The Greatest Cinematic Moment of the 20th Century

Flag it down

I love maps. I love statistics. I love this.

Did she lose me?

Call him a secret Muslim. Or a coke head/dealer. I guess that’s politics.

But shutting down an honest intellectual discussion with an ad like this crosses the line for me. Until this point I was certain that regardless of my preference of nominee, I’d only vote for those with a big D suffix in the general election. I’m no longer so sure.

34,445 Euros

John Edwards has received his deserved share of ridicule. A barber on L Street in Washington advertises $400 Presidential Haircut Specials. But maybe the class crusader hasn’t been spending enough? The Spiegel reports our darling mini-Berlusconi in la France is claiming a 34,445 Euro refund from the electoral commission for his campaign’s make-up expenses. Calling them “excessively high,” the electoral commission will only refund a third.

Memo to John: if you want a shot, stop being stingy and spend the money like a real president. Call now to receive a free supermodel (while supplies last).

Now that’s sexy.

The Library of Congress started a Flickr account with some amazing photographs from their collection, in part to help them identify the pictures better.

Listophilia

I may never got comfortable with blogging, because I feel the urge to apologize for anything excessively self-centered. So without any sort of self-consciously ironic introduction, I present you a list of 10 things I didn’t know I liked one year ago. I wrote the list itself in December, in the spirit of easonal/consumer guide retrospectives.

1. The National’s Boxer. Check out Apartment Story or Green Gloves.
2. The Wire. I finally gave in to all the hype. It’s less about gun battles than battles against Sartre’s mauvaise foi. The final season is currently ongoing.
3. Tryst. One of the few places in DC that lets you forget you’re no longer on the West Coast.
4. Barack Obama. Good policy. Good politics.
5. Nike Elite Running Socks. I haven’t had even the beginnings of a blister with these.
6. Polo Shirts. Like a mullet: business in front, party in the back. I bought my first two last year, but one was stolen by a drunk Russian.
7. Virgin America. You’ve heard about the mood lighting. But that’s not what makes it so great. They just make it easy on you, from booking to ordering food.
8. D.C. Despite number 3, life here isn’t the campaigning politicians’ favorite strawman.
9. Charles Cimicky 2005 Grenache/Shiraz Trumps (Barossa Valley). The half bottle I had bookended between a couple of liters of beer, wine, and a combination of the two, stands out as one of the most drinkable wines in recent memory. Watch this space for tasting notes once I open the one in my closet.
10. Blogging? Perdix and I are still trying to figure out a format for this thing. The most popular posts so far are Arnold and Inkblot. Is that the type of fare you are interested in?

Yes, ma’am. We need music out here.

Jeremy Blatter, a friend of mine, put together a great music video from the Prelinger Archive’s material for Sam Amidon’s take on the traditional “Saro.” It rocks:

RP for PR

After watching the returns from Tuesday night’s New Hampshire debacle, in which the Dragon Lady secured her seat for long haul, and Ol’ Reliable simply kept his warm, I was reminded of a state in dire need of representation in the modern American electoral process: Puerto Rico.

Yes, that disrespected commonwealth, or unincorporated organized territory as it’s known in some parts, has newfound importance. It is time that Borikén had the earliest primary therefore ridding ourselves of the discomfort we feel seeing in seeing White Power at its finest; whether at play in the cornfields or at work in granite quarries, these states don’t represent the changing demographics of America in the least.

Puerto Rico is not only heavily Latino, it is Latino. It’s not Mexico, sure, but census projections are far more favorable to our hot-blooded hermanos, even if they aren’t the much-vilified “wetbacks” smuggled along with a coyote. Indeed, by 2050 Latinos will represent exactly half the population of white America, and the majority in states like California and Arizona.

So here is how it works: politicians will cast aside their pea coats for tropical garb and the process will have a twist. PR is still, as of last month, set to be ruled as a territory under the plenary powers of the US Congress, and yet the two parties here make their hay out the independence issue. So you’ll get your typical retail politics, only this time in order to appeal to a large swath of the population they’ll have to openly court absolute sovereignty.

Everyone will be forced to speak, or at least ape, español. The opportunities for gaffes are endless, as even the most polished candidate will be sure to put Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech to shame. (The reader should note that I’m very aware that Kennedy’s grammar was correct when he gave the speech, but the jelly-filled doughnut tale will always captivate). Can you imagine Hillary Clinton’s tearful address, rehearsed after watching a stirring telenovela?

Most importantly, the island will be easy to dispose of with all the candidates buzzing about like pheromone-driven bees. You see, the US Navy had been dropping bombs on nearby Vieques until 2003; a continuation of a strafing operation wouldn’t be unthinkable. Can’t we spare a few nukes?

But I guess we’ll have to wait until another plebiscite goes out, until the statehood advocates finally get their way. The prophecy will be revealed on that day of judgment, though, this much we know for sure. Ron Paul will assume the Oval Office with howitzer in hand and hundreds of gold bricks stored inside his blimp.

In the spirit of giving (in)

Half the blogging team is in Baja and the other half in Santa Barbara. Posting will continue to be light, but here’s a description of Sunday. It also happens to be a fantastic new wine blog, which I hope to contribute to – once I receive a steady paycheck again to do the requisite research.

Meanwhile, an update on the Libyan situation.

Il Mio Manifesto

In the last few days I have had discussions with old pals from the Fourth Estate. It is doing well and the jewels and minks will only be sold to those of fine breeding, namely Roger Ailes. They have informed me that my plight in academia is a grim one: namely research can only get a privileged few very far, because most of the time faculty is desperately trying hammer one of its futile proposals for research down a foundation’s throat. At then the thankless teaching load, especially for younger faculty, includes such courses as the following three-credit masterpiece: FYC 4003 Family Financial Management.

I harken back to the old aphorism that the ass is leaner on the other hide, though, because when I was set to plunge myself into the thankless anonymity of writing for the Palatka Daily News or assistant editor of Fleet Owner Magazine I would have died to be an academic, in part because it didn’t look like I would be writing copy for the NY Times or broadcasting for the BBC any time soon.

So what I suppose I’ve always hankered for is the possibility of working in the jungles and godforsaken veldt while at once capturing something uniquely narrative. I’m nowhere near that now, but I’ve got the seed of an idea.

Many efforts have been made to marry journalism with academia in the past, and most of them haven’t been that successful. Journalism departments typify this perhaps the most, attempting to create scholarship and scholars out of something which is by it’s very nature not a scholarly process. But the same can be said for the news media, which for whatever reason seems to think that reporters can become experts on all range of subject matters despite their acute focus on only the most pertinent details to a contemporary story. This is most egregious when a cable news channel will put on the TV some cockamamie fool who can pronounce mujahideen but whose credentials nor more recommend them as a Middle East expert to CNN than to CVS.

So I’ve decided to combine my work in both disciplines, and specifically my work on resilience theory and natural hazards, to my ongoing sensibilities as a storyteller, for toxic effect. The project is protean, the aim ephemeral, the desire simple: try something that has never been done before, either because there’s no audience or because it’s too damn complicated.

In a sense, this is a call to arms on my part. I want to actually challenge myself and others to see if a utilization of blogs and other multimedia can move the material in question, in this case probably resiliency work in southeastern Mexico, or whether it is doomed to just be conjunctive. I’ve seen what’s out there, and as a result I wish to see what I can modify myself and put intro practice. Hopefully it will be something grand, but if it fails to be anything more than an effort that mirrors this self-promoter, then I want nothing of it.