Beauty is Imperfection

(Originally posted Wednesday, May 14, 2008 )

A few urban myths revealed:

–*Judd Nelson did not invent liquid paper, birth control, or the phrase “eat my shorts.”

–*Rock ‘n’ roll was not invented by Sacco and Vanzetti or Elvis Presley

–*Cass Elliot did not choke to death on a sandwich, a slice of pizza or the body of the little Kitner boy

–*An aerial water bomber did not drop a deep sea diver onto a forest fire after accidentally fishing him out of the ocean. But that photo of Uma Thurman nude on the beach is real.

–*Gang members don’t kill people who flash their headlights at them. Unless the people who flashed their headlights also happened to be selling drugs on their corner.

–*Henri III of France was not necessarily a homosexual, just a momma’s boy who liked to wear dresses, play with poodles and kill Protestants

–*There is no evidence that a true snuff film has ever been filmed or that anybody has ever been killed on film for entertainment purposes. However, it is likely that the male orgasms you see in pornos are real, unless you want to split epistemological hairs about it and say you can’t really trust anything you see with your eyes.

–*Despite the fact that “Osama” rhymes with “Obama,” there is no relationship between Osama bin Laden and Barack Obama. If Americans are stupid enough to believe they are somehow related, then they might also think that O.J. Simpson was innocent just because “you must acquit” rhymes with “if it doesn’t fit.” Hmm…..

–*Jerry Mathers, John McCain and Christopher Walken were not killed in Vietnam.

–*TV star Peter Krause does not have AVM. That was the character he played.

–*Atheists are not lobbying the FCC to ban religious broadcasts, which is a popular Internet falsehood. However, there is at this time no factual evidence that there is actually a God.

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(Originally posted Tuesday, May 13, 2008 )

Top 13 Rejected Advertising Slogans for Nintendo’s Game Phenomenon, the Wii

–*It’s so fun you can’t get one.

–*It’s more fun than sex with a minor

–*Go ahead and see if you can make it plural!

–*Playing the Wii is like swatting at bats in your mind!

–*The Wii! It only looks like you’re masturbating

–*Look out, carpal tunnel syndrome. The Wii will fuck up your whole body!

–*It’s so cool, we won’t even put the company’s name on it.

–*All your friends are gonna feel like a bucket of shit when you have one and they don’t

–*It’s so small, you can totally knock it out of an old lady’s hands

–*It’s like standing up to watch television

–*It will totally influence the election

–*If you do all the right gestures in a naval semafore pattern, a harrier will totally land at your house

–*You can read a book on the Nintendo Wii. And punch at it!

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(Originally posted Sunday, May 11, 2008 )

Stephanie and I were busy yesterday shooting Episode 5 of “The Retributioners,” titled “The Former BFF.” It has been a difficult episode, with many impediments, including the last minute loss of locations, on-set mishaps, and the resistance of certain local residents, but we somehow have got 80% of it in the can. If we can get a one-minute record store scene filmed we’ll be done; we have yet to find a record store, though, where the staff returns calls.

Meanwhile, a happy Mother’s Day to those of you who are mothers. I was amused to see that the Independent Film Channel started off their programming with mother-son incest classic “Spanking the Monkey” this morning. Another thing the channel likes to do is run “Sid & Nancy” on Valentine’s Day. I think someone over there is a smart ass.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed your Mother’s Day as much as the characters in “Spanking the Monkey” did … no wait, that came out wrong!

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(Originally posted Sunday, May 11, 2008 )

Grand Theft Auto IV has been creating a lot of controversy for its depictions of women, its glorification of violence, its use of ethnic stereotypes in a storyline, and its depiction of modern day New York as a crime-ridden dystopia (called “Liberty City”). What criticisms are being leveled at this popular new video game?

–*Critics insist that New York City is no longer a war zone, as depicted in the video, but instead is starting to look much more like Orlando.

–*The game is full of ethnic stereotypes of Russians, Puerto Ricans, the Irish and blacks who participate in the drug world, but sadly omits the rich and colorful history of Hasidic Jewish drug mules with their Yiddish-speaking, Ecstasy-tablet-carrying, old country ways.

–*The storyline offers several “morality” choices that allow a player to spare his opponents from death. However, there is no such “abstinence” choice when it comes to the services of Liberty City’s many prostitutes.

