Notes from Buenos Aires from our old blog buddy John Cusack
John Cusack, you’re a nut. I love you. Never change. But in future, could you provide Cusack to English translations of your notes? Thanks, signed, a grateful planet.
Besides. everyone knows pigs can fly, but they need to be in a proper kennel and stored under the seat in front of you. Duh.
Now that we’ve got that cleared up, here are the celebrity gossip links for today.
Scientia est Potentia
As longtime readers of the ol’ raincoaster blog know, occasionally we take a good long look at our stats, indeed, nearly disappearing into our own fundamentals from time to time, most particularly when something has either gone spectacularly well or when it has gone spectacularly badly. We call this Operation Global Media Domination.
As you, gentle reader, are doubtless also aware, recently things have been going spectacularly badly with the exception of the unfortunately shortly-lived Cusack Effect. You may be sure that I am doing all in my power to drag my hits out of the ditch in which Automattic has thrown them (and a long, technical rant on why will doubtless be forthcoming) including appearing on podcasts, speaking at conferences (four this month: FOUR) and pimping out my blog in my linkblogging every chance I get.
It’s paying off slowly, as we’ve gone from about 650 hits a day in May up to 1100, but when Automattic made the link from the global tag pages NoFollow, they basically threw me off a cliff, or at least my hits. My graph:
Is it any wonder I'm so fucking CRANKY?????
But there’s something worse than facing that graph: facing THIS graph:
Nick Denton is not a happy man
Can you guess when the new Gawker redesign was implemented? Can you believe a man as smart as Denton has a cash bet that pageviews are going UP? Can you believe he still doesn’t see the problem?
Can you ever be thankful enough that that’s not you???
Nick Denton BOOM Winning. Just ask him.
Baby on Board, what does it LOOK like?
I cannot be the only person on the face of the Earth who is literal-minded enough to be annoyed when seeing one of those smug “Baby on Board” stickers and NOT seeing any baby in the car. Dude, someone stole your baby! CALL THE POLICE! MISSING BABY! HOW IS BABBY MADE?
Oh wait, that’s “dogging” isn’t it?
Do pregnant women walk around with Baby On Board shirts? Apparently they do, for the people who are blind and cannot see that they are pregnant, although unless the shirts are in Braille those poor people won’t be able to see the shirt either, so I guess it’s just for the convenience of really, really stupid people who are also inclined to judge people based on their size.
Or should that be “Loo Wars?” I dunno, “Loo Wars” kinda sounds like a 1920’s bisexual movie star, probably one that took the virginity of both Ginger Rogers and David Bowie later in life. In fact, “Loo Wars” sounds rather awesome, now that I think of it. I should pitch a biography of this fabulous, imaginary person. BRB, writing proposal…
Okay, back. Where was I? Oh yes, posting about toilets once again. I KNOW I’m supposed to call them “Washrooms” like the way the news refers to “Afghanistan” when what they mean is Tarok Kolache. But they’re toilets, specifically the things you sit on. And here are two memos from Ye Olde Englande where, it seems, standards (and colons) have relaxed considerably in recent times.
Why is it always the men’s room? Except at Metrotown (whereof we will not speak…)?
The first, from the Grauniad, venerated temple of lefty journalism:
Subject: Gentlemen of the Guardian and Observer, we must buck up!
A plea on behalf of the cleaners and your fellow staff…
In the event that you are, ahem, inconvenienced when visiting the toilets, please use the brush handily situated at the side of the toilet to clean the bowl after yourself, rather than leaving the bowl – and in one case on the second floor toilets – the seat covered with evidence of your visit for the next occupant of the stall to behold.
Surely no one would leave a toilet in that state at home, would they?
And a happy new year to all.
And the second, from Endemol, whose website is a masterwork of corporate gobbledygook (building franchises and extending them into new consumer experiences etc) but whose memo is admirably direct, vivid, amusing, and (doubtless) effective:
A toilet memo for the ages: "You fucking animals" is the new "You dirty rats"
via Popbitch, the rest of whose stories today involve absolutely nobody of whom I have ever heard except Adam Ant. If you want to feel like you’re far away from anywhere a language you speak is spoken, read British sports, celebrity, and music journalism. Impenetrable, I’m telling you; some day I’ll do a rant just on British sports writing, but that rant is not today. My doctor says only one rant per day until the 28th, then it’s back to free-flowing bile 24/7 as usual.
