Cogito, Ergo Sumana for 2003 April

# 03 Apr 2003, 02:00PM: A Long Quote From An Interesting Thinker: My former prof and (according to the picture) moody teen heartthrob Steve Weber has made remarks on the war with Iraq. He says that the UN Security Council is over but we shouldn't worry too much about that; rather, "The interesting question now is, what are we going to put in place of these institutions?" And, as per usual, he says other thought-provoking things...

...The second piece of the Bush world order project is a shift to pre-emptive military strategies that redefine the role of force in world politics. This signals the end of the intellectual apparatus behind the containment doctrine. The National Security Strategy Document of September 2002 (which you must read, if you have not done so) says explicitly that the U.S. will act IN ANTICIPATION of the emergence of a threat, or of a center of power that could challenge U.S. predominance.
We could talk for a long time about the roots behind this shift; in fact there is a cottage industry in my field of IR [international relations] that does this, but let me just point out quickly why states are historically pulled to these kinds of doctrines like iron filings to a magnet. The fact is, pre-emption shifts the initiative back to our side and lets us shape the battlefield of world politics, rather than respond to it. This works sometimes. The beauty of the Bush administration's policy toward Iraq over the last year is that it has created a consensus that Saddam is history. No one defends his regime, no one thinks he should remain in power; the arguments are over how to get rid of him, not whether he should go. That is a serious diplomatic achievement.
But it comes with huge risks as well. The pre-emption doctrine always is at risk of breaking the number one rule of diplomacy: which is don't back the other guy into a corner from which he has no escape. When you combine this with the axis of evil rhetoric, you can hardly blame countries like Iran and Syria for coming to believe that they are next on the list and that war is likely or inevitable. At the moment they believe this, as we learned so vividly in 1914 and again at Pearl Harbor, the supposed target has every incentive to pre-empt pre-emption and find a way to strike first. In practice the U.S. is signing up to play games of chicken - everyone know what this game is? [in case you don't -- ed.] - but 10 or 12 games of chicken at once, which is a very tricky proposition.
By the way, anybody know how you win at chicken? Thomas Schelling got it right in 1961: the way to win at chicken is to throw your steering wheel out the window, so the other guy has to swerve. The question then becomes who can throw their steering wheel out the window first: Iran, Syria, North Korea, or the U.S..
I think this is EXACTLY what the North Koreans are engaged in right now....

When I took Intro to International Relations with him a few years back, he told us that the most interesting question in IR at the time was why there was no widespread international coalition trying to counterbalance or unseat US power. I don't think that's the interesting question anymore.

# 05 Apr 2003, 06:59PM GMT+5:30: A science fiction short story featuring shipping containers.

Filed under: Reading

# 05 Apr 2003, 07:12PM: Divine Intervention: I liked it even less than Leonard did. If you have the chance to either see Divine Intervention for free or see Phone Booth for money, I say see Phone Booth. And this is even though Phone Booth wasn't very good. A Salon critic (registration required, or watch an ad):

I guess this won't matter to people who don't live in New York or who never go there, but the "Manhattan block" where most of "Phone Booth" is set is thoroughly bogus. (It was shot in downtown Los Angeles, and I kept hoping that in some shot they'd forget to mask the palm trees.) More to the point, it's bogus in a way that appeals to the audience's worst prejudices about what urban life is really like, much as "Falling Down," Schumacher's white-man-in-multiculti-L.A. nightmare, did. "Phone Booth" is supposed to take place at 53rd Street and Eighth Avenue, in actual fact a mixed-to-middle-class neighborhood of placid shops, restaurants and condo towers. Here, though, it's a desolate zone of sex shops, skanky hookers and conniving street merchants, where a brutal midday brawl involving five people and a baseball bat attracts almost no attention. This was made by people whose ideas about New York come, at best, from "Taxi Driver" and "Bonfire of the Vanities," if not from mid-'70s Charles Bronson movies.

# 05 Apr 2003, 08:36PM: I need to start reading weekly reviews of syndicated comic strips. (via Jym)

Filed under: Comedy

# 05 Apr 2003, 08:54PM: What Next, Meat Eating?: I now own a car. My parents owned it, kept it with a friend when they moved to India, used it while they visited in March, and gave it to me when they left again. It is my car. Mine. It's taken me a bit to get used to that.

