Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
HEART.
Straight LOVE this song right here! Real talk.
Cut Copy.
Take Me Over.
LIVE! on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.
Cut Copy.
Take Me Over.
LIVE! on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
WHATAYAWANTFROMME?
A Moment of Clarity.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| America at Not-War | ||||
| ||||
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
For Your Consideration.
Words.
"I don’t know why, exactly, Barack Obama was so hesitant to intervene in Libya or why he has been reluctant even to say much about Libya in public. Maybe, as his critics say, it’s because he’s indecisive, or instinctively reluctant to deploy American military power. Maybe it’s because he thinks two wars are enough, and at a time of massive budget cutbacks we can’t afford a third, optional engagement. But it doesn’t matter: As French planes and American missiles began to bombard Libya on Saturday, his reluctance and his silence suddenly became his most important tactical assets.
...Some have criticized him for embarking on his planned trip to South America this week, but they’re wrong to do so. Whether accidental or planned, cynical or cowardly, Obama should maintain his silence, continue his trip, keep expectations low and offer no encouragement to anyone who expects us to go in, gung-ho for democracy, and win the war."
Monday, March 21, 2011
Friday, March 18, 2011
Dungeons & Dragons.
Words.
"A difference between an addict and a recovering addict is that one hides his behavior, while the other can't stop talking about it. Self-revelation is an important part of recovery, but it can lead to awkward moments when you meet a person who identifies as a sex addict.
...When it comes to addiction, the line between morality and disease has always been blurry. But only in the past 25 years have we come to regard excesses in necessary cravings — hunger for food, lust for sex — as possible disease states.
...The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is debating whether sex addiction should be added to its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The addition of what the APA is calling "hypersexual disorder" would legitimize sex addiction in a way that was unthinkable just a few years ago, when Bill Clinton's philandering was regarded as a moral failing or a joke — but not, in the main, as an illness.
APA recognition of sex addiction would create huge revenue streams in the mental-health business. Some wives who know their husbands are porn enthusiasts would force them into treatment. Some husbands who have serial affairs would start to think of themselves not as rakes but as patients.
...In the 20th century, we changed our thinking about alcoholism: what was once a moral weakness came to be understood as an illness resulting in large part from genetics. Sexual acting out seems different, though. Is excessive lust really just another biochemical accident?..."
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
A Moment of Clarity.
Words.
"...In getting himself fired from his hit TV show Two and a Half Men, this privileged child of the media’s sprawling entertainment Empire has now become its most gifted ridiculer. Sheen has embraced post-Empire, making his bid to explain to all of us what celebrity now means. Whether you like it or not is beside the point. It’s where we are, babe. We’re learning something. Rock and roll. Deal with it.
Post-Empire started appearing in full force just about everywhere last year while Cee Lo Green’s “Fuck You” gleefully played over the soundtrack. The Kardashians get it. The participants in (and the audience of) Jersey Shore get it. Lady Gaga arriving at the Grammys in an egg gets it, and she gets it while staring at Anderson Cooper and admitting she likes to smoke weed when she writes songs—basically daring him: “What are you gonna do about that, bitch?” Nicki Minaj gets it when she sings “Right Thru Me” and becomes one of her many alter egos on a red carpet. (Christina Aguilera starring in Burlesque doesn’t get it at all.) Ricky Gervais’s hosting of the Golden Globes got it. Robert Downey Jr., getting pissed off at Gervais, did not. Robert De Niro even got it, subtly ridiculing his career and his lifetime-achievement trophy at the same awards show.
...To Empire gatekeepers, Sheen seems dangerous and in need of help because he’s destroying (and confirming) illusions about the nature of celebrity. He’s always been a role model for a certain kind of male fantasy. Degrading perhaps, but aren’t most male fantasies? Sheen has always been a bad boy, which is part of his appeal—to men and women. What Sheen has exemplified and has clarified is the moment in the culture when not caring what the public thinks about you or your personal life is what matters most—and what makes the public love you even more (if not exactly CBS or the creator of the show that has made you so wealthy).
...Arrests. Accidental overdoses. Halfhearted stints in rehab. Martin Sheen’s teary-eyed press conference. The briefcase full of coke. The Mercedes towed out of the ravine. The misdemeanor third-degree assault on the third wife, who also went to rehab. Sheen allegedly threatening to cut off same wife’s head, put it in a box, send it to her mother. Sheen chain smoking on TMZ. The priceless dialogue. (On CBS executives: “They lay down with their ugly wives in front of their ugly children and look at their loser lives.”) The September 11 conspiracy theories. Shooting Kelly Preston in the arm. Fucking porn stars Ginger Lynn and Heather Hunter and Bree Olson. Compared with Cruise, Sheen has put on a mesmerizing and refreshing display of midlife-crisis honesty. He’s just himself, an addict—take it or leave it..."
