If I was ever pressed to give my pick for greatest video game of all time, it would take little thought to come to my conclusion: Tecmo Super Bowl, the 1991 release for the NES.
I think it says something that a low-budget football video game coming up on it's 20 anniversary still inspires countless fan sites and a major yearly tournament. But even more than this, it seems no matter where I go, I'll always be able to find at least a dozen guys who have an old Nintendo in their basement with Tecmo at the ready. It's like a default game -- the ownership of a Nintendo implies the ownership of Tecmo.
And I can't even begin to catalogue the thousands of hours I've spent on the 8-bit gridiron, listening to a hypnotic midi soundtrack one note at a time. And sure, it could be slightly unrealistic -- kickoffs spend well over a half minute in the air, a defensive lineman could go from nearly sacking the quarterback to chasing down the team's fastest wide receiver, and my single game rushing record with Barry Sanders is somewhere in the 800 range (though I feel like Barry in his prime might have been able to pull that off).
But even though Tecmo lives on, it's players do not. Several notable players (Derrick Thomas comes to mind) who ruled Tecmo have already passed away, and countless others are already enshrined in Canton.
Yet some stuck around...until today. Jeff Feagles, the NFL's oldest player, looks set to announce his retirement this Friday. Now normally the retirement of an old journeymen punter doesn't cause me to pause and reflect on my life, but this is different. If I'm not mistaken, Mr. Feagles was the last Tecmo player to still be playing in the NFL.
And sure, it's amazing (even for a punter) that his career has lasted 20 seasons. And I knew this day was coming eventually. But still, I can't help but feel like part of my childhood died with that announcement. You can't really feel old when the players from a video game you played as a small child were still there on the t.v. every weekend. But now, I might as well be hoping Sode Popinski makes a dramatic return to the world of international prize fighting or accept that I'm getting older...
One of the better little Simpsons moments of all time is when a comet is threatening to destroy all life in Springfield (evacuation being impossible due to a missile knocking out the only bridge out of town). As the panicked residents turn to whatever they can for solace, Flanders of course is in church listening to Rev. Lovejoy explain the comet's wrath:
Lovejoy: Judgement Day is upon us. I warned you the Lord wouldn't stand for your minidresses and Beatle boots. But it's not too late to repent your sins and be embraced by the Almighty...
Flanders:(frantically trying to unzip boots) I've resisted these for thirty-five years. Why did I wear them today?
Well, Flanders and the rest of us need worry no longer, as the Vatican has now officially given the thumbs up to the Beatles (though they remain conspicuously silent on the "bigger than Jesus" debate). While Beatle boots weren't specifically included in the announcement, I think we're safe to assume they're ok by association...
Comic book artist Chris Wares was commissioned to do the cover of Fortune's annual Fortune 500 issue, chronicling the richest of the rich corporations. However, his cover was deemed just a little to satirical/realistic for the folks at Fortune.
A look at the hi-res version lets you see why: while CEOs shower themselves with money and dance atop their corporate conglomerate, houses are underwater, people line up at the Milton Friedman check advance, and our neighbors to the South toil away in a shop labeled "Fabricia de Exploitacion."
This is the first I've heard of Mr. Wares so I'm not really sure what else he's done, but I am sure he's got some pretty hefty cojones to submit this to Fortune in the first place...
When things start to pile up, they really start to pile up. And unfortunately, blogging is on the very bottom of said pile. But I have not forgotten you, dear readers, for I give you this:
Need the theme song to Benny Hill? Got it! Need an evil laugh? Got it! Need someone else's voice to tell a coworker to fuck off? Got it!
Be careful about clicking on that link, though, as it is guaranteed you will spend at least the next 15 minutes of your life pushing buttons to hear funny sounds. Of course, there are worse things to do with your time, but I just wanted to warn you.
-It turns out the rich didn't fair so badly, but the rest of us got screwed. I'll give you a minute to pick your monocle up out of your morning tea, as it no doubt dropped from your eye as you gasped in shock at that amazing discovery.
-Continuing the theme of cool shit only happening in Iowa once I've left, a crazy meteor/government suppressed UFO craft lit up the night sky in one of the craziest things I've ever seen recorded on video.
Watch it and be thoroughly creeped out. It's like the opening sequence of a low-budget Micahel Crichton movie, as this horrible virus takes over the nation...
This is a really important point in understanding how inequality in America is reproduced. In teaching my Intro students about economic class last week, I asked them what they thought lead to wealth. One student said it had to be hard work, because "no one just finds a big sack of money and becomes rich."
And while yes, very few people literally stumble onto a bag of money, most wealthy Americans stumble into a bag of money called inheritance. In fact, the single greatest predictor of whether or not you are wealthy is whether or not your parents were wealthy. Not how hard you worked, not how smart you are, but how much money your parents left you. And it's far easier for the wealthy to leave money to their children, because they barely have to pay taxes on their vast fortunes.
And how do they get such big money in the first place? Again, rarely through skill or hard work. They get it because tax law so heavily favors them. For example, 2 out of 3 major corporations paid no taxes last year. Which not only means that you and I have to shoulder the tax burden these companies are unfairly let out of, it also means the top executives of those companies have more money with which to reward themselves for screwing us all over. Money which they then leave to their kids.
Wash, rinse, repeat. And there you have inter-generational class inequality...
Over at wikileaks, they've released probably the most disturbing footage to come out of the war thus far. If you click on the link, you can watch the video, from a U.S. military helicopter, of soldiers opening fire on some Reuters reporters and then later the people who come to pick up the dead bodies, including two young children.
There's not a lot I can add to it, other than to tell you to watch it immediately. For some more insight, Glenn Greenwald points out how this sort of thing is disturbingly common. You can form your own opinion from there...
One thing I always tell my students is that laws exist only in so far as we enforce them -- pretty much everyone breaks the law everyday, simply because we have made so very much illegal. Oh, you protest you did no such thing? You didn't speed? You didn't park illegally for just a moment? You didn't listen to pirated music? You didn't engage is a consensual sex act that is prohibited (and here in MN if it was anything but good ol'missionary, you did)?
Anyway, the point is, not everyone is being arrested, even though we're all breaking the law. This is because we have limited resources and have to choose which of our laws we strenuously enforce and which we more or less ignore. And for a variety of reasons, both historical and contemporary, we tend to enforce those laws broken by the poor and ignore those laws broken by the wealthy.
