I love Gothamist. I’m thinking about writing a love song about it. I have written them love letters/pitches and they go off into the webmobile, never answered*. I sit at home and sigh, my hair in curlers, waiting by the phone, doodling my name in the margins of Newsweek and the Economist and Esquire after taking their girly quizzes: “David Winston Gothamist,” I’d write.

But I digress. Today they’ve gone and found a hipster-targeted mutual fund. It is the GendeX Thrasher Fund.

GendeX.

Just me, or does GendeX sound like something that could get you out of the army?

*More to come on this topic, which is now not true. My unrequited love is now a little more requited.

Ron freakin’ Paul. He won a Republican straw poll.

Big deal, right? Straw poll. Doesn’t matter. Straws don’t even vote. And it doesn’t count for anything… but shame! Because he won it in New York City. Let’s see, what’s significant about New York City related to the 2008 presidential elections?

Oh, Hillary Clinton! She’s running. And she’s a senator from New York. But, hang on — Wikipedia says she’s a Democrat. Curious as that may be, I guess she’s not what makes Paul’s victory so interesting. Hm, hm, hm.

How foolish of me. I forgot that Rudolph Giuliani, former mayor of New York City, is also running for president! While he was out with John McCain shopping for hard-core Christian right voters, Ron Paul swept in and beat Rudy in his own backyard. With some big religious right names throwing their weight behind candidates for their electability, it’s interesting to note that in New York City, Hillary could beat Rudy, Bloomberg could probably beat Rudy and… Ron Paul just beat Rudy.

Not that the right is particularly concerned with winning New York. Just sayin’.

How did he do it? Was it the Internerd? If so, has he learned from history and can he avoid falling into the same traps as Howard Dean? Well, according to the Internet message forums around the world, the main thing about Ron Paul is he is infallible and will stop taxes from being necessary because, if elected, he will eliminate the IRS, which is totally a big-ass money pit.

Do you ever get worried about how obviously we’re getting dumber? The NYT gives us a story on how packaging is getting louder because it sells better. Mountain Dew bottles with crazy illustrations! Elliptical Kleenex boxes! Pepsi cans that double as ladies of the night! Read the rest of this entry »

The subways and city in general were a giant mess in NYC today thanks to underground flooding and, I swear, a tornado. The result was that I walked to school through the sweatiest weather I’ve endured in a while and lost about 40 lbs. on the walk to school. So now I weigh 10 lbs.

Being that it was rush hour, it had the added effect of a weird reversal on the wet t-shirt contest. Suddenly all these guy in shirts and ties were soaked through, holding their shirts away from their bodies. And instead of beer and water being sprayed everywhere, it was hatred. I learned some new swear words.

Elizabeth Edwards says she can’t make her husband, John, black or a woman. First of all, that’s not true. Read the rest of this entry »

This is just some of the craziest stuff I have ever seen. Martha Stewart’s daughter is paying a ton of money to get pregnant. Not Crazy. But the things she says about it are:

She said once a month she’ll inject herself with a drug that causes her to ovulate in 36 hours. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s USA Today on the Bush administration’s latest missive on global warming:

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is worried about missing out on a bonanza of oil and other resources in the Arctic unless Congress approves a treaty that helps determine who has rights to the area’s wealth.

Arctic sea ice has decreased nearly 20% in the last two decades as the Earth’s climate warms, making access to the area easier. The eight countries bordering the region, including the USA, are now staking competing claims.

Oh, wait. That’s not their take on global warming — it’s their take on how to get more oil thanks to the ice that is melting because the globe is getting warmer (unrelated to global warming). Funny, because I just saw a movie in which the villains kind of think like this (until they mend their ways due to an inspiring penguin dance routine).

It’s a cycle that goes like this: Read the rest of this entry »

OK, so Al Gore III just pled guilty after having been nicked for speeding in a Prius and posessing drugs. Quick, where are the snappy headlines sure to delight the right? Bring ‘em! Post ‘em!

• Not looking for a recount: Gore III pleads guilty
• Like father, like son; Gore III favors high-brids!
• An inconvenient doob
• “I said ‘lockbox,’ not ‘hotbox’”
• I invented the ganjernet

Oh, I’m tired of this.

Technorati tags: [ gore | weed | hybrid | crime | republican | democrat | election | dumbass news ]

Ms. Jennie Dorris alerted me to news about news today — the Associated Press’ youth-targeted service, “asap,” is closing shop.

Now, I’m 24. I live in New York City. I have an iPod. If you look up “hip” in the AP style guide, that’s pretty much the definition. So let me give it to you straight. I have the absolute best ideas on how to capture the youth market. Like me, the rest of the youth market is just slouching with wealth; there’s all this money that is trying as hard as it can to find its way out of our pockets, but we just don’t understand the old way of advertising and writing. It’s, like, too many words.

So here are the pitches (news nerd stuff below): Read the rest of this entry »

I’d heard and read about this, but here’s an actual video clip (make sure your audio’s up) of John McCain’s ship sinking — his campaign has decided to start playing a particular song frequently. It’s the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann,” but the words have been swapped out so that they’re singing “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.”

Poor guy. Even if it somehow saved him in the primaries, I have this feeling that the American general public might be, I don’t know, appalled at the idea of guaranteed killing in a multi-part harmony. McCain should have definitely gone with “Help Me, Romney.”

The AP has a quick-hit on the practice of sneaking up on people to give them jury summonses.

Madeline Byrne was making a quick trip to the grocery store to buy some cheese when a sheriff’s deputy approached her car in the parking lot and slipped something through her open window. It was a jury summons.

Ms. Byrne, 64, was ordered to report for jury duty a little more than an hour later at the Lee County courthouse in Sanford, N.C. When Ms. Byrne protested, the deputy told her, “Be there or you’ll be in contempt.”

I think this is just an extension of the way we’re trending — I mean, first you could call a special number to get up-to-the-minute sports scores, then you could get phone calls in the car, then you could carry your phone around with you, now you can check your email from your phone or another device.

Everybody’s all uppity about how we’re losing human contact. Well, here it is, coming to a parking lot near you, or wherever is most convenient. You don’t even have to check your mailbox! Or your inbox! Or your fax machine!

Other things already delivered directly to us:

• groceries
• rental movies
• books

Here are a few more things that I think we should see being hand-delivered to us, wherever we are, for the sake of convenience:

• prescriptions
• ballots
• warrants
• babies
• opinions

I am starting a campaign* and this is its slogan:

“Ah, the future! Here it is, you bastards; embrace it!”

Technorati tags: [ jury duty | future | police | satire ]

*Lies. That is not my real campaign. My real campaign is: “Ah, the future! It’s getting hairy, so let’s offset some of the crap with free scratch cards.” Under this campaign, police officers roaming around giving jury summonses would be required to give out at least as many lotto scratch cards.