armchair pundit

Lots and lots of people have passed this video around, but it puts a giant, ridiculous grin on my face everytime I watch it. This guy is my new hero.

Matt is a 31-year-old guy from Connecticut who was inspired one day during his travels to do his signature silly dance for the camera and upload it to the website he was using to keep his family up-to-date on his wherabouts.

Anyway, what started on a whim in one country, he decided to repeat around the world…

Well, you could say it caught a wave (over 10 million views as of today), and a year or so later, Stride Gum approached him about sponsoring a sequel, on their dime – which was a no-brainer for Matt…

My small town library was one of my absolute favorite places when I was a kid. I regularly borrowed to the full limit of what I was allowed to take home. I still love the library, and the big one here in San Francisco is way cooler than anything I experienced as a kid.

So, on that note, here are 5 things I love about the library…

1. Free WiFi
   Considering the small town library of my childhood didn’t even have computers (which took up whole rooms back then), you gotta love free access to the Internet.
2. Peace and Quiet
   Sure, I can find free WiFi and lively gaggles of hipsters and hippies at (respectively) Ritual Coffee Roasters or Farley’s, but when I want to actually do some work, I prefer a little more peace. At the library, you’re surrounded by people who are seriously and silently getting shit done. As an extra bonus, you don’t have to feel guilty for taking up a seat long after you’ve finished your coffee.
3. “Stealing” Music and Borrowing DVDs
   One of my favorite things to do at the library is to hit their A/V room and borrow a bunch of CDs before heading to a table to work. Then, while I work, I rip all the CDs into my iTunes. Right now, for example, I’m ripping Wilco’s “Sky Blue Sky.” Before I leave, I’ll borrow the second season of Lost, which I’ve been watching with my girlfriend.
4. Ridiculously Small Fines
   If you put embarrassment aside, the punishment for lateness at the library is almost silly. You can borrow as many as 50(!) books for three weeks, then renew them online for another three weeks, but if you forget to return them for a couple more weeks, you’ll owe the library like twelve cents. And then they don’t even make you pay what you owe. You can still borrow books. OK, I’m exaggerating the lowness of the fees a little – but just a little.
5. Self-Service
   On my library’s website, I can search for anything in their system. If they don’t have it, they let me search Link+ (a network of 51 libraries in California and Nevada) where I’m almost certain to find what I’m looking for. Once I find something, I can request them to hold it at the branch of my choosing. Then they email me to let me know when my request is ready to pick up. They email me again with a friendly reminder if I haven’t picked up my stuff after a few days, and again when it’s time to renew anything I’ve checked out

I can’t believe I’m writing about Britney Spears, but bear with me.

One would hope that Britney bottomed out somewhere around the head-shaving or the crotch-flashing. Now it seems the gossip mill’s coverage of Britney has finally bottomed out as well.

Yesterday I was in the checkout line at the Safeway – where I get most of my celebrity gossip – and I noticed the usual array of Britney shots on the covers of the usual magazines. But something was amiss.

The normally snarky Us Weekly had Britney’s face dominating the cover, but instead of the obligatory jab about her latest booze binge or child-endangerment episode, the headline simply read, “Living With Mental Illness.”

Adjacent to this on the shelf was Star magazine, whose cover story was something about how Britney and K-Fed are working to come up with a parenting agreement that will be good for their kids.

All of this on the heels of the recent South Park episode (“Britney’s New Look“) lampooning our insatiable appetite for tabloid news. Key quote, “I know watching celebrities go down can be fun. Me and my friends were just as guilty as all of you, but maybe, just maybe it’s time to let this one go.”

Amazingly, the tabloid press is listening, and it seems they’ve agreed to a ceasefire.

Of course, Craig Fergusson called for it a long time ago.

The fantasy known as Dubai, home of the world’s only 7-star hotel, is planning to burn another billion or so on what will be the world’s largest and tallest spanning arch bridge, The 6th Crossing:

(rendering by FXFOWLE)

Obscene displays of money are nothing new to Dubai, and why not? They might as well spend everything they can as fast as they can, because in 100 years I’m guessing Dubai will look something like…

(photo by daarkfire)

It really bugs me… They say, ‘Oh, David Beckham – he’s not very clever.’ Yeah. They don’t say, ‘Stephen Hawking – shit at football.’

- Paul Calf

Doesn’t it seem a bit strange that the places in this country most likely to be attacked by terrorists – New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles – are also the least supportive of the war, and least likely to send sons and daughters into battle? Meanwhile, places with virtually no chance of being attacked, are the ones who zealously support the war and send their loved ones off to the meat grinder.