I've now used the car for a few trips. Last night I drove to Kevin's place and five of us had dinner at a superlative restaurant on Grand Avenue. (By the way, Trio is the best place I've eaten in a year. Discovering Trio was like discovering the now-defunct vegetarian spot Kowloon in SF's Chinatown. Every dish was an awakening. "So this is what polenta/lentil soup/portobello is supposed to be!") We had a fine time, and to get back I didn't have to bike or bus or BART in the dark and while tired. (I cringe at thinking what Biker Zed thinks of that, or indeed of this whole entry, even though he can be sympathetic to drivers.)

Today my sister and I visited Monterey, where she's thinking of going to international relations grad school. She castigated the sunny-yet-cold weather as "fake sun." We enjoyed our mini-roadtrip. I grokked the feeling of freedom that car ownership is supposed to convey. I could go shopping -- today! Tomorrow! I don't have to plan! I have "the convenience of lameness"!

For as long as I can recall, I have been stating that I don't want a car, and wanted to live carfree the rest of my life. OK, maybe an electric car or a hybrid, I'd mollify my parents. But here I am with a Toyota Corolla, after telling my parents a thousand times that I didn't want it and a car in Berkeley is a positive nuisance. I've been using it. It feels like mine. I've begun to personalize it with pillows and music. I think about parking and gas (is any one oil company less bad than the others?). And here's my effort at atonement for my suddenly much larger footprint on the earth: added convenience for my friends. Hey guys, need rides to the airport?

# 06 Apr 2003, 11:17AM GMT+5:30: Excerpt From My Lonely Planet Guide To Weblogs: The difference between your high-powered, well-known weblogs (e.g. Instapundit and Body and Soul) and the journals of many of my friends is like the difference between a grand city restaurant and someone's kitchen at home. I go to a Big Blog for consistency and to my friends for personality.

Examples of those latter gems: Rachel, otherwise known as the sister of Leonard who's not getting married this summer, sums up her week; Sarah regularly tosses off links in the way I think Dorothy Parker would, and enchants me endlessly.

Filed under: Reading

# 06 Apr 2003, 11:55AM: You may ask, "Sumana, how do you figure out whether to watch The West Wing and Enterprise each week? Since you don't read TV Guide or newspaper TV listings, how do you know you're not going to all this trouble just to watch a rerun?" Simple, friend! At some point each week I visit NBC's The West Wing page and TrekToday, the only Star Trek site useful for my purpose, and check whether the upcoming episode is ALL NEW! The Internet is great. It's gotten me my boyfriend, two apartments, and now spoiler-lite rerun avoidance.

# 06 Apr 2003, 03:11PM: Better Than The Original Dept.: I am still laughing at Colin Hayman's Enterprise parodies. Example:

Bouncer: Not so fast, buster. You can't come in unless your name's on the list.
Mayweather: Oh, hi. A friend of mine gave me your address. What is this place, anyway?
Bouncer: Can't you read the sign? This is the Underused Characters' Tavern. Now gimme some ID and maybe I won't throw you across the street.
Mayweather: Underused characters? Hoshi must have made some mistake. See, I'm Travis Mayweather and --
Bouncer: Mayweather? That's YOU? Holy! Come in, come in! You're a legend with these guys!

Filed under: Comedy

# 07 Apr 2003, 08:10AM: I had worried about Nate Thayer of Slate and Salam Pax of "Where is Raed?". Well, I now hear that Iraqis no longer have internet access, but at least Thayer got out okay.

# 08 Apr 2003, 09:02AM GMT+5:30: Father Blog Stories: I've been reading G.K. Chesterton; his Father Brown stories tickle my fondness for high-concept mysteries, and his style is great, but the preaching gets on my nerves. Here's a modern mystery tale of weblogs, secret meetings, skulduggery, and betrayal. (via Electrolite)

In other links, Frances might enjoy Teresa Nielsen Hayden's guide to "judging the dubiousness of saints", and Rob Walker goes a little nuts over new Humvee ads. Walker cites Gregg Easterbrook with coining the category "FUV" in "Axle of Evil", a monster article explaining reasons why SUVs are abominable.

"What does it say about the United States that there are now millions of people who want to drive an anti-social automobile? Huge numbers of Americans will pay thousands of dollars extra for vehicles that visually declare, "I have serious psychological problems." (Though maybe we are better off having this declared.)"

