The World Last Week [Not totally accurate, since this issue was published two days early]
-The Taliban took responsibility for a car suicide-bomb that killed 40 in Pakistan, claiming that the villagers in the Buner district were operating in collusion with the security forces.
-Alexander Nevsky, who is featured in an old Russian movie that George Lucas used as inspiration (stole, sort of) for the opening sequence of The Empire Strikes Back, was selected as the greatest Russian of all time in a countrywide vote that 5 million people participated in. Bad news for Stalin, who came in a close second, and bad news for Russians, who apparently have stopped caring how many of their own citizenry were killed by Stalin. Unless "great" now means "bloodthirsty."
-2008's Miss Hispanoamerica was arrested with a bunch of gunrunners. She claimed--oh man, this is sweet--that they were "going shopping." Who does that? Who gets pulled over with a bunch of drug-traffickers in two trucks containing a fucking arsenal and says "hey, we were going shopping." That's like trying to explain the dead body of a co-ed in your trunk by saying "I'm on my way to vote."
-David Axelrod (he's the guy who came up with the "Time for change" Obama slogan) got stuck with the unlucky task of having to explain why in the hell people are going to have to listen to creepy ass Rick Warren deliver the opening prayer for January 20th's inauguration celebration.
-Are we tired of hearing/reading about Rod Blagojevich yet? They only give the guy a couple of sentences here, but that story never stops, does it? Dirty shithead. He looks like a sweaty version of one of those Lego people.
-Kuwait's Petrochemical Industries (which is a subsidiary of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, which is state-owned) bailed out of a planned multibillion dollar deal with Dow Chemicals. KPI would have taken over 50% of several chemical factories, which seems like a far bigger deal than that whole "please don't sell Budweiser to Belgium" thing from last year. Dow Chemical sells that much ownership in their company to a small Middle Eastern country? Odd that wasn't a bigger story. (In this magazine, I mean. I think we all know why it wasn't a bigger story on television news. "If it bleeds, it leads", that sort of thing.)
-The flipside of being tired of the Rod Blagojevich story is never being tired of the Bernard Madoff story. The upcoming book/film/television mini-series is going to be massively entertaining. (One doesn't exist yet, but oh shit you know it's coming.) Suicide count is now at two, I believe. Okay, that last part is less entertaining.
Leaders
-It's Gaza, of course, that takes over both cover and leader this week. As is the standard with the Economist, the opener article isn't pure journalism but op/ed. Unsurprisingly, the opinion is one that's firmly in the middle, choosing to cheerlead neither side. (Considering the sort of vitriol that any Israel/Palestine story gets, regardless of publication or stance, I wonder how much anybody enjoys opening the letters bag or checking the inbox following the publication of these sorts of articles.) Here's how it started, one more time: Palestinian groups in Gaza fired almost 300 rockets into Israel from December 19th to the 27th, and on the 27th, Israel began it's bombing campaign. (New reports, not mentioned in this issue are on CNN where Hamas refers to previous Israeli violations of the cease fire.) Due to the massive disparity between the Gaza rockets (which killed very few people during their off and on bombardment over the last three years) and the Israeli bombing campaign (which killed around 350 people killed in the first four days), it's been very difficult for global government to support the Israeli response. Of course, that's nothing new--any cursory reading of the United Nations feelings toward Israel showcase the perilous lack of global support (excepting, of course, the United States) regarding the majority of their decisions. Still, it's difficult to argue with Barack Obama's statement last July, when he said, "If somebody was sending rockets in my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that." It also seems to be only a matter of time, if reports are accurate, for the Gaza rocket launchers to do more damage: more lethal rockets have arrived in the area, and they've started to extend the radius at which they can fire them.
The Economist points out that it's likely that all the Gaza rocket-launchers are trying to gain is an end to the economic blockade that has kept the area in a state of almost inhuman poverty--while nobody would argue that the methods are sensible, and it would be massively preferable that Hamas quit calling for the end of Israel, the economic blockade has indiscriminately punished the people in the area, and Israel does itself no favors by starving the entire population. As the Economist points out, Israel has to know what everybody else does--that the bombing campaign isn't going to work. What the article doesn't go into (that I'd like to know), and I'm sure somewhere there is one that does, is why exactly Israel--who have one of the best secret services and one of the most well-equipped and well-trained defense forces on the planet--haven't been able to shut down the various tunnels that Hamas uses to get these rockets into Gaza. The efficiency with which Israel protects itself isn't an urban legend. Why they can't shut down tunnels, in an area that is bordered almost completely by them and the ocean--that's a story I'd like to know more about.
