Monday, June 21

Table scraps:
:There are a few problems in one Toyko high school. For instance, a teacher there was recently busted for forcing a student to write an apology in his own blood, after he fell asleep in class. But more disturbing, I think, is that the boy had to write the message in the staff room, and according to Reuters, "Other teachers in the staff room did not notice what was happening. Yup, if it's anywhere where parents can feel safe sending their children, it's clearly this school.
::Verizon has its new "in" plan for cellphone users. But as prison wardens are learning, such plans may have its fair share of "in"mates on them.
:::"There's nothing I won't do to win $1 million. You want me to slap my mom on television, I'll do it," said one Survivor-hopeful, proving once again that people are hopelessly, shamelessly, pathetically desperate to get on television.
::::SARS may make you cry, but your cries may also spread SARS.
:::::Coming soon to a doctor near you: an injection that will stop your lover from cheating on you. Coming next: the lucrative black market antidote.

Friday, June 18

They say you are what you eat
According to the AP, Dubya likes pie a la mode. Hillary Clinton likes mocha cake. And Bill Clinton likes cherry tarts. But this month, the White House pastry chef is retiring to... wait a minute. Clinton's favorite desert is cherry tarts? Oh, come on. Can't even one thing about this man not be sexual?

CNN officially out of things to talk about
CNN's salty-haired two-last-name anchor, Anderson Cooper, was apparently running low on eye-bulging topics on Wednesday, and so he had "Dr. Drew" on to talk about my article in the Washington Post. No kidding. They spent about three minutes (or, I'm assuming about that much time. I never actually saw it) repeating the exact points I raise in the article, as if they had done their own reporting. If it wasn't so funny and weird, it'd be maddening. Here's the intro (full chit-chat down at the end of this transcript):

COOPER: Well, in an age where you can drive in for just about anything and you can do absolutely anything online, we suppose it had to come to this: sex therapy over the phone or online. A recent "Washington Post" article says more and more people, too embarrassed to see counseling in person for their sexual problems or addictions, are talking with therapists they've never actually even met, distance sex therapy, they call it. Being New Yorkers, always interested in any form of therapy, we couldn't help but wonder does distance therapy actually work. Joining me live, not on the phone, Dr. Drew Pinsky, an addiction expert and a co-host of the radio "Love Line." He is in Los Angeles. Dr. Pinsky, thanks for being on the program with us. So, what do you think? Does this thing work? DR. DREW PINSKY: I really doubt it. It's been well studied. But the fact is, one of the things, and I really don't think I'm giving you a minority opinion here, one of the things that all forms of therapy share in common is the therapist's body, the therapist neurobiological systems is being offered as a regulatory body, a regulatory system, an alternative to the patient's system, a way of building regulatory systems within themselves based on the therapist. And without the therapist being present it's very difficult for these subtle kinds of corporeal communications to occur. In fact, online you can get information and that's fine and people can get encouragement and can be encouraged to develop motivation to do the things they ultimately need to get over some of these serious problems, but to think that it's an ultimate therapy or that treatment can be rendered definitively online, or over the phone I think is a big mistake.

Thursday, June 17

Table scraps:
:We took one small step for atom, and one giant leap towards being able to transport people a la Star Trek. Or, well, ok -- we're not that close.
::What's worse than getting your tongue bitten off during a kiss? How about if the woman who bit your tongue off then swallowed it? Yeah, that's worse.
:::If you get in George W. Bush's way, he will knock you out. No, seriously. He will punch you in the face. With his fist. Wham-o. Just like that. TKO.
::::Now that Reagan's kicked it, you can go kicking it with Reagan.
:::::A twenty-something reporter goes to a high school prom with a 17-year-old date -- but it's in the name of journalism, people! Don't you understand?
::::::All sorts of interesting stuff is coming out out the 9/11 commission now, including that the original plot involved 10 planes. But this is about the most chilling one I've read so far: Cheney had ordered the planes to be shot down, but his order didn't reach anybody in time. I don't blame him for the order, but it's just scary to think that someone had to sit down and make a decision like that.

