Crash Into Me, Former Presidential Hopeful and Ongoing Trainwreck John Edwards

There's a piece in the Times today about recent developments in the John Edwards secret affair and paternity scandal. I don't think you have to be a music snob to find this part amusing:

The notion that Mr. Edwards is the father has been reinforced by the account of Andrew Young, once a close aide to Mr. Edwards, who had signed an affidavit asserting that he was the father of Ms. Hunter’s child.

Mr. Young, who has since renounced that statement, has told publishers in a book proposal that Mr. Edwards knew all along that he was the child’s father. He said Mr. Edwards pleaded with him to accept responsibility falsely, saying that would reduce the story to one of an aide’s infidelity.

In the proposal, which The New York Times examined, Mr. Young says that he assisted the affair by setting up private meetings between Mr. Edwards and Ms. Hunter. He wrote that Mr. Edwards once calmed an anxious Ms. Hunter by promising her that after his wife died, he would marry her in a rooftop ceremony in New York with an appearance by the Dave Matthews Band.

[Via NYT]

When Haruki Murakami Chose To Be Poor

Part something-or-other in an ongoing series wherein I read things about great authors whose early-30's were not exactly financially successful — largely to comfort myself with delusions of being in good company.

From a truncated version of Murakami's "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" that appeared in (as with the first installment of this series) the New Yorker:

For three years I ran my jazz club-keeping the accounts, checking the inventory, scheduling my staff, standing behind the counter mixing cocktails and cooking, closing up in the wee hours of the morning, and only then being able to write, at home, at the kitchen table, until I got sleepy. I felt as if I were living two people's lives. And, gradually, I found myself wanting to write a more substantial kind of novel. I had enjoyed the process of writing my first two books, but there were parts of both that I wasn't pleased with. I was able to write only in spurts, snatching bits of time-a half hour here, an hour there-and, because I was always tired and felt as if I were competing against the clock, I was never able to concentrate very well. With this scattered kind of approach I was able to write a few interesting, fresh things, but the result was far from complex or profound. I felt as if I'd been given this wonderful opportunity to be a novelist, and I had a natural desire to take that opportunity as far as I possibly could. So, after giving it a lot of thought, I decided to close the business and focus solely on writing. At this point, my income from the jazz club was significantly more than my income as a novelist, a reality to which I resigned myself.

Haim Saban: Ay Yi-Yi-Yi Yi !!!

I have been waiting over three years for a scandal involving the Israeli-American neoconservative billionaire Haim Saban, the man who made a fortune single-handedly bringing Japan's Super Sentai craze to the U.S. (re-dubbed Power Rangers). I am also thankful this scandal is funny.

Why Orwell Chose To Be Poor

Part something-or-other in an ongoing series wherein I read things about great authors whose late-20's were not exactly financially successful — largely to comfort myself with delusions of being in good company.

From a recent New Yorker review of Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London" by some guy:

That’s a long time to be poor and living as hard as Orwell did. It suggests more seriousness of purpose and staying power than some comments would grant him. It’s true that he came from some rung of the English middle class (“lower upper middle” he once called it, subcategory military), but it wasn’t a social world that leant itself to sponging off your parents. His decision to become poor was just that, but it wasn’t a joyride that he could easily have gotten off once under way, and it carried psychological as well as financial dangers. So why did he do it?

Orwell’s explanation, given a few years later in “The Road to Wigan Pier” (which is a far more sociological and political book, about the unemployed poor in northern England), connects the experience to his years as an imperial cop in Burma:

I was conscious of an immense weight of guilt that I had got to expiate. I suppose that sounds exaggerated; but if you do for five years a job that you thoroughly disapprove of, you will probably feel the same…I felt that I had got to escape not merely from imperialism but from every form of man’s dominion over man. I wanted to submerge myself, to get right down among the oppressed; to be one of them and on their side against their tyrants. And, chiefly because I had had to think everything out in solitude, I had carried my hatred of oppression to extraordinary lengths. At that time failure seemed to me to be the only virtue. Every suspicion of self-advancement, even to “succeed” in life to the extent of making a few hundreds a year, seemed to me spiritually ugly, a species of bullying.

[Via The New Yorker]

I Won't Buy This Vodka, But I Love Its Pitch

Dan Aykroyd intentionally conveying total bullshit with (false) conviction is always hilarious.


[Uh, maybe he does believe what he's talking about.]

Chinese Youths Crazy for English Alphabet Tattoos

I am just posting this hilarious bit of satire without comment:

“The guy at the tattoo shop told me this means brave and proud warrior in English,” said beaming Beijing teenager Hao Tsang as he pointed to the letters GARF freshly inked onto his left bicep. “It’s perfect for me because I am very bold and confident, yet spiritual.”

Tsang’s friend Yuan Chi Hao also went under the needle for some English language characters. “Mine simply says FRUNK. The letters are so beautiful and flow so smoothly into each other. The word actually means old soul with young spirit in English. How cool is that?”

Apparently, very cool.

Throngs of Chinese youths are flocking to tattoo parlors looking to colorfully emboss their bodies with “meaningful” English language words.

“I couldn’t decide between CRYMPH or DLECH,” said Chengdu high school student Mingmei Lee. “I know they both mean beautiful flower dancing in the wind in American, but I can’t decide what looks prettier.”

[Thanks, Emily Z.!]

Milbank Fucks Up

WaPo's Dough-faced snark merchant, Dana Milbank, flubs a very lazy attempt to put his own imprint on the recent GOP talking point, "Obama's doing a victory lap: that dude's arrogant." As funny as Milbank can be sometimes, I have to admit that his whole "pointing out the absurd theatricality of Washington" shtick is wearing thin. It's not exactly a well-developed tool for critical analysis. In fact, why do I feel like this guy is auditioning to be a Daily Show correspondent every time he's on MSNBC?

Oh, right — because he does shit like this:


[When covering the time Cheney shot his buddy on a hunting trip]


[I have no idea what the context was for this.]

I say "Blergh" to you, Dana Milbank.
Stop being the political equivalent of Dave Barry.

Mysterious Colt 45 Malt Liquor Calendar

I took these photos on my cell phone way back in 2005 — while on a bender in college that concluded at a house party by people I didn't know. It was a pin-up calendar on the refrigerator and I've never been able to find any trace of its existence here on the Internet Online.

I think that speaks volumes on "the internet as secretly kind of segregated." Discuss.

Thanks, Hannah Arendt!

"In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism."—Hannah Arendt