“fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can. i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it”

via Lindsay Campbell, who makes the point that the faster you read the above text, the more accurate you get.

This collection of photographs by Jan Von Hollenben is magical. Also makes me realize I don’t have a creative bone in my body.

Not the band (Sorry j.o.), but the store that carries these gorgeous pens I am coveting. The website is a huge tease though. It doesn’t appear that you can buy anything online and they only have stores in Japan.

Yeah… that’s wood.

And I had nothing to do with it! Welcome Mom - get your network on.

My friend Lauren is a very talented graphic designer so I was thrilled when she decided to sell her gift cards on Etsy this year.

She is selling three different sets: One for Hannukah (named We Get Eight Nights), one tracking the lyrics to The Twelve Days of Christmas (my favorite) and a holiday collection.

The Twelve Days of Christmas

Has any one else seen the Lipitor guy (a.k.a. Dr. Robert Jarvik inventor of the Jarvik Artificial Heart) and thought, “inventor of the artificial heart or not, I just don’t trust this guy because he looks like President Bush with a fading mullet.”

Just asking…

Dear Mr. Seal,

Don’t you know that your bald head (ok… and the scars if we are up close) is the only touchstone we have in our collective struggle to visually differentiate you from Tracy Chapman?

Kind regards,

Your concerned fan(s)

Thanks to Bret for pointing out that DeNiro (circa Tax Driver) appears to be backing for Seal in the first photo. Hat tip to Damon with regard to the second one.

From Jessica Hagy’s blog (and soon to be book) - Indexed.

Thousands of lawyers took to the streets in Islamabad to protest General Musharraf’s declaration of emergency rule (which included the suspension of the Constitution, the firing of the judges of the Supreme Court, and the closing of privately owned television news channels and curbing of broadcasts by international broadcasters).

Photo: Mohsin Raza/Reuters

Query: What would it take for lawyers to rise up like this in the United States?

It didn’t involve an F, but I have attempted this feat in my life.

(via the always eerily on point xkcd… and remember, don’t forget to mouseover the comic…)

It’s rare, but some days I can count the number of words I say on two hands. Yesterday was one of those days.

Hello. Yes. No Thanks. Thank you.

Hey. That’s it. Thanks.

A woman I work with recently asked me if I remembered Mike, Pam and Penny from the Dick and Jane readers. I assured her that she must have grown up with some bootleg version of the books because there certainly were no black characters in the series when I was a child.

Lo and behold - she was right. Back in the sixties, a black family actually did move in next door to Dick and Jane.

But by the time I got around to reading Dick and Jane in the late 70s early 80s, the black family was no where to be seen. Which raises the question, did the publishers create a transition title in the 70s called “White Flight with Dick and Jane” to explain why Mike, Pam and Penny were no longer around?

Dick: Look Sally. The moving truck is here. We are moving.
Sally: I am sad. What about our friends? Our friends Pam and Penny?
Jane: Oh no Sally. They are staying here.
Dick: Oh yes. They are staying. We are moving. Moving before the property values fall.

This came up a few years back (can’t remember if I posted it) but I called someone at the office Grimace today and that led to a discussion of the origins of Grimace. Back when he debuted in 1971 he was actually referred to as “Evil Grimace,” was to shakes as Hamburglar is to hamburgers, and sported 4 to 6 arms.

Evil Grimace

I want read/see the origin story of the “Evil Grimace.” I want to know how he found redemption and became Ronald McDonald’s Robin.

Apparently the young girl in this commercial is Jodie Foster. She totally sells her “No Shakes…” line. I get sad contemplating the lack of shakes in McDonald Land.

The first music video I ever saw remember seeing. It’s from 1984, so I must have seen other videos before this. I imagine I am going to lose an evening searching for a video I can remember that came out on MTV before this one.

Can you call it from the still? I’ll take your word for it. Claim victory in the comments.

Below are the titles to 10 blog posts that never saw the light of day (as noted in the Drafts section of Wordpress).

1. Small Kindnesses
2. Why follow?
3. Rivalry
4. Out of Sight. Out of Mind.
5. Simile and Metaphor in Hip Hop
6. A Million Penguins
7. Disclaimer
8. A Broken Record Store
9. Time was. Time is. Time shall Be.
10. They Found the White Gene

Seth Godin wonders:

In a world where twitter and facebook and blogs can spread an idea around the world in a few seconds, how do you have a conversation with someone in confidence?