Filed under: Religion Reading

# 08 Apr 2003, 09:59PM: What Adam & I Ate Last Night: Apples. Plums. Dried sour cherries. Roasted almonds. Linguini and marinara sauce with olive oil and mockmeatballs. Whole wheat tortillas. Hummus. Soy ice cream pies. Orange juice. Water.

Filed under: Apartment Life

# 09 Apr 2003, 08:11AM: Y'all who enjoy really sarcastic foulmouthed weblogs will like stereolabrat. Sample whining: if Philip Morris has such a huge army of lobbyists, how did the New York City bar smoking prohibition get passed?

Also, Salon is hiring. "I'm not dead! I feel like dancing!"

# 09 Apr 2003, 08:15AM: The Torch Has Been Passed To Another Poor Schlump: I haven't been remembering my dreams lately, except for a vague theme of "going back to school" (high school and college, that is). On the other hand, Joe has been having pretty darn fascinating ones.

# 10 Apr 2003, 02:58PM: Office Follies: "Have any of you been to Japan? I mean, I guess I'd know if you had, but still."

"I've never been there, but I know things about it."

"Anyway, do you know anything about their cops? Because I was watching that movie, Jackass..."

[Sumana falls out of her chair laughing]

Filed under: Comedy

# 10 Apr 2003, 11:04PM: Sumana Actually Gets It Into Her Head That She's In A Dead-End Job: I'm now looking for a job somewhere in the San Francisco Bay Area where I could write or edit, or possibly sell things to people and institutions that could possibly need them. Massive rocking of the resume casbah commences this weekend.

# 12 Apr 2003, 07:25PM: Trying to do my taxes. I'm relatively low-income, so I should be able to use the EZ (easy, simple, "I'm poor") forms instead of the scarier full-size forms. I want to go to the Mango Mic in Berkeley, and want to go to the Platypus Jones! improv show at Cafe Eclectica, but I should stay home and do taxes. Grocery shopping and getting lost in Emeryville (Trader Joe's) and Oakland (Piedmont Grocery) tired me out, and besides this midnight I'll see Office Space downtown. Tradeoffs are appropriate for an evening of applied economics.

Filed under: Comedy Taxes

# 12 Apr 2003, 09:34PM: Death And Praxis: Michael points out that it's not that doing taxes is time-consuming, it's that doing them optimally is time-consuming. After all, in many cases you could just do the EZ or the A (abbreviated) form and take standard deductions and so on, but only if you follow many branching paths do you find the set of forms and numbers that give the least money to the government. (It occurs to me that a government-trusting liberal might enjoy knowing she was giving more money to the government than is its due, but I am not that government-trusting liberal.) Anyhow, following these branching paths is like Reading Code is Like Reading Talmud.

Filed under: Taxes

# 12 Apr 2003, 10:18PM: "I fled the wraps": While I have been muddling through taxes, Leonard (who has already done his taxes) wrote and put up his side of the DC story, which to him was mostly a "PyCon Adventure".

# 13 Apr 2003, 05:23AM: Lest Ye Be Mike Judge: I saw Office Space with many other people (including Adam, Josh, and Karen) and enjoyed it. The Saturday midnight movies at the Act I & II sell out quick (I had to snag a ticket from an acquaintance, as I arrived only 30 minutes before the alleged showtime), and the queue either is or allows me to believe it is a Who's Who of UC Berkeley.

When in conversation I mentioned Zed as "Zed who does MemeMachineGo!," I stimulated Adam to eventually ask me whether perhaps I'm reading too many weblogs.

I originally avoided Office Space because I heard it stereotyped Indians, and because it seemed to just repeat Dilbert humor. Well, for one thing, Samir is Muslim, so that's not too stereotypical. And yes, Ajay Naidu speaks English with a South Asian accent, but I wouldn't say the film stereotypes his character any more than it stereotypes Jennifer Aniston's waitress character. And as for unoriginality, the long form of the movie allows character development and more realism, leading to quite un-Dilbertish narrative. Recommended for those who have ever worked in cubicles.

Just as I was about to park near my house, I stopped; two girls were puzzling over a map at a bus stop, in the rain, at two in the morning. I gave them a ride home to Alameda, and promptly became quite lost. On an island. My peregrinations took me to a closed airport road, the wrong way down a few one-way streets, to a shoreline, and more than the duration of Weird Al's Bad Hair Day album. Finally I called Michael on my cell and he MapQuested me back to the mainland and its freeway. Phew.

