100 word rant

I'll get back to you with a quote.

2012-02-06T06:56:00.000-08:00

Fitzgerald's Law states there are no second acts in American life; that's probably why the parking lot empties out after intermission. But Wolfe's Theorem says you can't go home again, which makes me wonder where everyone goes. Off somewhere making the scene, since the world's a stage and we're all merely players. Then some people say it's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. Which may be true, but the only way to play the game well is to really, truly, desperately want to win. Most philosophy professors refer to this as Lombardi's Paradox.

Also, no Thurber.

2012-01-30T07:07:00.000-08:00

I don't know why I bought a subscription to the New Yorker. Maybe the hours spent in dentists' waiting rooms have somehow conditioned me, like an old lag craving prison chow. Also, it was very cheap. But I don't think I'll be renewing. For one thing, being reminded of the world-class events I'm missing every week is making me unhappy. Then there's the house style, with its excessive use of the word “the:” “The guitarist Bill Frisell appears along with the bassist Ron Carter and the drummer Joey Baron.” I like the cartoons. But I can't stand all the articles.

A Process of Elimination

2012-01-23T07:52:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've updated you on biofuels. Actually, I've never updated you on this important topic. But now there's a major scientific breakthrough worthy of your attention. A team led by synthetic biologist Yasuo Yoshikuni has genetically modified the common E. coli bacterium so that it digests seaweed and excretes ethanol. So in the future there will be no fuel shortages. The next step is to introduce the relevant genes into the human body. Because once each of us can basically subsist on compost while peeing vodka, why would anybody ever need to go anywhere ever again?

A Busload of Savings!

2012-01-16T08:05:00.000-08:00

Now that the holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr is uniformly celebrated in all 50 states, it's easy to forget that it was opposed by Senator Helms of North Carolina, who cited the Reverend's “action-oriented Marxism” and other “radical political” views. And really, being opposed by Jesse Helms is more dignified that having a Kmart sale in your honor. Dr. King would undoubtedly be proud to know that he was being treated with same disrespect as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, whose commemorative holidays are also used as precepts for unseemly retail promotions. Oh, and Jesus Christ. Him too.

Like a possum-fur collar

2012-01-09T09:01:00.000-08:00

It must be more than mere coincidence that this year's New Hampshire primary is occurring just a few weeks before the 201st birthday of one of that state's most influential and successful natives, Horace Greeley, who, even had he not died at the age of 61 while waiting for the results of a landslide defeat in the 1872 U.S. presidential election, would certainly have been dead by now anyway. Greeley's paper, the New York Tribune, was known as the Great Moral Organ. Oh, yeah: Then there's his neckbeard, which was so unpleasant looking as to defy the powers of language.

Priestly thoughts

2012-01-02T08:12:00.000-08:00

I note with dismay that our public schools are teaching science without any reference to phlogiston theory or Ptolemy's geocentric model of the universe. Since when is okay to use government dollars to support just one side in an ongoing debate? Surely there's room in our public institutions for free and lively discussion between many viewpoints. And Flat-Earthers pay taxes the same as everybody else. Also, since churches get government support in the form of protected tax status, shouldn't they be required to teach the controversy by including Origin of Species side-by-side with the Bible in their Sunday school classes?

Slightly Punchy on Boxing Day

2011-12-26T07:46:00.000-08:00

Reinsdyrsteik. That's Norwegian for reindeer steak. And, yeah, it looks exactly like a dopey misspelling of a dopey mispronunciation of the English. Which supports my theory about Norwegian, and also Swedish (actually, the word “Swedish” simply means “poor and badly dressed” in Norwegian), which is that it's just ordinary English pronounced with a thick Muppet-style accent. I've tested this theory by speaking like that to native Scandinavians, and they have pretended not to understand me, which I think proves my point. But how about them reindeer: They bring you Christmas gifts, and then you can eat them. Sure beats FedEx.

Never Enough

2011-12-19T06:18:00.000-08:00

Give a dog enough to eat and a nice cleansing walk and he'll go right to sleep until he's hungry again. Do the same for a man and he'll start looking around for something to do next. Because he's no good at doing nothing. Because he gets antsy. Because humans never feel quite right. Forget your big brain and opposable thumb; it's dissatisfaction that's made our species what it is. It's our primary survival trait. Take it away and we're local and rare as bonobos. Striving to overcome your nature in order to attain Zen detachment only proves the point.

Hey Baby

2011-11-28T07:12:00.000-08:00

Hi there! Breathing okay? Good. We'll just clean you up a little and you'll be good to go. That soft spot in the middle of your skull should firm up real quick, so don't worry about that. And, let's see, what else can we tell you on your way out? First, nobody knows what's going on. Anybody who says they do is stupid or lying. Take care of your teeth. Wear comfortable shoes. Be careful about the first few things you do, because that's what you're going to be doing over and over again for the rest of your life.

Regretfully yours

2011-11-21T08:46:00.000-08:00

If you had only known. Midget Racing is noisy and unpleasant and the drivers are ordinary sized people. It turns out sweetbreads are neither sweet, nor are they bread. You're pretty sure you would have remembered if somebody had mentioned the word pancreas. Is that the sort of thing a person is expected to know? How could you have forgotten how much you dislike playing Monopoly? If you'd only read the fine print. If you'd only listened in class. If you'd only known she'd grow up to be a morbidly obese Shoney's waitress, you might not have named her Hyacinth.

Even Educated Fleas

2011-11-14T07:24:00.000-08:00

We've all seen those bumper stickers that explain the appropriately puntastic ways in which members of a specific demographic clade “do it.” They are remarkably unfunny, and also if you then pass the vehicle to which they adhere, the driver is usually revealed to be someone with whom you could not remotely imagine doing “it” even if said human was dipped in nectar and rolled in cocaine. Assuming, of course, that “it” means what I think it means. This is all a clumsy setup for two great bumper sticker ideas: “Prostitutes do it for money,” and “Literalists eschew coy euphemisms.”

Fallback

2011-11-07T06:43:00.000-08:00

Daylight Saving Time was the invention of one G.V. Hudson, an English-born New Zealand entomologist and postal clerk whose collection of insects, the largest in New Zealand, is housed in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and who was furthermore a member of the 1907 Sub-Antarctic Islands Scientific Expedition, a voyage which led to the rescue of the survivors of the shipwreck of the Dundonald, who had initially subsisted on the raw flesh of the mollymawk, a medium-sized albatross with a distinctive salt gland above the nasal passage that excretes a saline solution from the nose. Wikipedia, baby.

