Ye NYT asks that you turn off that infernal computer before reading this article: “Read on, preferably shutting out the cacophony of digital devices for a while.” How?

Obviously, we have wedding issues. And velvet rope issues. This makes G’s take on NY mag’s ad-cash-grubbing weddings! issue doubly yummy: “The caterer, Peter Callahan, on what’s ‘newly popular’ for weddings: ‘Bottle service after dinner, like the kind you might get at Marquee, when waiters bring out champagne, vodka, scotch, and carafes of fresh juice.’ B&T clubgoers presumably not included.” Pow!

I feel dirty saying this, but FairTax actually seems like a good idea. Also, it would fit in with our scheme of a real estate market crash / opportuntiy for young people to buy damn property.

Perpetual candidate John McCain’s dumb MySpace page was hacked to have him voicing support of gay marriage. We pulled that “hack” ourselves last April, but on some dramatic high-school girl instead of McCain. And we don’t think gay marriage is “light.”

NYT mentions Erasmus, and “The movie L’auberge espagnole … captured the Erasmus experience: jumbled cultures, linguistic and amorous discovery, and the births of new identities from this mingling.” That movie was a mushy gay hallmark version of anyone’s “abroad” experience, but yeah it got to us too.

Wikipedia: “Some people do not consider the term ‘lifestyle’ to be an accepted ‘word’.” Count us in! Or, “in.” Whatever.

Most truthful comment yet at UncivilServants: “I answer to no one now that I am retired and thanks to the brotherhood of blue I am assured that I can park anywhere I want with impunity.” Now that the abuse and attitudes are out in the open, there will be changes. The Internet is hell on parasites.

NYT on drinks: “About 21 percent of calories consumed by Americans over the age of 2 come from beverages, predominantly soft drinks and fruit drinks with added sugars.” Holy shit—Coke is it!

The “pure” hotel room trend is as absurd as it is predictable. It is the product of a society with no worry of survival, substituting for it a general hypochondria and antipathy to all science that would contradict it.

Times fronts the fakest looking picture ever. And, like that guy’s apartment is the problem. Come on.

David Brooks’s latest column blithely advocating right-wing big government with a slogan he apparently just coined, “security leads to freedom,” leaves us wondering if the security-state antichrist is fated to wear a queeny pink tie.

Ask MeFi: “How can my Jewish girlfriend and I have a Passover Seder … in Bordeaux, France?” Good luck, dude. French people + Judaism + “backpacking” =
bonjour les dégâts !

SFGate: The Kathy Sierra incident has “drawn back the curtain on a computer culture in which the more outrageous the comment, the more attention it gets.” Trolling: it’s a problem! But it’s old media that falls for trolls the hardest.

Famous person knighted. Common stupidity rules.

NYT interviewee on her obstinate gas use: “‘With this SUV you really feel [the cost of gas], but I have two kids so I need it. In reality my husband would probably rather that I don’t drive the SUV so much, but I still do and I drive quite a bit.” He must not realize that you need it. Drive over him!

I am so over goddamn dogs. Mutts in hotels: their fleas justify irradiating the room, hooray.

Nice op-ed taking Dems to task for jumping head-first into the pork barrel. Cute graphic shows where the money would go. Mostly dumb countrified projects—except that $1.25 billion for public housing!

U.S. imposes a heavy tariff against Chinese paper imports, using the old foreign subsidy rationale. But, “Many Democrats [advocate] a tougher policy on trade with China and other countries where labor and material costs are much lower.” That’s a different reason, and not a legitimate one.