I'm not one to say I told you so

(Fact: I am one to say I told you so.)

In April, I argued that the most important parts of Twitter were its mobility, its ability to connect people to opinions of people they didn't already know (not just their friends'), and its real-time search feature. My point was that mobility encourages sharing in the moment, not just later when it's "easier," and that Twitter therefore makes available to everyone in the world a totally new and awesome kind of information: real-time opinions.

Well, Twitter has re-designed its homepage to emphasize search and access to real-time info (and to distance itself, I bet, from its image of meaningless statuses shared only among friends). In the words of Twitter founder Biz Stone:

"[D]emonstrating the power of Twitter as a discovery engine for what is happening right now through our Search and Trends often awakens a sense of wonder which inevitably leads to a much more compelling question, “How do I get involved?”

Read more about the new homepage

(Nota bene: "discovery engine" is a way cooler catchphrase than "decision engine," IMO.)

T.S. Eliot Tuesdays?

This is how I'm feeling recently. Eliot says it better. Written originally (allegedly) about the disillusion and hopelessness after WWI, the poem is pretty long, so here's just the fifth section.  The last stanza has been stuck in my head for years. 
The Hollow Men

A penny for the Old Guy

 

V

Here we go round the prickly pear

Prickly pear prickly pear

Here we go round the prickly pear

At five o'clock in the morning.

 

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

 

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the shadow

Life is very long

 

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

 

For Thine is

Life is

For thine is the

 

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Life Lessons Learned at Medieval Times

   Last year for Sass' birthday, we went to Buddhkan.  This year, we stepped up our game and went to Medieval Times. In South Carolina. Please don't ask, because we're still not entirely sure what we were doing there.  And by "there," I mean South Carolina. We know exactly why we went to Medieval Times, and we don't regret it for a second. 

    Before entering the jousting arena, we were first corralled into a giant hall full of shit they wanted us to buy. Let the record show that the only thing we bought were twenty dollar goblets of margaritas. (Let the record also show that Sass posed for a picture with the King and Queen, they would have us believe, of Medieval Spain. See photo.) Aside from all the paraphernalia to peruse, there was also a torture museum. (Spoiler alert: If that was a museum, then so is the hallway between mine and my brother's room, which, for those of you who don't know, is approximately seven feet long.) Anyway, it was still a treat, just like car accidents and five alarm fires are a treat. 

    The Hallway of Horror (as it should have been called) had such tried and true devices as the iron maiden and the stocks. There was also a chastity belt mounted somewhat incongruously in a gilded frame atop plush red velvet. As we pondered the serrated iron jaws surrounding the vagina area, we also noticed there was a smaller, rounder type situation going on around where a butt hole would be. In other words, we realized, chastity belts were designed to ensure against butt sex, too, and now that I'm getting fucked in the ass daily by my 9-5 job, I realize that butt sex and torture have gone hand in hand since the dawning of wage labor.  

    What I'm trying to say is, things haven't changed as much since the Middle Ages as we would like to believe. If we think of that period as being hard, what with its rampant and incurable disease, lack of electricity and poor treatment of women, I think I would rather be a wench with the Plague than a recent grad with a telephone bill, because while we now have highly trained physicians and high speed internet,  we also have to pay for these things, and they're all expensive.  Money still doesn't grow on trees, so we still have to work to earn our living, and slaving away behind a desk for the owner of a company is really no different from a serf toiling in the fields for the lord of his fiefdom.  And while these days, our parents don't make us wear iron skivvies, instead, they put us through college, which serves as the modern-day chastity belt that keeps us from getting fucked in the ass by the real world. The second our graduation ceremony commences, we're unceremoniously yanked out of the iron cocoon.  We're vulnerable, and it hurts. 

    In school we were taught that the Middle Ages were brutal and unforgiving, but the fact that we were never taught what the harsh realities of  our own lives would be post-graduation, or how to pay a bill or find a good health insurance policy, for example - well, that's simply medieval. 

Haikus I Wrote in Numerous High School Notebooks and Found Today

Love, you wake me up

When even alarm clocks won't

You scream me alive

Tyrosine-kinase

You're the sexiest protein

Will you marry me?

Oh, Danny Skimmer

People say that you're awkward

And I would agree

A wanton wind blows

Through silent eaves and slows

Of these things love knows

La Classe Loves R-Fed

If La Classe were a country, then its national sport would be tennis, and its official religion would be Roger Federer (minor deities include Tony Danza and cheese).  R-Fed is hot, talented and has a great sense of humor.  He also speaks four languages, which simply puts La Classe to shame (official languages: English/Ben's pidgin French).  

But the biggest reason we love Roger Federer is the love he has for his wife, Mirka Vavrinec. 

Oh, La Classe.  What an evil axis of power you would be.  

"We live not according to reason, but according to fashion."

Or so said the Roman philosopher Seneca in the mid-first century.  If true, then it's worth checking out the Richard Avedon exhibition at the International Center of Photography, which runs until September 6th.  Avedon revolutionized fashion photography, transforming it into an art form.  Often, his compositions are so orchestrated and original that they seem entirely spontaneous, making you forget that these were shot for a magazine (usually Vogue or Harper's Bazaar) and not fortuitous moments caught by a photographer roaming the streets of Paris.  The clothes are beautiful, the women wearing them are beautiful, and Avedon captures and enhances both beautifully.  The old black and white stuff is the best, but Avedon worked right up until his final moments in 2004 (he photographed Obama soon before he died), so there's some modern color stuff too - featuring Gisele no less.  The ICP also has a great café, assuming the highly incompetent Russian woman isn't manning the counter, because homegirl - or should I say, дом женщина? - WILL  charge you three times for one café latte and forget to make it every time you coax her gently towards the machine.

But seriously, it's a great show and worth going above 14th street, (or below 59th as the case may be... Sass).  And though Seneca would have no idea what was going on, I needed an engaging intro. 

Tennesse Williams is my hero

Okay, so he's best known for writing plays (he got a Pulitzer for A Streetcar Named Desire), but Tennessee Williams (né Thomas Lanier Williams) was an incredible poet.  You should really read as many of his poems as possible, but for now, a taste:   

THE SIEGE

I build a tottering pillar of my blood

to walk it upright on the tilting street. 

The stuff is liquid, it would flow downhill

so very quickly if the hill were steep.

How perilously do these fountains leap

whose reckless voyager along am I!

In mother darkness, Lord, I pray Thee keep

these springs a single touch of sun could dry.

It is the instant froth that globes the world,

an image gushing in a crimson stream.

But let the crystal break and there would be

the timeless quality but not the dream.

Sometimes I feel the island of myself

a silver mercury that slips and runs,

revolving frantic mirrors in itself

beneath the pressure of a million thumbs.

Then I must that night go in search of one

unknown before but recognized on sight

whose touch, expedient or miracle,

stays panic in me and arrests my flight.

Before day breaks I follow back the street,

companioned, to a rocking space above.

Now do my veins in crimson cabins keep

the wild and witless passengers of love.

All is not lost, they say, all is not lost,

but with the startling knowledge of the blind

their fingers flinch to feel such flimsy walls

against the siege of all that is not I!