Just William

2011-10-31T06:48:00.000-07:00

There's a new movie about an old subject. Somebody thinks Shakespeare was written by somebody other than Shakespeare. Every time this comes up, the new candidate is always better educated, or of a higher class, than the historical Bard. Because, see, they teach this stuff at college, and the actual Will Shakespeare simply wasn't qualified to write at a university level. But unlike tenure, talent is capricious. You can't learn it or earn it. And genius always attracts small minds seeking to reduce it to their own scale. Next you'll try to tell me that Bob Kane didn't write Batman.

Wrong to work state

2011-10-24T06:46:00.000-07:00

I like things simple. I like to decide what my position is on a whole class of ideas all at once. That way I can know what my opinion is just by checking to see who is on which side. So right now, Alabama has me flummoxed. That's because an unintended consequence of their new and scary immigration law is to make it absolutely clear that one reason we eat so cheap is because we have people working for us for less that we'd take ourselves. And I'm thinking any difference between slave labor and slave wages is purely semantic.

Waiting for "Lefty," maybe

2011-10-17T07:52:00.000-07:00

One of the things that starts to dawn on a guy as he grinds his way through his sixth decade is that if he was ever going to get a cool nickname he would probably have gotten it by now. More than likely, there will be no Pee Wee, Doc, or Big D for me. Not Sparky, Bucky, Lucky, or Duke. Not Scooter, Skeeter, Slats, Slick, Slam, or Slim. No Shorty, Sleepy, Specs, Spike, Spud, Tiny or Tubby or Chubby or Chink. Nickname acquisition is a young man's game: George Foster wasn't more than 29 when got tagged with Pops.

Prime Example

2011-10-10T07:24:00.000-07:00

Last week I wrote my 250th rant in a row, which I didn't notice until now. That's a lot of rants. It's a good time to pause and reflect. I feel that I have thus far accomplished as much as any one man could hope to achieve in terms of keeping the public eye focused on extremely large watering cans and also gigantic pencils. I have written about the best way to buy bananas, what I think of Jerry Lewis, and interesting things I've noticed while riding my bicycle. Admittedly, there has also been a certain amount of trivial filler.

Pet Theory

2011-10-03T07:31:00.000-07:00

Your choice of pet says a lot about you. Like, getting a dog means you crave unconditional devotion, and keeping a cat indicates you're a sucker for emotional abuse. So what does ferret ownership signify? It certainly makes a statement, something on the order of, “I have so little personality that I prefer to be represented socially through a proxy rodent.” It's still a better pet than a rabbit, though. Did you know those cute floppy eared little balls of fluff eat their own babies? They also eat their own poop, redigest it, and poop it out again. Nature's postmodernists.

3 exercises in discretion.

2011-09-26T06:46:00.000-07:00

When somebody tells you they're driving to the clinic for a stress test, that's the wrong time to say that if they'd regularly walked to the clinic they probably wouldn't need any stress test. You may remember exactly how many release-your-inner-millionaire books a friend has ever bought. There's no good time to mention that number, ever. And listen. Someday, let's suppose somebody gets up in your face all belligerent and asks, “You think I care what you think of me?” That's probably a bad time to point out that they're asking your opinion of them, right there.

Dagnabit!

2011-09-19T07:21:00.000-07:00

I'd like to think that every week I say a clever thing or two here, so that anybody who happens to be reading it will say to themselves, “You know, that's right. I never thought of it that way. The fella that writes this thing has a lot on the ball.” But I may instead be providing sidekick humor. Sidekick humor is when you say a dumb thing that inadvertently steers the main character toward a smart solution. So a scrawny bewhiskered geezer spouts some inanity, and Roy snaps his fingers and says brightly, “Say! That gives me an idea!”

Not You Again

2011-09-12T08:32:00.000-07:00

Contrafact. There's a word I'd never heard before. It means a musical composition that uses the metric and harmonic structure of an earlier piece. Like, every 12-bar blues is a contrafact, or how you can play the Flintstones theme over the top of "I've Got Rhythm." Charlie Parker's "Ornithology" is a new melody for "How High the Moon." Weirdly, "The Horst Wessel Song" is a contrafact of "How Great Thou Art." It's not plagiarism; a copyright protects melody, not chord structure. It's like life- you can't fundamentally alter its shape, but you can play whatever you want over the changes.

Rockstar

2011-09-05T07:59:00.000-07:00

I know this sounds like a retelling of The Aristocrats, but it's seriously totally true. Last decade, there was this great little band from Detroit that was creating quite a buzz. Big crunchy chords, clever and insightful lyrics, a guy named John Speck with for real one of the great rock voices ever. And they make an EP that gets some major label attention, get signed, make a full-length recording, which, okay, the label sits on it for too long, but finally it gets released. Then... nothing. No sales. No airplay. And The Fags go their separate ways.

A kept man

2011-08-29T08:07:00.000-07:00

We are funny animals, easy to please as dogs. I got up too early, dragged my butt out of the house to have a series of cheerful women torment me with pointed instruments. But I feel gratified, because I was told what a fine job I'm doing with the floss and the brush. Good boy. Doglike, too, in this way: There was a time when I needed a lot of work from myself, but these days I'm always looking for ways to keep me exercised, so I don't mope and pine. I have become my own pet.

Dreamy

2011-08-22T06:54:00.000-07:00

Back when I was a kid I would sit around and imagine I was a teenager. Then when I was a teenager I'd enjoy just sitting around imagining I was in a band. When I was in a band I would sit around imagining I was an actor, and when I had chance to do some acting, I'd sit around imagining I was on the radio. I used to imagine what it would be like to write for a living. Now I've finally figured out what my favorite thing to do is. Turns out I like sitting around imagining things.

Disclaimer

2011-08-15T07:08:00.000-07:00

It's like trying to climb a ferris wheel; there's isn't time in a human life to write down even a single day. There's too much; you have to leave stuff out. Storytelling turns out to be subtractive, like coaxing Caesar's head out of a block of marble. Every sentence you write has an omission-to-inclusion ratio that's just staggeringly high. The thing is, every omission is a little falsehood. Like saying you went to the candy store but not mentioning you stole a box of Atomic Red Hots. All I'm saying is, don't expect to read the truth here.

Probe

2011-08-08T07:18:00.000-07:00

Last Friday NASA launched a mission to Jupiter, named Juno, on a rocket called Atlas. This promises to be mythic- it's actually going to fly partway there, circle back, fly past Earth in 2012, then finally get serious and actually fly to Jupiter. The scenic route, I guess. But doesn't the phrase “unmanned probe” sound like something unpleasant and humiliating has occurred? Meanwhile, new evidence of water on Mars is leading some scientists to speculate that the red planet might support some form of life. So far, no Starbucks or WiFi, though, so you can't really call it living.