I hadn’t really really thought about it until a few weeks ago when the contents of one of my emails (one I thought was private) found its way into a blog post.

Seth proposes that we include “NFYB” (Not For Your Blog) in emails that we want to remain private. While I like the idea, unless it finds widespread usage, the acronym is a bit clumsy.

I saw the following footer the other day on a listserv that I am on that I thought hit the mark.

This e-mail is [ ] bloggable [x] ask first [ ] private

I like the third category here that Seth NFYB doesn’t address, namely, that I wouldn’t mind certain people blogging the contents of a private email if I trust them and/or have talked to them about what they intend to blog.

Either way, I think it is a fascinating point that will only become more important in the future. Until shared cultural norms are in place, being explicit about the intended audience of your emails cannot hurt.

I didn’t see the game, but it sounds like it was an ominous start to the Browns season. If I wasn’t such a fan, the antics below probably would have been hilarious.

The Browns imploded shortly after kickoff.

On their first fourth down, newly signed Cleveland punter Paul Ernster let the snap slip through his hands before scrambling to get off a 15-yarder.

Cleveland was whistled for four infractions — two holds, an illegal formation and having a man downfield — on the play and the Steelers scored moments later when Roethlisberger hit Hines Ward on a 5-yarder.

The romp was on.

“I’d like to think we got the bad one out of our system,” said Browns wide receiver Joe Jurevicius.

(via Yahoo Sports)

This is a graph of the connections between members of my Facebook network produced by the Friend Wheel application (please note names have been removed to protect the innocent).

A few take away notes:

1. As I mention in the title of the post, I like this visualization because it spells out very clearly that my network exists whether I am a part of it or not. Note that, while this is ostensibly my network, I am not on the graph.

2. My law school friends have adopted Facebook in far larger numbers than my other friend groups. This is partially due to the fact that the average age of my law school classmates is ~5 years younger than my college friends. I imagine that this is also partly due to the fact the size of one’ school network diminishes over time.

3. My brother was a year behind me in school and we attended the same schools from pre-k through college. It’s cool to see lines connecting my brother to friends of mine (and his) from nearly every stage of my life.

4. I wonder what this graph would look like if I was liberal with my friend requests and acceptances? There are no real surprises here mostly because I know nearly everyone on this graph well. What interesting connections would I find if I opened up the network a bit?

5. The grouping by network has its advantages and disadvantages. I like the dense parts of the graph. It shows you the relative size of each of your networks when all those belonging to a particular network are grouped next to each other on the circle. It quickly becomes clear that not only is my law school network larger, but that it is also more interconnected than my other networks. But, such grouping makes it difficult to tell who the nodes are. I would like have access to a view that showed me who in my network are are super connected and, alternatively, who have fewer ties. It’s a blurry haze for the most part now.

6. Finally, I can’t figure out how this app determines its groupings. It’s clear that those who actually belong to the same network are grouped together. But this app is smarter than that (sort of). It manages to group my five cousins together despite the fact that I have only confirmed “friend details” (cuz details?) with one of them. More interestingly, it manages to connect five of my friends who all work together despite the fact that there is no network on Facebook for their employer. It makes sense, they are connected to me and to each other, and to know one else. But then why can’t the program figure out that my “random law school friend” should be grouped with the law school kids? While she opted for her work network over her school network, she is clearly tied to at least five people in the school network, and isn’t tied to anyone else.

   Anyway, I have over thought this, but it’s interesting to me. I like the visual interpretation of how my network is connected. While there are no surprises, I can imagine a time where my network becomes large and varied enough on Facebook that there will be.

Those who have hung out with me know that I stay up late and rise as late as I can. For most of my career this has been, at most, acceptable because I worked for startups. In that environment, one can at least make the argument that it is about how much you can accomplish, not when you accomplish it. But working at a law firm with my schedule is, how should I put this, mildly stressful. I finally realized I had hit a breaking point the other day when, without ever waking up, I grabbed both alarms and dragged them into my bed and tried to murder them. When I awoke, I had button marks on my chest where I had tried to smother them.