For example, employers are legally required to provide a safe workforce for their employees and have a bevy of safety laws they are supposed to follow. One really obvious and necessary law is that they must provide proof of the safety of the workplace to any employee who asks, so the employee can decide if they'd like to work there or find somewhere else to work that doesn't endanger their lives.
But what happens if a lowly worker dares to ask to see a safety report? Well, if you're a window washer in Minneapolis, it means you get locked out of your job. That's right, locked out of your job as someone who dangles thirty stories above the ground on some flimsy ropes just for asking if the ropes will hold you up or let you fall to your death like 3 of your coworkers did in the past year.
And yet, this employer is not facing any legal sanctions, and their executives will definitely not be dragged out of their house at gun point in the middle of the night. Even though they are blatantly and publicly breaking multiple laws. As such, even though there are all sorts of laws about workplace safety, those laws don't exist in reality because they are rarely (if ever) enforced.
It's always bad practice to predict the future. After all, there are pretty much unlimited possibilities as to what could happen and your prediction is only one of those multitudes. Ergo, it's a good chance you'll not only not happened to have picked the one of all possible futures correctly, but even likely you'll be hilariously wrong.
Nowhere does this seem to be more true than with technology. You either say it will be able to do everything we could ever dream of and you look like an anachronistic fool, or you say it will never become anything and you look like a Luddite troglodyte.
How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can't tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.
You're totally right -- no one will ever purchase or read things over the internet, and there will most assuredly not be a crisis in the newspaper industry in little over a decade from the time this piece is written. Not to mention laptops will certainly never be so thin as to have their weight measured in ounces. Or how about this nugget:
Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping—just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet—which there isn't—the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.
This one's even better -- it's a good thing we never figured out how to send money over the internet, or else those malls sure would be in trouble. And if there's one thing I think whenever I'm online, it's "man, this sure would be a better experience if some minimum-wage idiot were asking me if I was looking for anything in particular rather than just letting me shop in peace."
So please learn your lesson from this, kids. Predicting the future almost always makes you look like an idiot. Especially if you discount something that will become one of the most integral aspects of our lives within 5 years of your article being published...
Just got done with a phone interview for a fellowship I really want to get (mostly because it will involve receiving $12,000 pretty much no strings attached) and am in a good mood. And I'm working not 1, not 2, but 3 separate jobs this semester because I grow ever so slightly tired of poverty.
So now I have spending money and will hopefully soon have lots of living money, so I am going record shopping. Because what is the point of saving money if you don't foolishly waste it?
What albums will I buy? Lord only knows -- I have a list about two pages long of albums I want to buy when I have money. Can I now afford two pages worth of albums? No, I cannot. But I can afford 3-5 of them, so harsh decisions will need to be made.
And as with all my actions, I turn to Mother Church to make my decision for me. Recently, the Vatican released their list of top rock albums, and in addition to existing (which alone is cool enough), is surprisingly not that bad. How many albums will I purchase this afternoon that carry the explicit approval of the Vatican? Stay tuned...
And with that stone-cold shot, Prince Ali takes down the overall number one seed in the NCAA tourney. Yet my beloved Panthers still get little love (outside of Iowa, where the bandwagon is getting pretty full). And it strikes me that the plight of the mid-major school is a good analogy for white privilege.
White privilege is the concept that because of the US racial hierarchy, all white people have some form of privilege (a lot more enters into it, like class and gender, but still, all white people experience it to some degree). Mostly it comes through "invisible" practices, such as being able to choose any home you want to buy instead of being steered toward certain locations. Or having your mistakes more easily forgiven. But here's how it applies to tourney basketball...
The Big East is one of the most privileged conferences in college basketball. And much like white people in America, much of that privilege is unearned. It's not that the Big East doesn't have hard working teams or any good teams, because they do, it's simply that their teams are often given more credit than they deserve. And much like white privilege, this is (usually) not an explicit process. For example, this year, half of the teams from the Big East got into the tournament (an unusually high number for any conference), which has proved to be a mistake, as the Big East so far is struggling to keep a .500 record in the tourney, with many of their top teams having already taken a quick exit. I'd be willing to bet none of the selection committee put them in simply because they're from the Big East. But the Big East schools do play near the major media outlets and have far more games on television than a mid-major like UNI, which is on TV once a year, if that. As such, when a Big East team has a bad game, the media folks that rank them will see it and put it in context. Maybe their star was sick, maybe the refs missed some calls, maybe they were just unlucky, etc. But when UNI loses, they only see the box score, and say "well, they must not be for real."
Similarly, when the Big East does poorly, like they're doing this year, it's dismissed as a one time aberration. Sports media say the Big East is having a down year, and you know next year they'll get an inflated number of tourney bids. In the same way, failures of whites are generally chalked up to personal flaws or extenuating circumstances, not a reflection of the incapability of the entire race. However, when the Missouri Valley Conference has a bad showing in the tourney, it's instead offered up as proof they don't belong, and the next year they will get only the automatic qualifier in, much the same way the failures of minorities are often attributed to the entire racial category.
And this same process happens with whites in many fields. Take employment, for example. We know from Devah Pager's outstanding audit studies that a white person with a criminal record is more likely to be offered a job than an equally qualified black applicant without a criminal record. And again, much like in the tourney selection process, I bet very few employers are explicitly being racist. Rather, they themselves are probably white, so when they see a white person with flaws, they can understand and rationalize them. But when they see a black person, who has already been stereotyped as a criminal, any perceived problem is assumed to define the person. Just like a team like UNI -- which is already assumed to be unable to compete with the major conference teams -- when they lose, it's not because they had an off night or the officiating was bad, it's seen as the inevitable conclusion for such a team.
And when teams like this do win, they're almost always seen as the exception that proves the rule. With all the talk of UNI's "luck" no one seems to notice the stellar defense they played or solid game-planning. And when (if?) they lose to a major team at some point in the tourney, it won't be an upset, but rather proof they can't really hang with the big teams, despite the fact they just dominated the consensus number one team.
