So long, and thanks for all the fish

Happy New Year, Snackers!

So ... it's been a little quiet around here lately. We know. Used to be, we'd post 4-5 times a day, but over the last year or so it's been getting kind of sparse. It's not you, really. We swear. It's just ... we've changed, baby. Or rather, babies: all of us all have at least one now, and man, do they ever cut into the web-surfing, post-writing time that we enjoyed back in 2003 when we started this thing. Not to mention, we all have different jobs, and none of us are in the, shall we say, blogging-conducive work environment we shared when ASS was born. We've each been blogging in other places, too. Our focus has shifted, and the New Year seems like the right time to call it quits. This blog has had a good run - 2,524 posts, which ain’t bad - and made us some good friends both online and off. We've enjoyed the hell out of it, and our readers are dear to our hearts. We'll keep the blog up for the archives (at least for now), but if you want to read newer stuff you'll have to come and find us at our other bloggy locales. Please do – we’d like to see you there, and we think you’ll find some ASS-y stuff if you make the trip. Thanks for reading and commenting.

You can find Christopher at Blowing and Drifting.
You can find Matt at Sanctioning Agent.
You can find Elise at The Snarky Squab.
We don't know where you can find Alex.

Vaya con carne!

Perfect Holiday Diversion Part I

So I take the kid to see Santa. I was pretty sure she wouldn't cry, but I didn't expect this look completely devoid of emotion. She get's her cynicism from her father.

For more fun with Santa, check out the "Scared of Santa" slideshow:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/entertainment/holiday/sfl-scaredofsanta-ugc,0,7181908.ugcphotogallery

Perfect Holiday Diversion Part II

27

As a child, my older cousins would make me fight their next door neighbors, who were twins my same age (I assume they're still twins and still my age). I think that experience paid off. What's your score?

Avoid Swedish Operations

Woman catches fire during hemorrhoid operation.

Ugh, yuck, and ouch.

Xmas controversies: how do YOU top your tree?

When I was little, we always had an elaborate angel topping our tree. You know: the kind with the stiffened muslin fabric skirt, the flowing plaster or resiny hair and the outstretched arms. Very biblical, very New Testament, very classical Christmas. After my parents split, my mom kept the angel and my dad switched to a traditional Austrian tree topper. We had ones made of wood and ones made of glass, but they all had that sort of pointed finial shape to them, kind of an extension of the tree top itself. Now, as the oldest child, I tend to carry on the traditions of my childhood with fierce devotion. You know, certain traditions just cannot be messed with: the tree has to be real, there cannot be tinsel, certain ornaments go in certain places, etc. But when it comes to tree-toppers, I have eschewed the angels and finials of my youth for a more gloriously over-the-top option:

Yes, the lighted star. It even blinks, if I want it to, which I mostly don't. Why do I like the star so much? Well, for one thing: SHINY! (I'm a bit of a magpie like that.) But also, dude: when you were a kid and you drew a picture of a Christmas tree, what did you always put at the top? A star, right? WELL THERE YOU GO. Christmas is one of the few times of the year when I feel it's OK to integrate a little tacky, gilded, sentimental, crass gaudiness. Heck, I EMBRACE it this time of year. 'Tis the season, right? And the star atop my tree hits the perfect note. What about you? What's on top of your tree? (Or, if you don't have one, what WOULD you top a tree with, if you did?)

Stinkiest Onion Piece Ever

Horrible. It would only have been horribler if they worked in a Christmas-spirit angle:

ALBANY, NY—In one of the most merciful disasters in recent years, a Greyhound bus traveling from Rochester to Albany, NY skidded into a ditch Tuesday, killing a dozen deadbeat fathers and penniless addicts, and putting nearly 20 more hapless bastards out of their misery.

According to Greyhound officials, the fatal crash occurred less than an hour after passengers gathered their pathetic belongings and dragged what little hope they had left onto the despair-soaked bus. Emergency crews called to the scene described the remains of the victims as "slightly more lifeless than they were before the accident."

"This is by far the saddest thing I've ever witnessed," said head rescue worker Charles Rabnett, referring to the sea of fast-food wrappers, losing lottery tickets, and scorched corpses that littered the crash site. "We've done our best to contact family members and loved ones, but so far we've only been able to reach four parole officers and 10 AA sponsors."

