Links o' Lovin'

The Hill's Twitter Room is a strange concept that pays off big in laughs. The perceived need of pretty-much-by-definition old and out of it politicians to keep up with the young 'uns what with their Twitter and all...Leads to shit like this. For starters, I would love, love, love to be the staff member who has to sit there all day and make observations like:
"Jindal is weird. I can't believe Jindal. Such a sad contrast with President. Doesn't even look or sound good, to say nothing about content" -Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)

But, as Michael Richards would say; What do I know? I'm prejudiced! I think Twitter is retarded anyway, to say nothing of redundant, so thanks, The Hill, for providing a public service.

Arnold Safety Blog is another one of those industry-specific things that you think would be pretty straightforward. Generally, this one is.
"Eric Arnold is a Former Enforcement Agent with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and a leading expert on USDOT compliance for small businesses," it says, at the bottom of the page. He also appears to be a member of the Outdoor Amusement Business Association, whatever that is.
His political opinions can't help but creep in there, too, and that's where it gets interesting. It's still a pretty dry read, but there's something that makes me snicker every time I read it. It almost feels like parody.


You Suck At Craigslist is always good for laughs. I recently submitted one, actually. Since they haven't ran it, I might as well:

Found this oddly worded mass of contradictions under "Talent Gigs":

I Need Some Help Just For Fun (Anywhere Portland)

---

Reply to: gigs-h2p2x-1100217227@craigslist.org ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}
Date: 2009-03-30, 10:12PM PDT


I am shooting a video, with some special effects. I need some people to jump around on a trampoline doing flips and having fun, while I film from underneath. I have asked friends and yes they are willing to help...but when is that next sunny day coming and when is everybody available. What I am asking from you (the people interested) is can you get some friends together maybe someone has a trampoline aswell...because I know I don't. There are tons of trampolines out there I see them all the time. I am trying to get this video in my portfolio for the future music video's to soon be produced. Certain segments will be used in a later music video. Any age, but please not over 30. Thank you

Example
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu1spxWAw30

Thanks,
Rob


Then he puts in his phone number. The example video is an example of what footage filmed from under a trampoline looks like, not an example of the artist's work. Dig the random philosophical musing halfway through ("when is that next sunny day coming..."), and the callous lack of regard for the basics of punctuation. And by the way, open to all, but no Olds. I think this may be a secret plea for friends. Or trampolines.



And through them, I also found It's Lovely! I'll Take It!, which is entirely devoted to pictures from real estate listings that never, ever should have seen the light of day. A favorite of mine appears to your right.

This is what one might see if one perchance were interested in a house in Oregon, where all things grow green and lush. So green, in fact, that you'd swear that it wasn't real.
Or, y'know, there's lots of entertainment industry professionals living here, so every house needs to come with its own green screen.



The Journal of Implied Statistics keeps on making with the science so you don't have to. It's comforting to know that things truly are more real now than ever before. Onward through the fog, science! Suus absentis probo infitialis!

People, it turns out, keep dying. And for this, there is a public service provided by Rear Admiral Dick Wheeler U.S.N. (Ret.) and his colleague/sister-in-law Mrs. Dr. Florna Boddington, Passages. They're so sorry for your loss.

Something odd is happening. The forgotten millenials are lashing-back. Generation A may very well have died for your sins. Please make a note of it.

And, I love Sexy People. So do you. So do all of us.

Today: moving day! Wish us luck, ev'ryboddah!

Internet Arguments are Fun

"Each generation is different from the ones past and future. This in of itself is an amazing thing, but the fact that most marketers do not realize this is a sad reality."

This is the observation of something named 'Bret', who works for a marketing concern named InsYght Consulting. I'm starting to see an actual difference between 'Millenials' and other people: torturings of language are viewed as entirely acceptable.
Weird generalizations with no foreseeable provenance, too. What, for instance, is so amazing about differences between generations? Marketing bluster, I suppose, is to blame for this, but come on...

And furthermore, I think it can be said that Millenials seem oddly fond of advertising aimed at it, and fail to find it insulting and silly. I mean, who the fuck links to a company that markets to "teens tweens and millenials" on their blog?

