Spotted in my neighborhood

On the corner of Clinton and Stanton:

Click it, and it’ll be easier to read. Is this advertising? Are they going to follow this up with a “Then It Hit Me: I might as well buy an expensive handbag while I’m at it, so at least I feel better!” poster?

In any event, it reminded me this pile o’ ironic garbage from earlier in the year.

in Slate

A reconsideration of the movie (and soon to be musical) 9 to 5.

The Beautiful and the Damned

Keira Knightley is reportedly in talks to star as Zelda Fitzgerald (nee Sayre) in an upcoming F. Scott biopic. Which is all wrong. Before Zelda went completely nuts, she was only mildly nuts. And one of the most spoiled rotten brats, if Nancy Milford is to be believed, ever to have walked the earth. If she were alive today, she’d be a candidate for Exiled. I love me some Knightley but I don’t know if she’s willing — yet — to do unlikable. (Ellen Page, however…?) Besides, Zelda was pretty enough but not shazam pretty.

From the Independent (UK):

The film is written by Hanna Weg, who also wrote Enigma, and directed by Nick Cassavetes. It is to begin shooting in April, although the role of [F. Scott] Fitzgerald has not yet been cast.

Role of F. Scott Fitzgerald? They need to get Ryan Gosling on the phone. I think we can all agree on that.

“The technology is there; it’s an application issue.”

My friends know I worry about plastic. What are we gonna do with all those water bottles? My only idea so far: Big public sculpture. (Like the Watts Towers, but made of Fiji bottles.) I’m a history major, therefore…limited skills. So I was happy to hear of this engineering initiative by fellow University of Minnesota grads. Go go Gophers.

Very late notice

I’ll be at the Burgundy Books Fall Festival. 2:00 p.m. TODAY. Burgundy Books is located at 4 Norwich Road in lovely — I’m assuming! Never been — East Haddam, Connecticut.

the latest Google “How to Be Useful” alert…

…brings us to Malaysia, and advice on how to survive an economic downturn. First suggestion? Renew interest in your hobbies. “If no hobby, get one soon.” Then:

If you need income, then you may have to forgo your enjoyment for the time being and think seriously of how to be useful to others, especially those with cash so that when they are happy with you in whatever you were doing for them, they would or might give you some cash.

If you are without talent or ideas, and you are hungry, then I suggest that you go to the countryside or maybe your parents back home and go to the nearby forest and gather some fruits or vegetables or hunt for some meat in order to feed yourself.

Politics and Bad Editing

Every time I see a statement by Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton, I wince the way I do when confronted with emails written to loves lost five years ago. The unease hits fast, like a drag off a Marlboro Red. Then irritation settles in.

My first thought was that Burton’s sentences were too long. He just needed an editor. Read the rest of this entry »

the law of attraction

Once you’ve read about this quasi-philosophy — subject of How to Be Useful ch. 2 —  you start seeing traces of it everywhere. Like in Christopher Hitchens’ piece on Sarah Palin here:

Walter Dean Burnham, one of the country’s pre-eminent Marxists, used to attract ridicule back in the 1960s and ’70s by saying that Ronald Reagan would one day be president. He based this on various calculations, one of which was what I’ll call the attraction-repulsion factor. Previous candidates of the right, from McCarthy to Nixon, indeed, had expressed powerful dislike and resentment of their foes. That can work, up to a point, but the problem is that if you radiate hostility, you also tend to attract it. Reagan didn’t radiate it and also didn’t attract it. He went on, in a genial enough way, to destroy the Democratic “New Deal” coalition. I don’t think Gov. Palin has quite that sort of folksy charisma, but I am still not sure it’s entirely wise to patronize her.

[emphasis mine] I’d go one further: It’s never entirely wise to patronize anyone. Except for small children.