Before
A chronicle of an American life
Archive for Culture
25 January 2006 at 10.02 pm · Filed under Culture, The law
Marcus has written on the legality of the Google Print program, now renamed to Google Book Search. He cites a six-page Congressional Research Service report that looks at the issue from a lightweight legal perspective. Partly because of my membership in the Young Conservatives Union, partly because I enjoy taunting the techno-establishment whom I’m supposed to be digitally brainwashed by based on my age and occupation, and partly because I think I’m right, I’ve written a comment digesting the issue and generally opposing the project. If you’re interested, read all three writings and comment over at Marcus’ World (or here).
11 December 2005 at 2.25 pm · Filed under Culture, Funny stories
Special thanks to Ben and Nathan for another “fabulous” 918 Christmas party. This year I did not embarrass myself and incur the substantial wrath of Matt Brown; rather, I behaved according to the reasonable person standard and we can all be grateful for that.
I did have the jarring experience of meeting a hair-wax-loving chap called Bill Couch, which was very disturbing, since the other guests were getting us confused. And I thought I was so original. So I talked to him and told him that he would have to change both his first and last names for party purposes, which he agreed to do: he said, “Tell you what, you can have Bill, I’ll take BC3.” Whereupon, poooof! my head exploded, because of course, I invented BC3. I almost slapped him, but he was straight, and that would only deepen the divide. So I just sort of walked away and bitterly complained to everyone else.
In other news, I now have a new pet. My cat enjoys dusting under my bed with his body, drinking out of the toilet, and, inexplicably, soft-sided luggage. Yes, I actually got his favorite suitcase out and am leaving around the house so he can lie on it. It’s been an interesting experience so far; I never thought I would be a cat person, but it’s one of those things: when you live in the city, you don’t have a choice.
Finally, I have to suggest for anyone interested in the Supreme Court to check out The Brethren, a book by Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong. OK, it’s real old, but it’s a “tell-all” that discusses events and cases during the first several years of the Burger Supreme Court. I just ran across it and it’s hard to put down.
27 November 2005 at 8.51 pm · Filed under City life, Culture, Random
There’s an interesting article in the Times today about the high-rise buildings France has built to house its poor. While the idea that high-rise housing projects lead to desperation among the urban poor is not a new one in Europe or in America, this article gives some interesting insights about what Europe is doing to move away from this concept.
28 August 2005 at 5.51 pm · Filed under Culture
From the June 2004 issue of Metropolis (yes, Virginia, the huge piles of newspapers and magazines do eventually get digested).
For all their flaky granola daffiness, Californians gave us Silicon Valley, Multimedia Gulch, and the Lockheed Skunk Works. Who are we to question the spiritual needs of these gentle unworldly people and their cyborg governor?
1 August 2005 at 1.42 am · Filed under Culture
I saw the “cute penguin movie” today (March of the Penguins). Rather than bore you with the details (cute movie; Emperor penguins are remarkable creatures), I’ll skip right to the funny part. I noticed in the credits the following three people listed consecutively: pianist, bassoonist, accountant. My mind immediately fluttered to two courtly musicians and a guy with a giant calculator.
15 July 2005 at 6.56 pm · Filed under Culture
Mary and David Savoie had returned to their favorite viewing spot along the Indian River, bringing cousins from Pennsylvania to watch the shuttle launching in the distance. Joshua Lacy had settled beside them with a cooler, and nearby, Tony Vivian had fired up his radio and grill.
All had staked out a grassy lot beside Route 1 to watch the first space shuttle liftoff in more than two years, but after hearing that the launching had been scrubbed, all left dejected.
“It was going to be so perfect,” said Ms. Savoie, casting one last glance at the Discovery, barely a glimmer across the water, before driving home to Sanford, near Orlando. “Oh, well, make that past tense now.”
- New York Times, 14 July 2005
No, damn it, make that subjunctive! Regular old past tense is used for things that actually happened in the past! Grammar idiocy is killing this nation.
17 June 2005 at 5.13 pm · Filed under Culture, Random
The millionaire families of Laguna Beach need help! They can’t afford to pay their expenses from the awful landslide. Here is a list of profiles of the families who need your money. The city wants to give each family $3,000 a month for 30 months and $60,000 for geological studies.
Click here to donate thousands.