I think Pete can give you some answers
Well, it seems as if just EVERYONE is talking about me, all up in my bowels, including Old Dead White Guy Alexander Pope. Still, although this dude has been dead since 1744, he’s all up in my biznass and up on the facts, so it would seem, for this does indeed explain a great deal.
From ItWasNow:
Memorable Audiene of the 19th of February, 1789.
Illustrated by
The NEW DOCTRINE of FUNDAMENTALS,
or a
Metaphysico-Medico-Political Comment
On a Passage in St. Paul,
“The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.”
St. Paul Epist. to Corinth. x. 22.
~*~*~*~My friend Dr. Purcell, understands by the term slow bellies, that the Cretans seldom went to stool, and, that thefaeces reacting on their blood, put them into a bad humour, and made them EVIL BEASTS, ill-tempered brutes. It is very true, that a man who seldom goes to stool, will be more choleric than another. His bile does not flow ; it is boiled over again, and his blood grues adust.
The morning that you have a favour to ask of a VICEROY, or his SEC. inform yourself particularly on the state of their bowels. If they have a free passage, it is the mollia tempus fandi.
Every one knows that a man’s character and disposition depends entirely on his intercourse with the necessary-house. The late Lord Sackville would not have urged on the American war at such a sanguinary rate, had he not been troubled with haemoirhoides in his intestinum rectum, which indurated the faeces. The Princess Dowager of Wales used to call him Rotten A—e. This nickname redoubled the acrimony of his bile, and probably cost Mr. Laurens his liberty, and Dr. Dodd his life.
That immaculate paragon of political and moral excellence, the present Premier of Great Britain, is habitually costive, notwithstanding the Bishop of Lincoln’s (Dr. Prettyman) prescription of an Ounce of Rhubarb every morn. It is very probable, that the Rt. Rev. Doctor, when SEC. to Mr. Pitt, sometimes experienced the effects of this fundamental bondage in the latter, as I have been told by Captain J—n who used to amuse the D. of Rutland with the story, that Dr. P’s first question to Mr. Pitt’s valet was, “Well! what news from the water closet?”
Many yet remember that famous Phillippic pronounced by the present Marquis of Lansdown, shortly after a difference with his quondam coadjutor and pupil, in which, amongst other strokes, we find the marquis recommending to Mr. P’s serious attention the caution of Mentor to Telemachus on, “the predominance of humour” and proposing that it be transcribed and placed at the bed’s head of every Minister in Christendom. Thus making it of equal import with the recollective rule of Philip of Macedon, in whose chamber a Lord was in waiting for the whole purpose of reminding his Kingship when he waked in the morning “That he was a man”—But to resume, if we could recur to Mr. Pitt’s diary at the time above alluded to, we she [sic] should doubtless find a ready solution to the Marquis’s counsel.
It is said our present magnanimous and generous Chief Governor ; (whom God long preserve!) is sometimes so plugged up,— that he is obliged to have recourse to Bartlet’s horse purging balls! This much transpired from his groom of the water closet, who lately bought a large quantity of Mr. Magee, who is in expectation of an exclusive patent for the sale of this valuable Apertive. It were to be wished that the day the two Houses went up with the Address, that his Excellency and his posterior’s had made a few detachments to the Water closet ;—perhaps the Lords and Gentlemen would have then hit on the mollia tempore fandi!
Temple Spectacles! A Tale For Seventeen Hundred and Eighty Nine. See ****** damn’d to everlasting Fame. Pope. By the Author of the Prelateiad. Dublin : printed for H. Chamberlaine and Heery & Co., [1789?]
Library Company of Philadelphia
O Eng Temp Spec 1789 15615.O.5(Source: librarycompany.org)
Latest HumanPearl news: Had a lightning-strike gallstone attack resulting from eating the best part of a half-box of Toffifee while under doctor’s orders to avoid fat (sugar, I knew, but who knew caramel had butter in it?). It hit at 2:05, a cold-sweat-inducing 8 on the pain scale and I was out of the hospital, home and on Dilaudid at 3 on the pain scale within two hours.
raincoaster 