guess the borough

billionaire's dilemma

god, i'm so disappointed in myself. i must confess, dear reader, that i actually agreed with at least one david brooks op-ed from a couple of weeks ago. i'm still reeling. it's not like brooks came up with any original thoughts, but he at least managed to admit that we all contributed to the current economic situation. (probably from all our whining?)

so now where am i supposed to direct my disdain? can someone help?

matt taibbi, who writes for the new york press, which i think is a free daily/weekly, excoriated tom friedman's "hot flat and crowded" and "the world is flat" in two separate "reviews." if you feel the need to screed (ha--i know, it rhymes) but just can't work up the requisite level of anger/sarcasm/bon mots, take a few minutes and read both articles. i'll wait.

thanks for coming back.

taibbi takes friedman to task for his lazy generalizations and hapless metaphors: e.g, "Approach-and-rhetoric wise, however, it’s the same old Friedman, a tireless social scientist whose research methods mainly include lunching, reading road signs, and watching people board airplanes. " "His description of the early 90s:The walls had fallen down and the Windows had opened, making the world much flatter than it had ever been but the age of seamless global communication had not yet dawned. How the fuck do you open a window in a fallen wall? More to the point, why would you open a window in a fallen wall? Or did the walls somehow fall in such a way that they left the windows floating in place to be opened?"

hmm. even i thought that was kinda mean, albeit entertaining. i dunno, i thought maybe taibbi was overreacting. there was a rather sunny profile of friedman in the new yorker a while back about what an authority he is and how well respected he is. and the man can sell books, although a book about how "Aliens have taken control of the minds and bodies of most human beings, but one woman won’t surrender" is like 4 on the nytimes best seller list, so i guess that don't mean much.

so who's right? i've not read the lexus and the olive tree or from beirut to jerusalem, so i decided to take a gander at his most recent column. if you haven't noticed, i harbor some doubts about the need for op-ed columnists, but at least they should digest the news and tell us how this affects us, right? they should be able to provide insight...or at least a new way of viewing a problem?

well, i suggest you look elsewhere if you're seeking enlightment, even of the dimmest sort. friedman decides upon two "signs of our times" by (1) quoting some "banker friend" of his, and (2) using GOOGLE SUGGEST. i can see the smirk on your face. i'm not kidding:

[G]o to Google and type in these four letters: m-e-r-e. Before you go any further, Google will list the possible things or people you’re searching for, and at the top of that list will be the name “Meredith Whitney.” She comes up before “merengue” and “Meredith Viera.” Who is Meredith Whitney? She is a banking analyst who became famous for declaring last year, long before others, that Citigroup was up to its neck in bad mortgages and would not likely survive in its present form. Do you know how many people have to be searching for you if all you have to do is put in four letters and your name pops up first? A lot!

and then he goes on to blab about god knows what. maybe some of it is substantive, but you can't overcome a handicap like that intro and his research "methodology." dude.

anyway, friedman's whole point is that the banking system is in super deep shit and it's gonna prevent obama from tackling the myriad of problems facing america. oh yeah? give me some proof. i'll let friedman take the reins:

For now, though, the banks still threaten to consume the Obama presidency. Indeed, I’m sorry to report that if you just type two letters into Google — “b-a” — the first thing that comes up is not Barack Obama. It’s “Bank of America.” Barack Obama is third.

you know you get when you type in t-o-m into google? tom cruise, tomtom, tom and jerry BEFORE tom hanks! omg, our national anxiety is causing us to convert to scientology and chase unattainable goals while using a GPS system. why can't we all just fucking relax and just watch joe vs. the volcano??

Calling All Douche-staches

This is Tom Friedman's latest sad sack of racism and unreasonable generalizations.

Below is the (unedited -- Director's cut!) letter I submitted to the Times in response:

In his most recent op-ed piece, "Calling All Pakistanis," Thomas Friedman asks "ordinary" Pakistanis to gather in the streets to denounce the depraved lunatics who perpetrated the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai. On the surface, this is not an unreasonable request. After all, in the name of a shared faith several Pakistanis, it would seem, have murdered scores of innocents, and yet no outpouring of organized dissent has spilled forth onto the streets of Lahore and Karachi.

How can this be, Mr. Friedman wonders, given Pakistanis' easy devolution into violent street protest in the wake of the frivolous Danish cartoon affair. The only conclusion to be drawn from Mr. Friedman's words is that Pakistanis are irrational, petty, and disinterested in substantive affronts to their faith and to their nation. In reading his piece, I am reminded how empty our own streets have been in the wake of all that we know about Guantanamo; I am reminded how spirited the boycott of the Dixie Chicks was following their remarks about the President. I am reminded that we too are a people more inclined to protest words with which we disagree than violent acts committed in our name. Perhaps, there remains a question of degree, but in this regard are the Pakistanis very different from us?

