It’s as if our entire culture has reached the halfway point in a gigantic bag of Cheetos and just collectively decided to go ahead and finish it off.
— Sam Anderson, in an article about the current reality TV trend
Slate, on reality TV - Oh please read this. It’s so full of great turns-of-phrase and insight.
“I hate the way [teens] express personal inadequacy through car accessories and vandalism.”
“…that doesn’t change my instinctive revulsion any more than knowing that sharks eat people because they need the protein.”
Most people who know me quickly learn I am a great fan of physical comedy: the bus rolls through the camera view, a crash is heard from screen left. Minister of Silly Walks. That stuff makes me laugh. In a departure from that usual style, I would like to formally recommend the following scene be added to whatever Stiller/Wilson/Vaugn/Ferrel movie approacheth from Hollywood’s ever-predictable jukebox stuck on repeat.
A man or woman commits to a personal training regime (preferably because they are pursuing some goal central to the plot). On screen agony commences with slow motion pans of tremendous feats of pain, driven by a personal trainer. “Take My Breath Away” plays in the background.
Watch for it in the next big screen comedy: you know screenwriters are Googling “funny comedy ideas” just like anybody else doing research.
Great caricatures - Clint and Einstein are my favorites.
I was cleaning out my planner and found this: it’s what my planner looked like at the end of last semester. I do hope this is not repeated in subsequent semesters - more work, but more organized, perhaps?
What if, everyday, people went outside and did something physical? I bet our workforce would be twice as productive if everyone slaving 9-5 could take a run on their afternoon break. Or even just run around. People’d be happier, healthier, able to cope with stress. Anti-depressant prescription rates would fall. Sleeping pills would drop off the market. Orthoscopic knee surgery rates would soar (or sore, as it were). Everyone’d be happier because they’d be healthier, and healthier because they were happier.
This upward spiral would not lead to world peace. It would not solve any economic problems. It would do precisely nothing to help the energy crisis. It is an idea that sounds fantastic and unreachable.
Yet, it is so profoundly simple, so ridiculously straightforward that, somehow, it has a chance of catching on. Imagine a backlash against sitting around: the point at which technology becomes so overwhelmingly intertwined with our lives will be the point when the masses say “enough.” No governments will be overthrown, no technology burned in effigy or reality: everyone will just go outside, move around, and feel better.
The Civic Si is Back, Baby - Check this out - the Si was my favorite cheap fast(ish) car for a while - then came its current horrible hatchback’ness. Now, the 2006 model year rocks the redesigned sheet metal. 200hp, under 20k … absolutely awesome.
The Saltine Challenge - Shh. I fully intend to conquer this for use at parties.
A List Apart REDESIGNS - One of the best resources for webdesign on the internet reveals one of the best redesigns on the internet. This one blows the doors off of pretty much anything else I’ve seen.
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