Scam scamming hits the big time
The NY Times ran a fun piece about people who scam the Nigerian 419 scammers -- you know, the mysterious people who e-mail you asking for help and promising riches in return. I've had my own share of laughs at a scammer's expense, but some people take it to real extremes. One thing I've always had a hard time tracking down, though, is a story about someone who actually got scammed. Every piece I've read about 419 scams says that people are taken for millions of dollars every year, and some actually get duped into flying over to Africa, where they're then robbed or kidnapped. I don't doubt it, but nobody ever offers an actual person as an example. I'd love to read someone's account of actually flying over there and finding a raw deal. But I guess it's hard to find some dope willing to admit they were suckered. Too bad. That'd be a great read.

Wednesday, June 16

Table scraps:
:Well, how about that! Fox News gives the thumbs up to Michael Moore's new film. That should make Bill O'Reilly, who walked out of a screening, fume.
::Somebody, anybody, please -- if you live in New York, go have a drink with this man. He's not asking for much. Really.
:::It's a good thing Rodney Dangerfield doesn't get all bent out of shape about getting no respect. He turned it into a career. This woman turned it into a jail sentence.
::::Snapshot: an attractive blond woman leans over and looks, with genuine interest, at a giant penis. Is it porn? No, not at all. It's just the Associated Press's photograph of a museum exhibition of Rasputin's penis. (and here's a story to go along with it.)
:::::There's a lot to enjoy, and laugh at, with this link. I'm not going to tell you what those things are, though. You'll just have to decide for yourself.

Please note: change of e-mail address
My family has rightfully decided to stop paying AOL for services we don't use, so please note my new e-mail address: jason (at) happyscrappy (dot) com. (If you saw this entry earlier today, it had a hotmail address. Disregard that. It was a mistake.)

Tuesday, June 15

Table scraps:
:At some point, it's worth questioning if regulations have any meaning whatsoever. And now that batter-coated french fries are considered a fresh vegetable by the USDA, I think we've reached that point.
::Virginia may have its "Virginia is for lovers" slogan, but it now needs to remind its residents that it's not for all lovers. Like, you know, old men who sleep with young girls. (But that might be a hard message to sell when, as the NY Post claims, breast implants are all the rage with teenagers.)
:::The first rule of cuddle parties is, "No dry humping." The second rule of cuddle parties is, "NO DRY HUMPING!"
::::Well, here's a question you never really wanted to be asked: Who's hotter, the editor of Vogue or Vanity Fair? And for that matter, what about all the other big-shot magazine editors?
:::::A friend of mine went to college with a guy named Sadaporn Pornpromlikit, who was from Bangkok. And while that name might be mighty unfortunate, this one just might be worse.

The Washington Post gets all sexed up -- by me
If you haven't had the pleasure of picking up the Washington Post recently, may I suggest today as a good day to start? That's because -- ahem -- I'm published in it! Believe it or not, your humble (ok, gloating) blogger landed a piece in such a fine institution as the Post. It was no easy feat, I assure you. It quite literally took months. But now, here it is, in all its proud glory:

Sex Therapy On Call
Some Clients Too Ashamed or Uncomfortable for In-Person Therapy Are Getting Treatment for Sexual Problems Via Phone and Computer

(and here's a sidebar, along with a really fun photo)

A final note: since the Post requires registration and doesn't keep stories on its site forever, those links go to happyscrappy.com, where I've imported the story from the Post's site.

Monday, June 14

God gets off on a technicality:
Sadly, the Supreme Court took the easy way out of the "under God" case, and decided that the atheist that started the case didn't have the right to do so. I'm guessing it did this because it knows his argument is solid, but it doesn't want to actually strike "under God" from the Pledge. So, next up, we need someone that's actually in school right now to take the case up. Which high school student wants to make history, defend the intention of the constitution, push this country back towards some semblance of equality and, at the same time, make the crazed, vicious religious right declare you an enemy? Yeah, well, that's what the Supreme Court is hoping for.

