The Kardashian sisters are getting out of the debit-card business they only just got into. The New York Daily News has the details:

In a letter to The Revenue Resource Group which created the card, lawyers for the Kardashians said they were terminating the agreement after it was brought to their attention that the card could violate consumer protection laws.

Connecticut’s attorney general wrote a letter to the debit card company last week, warning he planned on investigating if the card did violate state laws or the Dodd-Frank Act, a federal law implemented to protect consumers from abuse by the financial services industry.

The prepaid debit card, which sported a picture of Kim, Kourtney and Khloe on the front, cost nearly $100 in fees for 12 months, in addition to $1.50 ATM fees.

This is called, um, protecting your brand. Counsel for the Kardashians wrote:

“The Kardashians have worked extremely long and hard to create a positive public persona that appeals to everyone, particularly young adults. They have been successful in doing so because they are recognized as honest, ethical, and fun-loving individuals who are kind and caring to others.”

To which you might add “easily duped when someone waves a stack of cash at them.” (Like I have any room to talk.)

“Unfortunately, the negative spotlight turned on the Kardashians as a result of the Attorney General’s comments and actions threatens everything for which they have worked.”

Expect the unloaded, valueless cards to show up on eBay, disguised as collectible pop ephemera.

Are we running short of gorm?

I’d caught a fleeting glimpse of him now and then, but never enough to be sure I was seeing what I was seeing, though the circumstantial evidence was sufficiently strong. (As Trini once discovered to her discomfiture, mice will in fact go on your mouse pad.)

Then I withdrew a temporary trash bag from the box I was using for support, and visual confirmation was immediate, albeit short-lived: the furry little sumbitch held on just long enough for me to see him, and then performed a half-gainer to propel himself behind the nearest article of furniture. I marveled at his gymnastic ability, and then vowed revenge.

Traditionalist that I am, I had a couple of standard spring-loaded traps on hand; I tested one, found it presumably satisfactory, loaded it with a dollop of Jif, placed it near one of his favorite haunts, and went to bed.

Next morning, I found the trap, untripped, three and a half feet away from where I’d parked it, and the bait cleaned away with considerable efficiency. Hardware malfunction? I poked it with a Bic pen, and SNAP!

I’m starting to think that meeces (whom I hate to pieces) have evolved to the point where they’re too smart for these primitive attacks on their, um, person.

I have just a smidgen of difficulty with the idea that Carol Alt, fresh face of the Eighties, is now 50 years old.

Then again, 50 is the new [pick an integer from, oh, 29 to 47]:

This particular shot dates to 2008. And speaking of dates, Alt is romantically linked to Alexei Yashin, who used to play center for the New York Islanders and who still lives on Lawn Guyland, despite currently playing for a team in St. Petersburg, and I don’t mean Florida.

David Zucker, one end of ZAZ, tells the story of The Man Who Would Be Dr. Rumack:

At our first meeting, he mentioned proudly that he had done an episode of M*A*S*H.

We assured him we wouldn’t count this brief comedy experience against him. But when he read the Airplane! script he “got” its unconventional nature and off-beat style. We heard later that he told his agent, “Take whatever they offer, I’d pay them to do this.” Arguably the best role was that of Dr. Rumack, played by the guy no one wanted or ever suspected would be funny, much less go on to have a second career starring in feature films as a goof-ball comic. Leslie was great in the role because he never “winked” — let on that he knew he was in a comedy. This was essential to the style, and Leslie had a natural instinct for it.

Which instinct, of course, led directly to Sergeant Frank Drebin, Detective Lieutenant, Police Squad, and occasional locksmith.

Are We Having Funds Yet [not its real name], our 401(k) operator, sent over a chap to hawk some new investment options and generally churn up demand for the product. As always, there was a period for questions, and I threw in this one, just to see what would happen:

“What happens when Congress decides that they need all these billions of dollars more than we need tax benefits, and confiscates the lot?”

He was evidently prepared for it: “Members of Congress, as a general rule, do not wish to encourage unemployment, especially their own.”

Triple overtime in New Jersey, and I’ve got to figure that Russell Westbrook got sick of the whole thing: in the third extra period, Westbrook outscored the Nets, 13-10, to put away a game in which the Thunder trailed more often than not. Between them, the two teams put up 194 shots, and if only 86 of them fell — well, that’s still a hell of a lot of scoring: Oklahoma City 123, New Jersey 120, with no fewer than nineteen lead changes.

