Natural and Artificial Flavors

This is an essay, hopefully it wins me a G

2011-08-15T22:34:00.000-04:00

Indecision and uncertainty have led me here: abused, mistreated, barely holding myself afloat amid the morning deluge of hyphenated imperatives-- “triple-Venti half-caf three-pump non-fat no-whip white-chocolate-mocha”. I’m twenty-three and freshly bearing a BS in Neuroscience (specialty: Neuropsychopharmacology) as a patron takes a moment to explain the side-effects of excessive caffeine consumption on the brain.

I’m told that that the purgatorial space between undergraduate and everything else is at least as educational as those four years that got me here, and I’m inclined to agree. Out of school for just barely a school year, I’ve been a barista slinging java at five a.m.; a singing gondolier piloting a forty-foot authentic Venetian wedding gondola, witness to countless engagement proposals; a Direct Support Provider to an autistic child seeking rank advancement in the Boy Scouts of America. I’ve also obsessed over economics, politics, and gossip of all kinds, which is to say that I’ve wasted a tremendous amount of time.

I’m bored with stalling, and my fear of commitment has become abhorrent to me. I stand prepared to make movements to meet my potential, be it medical school, dental school, or something heretofore unimagined. The only thing standing in my way is a set of particularly ungenerous student loans, and so I say, unabashedly, that I deserve this award because I’ve spent a year underperforming, and my ambition demands it. I thirst for success, to strut my stuff, to ACHIEVE, for Pete’s sake, because your latte is a terribly small accomplishment, isn’t it?

Gasoline and Lottery Tickets

2009-07-04T13:47:00.001-04:00

My friends are funnier than yours! Check this out:

"...basket." (shrugs)

Who is this?

2009-07-02T11:07:00.001-04:00

Two things:

This video, by Welsh pop singer Marina and the Diamonds, makes blackface AWESOME again!
But also, she looks weirdly like former-official-Gawker.com-punching-bag Julia Allison, which I realized upon like my forth viewing, and my very well prohibit me from enjoying it again.

The Robin, pt. 3

2009-06-20T15:51:00.002-04:00

Me n' Georgia Purry wrote some apologetic haiku for the Robin. It's not quite as tired as it sounds. My two faves, first by her and second by me:

Sorry I laughed when
You said you could change the world
But, like, come on, girl.

I told everyone
You were lying about your
Peanut allergy.

In an unrelated story, there is something the matter with this animal:

Keyboard, Cat.

2009-05-05T18:58:00.001-04:00

This blog wasn't supposed to be for jumping all over new memes, but I suppose if it's good enough, there's no harm done. Observe:

PSA

2009-05-05T03:46:00.001-04:00

If you have not seen this yet, you have not witnessed the fully-realized potential of the oldschool mashup. Wtf, lurkaz?

[presented without comment]

2009-05-04T22:38:00.000-04:00

Kitchen prep/dishwasher (bloomington)

from craigslist | food/beverage/hospitality jobs in bloomington

Immediate opening for dinner shift Monday through Saturday for Food Prep/Dishwasher. Stop by Esan Thai Restaurant on Lincoln and Kirkwood Ave (across from Public Library) and ask for Aey. Person should not be afraid of getting hands wet!

via CL

TURN UP THE VOLUUM

2009-05-04T21:39:00.002-04:00

and then download this file
safe for human and hipster consumption

Zero calories
All natural Bjork and PJ Harvey flavoring,
Now with less than 10 mg artificial Mick Jagger flavor

The Robin, pt 2

2009-05-04T18:16:00.002-04:00

The next advancement in my plan to eventually own the entire internet and replace it with brass tubes with steam valves, shiny black pneumatic hoses, and chrome hydraulics.

via The Robin

Morning Musings

2009-05-01T07:42:00.004-04:00

I have said it before, but it is worth repeating: above all else, one must be brave and fair.