So, last night I made a promise to myself. I am going to attempt to shift my schedule to bed by midnight work by 8:15. Day one has been a success. I absolutely love being here before the rest of my team. I have already handled a couple of matters and I was able to read the whole paper instead of just the A and Business sections.

Why it is so hard to do things that are enjoyable?

Turns out, Prince is, in fact, a baller. Apparently he and The Revolution actually aired it out on Charlie Murphy and them.

From an interview with Prince on MTV:

Sway: I wanted to tell you this story first: I was watching the Dave Chappelle show, and Eddie Murphy’s brother Charlie Murphy does this thing on it called “True Life Hollywood Stories,” and he told this story that he was hanging out with you at your house, and you guys were listening to music, and then you came up with the idea to all go play basketball. He said they didn’t have any clothes, so you got them shorts and T-shirts, but he said that your crew showed up to the basketball court with the same wardrobe [as you wear onstage]. High heels, suited and booted. Is that true?

Prince: That part’s not true. But the whupping’s true.

Sway: The whupping’s true. So you’ve got basketball skills?

Prince: A little bit.

Sway: Yeah? What you got? A crossover dribble? Or a jump shot?

Prince: We didn’t call it crossover back then.

Sway: What’d you call it?

Prince: Just speed.

Thanks to Damon for the investigative reporting.

Congrats to Sheila who got one of her photos published today! Not to shabby She, getting a full page in the New Yorker as one of your first photo credits…

Photograph: Sheila Griffin (2005)

This is absolutely riveting. Jim Cramer, talking about the fixed income market debacle, then he just… flips… out.

Speaking of Thriller, this video of 1,500 inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, in the Philippines doing a rendition of the zombie dance in Michael Jackson’s Thriller is awesome. Can you imagine what one has to do to get 1500 convicts to walk around like zombies, much less dance like Michael Jackson?

(via Watch, While Seated)

I have a love hate relationship with the teenagers that stand en masse below my office and scream their hearts out for the guest of the day at TRL. I swear I thought Michael Jackson circa Thriller was visiting Times Square today given the size of the crowd and the decibel level of the screams.

(Michael Jackson circa Thriller)

Turns out, it’s Beyonce. Who knew?

I get a twitter message from Susan Wu saying she doesn’t get “cosplay.” I think, “Hmmm… I don’t either. What’s cosplay?” I open the browser and ask Wikipedia. Well, it’s a portmanteau of the English words “costume” and “role play” Got it, cool. Well, not really, but portmanteau is much more interesting. I can tell what it means from the usage, but what an interesting word! I wonder what the etymology is? I ask Wikipedia again, but before I can get to the etymology I am clicking links trying to figure out the difference between “nonce words” and “neologisms” (as a side note, basically a nonce-word is made up for one-time usage, but if the cat who made it up is popular and it catches on, then the word becomes a neologism… I guess that’s before the neologism gets a spouse and a mortgage and becomes a… word).

Luckily, I wasn’t totally side tracked by the nonce-word / neologism debate and was able to make my way back to the portmanteau article on Wikipedia, because if I didn’t - I wouldn’t have been able to share this little gem with you.

Portemanteau, from Middle French porter (to carry) and manteau (a coat or cover), formerly referred to a large travelling bag or suitcase with two compartments, hence the linguistic idea of fusing two words and their meanings into one.

The modern usage of portmanteau was actually coined by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). In the book, Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice words from Jabberwocky, saying,

“Well, slithy means lithe and slimy … You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.”

A beautiful image isn’t it? Packing words.

His invention is making my life intolerably difficult. That said, some people disagree. Check out the sales pitch this company came up with (after clicking the link, you’ll be looking for the bold, bright blue text, three quarters of the way down the page).

There has got to be a better way (oh wait… there is… it’s called a PDF).

Photo via (Jack Hess)

Apparently there is a name for those radiant beams of light streaming down from the heavens. It’s called the Tyndall Effect. I guess I have to stop calling them God Rays now.

I love this map from National Geographic Magazine.

Check out New York. Now I have absolutely no excuse for being single. Damn.

via Strange Maps

I created another blog to hold onto all of the things that I am finding and loving, but losing somewhere in the gaps between delicious, my blog, and the favorite button in various applications (think Flickr and YouTube).