We should have known. Westbrook sank two free throws with next to no time left in regulation; Anthony Morrow, in next to no time, came back with a trey at the buzzer to tie it. Weirder yet, near the end of the second OT, with the Thunder down three, Jeff Green missed a trey, the only one he missed out of five tonight; but he drew a foul, and he swished all three free throws. At this point — Uncle Jeff had 37 points, a number he’s never seen before — it became the Russell Westbrook Show.

That Durant guy? No show. Bad left knee. Same problem afflicted the Nets’ Devin Harris. Does losing your leading scorer intensify your effort? Ask Scott Brooks — or Avery Johnson.

Westbrook wound up with 38, plus 15 rebounds and nine assists, missing the triple-double by a dime. Add Green’s 37, and you have 75. Then again, you combine Brook Lopez (28), Jordan Farmar (28, a career high), and Morrow (25), and you’re looking at 81. Both teams played 11 men out of a possible 12, and rather a lot of them logged over 50 minutes. (Thabo Sefolosha worked the longest: 55:25.)

Overall, this is one hell of a way to start a road trip. Next stop: Toronto, on Friday.

For many years, superheroines in comics have been drawn to a very specific type: long flingable hair, legs to die for, and a balcony from which you could presumably do Shakespeare. (Even Susan Storm conformed to this look, and she was just an outline much of the time, for Pete’s Reed’s sake.) They don’t tend to be fiftysomething, and they definitely don’t tend to be columnists for The New York Times.

Benjamin Marra, seeing a need no one else saw, has now come up with The Incredibly Fantastic Adventures of Maureen Dowd, subtitled A Work of Satire and Fiction just in case you didn’t get the point. In Issue #1, MoDo is about to blow the lid off the conspirators who exposed a CIA agent (yes, that CIA agent), but two individuals stand in her way: a masked marauder who stole her laptop, and, um, George Clooney.

I may have to get this — it’s three bucks from publisher Traditional Comics — just on general principle. Marra has drawn Dowd as, yes, pretty much the traditional superheroine, albeit a tad past her prime; I will not speculate as to whether she actually looks that good in lingerie. (At least, not here.)

I spotted this over at TTAC, and I knew I had to put it up here: the last time I heard it was more than forty years ago, but I remembered the whole thing.

Nobody ever had this problem with Mutsangs or GOTs.

Joan of Argghh! sums up the current Wikileaks imbroglio with disarming (but never disarmed) succinctity:

[I]t ends up affirming to anyone with any sense what could easily be guessed about our enemies and allies and our rogue State Department. You read the revelations and go, “well, duh.” It’s like a Friday installment of the television soaps where new gossipy secrets are outed and all the household doyennes go, “I knew it!”

The major difference: the soaps have professional direction.

For the 402nd edition of Carnival of the Vanities, Andrew Ian Dodge asks the rhetorical question: “Newsweek moi?”

Actually, this year $402 would have bought Newsweek, one of those ubiquitous $399 TVs that show up during the holiday season, and most of a McRib. (Taxes and debt assumption not included.)

The curse of Yuletide Radio is upon us, and so far I have worked diligently to avoid it: I’ve even taken to threading the MP3 Walkman into the car stereo via one of those fake-cassette gizmos.

So I’m taking Nicole’s word for the following:

The major beef I have with it is that when you play nothing but 24/7 Christmas music, you have to play EVERYTHING ever recorded. So along with good stuff, you get the poppy trash that comes out every year. And you never get to hear the more churchy songs since it is on the radio and we don’t want to offend anyone.

This would seem to fall a little short of EVERYTHING, but I know what she means. And this in particular rings true:

[N]ow I’ll have “Feliz Navidad” stuck in my head all day long…

The Doors should have covered that, as payback to José Feliciano for his take on “Light My Fire.”

Stephen Smith at Market Urbanism, on why conservatives and libertarians have little or no interest in urban planning:

Despite the free market aspects of modern-day urbanism, smart growth and new urbanism are not libertarian movements. Urban planning is dominated by liberals, and it shows — few even seem aware of the capitalist roots of their plans. The private corporations that built America’s great cities and mass transit systems are all but forgotten by modern-day progressives and planners, who view the private sector as a junior partner at best.

God forbid someone should actually turn a buck downtown.