–*There is no morality choice in “Grand Theft Auto” that would allow you to not participate in the life of crime at all and instead retire to your house in the north and read the great masters.

–*A variety of sexy prostitutes are available in the game offering various sexual services from street corners. … Even though there is no such thing as an attractive New York City streetwalker. For those you must go to Montreal, where I suggest the next version of Grand Theft Auto take place.

–*The main character Niko is allowed to solicit fellatio, masturbation and cow-girl position sex from prostitutes. But he NEVER returns the favor with cunnilingus or allows them to finish. Also, if he wants to, he is allowed to run over them with his car. Either way, 14-year-old adolescent male game players learn bad sexual manners.

–*Conservatives argue that the game can narrate its players into violent ideation and anti-social behavior, and besides, the game always freezes up.

–*Conservatives also argue that television and violent media in general condition children to be more likely to participate in violent acts. However, the same conservatives are mum on the causal relation between ordering an army to invade a Middle Eastern country and the number of violent acts that may occur after that.

–*The game’s soundtrack includes a variety of diverse artists in a rich variety of musical genres, all of which can be played on the protagonist’s car radio. I don’t know if the makers of this game have been here lately, but New York has the shittiest radio stations in the country, all of which are a pretty good argument for nationalizing the broadcast system, by the way, and satellite radio would be the only way you can hear anything decent on a New York City car radio.

–*New York’s fifth borough of Staten Island has been omitted from the game, which, by the way, means Liberty City has overlooked a great many of the Italians, not to mention the actual mafia, that might have given this game some kind of verisimilitude.

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(Originally posted Friday, May 09, 2008 )

NEW YORK (AP) — Sunday morning, in an announcement that startled the theological community and Wall Street, representatives of Heaven and Hell said that they would pursue their long-rumored plans to combine forces and become one entity. The plan was intentionally unveiled on Sunday, God’s day of rest, and also a time when the executives could avoid upsetting the closed stock market.

“We didn’t want to scare anybody,” said a lawyer for Satan.

According to the executives with both heaven and hell, the decision comes at a time when the new corporate climate demands consolidation and right-sizing to secure a healthy profit and long-term growth. Insiders say that the executives of both entities had to look at their common business: that of souls.

“Just look at the spreadsheets,” says one insider. “Both heaven and hell have the apparatus to accept or dispense with souls as they see fit, and combined operations would make that apparatus 10 times more efficient than either entity by itself.”

“What’s good for hell is good for heaven,” said God the Father, in a written statement sent by fax to the major wire services.

Speaking to an audience of skeptics, executives announcing the merger said they could accomplish the venture without layoffs.

“The world population is booming,” said the Angel Gabriel. “Pretty soon, the baby-boomer generation will be coming to the twilight, and then you’ll see a bull market in religion–a lot of people repenting at the last minute. Blubbering. That sort of thing. You can bet that it’s going to be a busy judgment day for us.”

Satan, also known as Lucifer, also known as The Beast, the angel cast out of heaven, concurred with this assessment of the economic future.

“We’ve been talking about this for a long time, God and me,” says Lucifer. “We decided that the moment had come to put aside our parochialism–the arguing about whose light was the true light–and take a good, hard look at what our business is. The bottom line is, we trade in souls. We both need souls. It’s just left for us to weed out the good from the bad.

“I can’t wait for the baby-boomers,” he added. “There will be a lot of tares in the vineyard for me to pull, so to speak.”

Satan added that he goes by many signs, and he offers consumers wealth and power. In the future, he also plans to offer knowledge, in a joint agreement with the Lexis-Nexis Corporation.

United States anti-trust regulators are meticulously scanning the merger plans for inconsistencies and anti-competitive practices.

“For the most part, the corporations’ intentions seem fair-minded and competitive,” says Ira Witkin of the U.S. Department of Labor. “But there are certain worries we have. For instance, why do bad things happen to good people? Is a person born without the ability to make moral choices necessarily an immoral person? If God is the way, the power and the light, what came before God? Do we really need a concept of evil? … There are a lot of unanswered questions here.”

Independent analysts in the stock market see this merger as just one more in an ongoing U.S. economic restructuring–the same reorganization that turned the Big 8 accounting firms into the Big 6. The same trend that saw the big fish Chase Manhattan swallow Chemical Bank.

