Random Acts
on February 4th, 2010My business card is very plain. Either you know what I do and you want to hire me, or you don’t.
The other day I met a lawyer who asked for my card. I handed it to him. He looked at it, scanned it for pictures, bells and whistles, glitter and gewgaws. Finding none, he announced, “When you get a little further along and have some accomplishments, you’ll have something to put on this card.”
And I thought, “Whew, he’s not the lawyer for me.”
My kitties passed away. My family doesn’t want any more pets now. I am lonely for kitties.
I play with my bunny slippers. I talk to them and pet them and feed them carrots. They leave no dooky.
Alas, they do not purr or cuddle back, but I pretend.
Here are some links:
A very amusing review of a manga about King Ludwig, a book which sounds so bonkers I have to read it:
This is the kind of manga where characters routinely threaten to kill each other, then promise their undying loyalty, then trade gunfire with evil saboteurs, then strip naked, dress up as medieval knights, and/or say things like, “If the salvation of my soul could be achieved through the unselfish death of the one I love… Hornig, will you die for me?!”
Classical music artists have the worst sales EVAH.
The dirty secret of the Billboard classical charts is that album sales figures are so low, the charts are almost meaningless. Sales of 200 or 300 units are enough to land an album in the top 10. Hahn’s No. 1 recording, after the sales spike resulting from her appearance on Conan, bolstered by blogs and press, sold 1,000 copies.
An article about a scientific study of spite:
The moral seems to be that, while spiteful behaviour can be a powerful force for keeping a society functioning smoothly, the structure of that society must be able to contain and channel those spiteful urges. “Social norms are a moral scaffold that keeps aggression and spite under control,” says Herrmann. Societies that have strong laws tend to be those where individuals have a strong sense that they should treat strangers fairly – and are willing to punish cheats informally through gossip and ostracism.
I had a lot of problems with that article and the premise of the study. In order to punish the scientists for their bad, I will now gossip about them. The dress makes them look fat!
At The Wall Street Journal, we learn that fame is painful and drives people crazy. And if you don’t believe me, I will show you latter day pictures of Michael Jackson.
With Gould and Hughes, hypochondria was mostly a matter of keeping the world at bay. Today’s celebrities seem to advertise their fears and symptoms. The most obvious precursor of our present hypochondriac culture was Andy Warhol, who lived most of his life in a state of anxiety regarding the ailments and imperfections of his “bad body.” The artist’s diaries record an array of obsessions, including acne, baldness, weight loss, weight gain, aging, cancer, AIDS and brain tumors.
Erik Larsen poo-poos the comic creators Bill of Rights.
Okay–so Percy Pro decided I should be able to reprint my comics…why does that hold any weight with anybody? We’re not forming a country and establishing rules–a few guys got together and made a list of “rights” with no authority invested in them by anybody.
I not only don’t think it’s “viable today” but as far as I can tell it’s never been viable.
Here comes Valentine’s Day. And so, a book review of a book about romance.
Nehring’s book is an elaborate defense of ferocious, passionate love, a love that “at its strongest and wildest and most authentic…is a demon,” a religious faith and a “divine madness.” In Nehring’s view, this love is endangered after an embattled twentieth century that brought us Freud, feminism, pheromones and friends with benefits. Love in the twenty-first century has never been freer or easier, she writes, and yet, paradoxically, it has been “defused and discredited…. Streamlined, safety-checked, and emptied of spiritual consequence.”