Table scraps:
:More reason to hate Garfield: it was created by a guy with an advertising background, specifically crafted to sell products and not be very entertaining. Call me moralistic, but I don't think the creative arena has any room for money-focused jackasses like Jim Davis.
::So, what's the limit to what kind of jobs can be outsourced to India? Who knows, when Roman Catholic clergy have begun outsourcing prayers to Indian priests.
:::Tragic, brave, terrified, abused, hopefully not neglected -- hardly enough things to describe a teenage Iraqi boy who turned his father in and became an informant for the US military.
::::A lot of the online dating ads posted on pages like Nerve and Gawker ask respondents what their favorite on-screen sex scene is. If I were single and searching for someone, though, I think it'd be more telling to hear someone's thoughts on least erotic scenes.
:::::Happy birthday, honey. We brought you a shooting victim!

Here, there. Hereian, thereder.
I've always wondered how a place's name translates into an origin-adjective (Florida to Floridian, for example -- and yes, I totally just made up the phrase "origin-adjective"). Why, for example, does the name "Canada" gain a syllable to become "Canadian" -- working backwards, one might assume the country's name is Canadia -- while Texas doesn't undergo the same change to become "Texan"? (I once wrote a piece that began with a woman describing people from "Ukrania," because she heard they were Ukranian and mistakenly assumed the country's name. True story.) And while themorningnews.org, the site I wrote that piece for, hasn't quite address the grammar specifics of this, it did just do something equally interesting. It mapped out the states by their origin-adjective suffixes. Here it is:

key: -ans (red), -ians (blue), -ers (green), -ites (yellow), -ders (orange)

Fascinating, no? And to boot, it bears a striking resemblance to the red-blue map of the 2000 presidential election. (Original map, along with a list of every state's origin-adjective, is here.)

Who said propaganda can't be fun?
My girlfriend picked up a great bit of propaganda in Boston on Friday, and I was really taken with the Maoist-style rhetoric it used. It's laid out like a newspaper and bills itself as the New Federalist, but it's actually just an ad for an obscure Democratic presidential candidate named Lyndon LaRouche. Most of the stories were tedious, thinly-veiled editorials, but the back page was dedicated to dispatches from the LaRouche Youth Movement -- and this is where the paper's language really shined.

Someone at the LaRouche campaign must have studied the phrasing of Baghdad Bob -- the goofy Iraqi information minister who, at the start of the Iraqi invasion, delivered gems such as "We have surrounded them in their tanks" and "I triple guarantee you, there are no American soldiers in Baghdad" -- because they followed his lead perfectly. That is, ignore any failure and amplify, to an absurd degree, any success, even if it's only perceived success. Here's some of my favorite passages from the youth movement dispatches (and please note, all grammar mistakes are theirs, not mine):

From D.C., where three LaRouche supporters set up a table outside a day-long concert (written by a guy who last year got arrested for a similar scene): The night would have been fairly classified as 'decent,' until all of a sudden the steady trickle coming from the stadium became an avalanche of people that resulted in the subway system getting backed up. This, in turn, put many hundreds of young people right in front of our noses. Fortunately for us, they were a captive audience that could only move forward when the next train arrived down in the station... Many of these kids came out of this event looking as if they had just left their own funeral. They were in the hot Sun most of the day and exhausted from being beaten by harsh sounds whose repetition is reminiscent of the famous Rodney King beating. ... Their faces lit up every time there was a joke made about teaching Bush to read, or when we echoed the new education theme: "Leave no President behind." Their minds responded directly to ironies. Their faces seemed to project curiousity when they heard that Lyndon LaRouche was the only man with a policy on the table to create the coniditions for development and peace in the Middle East. ... At a certain point, what had been a slight murmur of opposition became a ferocious roar from a cluster of Cheney-Bush defenders that began to howl like angry devils. ... Unfortunately, as I am not an expert in the strange noises made by angry baboons, I cannot interpret what they were all yelling, when they all seemed to be making the same noise together. From Chicago: We created an institution at one site on the downtown campus of DePaul University. People walk by, greeting us by name, or acknowleding the dialog we had with them before, by nodding... On average, the student meetings on Wednesdays and Saturdays, have each had about four youth -- all excited to discuss what's going on in the world, and how it is necessary that LaRouche become President. The presentations were on especially the strategic reason for creating leadership, and a future for future generations -- not instant gratification, but a mission to ensure that billions of people aren't 'suicided' by the Culture or by the 'Beast-Men' who want to cause this destruction, e.g., Dick Cheney.

