AT LONG LAST, MY FAITH IN DEMOCRACY IS RESTORED

Forget all the Diebold conspiracy theories. Forget those speed-dailing freaks obsessed with American Idol. Thanks to the Serious Journalists(tm) at CNN, here's a poll everyone can agree accurately reflects our collective consciousness:

Do you believe a dog could care for a baby?
Yes		64%	100719 votes
No		36%	55697 votes
Total: 156416 votes

You might look at this and see 156,416 fatuous and somewhat disengaged folks, most likely browsing the Web on company time, succumbing to the ongoing infantilization of what people used to like to call "news." Me? I see 156,416 patriots.

SURVEY SAYS!

It's been a few months since my lucrative side gig of writing fake amazon reviews was brought to an untimely end, and the painful memories of Black Thursday have finally started to fade. So what do I get in my e-mail inbox?

Dear Amazon.com reviewer:

Who are the people writing reviews at Amazon.com? Why do they do it? And how often?

Answers to such questions can enable designers of online forums to better facilitate participation. As a participant at Amazon.com you can help us by taking a few minutes to share your experiences.

We are academic researchers in the Information and Decision Sciences Department of the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota... working on an academic research project to examine individual behavior in online forums.

Despite breaking into the vaunted top 2000 reviewers during my brief yet meteoric run, I'm not entirely sure I'm the person they're hoping to reach here. The survey asked a lot of questions about whether you've included your Amazon reviews on your resume and/or to get a job. Call me a cynic, but somehow I doubt pointing a prospective employer to a page like this would really help get your foot in the door.

WOO-WEE! LOOK AT ALL THEM TALL BUILDINGS!

Went up to New York City earlier this week for a magazine awards ceremony (the short version of the story: a bodyguard-adorned Martha Stewart won, we didn't). I spent a beautiful spring afternoon wandering around, catching up with friends and taking a Clark Griswold-like 55-minute sprint through the newly reopened MOMA, which now looks 45% more like the Paramus IKEA, only without the helpful pre-painted footprints to vector you into the Swedish meatball buffet line at the kafeteria.

Every time I go to NYC, there's at least one "only in New York" moment, and this trip was no exception. As I was walking past Penn Station towards Chelsea, the entire station disgorged itself -- apparently an underground track fire prompted a mass evacuation, and suddenly there were thousands of additional people out on the streets. Or maybe everyone was just trying to score scalped tickets for that evening's Duran Duran concert at Madison Square Garden. It was kind of hard to tell.

What was telling, though, was the absolute lack of panic--if anything, people were amused by the disruption. Of course, if the same thing had happened at, say, Metro Center in DC, you'd see nothing but throngs of attorneys attempting to beat each other back with their Blackberrys as they tried to fight their way up the (broken) escalators.

va-mem-map

MEMORY MAPS

I've always been obsessed with maps. And since all the Interweb kool kidz are doing it these days, I couldn't resist quickly throwing together a couple of memory maps made with Google's satellite imagery, complete with the requisite hipper-than-thou annotations from my not-quite-so-kool life (click on each image above to see them). Would-be stalkers, grab a magnifying glass and prepare yourself for hours of squint-rific fun!

WE'RE NUMBER SIX!

Okay, so maybe this humble blog isn't exactly setting the world on fire -- no book deals, no angry denunciations from the ever-defensive mainstream media, no journalists forced to resign in the wake of stunning exposes revealed here. But this site is up to #6 -- with a bullet! -- on a little site the folks on the Internets like to call Google. Perhaps you've heard of it.

No, really. It's number six -- that is, if you do a Google search for mud trucks. And judging by my server logs, there are a lot of people out there doing just that. (It beats the one lost depraved soul who was searching for a "wireframe image of Lucinda Dickey," the one-time star of several seminal 1980s movies about breakdancing and ninjas. But that's a different story for a different day.)

