Friday, 02/22/02
My regular Friday morning reading: "Together, we (will, can, must) (rule, change, destroy) the (world, our victims, the people in this bar)." Heh heh. 09:39AM «
Thursday, 02/21/02
It's no shocker when a study is formulated with the sole purpose of generating a bit of frothy wire copy with an attention-grabbing headline, and as part of the same ecosystem, frothy headlines often percolate up Yahoo's list of recent most-emailed wire traffic. The story du jour covers a study highlighting the frisky sexual habits of people over forty, crudely broken down by nationality.
If this were building toward a weak joke, the punchline would be, "Of course, the study was funded by Pfizer", and of course, the study really was funded by Pfizer. The Reuters journo-monkey understands full well that he or she is being played for free advertising before a word is written. So why write this story? And if you're going to write the story, why pretend that the Pfizer connection isn't important, or might be just a coincidence? Is that "balance"? 08:04PM «
Wednesday, 02/13/02
The NYT's corrections page doesn't seem to be archived anywhere, so I make an effort to read it every day. Otherwise I miss quietly salacious tidbits like the following:
Because of an editing error, an article in Business Day on Monday about the plans of W. Randall Jones, chief executive of Worth Media, to buy out his partners referred incorrectly to a woman who attended parties at Mr. Jones's duplex on Sutton Place, where he cultivated his flamboyant image. The woman, Candy Spelling, is the wife of the television producer Aaron Spelling, not his daughter.
01:07PM «
Friday, 02/08/02
Have you ever seen that movie Boiler Room? It's about a team of pump-and-dump stockbrokers, serving as a showcase for Vin Diesel and Giovanni Ribisi, with cute cameos-against-type for Ben Affleck and Ron Rifkin. Now, apparently, Boiler Room turns out to be sort of a documentary about Enron. 03:42PM «
Monday, 02/04/02
It dawned on me that Jon Carroll's hiatus was possibly news-related, and I commenced a look-see. His mother died. It's a striking obit, largely written from her son's perspective.
The musical accompaniment to this sad discovery was Sex Mob's dirgelike take on "You Only Live Twice". This was the first time I'd played it since I bought the album, and the meaning's all up and changed on me. 03:19PM «
Saturday, 02/02/02
The most useful thing I've ever seen made out of Legos: a DAT tape-loader. 06:09PM «
The best thing about the fashion industry is that it's so hard to tell when the designers are just flipping us off. 02:38PM «
Friday, 02/01/02
Columnists: I just discovered Andrew Tobias. He turned up in Maureen Dowd's lovely commentary on John Ashcroft's nutty decision to veil the semi-nude statues symbolizing Justice and Law in the RFK building, and in case anything ever happens to Paul Krugman, I now have a backup source for left-leaning articles about tax policy.
Meanwhile, Jon Carroll has gone on an unexpected and unannounced hiatus. His page at the Chronicle says flatly, "Jon Carroll is taking some days off. His column will return", but it's just text clumsily pasted into the page, not at all the Chronicle's usual style for vacation notices, which appear like article headlines and usually say exactly when the writer's coming back. I hope everything's okay.
Also, Andre Torrez is writing again, and Tom Tomorrow's started posting short-form commentary. Check out paratrooper Barbie. Is the lipstick too much? 11:46AM «
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