{ Monthly Archives }
November 2008
- Lust - Generally, I take a position in support of recreation, but in this case, something clearly went awry. When you’re nearing 40 with 3 kids to monitor and you come out of a blackout in the aftermath of being arrested for having sex in a Metrodome men’s room during a Gophers game, you’ve likely taken overindulgence to previously unknown heights.
- Gluttony - I know this is a little late, but I thought I might offer a few quick tips to readers who plan to take full advantage of the holiday season’s many opportunities to gorge. Just because no one else is trying doesn’t mean it’s not a competition.
- Hard and Fast: Allegedly, it takes between 20 and 30 minutes for your mind to translate the signals it’s receiving from your quickly swelling GI tract into an awareness of satiation. Whether you’re eating for volume or mass, you can use this delay to your advantage by eating like a sprinter. Breaks taken to breathe or sustain a conversation do little more than erode your window to set a personal record. Remain focused.
- Compactor: If you’ve ever watched Joey “Jaws” Chestnut compete, then you’ve seen how abdominal skeletal muscles can be used to the competitive eater’s advantage. Considering the informal nature of most family gatherings, I suggest taking a few moments after completing your first round of gorging to lie down and do a set or two each of regular and reverse crunches. Assuming you don’t vomit (suffer a “reversal of fortune,” in competitive eating terms), you should find yourself with a bit more room to munch. Well, I guess you’ll have more room either way, but my default position is anti-vomit.
- Surrealism - According to this story from CNN, another independent group of Somali militants now plans to wrest control of the Sirius Star, a Saudi super-tanker hijacked last week while laden with millions of gallons of crude oil (black gold; Texas tea), from its original pirates. Allegedly, the new group’s motivation derives from a sense that stealing from muslims, such as the Saudi owners of the Sirius Star, is more reprehensible than pillaging infidels at random. One doesn’t know whether to disbelieve this explanation because it would be fundamental to a caste-based moral system or out of reflexive skepticism.
- Escort - Tonight, 20/20 will be broadcasting an interview with Ashley DiPietro, better known as Ashley Dupre, sometime consort to Eliot Spitzer. This seems somewhat belated, given that the story of Spitzer’s involvement with the prostitute in question - through the Emperor’s Club VIP - broke some 7 months ago. Apparently, I’m not the only one scrambling for post-election content.
- Zakaria - Yesterday, CNN reported that the U.S. government had released a report projecting a decline of U.S. power and influence in the years ahead. One wonders how many of those involved in compiling this report had read Fareed Zakaria’s latest book, The Post-American World, the prescience of which has now been confirmed by none other than the fallible U.S. government.
Not unlike Ferris Bueller, Fareed is a “righteous dude,” but on reading his latest Newsweek column, one wonders if he has some learning about America yet to do. Sure, he’s correct to say that “We have the biggest houses and the flattest TV’s in the world,” and, in doing so, Zakaria displays the wit embodied by his “cool purple finger” comment regarding the asinine quality of Iraq’s first post-war elections. Fareed’s characterization of the American political divide as being one over the “size and role of government,” however, is insufficiently nuanced inasmuch as it appears to describe some nebulous concept of aggregate government size rather than the Constitutional argument about whether the balance of power falls to the federal or state level. While I understand that a single column lacks the length for a fully-matured description of American politics, this particular oversight neglects the systemic difficulty faced by a President attempting to mend the populace’s view of government as a whole.
- Gangsta - If, like me, you’re amused by Snoop Dogg but bemused by white-collar miscreant Martha Stewart, then you may not have seen the two of them cooking together. The segment is broken into halves on YouTube, with the first here and the second here. While the first half is all talk, the second involves cooking. [Spoiler Alert: Martha's secret ingredient for mashed potatoes is cream cheese; Snoop's is cognac.] Is anyone else hoping their next collaboration includes a single entitled “Insider Trading Was the Case”?
- Slaughter - Some people think the turkeys being slaughtered in the background of this Sarah Palin video are unnecessary, but I find the awareness of the man doing the slaughtering to be the clip’s more amusing aspect.
- Pardons - I mentioned the prospect of Bush’s inevitable late-term pardons the other day. Here is a Slate piece on that very subject.
- Skydiving - Opening the day at 7,552.29, the Dow has fallen just over 46% from its 52-week high of 13,990.65. At what point will all financial programs be forced to use Tom Petty’s song as their collective theme?