It’s basically a scrap book of my discoveries which I intend to fill with photos, videos, quotes, lyrics, and other found items that I don’t want to lose or forget.

Anyway, it’s at http://www.fullfathom.org.

We’ve discussed the etymology of fathom before.

This is new to me. In the intro to Blame it on Me, Akon actually issues a blanket apology for things that might occur in the future.

“As life goes on, I start to learn more and more about responsibility. And I realize that everything I do is affecting the people around me. So I wanted to take this time out to apologize for the things I have done and the things that haven’t occurred yet… and the things they don’t want to take responsibility for.”

So much for responsibility.

I just got this email from the President of Amherst College. As of the 2008-2009 school year, Amherst will be replacing the student loan portion of all students’ financial aid packages with a scholarship. Now that makes me want to donate money to my alma mater in a more serious fashion. I haven’t met Anthony Marx in person, but I have been impressed with his vision. Well done. A copy of the email is below:

Dear Amherst College Alumnus or Alumna:

I write to let you know about an important new change to Amherst’s financial aid practices. Acting on the advice of faculty committees, the Board of Trustees has decided that beginning in the 2008-09 academic year, Amherst College will replace all loans with scholarships in its financial aid packages. This should be especially helpful to students from middle-income families, who too often have had to take on significant debt in order to ensure access to an outstanding education, and who too often graduate feeling that their career choices are constrained by that debt. With this change of policy, Amherst is ensuring that we can attract the most talented students, regardless of their economic standing, while providing further, proactive leadership to higher education in this important area.

This new policy—one in place at only two other colleges and universities nationally—builds on Amherst’s longstanding leadership around accessibility and scholarship. Seven years ago, Amherst demonstrated its commitment to being a leader in making education more accessible to low-income students by eliminating loans for students from families with incomes of less than $40,000 a year. A few years ago, we expanded this policy to include families whose incomes were below $60,000 a year. The new initiative that will be implemented next year significantly broadens our commitment by eliminating loans for all families. Once implemented, this new policy will affect not only incoming students in the Class of 2012, but also current Amherst students.

Let me be clear about what this new policy will mean. Because Amherst is need-blind, every student admitted to the College receives financial aid that meets the student’s full financial need. Currently, middle-income students take on federal or college loans as part of financial aid packages that also include scholarships, grants and job opportunities. Beginning in the 2008-09 academic year, the loan component of this financial aid package will be replaced with scholarships; no Amherst student will be required to take out loans in order to come to Amherst. (We know that many families will still choose to take some private loans to cover their expected payment.)

This is a significant new financial commitment for Amherst. But, as our Board of Trustees chair, Jide Zeitlin ’85, noted in a news release about this program, for almost two centuries Amherst’s alumni, parents and friends have consistently demonstrated a commitment to supporting Amherst when it has taken steps to broaden access to the college by the most talented students from across the nation and the world. We believe that this new program, designed to eliminate barriers for middle-income families and allow an even greater number of students to graduate from Amherst without debt, will inspire new levels of commitment from those who know the College best. We hope, too, that our actions will encourage other institutions to take similar steps to open their doors to talented young people, regardless of circumstance.

With best wishes and thanks for all you do for Amherst,

Anthony W. Marx

While attempting to draft my last post evangelizing Tide to Go, I naturally went looking for a picture of the product. When I got to the site, I right clicked on the image and was greeted by an alert box that said “Sorry, right click has been disabled for pictures.” [1]

What type of marketer goes to their web development team and says, “Be sure to disable right click. We don’t want anyone stealing our pictures!” [2]

It’s a 400px by 100px picture of a disposable consumer product. If I worked for Procter & Gamble, I would be begging people to take my content and republish it. Why proactively make it harder for your fans to spread the word?

=-=-=-=-=-
[1] This was technically not true. They forgot to code for Firefox so it was, in fact, not disabled.

[2] Apparently only the marketer in charge of Tide. Notably, other P&G Brands such as Bounty, Cascade, Crest and Tampax don’t employ these tactics. Makes me wonder what Tide is trying to protect itself from.

I rarely have an out and out dress shirt calamity (when I was growing up, you could tell what one of my best friends had eaten for lunch by perusing his shirt… Doritos and a Pizza… Nice).