A later article deals with the concept that some (Amnesty International and Nicolas Sarkozy) have argued in recent weeks for proportionality in death count--that it's somehow not a "just war" because one side (Israel) so clearly outmatches the other (Hamas) in terms of ability, training and equipment. As the article points out, this is a cheap, stupid argument--anybody who's ever played Risk knows that you don't try attacking another country when you're equally matched unless you absolutely fucking have too, and that the goal of war is never for both countries to settle the bill equally in death tolls--but the article also points out that the reasons for going to war have to meet a standard wherein the good outcome beats out the bad. Israel's argument--that they are operating in defense following the rocket attacks--works for some, but it clashes with Palestinians who argue that there's is a "right to resist" the loss of their homes in 1948. Either way, philosophizing is sort of the armchair hobby of those not, you know, watching their fucking kids die.
-The euro celebrates it's tenth birthday this week, and the Economist is here to give it a huzzah. They mention that the currency had weathered more than its share of criticism, but they don't get specific--usually they like to name names when it's time for a "told you so" game--that makes me wonder if they were part of the "euro will never work" choir. Either way, they're clearly on board now, and even look at the precarious future for the currency as one that's worth whatever sacrifice will have to be made. (Of course, there's also the major problems inherent if one of the complainer countries wanted to bail out at this point. This article makes it sound like any current Euro country would pretty much destroy it's own economy for a while if they decided to abandon the currency.)
-It's not just a birthday for currency this week, but also time to celebrate the 50 year anniversary of Fidel Castro's ascendancy to the seat of Cuban godhead. The Economist has a birthday cake, three articles tall, the first of which is this op/ed calling for a "long overdue change", the second a small slice of reminder that it's been hurricane season for the country and they've yet to recover, and the third being a full-on briefing that talks about the estimable successes (as well as miserable failure) of Cuba since Castro came along and changed the world forever. Bay of Pigs, the Missile Crisis, a resounding note of contempt for Stephen Soderbergh, and an acknowledgment of where Cuba got it right (the years of quality health care and education are two)--it's all here, and it's pretty informative stuff. Just don't expect Raul to read it--he's got other things on his mind.
-Man versus ocean: ocean always wins. There's a 16 page feature on the ocean this week, this leader article is merely the doom and gloom introduction. Scientists think we'll lose a quarter of all marine species in just a few decades, the oceans continue to expand due to melting ice, and there's a mass of discarded plastic that swirls around in two clots in the Pacific Ocean (both clots are the size of the United States). Best of all, there's no quick fix, and even if everything changed tomorrow, it could take thousands of years (or more!) for the oceans to repair just a few years of damage. At some point, I think we'll get to stop pretending we care about a "future world for our children" and then things will get really interesting, Nero's Rome style. I plan to shove a pickel up my ass and sing the Led Zeppelin catalog on top of the ball at Epcot Center.
-Maybe my favorite article they've ever published, just because it's so sarcastic in dismissal of pretty much the entire class of people who use terms like "Social Networking" without acknowledging its inherent douchebaggery. Apparently the Economist has gotten a little sick of young people talking about themselves--while the newsworthy part of this article comes up later in the issue, this is just a call to arms against the young. Adorable in its rudeness.
Letters
-If I never hear that joke/truism about Ginger Rogers "doing the same thing as Fred Astaire, only backwards and in high heels" ever again, I still will have heard it enough times that it's become a dealbreaker when it comes to carrying on a relationship/conversation/cab ride with the person who said it. It's the irritating statement equivalent of somebody wearing a C.S.I. Miami t-shirt.
United States
-Well, this has to be a first of sorts. The Economist compares Barack Obama to Saddam Hussein and the Turkmenbashi, because various civic institutions are looking to name things after the upcoming president. St Louis trying to rename Delmar Boulevard after Obama, and a Long Island elementary school has already dropped the Ludlum name for "Barack Obama Elementary" after a student led campaign. As the Economist points out, there's a good reason why you usually wait to do that until after you're sure you don't have a politician who is...well, like most politicians. Sleazy. Or dumb. Or just bad at the job. That's not to say that he will be, but it is to say that there's nothing wrong with waiting--which is sort of why we've always waited before. Oh well.
