Sickly Salty

Wed 3 Mar 200411:28 PM

I went home sick at midday on Monday with a sudden fever and spent the next twenty-four hours curled up in bed, shivering or sweating. I’m not sure what it was that got to me. There were no cold symptoms, and though my stomach felt uneasy and I lost my appetite for two days, it didn’t seem quite the same — or nearly as bad — as bouts of food poisoning I’ve had in the past. There’s no conclusive evidence to support this, but in my mind I’ve made a link between my malady and the then-delicious Prosciutto di Parma that I bought in Little Italy over the weekend. All I know is whenever I think of cured Italian ham now, my stomach turns.

Mel Gibson, Christie Brinkley and an Anti-Trust Suit

Thu 26 Feb 200411:13 AM

but that’s the way it is. I understand their map usefulness. Often, a formalised exercise helps map quest me to crack a block of some kind, and often affords map quest a new way to see something. It’s a way of playing us map with the process of creation – if one lets it mapquest serve that purpose. Another example: a lot of driving directions modern composers who use Finale or similar programs maps to score their music, either on the fly or by hotels

Kick It

Wed 25 Feb 200412:41 PM

Earlier this evening I went with some friends to see “How to Kick People,” which is perhaps best described as a combination of comedic short story reading and variety show. I say ‘comedic’ rather than ‘comedy’ in an attempt to do justice to the idea that the show is not preoccupied with generating laughs in the style of an out and out comedy revue, and yet it was still remarkably funny.

Fellow Countrymen

Tue 24 Feb 200411:53 PM

There’s a special if perhaps unfair sense of shame that I feel for knowing that the USA Patriot Act was authored by a fellow Vietnamese immigrant. When I first saw Viet Dinh speaking about this legislation in 2002, a shock and a deep, hot flush came over me, and since then I’ve mostly tried to put it out of my mind, only periodically recalling the private embarrassment of my highly tentative and peripheral connection to this landmark abridgment of civil liberties. Anyway, for a beginner’s primer on Mr. Dinh’s position on the USA Patriot Act, you can have a look at the rather facile interview he recently gave to Wired.

Duplicate and Die

Mon 23 Feb 200410:50 PM

When conservatives complain about “activist judges,” I wonder if they would include the growing number of adjudicators who have been systematically destroying consumers’ fair use rights (or, for that matter, those appointed under Republican presidents who have been diligently repealing environmental protections). The latest of these is Judge Susan Illston, who sits on the federal bench in San Francisco, and who last week in a suit between 321 Studios and the Motion Picture Association of America, ruled that DVD-copying software is illegal.

Check It Twice

Mon 23 Feb 200410:12 PM

Kerry That Wait

Thu 19 Feb 200411:23 AM

The way the race for the Democratic nomination has turned out, I feel that my “amateur pundit’s license should be revoked,” as a friend of mine put it in reference to his own opinions on recent events. Certainly, I had no idea that the last men standing would be Senator John Kerry, he of Central Casting Presidentiality, and retiring Senator John Edwards, graduate of the Alex P. Keaton School of Law and Grooming. Who woulda thunk it?

Forum Follows Function

Wed 18 Feb 200405:49 PM

If you have something to say about design and you’re looking for a place to say it online, you now have the added option of saying it at the new AIGA Design Forum, which just launched today and is vastly improved and much easier to use. At least, that’s my humble opinion, as it’s yet another project from your friends over at Behavior. I first alluded to this major undertaking about a month ago, which is some indication of how long I’ve been excited about getting it launched. We actually started talking with the good folks at the AIGA about this when the weather was still warm and before the leaves completely abandoned the trees, so it has a relatively long history. A little bit of which I’ll go into here.

Don’t Mess with Valentine’s Day

Tue 17 Feb 200408:35 PM

Valentine’s Day, which passed innocently over the weekend, got me thinking about gay marriage. It’s all well and good to protect marriage as an institution between a man and a woman (as lots of right-minded people who obviously have learned how to prioritize the truly important issues facing us as a nation are doing), but has anyone stood up in defense of the great tradition that we owe to Saint Valentine — whoever the heck he was? This cherished holiday is clearly intended to celebrate romantic transactions between a man and a woman — and only between a man and a woman — and anyone who tells you otherwise, I’m sure, had better think twice about his or her relationship with the Big Guy.

I swear, if I hear of even one gay couple exchanging candy in heart-shaped boxes, filling out little pink greeting cards, or buying individually wrapped roses as a way of expressing their romantic intentions to one another on the Fourteenth of February — all of these being blatant attempts at undermining one of the founding Hallmark holidays or our society — then they’d better be ready for the onslaught of protest letters sent to newspapers and on-air call-ins to radio shows that only the dedication of all my bountiful free time can produce. Also, don’t even make write a letter to my congressperson with the words “constitutional amendment” in it. You just don’t want that.