I am sure you will hear more about this from me soon.
Edit/Note: I just bought it and if the shipping information is accurate I will have it in very early January. Expect a full review and ridiculous photos as I intend to try everything in the book.
Now there was silence again. This time I was the one not talking. There was this weird lump in my throat, this tightness in my chest. I had this vision of the future — a ruined empire, run by number crunchers, squalid and stupid and puffed up with phony patriotism, settling for a long slow decline.
Fave Steve Jobs on why the CEO of AT&T is an asshat. Great read even if you don’t have an iPhone (which I don’t)
It was you, adults, all the adults in her life. The high school assholes too, but they’re in high school. You’re adults. She was thirteen years old and she was driven to her grave for nothing and there was nothing inevitable about this.
And you should understand that. You should go to her grave as a penitent every day of your lives, all of you, like Leontes and Claudio, and make of yourselves a lesson for others. This is the real world, so you won’t get the kind of results that Leontes and Claudio did. She’s never coming back.
You should just do it because it’s the right thing to do. Because it is, honestly, the least you can do. Because she wasn’t killed by this year’s sexy scary cyber-youth-trend. You could have saved her if you hadn’t ALL been so busy reinforcing values that are killing our daughters.
There is a lot of babble, panic, conspiracies, and speculation on the Internets about what the hell this spiral is.
Bad Astronomy takes the skeptical approach and explains how it could easily be a rocket spiraling out of control.
Know one knows for sure yet, but to assume supernatural or alien causes is a bit of a leap.
It also takes away from the true wonder of the moment. Even if it is “just” a rocket spiraling out of control, take a second to think about how something so mechanical and so mundane can craft something of such beauty and wonder entirely without intention.
I don’t believe I will ever stage an Improv Everywhere event in a strip club, but this story emailed to me by a stranger today is interesting:
Charlie,
I recently heard the “Best Gig Ever” story on This American Life and wanted to relay an experience I had. A few years ago, I and several buddies of mine decided to go to a strip club after work. We became sick of dealing with the hot girls who knew they looked great and expected everyone to offer them tips and praise. This night we decided to only tip the least attractive girl in the bar. When our “Queen for a Night” danced on stage, we clapped and cheered and each of us clamored to put dollar bills in her garter. Our enthusiasm proved very infectious as the other patrons soon decided this girl was an over-looked gem.
We soon discovered that this act of throwing off the balance of nature in the club produced unintended results. Our frumpy dancer began to gain self confidence and dance more enthusiastically throughout the night. This new confidence and patron cash flow changed the natural pecking order, frustrating the normally high earners. In fact, the whole thing was so upsetting to the pretty girls that one came over to a friend, demanded to know why he thought the other girl was so hot, and ultimately slapped him across the face. The bouncer witnessing the entire episode came over and threw the hot stripper out of the bar. It had to be the first time that a stripper is thrown out rather than an unruly patron.
As the evening pressed on, the bouncer felt he had to step in to reestablish the social pecking in the club and asked us to leave. Our “Queen for a Night” hugged and kissed each of us good night, while strutting around the bar with a hundreds of dollars stuck in her garter belt. She said it was her greatest night ever.