Added Rabnett: "Dear God, what a terrible waste of my time."

...

No survivors were reported following the accident. In addition, initial surveillance of the wreckage seems to indicate that those who managed to pull their world-weary bodies out of the overturned bus, gave up on their wretched existence within minutes. According to paramedics, it is likely that many of the casualties had suffered during the crash, and, if not then, for years earlier...

"It's hard to believe that something like this could even happen," said Albany resident Carl Robinson, who, since losing his home to a fire earlier this month, has been sleeping in the city's dilapidated bus station. "To know that life, no matter how dreadful or hopeless, always has a chance of coming to an end—it's so inspiring."

Gomboc

Sunday's Time Magazine had a short article about the Gömböc, an object which - without a motor, counterweight, or any other assistance - can right itself from any position. Originally nothing more than speculation by a mathematician in Russia, two Hungarian scientists subsequently devised the actual, physical object. It's not much to look at, but when you watch it tip back and forth as it rights itself, you get the sense of something magical happening. (You can see the video by going to the inventors' website.)

For just 1001 Euros ($1450 or so), I could buy my own Gömböc with my birth year for a serial number. Maybe next year, when the Chinese have knocked it off.

Fjuckby

Readers have surely been waiting to hear more about the Swedes who have to live in the town of Fjuckby:

The hapless inhabitants of Fjuckby have lost the last chance they had of changing the name of their village to something less suggestive of sexual intercourse.

On Thursday, the National Land Survey of Sweden - the government agency responsible for the handling of place names - announced that it was following the recommendation of the Institute of Language and Folklore to preserve the name Fjuckby.

"Preserve" here meaning, "to saddle the townspeople with." More:

Fjuckby is saddled with the dual misfortune of containing both the rude Swedish word 'juck' and its more internationally recognizable English equivalent.

Speaking to The Local in February, Flensburg said she was surprised by the folklore institute's resistance to a name change since the alternative, Fjukeby, was "pretty and nice".

Fjuckby and Fjukeby both translate roughly as 'Windy Village'.

Shot Through the Leg and You're to Blame

Dave Zirin, one of the only pinko sportswriters in the business, offers an interesting analysis of the media furor over the murder of football player Sean Taylor:

Media illusion or not, we felt we knew Sean Taylor—and have wept for his family and their loss. There is nothing wrong with this. If anything, we’ve borne witness to people’s capacity to reach out and care.

BUT NOT everyone felt the better angels of their nature emerge. Within hours—minutes—of Taylor’s death, a collection of sportswriters tried to turn this tragedy into to a brazenly racist “life lesson.” They speculated that Taylor effectively got what he deserved, the fruits born of a “thug life.”

Never mind that Taylor was the son of a police chief who attended the same private schools as the Florida wing of the Bush family. The narrative of a young Black athlete dying by gunfire was too succulent to resist. The callous copy ran rampant, and this time went beyond Fox Sports Jason Whitlock’s easily dismissible, painfully predictable hot air...

The hypocrisy is breathtaking. If Taylor was white, imagine how this story would be played out: “Hero tragically dies defending his family in home invasion.” Instead, we get yet another example of how sports has become an absolute trash receptacle of racism over the past several years: an acceptable place for troglodytic writers and announcers to yip about “hip hop culture” and “thug life,” being the rot at the heart of professional athletics.

Bless You!

All about sneezing,, which can expel snot and spit at up to 100 mph.

Getting the Skinny

An interesting new website, ZipSkinny, lets you get basic demographic information on any zip code and to compare up to 20 zip codes. Here's part of the data on mine:

Primary Decisions

Well. This may just have solidified my decision as to whom I'll vote for in the upcoming primaries. (I admit I was leaning in that direction, anyway.) Check it:

Manchester, NH – Today, Senator John Edwards outlined his bold policies for a more family-friendly America with universal paid family and medical leave, universal pre-kindergarten for four-year-olds, more affordable care for other children and job benefits for independent workers. Among the most significant policy proposals of the Edwards plan is for at least eight weeks of paid family and medical leave that will help American workers balance their jobs and their families.