Friday, June 11

Table scraps:
:If you haven't gotten your daily dose of cute yet, hop on over to the live webcam of two endangered female Amur tiger cubs born at the Minnesota Zoo on May 30.
::I love news stories about overlooked phenomonons and people, so this piece was perfect: What happens to the people who miss the last train at Grand Central Station?
:::Stick a fork in him -- he's done! No, wait, not literally.
::::(Sigh) ...Ok, everyone all together now: "I guess it wasn't a very happy home." That's right, the editor of the about-to-launch Happy Home Magazine flees to greener pastures.
:::::So, just how much does your government love you? Enough to purposely withhold the sale and access of a chemical attack antidote.

Thursday, June 10

Table scraps:
:Baltimore's mayor wants to know: what's the fastest way to put independent coffee house owners out of business? That is, he wants to know, why aren't there more Starbucks in the city?
::How many Coke legends can fit on one page? With snopes.com, plenty. But sadly, it doesn't address the legend of a recalled Coke advertisement that cleverly included a depiction of a blowjob, which fetched more than $100 on eBay.
:::Well, here's one way to impress the ladies: Be the guy whose penis was used in the South Park movie's Saddam scene. If girls don't go for you, they'll at least blog about you.
::::So does it not come to pass that this heaven that we speak of ... this heaven that we ... Jesus, what the hell was I thinking before? You're messing with my head. A conversation with the community college Buddah master.
:::::A former Boston Globe columnist says, "Die on a slow news day and you’ll be well taken care of." So, with the war and a presidential campaign going on, how does that explain the endless Reagan coverage? (Although, there's no disputing that the world needs more obits like this one, where the first line is, "Everybody knew he was a dumbass.")

Your dog is listening
Here's the not-so-shocking truth about dogs: they understand words. Any dog owner knows that, of course, but now science is on board as well. Researchers tested a dog that knows more than 200 words, and can learn new words quickly. Next up: does your dog take offense when you talk to it like it's an idiot? Oooooh, puppy-wuppy, do you wanna treat? Yes you do! Yesshh yoouu doooo!

Wednesday, June 9

The write stuff and the wrong stuff
I don't really have much to say about Avril Lavigne, other than I think she's surrounded by some pretty awful marketing and her image is way too cliche (although, to her credit, I'm assuming it was crafted by her record label). But I have to share a few shamefully choice moments from this Rolling Stone interview. And when you read the following exchanges, please keep in mind her answer to the question, "What's the rudest thing you've ever read about yourself?" She said: "People saying that I can't write, which pisses the fuck out of me, because I'm a writer. Don't you fucking dare try to take that from me." Ok, here we go:

What's the best lyric you've written? One of my favorite bridges I've written is in "Losing Grip" [sings]: "For crying out loud/For crying out loud." I just get lost when I'm performing it. It's so me. Do you hear songs in your dreams? Yes! I wake up in the middle of the night, and I'll call my cell phone and record something. I wake up in my sleep with a melody, usually. It's so weird. I'm like, "Fuck! I should record that." I have a song called "He Wasn't," and I came up with the bridge and wrote the words [sings]: "Na na na na." I thought it was pretty cool. So no new political material? (A few exchanges about a song that didn't make the record, about the D.C. sniper, and then...) One of the lyrics was "On my TV there's a serial killer who's taken too many lives/He shot somebody every day/And now he's still getting away."

So anyway, I'm just putting it out there. You decide.

Note to terrorists: no, no, try this instead
The Associated Press has done a little legwork for al-Qaida, and reported that while the "dirty bomb" that Jose Padilla was allegedly building wouldn't work, something else sure would:

At a June 1 news conference, the Justice Department said the alleged al-Qaida associate hoped to attack Americans by detonating "uranium wrapped with explosives" in order to spread radioactivity. But uranium's extremely low radioactivity is harmless compared with high-radiation materials — such as cesium and cobalt isotopes used in medicine and industry that experts see as potential dirty bomb fuels.

Now, to be fair, I'm sure the AP isn't writing something al-Qaida doesn't already know. But it does read sort of funny, doesn't it?

