INBOX ZERO
November 11th, 2008
This is why I maybe asked you a weird non-sequitor question in the past day or two. GTD FTW.
Elected President-sistible!
November 5th, 2008Turn it up LOUD. This is still the best Internet video in the history of videos or Internets.
My new bicycle.
October 27th, 2008I’ve been working with my old friends Chris Conklin and Ben Moser on a new project: a blog that focuses on the Triangle area down in my ancestral home of North Carolina. It has the best name in the world: howRDUdoin?
I am Raoul!
October 25th, 2008This was the funniest thing in the world to me when I was eight:
Ok, bye.
VALERIEEEEEEEEEEEEE CALLLLLL ON MEEEEEEEEEEEEE
October 23rd, 2008Here’s your Song Of The Day, “Valerie” by Steve Winwood, thanks to the unusual memory of local dork Nick Faber, and the line at Ikea on Sunday. It was me, Nick, Meaghan, some quirkily-named flat-packed furniture on a cart, Stevie Winwood on the house music, and a little baby two lines over crying in perfect harmony with the long “EEEEEEEEE” sounds in the chorus.
Perhaps you had to be there, but I’m going to roll the dice and assume you can make the visual awesome all on your own. The baby was singing Stevie Winwood! It was hilarious! And the song is pretty terrible!
The one time I’ll kinda defend Sarah Palin.
October 22nd, 2008Surely by now you’ve heard all about how the RNC spent $150,000 on wardrobe for Sarah Palin, and surely it seems pretty ridiculous on its face. Yeah, there’s hypocrisy, there’s tax issues, there’s bad associations with the man who did the personal shopping. I don’t want to argue that this issue should be glossed over entirely, but I do think that the flash-obsession with this might just be a tiny bit sexist.
I’m pretty sure that a man campaigning for vice president could do it with one suit, two shirts, and four or five ties, and no one would ever say a word. Any attempt to focus on what a male candidate wears rarely sticks; for better or worse, the focus is usually on the words that come out of their mouth. We saw this to a certain extent with Hillary Clinton and now again with Palin, but there’s a certain gossipy cattiness to some of the coverage, especially around wardrobe. There’s plenty of blame to go around for that, but call it what it is.
If a female candidate campaigned in one suit, two shirts, and four or five different accessories, we’d notice, and we’d say something. (We made fun of Hillary for something along those lines, right?) We expect women to look good, men and women alike, and we call it out when they don’t, men and women alike. Did the RNC need to drop 150 stacks of high society to keep Palin in different looks for her up-to-three different appearances every day? Probably not. But is that kind of schedule going to require some coin? Absolutely.
There are plenty of reasons to dislike Sarah Palin — she’s a fucking idiot springs to mind. But the fact that they put her in pretty clothes because we expect pretty women to look pretty and appeal to horny middle-aged conservative men sort of seems like less of an indictment of her and more an indictment of our bullshit society. Maybe?
Fuck Jim Cramer.
October 7th, 2008Plenty of people are still freaking out about Jim Cramer wandering over to the Today Show yesterday to put on his Chicken Little costume. “OMFGZ,” our inner thoughts IM to each other, “Jimbo wants us to get out of the stock market! That CAN’T BE GOOD! It’s a natural part of the End of Times!”
Ok voices, cool out. Let’s take a half-sec for some pondering: how does Jim Cramer make his money? If you said “the stock market,” partial credit. If you said “writing books and squawking loudly on television about the stock market,” move to the head of the class. Cramer is in the business of telling people what they want to hear — people wanted to hear that they could be smarter than the stock market and listen to HOTT STOCK PIXX and come out way way ahead, and Jimbo delivered; now people with money in the market are super duper skittish and want an excuse to hide under their beds with Ron Paul and his gold bars, and Jimbo will deliver again.
Cramer is doing what they in the fancy media business call “reinventing himself.” One silver lining in all of this is maybe — just maybe — the day of the squawking obnoxious sound effect cartoon gibberish wheel-of-you-can’t-lose personality may be drawing to a close. Eventually, we’re going to stop taking these people seriously, and praise Greenspan, praise Buffett, that day may be here. Cramer’s not an idiot, he knows he can’t publish a book called Watch TV, Get Rich again. If he wants to have a job next week, he’s going to have to start acting like an adult.
So, what was the core of Jimbo’s sage advice? Don’t put money in the stock market that you’ll need in the next five years. Well, pardon me for not putting a finer point on this, but no shit, Sherlock. And of course, God bless Ann Curry, she’s got no clue. “Very dramatic statement, Jim.” Nonsense.
If you lost money that you’re going to need in the next five years in the stock market, I feel bad for you, but this is what we call “gambling.” If you’re going to gamble, get ready for Kobe’s ankle to go out in the first quarter, get ready for that tourist to hit his inside straight draw, and get ready for the world to collectively wake up and realize the price of tulips is ridiculous. And the fact that gambling on sports and in Vegas is tightly fenced in and regulated but gambling on Wall Street is perfectly legal should crystallize that nagging anti-establishment feeling you had been trying to suppress to be a good American. The whole world is fucking horseshit. Don’t let Jim Cramer get away with it.
My roommate, a regular Mark Russell.
October 5th, 2008I did the production side of a handful of videos for my roommate for his hot new website, www.siegelcomedy.com.
This was my favorite, even though he decided not to publish it on his site:
The costume idea for his Rachel Maddow was my idea, and I’m very pleased with how it turned out:
Dave observed that this was the first time I mentioned him on my blog without a tone of mocking and derision, so I feel obligated to point out that as his Web technology expert, he asked me to forward his domain name away from the custom WordPress install I did for him to a Tumblr “blog,” because the WordPress is just too complicated. “I wish I knew more about the Internet,” he said today, to no one in particular.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.
October 3rd, 2008This email arrived in my inbox overnight:
Oh noes! Is it already time for me to be pissing and moaning about getting a haircut again?
I should write back and ask her to send me a sports almanac.