These tendencies not only result in bizarre contortions of public policy, but they also blind planners to their own libertarian tendencies and history. Unable to communicate these commonalities to conservatives, it’s no wonder the Tea Party doesn’t see why eliminating parking minimums, allowing dense development, or raising tolls are good things. Urbanists have to overcome the urge to write more stories about yuppies riding bikes, and instead channel some of that energy towards issues of fiscal fairness and overregulation in land use. They have to recognize that arguments about social justice and the environment aren’t going to cut it if they want to unite both halves of America and reverse its sprawling ways.

Those of us to the right of center don’t necessarily reject urbanist proposals out of hand, either: witness this discussion of, yes, parking minimums. And I certainly don’t object to bike lanes.

From the “Let’s go out to the lobby” files, this was the top story in yesterday’s paper:

A state senator and lobbyist who are having a romantic affair worked together to steer a lucrative state contract toward a private company that had hired the lobbyist, an investigation by The Oklahoman has revealed.

The wife of Sen. Harry Coates said Monday her husband has told her he is having an affair with lobbyist Haley Atwood. Atwood, 29, who didn’t deny the affair with Coates, 60, also is married.

Legislators’ screwing around, of course, hardly approaches the rarity of Man Bites Dog. (This does, but don’t read it. Please.) What perplexes me is the May/December angle: how in the pluperfect hell does an old fart like that win the affections, however temporary, of a woman thirty-one years younger?

Yeah, yeah, I know: Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich. Another sort-of-alpha-male Old Pol. Then again, he’s a Democrat. (Coates, as per the fifth paragraph of the newspaper story, is a Republican.) As a practicing, even enthusiastic, non-pol, I can assure you that no 26-year-old woman is going to have any interest in 57-year-old me.

Then again, City Council elections are coming up, and Sam Bowman is retiring, and … ye gods, what am I saying?

A bit from Wikipedia on Acura’s top-line sedan, the RL:

While critically acclaimed, sales have not met expectations. Regarding sales of Japanese luxury flagships during the first six months of 2010, Acura has sold only 872 RLs, compared to 5,650 Lexus LS and 6,602 Infiniti M sedans. Enthusiasts and dealers said that the RL was not competitive because it is smaller, uses front-wheel drive, and lacks a V8 option, compared to its larger rivals in the mid-luxury segment that are rear-wheel drive and have a V8 available.

The home office apparently hasn’t been too concerned:

As the new RL offered more features and performance than the base version of its luxury competition’s (i.e., the base six-cylinder BMW 5 Series), Honda Japan suggested that it could charge more, though Honda Canada disagreed. The RL’s initial MSRP was $69,500 CAD, more than the six-cylinder BMW 525i and close to that of the V8-powered BMW 545i. At the RL’s price point, most consumers expected a V8, furthermore they did not perceive Acura as being on par with its German rivals and expected more value from the Japanese marque.

And apparently the Canadian branch called it correctly: according to Wheels.ca, the Acura RL is now the worst-selling car in Canada, having moved a pitiful thirty-three units in ten months this year.

(Via Autoblog.)

A couple of posts ago, I made some noise about 26-year-old women and how I couldn’t possibly be on their radar. There are, of course, very good reasons for that, and anyway Creepy Old Guy Mode is not really what I aspire to.

Just the same, I’m going to torture myself with a visual:

This is singer/actress Mandy Moore, born in, yes, 1984. (Judging by the Tonight Show set, this is a 2008 screen shot.) I have a duplicate of this file in C:\NOWAY\NOTEVER.

Murilee Martin, in his capacity as a judge for a 24 Hours of LeMons event, presents a Cavalcade of Crappy Cars, and I have to admit, I love the idea of a presumably-scruffy racing team called the Sex Pistons. They drive — what else? — a Triumph Spitfire.

Also on hand: a 1980 Maserati Quattroporte. (Only the Italians could make “four-door” sound seductive.) I have actually driven one of these, or maybe it was a ’79; it doesn’t much matter either way. What’s amazing to me is how this sensuous sedan has glided its way down Depreciation Row to qualify under the LeMons maximum-price rule of $500.