Finally, it's also a good example of why we need programs like affirmative action, or as the NYTimes put it, more UNIs and less Minnesotas (another under-qualified major conference team given a tourney position). Many in college basketball argue that the winners of mid-major conference tournaments shouldn't get an automatic bid, as it takes away a spot from a more qualified team, just like opponents of Affirmative Action claim it takes jobs away from qualified whites. But this again is a great example of how that's not the case -- rather than taking spots from qualified whites (or major conference teams), it gives a chance to qualified teams who otherwise would not have gotten their shot. And more often than not, those who benefit from finally getting an equal chance usually prove their worth, whether it be through being a productive employee, award-winning scholar, or taking down the consensus number one seed in the NCAA tournament.
You see? Everything can be explained with sociology...Go Panthers!
Via my new favorite time wasting blog Strange Maps:
The concentration of bars vs. grocery stores. You might notice that Wisconsin is the only state in which nearly every region has more bars than grocery stores. If you've ever been there or seen the types of people coming from there, this map makes a lot sense...
My old man often comments that a lot of Republican blowhards, from Bush to Limbaugh and everywhere in between, probably don't even believe the crazy shit they constantly spout. Rather, they've found something that works in getting them money and/or power, and hey, why give up the goose if it's laying you golden eggs.
The power point breaks donors down into two categories: small donors, who are the targets of direct marketing are described under the heading “Visceral Giving.” Their motivations are listed as “fear,” “extreme negative feelings toward existing Administration;” and “reactionary.” The other category is major donors, who instead practice “Calculated Giving,” with motivations such as “peer to peer pressure,” “access,” and “ego-driven” giving that can easily be tapped into with access to political “tchotchkes.”
Republicans have spent all of the past day pretending they have never heard of this and have no idea where it came from (it was apparently a magical and mystical RNC fundraiser that no one involved with the RNC had ever heard of or knew anything about), but I think it does a pretty good job of showing what the Republican party really thinks about all those "real" Americans they work so hard to represent...
On the heels of today's depressing news that Joe Nathan is probably out for the year with a torn ligament, at least we know which hot dog will be featured at the new Target field this year.
Hormel has been dropped, and while this sadly means there will be no more dollar dog nights and I will officially ever be in the Hormel row of fame or be a wiener winner, at least the Twins are going back to tradition with Schweigerts, makers of the original Twins Dog at the old Met.
The original Twins dog will be accompanied by the Twins Big Dog, the Dugout Dog, and the unfortunately named Dinger Dog. Having recently secured tickets to the opening series, I think I'm going to have to try them all and report back. Can they beat the Dome Dog? I don't know, but I'm willing to do the leg work to find out...
Remember conservative activist James O'Keefe? The one who keeps violating federal law like it's going out of style? And remember how I mentioned in a previous post that a good number of people have been looking at his infamous ACORN pimp videos and noticed how heavily edited they are?
Well, it turns out these folks are finding out quite a few things. For instance, he was not wearing the ridiculous outfit when he went into ACRON offices. And not only was he not dressed like a (rich white's kid's poorly conceived version of a) pimp, he also introduced himself as a young law student, not a pimp. In fact, it's become pretty clear that few, if any, of the ACORN employees identified as wrongdoers even knew he was attempting to pose as a pimp when they were helping him.
Of course, this doesn't mean the New York Times will admit they were wrong to trumpet this story as fact, even though it's been clear from the get-go that these videos were pretty shady. But then, that's pretty standard conservative operating procedure -- put an outlandish lie out there, knowing it will be accepted as fact until it's proved a complete lie, which won't matter, because the retraction will either never come or be buried so far back in the paper no one will know there was ever a retraction. Then, simply bide your time trying not to get arrested for attempting to bug the office of United States Senator...
Despite being the Greatest Country in the World™, the United States usually lags far behind Japan and most European nations in measures of well being, things like health, income, security, etc. One of the biggest gaps is in labor -- most European nations average at least 4 weeks of paid vacation a year, with fewer hours worked for higher wages. Contrast that to the U.S., where even a week of paid vacation is seen as something that must be earned after years of work, and wages continually plummet, in both real dollars and compared to inflation.
There are many reasons for this, but the Christian Science Monitor has a good quick hit piece this morning that points to a big piece of the puzzle: union activity. As you can see form the chart below, major work stoppages in America have pretty much become a relic of the past as unions offer more and more concessions to employers and refuse to deploy their most valued asset. To be fair, much of this is due to shits in employment patterns and threats of outsourcing, but a good counter-example is Greece, where the entire country is on strike right now.
Minnesota and Wisconsin fight over a lot -- which state is home to Paul Bunyan (Minnesota), which state has the better football team or hockey team (Minnesota), which state is most irrelevant on the national stage (Wisconsin).
But we can now add another chapter to this long and pointless border grudge: alt-country rock legends Wilco.
After the Mayor of Duluth made Tweedy and company an official honorary Duluth band, the Madison city council has introduced a motion to recognize "America's shiniest rock object" as honorary citizens of the Wisconsin capital.
The idea is that much like unions (at one point in time, at least) brought some semblance of power to working people by bringing them together to bargain and politic as one unit instead of thousands of individuals, so too should the unemployed attempt political reforms as one.
It's a pretty young organization, but it has a pretty solid model. Members are organized by zip code and form small cells to elect leadership and set local priorities. All of these groups are then linked up in broader local networks and national networks on line.
Obviously it's far too early in the campaign to see if it will be successful or not, but it's certainly an exciting development. And given that it now has the backing of over a dozen major trade unions (with more to come), it could actually turn out to be a pretty powerful vehicle for expressing the concerns of one of the most underrepresented sections of American society.
I often try to explain to my students that the reason they think criminals are poor people of color is not because poor people of color commit more crimes than anyone else, but because they are prosecuted more than anyone else. If you actually look at the numbers in terms of money lost, injuries/illnesses, and deaths caused, white collar crime is by far more harmful to our society than are all other crimes combined.
Yet we rarely prosecute white collar crime, and when we do, the punishment is rarely proportional to the crime. The example I always use is that the CFO of Enron, who stole in the billions of dollars and destroyed thousands of lives and was convicted of 109 felony counts, for which he received 10 years in prison. In contrast, in California under their three strikes rule, a poor Hispanic man named Leandro Adrande stole two VHS tapes from a K-Mart and received a 50 year sentence. Why? Well, one was rich and powerful, and one was poor and of color. Hopefully you can fill in the dots from there.
Yet we all know Dick Cheney is in no trouble of ever coming in front of a judge, let alone facing the death penalty (we tend to reserve that kind of thing for the poor people of color we're all so afraid of). Yet here he is, going on national television to repeatedly talk about the federal crimes he committed and how proud he is of them.
