Who gets into a fight with a couple of old people at a tennis match?
Freaking New Yorkers. This guy’s a parody of a parody. I love how, even though he’s the one who eventually got attacked by the old dude, the whole crowd totally turns on him. Maybe New Yorkers aren’t so bad after all.
… maybe.
One of the better Onion takedowns in a while; this time, it’s on NYC :
In addition, 3 million New Yorkers reportedly left the city because they realized the phrase “Only in New York” is actually just a defense mechanism used to convince themselves that seeing a naked man take a **** on a park bench is somehow endearing, or part of some shared cultural experience.
“I was sitting on my stoop, drinking coffee, and out of nowhere this crazy-looking woman just starts screaming, ‘I am inside all of you,’ over and over,” Bronx resident Sarah Perez, 37, said. “Then, we both had this moment where we looked at each other and realized, okay, we have to get out of here.”
I’ve been to New York maybe seven or eight times. I guess I’m glad it exists, but personally, I’m not a big fan. And I definitely don’t want to live there. When we began planning our escape from Cleveland, we started by listing a few places one of us just couldn’t bear to live in; my first nominee was NYC.
Of course, two years prior, my vote was for Cleveland — and I had never even been there before.
{Update : The episode player isn’t showing up in every browser, so if you can’t see it at the bottom of this post, you can download it here.}
Jeff had a great idea; we should join every other babbling internet dork in America, and make a podcast. I don’t really like the word “podcast” (I don’t really like the word “pod”, honestly), but we’ll use the term since it’s pretty much an industry standard at this point. At any rate, we figure it’ll be a fun way to make recordings of ourselves that we can laugh at later, and learn how to talk without constantly interrupting each other, or swearing uncontrollably.
We plan on doing this every Tuesday — I’m sure holidays and whatnot will throw things off, but let’s cross that bridge when we get there, b’okay ? — and I’m happy to say this whole thing only took a couple of hours to record and edit, so hopefully we can keep it up. The standard disclaimer that comes with this site applies here too; no, we don’t think we have anything of any real value to say, and no, we aren’t making some kind of statement of relevance by making an audio recording of us talking available on the internet. We just thought it would be fun, and it was.
One last thing — since I edited this right after the “show”, I noticed a couple of things.
1) The audio is… okay. I think the mics are fine, but we’re using iChat, and the full-duplex isn’t very good, so sometimes we end up both talking, and even though you should be able to hear both of us, you can’t. At least not well. I think I might try Skype next time.
2) I said — SURPRISE! — a couple of stupid things. One, I referenced the “2003 and 2004″ Celtics as being “terrible”, when in fact, the 2003 Celtics went to the second round of the playoffs. Of course, if you were watching back then, you know those teams never had a chance, and really were, in their own way, kind of terrible. But whatever.
3) Speaking of dumb things, I also oddly implied that baseball has “so many teams” (compared to what?), and rather pathetically described how a college football champion is determined by basically skipping all of the steps and referring to them “playing a bunch of games”. Nice. Fortunately, the reality is even dumber than my badly mangled explanation, so I don’t feel bad.
4) I started saying “like” a lot at some point. One of the main goals of recording myself is to STOP DOING THAT, so it warrants mentioning.
Other than that, I’m calling this a rousing success. Tune in next week, when we’ll pretty much talk about our fantasy league the entire time.
Conor Friedersdorf on my generation’s slow but inexorable embrace of the “finer things” in life :
“One thing that’s surprised me as I’ve watched folks in my age cohort move from college to professional schools to highly paid careers is how rapidly they shift their baseline for what is normal. People who were happily buying Natural Light and eating microwaved Maruchan Ramen a few years back earnestly insist that their $165,000 salary isn’t so much when you think about it, what with taxes, the cost of living in their city, the expense of dry cleaning… and that they really need a doorman building (“Do you know how hard it is to get packages delivered when you work 80 hours a week!”) and a fancy car (“I can’t show up to work events in a Hyundai”). I am talking about people who haven’t even had kids yet.”
