Good Stuff

If your breathing is constricted by the innundation of doomsday predictions in the financial section of your favorite paper/website, take a deep breath and read this; it might help you sleep a bit better at night:

http://www.freep.com/article/20081215/OPINION05/81215022

In the midst of the "crisis" I remind everyone that economics is called the dismal science for its offering of opinions based on data, instead of finite answers, and for its attempt to predict the future based on "science". Fascinating stuff, but not something to set your watch by. It's kind of like the search for the philosopher's stone. Or like the little gerbal running endlessly on its wheel inside the head of your average Joe. I would also urge you, like the author of the article, to keep history in mind. There have been downturns before, and there will be again. Rome didn't last forever (as an empire), neither did Tenochtitlan, and neither will New York. When you accept that everything comes to end one way or another, you can stop worrying about it. Really.

Also, buy the "slumdog Millionaire" soundtrack. It's brilliant.

Urban Dictionary words of the day

I've decided that when I don't have anything to say, I'm going to add in my favorite new words from http://www.urbandictionary.com/.

1. Salsa Fucked
This phenomenon occurs when dining at a Mexican restaurant with a large group and the salsa is not distributed evenly throughout the table. The areas of the table that do not have ample amounts of salsa are "salsa fucked."

"Jeff, all of the salsa is at the other end of the table, yo."

"I know, we got Salsa Fucked."

2. sexting
the act of text messaging someone in the hopes of having a sexual encounter with them later; initially casual, transitioning into highly suggestive and even sexually explicit
In a sentence: "He keeps sexting me saying how hard he is and how much he wants to tap my ass," Cindy said massaging her breasts unconsciously.

Sexting in action:

Nancy: "Wut do u want?"

Bob: "Cum over to my place now."

Nancy: "Is NE1 else there?"

Bob: "No. I need to c u."

Nancy: "K. Will b there soon."

Monday email update

An email I wrote to a friend recently:

My update is that I'm still living on Prospect (obvs), although with the lack of privacy and having to deal with my loser rommates, I don't know if I would call it living. I won't move out of there a minute too soon. Beth and I have pushed back to spring, but I'm going to look casually through the winter in case something good opens up. Thanksgiving was good, I stuffed myself to the gills with food and drink for 48 hrs straight, which took the rest of the weekend to recover from. My job sucks ass, I hate it more each week and, like my current living situation, will also not end a minute too soon. This semester has been easy, but I expect next semester to be a big pain, God willing it will be my last one and I can start to move on from the limbo I've been in the last two years.

I hope I don't sound super negative, all this stuff is par for the course and on a day-to-day basis I feel good. On top of all of that I think my ass is getting bigger and I'm scared it will turn into my mother's and my shopping addiction has made me broke, broke, broke. But I guess it's all about what you choose to focus on and what actions you take. So I like to wrap all of this up in a bundle and focus on the fact that changes are around the bend. I'm sure at some point I will look back on this time as being "simple" when all I had to worry about was fitting in my jeans and the only thing I had to sacrifice to pay my rent was a new dress that I don't need because I already have 35 black dresses.

I'll laud how lucky I was to have such under market rent, how close Beth and I were, how weed was plentiful and so was booze. I'll think of the roommates as "quirky" and "different" rather than half-retarded and hopeless. I might even laugh at the fact that I quit going to my Bodega because the owner creeped me out and wouldn't quit hitting on me. That could be funny someday, right? I'll probably remember him as a kindly father figure who just wanted to talk -- or maybe not. There will be no seedy underbelly to the neighborhood in my memories. Alex will not have killed himself by taking a dive off of the Brooklyn Bridge a week after I saw him last (obviously unaware that it would be the last time we said good-bye), Mikey will not have been such a drug addleded romantic, Robert will be a good guy I let slip through my fingers, and he and Megan will have been happy together. And I'll probably count myself lucky that I had a good, resume building job while I was in school that allowed me a relatively flexible schedule.

I wonder if our sugar coated memories of the past are some sort of primoridal survival technique. If we consciously let all of the fears and disappointmens build up, could we die from them? IDK.

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.

Thought of the day

Sometimes my Dad emails me a thought for the day.

Here it is: "thought for the day:
if everything in the world as we know it (including us) are made of atoms and atoms never die, how can we die? I have been reading about parallel universe."

Obsessed

I guess this was released in Sweden a while ago, and has finally been released here. This is the same chick who released a pretty cliche (and lame) pop song back in the states in the nineties, big radio hit.

This is still pop, but exactly the way it should be. Pop content, but delivered in a way that sounds original. Out of 16 songs, there are two I'm not thrilled about.

http://www.youtube.com/user/robynmusic?ob=4