I like how the obviously gay couples — “Jo and Jm,” and HC and DK, the flight attendant whose Steinway piano was lost — are referred to in carefully gender-neutral ways or their sex is just left out, whereas everybody else is Mr. and Mrs. W.
It’s also amusing that they actually admit one house was “red-tagged” in a previous 1978 landslide. Now the same set of spoiled Californians is back for more money. I was just in Laguna Beach a month ago, telling people it was all a dream and it wouldn’t last. I was proven right sooner than I thought I would be. These people have no sense of perspective. One of them actually told me, “It’s hard to believe that places like Houston and Ohio really exist. It’s like the whole rest of the country is a big bubble.” No, you’re in the bubble.
By the way, the city mayor doesn’t want you to think they are millionaires, but before the landslide, they used to be — especially the one family that bought its house for $280,000 eighteen years ago.
7 June 2005 at 9.50 pm · Filed under Connextions Lofts, Culture, Random, Solely personal, Technology, The law
Hello, dear reader!
It has been many weeks since the last Before. I am pleased to bring you more thrilling news and insights from me! This entry discusses a minor victory of mine as well as several other random news items.
Tonight, I was elected to the board of the erratically-named ConneXtions Lofts, and, have also been elected to the post of Treasurer! (It’s not as glorious as it sounds; nobody wanted Treasurer, and I made the twin mistakes of 1) being the impressionable new guy and 2) having the last name Cash.)
Now when I am in the elevator and it unexpectedly stops on the third or second floors, I will have the pleasure and power of barking, “Out! Out! I’m an executive officer of the Board!” (Note to fellow neighbors: It is my honor to serve you as a member of your Board for the next three years. I am looking forward to dedicating myself to the betterment of our community for everyone’s benefit. Now stop taking the elevators if you live on 3 or 2.)
No, seriously, if any of my neighbors do read this, thank you very much for choosing me and I do hope to work with all of you to make it a better place. Send me an e-mail or call me any time.
At least tonight didn’t go like the last election I was in, eleven years ago, which was for President of the Class of 1995. I stupidly ran a short but extremely negative campaign, consisting of a single speech bashing the current class president. I don’t even remember what I said (actually this is a lie), but it was pretty embarrassing and I think I lost 440-10. Also, he later refused to go to the prom with me. Eddie Harris, if you are out there, that day will be with me for the rest of my life.
I have just discovered the Urban Dictionary. I think I am a couple years behind the times on this, but at least I now know what holla back girl actually means. This is the resource I was looking for to stay “fresh” and “hip” as the popular culture evolves during the next decade. I won’t be able to enjoy it.
I visited the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati a couple weeks ago. This was the building the New York Times called something like, “perhaps the most important building since the end of the Cold War.” Well… ehhh. It was just OK. It was done by Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, who is most famous to me for her stage design of the Pet Shop Boys’ Nightlife tour. The building is vertically-oriented, and the floors are connected by shallow, suspended stairways. Unfortunately, the stairways seemed really cheap. Arnie and I panned the exhibits and I think we would have to say the best part was the gigantic elevator, the biggest one I have ever seen. Still, if you’re in Cincinnati and you have an hour and eight bucks, you might want to do it.
17 January 2005 at 12.19 am · Filed under Culture, Solely personal
Still continuing the monthlong extravaganza of returning from vacation. I actually think coming home and getting all those text messages and voice mails was more exciting than going on the trip! Happy new year to all y’all brothers and sisters, etc. (What song did they play at Axis at midnight???)
I finally got around to writing up descriptions for all the good photos from Berlin, which was only the first half of my trip. (I might do Amsterdam later, but let’s be honest, I wasn’t there as long and I didn’t take as many good pictures anyway. Also, I’m kind of busy all the time.) But, you’ll look at the Berlin pictures and you’ll like them!
It was such a fun time. Unfortunately, I did not get a picture of everything that happened, for example, visiting Cafe Maredo on the first day because my mother had discovered it the night before. (When I was in high school, we learned that Maredo was a kind of cheesy chain, and it was.) The hateful waiter put a bib on me solely out of spite, or else it was because Matt and I ordered the fajitas. I guess I actually do have this photo, but I’m not giving it to you. I also don’t have a picture of the little girl on the subway to whom, at the last second, my mom gave a euro because she felt sorry that the girl had to travel around with her mother and “that loser boyfriend.” (This was the unlikely Geschenk.)
