Our sincerest apologies for not having announced this sooner, it was totally fucked up of us: The Fuck Squad, Gen Y’s alternative source for really interesting shit, has closed.
The summer was fun, but we know, and now you know, that it was just a seasonal fling. So please don’t call us asking why we won’t see each other anymore. Just trust that this is what’s best for all of us, even if your heart is telling you to write “CHEATING BASTARDZ” on the side of one (or all) of our cars.
If you enjoyed what you read in this tiny corner of the InterWebZ, you can find more of the same at the following media:
-Mike Riggs (wordjockey11) now works at Washington City Paper. He blogs at WCP’s City Desk and Reason magazine’s Hit & Run. (And on occasion, he writes more substantial stuff for both publications.)
-The Deez, Ryan Napier, and Paul Atkinson can all be found in the pages of Stetson University’s The Reporter and at the paper’s website.
Apparently Jesse Lacey urged the audience to go see Explosions In The Sky instead of Brand New at a recent festival concert. When no one left he called those in attendance “a bunch of fools.” The next song he threw his guitar into the air, nearly hitting Brand New’s drummer before storming off stage.
Jesse Lacey is either insane or super hip… you decide.
I’m going to retract the invective I wrote about Gawker a few days back, but just for this post. Gawker’s Rumormonger has a lengthy thread on Tucker Max that holds a true literary gem:
The more I thought about it, however, the more the fact that TM is basically lying in his stories began to bother me. His whole hook is that these stories are “true.” Anyone could just make this shit up and pass it off as fiction, it would get e-mailed around a few times and be forgotten. But Tucker presents it as true, that it actually happened to him, and it didn’t, he’s lying and that’s unacceptable. What gets Tucker his attention is people going “Man, I can’t believe that this actually happened to someone, that shit is so crazy!! I wish I were him.” In short, he was interesting because he represented something that many people wish they were but don’t really have the balls to be. Unfortunately, he wasn’t really that person, Tucker is more a persona than anything else.
The people I know who worship TM, do so because he’s “living proof” that a man need not be perfect to score. I’m not a frequent Tucker Max reader (to date, I’ve read but half of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell) but I’ve always defended my fascination by arguing that reading his misogynistic stories allowed me to make important sociological-cum-psychological observations about male behavior. But what if his various books, blogs, stories–his entire mythology–were nothing more than a great big fiction?
More importantly, I wonder how many men have dicked their way to success using TM as a placebo?
Former presidential candidate John Edwards has lust in his heart, and it’s not just for mills:
In an interview for broadcast tonight on Nightline, Edwards told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff he did have an affair with 44-year old Rielle Hunter, but said that he did not love her.
Edwards also denied he was the father of Hunter’s baby girl, Frances Quinn, although the one-time Democratic Presidential candidate said he has not taken a paternity test.
A fatal blow for a man who’s political career has been absolutely soaring until now.
From Gizmodo, comes news of this incredibly handy device, good now for the Olympics, good later for when an FCC-DHS hybrid takes over the tubez:
If you’re reading this, odds are against your attendance at the Beijing Olympic Games, but we wanted to make sure that you knew about the Freedom Stick just in case—a USB dongle preloaded with all of the traffic routing software you’ll need to browse the internet unencumbered (specifically, The Onion Router). It’s available now until the end of the Olympics for $30, and please don’t send us tips about the freaky shit you’re using it for
Brief history lesson: Georgia has two provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, that have been trying to break off since the collapse of the USSR. A bloody and haphazard war in the early 1990s led to a stalemate; both provinces now conduct their own affairs, but they’re not recognized as nations by the international community. Through all of this, Russia has been interfering in order to maintain its influence in the region. It supports the “independence” of the two provinces, has a force of “peacekeepers” there, and regularly engages in little bombing missions. Needless to say, the ceasefire has always been shaky at best.
Well, today someone broke it with a vengeance (exactly who started this round of fighting will be the eternal debate of both sides’ propaganda services). Georgian troops have apparently occupied the Ossetian capital after a brief shelling campaign, and Russia has retaliated by sending a column of “peacekeeping” tanks.
What can we expect? Well, unless cooler heads prevail, expect Russia to gain a better position of influence in the Caucuses, or even a bit of extra territory (North Ossetia is part of the Russian Federation, so they’ve got a claim there). Georgia’s been boldly staring down the bear since its independence, scrabbling to join NATO before Russia inevitably tries to re-absorb it…it looks like the time for that could be now. How NATO responds to this could say a lot about the future direction of the alliance.