-A report on the state of America's unemployment-insurance program, which suffers in comparison to pretty much every other country that has one. Benefits only last six months, which is usually enough for people to find jobs when the economy isn't totally fucked up--not so much when it is. Congress actually got involved last year, working to extend benefits with the passing of two pieces of legislation--a rare success for something everybody in America seems to hate until, you know, they need it for themselves. One of the things that's supposed to work to keep the unemployment coffers full is called "experience rating", which is when companies that consistently lay-off employees have to pay higher payroll taxes, hopefully forcing them to figure out a better way to do business, or at least to force them to pay for putting undue strain on the system--as is the usual, a lot of state governments have bent to the will of the local corporations and eviscerated the way that system works. Some stuff is in the cards, but it'll be up to Obama to make it happen. Whether he will or not? Unknown.
-Back in 1900, a new tradition was suggested: a bird count. 27 people participated. Just last month, 59,918 people participated. I think you're supposed to be impressed, and while a dyed in the wool geek like me with intensely antisocial interests isn't wearing a good-for-judging suit, I'm really sure that I don't care, at all, that almost 60,000 people joined in for some kind of holiday related bird watching event. I just don't think that's newsworthy information. I realize there's some argument that "if it's not hurting me, why do I care", but that ignores the fact that it is hurting me. And I want to hurt it back.
-Have I mentioned these silly pieces the Economist has been doing, where they pretend to be reading emails to Barack Obama off his BlackBerry? Because I think they're stupid. And kind of juvenile. And almost product placement. And that I wish they would stop.
-He didn't get the obituary page because of Harold Pinter, but he probably would not have gotten it anyway, so Lexington is handling the Samuel Huntington obituary. Huntington, most well known for his "Clash of Civilizations" best represents the now long-dormant strand of hard edged liberal thought where cynicism (and to some extent, raw pessimism) walked in stark opposition to the sort of neo-ridiculous fantasy and pop conspiracy found in today's Nation or in the crazier stances of Z Magazine. While conservatives eventually found ways to lionize him as one of their own, Huntington was a much more complex thinker--a lot of thought went into his broad generalization style of historical interpretation, and while it's been years since he was somebody you'd call "in touch with reality", it's too bad that his legacy is one that will now be sullied by those who intepret his thought in sound-bite level (or cheap bloggery summarization) missives to prop up their own meager thinking. He wasn't right all the time, but his legacy, and his hard work, deserve better.
The Americas
-As has been noted following the early publication of this issue (The Economist had a holiday break, just like the Economist versus Idiot), Hugo Chavez has, for now, ceased his oil assistance program to US cities. While that isn't mentioned in this article, the reasons why are: Chavez has based his economic decisions on oil prices that have long since dropped and on a production scale Venezuela can't meet. At the same time, he's still pushing to change the constitution so that he can stay in power after January 2013, he's still trying to buy influence all over the world, and he's the major reason Cuba hasn't completely dropped into 3rd world level poverty. There's a good bit of information here, some you know, some you might not--but it all boils down to the simple fact that his days just may be numbered. Hopefully, the US has learned it's lessons over the last decade and will let Venezuelan citizens handle the transition on their own.
-The only other article in the Americas section is about the death penalty in the Caribbean, who had the first execution in eight years on December 19th--only one day after the United Nations General Assembly voted 106 to 46 for a global moratorium on the death penalty. All English speaking Caribbean countries (there are 12) are still kill-hapy, just like America. This article, which was apparently more important than whatever Canada and Mexico were doing over the holiday, is an update on their reasons.
Asia
-They let Sheikh Hasina Wajed out of jail, and she went on to shock the hell out of the country and win the election in what actually turned out to be a pretty clean one, a rare moment for Bangladesh. The army, who took over the country in a pretty mild 2007 coup (some violence, but not horrifying) was at a loss for words, especially since Hasina won in a landslide. Whether she and the Awami League will be able to meet the voters main desire, for "cheaper food", in the face of a military unlikely to allow someone they incarcerated on trumped-up (although still generally true) corruption charges will be determined in the coming months.
-There is some temporary Chinese gambling being tried out--a really shitty horse race in Wuhan was well-attended. More like a free lottery than anything else, where participants could pick (for free) a horse in two of the five races. If the horse won, they got twenty scratch off tickets, the highest prize of which was 30,000 yuan. The Communist government still technically considers gambling a "social evil", but they can't argue that China could use some of the profit that they're missing out on from the estimated $700 billion in underground gambling. Time will tell, and it'll be interesting to see if they try to propose some kind of philosophical argument to excuse the change...or if they'll just pretend it's always been this way.