“We can’t think of this in terms of just America anymore,” said the Angel Gabriel. “We have to think globally. The fact is, Mephistopheles is not our enemy. China is our enemy.”

“As far as the merger of Heaven and Hell, I don’t see this as part of a trend,” countered attorney Gary Weiss. “This is not a new idea. The plan goes back at least to Milton and Blake. And it’s not about corporations, really. We have to think about the consumer. Think of the person sitting there, waiting for transubstantiation. Right now, he’s got to wade through all of that red tape, all the while asking, ‘Am I going to stew in my own feces, or aren’t I?’ With this new entity in place, we’re hoping that maybe we can squeeze more people into heaven, because with the new system, souls will conceivably be purged by the fire of Earthly torment–the torment of their desires. That’s the way I see it.

“But let me choose my words carefully,” he added. “We’re not trying to shut hell out of the picture. We will always need Hell.”

Weiss describes himself as a non-practicing Jewish man.

The plan at this time is that owners of stock in Heaven–namely, those who pray and who have been baptized–will have their stake bought back by God. This new capital will be used to buy stakes in the lost souls of others. The plan raised hackles with some of heaven’s investors.

“You can’t just sell souls like that,” said John Calvin, a French reformer and theologian who has been dead since 1564. “At least you can’t sell souls for less than $100 a share.”

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(Originally posted Thursday, May 08, 2008 )

I sometimes feel as if I should be promoting my blog a little bit more than I do. Mostly I find my readers through friends and word of mouth. If I were a brand, though, how would I advertise “Beauty Is Imperfection” to make it stand out more? Some pitches for commercial purposes:

–*Beauty Is Imperfection: Read It Or You Will Get A Deadly Staph Infection

–*Beauty Is Imperfection: It Will Totally Get You Pregnant.

–*Read Beauty Is Imperfection Every Day: It Will Make You That Much More Beautiful

–*It Will Give You a Bigger Johnson

–*It Will Make You Feel Like a Better Person Just By Sitting There Doing Nothing

–*It Will Make You Feel Up To Date On Current Events Like the Tragedy in Darfur In Ways That Other Humor Web Sites Just Can’t

–*It’s The Funniest Masturbatory Work of Solipsism on the ‘Net.

–*Beauty Is Imperfection Will Show You Its Boobs

–*Beauty Is Imperfection Will Bring George W. Bush To Justice

–*It Will Solve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict With Its Snarky Brand of Obnoxious White Hipster Humor

–*Beauty Is Imperfection: A Much More Satisfying Blog Than The One By The Guy Who’s Always Talking About How Much Pussy He Gets

–*It’s More Bi Than Tila Tequila

–*It’s Not Really Bi, Just Like Tila Tequila Isn’t Really Bi

–*Beauty Is Imperfection: It Goes Through More Sexually Experimental Phases Than Tila Tequila

–*Beauty Is Imperfection: Where I Put The Jokes That Didn’t Make It Into “The Retributioners.”

–*Beauty Is Imperfection: The Site Where Eric Rasmussen Plugs His Still-Unpopular Music (Which You Can Listen To Here Seven Days a Week!)

–*Beauty Is Imperfection: If Everybody Read It, There’d Be No More War

–*Beauty Is Imperfection: If Nobody Read It, Would It Exist?

–*Beatufy Is Imperfection: It’s Cold Here. So Cold

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(Originally posted Thursday, May 08, 2008 )

A Live Blog of the North Carolina-Indiana Presidential Primaries*

4:00 p.m. While we wait out the early results, Hillary Clinton is once again mentioned by commentators as a favorite among working-class and blue collar voters who see her as being “one of them.” Given that Clinton comes from an affluent suburb and sat on the board of Wal-Mart and went to Wellesley and has made tens of millions of dollars in the last 10 years with her husband, working class voters rephrased themselves and said they liked that she was white.

4:15 p.m. Interestingly, both Clinton and Obama are now campaigning as underdogs.

5:15 More waiting. Now that we’ve got a few extra minutes, a little history trivia: Indiana is the state that made Ezra Pound want to leave the United States and become an Italian Fascist.

7:00 p.m. About half the voters at the exit polls say that the controversy over Barack Obama’s former pastor Jeremiah Wright has swayed their decision, while the other half said it did not. But 100% of those asked say that they only tolerated this completely insubstantial media-concocted flap because policy discussions about whether or not everybody should pay into a national health care plan were a little too rarefied for them.