Mister Big Stuff

2011-08-01T07:13:00.000-07:00

Normally, I'm in the droll observations and avuncular yet acerbic witticism racket, and let me tell you it's been paying off like gangbusters. Gangbusters, I tell ya. But let's get serious for a minute. It used to be the world largest pencil was hanging out front of an office supply store in Wytheville, Virginia. It was a big tin pencil on a small town main street. Then in about 2002, the Faber-Castell factory built a 65-footer out of real pencil materials.
Now there's a 76-footer, a new world's record, with a real rubber eraser. This, friends, is history writ large.

Monday Brain Teasers

2011-07-25T06:53:00.000-07:00

Welcome back, class. Let's start with an essay question. Was there anything short of WWII that Germany could have said to communicate their dissatisfaction with the Treaty of Versailles and desire for a more liberal peace as exemplified by the Marshall Plan? Try to show how violence is never the answer. Now a word problem: Where x is the value, measured in headline position and column inches, of 11.8 million human lives threatened by famine, while y is that same value for the story of a dead pop singer, prove by induction that y>x. Be prepared to show your work.

A fictitious narrative which terminates in an atrocious pun.

2011-07-18T08:07:00.000-07:00

He stood in the doorway with a paper plate in his hand. Covered in aluminum foil, it contained a double portion of the complicated quinoa salad he had complimented so effusively at dinner. Now the leftovers were his to take home, if he could ever get out the door. But the two women were still saying goodbye. He looked at his host and smiled. And his host smiled back. They smiled at one another. There was absolutely no eye rolling. Shifting his stance, he tapped, deferential, upon her shoulder. “Let us go now,” he said. “Without further adieu.”

I must blog about this immediately.

2011-07-11T06:53:00.000-07:00

Remember Tamagotchis, the little electronic pets that first came out about 15 years ago? Kids would carry them around as they simulated an organic life cycle, demanding to be fed and cleaned and otherwise attended to at preprogrammed intervals. All virtual, of course; what you actually do is push certain buttons whenever the machine tells you. A silly toy- it teaches you nothing, prepares you for nothing. Still, a generation of kids walked around bent over these little beeping boxes, absolutely absorbed by this utterly meaningless activity. Those kids are now in their 20s, and have outgrown such childish pastimes.

Here's what makes us unique.

2011-07-04T08:57:00.000-07:00

I'm looking at an outdated promotional calendar that carries upon it the mission statement/motto of the company that gave it away: “Our commitment to sophisticated technology is an investment in customer satisfaction.” Isn't that delightful? It's the sort of thing that's a perfect example of the sort of thing it is. I can envision them agreeing after hours of earnest debate and revision that, yeah, this really gets it. And one guy says, “But what about our tradition of innovation?” Then after a few moments of consideration, somebody says thoughtfully, “I think the tradition of innovation is pretty strongly implied.”

Mad, am I? The fools!

2011-06-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

I think probably Homer didn't write the Odyssey. As a blind wandering bard he would've had little access to even the primitive word-processing software of the time, let alone today's far superior GUIs that allow seamless WYSIWYG user interaction through keyboard, mouse and screen. Also, there is no evidence that he attended any sort of school where he could have studied ancient Greek, a notoriously difficult language. My candidate for the actual author of Homer's works: John Fitzgerald Kennedy, our 35th President, who not only attended Harvard but then there's his wife's second husband, an actual ancient Greek. Mere coincidence?

Up against the wall.

2011-06-20T06:46:00.000-07:00

You know when you're at a social event and somebody you barely know thinks you look lonely so they walk over and say something like why so glum, chum? and you go heh-heh and they start talking and before you know it you're nodding your head up and down so fast you might actually beat your own brains out against the inside of your skull which doesn't seem so bad compared to what's happening on the outside of it which is your new friend is getting ready to open his wallet and show you baby pictures? Facebook is like that.

Cordial and Substantive.

2011-06-13T08:42:00.000-07:00

When you said, "I respect your opinion," you meant, "I hold you and everything about you in utter contempt." To which I responded by saying, “We're really not that far apart on this,” which means, “I'm pretty sure we're not the same species. Can you prove you're even a mammal?” You replied, “We just have to take the time to listen to one another,” which is to say, “I hope you get lung cancer in your eyes.” But I meant every word when I said, “I heard you wrong.” I heard you. You were wrong.

Tails has something to prove.

2011-06-06T06:39:00.000-07:00

Sports commentators have the uncanny ability to see patterns that are invisible to the casual observer. Flip a coin once and they'll tell you heads has the momentum. That's a normal human thing, though. We want a narrative, not just one thing happening after another for no good reason. But actually, real life is like opera; try to enjoy the songs and costumes, 'cause the plot doesn't amount to much. Also, if you should happen to doze off because the room is warm and your seat is comfy, don't worry. You're not missing a thing.

The Symptom

2011-05-30T07:48:00.000-07:00

Here's bad news for those of you unlucky enough to live in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, or Tennessee -- states collectively known as the Stroke Belt. What may sound like something you'd order from the back of a gentlemen's magazine is actually a region where the odds of dying from a brain attack are significantly higher than the rest of the country. Now scientists say you are also more likely to suffer from cognitive decline, as measured by your willingness to live in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, or Tennessee.

Afterword

2011-05-23T06:44:00.000-07:00

Sex is nice and ice cream is delicious, but there's really no greater pleasure than feeling superior to another human being. So when a radio preacher tells us that the world is coming to an end, it's going to be a big occasion for smug fun. I mean, radio? Seriously? Get with it, Grandpa. Except, what if it's happened and the transition was subtle and difficult to detect? What if it's after the end of the world and this right now is what rapture feels like? What if we're in the presence of the Lord?

Space is the place

2011-05-16T07:10:00.000-07:00

Did you ever feel like you really know a place from years of reading about it and looking at pictures and hearing stories, while at the same time there may some other location where you have actually physically been that's left less of an impression? Two places like that for me are Berlin vs. Madrid. Also outer space and Akron. So the shuttle program is winding down, and I'm thinking maybe the best way to the stars is via inorganic extensions of ourselves, as opposed to figuring out ways to get actual meat onto the surface of Mars, for instance.

It feels so good when I stop

2011-05-09T08:07:00.000-07:00

I ran into yet another reference to Voluntary Human Extinction, folks who have chosen to forgo reproduction in order to save the planet. I have no argument with the goal, really, but their strategy is sadly flawed. They'll just end up prolonging the ordeal for everybody else, while reducing the population of people who want to reduce the population. If you want to hasten the extinction of the species, you should have as many kids as possible, and raise them all to be real estate developers who drive around in enormous SUVs buying up farmland to build tracts of McMansions.