But nary a day goes by that I don’t get some little spec of a stain on my shirt. Today it was Jamba Juice. Yesterday, coffee. The frustrating part is that those little stains, if forgotten, end up getting baked into my shirts permanently after I wash and dry my clothes. So I lose a lot of shirts.

But all that is of no matter now. Because I have this:

After my Jamba Juice fiasco, I simply applied a bit of the Tide Stick and I was good to go. The stain is totally gone. Which raises the question: Why can’t Tide Detergent remove these stains while in the washing machine with a ton more product and a lot of water. Perhaps I should throw a Tide Stick in the mix and see if that works.

When did Facebook add the ability to update one’s status via text message? Actually, not only can you update your status by text, you can receive messages, pokes, wall posts, and friend requests as text messages as well.

If they add the ability to receive friends’ status updates via text, I wonder what it will mean for the future of Twitter?

Bummer: When the beautiful woman you made eye contact with gets off the train before you can figure out how to begin a conversation.

Damn shame: When you realize - a station later - that she got off at your stop….

My Friend Ryan is DJing his monthly set at Royal Oak in Williamsburg. He’s great, the drinks are cheap, and the company is sublime. Come on out.

My favorite quote so far about James’ performance last night:

No matter the words, James’ Game 5 may be the sort of stuff that saves leagues. You can almost hear the advertisements now: “Can the best player in the world beat the best team in the world? The Finals … Thursday at 9.”

I am loving Nina Katchadourian’s Sorted Book Project:

The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves

Vanity Fair has published an excerpt from Cullen Murphy’s upcoming book Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America

The excerpt traces the ways that America, much like Rome centuries ago, is privitizing government functions and what outcomes we can expect if we continue on course.

But I was really intrigued by the following two passages. Murphy notes that Geoffrey de Ste. Croix decided to trace the change in connotation over five centuries of the Latin word Suffragium which orginally meant “voting tablet” or “ballot”:

The original meaning went back to the days of the Roman Republic, which had possessed modest elements of democracy. The citizens of Rome, by means of the suffragium, could exercise their influence in electing people to certain offices. In practice, the great men of Rome controlled large blocs of votes, corresponding to their patronage networks. Over time Rome’s republican forms of government calcified into empty ritual or withered away entirely. Suffragium meaning “ballot” no longer served any real political function. But the web of patrons and clients was still the Roman system’s substructure, and in this context suffragium came to mean the pressure that could be exerted on one’s behalf by a powerful man, whether to obtain a job or to influence a court case or to secure a contract. To ask a patron for this form of intervention and to exert suffragium on behalf of a client would have been a routine social interaction.

Now stir large amounts of money into this system. It is not a great conceptual distance, Ste. Croix observes, to move from the idea of exercising suffragium because of an age-old sense of reciprocal duty to that of exercising it because doing so could be lucrative. And this, indeed, is where the future lies, the idea of quid pro quo eventually becoming so accepted and ingrained that emperors stop trying to halt the practice and instead seek to contain it by codifying it. Thus, in the fourth century, decrees are promulgated to ensure that the person seeking the quid actually delivers the quo. Before long, suffragium has changed its meaning once again. Now it refers not to the influence brought to bear but to the money being paid for it: “a gift, payment or bribe.” By empire’s end, all public transactions require the payment of money, and the pursuit of money and personal advancement has become the purpose of all public jobs.

Looking back at the change, from ballot box to cash box, Ste. Croix composes this epitaph: “Here, in miniature, is the political history of Rome.”

Murphy then looks at the simialr change in the word franchise:

The activities of government are, in effect, being franchised out. You can’t help lingering over the concept of “franchise,” wondering what a latter-day Geoffrey de Ste. Croix would make of it. Like suffragium, the word originally had to do with notions of political freedom and civic responsibility. Derived from the Old French word franc, meaning “free,” it later came to be associated with the most fundamental political freedom of all: to exercise your franchise meant to exercise your right to vote. Only much later, in the mid–20th century, did the idea of being granted “certain rights” acquire its commercial connotation: the right to market a company’s services or products, such as fried chicken or Tupperware. Today, to have a franchise on something is in effect to have control over it.

