Lay down all thought, surrender to THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT!

The other day I was at Chili's with my mom and my little brother. I was zoning out for a minute and over the speaker system I heard a faint sound of bird calls and drum beats. After a second I realized I was hearing the intro to "Tomorrow Never Knows" by The Beatles.

My first reaction: That's odd—I've never even heard this song on the radio. much less in a restaurant.

My second reaction: GREAT GREASY FUCK SOMEBODY IS SINGING "JINGLE BELLS" TO THE TUNE OF THIS SONG.

So begins something I'll try to do on my blog for the next month or so—point out dumb attempts to create new and novel Christmas tunes. I will post about stuff as I hear it. It's not that I don't like Christmas music (I don't), it's just that it gets even worse when musicians make limp efforts to rejuvenate it.

I searched around and found that this version of "Jingle Bells" appears on a Christmas album by The Fab Four, a "Beatles tribute band."

First, this doesn't work rhythmically. Second, it's just dumb to make "Jingle Bells" try to sound mystical, especially in a song whose original lyrics come from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Sorry, Bing Crosby or whoever the fuck the first person was who sang "Jingle Bells."

So, what I'm saying is, in a musical genre where no one's totally original anyway, these guys are double-lazy for melding Beatles songs with traditional Christmas songs. That makes them ethically and musically worse than the fucking Monkees, even though I gather they play their own instruments pretty well. And their web site sucks. And I'd like to say: Fuck you, you bunch of huckster morphodite fucks. If you want to do something good with the legacy of a good band, go fucking start your own.

And the cute little suits and moptops are dumb. That's why the real Beatles stopped wearing them before they did all their good albums.

Headline of the Year?

Shouldn't there be an "at least" in there somewhere? Not-beheading just seems a crappy standard of restraint for a budding government to offer. And I can't decide whether it's a good thing for a headline writer to emphasize. On the one hand, it sounds dopey; on the other hand, it emphasizes some important questions about the future of the Iraqi government.

(From CNN.com)

Fun w/typos

CBS2: Purple Line Closed for the Weekend

Busts will make stops at or near all Purple Line stations.


That must have been an interesting meeting:

"So, how can we improve service?"

"Well, our focus group said they wanted more busts."

"Whaddya mean, busts?"

"You know, um, (whispers) breasts...."

"So our female attendants should go topless?"

"Well not THEM, but we can cut some strippers into the budget and no one will notice anyway..."

"This will keep our image up through any number of service delays! Get that man a call girl!"

Insert Kaiser joke here

There is no sex on TV. There are only coy hints and fake titillation.

But according to The Kaiser Family Foundation, "sexual content"—that means everything from cursory talk about sex to sex itself—is bad enough. According to the foundation's "Sex on TV 4" report, "sex scenes on TV" have "nearly double(d) since 1998."

Researchers at the University of Arizona and the Kaiser Foundation monitored one week of TV programs for the study. How can this accurately measure sexual content on TV in a two-year period? I'm sure "sexual content" fluctuates from week to week; some episodes of a given show will have more sex talk and more "sex scenes" than others.

In its insidious, meek and mild way, the study does say that sex is bad, that it's bad that TV makes it harder to control the way people think about sex:

“Given how high the stakes are, the messages TV sends teens about sex are important,” said Vicky Rideout, a Kaiser Family Foundation Vice President who oversaw the study. “Television has the power to bring issues of sexual risk and responsibility to life in a way that no sex ed class or public health brochure really can.”

At least the study encourages TV shows to remind people to use condoms and whatnot. But that's just realism—it doesn't get us past our irrational fear of sex.

The study doesn't ask just how sexual content on TV actually shapes our thinking about sex—it leaves us with the implied assumption that any mention of sex is a portent of evil, evil sexual liberation. That assumption gives this study its weight. The main motivation behind producing this study—or at least presenting it to the public—is too keep people in a panic about sex and the illusory difficulty of controlling it. Now, of course "sexual content" on TV makes people horny and curious, but so does being born with a penis or vagina. But the tone of this "sexual content" is repressive in itself. "Talk about sex" on TV is loaded with coy hints and often requires a loud swell in the laugh track. Even dramatic "sex scenes" portray sex with overtones of doom and fear. Sex is tension and release, but TV only shows us the tension. All the fake sex on TV, on billboards, in magazines, movies, newspapers—any form of mass media—is there to arouse us and tease us, but it also encourages our embarassment, self-consciousness and guilt about sex. And haven't we already got enough of that from religion?