-Here's some of the positive changes in Turkmenistan under the new president, whose name is (and I triple checked the spelling) Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov. (Rolls off the tongue. doesn't it? Musical, that one.) The months of the year are now back to their original names--the previous lunatic who ran the country had changed them to honor his family and favorite books--the bans on opera and the circus have been lifted, all references to the previous president have been removed from the national anthem, the number of years children attend school have been increased, and the new guy has restored at least 100,000 pensions to people who had seen them removed for no good (non-crazy) reason. He's also left the country to meet people in China, Russia and the US, looking into possibly selling some of the gas reserves that are contained within the borders--he was received with much love. Turkmenistan is still considered "one of the most repressive and authoritarian states in the world", but let's not take a dump on the new guy yet. People can go to the circus again!
-Despite the horrific bloodshed in Mumbai, the election in Jammu & Kashmir (the only state in India with a Muslim majority) went pretty well. Omar Abdullah won, and he mentioned that he hadn't worn his old bullet-proof vest once on the campaign trail. (He wore it every single day during the 2002 campaign.) Things are still pretty nerve-wracking with Pakistan--the border between Jammu & Kashmir and Kasmir still claimed about 540 lives last year--so the quiet election was a nice surprise.
Middle East and Africa
-The Gaza stories are already linked above, and the only thing left in this section is about the New Year's coup in Guinea, led by Captain Moussa Camara. It was a bloodless affair, announced over television and radio following the death of president Lansana Conte. (By the way, "president" disguises that he was a shitty dictator, running the country for 24 years.) Moussa Camara has said his priority is to deal with corruption, hold elections--but time will tell. As the article points out, the former dictator came to power in a coup. Times, they may not be a-changing.
Europe
-Well, that's interesting enough--although the big story out of Russia recently has been the shutdown of European gas delivery, which is actually developing as I type this, and will still be going when anybody reads it--this article came out too early too deal with it. But it's an excellent piece of background on some of the reasons why "what just happened" happened when it did. It also deals with the frightening riots that are starting to take place in various parts of the country, and the even more upsetting brutal beatings that shut those protests down.
-Here's a story you don't read about much--Muslims converting to Christianity in Kosovo. This little phenomenon isn't really something you'd say is "growing", and most of the information in the article comes from clerics, priests and pastors--never the most reliable source on the numbers of the faithful, but it's obviously happening. Interesting enough, but a little too close to lifestyle journalism for my taste.
-Some changes in Turkey, most of which involve a new television network that will feature round-the-clock Kurmanji, the primary Kurdish dialect. Up until now, Kurds had to accept a maximum of four hours a week in their mother tongue, and that was under tight control. A group of intellectuals issued an online apology to the Armenian genocide--which they still didn't call a genocide--and 25,000 have signed it. (The prime minister said the petition was a mistake, but still, it's a sort of progress.)
Britain
-Hey, it's time for a closed store round-up, United Kingdom style! I'm going to follow the Dirk Deppey rule and not include any of the stores having price-slashing sales, but I will say that "All of the ones still open" is pretty accurate. But Woolworth's, MFI and Adams--see you around! Oh wait. See you never. This article is a long one, but it's worth looking into if you're interested in the retail climate, which is bad and still heading for worse. As an aside, isn't it getting irritating to see/hear people say dumb shit about how "things aren't that bad" all the time? As if the economic crisis that struck, and is still tearing apart, the banking industry was going to change prices at Wal-Mart the same day it happened? I barely comprehended economics when I took it in fucking high school...why is it that I'm feeling like the smart one here? It's sort of like that we-fucked-up-the-ocean thing--like, I want to feel sorry for you because you lost your job, just like I want to feel bad about how the world is overheating, but if you're so fucking lazy you're not even going to try to understand why you might lose your job, it's kind of like: who gives a shit? It's like that old Bill Hicks routine about a guy killing himself because of what he'd heard when he played a Judas Priest album backwards--even if it were true, which it isn't, how much of a sum loss is somebody that fucking dumb?
-Britain has a serious problem with knife crime, and, like Bunny Colvin before them, have a problem with cops "massaging" the numbers. The solution? Hamsterdam, obviously.
