“Christoph Waltz [plays] Qohen Leth, a computer programmer toiling to understand the meaning of existence. However, surrounded by ‘mancams’ that report all unusual actions back to the shadowy corporate authority known as the Management, Leth finds his efforts repeatedly interrupted by distractions, including a teenager and a lusty love interest.”
“Think of the economy as a car, and the rich man as a driver. If you don’t give the driver all the money, he’ll drive you over a cliff. It’s just common sense.” As a public service announcement of sorts, the estimable C. Montgomery Burns explains the fiscal cliff. (See also Tom Tomorrow on this.)
“The 39% of Americans with an opinion about Bowles/Simpson is only slightly higher than the 25% with one about Panetta/Burns, a mythical Clinton Chief of Staff/former western Republican Senator combo we conceived of to test how many people would say they had an opinion even about something that doesn’t exist.” Speaking of a different Burns — Conrad, not Monty — a Public Policy Polling survey finds that Simpson-Bowles fares only slightly better than completely imaginary legislation in the public mind. As it should!
Actually, if you’re a looking for a good summary of the Simpson-Bowles plan, it’s hard to beat this one by Kevin Baker (via Past Punditry): “A prescription for hunting down every last remaining vestige of the middle class in this country and beating it to death with a stick…By the way, if the notion of putting a crazy old, obnoxious right-wing coot and Bill Clinton’s chief fund-raiser at Morgan Stanley in charge of a committee to make the very richest people in America still infinitely richer while at the same time ripping open the underbellies of working people in this country from stem to stern seems like a puzzling idea coming from the great avatar of hope and change, you’re onto something.“
Also in PPP’s findings: “49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn’t exist anymore.” [rimshot]
“‘We don’t know whether the media multitasking is causing symptoms of depression and social anxiety, or if it’s that people who are depressed and anxious are turning to media multitasking as a form of distraction from their problems,’ Becker said in a statement.”
And here I thought Netflix and Warcraft went so well together: A new Michigan State study finds a correlation between depression and multi-tasking media. I wonder if the obverse is true also. One of the many reasons I love seeing a movie in the theater is that (ideally) nothing else but the film is impinging on my attention.
“This dates back to February 1981 — the exact day is uncertain — which puts the show some 18 months before the release of the debut EP ‘Chronic Town,’ and a full two years before ‘Murmur.’” From three decades ago, film surfaces of a very young R.E.M. practicing their trade at the 688 club in Atlanta. Contrast with only four years later, in Rockpalast, when the pride of Athens, GA, had really come into their own.
“As I move through the book it becomes more demanding…Toward the end of a book, the state of composition feels like a complex, chemically altered state that will go away if I don’t continue to give it what it needs. What it needs is simply to write all the time. Downtime other than simply sleeping becomes problematic. I’m always glad to see the back of that.” Via Brain Pickings, daily routines of famous writers.
“The thing they always used to say was ‘We want these kids to have a victory.’ I think what they were trying to say was ‘Is there any way it could be a little less depressing?’ And it’s a fair question when no one’s really watching. We were telling really unconventional stories where the victories were so small they could be confused with not actual victories.“
In Vanity Fair, an oral history of Freaks and Geeks. “We didn’t really have to be told we were being canceled. We watched the craft-service table: it started out with, like, cold cuts and delicious snacks, and it was reduced to half a thing of creamer and some Corn Pops by the end.“
And also in the same magazine, Paul Feig tells where everyone was headed for Season 2: “With his mom dating Coach Fredricks, Judd and I liked the idea of Bill slowly becoming a jock — that he turned out to be good at basketball and started to get into it, so that he was getting pulled a little more over to the jock side.”