The result of this study, then, is not to pit fear against sex, but to pile fear on top of fear.

CNN clip art: the best ever

(Pic ran with this story)

According to Alexa, it's the second-most-popular news site on the Internet. So why is it so visually crappy?

Not crudely enough

I'm taking a class on postmodern art, and most of the reading is "dense" (read: POORLY WRITTEN) postmodern theory. Because of the language these writers use, it's pretty hard to teach their work to undergraduates—or anybody not totally immersed in this kind of thinking. This sentence should give you an idea of the language standards of these works:

Thus, to put it crudely, certain ways in which black men continue to live out their counteridentities as black masculinities and replay those fantasies of black masculinities in the theaters of popular culture are, when viewed from along other axes of difference, the very masculine identities that are oppressive to women, that claim visibility for their hardness only at the expense of the vulnerability of black women and the feminization of gay black men.

Ethics: A Special Poynter Dialogue

EPFTSW: it's weird, cause you think it'd be one of those things the Poynter types get fussy about

EPFTSW: a big Inconclusive Annoying Ethics Special type thing

Steely Wes: *nods*

Steely Wes: It seems like the kind of journalistic-academic circle-jerk they would engage in.

EPFTSW: right, like, "Should Journalists Ever Have Sex With ANYONE?" or something

Steely Wes: *LAUGHS!*

Steely Wes: "Could Be a Conflict of Interest for Your Publication."

EPFTSW: "Carol Skeeball, Poynter Ethics Editor and former ombudsman for the Bum-Fuck Cretin-Marksman, takes on this urgent ethical kerfuffle"

Steely Wes: *DIES LAUGHING*

Steely Wes: "A condom is not enough when your professional integrity is involved. Only abstinence can protect your impartiality and objectivity."

EPFTSW: "And never, EVER, cum in a source's eye."

EPFTSW: "They HATE that."

Steely Wes: *IS NOW OFFICIALLY DEAD*

EPFTSW: "And may take the opportunity to bite your penis off."

Steely Wes: "You would be surprised at how awkward the reporter-source relationship can become post-coitally. Moreover, even purely non-jounralistic affairs can affect your judgment."

EPFTSW: right, then the next day, the lead item on Romenesko: "Detroit Free-Press Journo: I Never Have Sex, Especially During an Election I'm Covering."

Steely Wes: *laughs!*

Steely Wes: And "New York Times Reporters May Be Compromised By Not Abstaining."

EPFTSW: "Judith Miller: Who Would Ever Fuck HER, anyway?"

Steely Wes: Eww. No kidding.

EPFTSW: "I. Lewis Libby: 'I tried, but it's extremely difficult when you're on crutches.'"

Steely Wes: *snorts*

But I don't mean to be a wet bandit...

Emily: i am watching home alone
Scott: for the record, welcome to the dollhouse is better
Emily: i know
Scott: imagine if todd solondz had done home alone
Emily: but its the holidays
Emily: wow
Emily: too good
Scott: right
Scott: joe pesci and daniel stern kill kevin and string him up by his guts...and the family comes home and says, "meh, well, we never loved him anyway...let's take out a big insurance claim and move to the upper east side...it will look great on our college resumes"
Emily: you are a genius
Emily: start working on this
Scott: I think you could just take a lot of lines from welcome to the dollhouse and paste them into Home Alone
Scott: the bandits call up kevin and say: "3 o clock. you're gonna get RAPED"
Emily: its soo genius
Scott: I know

In history class...

EPFTSW: oh, she said the Whig party passed out whiskey at their rallies
alnjustcurious: they were officially called the "Country Party"
alnjustcurious: ha, awesome
EPFTSW: I mean, I'm sure there's a cash bar somewhere at major political conventions, but that's too controlled
EPFTSW: I want people to get ripped and then wake up in the morning on the stadium floor and realize they've just nominated Bob Dole's dog to the party ticket
alnjustcurious: ha ha ha ha
alnjustcurious: or his WIFE