No more in thrall

2011-05-02T07:29:00.000-07:00

May Day, International Workers' Day, commemorates a time when governments could (occasionally) be shamed or coerced into siding with the citizenry against the predations of power, privilege, and capital. In some places, it also celebrates an early form of pole dancing. Oddly, people aboard a sinking ship don't holler "Mayday" into radios to celebrate spring one last glorious time; the word is a homophone for the French phrase meaning "help me." The Internet is just chock full of places where the simple appearance of the word "homophone" would be occasion for coarse jocularity, but this is not one of them.

They hate our freedom

2011-04-25T07:23:00.000-07:00

Maybe you missed this: A guy from Kazakhstan, while on a flight from Paris to Rome, pulled out a nail clipper and attempted to coerce the flight crew into diverting the plane to Tripoli. His first name is Valery. There was a brief altercation and Valery's nail clipper was confiscated. They gave him a sedative, and he was arrested when the plane landed in Rome. My guess is that he's in the most trouble you can get in with a nail clipper. Someone should dig deeper to bring you the story behind the story. That would be good, I suppose.

Apparently, size matters.

2011-04-18T07:26:00.000-07:00

Scientists at University College London studied the brains of people with liberal and conservative political views. They found conservatives are amygdala-driven, while liberals have a more developed anterior cingulate cortex; that's linked to rational cognitive functions. Wait. There's more. The University of Iowa reports on a woman with a damaged amygdala who is literally without fear. Yet a study at Harvard Medical School shows that folks with bigger amygdalas have more extensive and complex social networks. Normally, I would punctuate each of these little stories with a joke. But I won't insult your anterior cingulate cortex by spelling them out.

Ice Cream Mondae

2011-04-11T07:51:00.000-07:00

Remember those "Strange Old Laws" features with funny archaic ordinances? "In Zanesville, Ohio it is illegal to humiliate a raccoon?" Here's a brand-new one. With certain specified exceptions, you're not allowed out in public in France with your face covered. That's the law, and the legislators who made it up assure us they do not intend to target Muslim women. So don't be all, "I'm a Baptist and also I'm a dude, so probably I can stroll around downtown France in this here burka without fear of legal repercussions." Because nuh-uh. You can't. That's why the law is fair.

Fool me once

2011-04-04T07:15:00.000-07:00

Last Friday there was a item in the Times-Picayune about Mikhail Gorbachev's 80th birthday celebration. Held at London's Royal Albert Hall, this party went on for over four hours. There were live performances by The Scorpions, Andrei Gavrilov, and Shirley Bassey, among others. Large-screen monitors showed video greetings from Bill Clinton, Sting, and Bono. Arnold Schwarzenegger gave a short speech, as did Shimon Perez. The entire event was hosted by Sharon Stone and Kevin Spacey. This story appeared on April first; I assumed it was a joke - a pretty far-fetched one. Once again, reality beats absurdism at its own game.

The fine line between extinct and imaginary

2011-03-28T07:36:00.000-07:00

By now we all know there was never any such thing as a Brontosaurus. It turns out what they had back then (about 150 million years ago) was the Apatosaurus. We were calling it the wrong thing all along. Just think. If you'd have time traveled back there and seen one of these honking great quadrupeds ambling along chewing contemplatively and smelling like a thousand compost piles, and you had hollered, "Yo! Brontosaurus!" it would have just kept right on walking. And you'd have said to yourself, "How rude." But no. You were just calling him out of his name.

in re: bananas

2011-03-21T07:24:00.000-07:00

If you should inadvertently break the peel on two bananas at once, you pretty much have to eat them both. Avoid this by buying single bananas, available because people often seem to want exactly one banana fewer. Selecting several single bananas instead of a bunch also lets you create a ripeness spectrum, so every day when you go for a banana, one will be just about perfect. Because if you let bananas get overripe, the only thing you can do is say to yourself, “I'll save these for banana bread” for about three days, and then throw them away.

Tragic

2011-03-14T04:26:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in an airport. I've been awake since four. Remember being 17? Me neither. But I recall well-meaning adults saying, "It's not the end of the world." But, yeah it was. Normally, when we say the world is falling apart we mean our social or cultural infrastructure has revealed itself to be transitory and mutable. That's bad enough. But it's when the surface of the actual crust of the world gives way that we feel really betrayed. We take it personally. Well, personally is pretty much the only way you can take anything.

Fat Monday

2011-03-07T07:09:00.000-08:00

Science! A new study from Cardiff University finds a linkage between Happy Hour-type cheap drink promotions and pub violence. Researchers at Mississippi State University believe that it may be possible to substitute natural materials such as manure for artificial fertilizers. And a report out of Madison, Wisconsin concludes that huge lagoons full of pig feces tend to release noxious gases into the atmosphere. Whatever. They still deserve their right to collective bargaining the same as the rest of us. Except down here, in the right-to-work south. Hey. What's the difference between Scott Walker and Muammar Gaddafi? Gaddafi has loyalists.

A Trifling Quibble

2011-02-28T07:12:00.000-08:00

Apparently, the phrase "tech savvy" has evolved. By evolved, I mean, of course, "mutated to mean something that has nothing to do with the aggregate definitions of its component words." To me, the phrase implies a working knowledge of and interest in the underlying systems that make something work. So buying a new car or listening to the radio a lot don't make you tech savvy. Working on a car or rewiring a radio do. Supposing I design a new and more sophisticated button to dispense treats to a cage full of lab rats. Are my rats more tech savvy?

Who cares if you read this?

2011-02-21T05:30:00.000-08:00

For too long, we writers have been slaves to traditional forms that constrain our expression and constrict our ability to move the Art of Literature forward. The problem is that old habits are so thoroughly ingrained in us as to make truly original writing difficult, if not impossible. How to liberate oneself from the terrible tyranny of words? What I propose is to begin with a randomly generated 26-letter row of phonetic symbols, which we will manipulate according to strict rules of form and structure into works of a new pure literature which will transcend tradition, language, meaning, and readership.

Can you still get Tang?

2011-02-14T06:29:00.000-08:00

In Moscow they have this thing called Mars500, a simulation of longterm spaceflight. Eight volunteer cosmonauts have spent the past several months in "a series of windowless steel tubes representing a spacecraft." They recently pretended they had landed on Mars, and did a simulated Martian surface excursion by putting on spacesuits and walking around in a big sandbox for about an hour. Now they're going to get back in the windowless tube and pretend to fly back to Earth. All in all, a pretty cool science project. But they'll probably get beat by some guy with a soda-and-vinegar volcano.

Now I'm hungry for Froot Loops

2011-02-07T07:19:00.000-08:00

When you think about it, we're essentially toroidal. In a topological sense, stuff that passes through our alimentary system doesn't actually go inside of us. Although when we swallow a donut, it feels exactly like it's inside of us. That's because the difference between you and the world is a perceptual construct- the actual edge of you is as hard to define as the upper boundary of the atmosphere. As far as the universe is concerned, there's probably no big difference between you and the rest of itself. And of course to the atmosphere, I'm just an ambulatory man-shaped bubble.

