George Soros Never Calls

Great Pudgy White Hunter, Super Dumb Ass

I am funded by George Soros. He funded me last night. We’re going out for brunch later. Then he might fund me again.

Spencer needs to be kicked unconscious and urinated upon and stuffed into a dungeon where annoyed monkeys can chew on his soft bits while a video feed sends images of him writhing in agony and and shrieks of despairing horror to his sponsors at the PNAC.

This guy should be working for Breitbart – fact free and loving it.

Haha!

TJ/ Guys, may I please have your thoughts on The Economist? I’m thinking about using my beer money to buy a subscription, especially now that I’ve found Flor at a reasonable price in neighboring state (it goes much further and goes down smoooooooth).

So, The Economist: Love it or hate it?

@JNOV: I’ve never read it, but I know that the guy on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me said holding it on a train made you look like a pretentious ass. Nothing, however, about the content.

@blogenfreude: Lucky I’m not on a train, then, huh? :-)

ADD: Oh, and I wish I were able to ride a train to and from work. I just can’t get catch one early enough to make it on time. If I could, I’d just cover my copy with Mother Jones. Hmmmm…I think I might subscribe to that, too…

@JNOV: I read the freely available articles online. Pretty good.

@Mistress Cynica: Cool cool. I’d heard about it, and I read a little about it on Wiki, but I didn’t get sucked in recently until I read this article on our penal system. Then I read a little more today, got hooked into the comments on one article, and I’m starting to think that maybe I’d like the print version. I’d like to support the press as much as I’m able; I’m just wondering if these folks are worth my limited money.

@JNOV: This occurred during a discussion of the iPad – the panel concluded that it also makes you look like a pretentious ass.

@JNOV: Ms. Still subscribes and always feels guilty when she can’t keep up with it. We have months-old copies infesting various corners of our house.

I think they do a really good job of shining light in corners others don’t; providing in depth analysis that is supposed to have been a casualty of the starve-the-content-providers era we live in, and a clear perspective on issues that I often disagree with, but usually find worth thinking about.

However, I reserve my magazine obsession for Mojo.

@JNOV: I’ve subscribed to The Economist for almost ten years, I guess I’m a pretentious ass on the subway. When I had a subscription to US Weekly I’m sure that I confused the database bots.

It’s expensive but it’s so worth it to me. They are libertarian/liberal with a lower case l, their international coverage is unparalleled and they cover countries/parts of the world that no US media outlet covers, and most importantly to me, the articles are incredibly well-written, occasionally snarky, and they always print obscenities. In other words, they treat their readers like intelligent curious adults.

I disagree with some of their editorial positions, most significantly their full-throated embrace of capitalism and low taxes (though they supported universal health care in the US and they mock the teabaggers), but they do such a good job of articulating them, that I learn something and understand that point of view.

I’ve been so spoiled that now when I sometimes am forced to read Time or Newsweek (i.e. at the dentist or my parents’ house), I’m horrified by how shallow and poorly written the articles are.

@JNOV: I read New York Review of Books. Best magazine in US, in my opinion. Best reporting on lead-up to Iraq invasion, for example. Articles on law and finance I can understand. Noje gave up his subscription so he could surf pron from the sofa work on his awesome new totally work-oriented iPad. You can subscribe online for substantially less than the paper edition. Same might be true for Economist. I don’t read latter mag because I can’t count past my fingers.

@Tony Blair: I’m still reading NYRB. Working down the back-issue pile. Just finished August 2007.

@nojo: @nojo: You’re ahead of me, big guy.

BTW. Last night saw Insertion? Is that it? The thing with L d Caprio and mountains of CGI. What I want to know is why did nobody warn me?

@SanFranLefty: I agree with you on The Economist. I also read NYROB, the New Yorker and Scientific American. Other than that, I get my news from Stinque and The Daily Show.

@Tony Blair: A big meh, and the popcorn I had wasn’t salty enough because my wife was in charge of buying it. I did see an amusing trailer for The Expendables though, which my wife would never go see in a million years and so I’m going to go and buy my own goddam popcorn and load it up with enough butter and salt to give an elephant a heart attack.

@Dodgerblue: @Dodgerblue: You funny yanks and your popcorn. That you all think it’s adorable mystifies the rest of the world. The man in front of me ate a four course meal while watching the movie. BTW. I’m in Florida and Wordpres won’t let me log in as you-know-who.

@Walking Still: Yeah, it’s a toss up between MoJo and Economist right now. I BEGGED this dude at MoJo for an internship when I was in grad school. There’s a thin line between effusiveness and outright begging. I cross it All. The. Time.

@SanFranLefty: Hmmmm…see? That’s what I like. I hate echo chambers, because I want to question my assumptions, ideas and (what I believe to be) facts.

So far two votes for Economist, one for MoJo…

@Tony Blair: Oh! So you just had to throw something new in the mix, Mr. Blair! Bollocks! It’s weird — I’m a stats freak — that part of math I get. Anything past Calc I, um, no. BUT, I’m willing to try to learn. Now I gotta check out this New York Review of Books. Thanks! More options = more confusion.

MoJo: 1

Economist: 2

Monkey Wrench: 1

@Tony Blair and Dodgerblue: Why am I the only one that liked that movie?

@nojo: Okay, wait. How big is this Monkey Wrench?

Monkey Wrench loses 0.5 if I’m not going to have time to read the damned thing.

@Dodgerblue: Oh, for Pete’s sake! More? I’ll skip the New Yorker, but Scientific American might make the cut.

Economist: 3

MoJo: 1

Monkey Wrench #1: 1.5

Monkey Wrench #2: 1

@JNOV: NYRB is biweekly (except for given vacations), which is a reasonable amount of time for consuming it.

Unless you also subscribe to the LRB and New Yorker, and then get snookered into running a blog, in which case everything piles up until you cancel the lot of them to pay for an iPad.

Exigencies aside, I’ve been somewhat cranky about the NYRB the past year or two. Part of it is a generational shift — a founding editor passed, as did caricaturist David Levine — and part of it isn’t exactly an Echo Chamber, but what I’ll misleadingly call a Liberal Manhattan Parochial Perspective. I feel like I know what they’re going to say before they say it.

The same could probably apply to the LRB (substitute London for Manhattan), but since I’m not from London, or England, or Great Britain, or the UK, or These Isles, their perspective is a tad more refreshing. Plus, bitching about New Labour is fun!

But after more than two decades of all three publications, I personally feel like they’ve all exhausted what they have to offer me. It gets hard to find a fresh take on World War II. Or Cromwell.

I actually felt that way ten years ago — and canceled them all at the time — but when Iraq heated up, I needed more perspective than what the dailies were providing, and I wasn’t tuned into blogs and such. We’re years beyond that now.

If I was 25 or 30 again, it might be another story. Or not.

@nojo: I’m only holding onto Sci Am out of old habit. It’s about half the size of its former self and has been dumbed down considerably. I don’t need it on the coffee table to impress girls any more and I could get as much or more from Science News and Science Daily on the web.

@Dodgerblue: I used to love magazines. One of my favorites was Kinsley’s brief tenure at Harper’s, which was kind of a proto-Spy — until subscribers abandoned it in droves, and Lapham returned to coffeetable it up. The Windham Hill version wasn’t nearly as interesting to me.

I have a subscription to Wired, but I’m never able to read it (no time, or I just don’t want to) — so the other half reads it. It was one of those reward points deals with Coke (a reward for drinking enough Diet Coke to get a kidney stone in a few years), and I renewed it a few times.

I’ve found the Economist a good read on planes, but I can only take it in parts because it’s dense.

If only they had the 3-2-1 Contact magazine again.

@nojo: Right. My first somewhat interesting and slightly subversive subscription (for a fundamentalist Christian, it was very subversive) was to Rolling Stone back in 1980. I kept getting it until around ’99. I moved a bunch, but in 2007, they found me in LA of all places, and they sent me the remaining issues and I was like, meh. I’m tired of this.

We didn’t get the newspaper in my home, which made middle school “current events” assignments a nightmare, and my mother didn’t watch the news. Sometimes we got National Geographic and Newsweek. I used to read George Will on the toilet.

But I lived off of Penn’s campus, so I was able to kind of absorb what was going around, and I could see what was happening. So that was pretty cool.

In the last decade, I had a subscription to The Atlantic, and I didn’t read one issue. I’m not sure why.

So, it’s down to The Economist and MoJo. I think MoJo could use the dollahs.

