Monthly Archives: March 2008

24/7 Wall St. has a list of the 25 Most Valuable Blogs. Interesting to see the breakdown here on how they make their money, readership, etc. Unsurprisingly, the top (by far) is Gawker Media. Aside from Lifehacker, I kinda think that the Gawker scene is a bunch of bullshit. I loathe their main site, which is really just sassy gossip with a condescending hipster air (I mean, Perez Hilton is nothing but gossip, but at least it doesn’t try to be anything it’s not, ya know?).

I guess the troubling thing for me, and a lot of people, is the fear of corporatizing the blogosphere. Gawker has 15 blogs, ranging from sex to gaming. Yes, they all kind of have that Gawker feel to them, but the tone is increasingly seeming less individual and more of a style. I think that writers entering that scene might become encouraged to adopt the sassy tone and the snarky attitude, at the loss of their own voice. I mean, yeah I’m kind of a snarky fellow, but when snark becomes the norm it loses its effect.

For example, take Pitchfork Media, a site that is blessedly past its prime. A few years ago, Pitchfork was your destination for finding new indie rock/pop and reading unique reviews of recent releases. Sure, some of the reviews were a little over-the-top, but that was their thing, so ok. It quickly devolved into a circle-jerk of: Who can write the most overwrought pretentious bullshit? Now its a joke. All of the hipsters who used to suckle at its indie-teat have now deduced that its now cool to hate Pitchfork and ditched them. I mean, they are still popular, but that scene is dead. (PS check out David Cross’s classic column in Pitchfork where he skewers them for their evil evil ways.)

Ok, its about time for me to be grasping for a point to hold this all together. Alls I’m saying: Centralization in the blogosphere is new, precarious territory. Fads are fleeting and site fads are even worse (how much time do you think is left for Stuff White People Like?). Where does Gawker go from here? (PS I also like Gizmodo and Fleshbot)

Here, Via the One Laptap per Child (OLPC) program.

Some good stuff in there.

Ok… Now, I hate to jump onto the bandwagon, and I also loathe the politics of, “but if Obama lied Hillary would be all over it, so we’ll be all over her!”, but… Dammit, come on… This is as blatant as you can get. She doesn’t even really have a good excuse:

I, I, I, Look, I made, I, ya know, I uh made a mistake in describing it…

She just straight made some shit up. I mean, when Sinbad is calling you out, you’re in rough shape. As much as I hate the politics of smear, after all of the Rev. Wright bullshit, I really hope this sticks to her.

Ross Douthat with some interesting allusions.

Hey, remember OurTunes? Remember that awesome feeling you felt when you realized that your could grab music from your friends’ iTunes, merely by being in close proximity to their Mac laptop? Aww… them was the good old days…

Oh wait, now there is something much, much more incredible. Enter Mojo. Not only can you share your music via your airport, you can share it over the internet. Yeah. I/you can listen to your/my iTunes and share songs at the click of the mouse.

I encourage everyone I know to get on this service and let’s start sharing the wealth.

Email me to trade usernames.

Alarm Will Sound made this week’s Approval Matrix on the New York Magazine website. Not only that, but we are apparently the pinnacle of Highbrow meets Brilliant. Gewd Schtuhph!

Oh holy crap. And you thought Jane Eyre the Musical was a bad idea…

Full text

Yes. A brilliant speech. Probably the smartest, most honest speech I’ve heard a politician make in my lifetime.

Three thoughts:

1. I’m not saying that Obama doesn’t take politics and spin into account, but the fact that he would not disown Rev. Wright is a shockingly brave position to take. He rightly denounced his comments but wouldn’t toss the press the fresh meat they wanted.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Hillary wouldn’t have hesitated to sell out anyone who threatened her campaign. The same goes for McCain, and pretty much any other politican I can think of. Obama is tactful as well as moral though. He knows that transparent disowning of a close friend would only poke holes in his image as an honest, moral politician.

2. I’ve come to realize that the main thing that appeals to me about Obama is his intellect and eloquence. This is hardly surprising after enduring over 7 goddamn years of Bush. I want a president I look up to, a president I respect. I think this is his broad appeal. America wants to have a president they can be proud of again. His “lack of experience” doesn’t really bother me. Not to ya know, tow the line, but experience in Washington isn’t exactly something I look up to…

3. A criticism: Obama needs to ignore the conservative pundits. He mentioned them a couple times in the speech with a degree of bitterness. He cannot allow their insanity to affect him in the slightest. Responding to them and reacting to them will only encourage them. Everyone knows: do not feed the trolls.

5 years in Iraq…

I remember the beginning of the war very clearly. Back then I was much more of a lefty than I am now, so I was pretty active in the anti-war protests. I was also living in London at the time. It was strange to be an American in Europe during the build-up to war. Not a lot of love…

I watched the bombing of Baghdad (aka. Shock and Awe) on Al Jazeera while at a hookah bar I use to frequent. It was a pretty surreal experience. I was with a few friends who were also American and we spent the evening smoking strawberry flavored tobacco and watching the night sky over Baghdad light up with explosions. There was a oddly casual sense of, well, that we were fucked.

The odd idea I had to grapple with, and I still grapple with, is that even though I believed the war to be a horrendous decision, it was something that we as Americans bought, and we had to pay for it. Even though I thought it was a terrible idea, I had to hope that it went well. And actually, one of the things that disenchanted me with the left is that I came to believe that many writers and commentators actually didn’t want the war to go well. There seemed to be almost a delight in reporting the escalating death toll, as if each successive death was further justification for their position.

I simply cannot understand why so many on the left and so many libertarians demand an immediate withdrawal. The fact that our troops are dying is a terrible thing, but we made the horrific decision to go to war, we can’t just quit when our stupid decision yields less-than-appealing results.

Yes, yes, I know… The Republicans have been using the same rhetoric: “we can’t cut and run”, “we gotta stay until the job is finished”, etc. They are largely full of shit and always have been. But it doesn’t mean that they are wrong. As much as I hate to say it, I respect McCain’s position on the war more than Hillary’s. Hillary was for the war when it was popular and is against it now that it is unpopular. It is a profoundly cowardly position, the worst kind of opinion-poll-politics. McCain was for it when it was popular and is still against it now that it is very unpopular. Even though I couldn’t have disagreed more with his position, I have a certain respect for it.

What people need to realize is this: we as a country started this war. Bush didn’t start it. He may have lied, been unbelievably deceptive, but come on. It was pretty obvious that he was full of shit. The majority of the country was for the war. The majority of the people who voted, voted to reelect Bush. The war is killing our young people; the war is taking money from schools; the war is ya know, generally fucking up our country? Tough fucking shit America. This is a democracy. When we make a major decision like, say… blowing up a country and killing a bunch of people, there tends to be consequences.

It kills me that Americans and Iraqis are dying. I would much rather have the money and resources used to build our own country. But it would be incredibly hypocritical and destructive of us to renege on our decision to rebuild Iraq, no matter how fucking retarded a decision it was.

Woman Goes for Leg Operation, Gets New Anus Instead