Idun
What's this beauty's secret to looking so young? How about a diet laden with rejuvenating apples from her magical orchard? For a 1157 year-old, she doesn't look a day over 500!
Milken "Community" High School is spitting distance from my house in Los Angeles. It used to be called Stephen S. Wise High School, until junk bond king Michael Milken found out he had cancer, had a crisis of conscience, and donated enough money to rename the school in his honor (or alternatively to feed the entire nation of Uganda for a couple years, but I guess that didn't enter his laughably-obvious-toupee-wearing head). I guess you get what you pay for. It's a school funded by junk bonds, morals (or tact, or discretion) have no place within its walls.
I'll come back to caption these, but for the sake of expediency, I'm putting up halloween pics now so all can enjoy. I'm way too hungover to think of anything pithy to add beyond that.
Actually, maybe we can group-caption these. I look forward to the potential quips about the above image, for example.
I abhor David Brooks. 
This has been a frenetic (or should I say Frey-netic?) week, with some notable break-ups and some sizzling shockers. We put the myth back in "Man. Myth. Morland" and tell you who's at the top of the lot, and who's nearing their own personal Ragnarok!
