Stuff I've Learned And Been Angry About Lately

1. There is no safe word when it comes to nasal hair.


2. The greatest contribution to gastronomy by the Germans is not beer, and it's not sausage. It's pickled herring.


3. The Nobel Prize for Literature is probably the most irrelevant of the prizes named Nobel. Try this handy dandy quiz; no fair looking it up on wikipedia. Which of the following writers won the Nobel? Nabokov, Joyce, Proust, Twain, Ibsen, Chekhov, Borges, Greene, Tolstoy, Zola.The answer, as you no doubt know? NONE. That's right. No Nobel prize for the writers of the following; Lolita, Ulysses (almost without question the most important novel of the 20th century. Maybe not the best. But the most important) Remembrance of Things Past, A Doll's House, The Quiet American, Uncle Vanya, Anna Karennina, Aleph...and folks, that's only one book from some of them. Not all. None won a Nobel. And take a look at some of the luminaries who have;

Rudolph Eucken
Romain Rolland (whose main contributions seems to have been serious fetishization and "other-ing" of India)
Henrik Pontoppidan
Grazia Deledda
John Galsworthy
Pearl Buck
Sully Prudhomme

Ever heard of any of them? No? Why, do you ask? Because they're a gaggle of shitty writers, that's why.

4. This one is important.

Stop using the word "rape" to refer to things you don't like. Really. Stop. Gas prices do not "rape" you. Stores charging more than you would like to pay for luxuries like toys are not "raping" you. George Lucas and Steven Speilberg did not "rape your childhood" with any movie they have ever made or will ever make. It trivializes the word. It makes you look like a fucking idiot. It trivializes the pain and the experience of anyone who has ever experienced what the word actually means and the people around them who dealt with the fallout. When used, as it often is, in reference to pop culture items or artifacts that somehow harken back to your childhood, and you feel "aren't as good," it certainly doesn't apply. None of those things are an invasion. Nobody makes you buy a movie ticket, drive an SUV that gets .8 mpg, or spend your disposable income on toys. The incorrect and silly and trivial use of this word is starting to make me worry...even more...about the self-centeredness, nostalgia addiction, and childhood-fetishization of my generation. And this from a self-professed toy collector.

And last, but not least, it's getting the next person that says it in my presence punched. I'm tired of it. That's your warning, world. Do not doubt me.

5. I'm glad the Red Sox are losing. Their fans don't deserve a winner, the city doesn't deserve any more winning, and they're a bunch of assholes. Likewise, I am glad the Dodgers are losing because really, after spending 30 million dollars this year on Juan Pierre and Andruw Jones. Add their 2008 OPS+es together and you get 102. Combined. For 30 million dollars. Any team stupid enough to dole out that kind of scratch for that kind of production doesn't deserve to win a pennant.

There. I know it's not my best work. I've tried to get angry about the election, about the bailout (I know, I know, it needed to happen...but sometime, somebody somewhere ought to reap the whirlwind for the colossal amount of stupidity that brought this economic collapse about. I am convinced only that that someone should not be me or anyone I care about) but I just can't summon the anger. My only real coherent thought about it is that Warren Buffet should be named Grand Poobah of the Country, and the election suspended, until things even out.