But I suppose only a crazy radical leftist could see any injustice in that...
One point I always try to get across to my students is that our laws and criminal justice priorities usually have less to do with stopping the most dangerous crimes or offering citizens the most protection, but instead tend to be more abut what is politically popular or in the interests of those who create the rules.
Pedophiles are one of the best examples of this. Obviously, the sexual abuse of children is a horrible crime with often devastating consequences for those victimized. But what we do to pedophiles surpasses the harsh treatment of pretty much every other criminal.
Think about it -- people convicted of sex crimes have to register their homes, cars, employers, and often daily activities with the authorities. Though laws vary state-by-state, in most places they are required to actively identify their homes and vehicles as being used by a convicted sex offender. Many places make them take out ads in the paper announcing their arrival and even appear in front of the community at large events to out themselves and have scorn and abuse heaped on them. They usually can't live within a mile of where children gather, leading to the infamous cases like Miami where the only place sex offenders can legally live is literally under a bridge.
This is in no way to defend the actions of sex offenders or to argue that they're sympathetic characters; it's just to point out how harshly we treat them. Think about it -- we don't make murders do any of that, and I would argue they're at least as potentially dangerous as are sex offenders.
Well, with Minnesota's latest budget, you can see this over-the-top response in action. While facing a massive budget shortfall and gashing important social services, Tim "I Want To Be President Real, Real Bad" Pawlenty proposes throwing away $89 million on a facility to house sex offenders. As the article linked to points out, even if such facilities were effective (which research has found they really aren't) this would still only impact about 3% of the states sex offenders.
But it will pass, I can almost guarantee that. Why? Simple -- what politician is going to be the one that votes against punishing sex offenders? The only ones who can do it are those who have no intention of ever running for office again, as "being soft on sex offenders" ads would be the first thing run by any opponent they would ever face again.
And that is how laws that have absolutely nothing to do with protecting the populace or effectively fighting crime are passed, while the rest of us pray our bank doesn't jack up the rates on our mortgage and force us to share that bridge with the pedophiles...
Granted, they have yet to face a trial of any kind so it is possible they may not be guilty (unless they were Gitmo detainees, in which case guilt would have nothing to do with it). So it is possible they may be able to come up with some really crazy reason as to why this treason-level federal crime was understandable. But if you take the three minutes to read that affidavit, you'll see they're going to have a pretty damn hard time coming up with such an argument...
Under the state's "Subversive Activities Registration Act," passed last year and now officially on the books, "every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States ... shall register with the Secretary of State."
Yep, you have to register to overthrow the state. And it costs you 5 bucks.
There's lots of questions surrounding this law, the most obvious being "aren't there already laws against overthrowing our government?" But other more pertinent questions also arise, such as, will this law be used against right wing militias that advocate overthrowing the government, or is it just another way to harass vaguely Muslim-looking people? SPOILER ALERT: I think it's the latter.
In reality, this is one of those classic double punishment laws. Many states, for instance, require you to register all money you made from illegal drug sales with the IRS so they can be taxed. Of course no one does this -- no one is really expected to do it -- it's just a way to charge someone arrested on drug crimes with another crime so you can put them away longer. This is called "being tough on crime" or, more simply, "being really fucking retarded."
In any event, I'm hoping for a follow up soon to see who all has registered their intention to overthrow the government. Because certainly any group looking to do that wouldn't dare violate a law requiring them to register their intentions...
Something I talk a lot about with my undergrad students is that, contrary to what you might think from watching t.v. or reading most magazines, the white male is not under attack or a disadvantaged minority. In fact, the white male is still doing pretty well in the U.S. if you take income levels, wealth levels, standard of living, corporate power, academic power, political power, and several dozen other measures as proof of doing well.
But one thing the white male is being asked to do is share miniscule portions of his power with other people (mostly white women). Not give up his overwhelming power and advantages in life, mind you, just share a little bit with some other people.
This might not sound like too much to ask of a group of people who have more-or-less dominated much of the world by hook and by crook for the last 500 years or so. But then again, I don't suppose you violently colonize most of the world by learning to share, so maybe it shouldn't be too big of surprise they're not very happy about being asked to share a miniscule portion of what they have (most of which was, incidentally, stolen from these other folks in the first place, but that's another blog for another day).
Yet it remains that the poor white man is being asked to share. And if you saw this year's Super Bowl, you would think the white man has never been asked to do such a horrible thing in his entire existence. Take the above Dodge Charger ad for instance -- whereas car ads used to dance around the idea that you feel like having to give up any of your unearned advantages is horrible, they're now explicitly saying "stick it to the rest of the world with a shiny, noisy, polluting phallic symbol!"
Well, the good folks over at The Sexist made a nice little response ad to the good folks at Dodge, pointing out that maybe women don't have it as good (or men have it as bad) as they implied in their Super Bowl ad. Check it out:
To me, Punto is a perfect example of everything that is simultaneously right and yet so wrong about the Minnesota Twins. He's a guy who plays with an intense love of the game, emphasizing speed, hard work, terrific defense, and mediocre (at best) hitting. Nick fits in in Minnesota only because no other major league team would start a man of his proportions and batting skills, but yet you can't help but love the guy.
Sure, he slides head first into first base. Now, this is possibly the stupidest thing a baseball player can do. For starters, it's far faster to continue running. In fact, baseball long ago recognized how much faster it is to keep running to first base and not have to slide so they allow you to over run that base. So not only does sliding into first actually slow you down, it also significantly increases your chance of injury.
Yet when Nicky does it, you can't help but feel he knows what he's doing. And even if it never works (and it doesn't), you've got to love the sight of a hustling little midget man sliding into first. He's just too lovable not to.
And sure, could the Twins find a better hitting third baseman who could still play good defense? Sure they could. But that's not their style. Their style is to find guys like Nick who make highlight reel catches at a rate of about one a game, and who then seem very confused by this long, cylandrical piece of wood they're forced to carry up to the plate several times a game. It may not be high scoring baseball, but it sure is fun to watch.
And now more than ever, as the Twins are actually making off-season moves and acquiring players who may actually be able to play the game of baseball at an above-average level (let's not jinx it yet), I think the Twins need to keep guys like Punto around to remind themselves of who they are. Because yes, I want them to win championships, but I don't want them to do it at the expense of their soul.
Can you win a championship with the likes of Nick Punto starting at 3rd base? I don't know, but I do know that win or lose it's a lot more fun than watching some steroidal jerk like Alex Rodriguez play homerun derby for you. And I'll take that...
And of course, where do you launch a slick ad campaign but at the Super Bowl? The Air Force premiered a new ad showing how flying planes that drop internationally-banned cluster bombs (you know the kind, so deadly and horrific the rest of the world has agreed to stop using them) is really just like skateboarding. And you kids love the skateboarding, don't you?
To seal the deal, the Air Force hired 56-year-old Salt Lake City resident Kem Kraft to write a cool song for them. The only problem? He didn't write a song, he simply played "Fell in Love With a Girl" by the White Stripes. And they weren't too happy about it, releasing a statement saying: "the White Stripes take strong insult and objection to the Air Force Reserve presenting this advertisement with the implication that we licensed one of our songs to encourage recruitment during a war that we do not support."
Kraft claims he's never heard of the White Stripes (odd how a guy who makes his living writing music has never heard of possibly the biggest breakout band of the past decade), but his excuse sounds a lot more like a high school student who plagiarizes their homework and then claims they've never heard of this "Encyclopedia Britannica" of which you speak.
Compare for yourself -- Air Force ad (after the end of another commercial...youtube and all):
Slightly more original White Stripes video for "Fell in Love With a Girl":
This has been making the rounds of the interwebs, but I just wanted to chime in for a moment on it. Yes, Sarah Palin uses crib notes, which she ever-so-elegantly writes on her hand. And to make sure, I've cross-checked with a number of sources and it appears these photos are legit and photoshop free (multiple photographers have come forward with pictures showing the same thing, so it would have to be a pretty big conspiracy to have been made-up at this point).
And yeah, we all use notes to remind ourselves of things from time to time. But here's a few reasons why this is hugely different, and a great example of how Palin, like most of these hacks, doesn't seem to believe this crazy shit as much as she knows there are a lot of people who will give you large sums of money for talking about this crazy shit as if you believe it.
So why is this different than anyone else using notes? Well, for one, Palin is one of the chorus of idiots who constantly deride Obama for using a teleprompter during his speeches (as has every president since the invention of the teleprompter). If you're going to mock the guy for doing something, you probably should not then do the exact same thing in a far less graceful way.
But it's much bigger than that. This was a speech she gave at the Tea Party convention, and was supposed to be about her core beliefs. I don't know about you, but I don't have a super hard time remembering my core beliefs. In fact, you could say they are are the core of my identity. If you hired me to talk about what I believe in, I wouldn't need to write reminders on my hand, because I fucking know what I believe in. You know who does have to write reminders of what they believe in on their hand? People whose beliefs are a political expediency that is constantly shifting.
But this won't really do anything to Palin's growing cult, because it was never based on anything in the first place. All of the attraction to her that exists has always been based on the fact that she's a formerly-pretty white lady who won't take your guns away and wants to defend you from the possibly Muslim guy who talks about changes he never actually makes. And if you were on board that idea, a little direct evidence of her lack of sincerety is nothing to dissuade you now...
Glen Bell, the founder of Taco Bell, died recently. In his honor, the company released this image:
Maybe this is the way the guy wanted to be remembered, maybe this is some sort of sick joke, or maybe that is the sweetes eulogy anyone could ask for: the hot sauce packet-based eulogy.
It's a nice, short, and interesting read in which Watterson sticks to the idea that he quit the strip at its prime and doesnt regret it at all. As he points out, had he continued to cover the same ground year-in, year-out, most of his fans would be wishing he went away. It's a refreshing take from an artist who could have easily coasted on his name for at least another decade while racking up piles and piles of money. Not that Watterson is hurting for money, given the continued popularity of C&H books and whatnot, but it's such a rare event to see someone not destroy every shred of their artistic credibility for another stack of dollar bills.
In other news, The Family Circus is still being published.
A lot was made of Sarah "I'm just an average person/beauty queen/vie-presidential candidate" Palin's book Going Rogue and its high number of sales. The numbers, which are big for a non-fiction memoir, have been touted as further proof of Mz. Palin's unstoppable popularity and the American people's hunger for her home-spun wisdom.
The only problem is that of the sizable amount of sales her book has pulled in, over $63,000 comes from Palin's own PAC, which was ostensibly founded to help Republican politicians. In contrast, that same PAC gave out $43,000 to people actually running for office. Or for those who can't do the math, this supposedly bold political action committee has spent over $20,000 less on political action than it has on copies of its founder's book.
This is actually a pretty standard conservative ploy -- find someone with a lot of money (either yourself, which is usually pretty easy for conservatives, or a crazy, rich backer) and have them buy thousands of copies of your book. This artificially inflates your sales numbers, causing the book to look popular and shoot up the best sellers lists, not to mention driving an increasing amount of media attention your way. Combine with some shoddy fake journalism on your side (like Fox News doctoring footage of the crowds at your book-signing to make you look a lot more popular than you are), and you create the fiction that your book is really popular and selling well, which in turn, drives people who otherwise wouldn't have paid any attention to buy a copy for themselves, thus further artificially inflating your sales numbers.
That being said, I don't really have a problem with her faux populism or artificial sales numbers, I'm just jealous because when I write my first book, there's no way I'll be able to fake the kind of numbers Sarah Palin can, even though my book will be full of actual text about real things instead of crazy babbling disguised as "straight talk."
You've probably heard by now that Howard Zinn died. There's not really much I can add to the chorus of obituaries that have already been written about him. I think my relationship with his work was pretty boilerplate -- I first read a copy of A People's History when I was in high school, and it more-or-less changed the way I see the world, like it did for about 50 million other people.
And what more can you say about a man so dedicated to humane ideals that he once re-traced the routes his planes flew in WWII when he was a bombardier so he could find and apologize to as many victims of his actions as he could. I'm guessing there's not a large number of ex-military who have done that.
Right up until the end he was a prolific writer and lecturer, and he will be sorely missed.
A group of four "conservative activists" (it's hard to write the phrase, because conservative and activist tend to be two diametrically opposed terms) were arrested recently trying to bug the office of a U.S. Senator. One of the arrested is James O'Keefe, who regular readers might recognize as the guy who went under cover to entrap ACORN workers into quasi-illegal situations (hear a podcast with media expert Peter Drier discussing such attempts to discredit ACORN here).