Not that I watch them, of course...

2011-01-31T07:11:00.000-08:00

Are there more show business awards shows on TV than ever? I'm amazed these people have time to get any work done. Of course, technology helps: In a day or two in front of a green wall, skilled operators can capture enough of a performer's essence to add a vaguely human flavor to an otherwise all-CG thrill ride. Likewise, a few words mumbled into a mic provide a sufficient sample to be manipulated into an exciting vocal performance. So the technicians have lots to do, and the stars keep themselves busy parading around like nicely accessorized sides of Kobe beef.

Apparently, I can do this in my sleep.

2011-01-24T06:59:00.000-08:00

At 5 a.m. the other day I woke up, scribbled on a scrap of paper, and went back to sleep. In the morning I decided I had written the best non-watering-can-related prose of my career. Here it is, verbatim:

Out front of the post office this guy was getting all agitated – pointing at nothing and yelling, “If this is an elephant, where is its trunk?” Until one of us, one fellow stepped forward and said, “Who said anything about elephants?” And the guy calmed down. So what's so bad about answering a question with a question?

Another argument against tenure

2011-01-17T07:29:00.000-08:00

This just in: 47 British academics specializing in American history and politics have participated in a survey conducted by the University of London's School of Advanced Study's Institute for the Study of the Americas' United States Presidency Centre to rate American presidents. For all the relevance that has, they might as well have gathered to vote on their favorite pizza toppings, or the cutest Beatle. Anyway, Franklin Delano Roosevelt came in first, James Buchanan dead last. But seriously now, at the University of London, wasn't FDR sort of a shoo-in? Without him, the results would have been published in German.

Check behind the furnace

2011-01-10T07:24:00.000-08:00

Why do I even call these rants? There's precious little ranting done here. These are musings, micro-articles, featurettes. They are extended captions for invisible snapshots, dust jacket blurbs for non-existent books, truncated responses to essay questions on private pop quizzes that pop up only between my ears. Stabs at shtick, unsponsored spots for nothing at all. It's like some big sweaty guy moved into your knotty pine rec room and you keep getting these postcards from someone a lot like that in a similar rec room but you're not sure: What if it's some other guy in somebody else's basement?

The underside of a flat smooth stone

2011-01-03T06:48:00.000-08:00

Here's an actual quote from an art critic I refrain from naming so that you won't hunt him down and punch him in the nose: “His art was deliberately elusive; introverted but with a steely ambition evident in the obduracy with which it declines to present anything that could be interpreted as a statement of purpose.” I'm woozy with epistemological revulsion - there's something about that sentence that makes me want to douse it with kerosene and strike a match. Anyway, who needs Art when we spend every day of our lives in a full-sized interactive Museum of Everything?

Tastes like... transgression.

2010-12-27T07:52:00.000-08:00

It's vaguely peanut-shaped, approximately tangerine-colored, and I guess sort of banana-flavored. I'm referring, of course, to the humble circus peanut, a peculiar confection that manages to decontextualize every one of its disparate elements. Nobody likes them, nobody eats them, nobody buys them, yet they are available for sale at filling stations and convenience stores all across this great land of ours, huddled together in dusty cellophane sacks. I think they put them on those wire racks so the candy section can never quite sell out. They are to the candy counter what most 20th-century music is to the concert hall.

A hangover from days gone by.

2010-12-20T07:06:00.000-08:00

Chuck Taylors used to be made in Massachusetts. Now they make them in China. As far as I'm concerned they're not even real Chuck Taylors. They're replicas. Knockoffs. And PBR? Don't talk to me about PBR. The actual, real Pabst Brewery in Milwaukee closed somewhere back in the mid '90s. What they sell now is Pabst Brand beer, contract-brewed to meet a specific price point and skillfully marketed to a target demographic. And just who is buying this incredibly accurate reproduction of a humble working-class pleasure of decades past? They're young folks from the suburban middle class, mostly. Seeking authenticity.

Satsuma season

2010-12-13T07:38:00.000-08:00

I have been told that in the 1920s in my family's home village, my Great-grandfather would bring home an annual Christmas orange. The old man would sit and solemnly, with great care, peel the orange. The kids would stand watching, waiting. And he would distribute single sections of orange to one kid at a time until it was all gone. That was it for oranges for another whole year. If they'd been here, now, he could have got sacks of oranges cheap from the supermarket to snack on till dinner was ready. But you can't get the mythic kind anymore.

Showing Some Class

2010-12-06T06:52:00.000-08:00

Imagine a fellow who mostly listens to country music but sometimes Classic Rock when he's on a ladder because there's something about perspiring heavily while scraping window frames that makes a guy want to hear "Mississippi Queen" from a paint-speckled boombox on a milk crate. On his birthday, does this guy suddenly figure, "Hey, I'll break out the Schoenberg?" Does a lady who reads those Harlequin romances every day of her life suddenly on Independence Day crack the spine on Finnegans Wake? No. So how come on special occasions I'm suddenly expected to appreciate the complex subtleties of fancy food?

Think simple, elegant furniture

2010-11-29T07:17:00.000-08:00

Did you even know there was such a thing as the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement? The idea is, you join the movement through a firm commitment to avoid reproducing yourself. Which, if you think about it, is no way to build a sustainable constituency. See kids, by taking yourselves out of the gene pool, you're actually giving the species a stronger than ever tendency toward procreation. The name's Mendel, baby. Gregor Mendel. Still, they do get a thumbs-up from me for pissing off the Catholics. Not that it matters much. Terms like "voluntary" simply do not apply to the inevitable.

Doubleplusgood Duckspeakers

2010-11-22T07:08:00.000-08:00

You can detect them from half a house away, without even really discerning individual words. When one of the Opinionators is on, their strident confidence is audible in every syllable. It doesn't matter which side they're on- like soldiers or point guards, they have more in common with one another than with their teams. And here's the thing; they are not like you and me. We may often find ourselves conflicted, or unsure, or sometimes simply apathetic. But there is no topic upon which an Opinionator does not have a powerful position. I'm not sure what I think about that.

Autobiography

2010-11-15T06:45:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when I'm eating something, let's say a sandwich or cookie, I'll get near the end and perceive that the remaining portion is less than two full bites and rather than accept two moderately undersized bites -- or worse, one normal bite followed by a woefully minuscule final bite -- I'll put the whole remainder, nearly two bites worth, in my mouth all at once, which makes me feel kind of piggy and also my food is gone sooner than I'd like. It is not in my nature to be so confessional and self excoriating, but I needed this catharsis.

Mondays could start after lunch.

