Bring your own fun

Priceline Staycation

Adam Baer of Glass Shallot tries to book a “staycation” in his native L.A. via Priceline.com, with really interesting results. You may think, halfway through the first page (of 3), that you have a sense of what you’re going to be reading, but at the very end of that page you’ll begin to see the twist.

I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but the moral is that the best thing to bring on a vacation — or “staycation” — is your own sense of fun.

Read Full Post »

Overthinking overthinking

Irony, to a T: Is it possible to criticize the overthinking of T-shirt slogans, without engaging in the overthinking of T-shirt slogans? Maybe. I don’t know any way to do so. And neither does the author of this nevertheless-entertaining Gelf Magazine article. The full “evolution” chart (excerpted above) is definitely worth a look.

Read Full Post »

How “Born” was born

The birth of “Born to Run” “I’m still fiddling with the words for the new single, but I think it will be good.” — that’s  Bruce Springsteen talking about the song “Born to Run,” the title track of what Slate calls “his first masterpiece.” The article provides lots of interesting and juicy details about the album’s history (including early versions of the words he was “fiddling with”)), even if it’s occasionally slightly out of touch with Springsteen (at one point it says of his early work that “previously it seemed as if he had a rhyming dictionary open beside him” when for at least one song — “Blinded By the Light” — he did in fact have one beside him).

Read Full Post »

Asian Poses

Asian Poses Apparently the premise is that those wacky Asians can’t just spontaneously smile for pictures, without resorting to cliched poses. Of course, Americans don’t ever do anything like that.

Read Full Post »

Making the Clackity Noise

If this little manifesto won’t cure your writer’s block, maybe you should just do a Hemingway.

OK, that’s a little harsh, but Merlin Mann has an excellent point — don’t try to “write,” just type. See what comes out.

If it’s not all that good (and it probably won’t be), then you can work on making it better (that’s called “writing,” kids).

But you can’t start the “writing” until you’ve typed something you can work with. So unhook your brain, let your fingers loose and make the clackity noise for a while and see what happens.

(pic via Herd of Words)

Read Full Post »

Talk Like A Pirate Day

Buckle yer swash and swab yer decks, mateys, it be that time o’ the year again! Talk Like A Pirate Day has long been my favorite Internet holiday, and this year it happens to fall on Rosh Hashanah, so to all the Jewish folks out there, Shana Tovarrrrrh! Now if only I could get our new parakeet shoulder-trained in time … oh well, maybe next year.

(pic via Christian Science Monitor — with nice article)

Read Full Post »

About “Limousine Liberals”

No big link today, just some idle musing on the use of “Limousine Liberal” as an epithet. What’s wrong with someone in a limo being a liberal? If I do win the lottery, and I decide to add a limo to my lottery garage, am I supposed to change my worldview for some reason? What’s the logic (or should I say “logic”) behind that?

Maybe it’s used as an epithet because people think there’s some implied hypocrisy — as if liberalism is somehow anti-rich, or anti-being-rich. I’m not aware of any actual liberals that have that attitude. Sure, liberals often favor some redistribution of wealth, but I’ve never met anyone who thinks nobody should be rich.

People who think a liberal in a limo is a hypocrite are probably the same folks who think Al Gore is a hypocrite just because he doesn’t live in a mud hut and use a bicycle-powered generator to run the computer he uses to surf the Internet (which, by the way, he never claimed he invented).

Or maybe people think they’re traitors to their class — that rich people should feel some responsibility to stand up for rich people against those poor people (sort of the way white supremacists refer to white non-supremacists as “race traitors”). I guess that’s why such people are always tut-tutting about “Class Warfare.”

Funny how people who are otherwise hawkish suddenly turn into “Kumbayah”-singing hippies when faced with the prospect of “warfare” that might actually affect them. I guess when someone above you is pissing on your head, that’s called “the free market.” When you say “hey, stop pissing on my head!” that’s called “class warfare.”

(limo pic via A1 Executive Limousines)

Read Full Post »

Tribute to teabaggers

Teabagger signs set to appropriately ironic musical accompaniment. You stay classy, America.

Read Full Post »

A pwomising pwemise

Things I want to see: The BBC’s Jonathan Ross interviewing Tamil techno-triphop diva M.I.A. on subjects including Roman roads, river rafting and rum raisin brownies. Could be the funniest thing since that scene in “Life of Bwian” — oops, I mean “Brian.” (Baba Wawa pic via SNL on Hulu)

Read Full Post »

Tempting typo

Vageterian I hope it’s all-you-can-eat! (The link has some other spelling mistakes, including a couple of good ones). (via B&P)

Read Full Post »