My favorite part of the article? As O'Keefe was leaving jail on bail, apparently the only thing he said to reporters was "the truth shall set me free." Leaving aside the fact that leaving jail means you are currently free, I'm very interested to hear what truth that is. Dude, you were caught red-handed trying to bug the office of a United States Senator -- there are not too many situations in which that is not a crime. I can't wait to find out what "truth" there is out there that suddenly makes an obvious federal offense totally fine and understandable. I mean, even if I agreed with the guy I'd have to admit he screwed the pooch big time on this one.
So if we follow the safety procedures established by our previous president for dealing with ideologically-opposed activists, we need to convene a grand jury and threaten these four with dozens of years in prison, and assume anyone they have contact with is a dyed-in-the-wool terrorist...
The most ironic part of the article is that one person interviewed bemoans how other countries can recover more quickly from economic downturns because they actually make things that people need. I know it's more about political grandstanding than anything, but isn't part of the purpose of passing this kind of law so that American manufacturing companies, which by law and social pressure must pay their employees at least a decent wage (though often far from a living wage), can at least compete somewhat with multi-nationals that pay their workers pennies per hour?
So if people actually followed this law, then we would have companies actually making things and could recover faster from these kind of economic problems. But what do I know -- I'm sure the short-term solution of continuing to off-shore our production so we can get cheaper mershandise now will certainly pay off in the long run...
Couldn't even read the sports section this morning. In classic style, the Vikes played just well enough to get me to believe, so they could dash my hopes at the last second.
I'm now operating on the theory that Favre was actually Packer sleeper cell and this whole retirement saga/fiasco was just to lull us into accepting him so he could get our hopes up only to crush us...
If you follow football, you know the Saint have a regular cadre of nuns who always show up to their home games (in their habits, nonetheless). Some are suggesting this gives the Saints some sort of holy advantage in the up-coming NFC Championship game.
But do the Saints have an incredibly odd new song written by Prince? No, but fortunately the Vikings do. Entitled simply "Purple and Gold," Prince wrote it after he apparently had a "vision of the future" during the Dallas game and was inspired to write a theme song for the Vikes' championship run.
Now, whether Prince is more powerful than some nuns is a subject to be debated, but I'd be willing to be none of those nuns have ever worn ass-less chaps, so I think the edge has to go the Purple one...
Unemployment numbers are often bandied about in the media as good or bad, big or small, etc. But it's always hard to know what they mean and who they effect. For example, somewhere like Detroit that has 100% or so unemployment (well, it's not that bad, but close enough) can have a big impact on unemployment numbers. Things may not be so bad elsewhere, but when one big employer leaves the country, it can skew numbers. Or not. I'm no labor expert.
But here's a really cool graphic that has the growth in unemployment broken down by county over the last several years. It does a good job of both showing the big trends in employment, but also showing how it effects different places at different rates. It's worth a very depressing look-see.
And as another note to throw on there, the unemployment rate (which nationally is currently about 10%) only measures people actively looking for work and not in prison. This is big for two reasons: 1) many people have given up looking for work because in many place there simply isn't work to be found, and B) we have by far the most people in prison in the world (most of whom are unemployed). If you put those people in the number (to actually reflect how many Americans don't have jobs), the unemployment rate would easily double. Which means that it's much closer to 1 out of every 5 Americans being unemployed...
On the plus side, my beloved Panthers, the powerhouse of the plucky and lovable under-dog Missouri Valley Conference, are now ranked 20th in the nation in basketball. Granted, 20th is only a couple of slots into being ranked, but for a no-name school in the middle of nowhere Iowa, that's a pretty big deal. An even bigger deal? College basketball gods North Carolina are ranked a full 4 spots behind the panthers.
On the down side, Iowa is thinking of adding it's name to the long list of states that have banned the high-proof grain alcohol Everclear, just because some dumb-ass college kid nearly killed himself chugging the stuff. Without even getting into a rant about how Iowa can hardly ban the world's most infamous grain alcohol, why do we always have to make stuff illegal just because people are stupid? Why can't we just skip a step and make stupidity illegal, thus saving fun things for those of us who can use them responsibly, and guaranteeing the continued explosion of the criminal justice industrial complex? It's what we in business call a win-win!
Apparently the Pope. In the large stockpile of interesting things I probably should have known about but didn't, it turns out Benedict XVI is apparently pretty pro-environment: he's done everything from installing solar cells on the roofs of Vatican buildings to strongly denouncing world leaders for failing to make any sort of real progress at the Copenhagen summit.
Of course, though, global warming is just a scam and this is nothing but further evidence that the Pope is actually a left-wing nutcase intent on damaging free market enterprise, but it's interesting nonetheless...
The NY Times has a great interactive map this morning allowing you to see what videos are most (and least) requested from Netflix for a variety of metro areas.
Turns out the Twin Cities' most popular movie right now is the Curious Case of Benjamin Button (a/k/a Forrest Gump II), which also holds true for my zip code (though my old hippie neighborhood favors Milk...surprise, surprise). Giving me some hope? The least requested movie for my zip code is The Proposal, starring the charming Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. I haven't seen the movie, but I can only guess some wacky circumstance is keeping those two from falling in love...or is it?
My only bone to pick with this map is that you can't really define the least requested movie. Netflix has to have hundreds of thousands of movies, and I would guess that several thousand of them are tied for least requested at zero. On the other hand, if you were going to pick one movie out of the pack and define it as the least popular, I'm pretty comfortable with that choice.
He may not be a household name, but his claymation friends are (or were...hopefully they still are). Art Clokey, the inventor of Gumby, died this week at 88. Though he's also responsible for the hokey and over-the-top Davey and Goliath shorts, he did use the money from them to get Gumby back on the air, so I prefer to think he was only doing them for the cold hard cash.
Either way, I know Gumby filled up much of my childhood, and a Gumby and Pokey still sit atop my desk, inspiring me to reach for the stars...or something like that. In any event, he will be missed.
Li'l Wayne -- rapper extraordinaire, defender of New Orleans, syrup enthusiast, cake model for Alec Baldwin's daughter, soon to be convict, and all around bad ass -- will provide the voice of Jesus is an upcoming [adult swim] special "Freakniks," masterminded and produced by king of the vocoder T-Pain (who, of course, also played Frylok in the live-action Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode).