And never forget, "The issue is dispersion. The task is to survive in the diaspora."

quote from Donna Haraway
image via overtherhine.com

The Creeps

2009-04-30T22:47:00.003-04:00

I'm not entirely sure what genre the guys from The Mighty Boosh were going for, but about half the time the episodes span the distance between whimsical daydream and chilling night-terror. We're all familiar with that bizarre but funny enough "Old Greg" skit, but this episode I saw recently about the "Crack Fox," delightful animation aside, gave me the heebs.

crack fox

The B-Town Robin

2009-04-30T13:12:00.003-04:00

Were you aware of the existence of Bloomington's premier satire/humor paper/blog (it's transmedia!)? Lots of amusing people write for it, and I even know a couple. Oh also I wrote a little something for it, which is of course why I've known about it for some time but I'm only linking to it now.

Narcissist!

Cockles, Warmed

2009-04-30T13:02:00.000-04:00

via Sriracha Shits

Hey You

2009-04-30T12:37:00.005-04:00

Do you like punk rock? Do you like forties? Do you like pictures of Brittany Asam? It appears that Fithers has a blog. It's mostly media presented with little or no comment, but if you're like me, you don't hear/read the phrase "totally harsh" as an expression of approval anywhere near often enough, and Fithuz gotz the remedy.

This blog also contains an intriguing reference to "Sriracha Shits," next to a picture of town hottie and seemingly friendly individual (full disclosure: I don't actually really know him) Michael Hodges* (as seen above).

Oh and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't impressed by the fact that he appears to own his domain name. No ".tumblr" bullshit for Fithers, no sir. It makes the rest of us look lame, which may or may not be the point anyway.

*am I correct in remembering that it was this noble hero who went all Hulk Smash on Elliot Whatshisface (he of the guitar and the pajama pants and the collins quad) with little (possibly no?) provocation, just because he intuitively knew it was what everyone wanted to do but were afraid to get their skinnies dirty? I just remember seeing him launch himself shirtless across a porch and taking that kid out. This is definitionally heroic, and he should be regarded as the champion of the apathetic. He is basically our Achilles.

Morning Musings

2009-04-30T12:00:00.007-04:00

It is beautiful here, even when it rains; the trees are exploding into bloom, and the smells of freshly-mown grass, burning charcoal, flowers and spilt beer are ubiquitous, but only barely cut through the delirium induced by the approach of summer. The entire town is sharing the compressed giddiness one experiences when attempting to hold in an inappropriately loud laugh. The air is thick with pheromones and everything on campus is mating with wild abandon, constantly, everywhere. Jean shorts are back in, and the monstrous gangs of dumb skanks wearing huge, stretched shirts over leggings and high tops have returned to share the sidewalk and wary, sidelong glances with the hipsters, who if anything look dirtier than I've ever seen them.

Image via Molly Burkett's Flickr

Does Not Play Well With Others

2009-04-28T17:11:00.002-04:00

David Faris suggests we allow nasty old Texas, the sandy, sweaty crotch of Red America, to take its toys and head on home.

Texas should be given the option of taking neighboring Oklahoma, Alabama and Louisiana with them. These states are reliably deep red, and are also three of the biggest tax drains in the country, raking in federal dollars while kvetching about Obama's tyranny. In return, the U.S. gets to keep the liberal oasis of Austin, like the little swath of Azerbaijan surrounded by Armenia and Iran.

Hat Tip: Yaz

Related: Fuck the South

Get It Right or Pay the Price

2009-04-28T16:46:00.002-04:00

Let's get one thing extremely clear. Fainting is what happens when you overheat and don't breathe properly, for example if you're wearing a corset in a tanning bed. These people are swooning-- they are so overcome with ecstasy that they temporarily take leave of their senses.

SPACE

2009-04-28T14:08:00.004-04:00

Did you know that a mirror is a sort of time machine?
Did you know that light travels at a speed of like 963 million trillion miles per second, so it's really not?
Did you know the light from the sun is nearly 1200 years old before it reaches earth?
Did you know that just by looking up into the night sky we can see the past and the future, and we already know how and when the worlds gonna end and even who's gonna be there because we have pics?
Did you know that the only interesting thing the moon ever gets to see is that lame Great Wall in China that's been there forever? And maybe those awful lights in NYC?