International
-Only 3.5% of the students in America come from other countries, and one of the major reasons seems to be that America won't do business with student recruitment consultants, paid advisers that are often hired by foreign students to track down and recommend international schools. (Half of Chinese undergraduates have paid advisers for these same reasons.) As it is now, most agents route the students into Australia or the United Kingdom, but this could all change now that a non-profit organization has taken on the role of ensuring the advisers operate with some kind of ethical and quality standardization. Interesting? Sort of, yes. Two articles worth of interesting? Not really.
Business
-Despite President Bush deciding to cover the asses of General Motors and Chrysler, the Economist points out--in such basic, step one/step two detail that it would be insulting to think I could put it more succinctly--that all this has done has postponed the problem for Obama to deal with it. The circumstances that put America's biggest car companies in front of the government, begging for hand-outs, show no signs of abating. On top of that, all those hybrid cars we're supposed to be looking forward to saving the planet with? They aren't selling enough. God, the news never stops, does it?
-Here's another article about how much the Economist--and everybody who isn't part of this group--kind of hates the Net Generation and their obsession with constant positive feedback. Specifically, it focuses on a business called Rhypple that exists so that employers can help out younger employees who can't, or won't be their own barometers for the quality of their work and require constant feedback on questions like "What did you think of my presentation today." If I had to seriously take a part of my day to respond to this kind of nanny bullshit--and it would be a daily thing--I think I'd shoot myself in the mouth.
Finance and Economics
-Jeez, Buttonwood is predicting a 2009 equity rally, wherein the stock market starts doing well while the market burns. It's happened before, and it could happen again--but does he have to be so gleeful? And if the worst did occur, and one of those huge employers actually did lay-off a huge amount of workers, how long would they suffer on shit unemployment while watching stockbrokers get rich all over again?
-While it would seem that already struggling companies would face the current economic climate with a serious disadvantage from their peers--like how Toyota will probably survive, whereas one of Detroit's big three won't--Swiss bank UBS is fighting the trend well. They were one of the first to suffer when the subprime crisis began, but their response was quick--pulling in private loans when they were available, government money when the trend occurred, and streamlining (lay-offs) the company at a rapid rate. Although things aren't stable, and won't be for a while, UBS is handling things better than their peers.
-You know who has a better mortgage system than everybody else? The Danish do. You know why, beyond what this article says? Because Denmark is the size of a Lincoln Mercury.
-Here's some more on Bernard Madoff--I'm not going to waste time explaining who he is, we all know at this point--but I do like the second to last paragraph of this article, where it's pointed out that one of Madoff's competitors wrote a 19 page anaylsis entitled "The world's largest hedge fund is a fraud", and he included 29 specific reasons why Madoff was pulling some dirt. The guy turned that into the SEC back in 2005. That's how long people haven't been doing their fucking jobs at the SEC. (Actually, probably a lot longer, but this is some specific, date-having shit.) But hey, I'm sure the SEC was more concerned with the common man, the regular taxpayer, and that's why they totally missed one of the biggest financial frauds of all time when the evidence got sent to them in the fucking mail four years in advance.
Science and Technology
-The Science department spent most of their focus this week on their 16-page report on the sea, and the two articles this week are both centered on the same topic: numbers! It gets into math a bit, but for the most part, it's an article detailing current studies on infants, old studies on people who--due to brain damage or disease--have lost the ability to make mathematical references, and a little bit on the old Plato v. Constructionist fight. The second article is a bit more math-focused, being about the obsessiveness with which some mathematicians fight against the use of negative numbers. Your interest in the subject is your own, although it is rather "huh" to find out that enough people allow their day old babies to participate in scientific surveys. (Not because there's anything wrong with that, it just seems kind of odd that somebody will have a child and be ready to play guinea pig with it in the first 48 hours of said kid's life. Wouldn't they want to hang out with it, shit like that?)
Books and Arts
-Some British guy published a non-fiction book about hedgehogs. Really, I don't care--can't honestly think of who would--but it is sort of interesting that the book was called A Prickly Affair: My Life With Hedgehogs when it came out in Britain, but when it came time for it to cross the pond, they changed the name to The Hedgehog's Dilemma: A Tale of Obsession, Nostalgia, and the World's Most Charming Mammal. There's never going to be a time when I'd want to read an entire book about hedgehogs, but I would definitely clear my schedule to meet whoever it was who said "We should definitely publish this in America, but let's change the title." That was part of somebodies job, you know? That's sort of fascinating.