“The Raptors,” said Royce Young of Daily Thunder, “aren’t some pushover that you should be able to walk by,” and they impressed this fact on various Thunder backsides at Air Canada Centre, turning a seven-point halftime deficit into a nine-point lead in a mere twelve minutes. Radio guy Matt Pinto grumbled about some of the calls, or more precisely some of the non-calls, but even he’d concede that Toronto simply outplayed Oklahoma City tonight: they had more rebounds (42-34), more assists (29-22), a better shooting percentage (54.9-43.7), and where it matters most, more points (111-99).

The absence of Kevin Durant, which up to this point hadn’t been much of a problem, was keenly felt: apart from his scoring prowess, Kid Delicious has been a defensive stalwart of late, and in that deadly third quarter, the Thunder defense disintegrated. Scott Brooks went small, and when that failed, went smaller; the end result was giant Andrea Bargnani rolling up 26 points and 12 rebounds. Leandro Barbosa was fearsome off the bench with 22. And José Calderón, the only Toronto starter not to score in double figures, contributed 15 assists to go with his 8 points.

Offensively, the Thunder weren’t too awful, with both Russell Westbrook and James Harden scoring 20, plus 17 from Jeff Green, and one could argue that the defense wasn’t that bad, what with eleven steals and seven blocked shots. But stops, when needed, were few and far between, and nobody had an answer to Amir Johnson (14 points), who didn’t miss the bucket even once all night.

Or you could simply point out that the Raptors, after a 2-9 start, are now 8-11, and that there is such a thing as being on a roll.

I am not comforted by the fact that the next game (1) is at home (2) against the Warriors; it’s a Sunday, and the Thunder’s 0-4 record on Sunday indicates that somebody’s taking that “day of rest” business a bit too seriously. Besides, it’s the first half of a back-to-back. And beating the Bulls in Chicago on Monday doesn’t look at all like a sure thing.

Just watch me shrug:

According to a survey conducted by Austrian research psychologist Tatjana Schnell, an unexpectedly large proportion of Westerners feel that their lives have little meaning, and they don’t really care, reports Miller-McCune. Sampling more than 600 Germans, Schneller’s research found that “35 percent [of the sample] were ‘existentially indifferent,’ those who ‘neither experience their lives as meaningful nor suffer from this lack of meaning’,” and only 10 percent of that group were bothered by their own existential apathy.

I don’t think I’d necessarily equate “Germans” with “Westerners,” but I can’t say I’m particularly surprised by this. Then again, it may depend on what the meaning of “meaning” is. If your particular definition of self demands a satisfying romantic relationship and the job of your dreams and getting paid something like NBA rookie scale, your life might seem less meaningful than a box full of old press releases — but I’d give odds that you’d be concerned about it.

Not that those are the only choices:

The academics identified 26 “sources of meaning” in their study, and noted that the indifferent lacked sources like love, social commitment and unison of nature. They were especially low in self-knowledge, spirituality, explicit religiosity and generativity, even compared to those in a crisis.

And, says Dr Schnell:

Without commitment to sources of meaning, life remains superficial. But superficiality is not necessarily a state of suffering.

Sometimes it’s a way to make a living.

LeeAnn was kind enough to serve up a good object lesson in musical universality: classical themes in a metal mood, if you will.

Which reminded me of an old favorite I hadn’t spun in a while. Love Sculpture was a Welsh blues band (!) operating in the late 1960s. While most of their repertoire consisted of genre standards, they scored an unlikely UK #5 hit in 1968 with a power-trio version of the Sabre Dance from Khachaturian’s ballet Gayaneh. It wasn’t released in the States until 1970, and then only because leader Dave Edmunds had scored a solo hit with a cover of Smiley Lewis’ R&B shouter “I Hear You Knockin’,” prompting the usual Vault Raids. This isn’t technically metal — the guitar is way more Chuck Berry than Kirk Hammett — but it certainly passes the speed test. The video is billed as a live TV appearance; apart from the applause at the end, though, the sound is pretty much identical to what’s on my copy of the record.

The ending, of course, is more Puccini Rossini than Khachaturian, but what the hell.

I’ve been putting out these 250-word game recaps since the Hornets were using the Arena Formerly Known As The Ford Center for a temporary home base in the wake of Hurricane Katrina; so far as I know, no one pays much attention to them.

