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BUSINESS NEWS OF THE DAY:
Right after introducing its dazzling new iPhone iPod, Apple Computer announced that it was changing it's name to simply Apple. In a related development, Blackberry maker Research in Motion announced that it was changing its name to simply FUCK'D.
TRUISM OF THE DAY:
Whoever said laughter is the best medicine has obviously never had a herniated disc.
AFTERTHOUGHT OF THE DAY:
I may have put that (or something like that) in the blog at some point in the recent past. If so, let me apologize and retroactively submit the Nietzchean concepts of forgetfullness and repetition as my "Themes of the Day." And let me also blame it on the Vicodin.
IRONY OF THE DAY:
Last night I was busy watching the out-of-touch, blindly steadfast, intellectually minor Queen of England as played by Helen Mirren and missed the out-of-touch, blindly steadfast, intellectually minor President of the United States as played by some confused looking guy with funny eyebrows.
That said, I must applaud Bushie's plan. Secure Bagdad!!! Brilliant! Why in the WORLD didn't someone think of that sooner??
OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:
Ultimately, the only relevant questions in psychology are: What do you want and what are you willing to give up in order to get it?
RUMINATION OF THE DAY:
I still insist on asking for a small or medium regular coffee rather than a tall or grande americana at Starbucks--the gratuitous gesture of protest by the unhappily colonized consumer. But I am beginning to suspect that it's more rebellious to use the proper Starbucks vocabulary while making the two finger quotation marks gesture. Or maybe it's most rebellious to simply use the terms themselves without comment or histrionics. Indeed, my question really is: Is conformity the new rebellion?
POLITICAL OBSERVATIONS OF THE DAY:
a) The soaring encomia for Gerald Ford were thinly veiled indictments of George Bush. A legacy of honesty, decency and humiliy versus a legacy of deception, callousness and faith-based arrogance.
b) The sordid cell phone video of the Saddam execution with the guards chanting "Moktada! Moktada! Moktada!" (for the murderous Shiite leader) ressembled nothing so much as a terrorist snuff film and delivered the brutal and sad verdict on the war: We have replaced a secular murderous tyrant with a religious murderous tyrant.
DESCRIPTION OF THE DAY:
He had an unerring instinct for calling at precisely the wrong time--"precisely the wrong time" being defined precisely as any time he happened to call.
REPRESENTATIVE ANECDOTE OF THE DAY:
Saddam and the black-masked hangmen quibbling like 4th graders in the moments before his execution. "YOU go to Hell." "No YOU got to hell!" "Mommy, he started it." "No mommy, HE started it." The juxtaposition of the most solemn and macabre and the most silly and undignified must have been something to witness. And yet, an appropriate summation of Saddam's bizarrely contradictory life (and perhaps, to some extent, of all of our bizarrely contradictory lives).
Which suggests the aphorism of the day.
APHORISM OF THE DAY:
Pettiness: The lasting human legacy.
PET PEEVES OF THE DAY:
a) It's a bad sign that my most frequent e-correspondent this week is a guy I hardly know who, during his exotic trips, sends extremely long mass mailings that are intended to romance some woman on the list of addressees. I resent both reading e-mails that clearly are not really addressed to me that put me in the position of the involuntary voyeur.
b) Witnessing the sickening viral like spread of a new business cliche "Out of Pocket." A cliche that rankles even more than the ordinary cliche for being a solecism, a linguistic abuse, a shameless semantic perversion. Indeed, "out of pocket" originally meant that you'd laid out a certain amount of money out of your own pocket in expectation of reimbursement. But now it's been misused into the corporate vernacular as meaning "I'm not around" or "I'm away"--as if normally, they worked not in an office, but a pocket. It makes one almost nostalgiac for the good old linguistic indignities of "irregardless" and "infer" (when "imply" would be the proper term).
DESCRIPTION OF THE DAY #2:
At the 40s era Salon big band benefit, there came a moment when each of the lovely young ladies who had graciously agreed to dance with the strange old man suddenly realized that that pungent aroma they were smelling was emanating from him and that they they were stuck with it for the duration of the song. You could see the moment the realization registered (oh THAT is where that acrid smell is coming from!) and the associated attempts to disguise their disgust in the interests of protecting his feelings. Like so many things, it was funny and horrible and touching all the same time.
REFLECTION OF THE DAY:
James Brown, Gerald Ford and Saddam Hussein. Another unlikely triumvarate enters eternity. One couldn't be blacker. One couldn't be whiter. And the third couldn't be crazier.
RIGHTEOUS MEDIA MOVE OF THE DAY:
The NYT publishing photos of all 3000 servicemen killed so far in Iraq--thus putting an undeniably human face on this unconscienable fiasco. And just in time for us to announce that we're sending another 21,000 troops into the fray.
BEHAVIORAL ANALYSIS OF THE DAY:
The two forms of food-dropping denial. One is the famous "five second rule", wherein you acknowledge the drop but remain in denial as to its hygienic implications. The other is dropping food in one's own residence and remaining in denial about its having happened at all. You know: Someone drops a food item in his own home, gives a brief, perfunctory glance downward, doesn't see anything and so rationalizes that maybe it didn't really happen. This second form of food dropping denial has the more troubling characterological implications.
I suspect these two commonly operative modes of food-related denial have their corrolaries in the interpersonal realm.
UNFLATTERING SELF-REVELATION OF THE DAY:
In my most bitter of moments, I want to rename my blog The Teddy Vegas Book Depository and take Lee Harvey Oswald-worthy verbal sniper shots at the passing procession of life.
NEW YEAR'S MESSAGE OF THE DAY: (VALUE MAXIMIZATION OF THE DAY)
"I just wanted to wish you a happy and healthy new year. And in case I don't speak to you during this calendar year, let me also take this occasion to wish you a very happy and healthy 2008."
RANDOM SINGLE SENTENCE PORTRAIT OF THE DAY:
He loved to invoice promptly.
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Posted on 1/11/2007
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