Back to Work

Trying to get back up and running after a trip, but it occurred to me to launch a new computer with Windows 7 (up from XP).

In the new Word the menus have disappeared and it seems all must be done with the mouse, with tiny new symbols and lettering arranged not in a line but all over the place. It's just as if they rearranged the keyboard, the bastards.

The image above is driving me nuts too, but its days are numbered.

Bring in the Clowns

I had a friend in college, call her Sugar, who knew Tom Waits when he was just another suburban middle-class Dylan wannabee, and of course it's all an act. That's show biz. But you've got to have an act that, well, is a good act, and he just doesn't sell me. Sugar had sour grapes on a sour romance too I think, but he sings like a genuine phony. 

I read in some silly echo in El Pais of the silly branding of Zuccotti Square, how they didn't have a song yet, and maybe Waits had the song. Like Joni and Woodstock. Plu-eze! Call off the revolution, call in the merchandisers.

Crystal Bridges versus the Strip

On Walmart's Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansaw: They could have spared us the stores and spared us the museum too. Look at Carneige, who built magnificent libraries everywhere. What have they given back to the towns they've bled to death economically?

Wailing Wall

Glad I'm far away from all the 9/11 commemorations, as reported in the Times last week. If they commemorated every dead Iraqi or Afghan like they do every American, the world would become one big version of the Wailing Wall of Jerusalem. No one hears them over there but everything is connected.

Airport Security: A Modest Proposal

In light of increasing complaints on airport security measures (click here for example), we offer a modest suggestion: A special optional flight plan available to all travelers: pay less for your ticket in airport taxes, sign a waiver against suing the government if the plane blows up mid-flight, and you can skip the airport shakedown.

It's win-win for everyone. The only trick is to make sure terrorists buy the more expensive tickets with the pat-down included. Maybe something sacriligious to Islamic faith, like a pork-only menu on budget flights.

It makes about as much sense as the current system.

For more interesting observations on this issue, click here for Amazon customer reviews on the Playmobil  TSA Security Checkpoint pictured above.

Middle Brow Gourmandie

From our ongoing anthology Why I Hate The New York Times, in a book review about Americans in Paris in the 19th century:

"This is history to be savored rather than sprinted through, like a Parisian meal. It amounts to a meaty collection of short stories, expertly and flavorfully assembled, free of gristly theory."

The review  includes a good example of confusing diction and a curious way of seeing history from a Westchester perspective. The presumed dead and resurrected Washburne referred to was the US ambassador in Paris during the Franco-Prussian War. Fortunately everything was back to picture-postcard-perfect in a jiffy despite that  nasty little revolution: 

By the time German troops marched down the Champs-Élysées, on March 1, l871, more than 65,000 Parisians had died. The only prominent diplomat to do so, Washburne valiantly refused to budge even through the months of the Commune, one of the bloodiest chapters in French history. His was no paradisiacal Paris; as the atrocities mounted, the distraught Washburne noted that the city was “a hell upon this earth.” At one point the Seine ran red with blood. A team of 60,000 masons would be required to put Paris back together again. On Mary Cassatt’s arrival shortly afterward, the Hôtel de Ville looked like a Roman ruin.

And the review closes with this immortal line, after reporting on how Saint-Gaudens wrote of Paris, “Coming here has been a wonderful experience, surprising in many respects, one of them being to find how much of an American I am”:

Paris is the city to which good Americans go to learn that they really do love peanut butter.

And bad Americans? Is this is what passes for lively prose writing these days?

The Patent Office is Open

Some ideas just keep popping up in our head, time to unload. Interested developers, leave a comment and our lawyers will be in touch shortly. Reasonable rates:

• The Pedal-Powered Computer Desk. Remember those Singer sewing machine tables with the cast iron foot pedals? From Sweat Shop to Ye Olde Cafe. Hook one up to a dynamo and a lithium battery, and you can cruise the internet off the grid! Work off that flab too!! And help Save the Planet, so help me God. This should be under every Christmas tree by 2012.

• Chinese European Bus Tour: The Musical. The new Chinese middle class, 200 million strong, is hoofing it to Europe to take in the sights. There are laughs galore for all as they shoot photos of Karl Marx's birthplace in a lost town in western Germany, do the Printemps department store big time (dance number) and wonder over Western decadence. With hit songs like Louis Vuitton Loves Me, No Smoking Blues and Which Way to the Nearest Chinese Restaurant. Based on an article in the April 18th New Yorker.

• Sick and tired of the Same Old TV News, day-in, day-out? Download the Instant Laugh Track®, compatible with all major brands. Simply push the Instant Laugh Track® button on your remote and chuckle your way through floods, wars, bombings and boring Presidential addresses. 
• Works on Fox News commentators, Bloomburg market reports and commercials too!
• Extra option  for BlowTime™ subscribers: every time you push the Instant Laugh Track® button, BlowTIme™ bills you one red cent for relief work in Haiti with only minor handling  costs included. Ease that Guilty Conscience for a Worthy Cause! 
• Sixteen hundred completely unique and different laugh tracks, delivered by new digital lie detector technology that captures your every mood through the intensity of your hand grip on the remote. Results sent to your broadcaster for free opportunities to win Big Cash Prizes. 
• And don't forget Laugh Track MeToobe® and Laugh Track Faceshock® for your browsing pleasure. No batteries required.
  

A Nero from New York

If you had to chose between Donald Trump and Sarah Palin as President, who would it be? (He's looking pretty Presidential for sure).

Renewable Enegy

I've seen the future -- a radio/flashlight with a lthium battery and a hand crank. Soon we will be all running in circles like gerbels to power our computers, heat our houses and move our cars -- back to the Flintstones. WILMAAAA!