That is all.
Blue Baby
April 10, 2012My 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.
Strange Syndromes and Illnesses I’ve Learned Of From Watching Law and Order: SVU
April 9, 2012Fatal Familial Insomnia
Capgras Syndrome
Reproductive Abuser
Histrionic Personality Disorder
Staff Mersa
Brief Reactive Psychosis
EXTREME Stockholm Syndrome
Arousal Parasomnia
Canavan Disease
Turner Syndrome
Tay-Sachs
Enuresis paraphilia called Urolangia
Brocha’s Aphasia
Long QT Syndrome
“Killer” HIV
Factitious Disorder
Polycystic Kidney Disease
Placenta Previa
Porphyria
Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy
Postictal Shock
Alport Syndrome
Renal Osteodystrophy
Methylmalonic acidemia
Coprophilia
Quiet Sociopathy
Azoopermia
Cardaginer Syndrome
Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome
Squamous Cell Esophageal Cancer
Everybody’s Being Funny
April 6, 2012ID: OMG! Guess who checked me out on my way to the subway from work?
Boyfriend: … I don’t like this story.
ID: Owen Wilson!
Boyfriend: Really? Wow.
ID: He was riding a bike the wrong way down a street and not wearing a helmet.
Boyfriend: Well, that makes sense, because we all know he wants to die.
So true.
Chag sameach, darlings!
Krasivaya Devushka
April 5, 2012
My child will look just like this.
Doesn’t baby Natalia Vodianova look like an ad on Soviet TV for the glory of Russian youth? “In Soviet Pre-School, all children have bow and daisies. When you drink from the teat of Mother Russia, you grow blond and strong and smiling always.”
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 …
—
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.
Text Art For All
April 4, 2012I continue to be obsessed with words as art. This is a piece entitled “Bliss,” made from letters cut from the Koran. (Here comes the fatwa.)
By Meg Hitchcock, h/t This is Colossal.
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.)
Is This Funny?
April 3, 2012LB: I saw a parade of mitzvah tanks today going down broadway
literally 40 cars
ID: i know i keep hearing about it!
LB: and by cars i mean RVs w little hasid kids sticking their heads out
one asked if i was jewish, and i said “no, noone’s perfect”
and he said “i am, i’m perfect”
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.
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