ahhh...I gotta do it.

I'm adding a new section to this blog. I shamelessly admit that I'm a celebrity gossip whore. All too often though I read quotes from celebrities that are just too funny not to comment on; it has nothing to do with their talent, or whether or not they're good people. It's just that I gotta do it. So, here goes.

On the W Photo shoot: "I'd just had the kids six weeks before and felt so private, it didn't feel right having a photographer fly across the world with a rack of stylish clothes for me to wear. . . It became this one-week project in our house," Jolie says. The way she tells it, matters quickly got out of hand, and some of the photographs proved far too sexual to be released on an unsuspecting American audience. "Yeah, we thought about it, we'd look at the pictures as art and say this is a really interesting photograph, but then we'd know better and we'd think about how it was going to be received. So we made it a little more tame than it was originally."

We fucking get it Angelina, you and Brad in addition to being the hottest people ever and humanitarians are also very arty and sophisticated, much more so than the people who read W magazine. In fact, you're so open minded and cool that you can look at porn shots your husband took of you and call it art! No one else in the history of the world has ever thought of that! I mean this is mind blowing stuff...a beautiful body can be artistic, I bet you're going to tell me next that even an ugly body can be so too! I wouldn't believe you, but would have to take your word for it because in spite of the fact that you lack a basic formal education, your celebrity lends uncontestible validity to everything you say. Hmm...photography of the human form as art, groundbreaking.

If I could file these posts into different categories this one would be filed under, "Display of false humility."

Kindle

Kindle is a digital device that works much like apple's ipod, but it's for books instead of music.
The inevitable gripe follows:
How could anyone be satisfied reading a book on a computer screen? I mean really. One of the best things about sitting down to read is the tangibility of the pages and the smell, whether it be from use, or from the lack of it; It is the stimulation of these senses that trap a story in our memory, that make it mean something to us in a personal way. The particular cover of a certain copy may change through reprints, but it's your cover that means something to you and represents the memory of the impact a story had. On the pages, your underlines, your dog ears, your coffee stains...these are the traces of information recieved and the proof of it. And when you finish something that spoke to you it is the act of being able to put it on a shelf and leaf through those underlines and notes years later that brings you back to a certain time in your life, or even compels you forward with understanding forgotten, but again newly found.

Socrates lamented the invention of books and the common use of the written word. He thought it would diminish the capacity of our brains to retain information, undoubtedly destory the motivation for it. As important as this development has been to further human productivity and as immensly enjoyable as some people find it, he was right to the extent that never again would people memorize the imense store of information that the ancients were able to. What further devolution of our intellectual capacity will be presented with the Kindle? How easily will we now be able to forget the stories we read and the value retained with them? No underlines, no highlights, no notes. There is nothing to help us remember, but data stored on a "memory" card.