In other news, if you get BBC America, I suggest you look for the ten-minute science filmstrip spoof “Look Around You.”
31 March 2004 at 12.59 am · Filed under Culture
Last night, Alistair Cooke, a veteran BBC reporter and general world culture figure, died at home in New York. He was 95 years old.
I think he was a great man, a master of subtlety, very endearing, and touchingly funny and sincere. Even in his eighties and nineties, which are the only years I had to get to know him, he stayed sharp, and put together a weekly radio segment known as the “Letter From America.” He is best known for this segment, where he observes and comments on our country from a British point of view. I can certainly remember listening to his “Letter From America” many times on the BBC. For an Anglophile like me, Cooke’s dispatches let me feel as though he and I were sharing a joke, rolling our eyes over the dotty, amusing ways of our over-eager, good-natured American cousins. Alistair Cooke was a bit of a connoisseur of absurdity, like I am, and his gentle presence will be missed. You can read the BBC’s leader on his life and career.
Some advertising in today’s New York Times on the Web, however, creates a jarring scene for those who read about Cooke’s long and fruitful life. The obituary contained an ad for the movie Never Die Alone. If you are interested, the full Times article is still available.
21 March 2004 at 6.07 pm · Filed under Culture
“It’s 11:30 p.m., and my upstairs neighbors are running their washing machine, again, though only the experienced would know that it is not a helicopter landing. Three polite notes have done nothing to stop it.”
- New York Times, 21 March 2004, in an article on filtering out life, including by using noise-canceling headphones
The real message to readers: “If you cannot get results by polite means, try adjudicating your disputes in front of a million people in the Sunday Times.”
I wonder how I might have used the same principle… Thankfully, such means were not necessary.
20 March 2004 at 9.06 pm · Filed under Culture, Random, Recipes
Well, I’m fresh back from a trip to the wonderful Kroger — a trip that, I maintain, would have been made partly unnecessary by the Fishline.
It appears the pimply, nice U-Scan boy who used to work every single night has quit. I haven’t seen him in about two months. This a shame, because I love him. Even if it’s actually slower than using a cashier (who can say?), doing U-Scan just feels faster. He was the fastest vegetable code number typist I’ve ever seen. So, wherever you’ve gone, Face, I salute you.
Is it just me, or can the steady erosion and decline of American values be traced to when Sunny Delight changed its name to Sunny D?
And finally, it appears that you can now buy these fabulous Butterball chicken breasts that have been marinated for you. This is a Godsend for anyone who is not getting enough sodium in his diet. But here’s the best part: they’re sold in individually sealed chicken bags. No more touching raw meat — ever! All you have to do is carefully cut them open with a steak knife, dump that knife into the dishwasher, and Keshia Knight-Pulliam! you just got off scot free. I can’t emphasize how many “out, damned spot!” washing experiences this could have saved.
9 November 2003 at 3.39 pm · Filed under Culture
I recently discovered a religious paradox while having a discussion with a Muslim friend at work. He is fasting while observing Ramadan, an Islamic holy month. (This and a lot of other details I have are coming from just one single source, so correct me if I’m wrong.)
His definition of the fast is that no food or drink can be consumed between sunrise and sunset. Consequently, he has to get up around 5am to eat a big meal before work, then goes all day without food. (This makes him a big pushover during negotiations, due to exhaustion… I like to schedule 4pm meetings where I get my way.) (Just kidding.) There are other restrictions as part of the fast, such as no smoking, I think no swearing, and so on.
However, there is apparently an important exception to the fast. It is OK to break the fast if you are traveling. We both figure the exemption comes because traveling out of town can be exhausting, so you have to eat something.
We think this may have come because when all this fasting business began centuries ago, people pretty much walked wherever they were going. It is certainly unreasonable to expect somebody to walk miles each day with no nutrition, particularly if you don’t know where the food is going to be on the way.
The paradox arises in the definition of “traveling.” My friend says there is a specific distance, set by Islamic law, that you must go to be considered a traveler. He didn’t know it exactly, but said it’s about ten miles. We joked that he can get McDonald’s in Reynoldsburg any time he wants and he would be cool with God.