Or this experiment in idiocy and unprovable assertions that is millenialgeneration.org? Fuck, it makes The Journal of Implied Statistics look positively empirical by comparison.

Basically, there seems to be this terrible tendency among those born during a certain time period (more accurately described as 1981-1993 here. I've never liked extending this generation's age all the way back to five years after I was born) to believe their own marketing. They (or again, those who have appointed themselves to speak for them) seem to be making the same high-school-graduation valedictory speech over and over again: we are different, and we care more. We shall achieve more truly good things than anyone ever has, previously, due to our being young and all.
Or, as Dwight Eisenhower once so nicely put it; "Things are more like they are now then they've ever been before." Word, Ike.

So, all this is to back into talking about what we're really talking about: a hoedown at The Stump!

"...The latest quaint saying of a colored servant played a part in the conversation of the well bred, somewhat like that of the latest quaint saying of an amusing child." That's Frederick Lewis Allen, talking about the 1920's. Of course, we've been going to black people for our notions of cool at least since the Gilded Age, while utterly ignoring and actively suppressing them in every substantive way at the same time. However;

"Fist bumps are just another form of high-five. We can even use the word "bling" in a sentence without sounding like we're speaking a foreign language. So, in baby steps, I think it's fair to say that progress is being made."
Okay, for one thing, high-fiving is something I first saw practiced by black football players in the 1980's, and for another, giving five, slapping skin etc. are also things with black origins. But to bother pointing this out is unnecessary. Now everybody does it. Is this anything all that remarkable, indicating a general lessening ancestral race hatred by generations? No: it's a false indicator, pleasing to those who would seek to congratulate themselves and nothing more.

And all people, all generations, all races are responsible for what little has come in the way of progress. Nations, generations and races are arbitrary groupings, and they appeal to people who just need shit to be in groups, I guess. But every time I find myself nearly generalizing about race -inevitably about something that pisses me off- I end up making myself be honest about it and say, shitheads of every race do that. There. Done! Generation X is racially enlightened!

Whatever. In any case, j'read that thing on The Stump? Note that my damn girlfriend got herself into it over there. Note too how several actual racists wander in and shit all over the place. And how an editor gets into it at the end. Somebody's got a boyyy-frieeend...

The actual racist? He says, "I detest rap/hip hop but I like my hardcore rock 'n' roll. I can bang heads with the best of 'em. The comic stereotype of 'white' music as Pat Boone, Carpenters, Muzak, etc. has never had any base in reality. Rock may have distant roots in black music (we all know the blues/Jimmy Page connection) but listening to Iron Maiden, the Cramps, Skrewdriver, you'd be hard pressed to find it."

Skrewdriver? Really? I'm a-gonna go ahead and say it: if you're not a skinhead, you don't listen to that band. Nobody ever claimed they were fantastic musicians, if only you can look past the hate-mongering lyrics. And besides, 'the blues/Jimmy Page connection'? What, are you fourteen? If by 'connection', you mean how the first Led Zeppelin album is basically a Willie Dixon cover album that somehow failed to credit Willie?

No. Moving on. I continue to note no real differences between the generation that calls itself 'millenial' (remember the occasional reference to Gen X as '13th Gen'? What were they counting from?) and everybody else...Except that they can't write very well, and seem to be fond of rehashing the brave-sounding things they heard at their graduation ceremonies.
And that -at least as far as those who actually write as 'millenials', and not as individuals- they seem to think that if they keep spouting the same happy-sounding bullshit over and over, it equates to action.

Pretty soon, they won't be young enough to matter, or be given bylines based on their age. The media's fickle, you see.
But again, the quicker we get past these arbitrary distinctions the better. I mean, the Lost Generation, the Beat Generation (who kinda don't count because both were literary, not all of us), the Baby Boomers (who were probably the first generation to be vain enough to self-identify), what would eventually be called the Greatest Generation (in their personals ads?), the Blank Generation (thank you, Richard Hell), Generation X (thank you...Billy Idol?)...I dunno; it's just a way to sell magazines, ultimately. The wise guy doesn't bother with kindygarden shit like this.