Well, there is one exception. ESPN’s TrueHoop Network comprises about three dozen blogs, one for each NBA team, plus several that deal with the league in general. The Thunder, for instance, is represented by Daily Thunder. The one TrueHoop blog that actually picks up on my stuff, though, is Toronto’s Raptors Republic, which today kindly excerpted some of my verbiage from last night’s win over Oklahoma City. This isn’t the first time RR has seen fit to link here, either. I suspect it’s because I spell “Air Canada Centre” correctly most of the time.

Meanwhile, Doug Loudenback covered the 2010 Paseo Arts Awards, with lots of pictures, including a small group of shots of female participants from here down [gestures], which he said was intended for me — “if he is watching.” Well, of course. I left him an explanation, to the effect that my formative years, a period of generally-rising hemlines, were spent in a Catholic school, clearly an indication that God had intended me to be a leg man. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Citadel has been LMAing Champlin Broadcasting’s KQOB Enid for seven years now, imaging as Bob FM.

Earlier this year, Renda’s KBEZ Tulsa adopted the Bob monicker, which prompted Citadel to send a nastygram to Renda’s Pittsburgh HQ. Citadel has since followed up with a lawsuit.

What makes this interesting is that Tulsa’s Bob is actually closer to what’s generally thought of as the Bob format, described here by Lou Pickney:

[Winnipeg radio exec Howard] Kroeger began pouring through one of Joel Whitburn’s Billboard chart reference books and began compiling a list of songs from 1974 to present day that fit into the Rock/AC category but which weren’t receiving a great deal of airplay. The result was a list with a very deep and varied mix of songs.

Outside of Canada, however, there doesn’t seem to be specific licensing for the Bob FM trademark; rival Jack FM, by comparison, is pretty strict about what you can and can’t do to maintain your level of Jackness.

It seems to me, though, that this sort of thing matters mostly to lawyers; the only possible source of confusion between Bob and Bob would be in places like Stillwater where you can pick up stations from both the Oklahoma City and Tulsa markets. Personally, I think one of them should become “Bob 1″ and the other “Bob 2,” and they should play a lot more Devo.

Duyen Ky is assembling a suitably-smashing Christmas outfit, and one significant component thereof is this towering (to me, anyway) red pump by Type Z, sporting no fewer than four straps per side.

And four buckles per side, which I presume are positioned once and then ignored thereafter; otherwise, well, that seems like a lot of work just to put on a shoe. (I don’t know anyone who would actually undo each and every one of those buckles every time she took off the shoe. Then again, since I am inevitably observing from afar and extrapolating accordingly, I could be totally wrong.)

The shoe itself, called “Brenna,” can also be had in black. The heel rises to 5½ inches, or as Duyen would say, “about average,” and there’s a 1¼-inch platform underneath. It is definitely an attention-getter; as one vendor says of the brand, “If you’re looking for an affordable way to look your best, Type Z brand shoes will give you more attention than a zebra with hot pink stripes.” Whether that’s hot pink with black, or hot pink with white, they didn’t say.

(Too many straps, you think? Get a load of this.)

The most startling aspect of Ferris O’Brien’s purchase of KINB this year, I believe, was the purchase price itself: “Two million American dollars for a 900-watt rimshooter.”

That price proved to be the undoing of the Spy:

According to O’Brien, the purchase fell through when the station did not appraise for [seller] Last Bastion Trust’s asking price.

“When it comes back at nowhere near that number, it just doesn’t make sense,” O’Brien said.

The FCC didn’t have any problem with it; they’d granted the assignment of the license in November, pending the tying up of all the loose ends.

And it’s hard to fault Eliot Evers, operator of Last Bastion, for asking that kind of money, since that’s basically why the trust, which assumed ownership of a bunch of Citadel stations after the ABC merger, existed in the first place: to extract maximum value from the leftover properties. Still, somebody should have done due diligence.

In the meantime, if you haven’t heard the Spy lately, they’re at TheSpyFM.com.

Dear Mr. Ochocinco:

A regulation NFL football is made out of leather.

Just in case they didn’t tell you that before the photo session.

EMI, being among other things a record company, objects most strenuously to file-sharing sites like Rapidshare, and if you post some of their material to such a site — what? They posted their own material to a file-sharing site?

Michael Robertson, founder of MP3Tunes, has apparently found them out:

They say we link to Rapidshare which they called a known haven of piracy.

However we uncovered internal emails where EMI themselves put songs on Rapidshare and sent email to others instructing them to download them from Rapidshare.

