@Foster Kamer: Someone just emailed me to say that those oil-absorbing sheets are made of the same material as those toilet seat covers they have in airports/shady bars. This is like an issue of Heloise. THE MORE YOU KNOW!
For Tinsley, who just finished designing the packaging for a new line of Dior-by-Tinsley facial blotting papers, it seems a diversion. "When you’re with someone for seventeen years," she said, "pretty much half your lifetime, you just kind of want to get away a little bit and really try to relax and just have a nice time."
*sigh* It's getting more and more expensive to send your daughter off to various colleges to find the right male for mating purposes. 10 to 1 three couples above are divorced in five years.
Thanks, I really enjoyed this, Phyllis. But now I'm jonesing for B&J's Phish Food ice cream.
Plus, why can't one of the pretty, nth-degreed marrieds have the Tourettes? Why do they only seem to get invisible disabilities i.e., personality disorders?
RICE?! And that lowly scum was allowed to even look askance at that poor woman? Not my daughter, buddy. I would have embedded a croquet mallet in his shallow, ignorant brainpan before he could even inquire as to whether she wanted fries with that.
@clintosterholz: As a Rice grad, I can't decide if I should feel gratified or annoyed at Ms. Nefler's assessment of my alma mater in the context of Altarcations.
Reply button is broken for me again, for about the 20th time in the last month...
@saintjim: yeah, and the funny thing is the railroad business *has* been profitable over most of that time. All of the major railroads from the early 20th century still exist. They just carry freight now, and have consolidated names like CSX (instead of Chesapeake and Ohio) and BNSF (instead of ATSF and Burlington Northern). And they make more money than the airlines, most of the time. And without them, our economy would collapse. A train can carry many times more freight than any airplane, and almost all of the products you use were carried by one or more of these railroads at some point on their journey to you.
In fact, the railroads are hardly an example of an obsolete business that was forced under by more technologically advanced competitors - if anything, they're the opposite. They're an example of how an obsolete industry can reinvent itself and stay both profitable and relevant even while being mostly removed from public consciousness.
The newspapers could learn something from the railroads. What, exactly, I don't know - the railroads did get a bailout in the 1970's from the government (in the form of Amtrak) and that won't be coming for the newspapers. But the basic lesson of shedding unprofitable parts of your business and refocusing on your core work seems pretty universal.
Eric Schmidt, when he was at Sun, actually made websites slow today by f-ing up Java. Newspaper sites are weighed down by precisely the things that are supposed to save them: tons of Flash ads and Web 2.0 comments widgets. So, the scourge of Flash and AJAX, necessitated by Java's failure on the client -- over which Schmidt presided -- is what's making these sites slow. Now Schmidt's going to offer newspapers his technical expertise to fix it. Amazing.
It's easy enough to fault print media for not adapting themselves to the internet. But even in hindsight it's difficult to say what they should have done.
Business school profs have long tut-tutted the fact that not one major railroad ever attempted to start an airline. They didn't realize that they had to keep up with the times, right?
The only problem is that over the last 75 years the airline industry, collectively, has been a money-loser. Too much competition, too little profit. Likewise, it seems insanely difficult to come up with a way to use advertising to cover the cost of running a website.
@gerbilsoutofexile...is cheap and easy: What the hell were you doing under that VW bus in the first place? Sounds fishy to me. Everyone knows hippies never check under the bus before they take off down the boulevard.
@malke2010: No. The cops know exactly how much the drugs are worth because two weeks from now those same drugs are going to be used in another "sting" operation whereby said cops try to bust some other desperate boob for attempting to purchase said drugs. Besides, the fucking cops, sure as shit know what the drugs are worth because that's how they name their price whenever they manage to bust someone big enough and ballsy enough to bribe them into letting them go. And don't think it doesn't happen. It does. A lot more than you think.
