DinoBlog

Due to ultra-funky vibes blowing easterly off of a massive Lake Effects high-pressure zone, Kingremi and yours truly will be embarking on an odyssey, into the setting sun in order to investigate this highly unusual, but soulfully alluring weather front.

All inquiries can be sent via pigeon carrier to Chicago, Illinois or by electric telegraph to dino@dino.dino.

Having used gmail for a couple years now, I’m relatively free of spam.  At work, however, where we use outlook and have a pretty garbage server, I am treated to some very special forms of spam that seems to be targeted to me… it’s very intriguing.

While I would like to chronicle the most magnificent offenders (”DOn’t Kil baby EmbrRyo JESUs” was a favorite), I write today to make note of a more disturbing type of spam… one that tries to give me fake news.  Today’s was “China Fires Missile Over Taiwan”, but what it actually offered was an herbal remedy for increasing the size of, well, whatever you want, apparently.

Gasp!  Politics being intertwined with mythical cures for phallic insecurity?!  Say it ain’t so!

BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON!!!

This just in from the International Herald Tribune:

Iranian government spokesman: “[Israel] jeopardizes global peace and security.”

So Iran somehow has added global peace and security to its agenda, which is already crowded with such time consuming activities as:

1. Nuclear ”power.”
2. The manufacture and export of crucial industrial products like explosives.
3. Annihilation of Israel via Hamas.
4. Denying that homosexuals exist within its boundaries.
5. And numerous speaking engagements on the lucrative American university circuit.

I assume that all blogs are now feverishly chronicling Michelle Obama’s visit to The View.  I might as well do the same.

(Not that I watch The View or anything, not that I have anything against it, just, you know, I’m with my grandmother, and she’s watching it, and I’m here, and Obama’s on, so I just, like, yeah, kind of saw it out of the corner of my eye or something.)

Well done, Michelle.  If the whole politics thing doesn’t work out, daytime TV will come calling.  She did an excellent job of establishing the primacy of her role as a mother more than a politician’s wife.  Not only was this a smart political move, it’s a refreshing ethical one as well.  Debates will continue to rage over parenting responsibilities but I think she hit on a good point–there just has to be a parent present, and if it’s not Barack, it will be her, if it’s not her, it will be him.  Good to know.

An interesting politico-cultural development coming out of this election is the ability to be TV savvy.  Obviously, image and television have played huge roles in politics since Kennedy-Nixon, but it seems that its influence has grown exponentially, perhaps even disproportionately, since 2000.  I think it’s fair to mark SNL’s Gore-Bush debates as the catalyst.  It was a perfect storm of sorts–the candidates invited ridiculous caricature and the country was in good spirits, ready for a laugh.  How soon the results would turn tragic…

The role of television has expanded tenfold since then.  Now there is the Daily Show to contend with, and Colbert, and basically every single show that a candidate, or his or her spouse, can be squeezed into.  Is this alarming?  Should we be concerned about this?  It probably depends on our relationships with our television.

In a sense, all of political life is an act (regardless of whether it is true-to-heart or not, acting is occurring), so we shouldn’t be surprised to find candidates on television programs where they are asked to play to their character.  Talk shows accomplish this just fine, and hell, they even invite the possibility of the serious slip-up or brilliant realization that can make or break a political career, and who would want to miss that?  As for SNL et al, I would hope candidates could joke about themselves, even if it is an act for them to tolerate it.  I would be really uncomfortable with a leader who could not even feign self-deprecation.

This wouldn’t be happening at all if it didn’t bring results.  Politicians can mail leaflets to every home in America but they will be heard and recognized by infinitely more people in a ten minute segment on Leno.  Television, for better and worse, is a vital part of our democracy because of its ability to stretch across all socio-economic divides.

Every second of a candidates life is scripted, built up by statistics, tested in audiences, and refined.  Politics has always been a show, only now, we can check our local listings to catch it.

Well, the end of the school year sapped all of my time, but I’ll be back in full after this vacation.  In the meantime, Janus travels (apparently) to India.  I don’t believe a word of it, but he offers this wonderful note…

Congratulations to us. The Chinese government has deemed us to be subversive, splittist, and/or pornographic.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/17/asia/17softpower.php Take that, China commies.

An Indian business school has named a monkey god the official chairman of the school.

I guess Wharton’s reputation is safe for now.

Says the article:

“The position comes with an incense-filled office, a desk and a laptop computer. Four chairs will be placed facing the empty seat reserved for the chairman and all visitors must enter the office barefoot, said Vivek Kangdi, the school’s vice chairman.”

One can only hope they gave the monkey god a MacBook Pro.

Anyhoo, yours truly, the enigmatic and laconic third wheel of this blogging endeavor, is indeed off to India where he shall be spending the next two years working as an overseas recruit for Mahindra & Mahindra, an Indian conglomerate.

And now, continuing our production of Thomas Friedman at Brown University…

Part the Second, in Which Mr. Friedman receives one Poorly Written Apology to his Presumed Annoyance.

One day later, Gawker.com received this letter from one Rickie Kostiner, who identifies herself as a Brown sophomore and is apparently an ice hockey player.

