Where to begin. Where oh where to fucking begin. Numero uno, I thought I already covered this, and wherever I have failed—and the possiblity exists, the reality exists, that and my public is the size of a pea—The New Yorker has nicely picked up the slack.

Surely these are not overly-complex ideas, people! Barack Obama ich bin ein politician. Yes, I understand, you liberals got yourselves all worked up by the fact that he reads books. Christ, he writes them, and by all accounts, not only very well but all by his talented self. I understand you got all your introjected hopes up—you know, the ones you’ve been saving since childhood, or at least adolescence: that the wise and kindly uber-parent would come along who would at last understand, er, I mean, whom you could vote for. Read the rest of this entry »

Nick Carr, in Rough Type: “I’ve been reading a short book—an essay, really—by John Kenneth Galbraith called The Economics of Innocent Fraud. It’s his last work, written while he was in his nineties, not long before he died. In it, he explains how we, as a society, have come to use the term ‘market economy’ in place of the term ‘capitalism.’”

I wondered where that word went. It’s one of my favorites, difficult to harangue without it. I mean, Marx, Hegel and … the market economy? Sounds like you’re talking about the Gap. Would you like some Dockers with that? Read the rest of this entry »

The place is Santa Rita, the Alameda county jail, the time last December. Wired writer Joshua Davis has been sent to interview Hans Reiser.

… just because he evaded police surveillance and bought a book titled Masterpieces of Murder shortly after his wife’s disappearance—doesn’t mean he’s guilty. I have been asked to try to understand this, to try to understand the man.

And so I shake his shackled hand and ask my first question.

“Tell me about your file system.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Bastardly [cute. real cute]: Remember Allison Stokke? I bet you do! Now she’s a freshman at Cal Berkeley and doing well for their women’s track team … Here’s her official Cal profile. Well, all we have is this one recent picture but no one will ever forget the first Allison picture that lit up inboxes …

I don’t know how to break it to you, guys … but that thing in your pants? The one that leads you around like a pig with a ring in its nose?

Try and grasp this: it is of no interest. That’s right! Zip! Nada!

In addition, there is nothing clever or funny about being assholes. Hard to believe, I know.

Mostly, besides being disgusted, we feel sorry for you. Horny guys, guys without women (clue) are thick on the ground. Plus of course what you are doing is harassment of another human being. Yes! Another person, like you! Only better!

Now, if you were to become men …

I don’t know, Bill, but what if I had your past—and of course, as a woman, I never could—I’d be thinking seriously on shutting up right about now.

Which, I understand, would be the exact point where you really get started, but my god, has your presidential aura ever worn thin. That statesman thing? So over.

Once there was good feeling; I remember ’92. What people like you don’t understand is, That is capital you done spent.

Read the rest of this entry »

“I certainly hope not, and if that is the dreary case, how the hell does she think she’s going to keep Bill Clinton from horning in on everything (NPI.) Honestly, has the nation gone to sleep on … oops, not my blog? ‘KTHXBYE!”

… I was busily ranting away at Frank’s place when I realized, tis only right, mete and just to confine one’s rant to one’s own blog. Especially when you exceed the comment box.

Based on the results of yesterday’s primaries we may yet see a former President as First Gentleman in the White House …

Frank had writ (done wrote?) (writed?) and suddenly I was overcome, as if by fumes. So infuriating was the realization—and don’t tell me America hasn’t thought of this, although it is perfectly obvious it has not—Bill Clinton will no more stay out of the Oval Office than he successfully kept his pants zipped. (That sentence would be better in present tense, but it seemed crude; one does not really know. One did know, however—and however unwillingly—more about presidential ejaculatory matter and other grossities than we, as a nation, ever wanted.) (It stains.)

Did this not carve a deep enough rut in the national neocortex? Are not all, to a man and woman, sick to death of Bill Clinton and his close relations? (Oops, bad choice of words.) If the name Clinton be not anathema enough, take a gander, I dare you, at the worst, most devotedly unhip, glaringly 1995, clunky, unreadable excuse of a website …

Do you know what youth for Hillary is called? (Hold your barf, please. We have bags.)

“Hillblazers.” That’s right, and anyone under the age of twenty found clicking that link will be promptly sent into treatment. I have monitors.

When the great culture war of the Sixties was over … oh, sigh. Same old rift, nay, same old ne’er-to-be-bridged chasm. Between, you got it, the normal and Teh Square.

Which is how she won Ohio.

(I wonder how the vote came down in Winesburg.)

Next up: Watch Barack Obama busta move.

Frank writes on Listics: “Stanley Fish fishes around the Jason Horowitz article in GQ, but neither man can quite bring himself to call the Hillary hating what it is. Jason? Stanley? It’s MISOGYNY … I am puzzled about how the topic of “hating Hillary Clinton” could be addressed without either writer (or their editors) making a single call-out regarding the misogyny and sexism that underlie so much of the vituperative ad feminam critiques.”

Way to go, Frank! And here I thought the only man who could really “get” what it’s like, being on the receiving end, would have to be black. Read the rest of this entry »