There’s been a lot of hubbub over Toby Keith’s country dumbness, but I thought I’d do my part to help set the record straight on Beer for my Horses:
Blumenthal never mentions that Keith sings “Beer For My Horses” with Willie Nelson, and it’s actually Nelson who sings the supposedly incriminating lyrics (as you can see at about the 1:43 mark of the music video).
Now Willie Nelson’s been called a lot of things—a pot head, a tax cheat, etc—but I don’t think anyone’s ever called Willie Nelson (who just recorded an album with Wynton Marsalis) a racist. So if Blumenthal wants to argue that Keith is pro-lynching, he needs to argue that Nelson is, too—which is something he doesn’t do.
Hat tip to Jesse Walker (one of my bosses at Reason).
Ryan’s post below illustrates, more perfectly than all the prose and rhetoric this world has to offer, just how successful Naomi Klein has been at selling some of the poorest political and economic research academia has to offer.
Time reports that next month, a new online service-whocanisue.com-will launch, allowing ordinary citizens to determine whether they have any claims against any company or entity in particular that could get them cash, and referring them to lawyers who specialize in their cases if they do. The site will be financed by the lawyers, who will pay a base fee of $1,000 to put their names on the list and additional fees to get big animated boxes and the like. Basically, the site seeks to connect ambulance chasers with people who fall over in the bathroom at Arby’s and file for damages over the internet.
I don’t really know how I feel about the litigous nature of our country. It’s commonly denounced by most public figures and comedians for clogging our courts and allegedly eroding our senses of personal responsibility, but I can’t think of many better ways for consumers to get relief when they’re fucked over.
In the UK, the plaintiff is actually charged with the defendant’s legal fees if he or she loses a suit. This reduces the number of lawsuits, and legal reformers in the US want to see a similar measure taken here. But that makes the financial requirement for attempting to get restitution even higher; if a legitimate class action suit against a power company for dumping uranium in playgrounds fails, I don’t like the idea of the plaintiffs having to pay for the multi-million dollar defense team that screwed them over.
So I guess I do like our culture of litigation. It keeps companies on their toes, and it makes consumers less likely to put up with harmful/malfunctioning shit, which might encourage better products. Our resident libertarian will probably argue that lawsuits are what drives industry to regulate itself, and while I don’t agree that they’re enough to do the job on their own, affordable lawsuits are a vital component in any market economy.
That being said, I look forward to this site coming online. If I can’t call 911 over my missing Taco Bell fire sauce, maybe I can get some sweet pain-and-suffering fees.
I am convinced that every big city in America is rotten to the core. And of course, Detroit’s the worst of them all:
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick will spend the night in jail after a judge ruled he violated the terms of his bond in his perjury case by making a business trip to Canada and not informing the court.
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick apologized, but a federal judge ordered him jailed for violating terms of his bond.
Judge Ronald Giles ordered Kilpatrick to jail Thursday, a decision the judge said he would have made for any “John Six-Pack” defendant before him.
The mayor made an unauthorized trip to Canada last month, leading the county prosecutor’s office to request Kilpatrick be punished and triggering the judge’s ruling.
Only minutes earlier, the mayor offered an apology to the court, telling Giles that for seven months, “I’ve been living in an incredible state of pressure and scrutiny.”
But Giles sent the mayor to jail anyway, telling him he would have given any defendant the same treatment.
“What matters to me though is how the court overall is perceived and how if it was not Kwame Kilpatrick sitting in that seat, if it was John Six-Pack sitting in that seat, what would I do? And that answer is simple,” he said.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Jacksonville police say Reginald Peterson needs to learn that 911 is not the appropriate place to complain that Subway left the sauce off a spicy Italian sandwich.
Police say the 42-year-old man dialed 911 twice last week so he could have his sub made correctly. The second call was to complain that officers weren’t arriving fast enough.
Subway workers told police Peterson became belligerent and yelled when they were fixing his order. They locked him out of the store after he left to call police.
When officers arrived, they tried to calm Peterson and explain the proper use of 911. Those efforts failed, and he was arrested on a charge of making false 911 calls.
The next time some pissant at Taco Bell forgets to give me my fire sauce, I’m calling for back-up.