Monks vs. activists: a battle of the minds
First, an apology: I'm about to link to an article by the ultra-conservative Weekly Standard, a publication that really deserves no attention. But this week, it ran a piece about how NPR has been bumping classical music off the airwaves, and includes a segment from the research of a radio consultant who studied the issue. He dubs classical music listeners "monks" and NPR news listeners "activists." Take a read:

Classical Monks use the music format to attain an internal state, soothing and calm, intensely personal. NPR Activists use information from NPR News to guide their relations with other people in their community and around the globe. . . . NPR Activists love analysis and debate. More talk is better, if that talk informs their understanding of global issues. . . .

Classical listeners enter a dream world with images of paradise.

The NPR newsmagazines keep reminding us of the real world, with its social conditions, environmental changes, and economic forces. . . .

Classical Monks seek an emotion derived from the aesthetic. NPR Activists think that reason and logic, on the basis of solid information, can lead to the perfection of mankind.

The classical listener values lone serenity. NPR fans are the most politically active segment of the population.

Table scraps:
:The WWE wrestler Bradshaw was fired from his gig as a financial analyst on CNBC after he made Hitler-like gestures during a wrestling match in Germany. And while that might be weird, here's what's weirder: Bradshaw was a financial analyst on CNBC. What!?
::So, what does TBS think about 'Sex and the City'? "I don't think anyone watched it for sex and nudity," says its executive vice president. And after chopping the series up for cable consumption, he better hope he's right.
:::Here's a great senior prank: put your high school up for bid on eBay.
::::Slate has started a great feature on Kerry, in which it edits his lengthy, often muddled quotes down to something succinct and purposeful. Here's hoping Kerry actually takes the hint.
:::::The mystery of the blowfish's poison has been solved: it doesn't actually make any poison itself; it just eats other poisonous things. Armed with this knowledge, Japanese diners will now probably go eat the fish into extinction. 
::::::Ah, the hotdog, a little log of mystery meats. Perhaps you thought a hotdog, by its very nature, could not become more unappealing. Well, you're wrong.

Tuesday, June 8

Table scraps:
:Great, scary piece by a WashPost reporter who was shot at in Iraq.
::Here's a genuinely nice story about a woman overloaded with debt and the businessman who helped her.
:::I do have the pleasure of saying "I suck my own cock for a living" to people who ask me what I do, and I would consider that to be a political statement. Except, of course, that it's also a true statement.
::::Five ways to spice up the evening news with Dan Rather.
:::::From the Not The Way To Gain A Rapper's Street Cred Department: a rapper from Philly shot and killed his manager after being told he didn't have the skills to cut a record.
::::::And on a similar-but-totally-opposite note, one New York model has learned one quick way to break into the industry -- to be shot.

When Reagan is gone, he's gone. And he's gone.
Ok, so we'll all have to suffer through a week's worth of Reagan news coverage, and even give up our mail delivery on Friday for him. Fine. But there's no way, despite a new bill being considered, that this guy belongs on any money. Republican lawmakers who are pushing for his memorialization on everything from buildings to Mt. Rushmore are just taking advantage of this man's death to pursue their own agenda of making thier viewpoints appear to be mainstream America's morals. It's a pretty impressive feat -- being slimy and selfish under the guise of honoring a legacy.

FCC to sue Mother Nature for indecency?

This photographer's Earth Erotica series no doubt makes John Ashcroft want to cover the earth in drab cloth. But as someone not particularly fond of pornography but still a member of the libido-carrying modern world, I was struck by how I momentarily winced at some of these photos -- ones that, in the flesh, would be considered "hard-core close-ups" -- because they resembled stuff I don't really like seeing photographed up close. Like, say, this one and this one. What a strange automatic response. It took me a minute to remember, hey, this is just rock.

Monday, June 7

When you got money, honey...
There was an amusing, probably coincidental comment given by David Sedaris in yesterday's NY Times profile, which follows up on something he said in his first NYT profile 11 years ago. The recent story focuses a lot on the money he makes now -- an impressive sum which affords him, among other things, multiple apartments across the world. But Sedaris had a decidedly different take on money when interviewed for his first profile, back when he was cleaning apartments and doing radio bits on the side. Here's a graf from each story: