Category: Best Line of the Day

Another fascinating blog post from Scott Adams. It includes this:

You might think that everyone on earth understands what a conversation is and how to engage in one. My observation is that no more than a quarter of the population has that understanding. . . .

Prior to the Dale Carnegie course I believed that conversation was a process by which I could demonstrate my cleverness, complain about what was bugging me, and argue with people in order to teach them how dumb they were. To me, listening was the same thing as being bored.

“Many liberals, for example, want to stamp out cigarette smoking while legalizing marijuana smoking, while many conservatives want harsh penalties for pot smokers and federal subsidies for tobacco growers.”

Michael Lind – Salon.com

“When an AT&T representative suggested to one of Jobs’ deputies that the Apple CEO wear a suit to meet with AT&T’s board of directors, he was told, ‘We’re Apple. We don’t wear suits. We don’t even own suits.’ ”

Bad Connection: Inside the iPhone Network Meltdown | Wired Magazine

Well, I think the first thing is, you don’t feel like you’re thirty-five years old. You just don’t, and as that number gets higher each year you get more confused as to why you still feel like you’re in your late twenties. This is called senility, and it means that eventually you’re going to end up in a bed where a nurse has to carry out your pee in a plastic bowl while you scream, “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SOUL ASYLUM?”

dooce®

“The only difference between credit card companies and loan sharks at this point is that you can choose to not patronize a loan shark.”

Matt Taibbi

That’s really the only relevant question:  how much longer will Americans sit by passively and watch as a tiny elite become more bloated, more powerful, greedier, more corrupt and more unaccountable — as the little economic security, privacy and freedom most citizens possess vanish further still?  How long can this be sustained, where more and more money is poured into Endless War, a military that almost spends more than the rest of the world combined, where close to 50% of all U.S. tax revenue goes to military and intelligence spending, where the rich-poor gap grows seemingly without end, and the very people who virtually destroyed the world economy wallow in greater rewards than ever, all while the public infrastructure (both figuratively and literally) crumbles and the ruling class is openly collaborating on a bipartisan, public-private basis even to cut Social Security benefits?

Glenn Greenwald

Answer: Too long.

“The people who say Afghanistan will get better after 9 years probably said the same thing about ‘Friends’ ”

Twitter / Andy Borowitz

CUPERTINO, CA . . . – At a much-anticipated press conference at Apple headquarters, company founder Steve Jobs defended the performance of the new iPhone today, telling reporters that “it works great except for the ‘phone’ feature.”
. . .

“The most important features of the iPhone, like the app that gives you a robot voice, work better than ever,” Mr. Jobs said.

Andy Borowitz

My girlfriend broke up with me last week. She did it cruelly. She sent me a letter saying she ran away with a tractor salesman. I was devastated. It was the first time in my life I’ve gotten a John Deere letter.

Jill, official older daughter of NewMexiKen, brings us up to date on 7-year-old Mack’s training for a triathlon August 9th. [This post is from 2008.]

Today Mack had swim practice for an hour. They worked on the butterfly stroke for the whole hour, which can only help him.

Then he rode his bike home. That was two miles.

As soon as he got home he ran around the block — only .2 of a mile, but I figured one lap was enough.

His stomach hurt, but I kid you not, he wasn’t even breathing hard.

Loving grandpa that I am, I responded that he’d make a good Marine. Jill wrote back.

Nope, I’ve told all [three boys] that they are forbidden from pursuing any career which would lead to people shooting at them.

So that knocks out anything in the armed forces, as well as police officer, security guard, border patrol and working for the post office.

“I’m no expert, but using a leaky cap to stop a leak seems like a dumbass thing to do.”

Twitter / Andy Borowitz

“Oh, c’mon, at its best, The Wizard of Oz is just a story about two women fighting over a pair of shoes.”

Overheard in New York

First posted here last year.

Slobituary

“[T]erm for the relentless slobbering that overtakes broadcast media outlets after the death of any Extremely Famous Person”

Matt Taibbi — RollingStone.com

You want to figure out how long people will slobber over a George Steinbrenner, just take how much they slobbered over Reagan and work backwards. So here in liberal, Yankee-mad New York City Steinbrenner is almost a full Reagan, maybe even a Reagan and change — but in the rest of New York State, which is basically a red state, you probably need four or five Steinbrenners to rate one Reagan. Add it all up and you get about half a Reagan, which puts the Steinbrenner Slobituary at about 3-4 days. We’re still in day 2; I figure it’ll lighten up some by the weekend.

There’s more. Read it all.

“Parents Television Council F*cking Pissed About Repeal Of FCC Indecency Ban”

The Consumerist

But do not fear, “The PTC will vigorously work to defend the FCC’s legal authority to preserve the public airwaves as the last bastion of safety for children and families.”

That’s what we need — safety from the F-word, which I first remember hearing — and having explained to me by a girl — when I was in the 4th grade (and I went to parochial schools).

“Like Mayor Bloomberg’s trans-fats bans, smoking bans, and posted calorie counts, awarding A’s, B’s, and C’s for hygiene is an emanation of the liberal Nanny State so scorned by libertarians and conservatives—who, it seems, would prefer a Neglectful/Abusive Parent State and a Tyrannical Stepfather State, respectively.”

Hendrik Hertzberg : The New Yorker

The name of the the essay by Hertzberg is “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

“I can think of no better epitaph for [George Steinbrenner] than to borrow the one that my friend, George Reedy, wrote upon the death of his former boss, Lyndon B. Johnson.

“‘He may have been a son of a bitch, but he was one colossal son of a bitch.'”

Charles Pierce

“In the technology whack-a-mole sweepstakes, please meet this month’s winner: FIFA, the cartel that operates the World Cup. The organization actually appears to believe it can stop fans attending the games from telling people outside the stadium what’s going on inside, at least in any timely way.”

Dan Gillmor – Salon.com

The president of FIFA is 74.

“By any measure it was a landmark moment in the history of human self-involvement, eclipsing previous peaks in the narcissism Himalayas (Nero’s impromptu fiddle concert as Rome burned, the career of the prophet Mohammed, Kim Jong Il publishing “The Popularity of Kim Jong Il”) mainly because it was a collective effort.”

Matt Taibbi discussing the LeBron James ESPN TV show.

You really need to go read the whole marvelous essay, but here’s another excerpt:

“The weird thing about this Lebron story is that seven or eight years ago, he seemed like a nice kid. All he did was step into a media machinery deisgned to create, reward, nurture, and worship self-obsessed assholes. He was raw clay when he went in, and now he’s everything we ever wanted him to be — a lost, attention-craving narcissistic monster who simultaneously despises and needs the slithering insect-mortals who by the millions are bent over licking his toes (represented in The Decision by the ball-less, drooling sycophant Jim Gray).”

“That’s their prerogative. But they’re full of it. Their position on marriage is about as coherent as their position on Afghanistan.”

Andrew Sullivan writing about the Obama Administration.