If Freie Arbeiter Stimme were still around, and if I could read Yiddish, well, that would be first on my list.

@Dodgerblue: Oh, well, boo, then! Scratch that one. Besides, I’m in love with PZ Meyers.

@rptrcub: Haha! I fucking HATED Highlights. Goofus and Gallant my ass.

@JNOV: I tried the Economist some years back — as an intelligent alternative to, say, Newsweek — but it was just too dry for me. MoJo I haven’t looked at since college, but its communists columnists have been showing up on Keef lately.

I had a love-hate relationship with Wired in the 90s — loved to hate the Geek Utopia stories — but I drifted away when Conde Nast bought it. Still, its blogs are very good — particularly Danger Room and Threat Level, which RML tipped me to.

@JNOV: Did anyone read Highlights outside the dentist’s office? Ours was a Weekly Reader household.

ADD: Highlights was this odd, exotic, gentle thing. Whatever color they printed it in, it just reeked of beige, like our telephone, and all the edges were sanded off.

And that’s my inner 7-year-old speaking. Inner Seven wasn’t familiar with Stephen King, or Pod People, but he knew a horrorshow when he saw it.

@nojo: Highlights was some Tool of The Man, Trying to Keep Me Down. I knew that pretty early on. That was some bullshit there. If my mother didn’t spend all the child support on drugs and her wardrobe, sometimes I’d get two Nancy Drews to read on the weekend, but usually I just read stuff I found on the bookshelves of folks for whom I was cat sitting.

Once upon a time, she had some plays by O’Neil and some other mildly interesting stuff, but it all got tossed when she Jesusfied. I was hoping to get to her copy of The Female Eunuch, but I think that was lost during The Great Album Melt where we even destroyed some of her father’s 78s (I mean, he was playing on them). When I brought Edie home, she nearly killed me.

ADD: And, yup, I got Highlights on a fucking regular basis. They were my last resort for entertainment after cleaning the house and washing, folding and ironing my clothes.

WHOA! $223.30 for 102 issues? Fuck you, Economist! $223.30÷102= $2.19

MoJo: Ten bucks per year, six issues. $10÷6= $1.67 That’s more like it.

Why all the hate for Highlights? Anyway, I hope that Mr. Sniffles does find an outlet for his exclusive, shocking footage, because I’d probably recognize a lot of the people in it.

@JNOV: They occasionally run deals of sorts – I’ll keep on the lookout for discount offers. Either because I’ve subscribed so long or I had some great luck, a while back I got three years’ renewal for less than what they quoted you.

@JNOV:

Speaking of which, anybody know when exactly Reader’s Digest turned into a RW propaganda rag? I can’t figure out if it was always one and I’m just more attuned to dog-whistling now than I was as a kid, or if the publishers have deliberately tried to steal some thunder from Faux News (well, the fraction of Faux News viewers that can read, anyways).

@SanFranLefty: Gracias! They knew my zip code, so they must think I’m one of the rich people around here. Hahahahahaha!

@al2o3cr: Always. Always.

Hey, what was that kid’s magazine that was about 5″x 7″ and was the anti-Highlights rag? I remember liking that one a lot better.

I’m feeling pretty embarrassed that the longest-running magazine subscription I’ve ever had was to Vogue. I subscribed for years, until I moved to Oregon and it all became completely irrelevant. I still buy it when I fly.

@al2o3cr: anybody know when exactly Reader’s Digest turned into a RW propaganda rag?

1922?

Maybe it’s more rabid than it used to be, but historically I always thought it competed with Time for that corner of the market.

Speaking of which, sort of, I have a full-ish run of American Mercury, with which you can watch Mencken’s descent into madness during the FDR ’30s. It eventually downsized to the RD format, with Lawrence Spivak in charge, and got very cranky.

@Mistress Cynica: I subscribed for years, until I moved to Oregon and it all became completely irrelevant.

Fucking right. Socks with Birks, haters.

@Mistress Cynica: I’m feeling pretty embarrassed that the longest-running magazine subscription I’ve ever had was to Vogue. We’re all so proud of you.

Personally I find the tone of mojo too irritating to renew, though it does have some great reporting. They seem to be trying to be trying to sex it up with lots of you-are-there stories and a weird lib tuff-guy attitude. As if. I’ve never heard of Highlights.