Oh, also, other weird things are happening in space:

Lyman-alpha blobs are an astronomical mystery that may be primordial galaxies. "The consensus is that these are enormous protogalaxies, which over the course of time will yield very massive old galaxies such as we see in the local universe," says Dan Smith, a postdoctoral researcher at Liverpool John Moores University in England. Smith, who was not involved in the study, calls the detection of such an early Lyman-alpha blob "a very exciting result."

But as of now, it is not known what Lyman-alpha blobs are or what causes them to glow. Resolving the proposed explanations for these early objects could shed light on how galaxies such as the Milky Way take shape. Some theories hold that Lyman-alpha blobs are formed by inflows of cold streams of gas, a mechanism that Smith points out has recently been suggested by some researchers as the dominant mode of galaxy growth. Other explanations posit that the blobs' gas emits radiation due to heating by an active galactic nucleus harboring a churning object such as a supermassive black hole or by an accelerated phase of star formation known as a starburst.

They named it after an ancient Japanese queen, who also was rumored to be part- black hole. Ooooh I'm nasty!

(via SciAm)

High School, Revisted

2009-04-28T11:20:00.004-04:00

Let's have a momentary reminiscence. Remember a long, long time ago, when you were just a baby hipster in a baby nation*? And you loved that one movie, the movie that everyone else was like, "weee-eeird," but you were all, "naw dog, this is tight in ways you can't even underSTAND"? And you spent maybe a month humming "Head Over Heels" to yourself whenever you walked into the halls of your high school, contemplating such deep thoughts as, "Every living thing on this earth dies alone?" Yeah, so do I. We took Donnie Darko SERIOUS.

I have recently become reacquainted with Richard Kelly's first film, happening upon a copy which I received, appropriately enough, for my sixteenth birthday (or something). Revisiting this artifact of my weird adolescent development was accompanied by a strange sentiment, some peculiar cross between wistfulness for Jordans past and dread of the same.

I needn't have feared. The movie has become something totally different than it once was. To watch Donnie Darko during the melodramatic, self-serious period of early- to middle- highschool is to project a similar sort of sincerity onto the movie. Lines like, "I guess some people are just born with tragedy in their blood" are met with tender sympathy, and speak to the tortured, misunderstood teenage soul.

It is a surprise-delight, then, that these lines become hilarious when seen through more adult eyes. If you are willing to entertain an alternative reading in which the film satirizes all characters as viciously, albeit less obviously, as it does Beth Grant's charmingly desperate suburban stage mom Kitty Farmer ("Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!"), you suddenly begin to find hilarity in nearly every scene in the movie. Case in point: do you remember the scene with Drew Barrymore's character Karen, just after she gets fired and is sitting in her empty classroom with Donnie, with the phrase "cellar door" written on the chalkboard behind her? As she gets up to leave, Donnie asks her the meaning of what she's written and, while removing with great care her reading glasses which are tethered around her neck, she replies in a sort of annoyed, non-ironic sincerity, "This famous linguist once said that of all the phrases in the English language, of all the endless combiantions of words in all of history, that 'cellar door' is the most beautiful." As she casts one last, mournful look at Donnie, the two American flags jutting proudly out of the box in her arms bump against the door frame and she falters, stumbling gracelessly offscreen. The utter vapidity, the incredible absurdity of the claim she repeats is further ridiculed by the physical comedy. It is fucking hilarious. If you resist this joke, it's only because you don't know how to laugh at yourself. And if you think that they're really serious, take a look at this, dummy.

Further, it is impossible to resist this little exchange when Karen is getting fired:
-"I don't have time to get into a debate about this, Karen. I believe I have made myself clear."
-"You call this clarity? I don't think you have a clue what it's like to communicate with these kids. We are losing them to apathy, to this prescribed nonsense. They are slipping away."
-"I AM SORRY THAT YOU HAVE FAILED. Now if you'll excuse me, I have another appointment. You can finish out the week."
-"FUUUUUUUUUCK!"