With EMI spreading files far and wide, their experts grudgingly admit that it’s impossible to tell which links are authorized and which are not.

In depositions, says Robertson, EMI admitted that they were spreading around some tuneage in the hopes of getting it to go viral.

And links are at the very heart of file-sharing services, because generally they don’t have directories: you can’t go browsing through their offerings, because they’re not telling you what they have. If you have no link, you have nothing.

Now: can J. Random Downloader tell the difference between a URL produced by the upload of a file by one of his neighbors and a URL produced by the upload of a file by some EMI suit? (Hint: No.)

And, since imitation is the sincerest form of 21st-century commerce, what are the chances that the other Big Four music operations have been pirating their own properties?

PBS is circulating this clip to promote a tribute to the late Les Paul, who would have been 95 this year, and I’m happy to pass it on, since (1) the ever-tasteful Jeff Beck is standing in for Les and (2) the lovely Imelda May, whose band this is, does a really good Mary Ford.

It’s 1951 all over again.

There is no such thing as a safe lead against the Golden State Warriors. The Thunder were up 20 points after three quarters; with 23 seconds left, that lead had shrunk to three. It didn’t help that Serge Ibaka (19 points, 8 rebounds) had long since fouled out. So once again it took free throws to salt it away, and Oklahoma City finally won a game on a Sunday, 114-109.

You have to figure that Stephen Curry and Monta Ellis would get theirs, and boy, did they: Curry had 39 points, Ellis 29. The game plan, therefore, would have to be making sure the rest of the team didn’t get theirs, and it was not particularly successful: Dorell Wright and sixth man Reggie Williams both scored in double figures, and the Warriors racked up 18 offensive rebounds. (As did the Thunder, but Golden State got off eight more shots and had a slight edge in shooting percentage.)

The Thunder might have curbed some of that activity, but Scott Brooks opted to give Nick Collison the night off, presumably expecting he’ll be working very hard tomorrow against the Bulls. And the starters probably played longer than Brooks had hoped, what with that fourth-quarter semi-collapse: after making 29 consecutive free throws, the Thunder promptly missed three of the next six. Fortunately, the last four, two by Jeff Green, two by Kevin Durant, connected. Durant had a fairly-average night, with 28 points, as did Green, with 17; Russell Westbrook, despite some twinges late in the game, put together a double-double, 19 points and 13 dimes.

The Bulls, 10-8, had the night off, so they’ll be rested and ready for the Thunder tomorrow. We’ve beaten them once already, but that was at the Somewhere On Reno Arena; they’ll almost certainly be feistier on their home court. Then follows a Wednesday at Minnesota and a Friday at New Orleans. Next home game is on, um, Sunday, against the Cavs.

It’s time once more to pry open the door to the server and see what sort of nonsense can be found in the logs. As of this writing, the disclosure of this previously-unseen material, unbeknownst to the persons who produced it, has been a major topic of discussion in zero countries worldwide.

how to write a check for 475:  It helps if you have 475 to start with, which rather a lot of people don’t.

cheep working transmitions for a mazda 626 year 1999:  It helps if you have 2475 to start with, which rather a lot of people don’t.

calvin and hobbes “maybe you’re just stupid”:  You’re sure you’re not New Wave?

Rift and Separate:  See, for instance, the Praytex Riving Bla.

lack of bread:  Your punishment for the sin of gluteny.

mean heartless society?  I suspect median heartless society is probably a closer approximation.

ford bringing back the probe:  They’d have to get permission from the TSA.

“modern Country Music” “unlistenable”:  That’s what they were saying back when Patsy Cline was on the radio.

transvestites wearing kotex:  Now how did this story leak out?

do mothers make their sons wear pantyhose for punishment:  Right before throwing them into the briar patch, Br’er Rabbit.

Sextillion masturbation:  About a week and a half at most boys’ schools.

is Paul Anka legally separated from that Swedish witch Anna:  ”I’m so old and you’re so young / Please die, Anna, burst a lung…”

I have a general disinterest in things. What should I do?  Who gives a shit?

We are living, says True Ancestor, in the Age of the Death of Experience:

Within the past two decades, every action and interaction has begun to be submitted to the mediation of the experience and perspective of others, at greater speeds and depths, so that now, unmediated, uncontemplated experience — a shock to the system, a real live threat or opportunity, the sensory thrill of the immediate and unexpected that even the angels cannot know — is something for which younger generations are becoming thoroughly unequipped. The idea that you lean into the world with your physical being is vanishing. You now deputize technology to lean for you. Search engines, touchscreens and digital hieroglyphics cease to be tools, and become replacements for experience.