@nojo: NO SOCKS! I saw [derp] say this with nothing but love, Nojo. Nothing but love, kiddo.

Field and Stream, Outdoor Life, Sports Afield, Rifle, Rifle Shooter, American Rifleman, Shooting Times . . . Guns and Ammo gave me a $9/year deal I could not refuse. Mrs RML gets VF and Rolling Stone. I buy other hook and bullet mags depending on what the mix of articles look like, i.e., anything about mule deer, a subject that is extremely underrepresented in the sporting press.

I used to get Revolver – “World’s Loudest Rock Magazine” which covers all branches of metal – but I dropped it in an austerity move. I still buy it and Metal Edge on the stands. I got turned on to some cool bands through the reviews and articles such as Dir En Grey, Lamb of God, Isis, A Perfect Circle, and Volbeats. I get Decibel, another metal mag as well as metalundergound, online. I get Guitar Player if someone punk, metal, or awesome like Neil Young is on the cover. Oh yeah – Wizard, to keep up on comics and scifi/comic movies.

Mags I don’t get anymore; Fly Fisherman, Fly Rod and Reel, Fly Tier.

Linque: Lamb of God, “Contrator”, a song blasting the privitization of war (google the lyrics).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN9e_zVhtQc

ADD: Isis, “Wrists of Kings.” Awesome spacey/almost ambient metal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgjT1WwV5qc

the last mags i had subscriptions to were Highlights, mainly because i wasn’t in charge, then Mad, then Spy. i have some disease that prom diagnosed because i obsessively MUST read ANYthing that has text on it. like books and shampoo bottles. not so much mags, motions, and def not instruction manuels, my guilty pleasure? Vanity Fair for flying. i’m reading an old Updike book now that got by me (oh shut up, i hear your scorn)

i touched an ipad. caressed it, hugged it to my bosom. left it in the store with a tearful goodbye and scurried away with my new iphone!!! i’m so fascinated by it, it may hold my attention for as long as 3 days.

WHO CAN TELL ME HOW I GET SKYPE ON IT. and FB.
the stinque is only one, but my favorite, of all noos and information sources.
and jonathan stewart leibowitz
who in my yoot, caressed, hugged to my bosom, and tearfully left in the (comedy) store. and scurried away for my next hit and run. dayum.
which reminds me of another brush with fame that i blew, so to speak. when i was 15, i had the opportunity to give my virginity to rod stewart. instead, gave it to some guy named harry.
true story.

@baked: Hooray for you! I hope you washed thoroughly after hugging the iPad (was it Cyn who said they are covered with microbes? Blech.) I’m sure you’re fine! Really. <- I mean that.

Hokay. Skype on your iPhone. You get a 30-60 free trial (can't remember how long), then you gotta sign up for the service if you want to use it on your phone. Here's how you get the app on your phone.

On your home screen (the main screen you get when you turn it on with all the candy-colored app icons) there should be a blue icon with an anarchist "A" that reads, "App Store." If you can't find it, it might be on the next page of apps. To get to other pages, hold your phone in one hand, touch the home screen gently with your thumb (try not to click on an app and open it) and slide your thumb to the left or to the right. You'll see new pages of icons if you have more than won’t fit on the first screen. Later we can talk about arranging icons on your screen.) Click on that Anarchy A. Once it opens, enter "Skype" in the search function (it'll search as you type each letter, and you probably won't have to put in the entire word), and you'll get a link to the app. Downloading the app is free, but use of it after awhile will cost munnies.

So, once you see the Skype app in the search window, click on the green "free" button. That'll bring up a description of the app. Then click on the red (? can't remember) "install" button. You'll be jettisoned back to the home screen where you'll see the new Skype icon installing. A little progress bar will be on the bottom of the Skype app button, and the Skype app button will be dull in color until the whole thing is installed. Installation shouldn't take long.

Once installed, open Skype, put in your user ID and password, and you'll be good to go. It'll tell you how long your free subscription will run, and then you'll get annoying emails about buying an account that will work on your phone. Computer to computer is free. Phone to computer costs duckets. Boo! But, yeah. They gotta make a buck, as do we all.

@JNOV:

thank you soo much dahlink! i figured it would be in apps, but didn’t bother “flicking” to the next page.
before i run off to do it–one more question:
if i already have a skype account on the computer, does it transfer like servers? or do i have to add another separate skype acct?

how the fuck do these kids on my lawn text and drive? mystifying.