Of course, the war’s supporters say this simply goes to prove that the liberal elite are weak-kneed cowards who don’t deserve the sacrifices of so many young men and women.

The anti-war crowd, on the other hand, bemoan the fact that so many well-meaning people have been duped by the Bush administration into believing that the war was justified and is making us safer, when in fact it has done (and continues to do) a lot more harm than good.

I don’t see this gridlock resolving itself anytime soon.

Today, I took my car to the nearest Shell station to get it smog checked – a bi-yearly(?) ritual for drivers in California. The friendly folks at the Shell station took one look at my registration renewal paperwork from the California DMV, however, and said, “oh, you’re test only.”

Me: “What does that mean?”

Shell guy: “It means they’re picking on you.”

[beat]

Shell guy: “Seriously, it means we can’t do your smog check. We’re not allowed to do ‘test only’ checks. I’ll call the guys across the street.”

Long story short, the banner on the Shell station said “Smog Check Center,” while the one across the street said, “Smog Check Center: Test Only.” The difference, apparently, is that the test-only center can’t fix your car if it doesn’t pass the test. Now follow along kids, because here’s where it gets stupid…

Based on data collected by the California DMV, cars most likely to fail the smog check are flagged for test-only checking. That’s right, cars most likely to NEED FIXING to pass the smog check must get their smog checks done at the places that CAN’T FIX THEM.

Sweet infant Jesus.

Anyway, mine passed (yay), so next I visited the California DMV website where I was greeted by this monstrosity (direct link in case it goes away from the DMV home page).

Rock on DMV!

Did that get your attention?

That’s the name of the movie I saw last night, as part of the San Francisco Independent Film Festival. It’s a documentary about the word, not a portrayal of the act, so don’t be offended.

Or be offended. That’s the power of fuck I suppose.

After indulging in Monday’s all-you-can-eat pizza night at Goat Hill with my nerd friends, I took my favorite girl to the perfect Valentine’s Day date movie.

It explored the modern history of this most versatile word through anecdotes and interviews with a variety of notables, including Ice T, Pat Boone, Sam Donaldson, Judith Martin, Bill Maher, Hunter S. Thompson, Sandra Tsing Lo, and dozens of other actors, directors, commedians, linguists, news commentators, politicians, scholars and people on the street.

It gathered some of the most famous fucks ever uttered in film and television. And in real life, from the likes of Lenny Bruce, Richard Nixon, Bono, Dick Cheney and both George Bushes.

The word of course makes a most forceful denunciation (fuck you or fuck off) or insult (fucker, dumbfuck or fuckhead), but it also works perfectly to emphasize (abso-fucking-lutely), sometimes to seduce (fuck me) and often simply to interject (fuck!). It can be almost any – and every – word in a sentence. Sometimes it simply feels good to say it. Sometimes it’s the only word that seems to work at all.

We worry about our society’s children hearing it or, god forbid, saying it, and great pains are taken to protect them. But we all learned it eventually – mostly on the street and not from movies or television or music as commonly decried by the self-appointed advocates of common decency and family values.

Ultimately, however, we need the word, and we need it to continue to have the power that it does. So I hope Lenny Bruce is the last person ever jailed for saying it, and I hope the FCC is never successful in levying another fine against someone for exercising his first ammendment right to utter it.

But may it always offend the moral majority, in every context.

And may it always offend the rest of us whenever our children and grandmothers are around.

Because it would be tragic if fuck became just another word.

On Anca’s blog tonight, I came across this H.L. Mencken quote…

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on “I am not too sure.”

I generally agree, but I’d extend Mencken’s definition of “uncivilized” to include the young and less educated. I don’t mean to sound judgmental or dismissive. There’s a place in discourse for people who see things in black and white.

This has been on my mind again lately, and I’ve been thinking again about Mishima’s Runaway Horses, which I wrote about (along with Yann Martel’s Life of PI a few months back.

In Runaway Horses, Isao is a young revolutionary. Passionate, impulsive and utterly sure of himself. His unwavering believe in a higher cause is his reason for being. It’s what drives him to action and ultimately destroys him.

Honda, on the other hand, is an older man who has learned to moderate his beliefs. He is a reflective, nuanced thinker. He is an observer who more or less understands what makes people tick. He also acknowledges his own limitations and his inability to fully understand anything. In a world where most things make sense, and the rest is beyond one’s grasp, who’s to say what’s right and wrong? Morally speaking, Honda is a paralytic.

The more one knows, the less one does.

On the other hand, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

hmmm