i'm never flying again.

this is the scariest thing i've read in a while.

haircut, etc.

okay guys, i am obsessed with rock star: inxs. it's the first reality show i've ever gotten into, and i'm helpless within its grasp. the worst part is, it's on 3 nights a week! there goes my social life.

also, i got a haircut today. it was my first big-city haircut and in the end, i only spent $35 including tip, which was awesome. but i'm worried that it might be a little over the top, so i thought i might let you guys take a look:

stef's new haircut.

can anyone explain why this is funny?

have any of you seen the idiotic new chrysler ads? here's the idea: jason alexander walks into his boss's office and says "hey, remember how you asked me to research chrysler?" and the boss says "yeah" and jason alexander starts reading headlines off of newspapers, talking about the new deal that's going on, and then the boss (who turns out to be lee iacocca) says "yadda yadda yadda. you forgot the best part - the deal!" and jason alexander says "i say, if you can find a better car, buy it."

you can watch it here, (third one down)

it's the least funny thing ever. i can't even comprehend who thought this was funny. first of all, i had no idea that the guy even was lee iacocca until i went onto the chrylser website to get that link to the commercial. second, apparently "if you can find a better car, buy it" is apparently some famous iacocca tagline. are we supposed to remember this? in fact, here's how totally out of our generation's consciousness iacocca is. i remember my parents having a biography of iacocca on the bookshelf we had when i was like seven. which means that he had already had a career worth biographing by 1988! plus, they got it at the library book sale, which means it had been out long enough that someone bought it then gave it away by 1988! who remembers that? unless they're marketing solely to 50-year-olds, which is stupid.

and, why did they choose jason alexander for this? obviously he's supposed to be rehashing his incompetent worker role, but it just doesn't work.

ugh.

okay, this is cool.

so, i discovered this morning that, on amazon.com, you can buy the The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection for just shy of $8,000. it's 1,802 (or 1,082, depending on which figure in the listing is a typo) books and weighs 700 pounds. despite my liberal anti-materialistic guilt, i think that's freaking cool. if i ever get the point financially where i have $8,000 to spare (HA!), purchasing this collection will be my first priority. i will then retire immediately, start reading Adam Bede and refuse to die until i've finished Zazie on the Metro.

am i friends with any econ majors?

okay, so i saw this in an article this morning and it might be the most nonsensical sentence i've ever seen in the news.

"China scrapped the yuan's peg to the U.S. dollar on Thursday and tied it to a basket of currencies, the central bank said."

the rest of the article is here and there's a lot of talk about "virtual pegs" and "baskets" and i just flat-out don't get it. can anybody explain it to me?

my new prized possession

best gift ever:



thank you.

i had a terrific weekend: apartment-hunting in the sweltering heat punctuated by pouring rain, then the discovery of a gorgeous used bookstore, then an excellent brunch this morning with all my best dc friends.

also, i still cannot get over this new sufjan stevens album.

karl rove needs to resign.

come on, feel the illinoise

guys, i've only listened to about 3 tracks of the new sufjan stevens album (illinois) and i'm already completely positive that i never want to listen to anything else ever again. it is simply beautiful. and the song titles are so clever! i mean, sure, i could choose to be bitter that he wrote songs about decatur, bushnell, highland, and jacksonville but not galesburg (though he did write about carl sandburg, who as we all know was born there, and also about prairie fire, our beloved mascot) but no, i don't think i will. instead, i will just sit here and absorb this. i am a better person already.

i watched a very long engagement earlier this week, and i'd be interested in comments from any of you who've seen it. i liked it very much and thought it had moments of extreme beauty, but i think i wanted a little bit more from it and a little bit less at the same time. the cinematography was gorgeous and every scene seemed to be washed in a warm brown, but at times it seemed sort of plodding. i was extremely surprised to see jodie foster in the film, and i'm of course not fluent in french so i wouldn't know whether she sounded like a native french speaker but i thought she pulled it off quite well.

i don't know. life rolls along, i guess. this week i accidentally went on a date with a married guy - well, the date was intentional, but the married part came as a bit of a surprise. that was fun. here's a transcript of a conversation i had with my dear darling friend mikey about it:

me: so, this guy from my building asked me out, and we went to lunch on tuesday. seemed like a totally normal date until, 45 minutes into our lunch, he casually says "yeah, i love tivo. my wife got it for me for christmas last year."
mikey: well, i mean, at least he's got tivo, right?

yeah.

swoon

okay, i won't lie. lance armstrong is the sexiest man on the face of the earth.

for helen.

i will miss you when you are across the sea

it's hard to make the good things last

i just read the most beautiful essay about a man, his son, and the flaming lips.

and here's the story of yoshimi.

that's it.

orange

let's put this on the short list of reasons it's not always so cool to live in dc:



yep, that's a machine gun.

i guess i'm not really all that worried about attacks in dc, because i understand that there were several factors (primarily the olympics announcement, in my opinion) that made london a target and those factors don't apply to dc right now, but still. machine guns in your train car at 8:30 in the morning are not cool.

a letter from nuevo california

Dear Red States,

We're ticked off at the way you've treated California, and we've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren't aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split wi! ll be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California. To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand.

We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss. We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share. Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home.

We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country's fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 percent of America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners), 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT. With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale. 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws. 44 percent say evolution is only a theory; 53 percent, that Saddam was involved in 9/11; and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

By the way, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico.

Sincerely,
Author Unknown in New California