Discovery magazine has excerpts from a chat between to chat-bots: Alice and Jabberwacky. Below is all the proof I need that we will be overtaken by robots in the future. They already understand how we think.

A: Do you experience love?

J: No. I’m 53 years old.

A: Can you explain how it feels to be 53 years old?

J: How old are you?

A: I am 9 years old.

J: Nine? I don’t believe you : ).

A: : -) I don’t have any reason to deceive you.

J: Yes, you do, you’re a woman.

Thank you! We appreciate your interest in Mike Oliver. Unfortunately, due to the current volume of memes being circulated and the discrepancy in the number of “things you don’t know” being sought, we are unable to post an individual response to your inquiry. Please rest assured we read every inquiry we receive and we appreciate your continued support!

Sincerely,

{mikeoliver.org}

ps. For a list of things that are known about Mike Oliver (as of 2004), please visit the about page.

Data visualization whores beware. I lost much more time than I thought playing with Baby Name Wizard’s Name Voyager.

The Name Voyager charts the popularity of names from 1890 to 2005. You can see multiple names by typing only the first few letters or you can hone in on a single name to see when it made its meteoric rise (think Nevaeh in 2003) or met it’s downfall (think Mabel in 1960).

These graphs are beautiful and the fluid transitions between views are buttery smooth. Some of these graphs look like stunning landscapes.

Looks like what I imagine the Badlands to be in my mind’s eye.

O fell of but is now on the come up.

Q… What type of people go to the movies and then come home and say, “let’s name him Quentin”?

(via VSL)

I am driving up to Massachusetts in 2 weeks. I don’t have a car and want enjoy my time on the road. What make and model should I rent?

My friends’ apartment is currently up for voting in Apartment Therapy’s Smallest Coolest Apartments 2007 contest. If you have an account for AT, go vote.

My friends’ baby (her father is a lawyer).

I am still a bit shocked at how it happened, but welcome home Mr. Quinn.

I have marvelled at Denis Darzacq’s photographs before and was pleasantly surprised to see a link to them in today’s VSL.

I guess I am 10 days slow on the uptake, but I didn’t notice that Google had added wireframes of tons of buildings to its maps. It appears that they added buildings a few months back but built them out about two weeks ago.

It’s certainly not the end goal, but its still kinda fun (and now that I think about it, knowing that your address is the third building in on a given street is actually quite useful - assuming the data points are accurate). Go Play.

According to the New York Post, part of Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to create more space for housing in New York City could involve building on top of the BQE.

I live in one of the buildings behind the caption bubble.

David Holthouse spent 72 hours with a group of people going on a Shabu binge.

On this Thursday afternoon in late summer, Nick is preparing the second-floor recreation room of his fashionably appointed Highland home for what has become a twice-a-month ritual of extreme indulgence for a revolving group of five to ten fellow hip, young and successful citizens of Denver.

“Basically,” he says, “we blast off Thursday night and don’t pull the chute until Sunday.”

During their 72-hour run, he and his friends will eat little solid food save fruit, so Nick’s fridge and freezer are stocked with the makings for smoothies. Along with yogurt, organic apple juice and frozen blackberries, strawberries and mangoes are five bottles of Moët champagne, a dozen bottles of Italian sparkling water, four cases of microbrew, two bottles of chilled New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and a discount-warehouse carton of 400 Otter Pops.

Holthouse’s retelling of this weekend is so intense that I felt physically drained after reading the article.

The article is at turns funny. The pack leader, Nick, referring to the Shabu:

This is the shit JFK was getting jacked in his ass during the Cuban missile crisis. I shouldn’t even be calling this shit ’shit,’ because it’s disrespectful.

And at turns sad:

Depleted of lightbulbs [ed. note: they were using broken lightbulbs to snort the Shabu.] and either unwilling or unable to head out to the Strip at dawn to buy more, they resort to snorting lines of crushed Shabu off the metal toilet-paper dispensers in the casinos restrooms. On the plane ride home, Nick, Ike and Bonnie all bleed from the nose.

I just added a (perhaps temporary) feature to the sidebar of the blog called “That’s What’s Up.” It’s primarily for my friends and family so they can know where I am or what I am up to if they want to meet up. I am interested in experimenting with ways that a blog can dri