2010-11-08T06:54:00.000-08:00

Wait. Wasn't the 20th century supposed to be all about creating technology to release people from the need for ceaseless backbreaking toil so they could enjoy the best things in life? And the best things in life are free, right? So 10 percent unemployment should mean 100 percent of us happily working a 36-hour week. Unless they were lying to us about the 20th century. They wouldn't do that, would they, the folks with the money and power? Cause if they would, it's like we've gone to the movies and left the kids at home with a convicted cannibal pedophile.

And there was one guy doing a pretty good "Al Pacino as Ben Gazzara," too.

2010-11-01T08:16:00.000-07:00

On the frontier between the Quarter and the Marigny Saturday night, the street was a river of wildly attired humanity. The standouts? There were some gutterpunks that looked exactly like the real thing, a really great "tired waiter just trying to get home," a couple of extraordinary "glazed-eyed tourists," and my very favorite, some guys doing a conceptual group thing I'd call "downtown hipsters too cool to dress up for Halloween." Me, I went as Eugene Debs. Like him, I'd rather vote for what I want and not get it than vote for what I don't want and get it.

Here I sit, broken hearted.

2010-10-25T07:37:00.000-07:00

The job of America's Poet Laureate pays 35 thousand dollars per annum. Traditionally, our poets laureate are plucked from a pool of tenured English professors, to whom that stipend may seem like a stingy smidgen. But it's better than double the minimum wage, and to a whole lot of un- or under-employed citizens that might seem like pretty good pay for what you have to do, which ain't much. Sure easier than mowing lawns or cleaning hotel rooms. Why not fill the position through a nationally televised talent contest? I'll bet the winner would be a young man from Nantucket.

My money's on the blonde

2010-10-18T06:45:00.000-07:00

I recently had occasion to do research that had me following links that led to references to a pair of late-'80s teen girl singers named Tiffany and Debbie Gibson and I was pretty sure they meant either Britney or Debbie Boone but I checked and, nope, I was wrong, these are different people altogether and while the only thing Tiffany and Debbie Gibson have in common with Britney and Debbie Boone is that I don't really know what any of them sound like, I for one would pay good money to see all four in a TV wrestling cage match.

Now Joss Whedon wants a Nobel.

2010-10-11T05:44:00.000-07:00

I'm the kind of guy, I never win anything. I wasn't hopeful when I filled out the little slip of paper at the Nix Library with my best estimate of the number of Rice Chex in a candy jar on the desk. I won by a mile. The head librarian tells me I got it within a single Rice Check, while nobody else got even close. I got a box of Rice Krispies treats as my prize. They're all gone. I ate them up and did not share. They tasted sweet, like victory. Bet that's how David Simon feels.

pompadour & circumstance

2010-10-04T07:58:00.000-07:00

If it hadn't been for Tony Curtis, Elvis probably would have retired from driving truck for Crown Electric in 2000, bought a little trailer on an acre or two near Tupelo. Because it was always the hair, wasn't it, the loops and whorls, the improbable glistening rivulets and distributaries, the whole gleaming artifice of pomades and waxes and perfumed unguents, the jet black shining edifice springing from the brow like some vaselined Athena, an ebon rostral projection emerging from the faultless sculpted helm. They don't have hair like that now. It can't be done ironically, nor made to look accidental.

Because it worked out so well for Youngstown

2010-09-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

I'd have never guessed: Apparently, one of the worst things to do with rich alluvial soil and a long growing season is waste it growing stuff. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has proudly announced that by offering $600 million in tax-free bonds, he has managed to attract a large steel production facility to the banks of the Mississippi River. And this is land once thought fit only for agriculture. Isn't ponying up tax dollars to entice somebody to build a steel mill in your cane field is a lot like pimping for your sister and then lending the guy a twenty?

More choleric than splenetic, though.

2010-09-19T22:29:00.000-07:00

You want a rant? I'll show you a rant. Seriously, this week I'm not writing one, just showing you one. It may the best rant ever, by anybody. A rant so quintessentially ranty that to attempt a rant of one's own in the same time frame would be like (insert clever pop culture reference here). So I'm simply turning around, trotting into the locker room, and changing back into civvies. I'll content myself with this 100 Word Intro to the rant you should be reading, by a guy who has been busting my cubes, humor-wise, literally since the Carter administration.

Enlightened shelf interest

2010-09-13T07:18:00.000-07:00

Isn't Terry Jones, the mouth-breathing Florida preacher who was threatening to start his own bonfire of the inanities with a stack of Qur'ans, that one guy from Monty Python? Or maybe he's getting paid off by big paper and printing ink cartels anxious to maintain market share in the face of the inexorable penetration of the e-book into their bailiwick, down-loadable data files being less than optimum kindling. Okay, unlikely conjectures, both of them. But I'll bet when he rounded up the volumes he was planning to torch, it was more books than he'd ever owned before in his life.

We have been naught

2010-09-06T08:40:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe, but Labor Day was originally an occasion to celebrate "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations." So let's take a few moments to recognize the hard-working people who make this holiday possible, even the ones being chased across the Arizona desert to get to their jobs. Maybe you're enjoying a regatta or a bass fishing contest. Possibly you're playing croquet or watching the kids bounce on the backyard trampoline, attending NASCAR or the National Symphony. Just thank your lucky stars 'n' stripes you live in a country without a class system.

I've been eschewing normative ideation

2010-08-30T08:02:00.000-07:00

I have to tell you the truth. I'm feeling unusually placid, with none of the gritty cerebral irritants so essential to creating the requisite ranty pearls of prose. I've tried. I swear. I checked the news. Plenty of outrageous stuff, but the appropriate responders have responded with appropriate outrage, so there's no work for me there. But I promise you, should I see the opportunity for any sort of cheap joke, BAM! I'll be all over it like an onomatopoeia. And meanwhile, at the Home for Retired Metaphors, all the old similes are sitting around like, oh, I don't know

Maybe next week

2010-08-23T05:13:00.000-07:00

Yup, there you are. Right on time. All like, “Let's go see what kind of absolutely free rant Dave has provided for us this week.” Did it ever occur to you that I might have something better to you than type up a rant for you on a Monday morning? Like maybe I have a dental appointment and won't have time to write anything, or maybe I'm just the teensiest bit tired of providing exactly 100 words right on schedule, rain or shine, come hell or high water? Maybe this week there just won't be any 100 word rant.

You have to look at the big picture

2010-08-16T06:56:00.000-07:00

Gardening up north means growing plants. Gardening down south means killing plants. I was cutting back some weeds that were choking out the kudzu when I made the mistake of looking too close and realized I was scaring the living crap out of a brilliant green newborn anole no bigger than the first joint of my thumb. And I tried not to think of how many little lizards I had hacked in two already, or the teeny snails I was depriving of life-giving shade. And I kept right on chopping. Think that's how government and business leaders feel about us?