Of course, I have only myself to blame. You see, what all these mud truck aficionados are finding when they hit this site is this brilliant essay, which I wrote while I was in college. You've got to give the people what they want, after all. And coming soon: Lucinda Dickey fan fiction! (Lucinda stopped breakdancing and crouched into her ninja stance. "I think there's trouble," she said. "Where's my wireframe image?")

Or not.

RECOMMENDED: THIS AND THAT

Well, ever since the evil editors at Amazon.com laid down the smack, I've needed some sort of outlet for my brilliant critical interpretations of our cultural effluvia. Or something.

First up is Arcade Fire's Funeral, the best new album I've heard in some time (it's also the only new album I've heard in some time, so take that with a grain of salt). Their music has been pretty much universally compared to Roxy Music, but I hear bits and pieces of all kinds of 80s influences here -- everything from the straightforward pop drive of the likes of Simple Minds or U2 to the moody eclecticism of David Byrne. Yet it's not at all imitative -- it's like they've co-opted chunks of the DNA of the 80s wave sound and recombined it in unique ways. I'm not exactly sure who their audience is, but I'm enjoying it.

Next up is the Battle of Algiers, which has to be one of the few movies to ever have been banned by the French. Centered around the urban insurrection during the Algerian war for independence,the movie, which was made in the late 1960s, wound up being redistributed last year after it was revealed that folks in the Pentagon screened it following the invasion of Iraq (though the object lessons of the movie suggest that perhaps they should have screened it beforehand). In truth, it's not particularly fair to make direct comparisons between Algeria and Iraq, but depending on your poltical leanings and/or proclivities towards wearing tinfoil hats, there's quite a bit to chew on here. It's also a well-done movie that, unlike most of the war films before it, definitely avoids black-and-white portrayals of what was a complicated historical situation (about which the film assumes some level of knowledge on the part of the viewer).

Well, that's certainly an eclectic combination of music and cinema. Something tells me the old Dark Side of the Moon-Wizard of Oz trick won't work here.

RESTON'S DOPPLEGANGER

I always suspected that my idyllic, planned community of Reston(tm) had a darker side (though I'm sure it's actually an HOA-approved shade of russert brown). Little did I know, though, that it has an evil twin.

Located on the other side of Washington, D.C. in Maryland, Columbia has all the same hallmarks of a master-planned community -- the goofy, sylvan community names, persistent earth tones, questionable contemporary architecture, etc. Only, instead of a fake downtown, they plopped a generic shopping mall into the middle of "town," right next to an outdoor music venue where you can still hear all your favorite hair bands from the 1980s.

Sure, all this speaks to the banality of evil. But Columbia apparently isn't at all shy about its wicked ways. While Reston has street names evoking sunrises, sunsets, and Wiehles (whatever they are), Columbia has Satan Wood Drive.

Of course, I probably shouldn't be so smug -- as this handy search of Google Maps can attest. Who knew I was just 19 miles from that well-known locus of nefarity, NBC News?

WHAT COLOR IS MY PARACHUTE? APPARENTLY, MAUVE

Regular readers know about the helpful job postings that continually get e-mailed to me, whether I want them or not. So what am I to make of the two listings that found their way to me today? All I know is that together, they pretty much say it all about the state of my chosen metier, ca. 2005:

WRITER/EDITOR, WAL-MART WORLD

I'll bet the commute to Beijing's a real bitch. Actually, this part was particularly intriguing:

The magazine has a circulation of 1.2 million domestic associates. It is produced by a two-person staff, which includes an Editor/Writer and a Creative Director.

If my math is right, that's a edit staff:circulation ratio of 1:600,000, a figure that would make the GM at even the smalllest, crappiest daily newspaper drool. And as if that wasn't bad enough, then there was this:

FACT WRITER, FOX NEWS CHANNEL

You read that right -- not a fact-checker, but a fact-writer. I'm seriously thinking about sending them a resume, using the name Winston Smith.

I WON'T QUIT MY DAY JOB

But from time to time, I actually get paid to dispense liberal doses of snark. (Note: Free but annoying registration probably required; try 'kos@dailykos.com' as a username and 'kos' as a password).

