"the holy slow train" -- b. dylan

Suckers bringing the realness at the RNC in St. Paul:

"If you 'just tripped,' why are you pepper-spraying Jeff?"

Lindsay "Warhol Recursion" Lohan still exists. From Wikipedia:

Lohan has yet to comment on the exact nature of their relationship, stating through her publicist that she "wants to keep her private life private." When pressed by a paparazzo to deny the rumors, Ronson responded, "Are you retarded?"

Things that make that much sense:

Paparazzo: "Deny the rumors!"
George Clooney: "Am I hungry?"

Paprazzo: "Deny the rumor!"
Lisa Kudrow: "What is a quark?"

Paprazzo: "Deny a rumor!"
Winston Churchill: "Come here often?"

Two great album titles, one deep-sounding-because-we're-French-and-half-literate song title, and the my favorite band name ever:

Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
Everything All the Time
Everything Is Everything
Girls Are Short

In conclusion, Michael Johnson looks like a haggard Eddie Murphy, Tony Stewart looks like a fat John Cusack, and it is hilarious to spend a year smoking up every day and getting super fat before getting completely over it and regular-size again. That must be the biggest perk of being young and male.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Fact: Alaska's state motto is "North to the Future." That is the second-best state motto after "Live Free or Die" (Nü Hampshire). The worst is Ohio's---"With God, All Things are Possible" ---because it is not true. ("Cincinnati? Do you mean Cincifratty Brohibro?" "...No."). HILARIOUS.

Mission Impossible Two, oh my God: people take off their faces in that movie like you and I walk down stairs (not that often, but with an air of aggressive 'of course'). The stressed characters (all of them; calm down Tom Cruise!) rub their temples and then, as if an afterthought, un-face. Dept. of Come On: director John Woo also made Face/Off. Some kinda formative childhood trauma he must've had. Then again, MI2 came out in 2000, when websites still asked you if you wanted Frames. The past is a foreign country: they face the future less figuratively there.

The word 'aggressive' is soon to join 'random' and 'awkward' in the graveyard of killing overuse. The millions of guilty will face no jury. 'Absurd' is endangered.

"Not at all" is a bizarre way to say "You're welcome."

"Thank you."
"No! Nooo!"

"Fuck you, fuck your fuckin' pizza, and fuck Frank Sinatra." Casting an Italian guy as a pizza shop owner is like casting a black guy as a criminal or inmate.

"Okay, get in the cell. Nice. Also, there is no movie."

--America

This post being a hodgepodge, I will tell you that Thousands's Ricky sent my family a thank-you sausage after crashing at our house. The packaging says this: "ARE YOU KIDDING ME? That's the best summer sausage I've ever had!"

Ricky, everyone: I am not kidding you.

NERDING: keeping climate change super cool

The origin of the common idiom, "The sky's the limit," is thought to come from Don Quixote. But I don't even think that OG D.Quix would be able to fathom the absurdly cool applicability of his statement to one of today's most high profile advancements in green architecture.



Looking at the current rate of expansion and population increase of us human-beans, it is estimated that by the year 2050, 80 percent of people, of which there will be 3 billion more, will live in urban centers. To match this demand for food while the land to grow it on becomes more scarce, it has been proposed that we mimic our urban progress by building farms up. Not only will this high-density solution provide sufficient space to supply a growing need, it will also allow for crops to be produced in a controlled environment at the source of demand, maximizing production while renewing and reusing resources, minimizing the cost of transport, and allowing for our natural spaces previously used for agriculture to recuperate.


The Vertical Farm was conceived by Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia in 1999, and has grown from an imaginative but inconceivable solution, to a distinct developmental possibility. It's all over the webernets. Check it out.

Big Feet in Georgia

Today I angered a Russian who does contract work for my company by making a side comment about his country's occupation of Georgia. Not exactly tactful, but neither was that whole invasion thing on the night of the Olympic opening ceremonies. Alexi the Russian and I later bonded when he overheard me lament the fact that I was working overtime, and without a flask at the ready.
Russians have very good hearing.
Especially when they're KGB.
...




Also: Georgia USA, now known as "the other Georgia", found Bigfoot. They even have an official site on the matter. Freezepops for everyone!


(photo from CNN.com, and from a mushett family album)

dropping the baton

I would vote Bob Costas into any office in this country. Small and intelligent, the man is loosening up gloriously as the Olympics continue. When both the men and women of Team America lost the 4x100 relay, Costas welcomed us back into the womb-like NBC studio by announcing that USA Track had "laid an egg in the Bird's Nest." Like most of the Thousands staff, I care about puns more than my physical safety.

But the Olympics are also hilarious not-on-purpose: "Cuban Athlete Is Barred for Kicking Referee in the Face".

You'll be flabbergasted to know that I am not the only person in and around the internet making Olympic jokes: in their current issue, the New Yorker's Nancy Franklin bemoans Misty May and Tall One's "Victoria's Ill-Kept- Secret" outfits, and the masterful Anthony Lane draws terrifying comparisons with the fascistic foreplay of the 1936 Berlin Games.

I am going to be drafted by Google into the war against Ruso-China.

Below, the assembling of a Denver installation called "I See What You Mean" by Lawrence Argent. I love the title, in all likelihood because it smacks of LOLcats.



Can you blame him? The bear just wants to hang out. "Give me art and companionship!" he seems to say. The bare blue necessities.

(Photo credit: the City of Denver, I think.)

BROlympics Coverage

I wonder how the American Gymnasts feel about the current investigative efforts being conducted by the IOC in attempts extract correct ages of the Chinese Gymnasts.

Sure, they must be aggravated that "cheating" occurred. That the Chinese team employed an unfair advantage by entering their lighter more flexible capri-sun-drinking no-fear-having middle schoolers. But what must really piss them off is that it was in fact these baby-teeth-havers who beat their very well defined asses. They got beat by little girls. Really little girls. Really little tiny people with hello kitty backpacks. Simply put, that realization must suck. But probably not as much as the concurrent realization of these young Chinese gymnasts, that at age whatever, they have probably already had the most rewarding experience of their lives.They do have big shiny medals now though (Medals that I personally hope they get to keep), and I bet they'd make great spies.

That said, who wants to train for the 2012 trampoline team with me? I'm thinking we should probably go for the gold.

(Photograph from Telegraph.co.uk)