Help! I'm too fat to watch this!
Folks have been decrying the deleterious effects of TV for decades — so how did it take this long before someone realized that the tube could turn your brain to mush by proxy?
Harvard researchers this week published a study showing that Fijian teenage girls were more likely to have an eating disorder if their friends own television sets, whether or not they have one themselves. Continue reading
There’s a little something I’m trying in the new year. It’s writing for other women, instead of exclusively nerdy pubescent and octogenarian males. Some time next month my first articles in a couple major women’s magazines will start to appear on newsstands, adding some softer edges to my portfolio — and some rougher ones to my personality.
Though writing for chick rags has been a welcoming entree into a world of puffy stories and exclamatory emails, I’ve also come up against the industry’s Spanxed underbelly, a cavern of cantankerous cuntery and fantastically unreasonable expectations buttressed by some of publishing’s most solid ad numbers and reader loyalty. The video above is frighteningly accurate. It’s not as much of an exaggeration as you think. I have received some of these very instructions from automaton editors. Get me three whiteshoe professionals from the midwest, one told me, no temps. From another: I get most of my story ideas just talking to my friends and turning it into a trend piece.
Hit play for a glimpse into the terrifying trials of freelancing for the ladymags. It gives a good sense, too, of the general humility and humiliation veritably wrapped up in the freelancer’s job description.
Well, one thing’s for damn sure: 2011 will not be the year the internet swings toward a return to innocence. Bill Cosby, if you’re reading this, please go no farther. Alt+Tab. For the love of god, Alt+Tab.
Granted, as a child there were few things that could so reliably deliver me to giggles as dessert and a well timed poot, but there is nothing endearing about a modern day combination of the two. Continue reading
Thanks to the reader who found the site today by searching “fuck clouds.”
I know, right?
Thanks, also, to the readers who’ve noticed and noted my recent output decline. I been rasslin’ with a sudden surge in work that people actually pay for and it’s done a number on my priorities. In the new year I look forward to reattaining some sort of equilibrium and in due time I’ll be back on the Superhighway honking away at oncoming traffic.
Until then, friends, I’ll leave you with this. Eat up:
The theme of today’s Google Game may not be readily apparent upon first glance. It wasn’t to me. But a little rumination on this selection of seemingly disparate searches revealed that many of us are looking for very much the same thing: rebirth and renewal.
Posted in Google Game
Tagged antidepressants, eggs, Google Game, pregnancy, rebirth, renewal
I’ve been conspicuously unprolific here lately. Too wrapped up in myself, I think, to give to the blog. What have I been doing instead? Well, you know, I’m often told that I can be frustratingly reluctant to talk about 
what I’m up to. So
in an effort to embrace a lemons-to-
lemonade attitude I’ll try to turn my uncomfortable internet silence into productive sharing. I’ve been sitting here for weeks with my horn in my hand, I may as well toot it. (How’d that metaphor work for you? A little funny, or just awkward?)
In lieu of any original content, please feel free to check out my story in the December issue of Wired magazine, probably the coolest publication to bestow on me a byline. (Sorry, NYU Physician quarterly.) If you’re feeling analog, you can find it on newsstands now, but it costs real money and you have to get up to get it, so I wouldn’t bother. Though it will help you achieve that plugged-in geekster look when you’re reading it on the F train.
Yours truly, in good company along the margins of the LinkedIn profile of someone I don’t even know. I’d be quite interested to know what algorithm could generate such an absurd professional juxtaposition as myself and our esteemed Commander in Chief.
Must be the Harvard connection. He got his Law degree there in 1991. Ten years later I got my lip pierced at a mall down the street.
Posted in Information Stupor Highway
Tagged linkedin, obama, president, social networks
Spotted in Boston at the Fenway Park subway station, a rather ill-advised ad for Chipotle burritos. Too bad the baseball wordplay means nothing, and doesn’t distract from the immediate associations the slogan suggests. Like: CLEAR THE ROOM. Or VOID YOUR BOWELS.
If you can’t read the fine print it says, “For best results, don’t get on the subway directly after eating.”
I don’t like panhandlers. Because they make me feel like a jerk. Because I’m usually too selfish/heartless/lazy/jaded to help them. And anyway, face to face interaction is so outdated. That’s why I like Craig Rowin’s direct but distant digital approach. Plus, when someone asks for an (M)-note instead of a dollar it means that when I say “Sorry, guy, I don’t have it,” I’m not 100% lying. I can pat my pockets all I want. It’s not showing up. Ever.
That gives me an idea for a video.
Posted in Information Stupor Highway, Shoot the Messenger
Tagged craig rowin, philanthropy, shameless plugs, videos
I know I’ve been delinquent this week. And that this ought to be a Google Game. But this is worth it, I promise.
I was on the phone with Hertz rental car. Well, on hold with Hertz rental car, that is. And an automatic message was explaining to me all the better ways of dealing with Hertz than trying to get them on the phone. I could go online, the voice told me. Or, if I were on a smartphone, I could use their mobile site, by visiting
hertz 2 go.com.
Say that out loud.
Hertz. 2. Go.
I was cracking up when the operator finally came on the line. Where were your marketing people on that one? Freaking hilarious.
Posted in Information Stupor Highway, Shoot the Messenger
Tagged hertz, ridiculous url, website
No Happy Medium 