# 13 Apr 2003, 01:29PM: Say Uncle Sam: I love reading government documents. The first book I remember reading is the Pennsylvania driver's manual, and for a week after I had nightmares about cars. (The one I remember: my mother is driving and has a heart attack. I have to take her place, but I'm too short to look, steer, and use the pedals at the same time. We hit a guardrail and are about to flip over it.) When I was about eight or twelve, I heard various instructions to adults encouraging the saving of receipts, but I completely missed the bit about large purchases and optional deductions. I just thought, "Okay, I'm supposed to save my receipts for taxes," and accumulated huge stacks of five-dollar receipts for candy and books and whatnot against some uncertain tax judgment day. I still haven't quite broken the habit.

This morning I relaxed while eating breakfast by flipping through the instructions for the more obscure deductions and forms. Did you know that, in certain circumstances, you can amortize "goodwill and other intangibles"? Leonard and I debated the possible reasoning behind California's tax credit for renters. (I eventually surmised that the credit makes up for the indirect property taxes a renter pays, which explains why it's nonrefundable.)

Tax history fascinates me. My first year in college, I had the excellent Robin Einhorn for US History (pre-Civil War) and she surprised me by making use of data about slave prices. Of course! The market for slaves gives us clues as to historical trends! Anyway, she hits my intellectual G-spot with her vigorous riffs on slavery, taxes, legislative maneuverings, and counterintuition. (Example: the early-republic mystery in which "a series of New Englanders proceeded to oppose taxing slaves, and a series of southerners spoke in vigorous support of taxing this 'species of property.'")

Perhaps best of all is that my search for Einhorn's articles online led me to Margaret Garb's Urban History Seminar on late nineteenth-century working-class homeownership in Chicago, in which people say such things as:

Great stuff! Neighborhood credit markets-where did you find this stuff? It's all these records in the building in the bottom-wow, unbelievable-did anybody know this was going on? Am I the only one who didn't know this was going on? All right.
The value of the property is the assessed value from the assessor.
Tax assessor?
Tax assessor. It's in the papers.
But I just love that secret laundry in the basement.

Filed under: Taxes

# 13 Apr 2003, 01:32PM: Bad news: someone stole a car and guns within, at Shattuck and Durant, in broad daylight. Good news: publicity for Venus, one of my favorite restaurants.

# 14 Apr 2003, 10:24AM: I think lawyers claim Gandhi like Republicans claim Lincoln.

# 15 Apr 2003, 08:45AM: Leonard on being a Salon Premium support tech: "You'd be like a telemarketer, only people would call you. You'd be working in Soviet Russia."

Filed under: Comedy

# 16 Apr 2003, 08:24AM: Just last week someone called up my programmer flatmate and offered him another job, as though it's 1997 or something.

# 16 Apr 2003, 06:04PM: Sumana Comedy Alert Level: Banana Peel Yellow: This coming Tuesday, April 22nd, I get to perform comedy FOR MONEY! I'll be doing somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes of material for a Pi Sigma Phi fundraising night on the Berkeley campus. (I'd never heard of them either; some coed service honor fraternity Malkovich.) It'll be at 7pm in 10 Evans, and I have no idea how much the tickets are or how crowded it'll be, but 10 Evans is a largish lecture hall. Hey, that's where I saw Andrew Creighton lecture in Intro to Sociology, and where I met Matt Weinstein and Brandon! What an honor.

[Update: Whoops, not Pi Sigma Phi, but Phi Sigma Pi.]

Filed under: Comedy

# 17 Apr 2003, 04:15PM: Gideon informs me that Wyoming's largest town, Casper, holds only about 500,000 people. Practically a friendly ghost town.

Filed under: Comedy

# 17 Apr 2003, 09:12PM: Publicity Shock: Hal stopped by the store today expressly and solely to tell me that PSP people are advertising my show on Sproul Plaza. He showed me a quarter-page yellow flyer for Free Comedy, with my name (spelled correctly!) given top billing! Yao!

Tight scheduling that evening -- Tuesday afternoon I have a job interview at Salon.