If you can stand the PR-speak, check out the whole press release. Universal paid leave and Pre-K + subsidized childcare = music to my ears. And should be music to everyone's ears, of course, since those little rugrats will one day be deciding how nice your nursing home care is. Among other things. I'm not super confident that Edwards will get the nod, but policies like this make it pretty easy for me to give him my vote.

Wednesday Lyric Blogging - Woody Guthrie

In a bit of a progressive nod to Christopher's post on the left lean of the academy, this edition of Wednesday Lyric Blogging is for Woodie Guthrie.

All You Fascists
Lyrics by Woodie Guthrie
Performed by Billy Bragg & Wilco

I’m gonna tell you fascists
You may be surprised
The people in this world
Are getting organized
You’re bound to lose
You fascists bound to lose

Race hatred cannot stop us
This one thing we know
Your poll tax and Jim Crow
And greed has got to go
You’re bound to lose
You fascists bound to lose.

All of you fascists bound to lose

I said, all of you fascists bound to lose
Yes sir, all of you fascists bound to lose
You’re bound to lose! You fascists
Bound to lose!

People of every color
Marching side to side
Marching ‘cross these fields
Where a million fascists dies
You’re bound to lose
You fascists bound to lose!

I’m going into this battle
And take my union gun
We’ll end this world of slavery
Before this battle’s won
You’re bound to lose
You fascists bound to lose!

The Liberal Academy

If you're even tangentially part of the academy, you're probably aware of the eternal debate over whether and why American colleges and universities are so politically liberal. Myself, I think that American higher education is laudably, permanently liberal (though often in some pretty shallow ways) largely because the goals of liberalism as a political movement are so directly related to the goals of higher education - for instance, equipping people to think critically, rather than reverently, about those who hold political, social, economic, or some other kind of power, and to act to alter present arrangements of power, rather than simply maintain them.

A new study proposes that one reason conservatives are underrepresented in the academy is that people who are politically conservative prefer to either get jobs right out of college (rather than pursue PhDs) or to start families (again, rather than pursue PhDs). Interesting stuff:

The study — “Left Pipeline: Why Conservatives Don’t Get Doctorates” — argues that the much debated minority status for conservatives in higher education may be the result of differing priorities of graduating college seniors of different political persuasions. The study presents evidence that conservatives are significantly more likely than liberals — at the point when college students decide whether to apply to graduate school — to value raising a family and having money. In contrast, liberals at that point in their lives are significantly more likely to value writing original works.

The authors of the study do not dispute that conservatives are a distinct minority in academe and that the imbalance is problematic. They also hold open the possibility — much proclaimed by other authors at the conference of the American Enterprise Institute where all of the work was presented — that there may be bias against conservatives (although they question whether this has been proven). But the authors of the work on the pipeline say there is considerable evidence that could show conservative self-selection out of academic careers.

Wednesday Lyric Blogging – Thanksgiving Edition

Thanksgiving Song Lyrics
Adam Sandler

Turkey for me
Turkey for you
Let's eat the turkey
In my big brown shoe
Love to eat the turkey
At the table
I once saw a movie
With Betty Grable
Eat that turkey
All night long
Fifty million Elvis fans
Can't be wrong
Turkey lurkey doo and
Turkey lurkey dap
I eat that turkey
Then I take a nap

Thanksgiving is a special night
Jimmy Walker used to say Dynomite
That's right
Turkey with gravy and cranberry
Can't believe the Mets traded Darryl Strawberry
Turkey for you and
Turkey for me
Can't believe Tyson
Gave that girl V.D.

White meat, dark meat
You just can't lose
I fell off my moped
And I got a bruise
Turkey in the oven
And the buns in the toaster
I'll never take down
My Cheryl Tiegs poster
Wrap the turkey up
In aluminum foil
My brother likes to masturbate
With baby oil
Turkey and sweet potato pie
Sammy Davis Jr.
Only had one eye

Turkey for the girls and
Turkey for the boys
My favorite kind of pants
Are corduroys
Gobble gobble goo and
Gobble gobble gickel
I wish turkey
Only cost a nickel
Oh I love turkey on Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Skyway or the Highway

I loved the skyways when I worked in downtown Minneapolis - until I had to walk through them after normal business hours. *shudder* Two well-known urban designers think they're a blight on the city.

