Wanna hear something funny? The Dalai Lama has 3,962,976 followers on Twitter, and yet he follows NO ONE. Damn, Dalai! That’s a statement.
Archive for the ‘Conspiracy Theories’ Category
Fun Fact!
April 12, 2012An Old Friend
April 12, 20123. There are probably whole Johns Hopkins U. Press books to be written on the lallating function that humor serves in today’s US psyche. A crude way to put the whole thing is that our present culture is, both developmentally and historically, adolescent. And since adolescence is acknowledge to be the single most stressful and frightening period of human development –– the stage when the adulthood we claim to crave begins to present itself as a real and narrowing system of responsibilities and limitations (taxes, death) and when we yearn inside for a return to the same childish oblivion we pretend to scorn* –– it’s not difficult to see why we as a culture are so susceptible to art and entertainment whose primary function is escape, i.e. fantasy, adrenaline, spectacle, romance, etc. Jokes are a kind of art, and because most of us Americans come to art now essentially to escape ourselves –– to pretend for a while that we’re not mice and walls are parallel and the cat can be outrun –– it’s understandable that most of us are going to view “A Little Fable” as not at all that funny, or maybe even see it as a repulsive instance of the exact sort of downer-type death-and-taxes reality for which “real” humor serves as a respite.
*(Do you think it’s a coincidence that college is when many Americans do their most serious fucking and falling-down drinking and generally ecstatic Dyonysian-type reveling? It’s not. College students are adolescents, and they’re terrified, and they’re dealing with their terror in a distinctively US way. Those naked boys hanging upside-down out of their frat house’s windows on Friday night are simply trying to buy a few hours’ escape from the grim adult stuff that any decent school has forced them to think about all week.)
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Note to the heavens: I’ll work on the books about the “lallating function” that humor STILL serves. Rest in peace, DFW.
My New Favorite Foreign Word
April 9, 2012… is poshlost, Russian for, roughly:
“self-satisfied vulgarity…” “… banality, with a characteristic national flavoring of metaphysics and high morality, and a peculiar conjunction of the sexual and the spiritual. This one word encompasses triviality, vulgarity, sexual promiscuity, and a lack of spirituality. The war against poshlost’ was a cultural obsession of the Russian and Soviet intelligentsia from the 1860s to 1960s.”
Of course, I first encountered this term in an article railing against –– what else? –– the about-to-premiere HBO show Girls.
TRAGEDY
April 5, 2012You know when you think you have an awesome idea and then it turns out someone else has already done it? (Everyone will know my Love Boat example.) Well, for years now, I’ve wanted to write an updated version of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel, BUT it seems that bridge has been crossed. Here are the not-so-chronological and yet still somewhat amusing lyrics by New York Times op-ed columnist Roger Cohen:
Bill Clinton, Tina Fey, capitalist China, O.J.,
Asia rising, Facebook, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ugg boots, Seinfeld
West Bank, Gaza City, Tupac Amaru Shakur
Mohamed Atta, W.M.D., Harry Potter, Reality TV
Tom Cruise, American Beauty, MP3, Oprah Winfrey
Schwarzenegger, YouTube, America’s got organic food
Armstrong, blogosphere, Monica Lewinsky
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
Vlad Putin, Medvedev, Assad, Posh-and-Becks
The West Wing, Y2K, massacre in Falluja
Britney Spears, Spike Lee, Kurt Cobain, Sarkozy
Mia Hamm, Heath Ledger, Viagra, Napster
Lindsay Lohan, skinny jeans, Boston’s got a winning team
Lehman Brothers, A.I.G., subprime, Ponzi scheme
Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia, and a billion poor,
Tehran, Hezbollah, trouble with the jihadis
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
New Orleans, Bolaño, Sarah Palin no-go
TiVo, Hu Jintao, and the vegan-eco crowd
Tony Blair, Paris Hilton, Princess Di, Bin Laden
Pyongyang, the renditions gang, Roger Clemens in a cloud
ACT UP, Infinite Jest, O.J. Part Two, Johnny Depp
iPhones, Federer, Who Let the Dogs Out?
Halle Berry, cloned Dolly, and another Kennedy
Jon Stewart, American Psycho, tsunami, Danger Mouse
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
Sedaris, Unabomber, Girls Gone Wild, Nasrallah
Jay-Z, Shanghai, shock and awe in Baghdad
Amy Winehouse, Imus, gases of the greenhouse
Kelly Ripa, Maureen Dowd, Ted Williams gone mad
Outsourcing, Mumbai, so many didn’t have to die
David Blaine, human rights, and Napoleon Dynamite
Mandela, Madonna’s ex, abstinence, safe sex
Rabin blown away, what else do I have to say?