@baked: Heh. If you log into the same account you have set up on your computer (same ID and password), all your contacts, etc. will be there at your fingertips. It’s like logging into Yahell or Gmail from your phone — as long as the account is the same, all your stuffs will be there.

MWAH!

Lemme know when you get it set up. My Skype on my puter is still fighting with my firewall, but I think I have some time left on my phone.

@baked: You can do as JNOV suggests or call Steve J and have his people do it for you. I’m sure your mother raised you to know how to play the princess card when necessary. Just call 666-HOT-JEW3, which is Steve’s direct 3rd bedroom line. If you hear heavy breathing he’s on his iPad and it’s best to call back later.

Rod Stewart rented a room in our house when he was young.

I’m so thrilled you all have iPhones and I am not at all jealous. That is not part of my nature.

@JNOV:
you will be my first call ! thank you thank you !
you would think i’d call bakette first, but alas, the princess is too busy WATCHING people pack for her to talk. she touches down in your hood in 2 weeks! i havn’t been able to secure an appt. yet to visit.

dog tip: when the puppy gets on crack, chasing her tail, and leaping and biting and such as, there is an instant cure:
turn on the vacuum.
back to the floor, then the phone…MWAH!

@Tony Blair Witch Project:
well i’m jealous that you change avatars and handles like panties and i have to give word press sexual favors to log in to the same name and crooked justice!
i’m vacuuming. MWAH to you too mum!

WAIT…how young? was i with him?

@baked: I was a mere child. He was young and thin. I hardly remember him. I don’t think he was blond.

the princess is too busy WATCHING people pack for her to talk. So proud to hear you raised her right. Watching other people work is an important part of any girl’s education.

As to names: I am in Florida. The normal rules don’t apply.

@Tony Blair Witch Project:
he was already in “faces” when he stopped me in the corridor of the el conquistador in puerto rico. he was ancient to me at the time, at least 28. and harry was SUCH a disappointment. if we only had crystal balls like (insert joke about ‘Catt)

i have moved 7 times in the past 12 years. no one EVER packed for me!
she is a tad spoiled, like all the creatures i raise. ::sigh::as long as they are good people and contributing members of society, why shouldn’t they be? bella is going for her doctorate, and bakette is almost housetrained.
i’m a good mommy, it’s what i do best. what were you saying about names?

@baked: I have to drive to Miami. I’m so depressed.

WordPress won’t let me in as you-know-who on my Air. So I’m here as my alter kocker ego.

@baked: Ha! Yes, I read every bit of text within view, always. The shampoo bottle, the cereal box, everything. But, also, and, too, Vanity Fair for the airplane, its a fucking ritual for me, to buy a Vanity Fair if I am going to be flying anywhere. You do know the editor came from Spy?

Today, today, today was so fucking hard, really, its hard to leave Paris, its so fucking hard, to wake up in Paris, and go to bed in New Jersey, fucking fuck, you know, fucking fucking fuck.

At least the flight home was the very best best flight, ever, the best ever, for me. Mrs. has so many many miles, so we were in Business class, oh, for all my socialist, liberal, solidarity, working man sympathies, oh, nothing is better than being up front. But thats not why it was the best flight ever, other than the seat going back all the way, but thats not why it was great.

It was an 8-hour flight, and we took off at 9 paris time, and I took a xanax right before boarding, and I accepted the offered champagne while steerage was boarding, and as soon as we took off, I put in the earplugs, put on the eye-mask, and I fell asleep, and slept better than I did any night on the ground in France, and slept for 6 straight hours, until we were on the approach to EWR. Not that fitful, half-sleep you usually have on planes, I slept, totally and completely oblivious, for almost the entire flight.

Hey youse guys, check out the love-locks I posted on facebook, come on, I was so fucking entrancelled, charmed, just tickled, to discover this new tradition, this cute cool, so wonderful expression of something positive by people.

Also, too, over there in the jardins luxembourg, there was a dude and a chick walking around with signs, in English, and French, that said, “Free Hugs,” and people were taking them up on it, and hugging them, all over the park.

@Promnight: There is nothing worse than leaving Paris. Waking up in New Jersey just takes it to a whole other level.