Now, conservative Muslims are more likely to fast — some liberal followers don’t observe it at all. But conservatives are also more likely to stick to a strict interpretation of “traveling” and use the ancient measure of ten miles. I think liberal followers would be more willing to look at the traveling exemption and take into account several obvious differences in 21st-century travel — it’s much faster these days, food is readily available everywhere, and you can travel thousands of miles in a day with no serious physical exertion. Certainly, liberal Muslims should interpret the rules differently based on today’s realities. And ironically, conservatives have given themselves a free pass on fasting as long as they manage to skip a few miles out of town. As I understand it, theoretically, you could do this every day and be considered to have fasted in accordance with Islamic law.
I’m not making a commentary on Islam per se, and I certainly don’t claim to understand the full story here or on all of its precepts generally. But I find it interesting to highlight a situation where it seems clear to me that following the rules strictly (eating ten miles away) produces an outcome that is generally opposite to the actual intent of those rules (fasting as a sign of strength and commitment in one’s religious beliefs). Conservative adherents to all faiths should take a look at their regulations and consider whether the practice actually encourages the desired outcome.
16 August 2003 at 11.31 am · Filed under Culture
I attended a really great party last night, with a lot of witty and engaging people. If you’re reading, you guys were fun!
But definitely, the highlight of the party had to be “Uh-Oh Oreos.” The bag helpfully explains (and I am paraphrasing here), “Oops! We put the chocolate flavor into the creme instead of the cookie!” Longstanding complaints about “creme” notwithstanding, this leaves a few questions.
- First of all, so they messed up about ten million Oreos, and instead of chucking them into the River Scioto, they decided to make up a cute little bag about them and sell them for money?
- Secondly, if the chocolate was left out of the cookie, what flavor is the cookie? The cookie looked to be vanilla, but if the bag were honest about it, the cookie should have been, like, tasteless… or clear… or pocked with holes where the missing chocolate flavor molecules should have been. The absence of flavor is not vanilla; vanilla is its own flavor, dammit.
- Finally, what does this inverse cookie do for race relations? What would Bill Cosby say?
12 August 2003 at 1.46 am · Filed under Culture, Funny stories
I guess all I have these days are small thoughts. But hey, it’s summertime, the reality shows dominate, and you just gotta have some reality web log entries. If you really want substance, America, go read my famous Michael Moore entry (still one of the most popular pages on my site). I’ll be back with serious commentary in September.
That out of the way, here are more small thoughts!
- Virginia’s new license plates advertise the state’s 400th anniversary — “1607-2007.” Couple of points for you, Virginia. 1) 2007 is four years away. There’s no guarantee you’ll even exist. Some guy from West Virginia might organize a recall election, and your whole state could be replaced by Arianna Huffington. 2) 400 years, huh? And it took you, what, 260 years to free all the slaves? 370 years to legalize interracial marriage? 400+ to spit that chaw out? My state is only 200 years old, and we’re way more sophisticated. Maybe you should catch up to the inland provinces before bragging about your proud history.
- E-mail I got recently: “Bill F Cash, It’s a world of wine and United [Airlines] can take you there!” God, if only it were that simple.
- News story about today’s California ballot lottery: “The letters H, B and S, were drawn as eighth, ninth and tenth, meaning that some high-profile candidates, commentator Arianna Huffington, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger will be relatively near each other on most ballots.” This is what passes for news? The order — not even the content — of the California ballot? Well, their state is only 150 years old. :) Still, pretty tragic.
- Finally, I’ve come up with a couple of new shows for Bravo to air:
Boy Meets Girl. Here’s the setup: a pretty gay boy shows up and has a shot at meeting fifteen potential fag hags. They line up the women, and they each claim to know so much about things near and dear to the gay boy’s heart, like eyebrows or dance music, while complimenting him on his “zaniness” and “totally sensitive side.” But what the gay boy doesn’t know is that some of the potential gal pals are actually scary dykes who’ve been recently shaven. The big finale of the show has the girl revealing the particular horrific personal insecurity — weight, height, breast size, awful middle name — that will come to dominate their fledgling best-friendship. Grand prize? Trip to a gay bar, of course, where the boy will ignore the girl and the girl will silently lust after hundreds of cute unavailables.
Queer Eye for the Straight Teenager. A lecherous group of hairy fortysomethings drive around in an Impala cruising for hotboys in backward ballcaps. When they find them (typically at auto battery stores or maybe NASCAR), they offer smart fashion and dating tips such as: wearing less fashion and dating older men.
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