This isn't exactly the weirdest news I've ever read over my morning coffee, but it's probably the coolest. And I've got to give it to [adult swim] -- no other block of television can claim to have cornered the coveteted stoner/overweight loser/gangsta market so throroughly...
You know Michele Bachmann, right? You know, the woman who had an orgasm the first time she met then-president Bush? The woman whose un-paralleled insanity embarrasses Minnesota on a near daily basis? Yeah, you know who I'm talking about.
Well, you probably remember how she said she wouldn't fill out her census because it would send her to an interment camp, or something like that. And she encouraged other God-fearing Minnesotans not to fill out their census either, because then they, too, would be open to all sorts of government mind control now that Obama and his socialist-fascist regime would know their estimated annual income. (Though I do have to at least point out the irony between this "how dare the government want to find out basic information about me?!?" stance and her continued support of government spying programs...)
But if you follow her crazy ramblings, you might notice she's stopped caring about the census so much lately. Is it because she suddenly realized she's bat-shit insane and wanted to back off of her comments to save whatever scrap of dignity she has left?
And in the end, I guess that would be a pretty good outcome. So maybe this is indeed the one time people should actually do what Michele Bachmann says...
Because you can't take it with you, but just because you can't, doesn't mean you should have to pay your fair share of taxes.
And a word on the so-called death tax -- remember, it will never apply to me or you or to anyone you know. If every single member of my extended family died tomorrow and everyone of them left everything they owned to me, I would still not have enough money to qualify for the estate tax when I die. As the article points out, the estate tax applies to about 5,500 people each year. According to the CDC, 2,426,264 died last year, meaning the "death tax" applied to roughly 0.2% of the population. The 0.2% we call the "obscenely wealthy who go to such lengths to avoid paying their fair share of taxes that they artificially keep their corpses alive long enough to avoid paying in any way."
Not noted in the article, of course, is the irony of how much money it takes to keep someone alive who otherwise would be dead. It seems the obscenely wealthy don't mind draining away large sums of money, they just don't want it going to their fair share of taxes...
As a teacher of crime and deviance, one of the biggest yet most basic points I try to get across to my students is that the two are not the same. That is, not all crimes are deviant and not all deviant acts are crimes. It sounds like a basic and obvious point, which it really is, but it's so important for how we make laws and use the limited resources of our criminal justice system. It's equally important for understanding why certain crimes tend to be committed by certain people and why some communities barely look askance at crimes that shock other communities.
The most obvious example of this concept is speeding. Speeding is a crime, yet it's not at all deviant, seeing as roughly 99% of our population does it (I just made that number up, but I would not be surprised if it were true). But I think a more illustrative example is drunk driving -- it's certainly illegal, and in most places it's also fairly deviant. But even for something so obviously dangerous and risky, there are still varying shades of deviance attached to it (even though it's illegal throughout the U.S.).
For instance, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas almost always fill out the list of top 5 states for DUI arrests. Now this could be because DUI enforcement is stronger in these states, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would say it more likely stems from the fact that we here in the Upper Midwest like our alcoholic beverages. Also, we tend more rural with far fewer taxis or dependable forms of public transportation.
As such, while drunk driving is still illegal, and probably still seen as pretty deviant by many people around here, it's probably less deviant in the Upper Midwest than it is elsewhere. So while the legal regulations on drunk driving are pretty uniform across the nation (all 50 states now have a BAC limit set at .08), the social regulations on drunk driving are probably weaker around here. And given that social pressures tend to be much more effective in limiting criminality than are legal regulations, you have people more likely to drink and drive yet face the same legal sanctions as they would in a place where it's less socially acceptable.
Now, I'm certainly not saying that it's socially acceptable around here to drive with a BAC of .708 as they do in South Dakota, but if you live in the Upper Midwest and are heading out to a party tonight, you should probably be a little extra cautious about drunk drivers...
Don't have much time to write today because I'm busy working on funding proposals and taking care of a dog that had to have surgery (yes, I provide my dog with the medical care I myself cannot afford).
So in the interest of posting yet not spending time on something, please do check out the craziest shit said in the media in the past year. Not too surprisingly, Glenn Beck tops the list. S read it, and then remember that thousands of people actually listen to that guy. Then go take a long, long shower...
Don't have much time to blog today with end of the semester work to do, but I did want to link to a great article by Sports Illustrated's Joe Posnaski arguing again why Bert Blyleven should be in the Hall of Fame.
Bert gets no love from the selection committee because he was never a Cy Young winner or MVP candidate or collector of any of the big awards that make a choice obvious. But if you take a minute and look at what he actually did, he was easily one of the best pitchers of his era, and clearly one of the best pitchers of all time.
Once, when Homer Simpson was running for Springfield Sanitation Commissioner, he was decrying that sad state of the world by exclaiming "That's not America! That's not even Mexico!"
And that seems to be a pretty common belief in the U.S. -- that we may not be that great, but shit, look at how bad Mexico's doing. We can't be doing that bad...
But once again, the people we look down on have shown us up as Mexico City recently legalized gay marriage. Not some bullshit "partnership" thing, but full-on marriage with all the attendant rights and responsibilities.
But meanwhile, here in enlightened America, things could only be going so well...
My guess is it would be far less than $57,077.60 a minute (and by "guess," I mean "know for a fact").
Yet that staggering amount is what we pay for the war in Afghanistan. Not both wars, just the one in Afghanistan. You know, the war that's taken us longer than both World Wars and is nowhere near being a complete or achieving anything approaching success.
It never ceases to amaze me how we just simply cannot find the money to pay for the medication people desperately need and yet cannot afford, but if we're gonna go kill some people, we always have the money. Even if the reason we're killing people has pretty much no basis in reality. Or no basis at all.
Anyway, just a little something to remember every time you hear a politician or right-wing blowhard tell you that sure, in an ideal world, people wouldn't die from easily cured diseases simply because they couldn't afford the cure, but we just don't have the money for that. Or maybe we'll all be lucky enough to contract deadly diseases that can be cured by bombing defenseless people...
Today marks the 20th anniversary since the Simpsons first aired on a fledgling, never-to-survive network called Fox.
It's almost impossible for me to summarize how big of an impact the Simpsons has had on my life; after all, I was 7 years old when it debuted and have been a super fan since day one. I literally do not remember life before the Simpsons.
