FRIENDS WITH MONEY, ENEMIES WITH POWER ETC. ETC.

TALKING POINTS OF THE DAY:

According to Monday’s Washington Post, the White House has sent communications packets to selected career appointees at the Department of Agriculture encouraging them to include scripted positive talking points about the Iraq war in all of their public statements and indicating that officials will be graded on both the frequency and faithfulness with which they parrot the propaganda. If they get bad grades they’re taken out back behind the woodshed by Dick Cheney…and he does unmentionable things to them and their faces.

Oh and in case you’re wondering how they’re supposed to work pro-administration comments about the Iraq war into speeches about farming, feed and fertilizer, the White House Speechwriter’s office has included a handy list of suggested seamless segue-ways. While I didn’t read the list of artfully constructed rhetorical maneuvers myself, I suspect they were something along the lines of: “With regard to concerns about the Avian flu, let me assure all Americans that things are going really really well in Iraq.” Or “Speaking about the Farm Bill, President Bush has a fabulous plan for success in Iraq.”

Here in the No Fact Zone, the Spin Shall set us free.

In a related development, Dubya has agreed to give a huge donation to Yale on the condition that they offer a graduate degree in Intelligent Design and Political Strategery and change their motto to Spin et Veritas.

Just kidding about this second development. But, really, we've long since reached the point where it’s impossible to draw the line between parody and plausibility.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

“Here in the duskgarden it’s getting so you can’t tell/an abyss from a pageant.” -Joshua Clover, from his collection of poems about post 9/11 society entitled“The Totality for Kids.”

VISUAL OF THE DAY:
/>http://monkeysaurus.net/321/moore-goode-dick.htm

MOVIE REVIEW OF THE DAY:

Somehow, I allowed the Onion’s A-V Section (usually a very reliable movie review source) to convince me to see “Friends With Money.” Oh my goodness! A bunch of wealthy L.A. women improbably affiliated with an unwealthy L.A. Woman—angsting over the blessings and burdens of wealth and relationships in an earnest –but wholly unconvincing—approximation of real dialogue. Awkward. Uncomfortable. But not in in a good way. Think “Curb Your Enthusiasm” without the comedy. Then think “Thirtysomething” with some unintended laughs. Then put the two thoughts together. Then shudder. Then be grateful you didn’t spend 2 hours of your life inside of that thought.

Maybe—in this case--I’m a little biased by estrogen deficiency (as it’s clearly a chick flick), but it appears that it’s enough these days for a movie to gesture towards real lives, emotional truth and intelligent insight for people to hail it as real, emotional and deep. It seems not to matter if the characters are unconvincing, the emotions canned and the insights pedestrian. You couldn’t imagine, say, a French movie hitting so many false notes and being praised as piercing and perceptive. I can’t help but thinking our collective standards for real and profound have fallen to troubling new lows.

Generous interpretation: People are so hungering for something real and moving and intelligent that they gladly feast on anything remotely suggestive of it.

Ungenerous interpretation: People have been living inside the entertainment-media-matrix for so long, they can’t even remember what emotional truth is.

Third possibility: Everyone knows the movie was a well intended travesty of a mockery of a sham. But the Director had Friends With Money who paid the reviewers off.

BTW: I don’t think the estrogen-deficiency issue is relevant as the female-friendly “You Can Count on Me” was one of my favorite movies of the last 10 years.

I’ll end my review with a post I saw about the movie on IMDB (when I went to see what in the world people thought they saw in this movie.): The quote: “This movie made me ashamed to be white.”

MISFORTUNE OF THE DAY:

I have a kind of cinema specific narcolepsy—which causes me to nod off for about 10-15 minutes in the middle of almost every film I see. Even if the film is otherwise riveting. Something about the comfort of the seats. The darkness of the room. Whatever. Anyhow, for whatever reason, I did not submit to my usual 40 winker during the movie and was, hence, subjected to 100 uninterrupted minutes of excruciating falseness masquerading as gripping realness. I’m probably being a little hard on this movie.

But it spewed.

TIP OF THE DAY:

How to appear fabulously popular—in three easy steps. 1) Drop your fold-up cell phone and crack your screen—so it looks like a death star black spider. 2) Wait 3) After enough days or weeks or months go by, you will have accumulated the requisite critical mass of text messages for your phone to ring, with the exterior L.E.D. display indicating “Text Messages Full.” Your cell phone provider will not know that you are unable to access said messages because you have a broken screen and, hence, will continue to call you at 20 minute intervals throughout the day to bring this problem to your attention. With your phone ringing all the time, friends and colleagues will think you are the most popular guy around. It’s that simple.

As you might have guessed, I speak here from experience. This audible dysfunctional loop has become my new (and entirely unmeditated) signature thing. My old signature thing was having a chaotic pile of junk in my pocket without a wallet. And my future signature thing—should I become fabulously wealthy—will be to hire a geisha girl to follow me around all day dispensing those hot rolled up towels at 10 minute intervals.

SCANDAL OF THE DAY:

That Chris Paul only received 124 out of the 125 first place votes for NBA Rookie of the Year. That Deron Williams of all people received a first place vote represents an obvious contempt for truth and reality that is sure to land that sportswriter a high position in the Bush administration.

IRONY OF THE DAY:

Having my office mailbox filled with “Your Mailbox is filled” notices.

BIG BROTHER DEVELOPMENT OF THE DAY:

I know a lot of people are up in arms about the revelation that the NSA has accessed and archived pretty much every single phone call by every single American over the last few years. Some are even going so far as to evoke comparisons to Big Brother and all that. But me? I think there’s an unexplored upside. It means some of my finest impromptu voice mail messages have been archived and preserved somewhere. The government could really reduce the national debt by selling those taped calls back to the people who want them They could also provide a public service by allowing people to consult the old phone calls to adjudicate any domestic disagreements over what people did and did not say. “Honey, I TOLD you I had plans to go to the game on Wednesday night. Yes, yes, I did, I swear. Remember I called you from work yesterday and told you that. OK, well, I guess we’re gonna have to write to the government again to resolve this.”

It’s sort of ironic that the party that advocates keeping government out of private life has gotten it involved in private life like never before. Oh, wait, I see. It’s not private life any more…so there’s no contradiction. My bad.

QUESTION OF THE DAY:

Bought the new Pearl Jam CD. Can’t tell how much I like it yet, but something in the conjunction of the NBA Playoffs and a new Pearl Jam offering reminded me that I’d read somewhere that the band members are all huge NBA fans and the band had, in fact, previously been named “Mookie Blaylock” –after their favorite basketball player. Evidently their first album “Ten” was inspired by Mookie Blaylock’s uniform number. Which makes one wonder: If Mookie had worn number 99, would they have had to come up with 89 additional songs?

THEORY OF THE DAY:

A colleague and I were watching a reel of television commercials when he opined “I’ll bet 90% of all garden gnomes bought in the United States end up in television commercials.”

"THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMM...OR IS IT SIEG HEIL?" IMAGE OF THE DAY:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12733214/

Democracy is on the March in Iraq. And it looks an awful lot like something else.

DEFENSE OF INTELLECTUALISM OF THE DAY:

From a recent installment of Ze Frank’s excellent daily video blogs.

www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/05/050506.html

RANDON SINGLE SENTENCE PORTRAIT OF THE DAY:

He was a real team player, only for the other team.

Tags:   None

© All rights reserved.

Posted on 5/11/2006 ( Permanent Link )
Read 590 Times
 Send to Friend