-Did you know the story of Oliver Cromwell's head? There's an entire book out about the story of Oliver Cromwell's head. Sure, it's a head that saw some definite airplay--cut off after he was dead, stuck on a pike outside Whitehall, stolen by a soldier when the wind knocked it off, eventually becoming a weird "hey, this is sort of a museum piece, this dead guy's head with an iron spike shoved through it."--but still, a 238 page book on a dead dude's head? For 23 bucks? I guess it's a big library thing. Oh, but don't read it, it's apparently poorly written.
-A nice little article regarding the ascension of Thomas Campbell, who became the new director and CEO of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 1st. It's a little hard to not get excited by this piece, as Campbell's promotion from curator was a big jump for the man, and the article describes what seems like one of those rare moments where a cultural institution decided to hire the best person for the job instead of just picking somebodies kid or mistress.
-Azar Nafisi had so much success with her memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran that she decided to drop another memoir, Things I've Been Silent About. The memoir circuit is going bananas about the whole thing, because such a thing is just unprecedented. Iran, crappy families, growing up smart--gosh, it's like the literary gods just decided to make 2009 the best year ever in the first weeks.
-Usually when the Economist does a double book review, they either shape it so the review is about both books at the same time, or they give equal word counts to both--not so this time. In fact, neither of these two books seem to have much in common besides general topic--the Middle East--as well as their recent publication date. But one is specifically about Martin Indyk, the diplomat most well known for his involvement in the Clinton attempts to negotiate peace between Israel and Palestine (which is the primary focus of his Innocent Abroad) and the other is about--well, everything. It's America's entire relationship with the Middle East, starting with Eisenhower to now. That second book, by Patrick Tyler, is barely even reviewed in the two meager paragraphs at the end of a two page article. Weirdly, it also sounds a lot more interesting--certainly less masturbatory than Indyk's "Hey, I tried. gimme some money for trying."
Obituary: Harold Pinter
-Honestly, a god who walked among mortals. One of the best playwrights of the last 100 years--that's not the Economist saying that, it's me, but I doubt they'd disagree. This is the first obituary from this magazine I've read that's used the word "fucking"--they may have done it before, but I haven't seen it. While two of those usages come from a quoted poem Pinter wrote, the third usage is all the Economist. "..the work of his critics, who could go and fuck themselves." Hell yes. I don't do this often, but let's just quote directly:
Hallelujah!
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
We blew the shit right back up their own ass
And out their fucking ears.
Next week in The Economist Versus Idiot...well, I'm not exactly sure. Gaza, the regular crew will all be back from their holiday--this was a short issue of the magazine, so who knows? But we're back on schedule here. Happy New Year, and sorry for the long delay in between updates, to all two of you who read these.
-All art from the Economist unless otherwise noted. I would credit the blogger who seems to be responsible for the Obama/St Francis picture, but after a cursory reading of some of his/her writing, he/she is a fucking neo-Nazi, and not in an interesting/how fucked up is this kind of way, but just in a creepy Mcveigh kind of way. So fuck that guy/girl, he/she will get no linkage here. The Chavez with a parrot picture comes from some website called Latin American studies, although I doubt they own the image,Farjana Khan Godhuly took the picture of Sheikh Hasina Wajed for the AFP.
'Adorable in it's rudeness.'?
I think you meant 'Adorable in its rudeness.', you ungrammatical fuck!
Posted by: Tam | 2009.01.12 at 03:19
bah, you've corrected it, now my comment just looks silly instead of wittily pedantic. Oh well, while I'm here, I ought to mention I enjoy reading these posts more than reading the damn magazine which often just sits there glaring at me, demanding to know why I haven't read it or cancelled the sub yet.
Posted by: Tam | 2009.01.13 at 08:51
ha, you don't look silly at all. I'm always screwing up the grammar. Thanks, I'm glad to be back doing these. They make 24 more entertaining.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2009.01.13 at 08:58
Is Turkmenistan the country where the dictator made all the people participate in a religion where they worshiped him? Because that shit is crazy. Going to the circus has got to be a relief after that.
When it comes to stories about decapitated heads impaled on pikes, nobody's going to beat the one Alan Moore wrote in Voice of the Fire. Just saying.
Oh, and references to The Wire always win.
Posted by: Matthew J. Brady | 2009.01.13 at 16:53
Yep, that's Turkmenistan. That dude has actually been dead for almost two years, but the new guy is moving very slowly. Still: the circus! I wonder what else is still banned. Like, they got the circus and the opera...but what about modern dance? Barbershop quartets? Can people double dutch? Where's the line being drawn here?
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2009.01.14 at 01:01