I have a pretty well-grounded set of friends, so I haven’t really run into this. But I do hear an increasing number of people my age developing more and more ridiculous justifications for the acquisition of what are really pretty pointless luxury items. On top of that, the whole concept of getting smart young people accustomed to a lifestyle they’ll only be able to maintain by keeping jobs they basically hate (something Friedersdorf discussed earlier in the linked thread) is absolutely terrifying. I know otherwise reasonable people under 30 who tell me, with a straight face, that they simply can’t function without their iPhone now, and people under 40 who don’t think of BMWs as luxury cars (“they’re just high quality”).
Someday, I will probably need to make more money than I do now, because I’ll have kids. But hopefully not — and I never want to be in that position just because I’m addicted to having an unlimited data plan on my phone and a german suspension in my driveway.
Brendan Kelly on cultural sensitivities and political correctness :
There are two kinds of American Totalitarianism: the California and the Texas and I really hate them both. The Texas is the retard executing, hard ass, you know…texasy thing that we’re all too familiar with from shows like “texas justice”. It’s conservative and no bullshit and a little crazy and it’ll tell you what to do in no uncertain terms. The same thing exists in California but it’s all done under the banner of tolerance, community and coexistence but it’s just as f****** insidious and just as hard line and even more f***** up because they pay lip service to a completely free society but they’re just as arch and authoritarian as the Texans, it’s just about different things. I hate both of these ideologies, and therefore I hate saying something is ‘gay’ as much as I hate the raised eyebrows if I do. It’s different anti authoritarian strains fighting in my head for superiority and the end result is a stupid argument with myself that only tangentially concerns me in the first place.
I have an incredible amount of stupid arguments with myself that probably reflect a large degree of self-absorption, but at least I’m aware of it (as Kelly certainly appears to be here). But I actually think this kind of thing is probably good for you; if you’re not questioning why you do or don’t say/do certain things on a regular basis, you run the risk of of becoming a pretty intellectually lazy person, and those people are usually total doorknobs.
Oh good, a counter-biased version of a page-view-hunting, link-baiting fake online newspaper that makes you stupid. That’s not quite what I was hoping for.
Hey, look at that — it’s almost September. The annoying kids are gone from my cool, late 20-something type hangouts, and back in school where they belong, learning fractions and other things they’ll use to drive me out of whatever cushy, entrenched white collar job I’m desperately clinging to thirty years from now. Actually, thirty years from now, they’ll probably be being driven out of whatever job they stole from me, so that’s not the best example. The important thing is that they’re learning fractions, though, and not in line with me at Chipotle.
It’s also stopped being unbearably hot, which is nice, because I hadn’t done anything outside in about a month until just last week. Want to know what else is going on?
1. The Red Sox lost a couple of times, leading terrible fans like me to shrug awkwardly and wait for football. Given the fact that I famously (amongst my roommates, at least) threw a chair across the room in 2003 after Tim Wakefield gave up that stupid Aaron Boone home run, you’d think I’d be a little more passionate about the whole thing, but frankly I never managed to get excited about the Red Sox from day one this year. I can follow a doomed football team, or a doomed basketball team, but following a doomed baseball team just seems pointless.
2. Speaking of football; Steve and I were talking the other day about the increasingly uncomfortable (and unavoidable) reality that professional football is a horrible, exploitative enterprise I should be thoroughly embarrassed to enjoy as much as I do. As if to punch me in the face with that slow realization, somebody linked to this Deadspin piece today, which is pretty much exactly spot on. Now, of course, Deadspin isn’t coming right out and saying I shouldn’t like football, but they are providing an irritatingly revealing perspective that’s making me feel like… I probably shouldn’t like football. And yes, I’ve already taken the players side on this kind of thing before, in regards to money — but still, I find myself enthusiastically supporting a system that continues to flaunt the fact that it basically doesn’t give a crap about the young, generally ignorant poor people who make it a lot of money at no risk to itself, and I don’t know if I can do that forever.
