Indeed, to get a sense for what it’s like to be 18 and Cuban these days, imagine going to a high school that won a miraculous and inspiring football championship in 1959. The guy that quarterbacked the team some 50 years ago is still wearing the same damned uniform—only now he’s the school principal, and he’s decreed that all academic subjects must be studied within the context of that bygone championship game. Everyone at your school is now an honorary member of the football team—though the stadium is condemned from years of neglect, no actual games have been played in decades and anyone with the temerity to point out this discrepancy is summarily sent to detention. On most school days you’re required to study your principal’s old pass-routes and blocking schemes and tell him how ingenious he was to have devised them. All of which would seem insane were it not for the fact that tourists from wealthier schools—schools with actual, functioning football teams—are constantly visiting your class to marvel over how wonderful it was that your team triumphed 50 years ago, and gush about how proud you must be to have such innovative role models. In this context, it’s easy to understand why young Cubans are underwhelmed by the idea of Che: To them, he’s just another sepia portrait in the trophy case—handsome and intriguing, perhaps, but hardly relevant or revolutionary.
I’m in love with the ideas behind The Jejune Institute, a fake retro new-agey techno-cult, and an alternate reality game, all neatly wrapped into one deliciously absurdist package. We need more reality subversion these days. This shit is brilliant.
The first in a continuing series of home improvement tutorials brought to you because Barack Obama inspires me to give something back.
Tools: wrench, channel lock, kick-ass power screwdriver. Use tools as intuition directs you. Add anger where necessary. In the end, the toilet will comply.
To understand the thesis of actualism, consider the following example. Imagine a race of beings — call them ‘Aliens’ — that is very different from any life-form that exists anywhere in the universe; different enough, in fact, that no actually existing thing could have been an Alien, any more than a given gorilla could have been a fruitfly. Now, even though there are no Aliens, it seems intuitively the case that there could have been such things. After all, life might have evolved very differently than the way it did in fact. For example, if the fundamental physical constants or the laws of evolution had been slightly different, very different kinds of things might have existed. So in virtue of what is it true that there could have been Aliens when in fact there are none, and when, moreover, nothing that exists in fact could have been an Alien?
Stringer Bell from The Wire with pragmatic business advice for the American automotive industry seen here in season 3 episode 1.
(skip to 1:30 for this)
“Your territory ain’t gonna mean shit, if your product is weak. Go ahead and ask them motherfuckers trying to sell them Ford tentpoles and you got niggas riding around in Japanese and German cars in America all day. “
We must save Circuit City. In these dark times of bank failures and evil terrorist debts wreaking havoc upon our nation letting Circuit City fail would have a disastrous ripple effect. A financial tsunami like none before it…or like several before it. But even worse, it would take away one of the few remaining places to browse consumer electronics and not buy them. This cannot happen. Where else can non-shoppers go when they want to browse a flat screen before buying it online for 50% cheaper? No, Circuit City is just as important as AIG or FreddieMac, or that other beacon of American quality, the automotive industry. We must not let it fail.
After Ron Paul’s campaign the best the Libertarian Party can come up with is Bob Barr? This is perhaps the United States most Unelectable Mustache to date. I guess the fact that Barr has spent the last two decades fighting the War on Drugs, impeaching Clinton, authoring one of those no marriage for gay people acts, and oddly trying to ban the practice of Wicca in the military, means he finally got it all out of his system.
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