And of course, I'm not the only one like this -- my entire generation can be defined through the Simpsons, from their character arcs, to their showdowns with Cosby and the Bush White House, to their irony-laden cynicism that has effectively taught my generation to never believe in anything ("Oh, it's just nonsense words -- you know, like rama lama ding dong, or give peace a chance.")
I don't think I have the time or space to explain what the Simpsons means to me and how it's effected my life, but I will take this angle: I once read an interview with Matt Groening in which the interviewer asked him why a television show (he already had a fairly successful daily comic strip, Life in Hell). Groening said it was because of the ubiquity of television. He wanted to make something that could reach out to the kids in the middle of nowhere, the kids who couldn't run down to the local alternative book store to read up on the latest underground works, because those don't exist in their town.
And this is really what the Simpsons was to me. While obviously a lot of people and ideas had an impact on the person I came to be, the Simpsons was really the first thing I can remember that consistently told me "Life is absurd. The people who control your life and run most every institution are idiots at best, and usually corrupt hypocrites. Just because they have power doesn't mean you should trust them, and in fact, probably means you shouldn't. Also, laughing at the failings of others is a sure fire way to make yourself feel better."
And I'd be willing to venture that is the most important lesson I've ever learned in life...
They found that for every pound earned in wages, those who clean hospitals created 10 pounds worth of social value, while for every pound generated by bank executives about seven are destroyed through their reckless speculation and the stress on the financial system they produce.
Not to be so radical as to point out that Marx demonstrated this principal damn near 200 years ago now, but it does seem to still be true that people who actually do something for a living create value, while people who do nothing but push money around and get giant salaries and bonuses don't really create anything worthwhile...
If you pay attention to the news from Iraq and Afghanistan, besides being about 90% more attentive than the rest of the nation, you may have noticed that the number killed by coalition airstrikes always seems to be 30 people.
Why is this? Well, one answer could be that the military has developed a special 30-person killing bomb that works remarkably well.
Or it's because, according to leaked military memos, any action which would likely kill more than 30 people requires approval from the highest echelons (specifically, according the memo, either Bush or Rumsfeld had to sign off on it from the get go). So if you were a commander on the ground who wanted to get things going, 30 was the highest plausible number of deaths you could report without having to go through mounds of red tape.
I'm not a sociologist of organizations, but I'm sure there's a term for this kind of thing that explains it quite well. But even without that, you can see how this kind of policy has all sorts of latent effects. Probably the most important, though, is that there is likely a greatly under-reported number of civilian deaths, as you can't report more than 30 people dead.
I don't want to be so radical as to suggest that maybe this is somewhat intentional, but I'll let you draw your own conclusion...
From the handy blog Graphic Sociology, here's a nice little graphic showing the changing attitudes toward gay marriage over the past 10 years or so in America.
While we're all pretty familiar by now with all of the arguments surrounding gay marriage (you know, human dignity vs. being an asshole), what this graphic really demonstrates is how things that were once non-issues can suddenly become pressing matters. Note that outside of Sarah Palin's Alaska, no sate had any law regarding gay marriage just a decade ago. Now nearly every state has some form of legislation, whether it be legalizing or banning it.
If nothing else, it does kind of take the air out of the "tradition" based arguments -- after all, it's hard to imagine that hetero-only marriage is such an important tradition if no one had ever bothered to take legislative action on it before 10 years ago. One decade of hyper-politicized legislation does not a sacred tradition make...
UPDATE:
Another handy graph from the NY Times notes that only 25 states have laws banning cousins from getting married. So, just for the record, far more states think it's more important to make sure two dudes can't get married than to make sure two cousins can't get married.
How about the Flaming Lips silver fetus christmas ornament? As frontman Wayne Coyne points out, it's guaranteed to "give off vibrations that help all humans progress toward an intelligence explosion." What more could you want?
Check out Wayne shilling it here, and note the sweet traditional Christmas skulls sweater:
I'm currently in the midst of trying to find someone to pay for my dissertation studies, which is neither an easy nor fun process. In fact, the only things that differentiate it from begging on the street for money are that 1) I get to do it from the comfort of my home, rather than the discomfort of a street corner, and B) it's slightly more socially acceptable.
But otherwise, there's very little difference, as I scramble daily to find the best way to beg people with lots of money for a small portion of that money such that I may one day have a job.
And it's really annoying and difficult to do, especially in he middle of a recession. And now I find out that the National Science Foundation, one of the biggest foundations offering funds to lowly peasants like myself is losing a bunch of its money due to its employees internet porn addictions.
Not only does this mean there's less money available, but it makes the process all the more degrading; I mean, it's one thing to beg money, but it's a whole different ball game to be forced to beg for money from internet porn addicts...
Don't have much time to write today as I'm busy getting actual work done (a rare event unlikely to be repeated), but did get a delightfully unexpected dose of good ol' Midwestern neighborliness as we're having our first big snowfall right now, and some older gent who've I've never met just got done shoveling my front sidewalk.
Try getting that in your fancy-pants big-city New York...
The scotch, from McKinlay and Co., was shipped shipped to the Antarctic by British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton (Ernie Shacks, as the ladies called him) as part of a 1909 expedition. It was discovered by scientists currently working on the Nimrod Expedition underneath a hut they had set up. Well, that's their story at least -- I'm assuming they were desperately searching the ice for anything to dull the inanity of a vast, snowy wasteland and stumbled upon the find of their dreams.
The biggest catch, though, is that the current incarnation of McKinlay and Co. will only be able to recover a small portion of the lost scotch under conservation guidelines agreed by 12 Antarctic Treaty nations. They want it to test it and see if they want to recreate the old scotch.
But I say the skip the re-creation and just sell the world's most exclusive and well-aged scotch their is...
Opting not to go the KISS route and release the same album for 20 years while on a never-ending retirement tour, Trent Reznor is apparently pretty serious about the break up of Nine Inch Nails. So much so that he's selling most of his equipment on ebay.
Of course, most of it is already prohibitively expensive (as I assume it tends to get whenever the seller is famous), but there are some pretty sweet instruments tucked away in all of it, like the above custom-made banjitar (which is currently available for the low, low price of $1,690).
I guess you know what to get for the mid-90s industrial goth fan on your holiday shopping list...
