White Slavery in the Twenty-First Century

If Eliza Armstrong were alive today, I know exactly what she’d be doing: running interference on her overlord’s stalker, fighting over table scraps, and contributing keyword-heavy posts on the state of the chimney sweeping industry to some faceless blog network for five bucks a post.

Oh, a blogger’s life is not all Champagne and Caviar, my friends. No, nor Skittles and Beer neither.

Alas, not even Smarties and Orange Crush, most days.

It all starts so innocently. You LiveJournal, perhaps, or you get a bit of a reputation as a Tumblr.

You see a blog job listed on MediaBistro. You think it’ll be fun. A laugh. Something you do in between vigorous rounds of Scrabulous and the performance of whatever lucrative, yet cushy, professional tasks the future holds in store for you. Someday.

As this video exposé from BarelyPolitical (via Valleywag) demonstrates, you could not be more wrong. Long hours in murky darkness, scant rations of Chex mix and RedBull ( or cheap knockoffs, if you work outside Silicon Valley), and a polyester duvet that you have to share with the owner’s poorly-housebroken bulldogs are the lot of a typical blogger.

And your overlords? Raising a toast to themselves at Balthazar.

a medical emergency

You can’t blame her, really.

Medicinal Marijuana for emergencies only

Well, have you?

Service with a Smile

I know, I know, it’s old. But it’s damn funny. If airlines normally ran ads like this they’d never have an empty seat.

Yes. I. Went. There.

Control your Seafood: Cookin’ with Coolio

In a world where our most revered chef is a nattering, giggling, chainsmoking, Botox-riddled second-rate Mary Richards impersonator, it is heartening at last to find a show featuring someone so singlemindedly dedicated to the pursuit of culinary perfection. Someone for whom the mysteries of the roux are as deserving of attention as the mysteries of geopolitics, or the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present: Cookin’ With Coolio: Swashbuckling Shrimp!

Did he say “a dime bag of pepper?”

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Buddy, can you spare ten trill?

Total Information Awareness, yo

Well, I have been asked for money for a latte before. And a friend of mine has an email signature, I live for the day schools have all the funding they need and the Pentagon has to have bake sales. So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at this. Actually, having lived here for so long I shouldn’t really be surprised at anything.

It appears that the US Department of Homeland Security, having exhausted the normal funding routes of bleeding taxpayers and selling the next few generations to China as indentured servants, is muscling in on territory normally occupied by organizations like the Cancer Society, the SPCA, and the Make-A-Wish foundation.

It’s holding “charity” fundraising galas.

Oscar Wilde would’ve been ecstatic at the juxtaposition of life and art at the Brooklyn Museum earlier this evening — and not just because it involved an abundance of luxury goods. As guests arrived for the opening of an exhibit celebrating the art of Takashi Murakami and his collaboration with Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton, they were greeted by an outdoor scene more common on Canal Street: logoed merchandise piled on tables or hung on metal pegs, graffiti-covered walls, stalls closed “by court order,” and persistent vendors promising “best quality” and “best price.” The difference? Those piles of LV Multicolore bags were real…

As real as my recognition of Das Unheimliche.

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