First, the Rodney King Cops. Then, OJ. Now, MJ. Southern California is
an awesome place to be guilty! Or not guilty. You know what I mean.
photo below:
This isn’t the first time such a thing has been said. Charles “Peanuts” Schulz is quoted as saying “There’s a difference between a bumper sticker and a philosophy.”
(Psst! Here are definitions for the Epimenides
paradox and the Eubulides
paradox. You’ll find more about “strange loops” like these
paradoxes in Douglas Hofstadter’s Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden
Braid. Don’t say I never taught you
nuthin’.)
I’ve referred you to Human Events Online’s list of the “most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries”. I’ve also referred you to the counter-list posted on the blog Ghost of a Flea, which lists what the Flea considers to be the most helpful books of the past 200 years. For the record, I agree far more with the Flea’s picks.
However, the books on both sets of lists are about Big Ideas:
large-scale concepts that often touch on our lives in a rather indirect
fashion. “Yes, John Maynard Keynes, Charles Darwin and John Stewart
Mill have all been important thinkers,” you’re probably thinking, “but
will they help me find a new job, get in shape or…you know, meet chicks?“
Okay, maybe you’re not thinking that. I’m not (anymore). But those of
us who are still eligible bachelors probably are. Looking through their
C.S. Lewis, they’re probably screaming “Dammit, Clive! Less tape, more screw!“
A friend of mine — a charming, perfectly nice, well-educated gentleman
to whom I’ll refer to as “Diego” — if asked to compile a list of
candidates for most harmful books of the 21st century (yes, it’s a
little bit early, but why wait?), would say that this book deserves the
number one spot:
Diego claims that He’s Just Not That Into You
has poisoned the dating landscape. The basic premise of the book is
sound: if a guy doesn’t put much effort into the relationship, it means
that he’s not into you. The problem, Diego says, is that the book
(whose popularity was no doubt helped by the fact that one of its
authors wrote for Sex and the City) has raised the bar on what one has to do to prove that he’s truly “into you”.
“Returning her calls, dinner and a movie — those used to be the
baseline,” he said, “but not anymore. Everything has to be a event. If
you haven’t somehow planned a date to be some kind of production, they think you’re just not trying hard enough anymore.”
After saying this, he put a bid on a hot-air balloon ride for two at the auction at the singles charity event we were attending.
A couple of women approached me at that point and asked if they could
touch my accordion. This led to a conversation to which I invited
another single gentleman friend of mine — whom I’ll call Bilbo — to
join. These days, I use the hook-up powers of the accordion to benefit
my single friends. The Universal Code of Dudes demands it.
Without the accordion, that conversation never would’ve happened. Yes,
I like to think I’m a sharp-looking fella who was snappily dressed at
the time, but it was a singles event where another fifty or so guys
were — depending on your tastes — equally handsome and stylish. If
the accordion didn’t give me some kind of edge and the ability to turn
ordinary evenings into unusual events (here’s an example), I wouldn’t drag its thirty pounds of bellows, reeds and mechanics whenever I went out on the town.
Maybe Diego’s right.
Categories
A Pretty Good Facsimile
Last night, I was at Nathan Phillips Square,
attending the “Filipino Idol” competition (as an audience member, not a
performer), which was organized with the assistance of the Filipino Centre of Toronto,
which Dad helped found. With the good-sized crowd, some really great
performances, some Filipino kebabs and the hot and humid weather, I
closed my eyes and thought “Yeah, it feels kinda like Manila.”
AKMA (one of the co-officiants at my upcoming wedding) and his wife Margaret are here in Accordion City on a little getaway to celebrate their 23rd anniversary, which falls on this very day.
They spent the earlier part of yesterday hanging out with Michael O’Connor Clarke and the evening hanging out with Yours Truly. AKMA’s already blogged it.
Congratulations, AKMA and Margaret! I enjoyed hanging out with you last
night and I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay in Accordion City! See you folks in September!
Categories
Interesting Reading
I’ve been proving it for years, and the New York Daily News has finally decided to back me up: Nerds Make Better Lovers.
The Colbinator has comments on AC/DC’s Back in Black (which I wrote about in this entry) here and here.