3. Excellent — now that we’re talking about money, let’s talk about how I still can’t afford a house, or anything remotely resembling a house. Should I be able to? Hard to say. But at these prices, it’s equally hard to blame me for not buying, which is exactly why me and the Missus are still renting (happily, by the way). I do find it rather amusing, though, that after being told for an entire calendar year that I had to buy now, that prices were actually too low, and that no one needed my purchase so I should hurry up and make one, the same people are freaking out because I didn’t listen to them. “HE STILL WON’T BUY??? WHY WON’T HE BUY?????” I keep telling you clowns, I just don’t want to pay that much for a house. That’s it. It’s not “job insecurity”, it’s not “an unstable market”, and it’s not mortgage rates. I don’t want to borrow half a million freaking dollars to buy a tiny house that probably needs work. I’m okay if that means I never get to own a house. Are you okay with never getting to sell it? Oh yeah, the point of this is that Calculated Risk says the only thing we can do is let prices actually drop — like, fo’ real. Sounds good to me… but I’ll believe it when I see it.
4. Finally, here’s a pretty cool interview in the Economist with Jay Rosen, media-guy. Want a quote?
DiA: In Washington a lot of reporting takes the form of left v right. As you say, “The two party system and the journalist’s method of pushing off from both sides to generate authority fit perfectly together.” How does this lead to poor journalism?
Mr Rosen: Many ways. When both parties are closed to certain ideas, the news system becomes closed to them, too. Not good. When journalists get attacked from the left and the right, they take it as confirmation that they’re doing something right, when they could be doing everything wrong. There’s a certain laziness that creeps up too, which you can hear in phrases from the commentariat like “extremists on both sides”. No attempt to actually examine centre and margin and compare them across parties; instead, this sorry act of positioning, in which the political centre is associated with truth, common sense and realism. This is a very common prejudice in political journalism.
Outstanding. That ought to keep you people busy for a while. Tomorrow, Jeff-tron and I try to make a radio show.
Iran just built the functional equivalent of a Predator drone. Ahmadinejad is pretty stoked, obviously.
“The jet, as well as being an ambassador of death for the enemies of humanity, has a main message of peace and friendship.”
“Hi, I’m a jet! I’m here to help! Or, if that fails, EXPLODE YOU!!!!“
Title of post comes from my boss. Elementary recording is official. Finger is getting better, slowly, but just in time. We are all excited.
Sentence fragment.
First real episode of The Tron Show is coming on Tuesday (I beefed the first one, technical issues). Rode bikes with my superior athlete of a wife back to our old haunts in Vienna, then all around Reston; probably went 20 miles today, total.
Tired. Require ice cream.
This is even funnier in my mind, because I envision it in grainy, late 60′s picture quality… plus, the Biden is my head is his current age, and just pretending to be 19.
“Shortly after he ousted a guy named Corn Pop for breaking the rules at the all-black pool, Joe Biden considered calling the police to escort him to his car once his shift ended.
Corn Pop belonged to a gang known as the Romans, and Biden, the lone white lifeguard at Prices Run–one of the few public pools in Wilmington, Del., open to non-whites during the 1960s–made fun of the man’s pomade-slathered hair before kicking him out.
Word from the black lifeguards was that Corn Pop, who took his coiffure pretty seriously, would be waiting outside with a straight razor, ready to fight. Calling the cops was a no-no, Biden was warned, unless he planned to never return to the pool.
Biden, then a 19-year-old college student, didn’t take long to deliberate. He made his way to one of the back rooms and emerged with a 6-foot-long piece of chain wrapped around his arm. He knew what he had to do.”
Also, my internal re-enactment involves a lot of chest thumping and things like “YOU WANT A PIECE OF BIDEN???”
Accountants discover that despite decent earnings, Dell is completely full of crap, and basically doesn’t have a functional business model anymore — outside of taking bribes from Intel.
What a miserable company.