7:10 p.m. Obama has a beer.

7:20 p.m. Hmmmm….buffalo wings!

7:30 p.m. North Carolina polls close, and all the networks call it for Obama. Now comes the racial drill-down of the numbers that is sure to lift us all up as a people.

7:45 p.m. Is Joe Six Pack happy?

7:46 p.m. He’s OK. But he’s glad you asked. He was feeling a little sensitive and glad somebody paid attention to him for two minutes, even if it’s just people using him momentarily for political vantage. He’s kind of bashful about his Joe Six Pack.

7:55 p.m. Indiana certainly took a long time to finish voting. Are there some 1960 Chicago-style shenanigans going on here?

8:00 p.m. Rush Limbaugh’s “operation chaos” is working, as Republicans who hate Hillary Clinton are voting for her anyway to undermine the Obama Express. Now if Rush Limbaugh’s fans were actually going to vote for their own candidate John McCain in the fall, the rotund radio host might be on to something here. But since they’re not, it seems that Limbaugh is still just a garden variety idiot.

9:15 p.m. Obama says congratulations to Clinton for her win in Indiana.

9:16 p.m. “Are you patronizing me?” Hillary asks. “What the hell is so bad about Indiana.”

9:17 p.m. Gary, Indiana has still not come through. Was Obama too early when he called Indiana for Clinton? Who does he think he is, Wolf Blitzer?

9:30 p.m. Hillary thanks you for your support. “I’m broke,” she chuckles. “No, really.”

10:00 Clinton says she’s going to work hard to win the necessary 2209 votes. Wait, 2209? Oh! She’s including Michigan and Florida. Funny. Unfortunately, nobody told her: Those delegates were all drowned in butts of malmsey wine. C’est la vie.

1:30 p.m.–Mark Antony gives a speech using verbal irony and rhetoric to turn the common people against Brutus and Cassius. … I’m sorry, that’s not right. What I meant to say was that NBC’s Tim Russert uses shambling, hedging, veiled insinuations in an attempt to turn the super delegates against Hillary Clinton.

*OK, it wasn’t really live blogged. I did it after the fact late at night. If I could do it live, I’d be working for The New York Times, people.

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(Originally posted Tuesday, May 06, 2008 )

New York (AP) — Facing rising costs for glossy magazine paper and other pressures hitting the magazine industry, editors at Vanity Fair, the iconic magazine of culture, fashion and politics owned by Condé Nast publications, said Monday that for cost-cutting reasons, they must in the future combine their annual Hollywood, Kennedy clan, and nymphette-themed editorial spreads into one large “Movies, Kennedys and Sexy Little Girls Issue.” The editors refer to it as an annual tableau vivant — “a regatta of taste, vision, desire, splendor and sumptuous taboo,” claims editor E. Graydon Carter.

Known for its access and insight into the deepest chambers of political power and for lots of pictures of teenage girls without their clothes on, Vanity Fair says, in its characteristic bluster, that its new issue will capture the new zeitgeist of all of the great fetishes of the literati–the Kennedy clan and its power and tragedy; the lavish and sinful Dionysian decadence of Hollywood; and the achingly short-stemmed beauty of a number of barely pubescent 13-year-old sub-debs, captured with barely swelling knolls of breasts in evocative red swimwear, or in no wear at all.

“People want the moral clarity, the strength, the vision and the Apollonian beauty of the Kennedy clan,” said Carter. “At the same time, we seek in our Hollywood establishment the depths of fin de siècle perversity, the human hubris, and the possibilities of touching the ends of our moral universe in ways that even the gods of Olympus dared not. And meanwhile, we must all acknowledge our collective fervor to ravish the presexual female and suckle on the fruit of her lost innocence–which becomes beauty.”

Glossy paper costs just keep rising in the magazine industry, which has forced many a magazine to cut corners. Even Vanity Fair, which has often enjoyed rising circulation in tough times, is not immune to the base coin of economic necessity now and has been losing advertising revenue, and thus profitability, even as circulation rises. But the magazine says that its editorial mission is the same and that its readership (mostly women in their 40s with an average income in the $79,000 area) should continue to expect journalism of refinement, savvy and integrity that is privy to the thinking of some of the most powerful men in the world, as well as expect a prurient housewife’s interest in the sex lives of effete monarchs and aristocrats and also expect lots of luscious male-gaze-impotent-voyeur fetish snapshots of sexually charged tweens such as Dakota Fanning and Francis Bean Cobain.