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
BlackBerry, global mall, Hillary Clinton standing tall
Tiger Woods, Barry Bonds, MySpace, The Corrections
Rushdie, Starbucks, Channel Tunnel, Spurlock
American Idol, Black Hawk Down, Miracle on the Hudson
Sopranos, Cougars, Da Vinci Code, life on Mars
Saddam hung, Mugabe, traumatic stress, mission creep
Social networks, match.com, iChat, Amazon,
Terror cells, endless war, I can’t take it anymore
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
Hawaii, Kenya, Kansas and Jakarta
Harvard, finding God, social work, Axelrod
Red state, blue state, unity can no longer wait,
A time to reap, a time to sow, we will close Guantánamo
Iowa, Yes We Can, McCain was just an also-ran
I Have a Dream, Bush out, a black man in the White House
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire …
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This is actually really poorly written. Do yourself a favor and listen to the lyrics of the kid who posted his version on YouTube –– but feel free to ignore his voice. Eesh.
Psychology Studies
April 4, 20129 Recent Studies in Psychology That Rendered Horribly Obviously Results (And Two That Are Somewhat Surprising):
“Exercise Makes Us Happy” (Penn State)
“Children Who Get More Exercise Do Better in School” (Vrije Universiteit Free University Medical Center, Amsterdam)
“Online Dating Services Don’t Work Any Better Than Meeting Someone in a Bar” (Northwestern)
“People Eat Less When They Munch on Snack in Pre-Packaged Segments or Portions” (UPenn and Cornell –– They needed TWO TOP SCHOOLS for this?!)
“People Who Work Too Much Are Twice as Likely to Become Depressed” (Finnish Institute of Occupational Health)
“Men Are at Higher Risk for Memory Loss Than Women” (Mayo Clinic –– #womenarebetterthanmenineveryway)
“Good Friends Can Reduce the Effects of Stress” (Concordia University, Montreal –– operative word being “good”)
“Having an Easy-to-Say Name May Help You Get Promoted” (a team of American and Australian researchers)
“Teens Have Fewer Behavioral Problems When Parents Enforce Rules at Home” (University of Oregon)
The two shockers are:
“Topping off breakfast with a piece of chocolate cake may help dieters lose more weight” (Tel Aviv University): though I think the sentiment, which is “add a little bit of yummy fat to your Weight Watchers’ plan,” is pretty well established
and
“Narcissism may put men’s health at risk” (University of Michigan) –– which basically has become my new go-to comeback
(Thanks to Monitor on Psychology magazine for letting me lampoon it, and my former roommate for not forwarding her subscription to her new house.)
Shivers
April 3, 2012This poem in The New Yorker made me think of dark, delicious things:
Rituals
Washing your hands, trying the lock,
burning a hundred head of cattle
not to eat, washing your hands
again, trying the lock again,
talking forever to yourself,
saying the sorts of things the god
least can understand, who finally
figures this must be for me.
— Jeff Dolven
On a related note, there are 4 ads in this week’s TNY for fancy psych hospitals. Glad to see they’re keeping the percentage up.
If I Had Twitter
April 2, 2012Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) said: I’m getting pret-ty worried about how we’re gonna organize the gmails of great thinkers & publish volumes of correspondence. Who’s on this?
Itinerant Daughter says: I am. Don’t you worry one bit.
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If perhaps you get this, though, I’m sorry to say I can’t watch your new show, as I am incapable of watching anything other than re-runs of Intervention and Law and Order SVU that I’ve already seen eighteen times. My psyche is on a permanent Aristotelian carthasis-by-tragedy loop.
Hm (Thoughtful Upward Glance, Furrowed Brow)
April 1, 2012While editing Shmuley Boteach’s book, I came across this:
“An idea which might also have such unintended potential was proposed by Nobel laureate Francis Crick, who suggested that it may be necessary to redefine the concepts of ‘birth’ and ‘death.’ He suggested that the time of birth of an infant be redefined as two days after parturition so that there would be time to examine it. Crick has also proposed redefining death as occurring when a pre-determined age were achieved. At that time the person’s property would pass on to his heirs.”
This is… interesting. I will research further and get back to y’all.
This Makes Me Sad
March 30, 2012These tights are adorable:
I always feel like a twat when trying to pronounce "ombre" though.
But one, it’s springtime, and so no new tights necessary for a good few months now, and two, they’re FORTY-FIVE FUCKING DOLLARS! (It actually says “fucking” on the Etsy shop entry.) Seriously, for $45, I could feed myself for a week, and buy a cheap pair of tights at H&M and dip them in crushed berries myself.
Luckily, when I win the $600 gajillion megamillions powerball whatever tonight, I’ll be able to buy myself the woman who owns this Etsy shop and set her up in my laundry room, where she will dye tights in the morning, make funky candles in the afternoon, and sleep at night. Hey, I’m not a slavedriver.
Another Profile
March 26, 2012So I’m having a semi-shitty day because my stomach is all weird and gurgly, but it just got a whole lot better when I read this blind item on DListed:
This D list (Z list?) former child star is currently in the process of starting his own religion. He’s claiming to have visions and knows when the end of the world is. He currently has about five followers.
Joey Lawrence, reveal thyself to me! (I know, you were thinking Kirk Cameron, but that’s too easy –– plus, he’s way too high on Jesus to go the way of heresy.) We could really go places with this one.
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