thoughtcrumbs : january 2000

When asked if she would order a vegan pizza at an office meeting, my cousin said, "what's that -- a picture of a pizza?"

Yours is a Very Bad Hotel - Powerpoint done right. Via nubbin.

From the sign-up page of ReadyMade Magazine (like Living for the deprogrammed set):

Your email:
I know this is a lot to ask, but can you
please share my personal info with other
companies so that they will encourage me
to buy more things and finally be happy?

Everyone see this week's cover of the New Yorker?

Television gone very, very wrong
Richard Dean Anderson, the MacGyver of my adolescence, the object of a makeshift seventh-grade fanclub of which I was the secretary (and only because I liked the guy who was the president, so was delighted to be in a four-person club, although I haven't seen that president guy in ten years, and I now suspect is gay), second only in my adulation to Quantum Leap's Scott Bakula, is now doing prepaid calling card commercials.

Mommy, can I have a Megway TH (Transporting Human) for Christmas?

Ooh ooh - Geoff Nunberg talks about blogs on Fresh Air this afternoon. Leave it to a linguist to describe blogs as the "accretion of diurnal detail."

An interesting point just came up in the military tribunal hearings (but I missed which senator brought it up - anybody know?). The topic was the ready availability of assault weapons to terrorists, and the ease of purchase of all kinds of weapons at gun shows. The senator asked Ashcroft why we don't pass better background check regulations at gun shows - since the goal is to provide the Attorney General with all of the tools he needs to find terrorists, wouldn't this be an excellent addition to his arsenal (if you'll forgive the pun)? Ashcroft was painted into a bit of a corner, given that the Bush administration is the least likely of any in history to infringe upon the rights of its gun-toting constituency. He hedged for a minute, said that federally-licensed dealers must perform background checks at gun shows under the Brady Law, but wouldn't accede to any more, even when the initial senator pointed out that that is just a small portion of the problem. Interesting how we're so quick to forget about amendments four through eight, but number two, boy, that's a keeper.

That noise you just heard was me stepping off my soapbox.

Think I should apply?

On airline cinema:

...the grubby movie screen on which the inflight inevitability of Walter Matthau had stumbled lugubriously into the aerial ubiquity of Goldie Hawn.

From The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. This makes three book quotes in about two weeks. I suppose that's indicative of what my social life's like right now.

Here's a sample post from my job interview.

Different kinds of blogs I'll be showing in my job interview on Tuesday (brimming with blogarific goodness):

• http://www.chickeninthewoods.org/librariness/ - 'brary blog
• http://www.henrysdiary.com - Henry's Diary
• http://www.kottke.org/ - Kottke.org