“Whether they are mourning the tragedy of Camelot, or enjoying the tumescent tabula rasa that is the sight of Miley Cyrus’s soft, milky white topless back, Americans continue to revive the themes of Greek drama,” said Carter. “They yearn to see in their role models the classical virtues and aesthetics. When we see the multiple tragedies of the Kennedys, do we not think of the Gods angered at Achilles or Actaeon? When we see the rare, supple form of a burgeoning Abigail Breslin, do we not admire the universal elements of beauty, which Aristotle identified in his Metaphysics–order, symmetry and definiteness?”

Vanity Fair has recently stoked controversy with its racy photos of Miley Cyrus and exposes of Roman Polanski and Lindsay Lohan. Though these have caused momentary setbacks, the magazine blazes forward with its mission, it says, of bringing “any and all details of the Kennedy clan, including forensic evidence such as lipstick, pubic hair, and spittle into public view at all times, if only so the public may touch the DNA of greatness. And also, the moment we see any new film featuring any girl under the age of 8, we promise the Vanity Fair reader that we will be working diligently on a new nymphette issue five years in advance–thus bringing you the emerging sexuality of Hollywood’s next Christina Ricci. Or Natalie Portman. Or Jamie Lynn Spears. Or Lindsay Lohan. Whoever is the woman inside the child, we at Vanity Fair promise that we will be the first to jump, pounce on and tackle that woman and wrest her from her innocence forever with typical journalistic élan.”

Vanity Fair‘s circulation is 1.2 million.

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(Originally posted Sunday, May 04, 2008 )

What Statistics Are We Using To Miscommunicate and Misrepresent The Way People Feel During This Voting Season?

–*Fifty-eight percent of Americans say they have not changed their opinion of Barack Obama during the recent flap with his former pastor, who it is said made inflammatory remarks about America

–*Fifty-one percent, however, say that it could bother them later in the campaign season

–*Forty-two percent say this is because they are assuming it will affect other people’s opinions, and thus hurt Obama’s electability. So they are voting based on what other people are thinking.

–*Thirty-one percent say that they are reconsidering whether the relationship with the pastor might actually hurt their feelings about Obama now that a journalist has called them and asked them if it sways their opinion.

–*Thirty-five percent of those respondents asked the poller, “How do you think I should feel?”

–*Ninety-nine percent of those respondents who asked for help with their answer were told by the poller that he could not do it because it would harm the results

–*One hundred percent of those pollers do not understand that they are already harming the results by asking people loaded questions that have absolutely nothing to do with anything.

–*Fifty-eight percent of respondents said that given the choice of John McCain or Hillary Clinton in November, they would rather eat a large roast beef sandwich

–*Thirty-percent of those said they would want onion on it.

–*Twenty-four percent of those said not too much onion.

–*Eighty-eight percent of those polled said that the Democratic candidates’ promise of gas tax relief was a political stunt to curry favor with the public.

–*Fifty-six percent said that, as far as political stunts go, that one would probably work

–*Sixty-four percent of Americans said that they would pay more taxes for health care if the system worked.

–*Even though that would be communism, said 2%.

–*Fifty-eight percent of those who say socialized medicine is communism are not rich, they say, they are simply absolutist and dogmatic and tend to see the issue of free market economies in black and white terms.

–*100% of those with borderline personality disorder tend to see the world in dogmatic and black and white terms

–*Sixty-percent of voters think the Iraq War was a mistake

–*Twenty to thirty percent of those people might have done well to think about that in 2003 when many smart people with lots of empirical evidence could have told them that it was unjustifiable and immoral and would end up like an April turd-floater in Texas

–*Fifty-one percent of voters think Hillary has the right stuff

–*Even though that number was only 41% two days ago.

–*Which means 10% are pretty goddamned fickle and probably listen to their television too much

–*100% of Obama voters think Clinton should drop out

–*100% of Clinton voters think Obama should drop out

–*.0007% are Amish living in relative peace in their buggies and a lot of them don’t know know jack about the election. “What say thee, English? There’s an election afoot?”

–*Which means those 0.0007% seem to be just as qualified as anybody else.

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