Filed under: Comedy

# 17 Apr 2003, 10:04PM: When should I leave the US? Zack suggests: "I think my personal last straw will be the outcome of the 2004 elections, and in particular whether there will be reason to believe that they are rigged." A useful metric, although I worry that in the next year and a half I'll ignore some other crucial harbinger.

[Update: "You have two choices: live under US domestic policy; or live under US foreign policy."]

# 18 Apr 2003, 05:45PM: Cody's Events in May include Douglas Rushkoff criticizing modern Judaism (including the creation of the state of Israel), Eric Schlosser on the black market, Carroll Spinney (the spirit of Big Bird), Huston Smith on Buddhism, Tom Robbins, Jane Smiley, Calvin Trillin, and Diana Abu-Jaber. (My sister and I loved Abu-Jaber's novel Crescent.) One last note: a talk on May 31st by Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking. Andrew Creighton had his Intro to Sociology students read an excerpt from Rape; he said that studying humanity includes a long look at the worst of which we're capable.

# 19 Apr 2003, 10:50AM: Articles about St. Petersburg in the New York Times (on special events and places to eat) warm my nostalgic heart. I've eaten at the Idiot! Also, I think, at the Literary Cafe.

# 19 Apr 2003, 12:47PM GMT+5:30: Intellectual Time Waster: While researching books for a customer, I discovered that the University of Chicago Press posts tons of fascinating excerpts. Behind the scenes at talk shows, why hundreds of Chicagoans died in the 1995 heat wave and the mass media ignored it, apocrypha, Japanese-American draft resisters in World War II, Insiders' French, maps of gerrymandered districts, and more.

Filed under: Reading

# 20 Apr 2003, 09:00PM: Kris liked the thriller One Hour Photo. I avoided it because I heard negative reviews, and also because I indulge in the "why should Robin Williams get several chances to play serious roles?" carping. But maybe I should see it.

# 21 Apr 2003, 09:25AM: "If I Want a Long, Rambling Story With No Point, I Have My Life" -- Jerry Seinfeld: A dream from a week ago: I'm trying to start a restaurant. My sister is helping me cook sample food, including French fries and beets. Andy Ross, the owner of Cody's next door, is helping me figure out regulations on whom I have to pay. The set of regulations is called CAUCE.

I take a break from cooking to visit home, which is my parents' house in Stockton. We're expecting guests, and when I open the door it's a blood aunt and her husband, who looks just like Osama bin Laden. I wonder whether I should call the authorities, but he acts like a legit person who just highly resembles bin Laden, and jokes about how much hassle he gets from security personnel.

I take my aunt and uncle out on the town, and in a bar some yokel starts messin' with my uncle. Uncle takes the guy down with a judo throw and runs away.

I think I chase after him and end up on the Berkeley campus. The student union is also a Circuit City-like store where Eric from Cody's is selling electronic equipment as my boss looks on. I escape by crawling under and between incomplete walls of equipment, and happen to see my sister listening to music on headphones.

There's a crowd because it's graduation day. We gather around some guy, a dean or a chancellor, who gives a speech. "I'll be trying not to be elitist in this speech, ha ha. Well, my daughter is graduating today, and as I told her..." and he starts speaking in Italian. I look at a brochure in my hand, which is Zed's weblog. I look at it again and it changes, because he's posted a new entry.

This is the third time in the past year that I've dreamt of a weblog on non-computer media. (First a candy bar wrapper and then sculptures.) A poor motif, sir, but mine own. [Update: I guess bin Laden shows up in more than one, too. The perfect synthesis: his acts of terrorism are actually a weblog.]

# 21 Apr 2003, 07:43PM: "If you go to good films, you will become a better person": Interview with the Ebert where he notes a pattern:

When I write a political column for the Chicago Sun-Times, when liberals disagree with me, they send in long, logical e-mails explaining all my errors. I hardly ever get well-reasoned articles from the right. People just tell me to shut up. That's the message: "Shut up. Don't write anymore about this. Who do you think you are?"

# 22 Apr 2003, 12:45AM: I read FTrain regularly. Paul Ford is a writer in New York and his stuff really does it for me. If I recall correctly, most of the other writers on the site are his fictional creations, so I have Mr. Ford to thank for "The time I did lines with a bunch of grad students upstate and we ran around in the woods naked firing guns at each other at random" by Scott Rahin. I don't see enough plain-English descriptions of drug use, and this one hits the spot:

His girlfriend had a station wagon and she drove us all to the top of a hill. As discussed in the car, we got out, took off all of our clothes, and did lines off the warm hood of the car, from the same bag of coke I had delivered. Then we ran into the woods while counting to 30. After 30 you could start firing.