VIRGINIA IS FOR H8RS

At last, I have just the perfect thing to put on my Xtreme SUV as I tool around Reston(tm): a personalized license plate honoring traditional marriage. But don't thank me. Thank the Virginia General Assembly:

The capitalized "TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE" plate, showing two interlocked golden wedding bands over a red heart, would join scores of others for supporters of everything from fox hunting to Holstein cows.

Holstein cows? I mean, to each his own, but that's just creepy. What's next? Dogs and cats living together?

MAYBE WHAT THEY NEED IS A LITTLE MORE COWBELL

Well, Washington has a new daily newspaper, and already I'm underwhelmed. You see, I assumed I lived in one of the demographically desirable Zip codes that will get the new DC Examiner mass-mailed to them. Then I remembered I live in Reston(tm), which has more SWAT teams than Scan outlets.

Oh, well. So far, I've missed out on such thought-provoking and only vaguely Onionesque editorials as "Hope Blossoms Where Bush Plants Democracy" and intimate personality profiles of the likes of Celine Dion -- both of which make me feel a bit relieved that I'm not in the right demographic. In fact, it seems like they're chasing the elusive wingnut audience championed by The Washington Times (a point-by-point comparison from a much funnier writer is here.)

Even so, the Post has got to be feeling some pressure, particularly when it comes to attracting younger readers. To wit: it ran a story this past weekend analyzing in excruciating detail a Saturday Night Live skit. From 2000.

Someone wake me when this newspaper war is over.

ET TU, BUSTER?

First, they came for the Teletubbies. Then, they came for SpongeBob. And now, they're after Buster Baxter, the snack-food snarfing bunny known to any parent who's come within 100 feet of the book, TV and video empire inspired by Marc Brown's Arthur series (which are actually quite good, as kids books go, despite the fact that the author appears to have drawn them with his feet).

But I digress. Seems that Baxter unwittingly "visited" a real Vermont family that lives on a farm and makes maple syrup -- oh, and just happens to have two mommies. Or a step-mommy. Or something. So the Feds have layeth down the smack, ordering PBS to 86 this particular episode or lose a big chunk of funding.

To which I say bravo -- only they haven't gone far enough. If you've ever watched Arthur, you know that the universe in which these cartoon animals live has its own share of morally troubling issues. For starters, Baxter is growing up in a single-parent bunny household of his own. Apparently his father -- a hotshot pilot -- left his family, presumably after chasing another enticing critter down a rabbit hole. I mean, doesn't this just glorify tired old stereotypes about rabbits and their breeding habits? Or, worse, is it a way to inculcate impressionable youngsters to the coastal elitist moral relativism that gave us Bill Clinton, balanced budgets and unprecedented prosperity? Lest there be any lingering questions about this, consider that Baxter's mother -- his only parental influence -- is a newspaper reporter. With that horrifying fact in mind, I'm shocked that the FBI hasn't gone in to "rescue" him, Elian Gonzalez style.

You might think I'm blowing all this out of proportion. Perhaps. But when I get a sweet six-figure "grant" from a cabinet-level federal entity for my pro-traditional family proselytizing, we'll see who's laughing.

MY INTEGRITY WILL NOT BE UNDERSOLD!

Hey, remember that time when that journalist guy got paid $240,000 to shill for the Bush administration? Yeah, that was awesome. But as is usually the case in the writing business, turns out there's someone out there willing to work cheaper. Today's market price for integrity: a mere $21,500.

My favorite quote:

"Did I violate journalistic ethics by not disclosing it?" Gallagher said yesterday. "I don't know. You tell me."

Um, okay -- yes. Frankly, I'm just shocked that Gallagher is seen as having so much influence. Guess smashing watermelons with a mallet is a lot more persuasive than a bunch of stuffy op-ed pieces.

BLACK THURSDAY

No, I'm not refering to the inaugural -- I'm too much of a fan of John Ashcroft's Goulet-inspired "Let the Eagles Soar" to call any event highlighting the song an unmitigated disaster. But is it any coincidence that on the same day, the evil editors at Amazon.com decided to systemically delete every last one of my 90-plus well-reasoned, articulate and objective reviews?