Jeff-Tron and I don’t have very many video games, but we did both buy NBA Live 2010, which is actually pretty fun. However, as someone who enjoys living vicariously through my PlayStation, it’s missing any kind of “grow your own NBA player” mode (like the good idea, horrendous execution “NFL Superstar” thing from Madden).
Allegedly, they’re trying to pull that off this year. Quote?
“So if you want to be like Allen Iverson and win the scoring title but not win any championships, you can do that. Or you can be the role player who just hits threes but wins nine championships and still become a legend.”
First of all, wow, ouch if you’re Allen Iverson, huh? “Hey, if you want to be a me-first loser like Allen Iverson, we’ve built that right into the game! It’s called, ‘Failure Mode’.” Poor, poor, misunderstood AI. And why doesn’t Robert Horry get a name drop? Who else could they be talking about? Steve Kerr, I guess.
The mode starts out in a game called The Jordan Brand Draft Showcase where your created character gets to play alongside and against some of this years best rookies. It’s a single-game event, and based on your performance, you’re given an ESPN projected mock draft position. This game will also be available in “Elite’s” demo, and if you play the demo, you will be able to carry over your draft position and your created character into “Elite” once you purchase the game.
“Based on your performance, you’re drafted into the NBA, then you start out playing as a rookie in the league,” says Campbell. “It’s full customization from your face, tattoos, accessories, and shoes to your jump shot style and dunk package. And the one thing to mention with the shoes is you start off only being able to use the generic version, but as you progress through the mode, there are 23 legend levels that you progress through, and there are three levels that let you unlock packages of Jordan shoes. Level 5, for example, you become a member of the Brand Jordan team and are given some shoes. As you progress through the mode, you unlock more of the classic Jordan shoes that you can then put on your character.”
Secondly, this sounds really cool — except for the shoes part. Seriously, I don’t even get excited about what shoes I wear when I play basketball, never mind what my imaginary NBA-self wears. Honestly, though, I doubt they’ll pull this off (except for the shoe part, which of course, will be robust and full featured since I don’t give a crap about it). It’ll probably be like Madden, where there are just so many horrendous logical holes that the entire thing remains completely non-engrossing.
But we’ll see. I’m not going to buy it ($60 video games are… “unreasonable” at the current juncture), but I’ll probably get the demo (since it’s free), and see how fun it actually is. I’m a pretty big dork, so it shouldn’t be that hard to get me excited, but I’m skeptical.
There’s a cricket in my office ceiling that won’t stop singing. It’s driving me absolutely bonkers. I even shut the door and turned up obnoxious punk rock; but somehow, this little &%#@ is so evolutionarily advanced that his noises are in some super-frequency that cuts through even the densest rock and roll recordings.
I honestly don’t know what to do. It’s 10:30. SHUT UP YOU LITTLE BUG!!! SHUT THE CRAP UP!!!!
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHJLHJK:LGFGRVHI:OEGVE::GVDVVgvhi;ohi;ohi[;oebebhioehjipoewhi;ohiouhje35yi[oewi[oyIO
The story of George Washington University’s climb up the U.S. News rankings,via Arwen :
“But above all, GW seems vulnerable to a potential change in the way we think about higher education. What if we actually started measuring how much students learn at their colleges and universities? How would that change the competition among institutions?”
Rank schools by their ability to successfully educate? WHY, THAT’S UTTER MADNESS!!!
By the way, for a personal touch, the University of Richmond now costs $41,000 (not counting room and board) a year. Of course, U.S. News just named them one of the “Top 11 Best Values Among Liberal Arts Colleges.”
Value is half price pizza night at the place down the street from my house. It’s not $41,000 for one quarter of a freaking bachelor’s degree that will get your resume into the “don’t immediately discard just yet” pile with every Tom, Dick, and Harry who went to Strayer and paid attention. God bless my parents for piling up the pennies for twenty years so I could get in and out without mortgaging my future — but we all need to face the fact that there are diminishing returns at some point when it comes to throwing money at your education, and that we passed that point at least fifteen thousand dollars ago.
I guarantee this whole system completely collapses on itself within 20 years.
