Category: Uncategorized

I have such a huge journocrush on Dana Priest. She’s just so damned good. With most good stories I read, I can at least conceive of getting them myself — I can see where the leads developed, how the info came out, et cetera. But pieces like this are just beyond me.
(Maybe it’s a regular crush too: she’s pretty cute.)

The liberal anti-anti-Wal-Mart backlash. I’ve expressed my comparatively pro-Wal-Mart feelings before here. I grew up in a Louisiana town too small for a Wal-Mart — and trust me, the town fathers would have killed to get one.
My biggest problem with Wal-Mart critics is that their real complaints often aren’t about labor practices or trade with China or employee health care. They’re about class, pure and simple: a disdain for poor rural people and the things associated with them. Throw a thin veneer of “style” and hipsterness on top of it — in other words, call it “Target” instead of “Wal-Mart” — and they’ll gladly rave about the convenience and bargains. It’s the same bullshit reflex that afflicted so many of the people I went to Yale with.
I have relatives who have tried really hard to get jobs at Wal-Mart because they’re considered a better place to work than the other options available. When I lived in Louisiana, I did a ton of shopping there. I just went to the newly opened Wal-Mart supermarket in my Dallas neighborhood for the first time, and let me tell you — it was miles nicer than the safely middlebrow Albertsons I’ve shopped at for four years.
As one guy puts it in the comments to that post: “boy…talk about some typical, ignorant, stereotypical limousine liberal comments on this thread…as someone who actually grew up poor…fuck you.”

Why Google Book Search is awesome:
“‘Joshua Benton,’ Ethan Podell spoke. ‘Are you prepared to earn your passage unto our great master? Our [sic] you a worthy servant of Satan?'”
With writing and spelling that good, it really makes you wonder why it’s only self-published.
Oh, and this:
“‘Everyone, this is Josh Benton, he’ll be joining our group.’ Leesa opened the meeting.
“Josh sat on the small metal chair with legs open and slouched over his legs. He wore a baseball cap pulled low onto his forehead and tilted on an angle. Angry gray eyes glinted from under the brim, giving each member a hostile once-over.
“‘What brings you here? A big burly guy like you couldn’t have been raped,’ Kim asked, noted for her aggressive nature.”
It turns out that this “Josh” fellow is instead a rapist who — and this is where things get strange — was ordered by his judge to attend group counseling sessions with rape victims. Because, you know, that’s just what a bunch of rape victims want — a rapist in their counseling midst.
Some times, I wonder if I’m ready to write a book. Seeing writing like this really bucks me up at times last that.

Arrested Development fans: Have you ever noticed that Buster has never, in three seasons, spoken to Lindsay? Extremely curious.
On a more macabre note, everyone’s favorite female Canadian serial killer, Karla Homolka, has been unconditionally freed by a Quebec court. Here are some details of her case. Karla got only 12 years despite, with her husband Paul Bernardo, raping and killing three young girls, one of them her younger sister. The sentence was controversial because the plea deal was worked out when public perception was that Karla was purely a victim of Paul’s abuse; it turned out, over time, that she was more of a willing, even excited participant in it. (Bernardo’s away for life.) Sick lady. More background from the CBC.

The 100 greatest Finns of all time. Heavy on politicians and military types. Only names I recognized are Jean Sibelius, Linus Torvalds, Paavo Nurmi, and Mika Hakkinen. Speaking of Finland: The Continuation War, one of the best-named wars of all-time.
Did you know that, linguistically, Korean is closer to Finnish than it is to Chinese? True.
The best yo-yo work of 2005.

A different kind of white flight. Fascinating. The Journal does such a good job with stories like this.

Curious who your wife has been calling on her cell? Apparently, for $110, you can find out. Creepy. More here.
If you were trying to name your new school of architecture, wouldn’t brutalism be just about last on your list? Particularly if “oppressive” and “inhumane” were the top terms critics used to deride it?

A sub N squared times delta (S plus 1) over the root of L times V sub O = that girl at the bar is kinda hot, isn’t she?

Quoth our elected leaders: “Butt fucking. You think that’s art?” With a special appearance by an 18-inch walrus penis bone. More on Alaska.
Cheerleaders as drug dealers. Of a sort. The pharma sales industry has always seemed like one of the most superficially corrupt around. Note photos by ex-DMNer (and neo-Avedonite) Allison V. Smith.
Related: The trailer for Side Effects, an indie film on pharma sales. Man, it looks bad. Dogmatic.
Speaking of Good Records, they’re moving to a new location on Greenville at year’s end — which means current inventory is all at least 30% off. EVERYTHING MUST GO! Hurry over to build your indie cred in as cost-efficient a manner as possible.

The best novelty rap records of all time. Including “You Didn’t Use Your Blinker Fool!” by Rappin’ Granny, “The Contra Rap” by Rich Little (doing the voices of Oliver North and Ronald Reagan, among others), and “Check It Out” by Wayne and Charlie The Rapping Dummy (“dummy” in this case meaning a ventriloquist’s dummy, not a slur on the less academically able).
Sad fact: I’m 99% sure I had a 45 of “Ronnie’s Rapp” by Ron and the D.C. Crew in the mid-1980s. I thought it was so damned cool.