Dear Mr. Gawker,
My name is Rickie Kostiner and I am a sophomore at Brown University. I am writing to apologize for the deliquiencies of my classmates this past Tuesday evening, when two students decided it was a good idea to throw pies at Thomas Friedman. Not only a respected journalist for your New York Times, Friedman is one of the most respected and famous authors to date, and I want to personally apologize for these students actions. I am embarrassed to even say that I am a student of Brown because of incidents like this. Brown has the reputation of being an overly liberal school, but actions like these make us seem just plain stupid. Obviously only thinking of themselves, these two students made a complete moquary of the entire student body, and really showed how selfish some people can be. I want to stress again how terribly sorry I am for my institution to carry this under their name. I have attempted to find other ways to reach Thomas Friedman directly, but I could not find a more direct way then writing to the newspaper in which he has been affiliated with. I saw your blog online and I just wanted to send my comments. Thank you and again I am so very sorry.
-Rickie Kostiner

In an excellent, if subtle, demonstration of Ringkomposition, Ms. Kostiner’s apology comes as obliquely as the pies that struck Mr. Friedman just one day prior. Little Rickie had “attempted to find other ways to contact Thomas Friedman directly,” but her Brown education prevented her from discovering that Mr. Friedman’s email address is actually published on, of all obscure places, the New York Times website. Following her instincts, which undoubtedly contributed to her admission to an Ivy League school and will help her as a future executive/public servant/fast food restaurateur, she sent an email to Gawker.com to apologize to Mr. Friedman.

But doesn’t she have a point? Using poignant French terms, Ms. Kostiner deftly writes that the deliquiencies of her classmates did show them to be “just plain stupid.” Oh, and the moquary? Yes, you’ve never heard of that because it’s actually an expensive cognac that goes especially well with a Dominican Cohiba, which Ivy League elitists swill by the hearths of their social clubs as they enumerate their superior spelling skills.

Now we take leave of the stage, with Mr. Friedman’s green-pied countenance, the mysterious reasoning of the Greenwacs Guerillas, and a bewildering apology from an unassociated Brown undergraduate. Through the twists of fate and their own hubris, none have retained dignity. 

FIN.   

Pursuant to Mr. Janus’ comment about Thomas Friedman’s recent run-in with Brown University students, it is now my pleasure to present the following two-act news piece.

Part the First, in Which Mr. Friedman receives two Poorly Thrown Pies to his Left Arm.

Here we observe the would-be baked-goods terrorists, nervously sitting in the first row of the audience, only to abruptly launch themselves onto the stage at Mr. Friedman’s person, un-athletically lunging two classically comic custard pies. The missiles’ swerving trajectories land obliquely upon Mr. Friedman’s outstretched left arm and spray the floor with what appears to be a sickly green whipped cream substance. His body wobbles in a flailing, awkward, ultimately successful attempt to regain balance as he wipes the gooey foodstuff from his body. The seal of Brown University silently witnesses her sons humiliate her; I, for one, am surprised that it did not burst into tears of blood out of shame.

The New York Times columnist’s signature mustache was caught in the crossfire of stray custard shrapnel, but neither he nor his facial hair needed medical attention.

Despite having employed two extremely uncoordinated persons to pie a noted journalist, the whole incident seems to have been planned. By an organization of no less stature than the Greenwash Guerillas, an environmentalist group that has pulled off such infamous, hard-hitting, and intelligent protests as … well, the 2008 pie-ing of Mr. Thomas Friedman. I guess the varsity baseball team never did see an environmentalist on the mound. The Guerillas left this note:

Thomas Friedman deserves a pie in the face…

• Because of his sickeningly cheery applaud for free market capitalism’s conquest of the planet.
• For telling the world that the free market and techno fixes can save us from climate change. From carbon trading to biofuels, these distractions are dangerous in and of themselves, while encouraging inaction with respect to the true problems at hand.
• For helping turn environmentalism into a fake plastic consumer product for the privileged.
• For his pure arrogance.
• As the only way to compensate for the ridiculousness of having this fool speak on Earth Day.

On behalf of the earth and all true environmentalists – we, the Green wash Guerillas, declare Thomas Friedman’s “Green” as fake and toxic to human and planetary health as the cool-whip covering his face.

Great googley moogley! I never knew that cool-whip is fake and toxic: have I been severely misinformed about my favorite whipped imitation dairy product? Once again, the shining light of rational thought and action has illuminated the darkest corners of humanity, swirling into physical manifestation as what will surely go down as the worst pie-ing ever. Where did the Guerillas learn to throw anyway, Donovan McNabb?

On the other hand, considering how much marijuana Brown students consume, I should probably just be thankful that they didn’t eat the pies before trying to throw them.

Victor Davis Hanson, the classicist and military historian at Stanford University’s invaluable Hoover Institution has long advocated that the culture of Western civilization has throughout history given its constituents a decisive advantage over its enemies. In the brave new world of 21st century asymmetric terrorist and anti-terrorist warfare, this shamefully antiquated, western chauvninist, orientalist, </ivory tower newspeak> proposition of VDH seemed destined to meet its Waterloo in the bloody streets of Baghdad.

But it looks like VDH may wind up with the last laugh after all. The quantitative and qualitative success of General Petraeus’s COIN [COunter-INsurgency] strategy has turned the tables on the insurgency (knock on an entire rainforest’s worth of wood, of course), whose brutal tactics and inflexibility have cost it the strategic advantage and popular support it once commanded. As Andrew Sullivan opines:

Maybe this will be history’s judgment of the last few years: both the US and al Qaeda over-reached. But al Qaeda’s over-reach was greater. And in this we see why democracies do actually do better in warfare in the long run: because our leaders have to be responsive to the people; because legitimate internal criticism and debate forces course correction and exposes self-defeating hubris. With the Bush administration, this process took much longer than it should have, and the Bushies did all they could to stamp out, rather than hear, criticism. But in the end, democracy adjusts to reality; religious extremism cannot.

Whammy! Western Civ for the win!

Petraeus for President. and VDH as veep. And Andrew Sullivan as Secretary of the Interior[-Design].