This is not to say that we never did this before. Consider the seemingly-ancient TripTik, which someone down at the Triple-A office would draw for us before we left on our Epic Journey to Shelbyville or wherever. They knew the roads, and we didn’t, so we had no problem accepting their advice. (Now, of course, there’s an app for that.)

Experience has until now begun with contact. Now it begins with a Google search. What’s lost is the ability to improvise one’s way through upheaval. We have, in varying degrees, the necessary sensory and mental equipment to improvise through upheaval, but that requires instinct and improvisation. When everything is ordered and rehearsed, packaged and delivered, instinct and improvisation become quaint.

There are times when I’m tempted to blame television. The programs are scripted; the news is scripted; even the so-called “reality shows” are scripted. If we want our problems neatly tied up before the top of the hour, shouldn’t we do a little scripting ourselves? But this phenomenon seems to be accelerating, even as the Internet displaces television, so there’s got to be some other factor at work.

I wonder how much of this is the simple desire to duck responsibility. If we work up all those searches, check out all those destinations, do all that due diligence, and yet somehow things still go wrong, we will not note ruefully that there is but one God, and Murphy is His prophet; we will instead blame those cruel, heartless individuals who posted all those good reviews specifically to cause our experience to fail, because, well, why else would they do such a thing?

Or maybe it’s a bit more elemental. Feces, as the bumper sticker doesn’t quite say, transpire; I suspect most of us will go to a lot of trouble to make sure we don’t have to deal with the stuff up close and in person. Which is all very well and good, until the fan is struck by it.

(Via this Annie Gottleib tweet.)

That so-called “Repeal Amendment” has its charms, but, says Ric Locke, it’s unlikely to work:

[T]he very idea of getting 67 or 68 State Legislatures (depending on whether or not Nebraska is involved) to agree on anything makes herding cats look simple, so the likelihood of its being actually implemented is vanishingly small. It might be useful as symbolism, but symbolism, while important, is not enough.

What needs to be addressed, says Locke, is, well, basically everything since Wickard v. Filburn, which would take something like this:

The power of the Congress to regulate commerce among the several States is hereby revoked, and neither the States nor the Congress shall regulate, tax, or otherwise burden commerce among or within the States.

The Commerce Clause, in other words, has got to go, since it’s being used to justify all manner of egregious Congressional actions, the vast majority of which, irrespective of their alleged intent, have had the effect of enriching the few at the expense of the many.

I don’t know whether this has any better chance of being passed than does the Repeal Amendment, but I am reasonably certain that the current system is about to run headlong into Stein’s Law: things that can’t go on forever, won’t.

The interests of NRA members (which include me) and AANR members (which include me) would not seem to clash. But there’s a first time for everything:

One of the groups trying to stop Snohomish County from building a shooting range near Sultan [Washington] isn’t a gun safety or environmental group; it’s a nudist club.

The multi-million dollar gun range would be a mile away from the 72-year-old Lake Bronson Club and its 200 nudist members, who say that’s too close to bare, so to speak.

Although guns themselves are not the issue, said Club president Earl Calkins:

“It would be disruptive to our members and guests to have that constant bombardment of noise. That’s not why people come to the club.”

Several shooters come by here occasionally, so I ask them: How likely is it that they’ll be able to hear what’s going on at the range at a distance of one mile? It’s fairly hilly through there, though not quite mountainous.

“My girlfriend cheated on me, so I rated movies in her Netflix account until I reached the desired result.”

(Seen here.)

So it wasn’t a Russell Westbrook-Derrick Rose battle to the death after all. And the Bulls didn’t need that sort of support anyway: Carlos Boozer, when he’s on, makes a pretty good one-man wrecking crew, and he was better than pretty good tonight, coming up with 29 points and 12 rebounds as Chicago put the beatdown on Oklahoma City, 99-90.

Actually, Kevin Durant matched Boozer’s 29, but he got almost half of those at the foul line: KD hit only 7-18 from the floor, which was actually better than the Thunder’s dismal 35.4 shooting percentage. The only consistent shooter tonight was Nenad Krstić, who went 8-12 for 18 points, his season high. Jeff Green was held to seven points; Westbrook got only 15, though that was still four more than Rose. On the other hand, Rose had nine assists; the entire OKC squad came up with only 13.