Other good gateway drug FTrain essays include "Heloise in Hell" and "Cleaning My Room", bachelor anthems.

# 22 Apr 2003, 10:50PM: Remind Me Not To Schedule Two Back-to-Back Performances Like This Again: Salon interview went okay-to-well. I met Scott Rosenberg! I'll find out by the end of next week.

I was so exhausted by the evening that I didn't practice my act nearly enough and therefore floundered semi-amusingly onstage. Fortunately, not too many people I know witnessed me. Several other funny comics performed, including Mike Spiegelman of Fresh Robots fame. I got to casually hang out with a Fresh Robot! Lori Chapman and Shanique (?) Scott also made a formidable impression. Tony Sparks and Danny Dechi rounded out the ad hoc troupe. Note that they all did better than me. Much better.

Mike joked about drinking to forget, and thus precluded me from actually doing so. Thanks, Mike!

Now, sleep. Sleep, Data.

Filed under: Comedy

# 25 Apr 2003, 12:42AM: Just saw Better Luck Tomorrow with Hilary and Kim. It's deservedly an R for violence, but recommended. Just as after watching Pleasantville I experienced colors in the real world anew, after seeing BLT I saw each East Asian face more singularly.

Exciting day at work -- some shoplifters got arrested. Intellectual property theft, ha ha ha.

# 25 Apr 2003, 01:10AM: Also at work: I recognized that a customer had just picked up his Cal diploma, because he was carrying the no-ISBN anthology of essays that Cal hands out with diplomas. I impressed him, which is nice.

# 25 Apr 2003, 09:25AM: Morning Musings: "Madonna wrote a children's book? Well, why not, she's done everything else. You know, I never realized that before -- when you're Madonna, you run out of things to do on a much larger scale. I think she's climbing Everest next."

Filed under: Comedy

# 26 Apr 2003, 06:52PM GMT+5:30: Take That, J. Bradford DeLong!: I just reread Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed. Silly idea: a book entitled The Good Soldier Shevek.

[The born-and-raised socialist/anarchist] tried to read an elementary economics text; it bored him past endurance, it was like listening to somebody interminably recounting a long and stupid dream.

Filed under: Reading

# 26 Apr 2003, 07:39PM: "Spam Is The New Dada": Brendan, on whom I can count for occasional odd spam subject lines, provides the title. I worry about copyright sometimes when I post excerpts from spam, but then I realize I'm being silly. And then I worry as to whether or not I'm actually being silly. Paranoia aside, I present two spams, with commentary.

Please confirm that you would like 'Woodspiration' updates by Tristan Woodworks.
We have decided to add this 'double opt-in' system because some prankster decided it would be fun to add a bunch of people without their permission or knowledge. This event has led me to answer angry emails all week instead of carving. All I want to do is carve and share my work with those who can feel it and receive the light. Nobody wants more useless email, and I certainly have no desire to share my work and ideas with anyone who has no interest.
Reply to this email and type 'Yes Please' in the body and you will be added. Do nothing and you will be forgotten.
Derek Olson
Tristan Woodworks
http://www.SmileAtYou.com
Highlands Ranch, Colorado
How is this double-opt-in? Maybe the first opt-in was someone submitting my email address somewhere else and this is the second.
Woodspiration? Not a pun. What is it? And why is SmileAtYou the domain for Tristan (triste = sad) Woodworks? I distrust the line about the prankster, but the artist wins me over with "those who can feel it and receive the light." New age hippies would never spam me, right?
The last line is the most chilling: "Do nothing and you will be forgotten." I have known this for a long time, but the warning from a stranger goes straight to my bones. Speaking of which, hey Kris, there's a thriller I stocked yesterday called City of Bones.
This next one's from "Carrie White." Ack!
...It's especially good when one of these eighteen year old girls screams [deleted] out in pleasure, almost involuntarily....
Tara was extraordinarily naughty....
Don't want to receive our emails anymore? It's very easy to oppt out. And yes, doing so really will allow you to opppt out. We aren't just saying that so that we can put on the facade that we're legitimate advertsers, whilst laughing away, blatantly ignoring remvve requests. If you remove your name from our list, you definitely will be remm,oved. Your name will be marked as r,emoved in our email database, and you won't receive mail again. We don't really know how more clearly we can explain this. Just take our word for it. Otherwise, continue toreceive these emails. Now is your chance to opp,t out. Do so by clicking this
I'm not sure what to make of the upper register (correct? help me, linguist Adam! You're my only hope! *flicker*) employed here. Either it's trying to appeal to an educated audience -- sort of the original Playboy concept -- or it's post-ironic. And when it comes to ignoring removal requests, methinks the spammer doth protest too much, and loses all my trust with "Just take our word for it." If they know I have a reason not to trust them, then they know they'll have to do better than that.
The fine lasses call out "almost involuntarily." I'm glad the spammer made that fine distinction between loss of control and lack of consent.