They were in a dead heat

2010-08-09T07:36:00.000-07:00

You think this is hot? This ain't hot. In a part of Iran called Dasht-e Lut it gets up to about 70 degrees. Celsius. That's around 158 Fahrenheit. The area is abiotic, meaning it supports no life at all, not even bugs or germs. Too hot for people? It's too hot for baking meringue. Meanwhile, the World Sauna Championship ended when the last two contestants lost consciousness and had to pulled from the 110 degree C (100 is boiling) heat and hospitalized. One of them died, which I think means he wins, since he stayed in for his whole life.

Our little drama

2010-08-02T07:06:00.000-07:00

Observations and musings from the Interstate: For one thing, the phrase "observations and musings" pretty much relegates me to the category of purveyor of droll anecdotes who ought to be named Josh Something. Dagnabit. Anyway, Alabama license plates used to say "Stars Fell on Alabama," recalling a lovely song from 1934. Now they say "Sweet Home," recalling Lynyrd Skynyrd. Note to Montgomery muckety-mucks: A jump into the 21st century shouldn't require a layover in the '70s. And then, here's my idea for a tribute band that plays Australian hard rock covers absolutely perfect down to the very tiniest detail. OCDC.

erratum

2010-07-26T07:57:00.000-07:00

Remember when I mentioned that the world's largest pencil was hanging in front of an office supply store in Wytheville, Virginia? I was misinformed, and passed along this misinformation to you, the reader, without doing due diligence, fact-checking-wise. This was irresponsible. It falls short of the high standards you have rightfully come to expect. The City Museum in St. Louis has a 76-foot long pencil. It has 4,000 pounds of graphite inside, so this St. Louis pencil would actually work if you could find something to write on. Compared to it, the Wytheville pencil is a laughable piece of crap.

War has sort of ruined violence for me

2010-07-19T06:46:00.000-07:00

The Journal of Psychopharmacology (JOP) reports that in clinical trials funded by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), doctors have been seeing encouraging results using ecstasy (MDMA) as an adjunct to talk therapy for patients with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). MDs in both the UK and US want to emphasize that these are only initial findings. Still, pretty soon you'll get prescriptions for ecstasy and marijuana, and nobody will want them. See, grownups ruin everything. They ruined baseball with Little League, they ruined rock and roll with a building in Cleveland, and now they're going to ruin drugs.

From my "Irascible Geezer" collection:

2010-07-12T07:54:00.000-07:00

Remember when the cool kids had Nike or Adidas and you had to be a nerd or dweeb or doofus to be walking around in old-fashioned Converse? Then you may also recall a time when the hippest eyewear was tinted aviators and you had to be sort of a dork or geek to have squarish plastic frames on your face. But nowadays, it's hip to emulate the most out-of-it, uncool fashion statements you can find. But it somehow doesn't work when you do it on purpose. It turns out that being unselfconscious is one of the hardest things to fake.

After all the fireworks

2010-07-05T09:00:00.001-07:00

It seems to me that we should be able to put our heads together and come up with a less fractious set of interpretations of the Constitution than the ones under which we currently operate. The problem, I think, is that we compartmentalize our concerns, picking and choosing articles and amendments to suit our agendas like a TV evangelist quoting chapter and verse. We need a more holistic view. Like, when you study the first and second amendments together, it becomes pretty dang clear that the founding fathers believed shooting somebody with a firearm was a form of protected speech.

To me, Eliot Ness defines class.

2010-06-28T08:10:00.000-07:00

I've had two thoughts about matters of taste. First: people who complain that the great mass of people have none should be grateful, since if the hoi polloi shared their preferences they would be required to despise what they currently love. Like a music fan who buys every record a band makes until they finally cut a hit. Then they hate 'em. There's no middle ground between obscurity and selling out. And second, definitions of taste. Good taste is when you have internalized the standards of your class. Exquisite taste is when you understand the unspoken standards of your betters.

Miller Barber: High Life and Vitalis

2010-06-21T07:22:00.000-07:00

Here's the sort of cutting edge journalism you don't get from Cal Thomas or that mean girl with the red hair: Suggested drinking games for the long hot summer ahead. Not alcohol drinking games; the only real fun one is called "try to maneuver the concave end of the vessel somewhere near your slack and drooling piehole." No, this is variations on the Arnold Palmer, half iced tea and half lemonade. You get to make up other vintage golfer related beverages. Lee Trevino: horchata and coke. Tom Weiskopf: beer with a nice head on it. Johnny Revolta? Not going there.

I reach for my revolver

2010-06-14T06:43:00.000-07:00

Roger Ebert says video games aren't Art. Which annoys some fanboys, but leaves a lot of us wondering why he bothered to opine on the topic, being as qualified to talk about anything but movies as Richard Dawkins is to give spiritual advice. Stick with what you know, I say. Plus, "what is Art?" is sort of a turn of the last century question anyway, isn't it? Capital A "Art" came in with The Sorrows of Young Werther and hasn't meant anything since 1914. "Art" is propaganda in the hands of dilettantes - it's a commercial nobody's paid for yet.

Oddly, it's poison to pigs.

2010-06-07T06:49:00.000-07:00

Palmer Amaranth may sound like a J.D. Salinger protagonist, but it's actually a nuisance weed spreading across the American south. Also called "pigweed," it's immune to most pesticides. It's incredibly competitive, thriving even in extreme heat and drought conditions. And it's moving north. But here's the thing; this 6 1/2 foot tall plant has a one kilogram edible seed head with more and better protein than whole wheat, while the leaves and stalks are more nutritious than spinach. If I was a farmer, I'd be doing everything I could to keep cotton and soy out of my amaranth fields.

still spewing

2010-05-31T09:02:00.000-07:00

It doesn't matter if we say we never buy junk food. The stuff keeps flying off the shelves and down our bottomless gullets, and that's the only opinion that counts. The marketing racket calls that the shopping cart vote. So, who doesn't like a climate controlled house, a comfy commute, plus healthy returns on their 401k? That's yummy as a poptart. Getting all those things at the same time requires willing complicity with mentally deficient delusional greedheads. Now hop in the car -- we're driving down to the protest march to yell at BP for doing what we voted for.

Already nostalgic for tats and soul patches

2010-05-24T06:40:00.000-07:00

We've almost plowed through the first decade of the 21st century and still don't have consensus on what to call it. The two-thousands sounds way too Mr. Wizard: “Radiotelegraphs from Pluto! Dirigible service from Siam to Rhodesia! Who knows what other wonders the two-thousands may bring?” The aughts only works if you're a coot and/or geezer: “Yep, I 'member back in aught-three, I wuz ridin' with ol' Stinky Liederkranz...” My modest proposal – why not just call it the First Decade? It works great as a noun or adjective. Sample sentence: “Dude, that stubble 'n' fedora look is totally First Decade.”