When two of the world's top urban designers drop in for a visit and come away with the impression that your city — in this case Minneapolis — is a relic of the 1970s, ill-equipped to thrive and compete in a new century, and that its only hope is to tear down its skyways, well, that gets your attention.

"I feel sorry for Minneapolis," said Jan Gehl, the celebrated Danish architect whose work around the world has linked the rising importance of good public spaces to a city's success.

Thirty years ago, Minneapolis was thought to be a leader among winter cities. But taking people off the streets and putting them upstairs, "under glass," hasn't worked in Minneapolis or anywhere else, Gehl said, to the point that Minneapolis is no longer "up to the beat of the world-class cities of the 21st century."

Gil Penalosa, a noted public parks developer in both Latin America and Canada, said that the skyways lend a defensive, pessimistic air to the downtown core when, in reality, they are needed for only a few weeks of the year. "They suck the public life out of the city," he said.

Given the fat chance that Minneapolis will remove its eight miles of skyways, both men agreed that finding a solution poses one of the toughest design challenges faced by any city in the world: creating vitality at street level when most foot traffic has been shifted to the second story.

The biggest problem, both said, is that people in Minneapolis don't realize that great cities — even cold cities — are now defined by the vitality of their street life. "People here don't see a crisis," said Gehl. "They don't yet see themselves as behind the times."

Finnegan's Wake, the Picture

Envisioning works of fiction as images is a challenge (unless they're graphic novels, I suppose). But here is a fascinating attempt by Hungarian Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy to represent Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. I guess Ulysses was too easy.


The Guardian has much more on Moholy-Nagy, a brilliant designer and artist who could also toss off some good lines: "It is not the person ignorant of writing but the one ignorant of photography who will be the illiterate of the future."

Wednesday Lyric Blogging

Last night I was flipping through iTunes and started listening to some of my old Cracker albums. Listening to David Lowery made me think about Camper Van Beethoveen and I thought, “I need an upbeat, absurd, fun song. From there, “Take the Skinheads Bowling” was obvious. Bonus: You Tube of the video from MTV’s 120 Minutes.


"Take the Skinheads Bowling"
by Camper Van Beethoveen
from Telephone Free Landslide Victory

Everyday I get up and pray to Jah
And he increases the number of clocks by exactly one
Everybody's coming home for lunch these days
Last night there were skinheads on my lawn

Chorus: Take the skinheads bowling, take them bowling.
Take the skinheads bowling, take them bowling.

Some people say that bowling alleys have big lanes (have big lanes X 2)
Some people say that bowling alleys all look the same (all the same X 2)
There's not a line that goes here that rhymes with same (anything X 2)
Had a dream last night but I forgot what it was about (what it was X 2)

(chorus)

Had a dream last night about you my friend
Had a dream I wanted to sleep next to plastic
Had a dream I wanted to lick your knees
Had a dream it was about nothing

(chorus)
(chorus)

I Swear

Linguistic and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker on why swearing matters and why we should care about it. Fucking brilliant.

Wednesday Lyric Blogging (Belated)

Well, I seem to have misplaced my mind. A weekend that involved a visit from the mother-in-law, a great wedding with a reception filled too many White Russians (while the wedding was in “nordeast” Minneapolis, I’m talking about the drink), and the end of this new daylight savings time jibber-jabber, bled into a day off of work, and another day of working from home. The net result is that it’s Thursday, not Wednesday. On top of that I can be somewhat forgetful.

As Kyle aptly pointed out, today would be a great day for "Where is My Mind?" Hell yeah. In high school Surfer Rosa was a breathe of fresh air (and a nice album cover or so I thought). So in a nod to forgetfulness and great alternative power pop, here we go.


Where is my Mind?
Performed by Pixies
Written by Chris Thompson/ Black Francis/Frank Black

With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
But there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind?
Where is my mind?
Where is my mind?

Way out in the water
See it swimmin'

I was swimmin' in the Caribbean
Animals were hiding behind the rocks
Except the little fish
But they told me, he swears
Tryin' to talk to me, coy koi.

Where is my mind?
Where is my mind?
Where is my mind?


Way out in the water
See it swimmin' ?

With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
If there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind?

Oh
With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Oh
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Oh
Oh