I think not.

Perhaps I overreached somewhat. For instance, referring to the movie The English Patient as the "best critique of the British single-payer health care system ever committed to celluloid" might have been a bit... oh, I dunno, over the top. And I suppose giving Amber Frey's tell-all memoir five stars and calling it an "invaluable how-to guide on picking up desperate, single massage therapists" could be considered callous and insensitive.

Fortunately, I managed to save my reviews for posterity here. And maybe, over time, I'll begin contributing again, presumably under a different pseudonym. Who knows, maybe ultimately I'll rise back up into the vaunted echelon of the top 2,500 Amazon reviewers (watch out "iheartcats57" of North Spittle, Arkansas -- I'm gunning for you!)

Or maybe I'll start torturing the folks at Barnesandnoble.com instead.

WHATEVER YOU DO...

Don't get pulled over in Marshall County, Alabama. Meet the sheriff.

I was raised in era, the 1940's as a child and the 1950's as a teenager, which I remember with great affection.

[snip]

Parents could allow their children to go to a movie without having to screen it first because the good guy always wore the white hats. There was no question who the "Good Guy" was. Even the "Bad Guy" in the movie didn't use foul language.

Say what you will about Hitler -- at least he didn't have a potty mouth.

It goes on and on, hitting all the expected talking points, but my favorite part is the reference to the halcyion 1940s and the 1950s. Let's just say I've lived in the South long enough to know that what he's nostalgic for isn't Big Band music.

RECOMMENDED: SHAUN OF THE DEAD

Nothing like a quiet night in with your significant other, watching a romantic movie after the kids have gone to bed. Well, what passes for a romantic movie in our household, anyway.

The movie's a hoot--a clever but predictable premise you could jot down on the back of a business card, but so perfectly executed and well acted it's impossible not to laugh. A lot. In short, it's a romantic comedy for people who don't like romantic comedies (but do like zombies). Think Army of Darkness meets Four Weddings and a Funeral meets I Spit on Your Grave--or maybe that other well-known horror of horrors, Notting Hill. In fact, that's probably how it was pitched in the first place.

SO LONG, HFS

And hola, el zol. (I don't speak Spanish, but I'm guessing that, loosely translated, "siempre de fiesta" works out to "music everyone can agree on--even the boss.")

Long before the airwaves were paved over and strip-malled, WHFS was a legendary alternative-rock station. I remember listening to it when I was in high school, back when it was still on the trailing edge of being "cool" (the trailing part, though, is probably why I had actually heard of it). It had an awful signal back then, meaning that tuning it in from the Virginia suburbs was something of an accomplishment that, in its own right, gave one some limited hipster cred.

Of course, if HFS hadn't spent the past decade trying to attract a sliver of that lucrative 15-to-17-year-old skateboarder demo by playing Lincln Park (or whatever 3l33t misspelling they chose for their moniker) on the half-hour, maybe it wouldn't have come to siempre time. Of course, the same could be said for almost every cookie-cutter station out there. A few years back, I agreed to periodically listen to snippets of new "hot rotation" songs as part of an ongoing automated survey purportedly used to refine playlists at Top 40 and AC radio stations. A robotic voice would call, play six seconds of some crappy, angry-but-not-angry-enough-to-worry-the-parents Matchbox 20-sounding song and ask me to rate it from 1 ("like") to 6 ("really, really like"). The song would invariably suck, so I'd stab my phone's zero or star key until they'd pipe another snippet of an identical-sounding song down the line, which would also invariably suck.

Not surprisingly, the robot stopped calling me after a handful of times and, as we all know, Matchbox 20 achieved its longstanding goal of world domination shortly thereafter. Hey, don't blame me -- I tried.