The Bulls also ruled on the glass, retrieving 52 boards versus 39 for the Thunder. Chicago took five more shots but made thirteen more, which tells you that this would have been a lot worse were it not for OKC’s prowess at the stripe: the Thunder were 28-31 on freebies, the Bulls 10-17.

The road trip continues at Minnesota tomorrow. I am less hopeful than I might be, despite the Wolves’ 5-16 record.

I find myself inordinately fond of Sara Bareilles’ single “King of Anything” these days, and since December 7th is her birthday (she’s thirty-one), I’m up for a photo or two — two because, well, I couldn’t decide which of these to leave behind.

This is the cover photo for the “King of Anything” single:

And this, um, isn’t:

I suppose it would be reasonable to ask who died and left me in charge of the pictures.

I find it hard to add anything to this:

Damn you, John Edwards. Seriously, you had to go and father a child with someone else while your wife was going through this, after the loss of your older son? You seriously must have no conscience.

Or, for that matter, to this, from Elizabeth’s Facebook page:

The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that. And, yes, there are certainly times when we aren’t able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It’s called being human. But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful.

Further treatment, say her doctors, would be “unproductive.”

If I remember correctly, Carole Shaw’s original BBW Magazine carried the following statement on each and every cover: “Beauty Comes In All Sizes.”

It’s a phrase Robert Stacy McCain certainly knows from somewhere:

Beauty comes in all sizes, and it’s not Regular Guys who are driving women to anorexia. The fashion industry isn’t dominated by Regular Guys. The editors of Vogue and Cosmo, the designers and photographers and fashion reporters aren’t Regular Guys. No, the beauty industry is run by women and gay men, and so if you want to point the finger about “body image” issues in the fashion culture, don’t point the finger at the “oppressive patriarchy.”

Back in the Good Old Days, when men were men, and Ike was president, and godless commie pinko traitors were sent to prison where they belong, the ideal of beauty was Marilyn Monroe, who certainly wasn’t skinny.

Although she didn’t exactly wear a size 16, either.

I am loath, however, to blame all this on, for instance, Twiggy, who wasn’t at all known for backing away from the table after a second sprig of parsley; I’ve known women of comparable diameter who could outeat me, and I was quite the trencherman in my day.

Hey, Lorem, whaddaya think of this?

(Via FAIL Blog.)

Yes, I know how much fun it is to deliver the zinger of all zingers, but after Chele got to hear this way-too-Kevin-Smith-y dialogue at Whole Foods, I may have to reevaluate the value of that particular weapon:

A young couple was standing near the wines (blocking my path to the Chilean Shiraz) and they were arguing in heated tones. She was a good looking brunette who was whisper thin. He was a tall blond who hadn’t seen direct sunlight in a while. I don’t know what the argument was about but the line that made me wince came from her:

“I didn’t have to worry about stuff like this with Todd.” Pow!

He came back with, “Which one was Todd? How do you keep them all straight? Surprised you paused long enough to get names.” Bam!

It inevitably escalated from there.

I slunk away hoping none of their bad vibe-i-ness rubbed off on me.

Moral: Sticks and stones may break your bones, but some words will make you yearn for mere sticks and stones.

Liz Enthusiasm, lead singer of Freezepop, that is. As is becoming typical of self-released music albums these days, Freezepop’s Imaginary Friends is available at several price points, from the lowest Download Only (Level 1) to whatever the band can persuade you to pay for ephemera and trinkets and whatnot.

If you can ante up five grand, this is Freezepop’s Level 9:

You and a guest fly to Boston to spend a day and night with Freezepop! Package includes:

• Roundtrip airfare for 2 (continental US only)
• 1 nights stay in Freezepop’s guest room (mattress is pretty comfy)
• An afternoon of thrift shopping with Liz
• An hour with [The Other] Sean [T. Drinkwater], watching the History Channel or some show about science that will freak you out and make you question the purpose of humanity/existence/etc.

And so much more. As the phrase goes, it doesn’t get any better than this — unless Spın̈al Tap comes up with a Level 11.

Disclosure: Being cheapish by nature, I bought Level 2, which includes an actual CD plus MP3 and FLAC downloads.