Nearly every character is given some such funny moment. Eddie Darko's comes when he's watching a Dukakis-Bush debate on the TV, slouched low in his chair, sloppily eating some snack, covered in crumbs. Bush says something dumb about the Iran-Contra Scandal, and Eddie mumbles cantankerously, "You tellem, George." I've already mentioned one of Gretchen's, and though it's a bit cynical, I'm inclined to laugh at Rose Darko's answer to Donnie's "How's it feel to have a wacko for a son": "Oh, Donnie. It feels wonderful," pfft! Wanna see the funny? The clip below contains some great moments. Skip in to 3:45, and try to tell me I'm wrong.

*"baby nation" intellectual property of Yasmina Bersbach

Marvelous Technology

2009-04-28T10:41:00.003-04:00

Go home, and tell your parents that everything is going to be ok.

Lady what?

2009-04-19T04:39:00.004-04:00

Fine, so it's not so cool, but still. The fact is that this video of Lady Gaga riffing on her song Poker Face is incredible, and (as not-cool as this is) totally alters my estimation of her as an artist, and possibly redeems her entirely. Look, turns out the bitch can wail, and clearly has a sense of humor about her own music and her (utterly ridiculous) image, and though her music does virtually nothing for me, I am finding her more than a little bit intriguing.

"It's because I chatter that I do nothing..."

2009-04-07T19:54:00.001-04:00

“ I want to attempt a thing like that and am frightened by these trifles,” he thought, with an odd smile. “Hm … yes, all is in a man’s hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that’s an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most. … But I am talking too much. It’s because I chatter that I do nothing. Or perhaps it is that I chatter because I do nothing. I’ve learned to chatter this last month, lying for days together in my den thinking … of Jack the Giant-killer. Why am I going there now? Am I capable of that? Is that serious? It is not serious at all. It’s simply a fantasy to amuse myself; a plaything! Yes, maybe it is a plaything."-- Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Yeah Yeah Yeahs: It's Blitz!

2009-04-07T16:05:00.000-04:00

review

Show Your Bones' two final tracks have always sounded to me like a last gasp of a dying band ("Warrior"), and its eulogy ("Turn Into"). It was no secret that the band members had become embittered toward each other, nor did anyone think it was very likely that another record would be coming. Most everyone I know had made peace with the band's demise, particularly in light of the fact that their sophomore effort just waddn't that great. When the Is Is EP came out, it was a delightful, extra surprise, and just what we needed: the thrilling, unsteady blending of the first two albums. YYYs responded to the first question everyone asked about Bones: "how the fuck did you get here?" Is Is sounded like the conciliatory gesture of a band that knew it had disappointed its audience, and gave (me, at least) a satisfying sense of closure. When I encountered the bizarre pairing of the now-ubiquitous synth with the unmistakable crooning of Karen O, I was more disoriented than excited, and immediately thought I was hearing the rumored Karen O solo project. I had the huge misfortune of arriving after the first track had already been played, and was really dismayed to learn that not only had the band returned from beyond, but that they'd decomposed visibly, with Zinner's guitar, already diminished on Bones, practically absent replaced instead by glittery disco-synth and O's now-thoroughly-tamed vocals-- even the drums were weak.

I will not belabor the point: there are two, maybe three decent songs on the album. The opener, "Zero," is fine, and I guess "Skeleton," and even "Dragon Lady" are ok, but the real effect of the album is probably best summed up by their own song title: "Soft Shock". Further, there is a certain gaucheness and indignity in the band's choice to stubbornly resurrect themselves, only to fall so much further than we thought possible. The album is getting plenty of positive reviews, but frankly, it's time everyone got on board: the band died when Karen retired her tutu and abandoned her habit of spraying beer all over her fans. There was a time when we'd gladly pay so she could spit on us, but this time it just feels degrading.

Pic via SMB