“Mmm, mmm, Campbell’s Soup–Possibilities.” That infernal commercials jingo has infected my mind and torments my soul. There is nowhere I can hide from its taunting refrain, nothing I can do to stop it from springing forth into my consciousness, uninvited, mocking me. Soup. Possibilities.
What the bloody hell am I missing? For years I’ve just been [...]
One of the things I admire about my friends Ken, Scott and Dom is that they all seem to be the kind of balanced people who will raise kids who will be sensitive and thoughful, yet also not neurotic or afraid of taking risks. I don’t know if that’s as rare as I fear it is, [...]
From a recent instant message chat with my father. I don’t know why I find this amusing. I think it’s how it ends. The only background you need to know, to protect the innocent, is that my father is a life long Democrat. He tried to raise me right, so don’t hold him accountable for [...]
Photo courtesy of the US Coast Guard.
In the absence of anything interesting I can think of to write about the few things I understand, and an inability to write intelligently about the interesting things that are actually happening (e.g. the present collapse of our financial system), I am not above just jangling a shiny object [...]
People pay $5000 for a stereo system, and yet for $26 you can hear the temporary assemblage of the greatest sound system ever concieved and built: the live combined efforts of 300 people who’ve trained a lifetime to play the work of a genius on instruments honed over centuries in a hall built for the purpose. Western civilization is worth keeping around. Perhaps they could even afford to raise the ticket price a bit.
I’ll depart from my usual genre of pointless complaining to actually put up something of use. Well, at least of use to the 1% of my readers who live in Boston. (Which prompts the following Zen koan-like question: what is 1% of ten people?) So, if you don’t live here, may I suggest you read [...]
Today’s Wall Street Journal includes a great quote from Norman Mailer, who recently managed to revive his career by dying:
I always felt [Timothy] Leary really was a sort of bland asshole. What was it: “Turn on, tune in, drop out?” I thought he absolutely was wasting a generation. So I have nothing good to say [...]
