Commonplace Book

The subhead to the article Mean Girl by David Talbot of Salon.com reads "Sarah Palin has a way of using ‘old boys’ — then dumping them when they become inconvenient". As I read the article, it called to mind the song Good Night and Thank You from Evita.

Now understand, I am not for one single moment suggesting that Governor Palin has been trading sexual favors for advancement. (No. Seriously. Not at all. Ewww. Ick.) However, other parallels do spring to mind. And so now I’m thinking: isn’t it time for a remake of Evita? Sarah Palin as Evita, of course, John McCain as Colonel Peron, and Barack Obama can play Che.

Think they can spare time from their busy campaign schedules for rehearsals?

IMDB reported today that Paris Hilton is working with Stan Lee to create a superhero based on Hilton. One can only hope that this isn’t true. Just in case Stan Lee really is that hard up for money, though, everyone send him $1, okay?

Ignore the provocative title, and read this article from the Atlantic Monthly. I can’t make up my mind whether to be scared or relieved (or both).

I, too, have noticed with some dismay that I spend less time reading books than I used to, and that the books I do read are tending more and more to simple, inconsequential fluff. Mind, I still buy more serious books; they’re just likely to sit on the shelf unread for months at a time. I had worried that perhaps this was a sign that I was getting older, and the ole brain was getting lazy.

If this article is to be believed, though, the fault is not so much in myself as in the reading habits that the Internet has inculcated. Hence my relief.

On the other hand, it’s scary as hell to realize that not only have I willingly, nay eagerly, participated in this effort to dumb down my reading, I’ve even made a career of propagating it! And it’s even scarier to realize that my behavior is unlikely to change greatly even after this has been brought to me attention.

Excuse me now please, while I go pull some weighty tome off my bookcase and see if I can’t start to reverse the process.

P.S. The irony that I found this article on the Internet does not escape me, either.

Italy’s food fraud police seizes fake ham? But… I didn’t even know that Italy had "food fraud police". Nonetheless, I sleep better at night knowing that we’re being kept safe from counterfeit prosciutto.

But are there French food fraud police protecting us from bogus Brie? I may not be able to sleep tonight…

Apropos of absolutely nothing at all, I ran across this on McSweeneys Internet Tendency, and I thought it was too good not to share.