MAYBE THEY'RE JUST UPSET THAT YOU CANCELED MARMADUKE

Here's the most brilliant idea I've heard all week: Calling people who've canceled their newspaper subscription and asking them to reconsider by pointing out that you publish pieces that are supportive of the president. (Also note the patronizing comment about interacting with the huddled, non-cocktail party-attending masses -- "If they want to talk, that's a bummer.")

Hey, if declining circulation revenue is the worry and you have no qualms making what's essentially an implicit offer of fealty for cash, why not just cut out the middleman completely and go straight to the source?

(via Poynter).

DO NOT TAUNT HAPPY FUN IPOD, EITHER

See the footnote at the end of the display type touting the newest iPod's size? Here's exactly what the legalese says, buried amid a raft of other fine print involving AAC bit rates and Apple's always-questionable battery claims:

2. Do not eat iPod shuffle.

I don't know which explanation is more horrifying: that some corporate attorney billed upwards of $250 an hour coming up with that disclaimer, or that somewhere out there, someone might actually confuse a Flash player with a stick of Feenamint.

FOR $240,000, I'D WRITE A FLATTERING PROFILE OF... WELL, OF THIS GUY

Move over, Jayson Blair and our friend with the soggy cheese on the private island off Sri Lanka. There's a new kid in town:

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same.

The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that aired during the show in 2004.

Williams said Thursday he understands that critics could find the arrangement unethical, but "I wanted to do it because it's something I believe in."

The top Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. George Miller of California, called the contract "a very questionable use of taxpayers' money" that is "probably illegal." He said he will ask his Republican counterpart to join him in requesting an investigation.

Yeah, don't hold your breath.

Wow. Bear in mind that along with being a "pundit" (whatever that means), this guy is a newspaper columnist. I hate to add to the self-righteous rhetoric that pervades a profession that has long favored self-righteous rhetoric over actual ethics, but this is truly astonishing. I'm almost sick to my stomach.

(via USA Today via Eschaton).

REQUIEM FOR A MEGTRON(tm)

After two years at my current job, my ca. 1994 Megtron(tm)(R) PC has finally growled menacingly at Mothra for the last time. Much to my amazement, I now actually have a brand-name computer running this strange, futuristic OS by the name of -- what do the kids call it again? -- Windows XP.

But my Megtron is still sitting forlornly in a corner of my office, waiting for me to offload the last of my files (assuming I can without it locking up). And every time I look over at it, memories wash over me.

• No more rock-tumbler-like "fan" sound.
  
• No more waiting for 2 minutes and 20 seconds for Microsoft Word to load (I timed it once when I first started working here, largely out of disbelief)
  
• No more walking out of a meeting to see thick smoke billowing out of my office after my Megtron's attempt at self-immolation.
  
• No more thinking I'd get a replacement PC after an inconsquential mishap like a fire, only to have the IT folks have it up and running again in 20 minutes (which, I guess, makes sense when you're talking about a machine with roughly three moving parts).
  
• No more worrying about it crashing if I did something unadvisable, like attempt to work on two files at once.
  
• No more trying to pop in a CD before remembering that the Megtron concept of a CD drive -- a permanent, hermetically sealed tomb for any item foolishly placed inside -- was a bit different than mine.

It's been a long decade, faithful friend. May you slumber in peace at the landfill.

(Note: I did a Web search to look for an image of the Megtron(tm)(R) logo, and apparently this particular brand can now only be found in Yugoslavia, Germany (presumably what used to be East Germany), and other decidedly non-Coalition of the Willing countries. But check out the great price on this German site. Who says you don't get what you pay for?)

THE TRUE TRAGEDY OF IT ALL

Leave it to the Post to capture the full dimensions of the devastation wrought by the tsunami last week:

There were 15 of us gathered around the dinner table, from four continents, celebrating Christmas on a fantasy private island in the Indian Ocean... Hoots of laughter greeted my brother Geoffrey as he instructed us how to slice the Stilton cheese he had brought with him from England. On no account must the Stilton be dug into with a spoon, he insisted.

Sure, more than 150,000 people died, but I'll bet that Stilton got really, really soggy.