And this is my letter were it a Lolcat:

Some Kind of Special Mustache

And, yes, this is how we Muslims do.

P-arrrrrrrgh

the news is a huge downer nowadays--our toilet economy, our ineffective leadership, the fact that i can't vote in the canadian election because you have to have left canada with the intention of living elsewhere less than five years ago...

anyway, much to my surprise piracy beyond the interwebs still exists! not only that, they have a spokesman! i wonder if they too wear eyeliner.

separated at birth - the genocide edition

aw fuck it, i can't get the formatting right. you get my drift.

A Death Row Pardon Two Minutes Too Late

I was going to mention that while cancer is never funny--never--isn't it just a little Alannis Morissette that the guy who married the Noxzema girl got skin cancer? But then my attention was drawn to the newly acquired facial hair of our country's most notable politicians of Mexican extraction. (Actually, I say "newly acquired," but I don't know when Fredo got his cookie duster.) The comments page is open for you to discuss their new relative sexiness. Or not.

Cheezburgers Made from Soy, and Other Myths

So, 'Pockets and I are spending the holiday in San Antonio, which for some reason has embraced the suicidal gray and chill of an Bay Area morning. Surely, this is the slow descent to hell Nancy Pelosi and her ascendant San Francisco "values" portended.

We left early Wednesday afternoon-- bracing for the rowdy, pre-tryptophan crowds--but SFO was a ghost town. The plane ride was memorable only because the mustachioed flight attendant passed out cheeseburgers he insisted were made of soy, despite the 42-point-font "beef" stamped on the wrapper. I love watching people wage losing battles: a whole bunch of perturbed maybe-vegetarians drew the mistake to his attention, but he insisted the label was a misprint. Even an appeal to his co-flight-attendant yielded a dismissive "you must be hallucinating," but he stuck to his guns.

We changed planes in Houston--Bush Intercontinental--where the picture above was taken, and my question to you, reader, is not what's up with the airport bookstore which, along with no fewer than 12 ideologically like-minded great works, put the following books on display in the window? See here, here, and here. (I like that the author of the first two lives in a "secure, undisclosed location," simultaneously paying homage to his bloodthirsty demigod and luxuriating in the paranoid fantasy that he might be some suicide bomber's prime target.)
No, my question is when did George H.W. Bush become motherfucking John Henry--chiseled abs, broad shoulders, Saddam-like stature and all? A man who's most memorable for vomiting on the Japanese Prime Minister and for evoking a Mr. Burns-esque sense of human decay has now been reimagined as some sort of frontier hero. Ninja, please.

I Learned It By Watching You

So, it's only sensible that as my homeland descends into typicality, I should feel the urge to blog about it. However, I didn't opine on the state of Pakistani affairs when the chief justice was sacked initially several months ago; nor did I weigh in when Generalissimo Musharraf reneged on his promise not to stand for reelection whilst in uniform. I suppose I was a bit blog-shy because my posts about the dead Pakistani cricket coach yielded little attention from you, fickle reader.

Alas, that said, this news is a big deal, or at least the MSM is making it out to be. I remember when I was a kid it was a big deal when anything related to Pakistan made its way into the newspaper; now Pakistan's as big a story as the Duke rape scandal (though not quite as big a story as the overdose death of a soft-core pornography star). Before the blowhards and alarmists of the world come to completely dominate this story, let me wipe some of the saliva from their glee: It ain't no big deal. Sure, Musharraf's suspended civil liberties, quashed thousands of dissenting voices, made a mockery of the terror threat by exploiting it for political gain, asserted himself in the workings of a so-called independent judiciary, and willfully misinterepreted the Constitution.

But it's how we do in Pakistan; it's how we've always done, and nothing about it should be unfamiliar to those of us who've lived in America the last six years.

give me a break

ever since the times recommended shallow hal, i have learned to disregard their movie reviews. sorry to rip off your mantra, stosselini (and RIP nell carter), but are you kidding me over here, a.o. scott. looks like someone is projecting.

aloha!

is this blog anti-daylight savings time?

someone at work today revealed to me his love for magnum p.i. (for the record, i always thought magnum wore both a detroit tigers cap and a hawaiian shirt, but apparently that venn diagram doth not meet). thinking about hawaiian shirts reminds me of only one thing: trader joe's. i have an unabashed and unquenchable love for that place. it was the silver lining amidst those dreary days in ann arbor. sure it was snowing in may, but who gives a shit when you can hang with not only trader joe, but trader ming and trader giotto?

anyway, i was super-psyched when TJs decided to open an outpost in new york. i think this excitement lasted for about 2 months, when it dawned on me that the anxiety over whether i could reduce my trip to 8 items so i could join the express line, fighting off those pesky nyu kids buying nothing but cereal, going to a separate store to buy wine, then taking two trains to get home, oh, i dunno, seemed stupid.

joe, someday you and i will be reunited and it will feel so good.