100 word requiem

2010-05-17T07:00:00.000-07:00

Around the world
From Rome to Rio
We mourn the loss of Ronnie James Dio.

There's no more joy,
There's no more glee-o
There's no more, no more, Ronnie James Dio

We ask ourselves
How can this be-o?
Goodbye goodbye to Ronnie James Dio

He replaced Ozzie
But who'll replace he-o?
There's no-one now like Ronnie James Dio

He sang con fuoco
He sang con brio
He sang with Rainbow, Ronnie James Dio

We weep now 'neath the old oak tree-o
The voice that rang from sea-to-sea-o
Is silent now, his soul is free-o
Ronnie James Dio
Ronnie James Dio

Wild thing, you make my heart sing.

2010-05-10T07:12:00.000-07:00

Somewhere between one and four percent – that's how far short of being fully human most of us are. It seems that when the first humans came out of Africa they enjoyed cordial relations with some of their Neanderthal cousins, with the result that the only folks around who can claim to be entirely free of caveman DNA are certain Sub-Saharan Africans. Ordinary white people everywhere can rejoice at this little troglodytic tang in an otherwise vanilla gene pool. I welcome this addition to my messy Mischling heritage, especially if it means I can take off another set of holidays.

It's like, deep down inside, I'm nine.

2010-05-03T07:26:00.000-07:00

At first glance, Esther Duflo and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab sounds like a plastic playset with action figure included. Or a musical group that collaborated with Henry Threadgill for that one album. But no. Esther Duflo is a MacArthur genius grant winning economist who uses statistical tools to quantify the effects of microeconomic variables vis-a-vis poverty in the developing world. And the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab is an academic center at MIT focused on applying controlled research methodologies to socioeconomics. Nothing funny there. I singled them out for cheap laughs based solely on their names.

I think they have these at Waffle House

2010-04-26T06:49:00.000-07:00

This just in: In a strategy called “taste-aversion learning,” scientists in Australia are making little sausages of toad leg meat and a nausea-inducing compound in order to train wild carnivorous marsupials known as quolls to avoid attacking giant cane toads, invasive amphibians with large venom glands in their shoulders. I learned this from the BBC this morning. Did they add an extra Fool's Day to April this year without telling me? The longer I look at it, the more it seems that absurdity is like gravity or the speed of light – a fundamental property of the physical universe.

Watch out for unbearably cute baby animals

2010-04-19T06:59:00.000-07:00

Just a heads up as you plan your activities for the week: Thursday is Earth Day. I intend to mark this event by remaining on or near the surface of the planet most of the time all day long. Also, I will participate in various promotional activities in my area, like I saw in the paper where Target will send you a reusable, Earth-friendly shopping bag when you mail five plastic Target bags in to them. Mail them. In an envelope that goes on a truck to travel across the country. Guess what color the bag they mail back is.

John Goodman is a local landmark.

2010-04-12T06:38:00.000-07:00

There is this architectural stock footage shorthand the movies and TV use to indicate what city you're in. Chrysler Building means New York. Big Ben means London. And of course, the Taj Mahal means absolutely anywhere on the Indian subcontinent. So I want to give the new HBO series Treme credit. They stayed away from the stereotypical stuff everybody sees on their first trip to New Orleans, like Bourbon Street and the Cafe Du Monde. Instead, they dug deep to focus on brass bands, Indians, Vaughn's, Susan Spicer, WWOZ, and all the other stuff everybody discovers on their second trip.

...so maybe life isn't like a river?

2010-04-05T07:05:00.000-07:00

You know the old joke about the resort, where one guest complains that the food is terrible? The other guest replies, “Yes, and the portions are so small.” Life's like that. Or like when you're at a party and it's not very fun and there's nothing to do but you stay and stay because you're just sure something will happen the moment you leave. At least maybe somebody will drink too much and humiliate themselves. Then you realize in one sad sick sinking rush that it's you. This world is a terrible place, and we have to leave so soon.

A bright cold day

2010-03-29T06:56:00.000-07:00

Progressives and liberals and other whiny types who like to hide behind the Constitution like it was their mommy's skirt are all upset about a recent Supreme Court ruling that allows unlimited political contributions from corporations. Get over it. Sure there's a downside; it's now a matter of legal precedent that an abstract business entity enjoys all the rights of citizenship. But look at the bright side. Thanks to the Supreme Court, anything you want to do with your money, from buying an election to scoring crystal meth to hiring a hitman, is now theoretically defensible as constitutionally protected speech.

The Importance of Membership

2010-03-22T07:04:00.000-07:00

We know you depend on 100 Word Rant each and every week and that's why we're coming to you during our fundraising drive to ask won't you please do your part your support is important maybe you're in your car or talking around the water cooler and the topic of 100 Word Rant comes up and when you get right down to it this is a community and the people behind the scenes here at 100 Word Rant who bring the quality you've come to expect imagine if you woke up one Monday morning and 100 Word Rant wasn't there.

More Big News

2010-03-15T07:29:00.000-07:00

The world's largest catsup bottle is located in Collinsville, Illinois. The locals there united to form the Catsup Bottle Preservation Group to save this historic structure from demolition, thereby preserving a spelling which has of late been falling into desuetude. At one time, there were two dominant brands of America's favorite condiment: Heinz Ketchup and Hunt's Catsup. They sounded much the the same. They tasted exactly the same. Each devoted a sizable chunk of energy and resources to convincing the consuming public their product was in some way superior. I can't think of a better metaphor for our two-party system.

The Noblest Obbligato

2010-03-08T06:59:00.000-08:00

Talk about aftershocks. A hideous horrible natural disaster has forced us all to say the word Chile more often than we are accustomed to. The other day I got corrected because I said it as if it was chili, like a bowl of chili. “No, no, no,” she said. “CHEE-lay. It's pronounced CHEE-lay.” I was appropriately chastened, but then I got to thinking; I'll bet she says Paris and not pah-REE. Berlin, not bear-LEEN. But Chile is south of the border. Condescension is what it is. And it ruins an old third-grade joke that also invokes Turkey, China, and Denmark.

We are professional grade

2010-03-01T07:21:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons new restaurants keep opening and closing all the time is that folks who love to cook good food keep thinking they should get into the business of serving strangers. But the service industry is a tough scuffle for people accustomed to luxuries like self respect. It that sense, cooking is like playing music or being funny. So if you like cooking and are thinking of opening that little bistro, look at it this way: You probably like sex, too. You may be very good at it. That doesn't mean you should start doing it for money.