Purveyor. Not of goods, but of good ideas

Friday, March 17, 2006

Entertainment is news. News is entertainment.

Jessica Simpson (no relation to Lisa or Bart—although they are all, I suppose, cartoons) has snubbed President Bush and that's enough to make headline news this week on The Drudge Report and elsewhere.

What? She's a political king maker?

Also in the This-Is-Important? category is the story of Tom Cruise and Isaac Hayes protesting an episode of the South Park cartoon show mocking both Cruise and Scientology (providing the answer—or punchline—to the query, in case anyone was asking: What's the similarity between radical Islam and Scientology?)

We are not just witnessing the blurring of entertainment and news, we're seeing the blurring of CARTOONS and REALITY.

Parker and Stone are my new heroes for releasing this statement in response:

So, Scientology, you have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for Earth has just begun...

Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!
That's the most appropriate response I've yet heard to the lunacy that is now our society's mainstream conversation.


Wednesday, March 15, 2006

A List of Annoyances, as told by a James Bond Villain

I didn't write this and don't know who did. I was just rummaging through some very old files on my hard drive, found this, and had to laugh...and share it with you. Best read with a Czechoslovakian accent:

Having an eye made completely out of gold annoys me.

It annoys me that I have to invite the freaks I hire as assassins and henchman when I have a Christmas party. Do you know how many fried shrimp a giant with metal teeth can eat? A lot. And try buying a sweater for a 500 pound Korean. How about doing a seating arrangement that doesn't make someone feel left out and start slashing the other guests with a knife.

I'll tell you what is annoying. When I say "take care of the situation" people always think I mean kill everybody. Then my own people shoot my corrupt Swiss banker who took me forever to find. It's a lot of wasted energy.

If someone wants to search an underwater city, any underwater city, for nuclear weapons, they should have a warrant. End of story.

It annoys me when my workers in different colored jump suits start fighting soldiers like they've all been trained in hand to hand combat. It's not easy to build a fortress in a volcano, you know. You need lots of people. Engineers, welders, geologists, architects, not to mention chefs and plumbers and people to clean and feed the snakes in the pit. The whole point of different jump suits is to separate my soldiers from my drones. I don't need some twenty dollar an hour dental hygienist getting in the way of a trained and qualified mercenary.

I also really hate electronic theme music they use on TV shows these days. That's music?

Oh yeah, it annoys me when you yell "Everybody CONGA!" and nobody does.

Am I right? Or am I right? Hello? Is this thing on?

My Best Smeller List: Addendum

Laurie Anderson interviewed in WIRED magazine in 1994:

A few years ago, Brian [Eno] began collecting little perfume bottles, just because he liked them. Then he began mixing the scents, making these incredible combinations. Now occasionally he goes to a big factory to do it. So when we did our last record, rather than sitting around afterwards talking about how we mix that, or who played bass, he took us all to a perfume factory, where we made a perfume. The secret of a really good perfume, Brian taught us, is that at its very core is something very, very stinky—civet—because the purpose of the nose is danger, to alert you. After that happens, then you can put on the pleasant smells. But first—wake up! So that’s one of the things we’ve paid attention to in making this record, that at its core is something that’s repellent, because those are the things that interest me.
Now that's interesting: the smell of perfume, the substance we use to evoke sexual attraction, is based on a substance—from a wild cat—that signals what might possibly kill us.