In his first entry on the topic, Colby states that no AC/DC album has
any “chick flick” parts the way Led Zep albums do. My DJing and AC/DC
accordioning experiences suggest otherwise. I must agree with his
friend Jason, who says the the chick flick part of Back in Black is in fact the booty anthem You Shook Me All Night Long. Think of it this way, Colby: the chick flick parts of Zep albums are analogous to Gilmore Girls; the chick flick parts of AC/DC albums are analogous to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
I wish to throw my support behind my friend Suw Charman’s campaign for publicly-accessible power points.
I also wish to throw my support behind my friend Ben Hammersley’s call for a new Tatler [1.2MB, PDF].
[via BoingBoing] Downing Street Memo site. Read and learn!
Remember that site I pointed out
— the one that lists the ten mostharmful books of the past 200 years? The Flea has compiled what he
considers to be the ten most helpful. Interestingly enough, Charles
Darwin’s The Origin of Species appears on both lists.
Worth repeating is the original list’s critique of Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money:
The book is a recipe for ever-expanding government. When the business
cycle threatens a contraction of industry, and thus of jobs, he argued,
the government should run up deficits, borrowing and spending money to
spur economic activity. FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and the
U.S. government now has a $2.6-trillion annual budget and an
$8-trillion dollar debt.
To which The Flea adroitly responds:
Though one could also say, “FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and
the U.S. government now administers the largest economy and highest
standards of living in human history” or, following the non sequitur to
its logical conclusion, “FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and I
like lappi cheese”. It seems to me a more germane observation is the
irony of how those governments adopting policies from the Nazi or
Communist representatives on the reading list would share Human Events’
disapproval for the work of Sigmund Freud, Betty Friedan or Alfred
Kinsey. But that is the tricky thing about arguments advocating greater
individual responsibility, choice or liberty: we are always going to be
stuck with the problem of other people disagreeing with us or, heaven
forbid, having fun while we sit at home typing grumpy articles and not
getting laid.
That last sentence reminds me of just about everyone with posting privileges over at The Shotgun.
Linux is a great and wonderful server operating system. However, it
leaves much to be desired as a desktop OS, even to guys who eat, sleep
and breathe computers like me. I’m not alone, either. I’ve seen lots of
alpha geeks of all stripes — programmers, systems architects,
sysadmins and people who generally tweak computers for money and/or fun
— simply switch to an operating system which combines Unixy goodness,
a great UI and the “it just works” mantra: Mac OS X.
convert is Jamie Zawinski, Netscape/Mozilla developer turned club
owner, who’s just had enough of Linux’ primitve support for sound cards. There’s much carping going on in the comments to his entry as well as in Slashdot from the Linux zealot crowd, to whom I say: turn off the computer, get out of the basement, and go help Mom do the dishes.
[via MetaFilter] This sounds even worse (in the so-bad-it’s good way) than the Star Wars Holiday Special: Legends of the Superheroes, a live-action show featuring your favourite DC Comics heroes and villains. And Ed McMahon. Kareeeeeeem!
Jeffrey Rowland is funny because he’s true:
[via “The Colbinator”] I knew that Michael “Bad Touch Scout Troop
Leader” Jackson owned the rights to a large chunk of the Beatles’
catalogue, but didn’t know that he had a 50% share in Blue Oyster Cult’s
Don’t Fear the Reaper.
Here’s a list of the other songs for which he is half-owner:
- ’65 Love Affair, Paul Davis
- Alone Again, Naturally, Gilbert O’Sullivan
- Bad Case of Lovin’ You, Robert Palmer
- Blue Bayou, Roy Orbison
- Burning Love, Elvis Presley
- Clones (We’re All), Alice Cooper
- Crazy, Patsy Cline
- (I Just) Died In Your Arms, Cutting Crew
- Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It, Will Smith
- Here Comes the Night, Them
- Hit Me With Your Best Shot, Pat Benatar
- Hush, Deep Purple
- I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, Hank Williams Sr.
- Let It Ride, Bachman-Turner Overdrive
- Long Tall Sally, Little Richard
- Positively 4th Street, Bob Dylan
- Radar Love, Golden Earring
- Stop Your Sobbing, The Pretenders
- Sometimes When We Touch, Dan Hill
- Son of a Preacher Man, Dusty Springfield
- Suspicious Minds, Elvis Presley
- Sweetest Taboo, Sade
- Wonderwall, Oasis
- You Really Got Me, The Kinks