Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

The United Nations World Drug Report is out, and it carries bad news for the organic movement. According to the BBC, “Drug use is moving away from cocaine and opiates and towards synthetic drugs such as amphetamines.”

Synthetics. Don’t people know that’s bad for them? They could go for something more natural, like organic heroin.

I just took my kids out for a slice of pizza at a local restaurant that has a big picture of New York City covering an entire wall. It’s a color photograph, but when my kids started playing I Spy, and my daughter said, “I spy with my little eye something that’s grey,” I had no idea where to begin. It occurred to me that most of New York City is some form of grey.

What color is your community?

My first thought when I saw a teaser on Technorati for an article about a biography of Angelina Jolie, calling the biography the author’s “most compelling subject yet”, was that it wasn’t possible. How could Angelina Jolie be any experienced biographer’s most compelling subject?

Then I looked into the author’s past subjects:

- Madonna
- David Beckham
- Monica Lewinski
- Princess Diana
- Tom Cruise

Those are pretty lean pickings, and Angelina Jolie fits right in.

So, among these rather uncompeling celebrities, which is the most compelling? It’s going to a Dunkin Donuts and being asked to find the most delectable confection.

Guess what this fish, the Portuguese dogfish, is used for:

It’s killed to gather its liver oil. That’s used for cosmetics.

Grody.

Heard in a hotel lobby this morning: A Muzak version of the Sesame Street classic song, Sing A Song. It ended with violins playing a sweeping version of the part that goes, “La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la”.

But where did he get the gasoline?

Far out news from Hawaii this week. Maybe it didn’t seem quite fun at the time, but a canoeist got a ride of his life when a humpback whale surfaced right next to his little boat. The wave sent the canoe skipping across the water like a flat stone. It ended up okay, although the canoe was destroyed. The whale rider got picked up by his friends and carried back to shore.

Is it the saddest story that Leif Garrett, a nearly-50-year-old former teen idol who is now barely remembered even by people who are old enough to have once been his fans, has been arrested for carrying black tar heroin? No. The saddest story is that 30 years after Leif Garrett was a star, on a day when there are truly serious issues to be discussed, the term “Leif Garrett” has reached the top 20 most popular Google searches.

We get the media that we deserve.

In spite of the economic stimulus package, for people who don’t work on Wall Street, the economy has continued to get worse. Lately, they’ve moved from worse to… worserer. So, what are we to do?

We’ve tried working harder to keep our jobs, or to get a job, but we’ve been working harder for a long time now, and nothing’s getting better.

I say we turn to drink. I’ve just discovered a wonderful liquor that tastes absolutely fabulous: Disaronno. It’s an italian liquor with a kind of sweet bitterness to it.

I find it to be a remarkable stimulus during this time of economic troubles.

How about you? What’s your alcoholic coping mechanism of choice?

The very first instructions in the book that came with my new Frigidaire washing machine were these: “You can be killed or seriously injured if you don’t follow these Important Safety Instructions. Failure to comply with these warnings could result in serious personal injuries.

I’m not a legal expert or anything, but it does not seem like a very good idea to me for an appliance manufacturer to be threatening its customers in this way. Frigidaire, I’ve read the instructions, okay, so you don’t have to be sending your goons after me!