If I could find a web archive of Johnny Frederking's (segway888@hotmail.com) scary spam stylings, I'd end this post with it. Anybody know?

# 26 Apr 2003, 07:44PM: Dying For Our Arts And Crafts: When I completely forgot two thirds of my material on Tuesday, I felt much as Skot did: "I mentally pictured the skipped-over lines dying like slugs on a salt lick, and they screamed, 'Why didn't yooou saaaaay uuuuusss? Weee are goooood lines! AAAAAaaaaaahh--!'"

Filed under: Comedy

# 26 Apr 2003, 07:46PM: You, meaning I, always hear about the Ruby Ridge fiasco in the same breath as Waco, so I had no idea of the lopsided, breathtaking horror of the thing. An article from a pretty reliable source explains to me exactly why I shouldn't trust the government further than I can regulate it.

# 26 Apr 2003, 09:40PM: In the mode of my Google party game, I learn other fortune cookie suffixes.

# 27 Apr 2003, 10:39AM: Film Critic Terrorism?: I'm not sure what's more ominous, that I've dreamt of Osama bin Laden at least twice (silly, scary) or that I've dreamt of Roger Ebert at least twice (example).

# 27 Apr 2003, 01:58PM: More Silly Movie Review Reviews: Ebert says a bloggy thing in a 1998 review of a half-star flick: "The plot involves ... excuse me for a moment, while I laugh uncontrollably at having written the words 'the plot involves.' I'm back."

The CAPAlert guy CAPAlerted me to Extreme Days, "an extreme signal to an world saturated with extreme vulgarity." His review included the note: "This movie could have very easily been rated G. Indeed, it earned a score of 92 which is midrange of the CAP scoring range (100 to 87) earned by G-rated movies. I suppose it was given a PG because of the 'thematic elements': open submission to God's Wisdom and Will."

Curious, I looked for more info on IMDB, and found many user comments. Most are enthusiastic young Christians saying that the movie is not too preachy, and great for youth ministries, and perfect to watch with friends, saved or unsaved. (Example: "good youth group movie, or just to watch at your house w/ buds. you don't have to fastforward through anything. oh yeah!") A few comments call it boring and repetitious. (Example: "If this is the only video remaining in the video store, walk away!!!")

Neither set of comments swayed me; in any case, I know I won't see it because it has "Extreme" in the title.

Filed under: Religion

# 29 Apr 2003, 11:46PM: Cody's Deals: I saw a guide to California independent bookstores for $1.98. Seems like quite a deal. More bargain book highlights coming, as well as reviews of Douglas Coupland's upcoming Hey Nostradamus! and Kavita Daswani's upcoming For Matrimonial Purposes.

# 30 Apr 2003, 12:11AM: Important Aspects of History: Macaulay's celebrated quote (and related present-day remarks): "I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia."

Good name for a weblog: "A Single Shelf." Or possibly "The Valuation of the Orientalists."

# 30 Apr 2003, 08:48AM: Other People's Ornery Geekery: I'm only one or two degrees away from jwz via Joe. His LiveJournal is uniquely readable, and especially caught my eye when a documentary/rant on CSS spawned a comment with the following jollities:

This is what happens when you design by committee. There's always a posse of sharpnosed little nerds at the back who treat software design-to-spec like they were running a D&D game....
The huge sense of self importance you detect in most CSS/XHTML evangelists stems from their utter elation at finally pummelling their design expectations and wrestling with buggy CSS implementations until they finally compromise in some Israel/Palestine sense of the word.

The comment's author has just discovered Need To Know, which makes me glad.