This is some lame-ass bullshit. The fucking world is going to hell in a handbasket. Those fucking criminal assholes on Wall Street are still robbing the whole world blind. The bible-thumping fuckwads in the heartland toting automatic weapons continue to break into churches to shoot other (innocent) bible-thumping civilians. The economy is imploding faster than Britney Spears' marriage, George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld still have not been impeached and this is how the good people of law enforcement choose to allocate their precious fucking resources?!?!? Busting a bunch of stoned-ass, admittedly dimwitted, hippies for possession of illegal drugs?!?!? When the fuck is this country going to get it's fucking priorities straight? Pot doesn't kill people. Ok?Neither do shrooms or acid. Wanna know what kills people? Automatic fucking weapons in the hands of morons kill people; but we haven't managed to criminalize stupidity OR AK-47's, so leave the fucking hippies alone already. Jebus! (Besides, if you do somehow manage kill yourself while taking shrooms or acid, then your chances of making it too much further in life were already slim to begin with.) Fuck this shit. I'm out.
@bjonston: Good rant. I haven't listened to them in a few years (I loved Junta), but I dl'd all three of the shows and am looking forward to listening to them. They are creative musicians.
08/17/09
08/17/09
08/17/09
08/17/09
08/17/09
For Tinsley, who just finished designing the packaging for a new line of Dior-by-Tinsley facial blotting papers, it seems a diversion. "When you’re with someone for seventeen years," she said, "pretty much half your lifetime, you just kind of want to get away a little bit and really try to relax and just have a nice time."
08/16/09
08/16/09
The Gawker "miscellaneous contributors" are a dedicated group, I guess.
Loved the post, BTW - sheer genius. (But I disagree on one point: Maine lobsters are not overrated.)
08/16/09
Plus, why can't one of the pretty, nth-degreed marrieds have the Tourettes? Why do they only seem to get invisible disabilities i.e., personality disorders?
08/16/09
08/17/09
08/17/09
06/01/09
06/01/09
Also, the flying hot dog gag is stolen from the Dead, who probably stole it from Sammy Davis Jr. or somebody.
06/01/09
05/31/09
04/08/09
@saintjim: yeah, and the funny thing is the railroad business *has* been profitable over most of that time. All of the major railroads from the early 20th century still exist. They just carry freight now, and have consolidated names like CSX (instead of Chesapeake and Ohio) and BNSF (instead of ATSF and Burlington Northern). And they make more money than the airlines, most of the time. And without them, our economy would collapse. A train can carry many times more freight than any airplane, and almost all of the products you use were carried by one or more of these railroads at some point on their journey to you.
In fact, the railroads are hardly an example of an obsolete business that was forced under by more technologically advanced competitors - if anything, they're the opposite. They're an example of how an obsolete industry can reinvent itself and stay both profitable and relevant even while being mostly removed from public consciousness.
The newspapers could learn something from the railroads. What, exactly, I don't know - the railroads did get a bailout in the 1970's from the government (in the form of Amtrak) and that won't be coming for the newspapers. But the basic lesson of shedding unprofitable parts of your business and refocusing on your core work seems pretty universal.
04/08/09
04/08/09
04/07/09
Business school profs have long tut-tutted the fact that not one major railroad ever attempted to start an airline. They didn't realize that they had to keep up with the times, right?
The only problem is that over the last 75 years the airline industry, collectively, has been a money-loser. Too much competition, too little profit. Likewise, it seems insanely difficult to come up with a way to use advertising to cover the cost of running a website.
Sometimes there just isn't a good option.
04/07/09
03/10/09
I say this as someone who was once run over and dragged down the boulevard by a very stoned hippie. Recovery was long and painful.
And if you're stupid enough to haul your stash out in public, tough shit on ye. That's what the port-a-potty is for.
03/10/09
Meh, one person does not prove much.
Try riding a motorcycle to work every day and see all the dumb shit people do behind the wheel. You would start hating all of humanity.
03/10/09
03/10/09
03/10/09
03/10/09
PS
I still like Phish. So sue me.
03/10/09
03/10/09
03/10/09
03/10/09
03/10/09
I really cut back on listening to them around the time that "Billy Breathes" came out.
That said, the song "Maze" is one of those songs that instantly takes me back to high school. Love that track.
03/10/09
03/10/09