And then there's the sushi furniture, because I totally want to sit on a big hunk of salmon.
Still, nothing beats the 55" flat-screen TV available at Wal-Mart, for only $1548. I know I don't have that much contiguous wall space in my house, but that $.97 shipping charge is hard to resist.
Or you could eschew crass commercialism and just egg my car.
Roland Emmerich and Malcolm Gladwell are actually twins separated at birth. You can tell because they both produce mysteriously popular works of blockbuster proportions based on a single, simple (minded) idea.
Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink is about why, within two seconds we know we hate the guy with the slicked-back hair, wearing a shiny black jacket, leaning back in his theater seat chewing gum at machine-gun pace. Or why taking less time rather than more to gather diagnostic information from a patient suffering chest pain is a good idea. (“Stabbing pain on the left side? Unable to breathe? Boxers or briefs?”)
Outliers tells us in 285 pages that successful people aren’t really that great and that we could all be successful if only we had the right cultural influences – sometimes entirely coincidental – backing us up. I’m assuming a good agent helps too.
Then there’s this new dog book, about which I only know so far, that it’s a collection of essays. This is a relief, because each of Gladwell’s slick, sloppily constructed ideas only last a little while.
Which leads me to Roland Emmerich. About whom I know little, except he keeps making these wildly successful - and long - movies all about the same damn thing. The prospect of seeing his newest, 2012, has Jackson drooling in anticipation, but I’m thinking, two-and-a-half hours of the destruction of the earth? Again? I’d sooner pay someone to actually destroy the damn thing so I wouldn’t have to sit through the movie.
I have to offer a Rant Caveat: I have never read a whole Gladwell book, because I just can’t, but I do have Outliers sitting on the back of my toilet seat, and Blink is stuffed somewhere between The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom and The Road Less Traveled on the shelf with other books that have been recommended to me, most often by people with 3 or more years of group therapy under their belts.
Yankees Yankees Yankees. Yay, Yankees! Derek Jeter. Mariano Rivera. Jorge Posada. Andy Pettitte. Matsui. It's so multicultural even lady shrinks in Berkeley drinking kombocha like this shit.
What I really love are the many nights spent watching the moon come up over the bleachers (geography/architectural help here) at the old Yankee Stadium. The many train rides back downtown where I really really had to pee somewhere around 42nd Street and damn it if I didn''t have 3 more stops.
Rickey Henderson. May seem like a non-sequitor, but if you love the human body like I love the human body you know what I mean.
Go Yankees!
I have been silent too long. I have endured this over the course of hundreds of trips to Safeway for beer. And other things.
Now, every time a shopper walks into the store he or she is assaulted by an aggressive, almost violent request for donations to good causes: Jerry’s Kids, or the Breast Cancer Foundation or any number of other middle-of-the-road, unobjectionable charities.
There is a box on the credit/debit card screen that says “Do you want to make a donation to the Save Helpless Victims Who Look Just Like You - We Promise They’re Not Like From Some Country You’ve Never Heard of - from Impending Painful Death?” The checkers are trained to ask if you want to round out your purchase to donate to this cause. Today, my checker, who was wearing a pink tie, when tallying my Safeway Savings Card savings, said, “Since you saved over $74 (she bit her tongue and didn’t add, ‘on beer’) maybe you would like to make a donation to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.” I'm afraid I almost always say no. I know everyone is glaring at me, but I just feel I should be left to decide where I’d like to make charitable contributions. All by myself.
Call me cynical, but I don't think shaming people into giving 53 cents is all that helpful in the long run. How about addressing real need in a bigger way?
Oh, and how about double bagging that six-pack?
I am pretty sure I should have gotten the Nobel Peace Prize, or at least shared it with Obama. I think it was a mere oversight. My qualifications are incontestable:
1) I too am multi-racial.
2) I'm potentially very diplomatic.3) I love peace.
Since it seems like you don't have to have accomplished anything that's in the strictest sense diplomatic, or done anything that’s really like totally all that peaceful, I think potential is an important consideration.4) People of all nationalities love me, except for the French (Who cares how I speak their language. Whatever. It’s not that special), the Chinese (only because for some reason they hate the Japanese), Filipinos (see above), Koreans (if they hate Japanese people so much they shouldn’t own so many sushi restaurants), and a couple of other countries.
5) I was overlooked for the MacArthur award. I am way overdue for worldwide recognition and a large cash prize.John thinks that because Obama can’t accept the money, he really ought to give it to me. He’s drawing up the papers for that now.
6) Sometimes I too want to rip the faces off the people who think nothing of bringing the country to absolute ruin if it protects their own economic interests. I want to gouge their noses out with a woodcarving tool, which you can get at http://www.woodcarverswarehouse.com/ and throw them into my neighbor’s garbage. But like Obama, I merely smile and say things like “bipartisan cooperation,” and “consensus,” and “I like your dog’s poop in my driveway.”
I have my phone set up to make international calls at a discount rate. So when Oslo calls, I am totally ready.Listen up guys. It’s the 21st century. You now have permission to cast off the shackles of your whiteness and your straightness. And if you’re gay, you no longer have to pretend to be straight by dancing like these other doofuses. Ditto being a person of color, Barack Obama. I saw you at those inaugural balls.
First things first. Please stop standing on the side of the dance floor moving only from the neck up and the knees down. Girls hate that. They only put up with it when they grow up because they have your babies.
Do you think that if you move your hips it might give girls ideas, like: “Hey, they have hips. Maybe they should walk around looking sexy and getting me coffee, and I should run the SEC.” No, it will make them think… never mind, you’re only 15. Anyway forget about it, we’ll be running the SEC before you register for “Gender Paradigms 101,” in your Freshman year at Brown.
Anyway, your hips are the center of your body. If while dancing you move the other parts of your body by themselves you look like you’re trying to flag down a police officer or scrape dog shit off your foot.
Okay, so don’t panic, no one’s laughing at you yet. Stand quietly, without pushing any of your male friends or making a series of retarded jokes about calculus or someone’s boobs. Listen to the music and find the beat. You’ve done this before, in Western Civ. Okay, so it was Hildegard of Bingham, but still, rhythm is rhythm. If the song is in 4/4, which is almost always will be at any dance you’re likely to be invited to, emphasize the 2 and the 4. If you emphasize 1 and 3 you will look like Bon Jovi.
Ask a girl to dance. If she says no, don’t start saying mean things about her to your friends. Say, “Maybe later,” and know that when she sees you dancing she will flog herself for saying no. If she says yes, put your hand gently on her shoulder and move into the center of the room.
Then comes the dancing part.
When moving the hips we talked about earlier, remember, they can move not just forward and backward, or side to side. Think of the circle of life you learned about in the “Lion King.” Dancing is circular, as is life. While dancing your hips should have access to all 360 degrees of this circle.
STOP BOBBING YOUR HEAD.
Your feet can move too. The psychological superglue that has cemented your feet to the floor has been blasted to smithereens, like the enemies in Call of Duty 4. Girls like it when you move your feet. You won’t step on their toes, and if you do, they’d much prefer that than to watch some kind of sea anemone creature all stuck in one place.
Breathe. Relax the facial muscles. You look like you’re being poked in the ass, and not in a good way. In case you forgot: 2 and 4. Not 1 and 3.
Watch what your partner is doing. Do not ignore her. If she moves left you don’t necessarily have to mirror her movement by moving right but in any case, she is surely a better dancer, and you could do worse than to try to imitate her. If possible look into her eyes. If you do this she might not notice anything else.