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
Oh Word?
A Moment of Clarity.
Words.
"“We’re broke.”
You can practically break a search engine if you start looking around the Internet for those words. They’re used repeatedly with reference to our local, state and federal governments, almost always to make a case for slashing programs — and, lately, to go after public-employee unions. The phrase is designed to create a sense of crisis that justifies rapid and radical actions before citizens have a chance to debate the consequences.
Just one problem: We’re not broke. Yes, nearly all levels of government face fiscal problems because of the economic downturn. But there is no crisis. There are many different paths open to fixing public budgets. And we will come up with wiser and more sustainable solutions if we approach fiscal problems calmly, realizing that we’re still a very rich country and that the wealthiest among us are doing exceptionally well..."
THE WASHINGTON POST: What if we’re not broke?
Words.
"“We’re broke.”
You can practically break a search engine if you start looking around the Internet for those words. They’re used repeatedly with reference to our local, state and federal governments, almost always to make a case for slashing programs — and, lately, to go after public-employee unions. The phrase is designed to create a sense of crisis that justifies rapid and radical actions before citizens have a chance to debate the consequences.
Just one problem: We’re not broke. Yes, nearly all levels of government face fiscal problems because of the economic downturn. But there is no crisis. There are many different paths open to fixing public budgets. And we will come up with wiser and more sustainable solutions if we approach fiscal problems calmly, realizing that we’re still a very rich country and that the wealthiest among us are doing exceptionally well..."
Friday, March 11, 2011
"WHO'S BAD?!"
Words. For Your Consideration...
"We’re an overconfident species.
...When pollsters ask people around the world to rate themselves on a variety of traits, they find that people in Serbia, Chile, Israel and the United States generally supply the most positive views of themselves. People in South Korea, Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan and Morocco are on the humble side of the rankings.
...In short, there’s abundant evidence to suggest that we have shifted a bit from a culture that emphasized self-effacement — I’m no better than anybody else, but nobody is better than me — to a culture that emphasizes self-expansion.
...If Americans do, indeed, have a different and larger conception of the self than they did a few decades ago, I wonder if this is connected to some of the social and political problems we have observed over the past few years.
I wonder if the rise of consumption and debt is in part influenced by people’s desire to adorn their lives with the things they feel befit their station. I wonder if the rise in partisanship is influenced in part by a narcissistic sense that, “I know how the country should be run and anybody who disagrees with me is just in the way.”..."
Thursday, March 10, 2011
The Game of LIFE!
Words. For Your Consideration...
"It's not hard to see how Facebook might chip away at a person's self-esteem. Though celebrated — breathlessly revered, in fact — as a way to bring people together, anyone who's poked around the site for more then 10 minutes knows it's also the ultimate performance space. Like holiday newsletters in which families pay unsubtle homage to their own achievements — "Dakota won 57 taekwondo trophies!" "Sophie took summer courses in cheese making!" "Bob passed an impressive kidney stone!" — Facebook reminds us that there can be a fine line between sharing and gloating..."
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Round & Round.
Words.
"Bruce Willis once described the basic trajectory of celebrity in America as having four stages: You arrive, you peak, you bomb and you come back. Whether he realized it or not, Willis was also describing the phases that anthropologist Joseph Campbell had discerned for the hero across cultures — save for one thing. Heroes don't bomb. That is a distinctly American interpolation, one designed to ensure that our demigods never confuse themselves with gods. As our stars rose into the heavens, we reserved the right to humble them, to bring them back to Earth. Think of Eddie Murphy or John Travolta or Tom Cruise, all of whom seemed to get too big for their britches and were brought down a peg for it.
So Charlie Sheen's verboten media blitz flaunting a lifestyle that is decidedly not shared by the vast majority of his fans (how many of us have two live-in porn star "goddesses" or can profess to have consumed an amount of cocaine that would have killed a mortal?) explicitly violates the contract, which seems to have been Sheen's point.
He says he isn't off the rails like Mel Gibson or Lindsay Lohan. He insists he is the engineer. He is doing exactly what he wants to do, what his riches and fame allow and entitle him to do. As he puts it, he is embracing his "rock star" life.
...In letting us know that he is nothing like us — that his life is the American dream on steroids and that many of us, as he says, are jealous of him for it — he has shown us that envy is at least as potent a force as identification. With his firing this week, one might even say that he sacrificed his career for the cause."
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Monday, March 07, 2011
Friday, March 04, 2011
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