fuck you, rupert

like a shakespearean tragedy without the moral force and literary beauty.

Mr. Murdoch mused aloud about The Journal, saying, for instance, that he did not have time to read longer stories during the week and might like to swap out the paper’s Pursuits section on Saturdays with a glossy magazine.

how about just pictures? or a comic strip! just put sources' quotes in big bubbles above the pen sketches of main characters that the WSJ is famous for.

More recently, he told Time magazine that he was not sure about the offbeat front-page stories known internally as “A-Heds” that are a plum for reporters to write.

you obviously have zero sense of humor. these are endearing, interesting, and flat out exemplify what's great about journalism. which actually explains exactly why you'll kill it.

Reorienting the newspaper further for consumers would fit with two other aspirations Mr. Murdoch has. One is to build his nascent Fox Business News Channel.

great. as if business coverage didn't slant far enough toward the wealthy already. this might as well be a billionaires' circle jerk club.

lucky soul, how do i love thee?

for me, this borders on treachery, but lucky soul's masterful debut album, the great unwanted, outshines feist's stellar sophomore effort, the reminder. which is not to say that every man, woman, and cerebral creature who doesn't own both shouldn't be placed in pillory indefinitely.

now let me count the ways. i watch everything posted on youtube, from the home-video clips of your concert in some sweaty, little uk club to the nearly-as-budget videos cobbled together for your initial releases. i check the calendars to see when you might be swinging through my hometown, and hang my head in sorrow each time after seeing it is no time in the near future. i order a $30 t-shirt bearing your words and restlessly await its arrival. but most of all, i prohibit myself from looping your album in an effort to stave off listening fatigue, knowing that i could never forgive myself for letting such a thing pass.

only as good as my company

a close friend from my berkeley days just hooked up a spine surgery fellowship at ucla. another will be starting a clerkship in los angeles this coming month. and did i mention two of my friends are heading to thailand this month to try and help the phillipines women's soccer team qualify for the '08 summer olympics in beijing?

i must rule.

that's why i use visa

okay, i'm sure visa's every bit as evil, but this is seriously bush league by mastercard (original post on m. ward's blog)

as an aside, i wonder why m. ward denied use of the song in the first place. indie music has become ubiquitous in tv commercials these days, so i assume it's a good source of money. wonder if it's some specific practice or just that he thinks something like credit cards are generally predatory in their ways...

blogs aren't perfect, but they sure have their place

for all haters (and i would consider myself a reformed hater) of blogs, please read this post. it comes from the true hoops blog which now is linked from espn's site. great little nugget about agent zero's summer training regimen and a hilarious update.

overmatched

life supplies you with funny moment after funny moment if you're not too depressed or self-absorbed to notice them. like the artist m.i.a. showing up to a nyc show 3 1/2 hours late (okay only funny because i wasn't there).

or this. looking to get fit in a manner slightly more mindless than picking up large hunks of metal and then moving them until pain ensues, my brother put together a co-ed soccer team for a 7x7 league in la. friends from work etc., all of whom had played either varsity soccer in high school or some form of college ball. apparently, they joined the wrong league, something that became crystal clear after losing 11-1 against a team comprised entirely of former division 1 soccer players from loyola marymount. and the kicker, they played in the league last year and only had a .500 record.

and to make this even better, eric wynalda -- the U.S. national team's all-time leading scorer -- had his team playing just a couple of fields away. apparently, former u.s. national lori fair also participates.

sure it's just for fun, but losing sucks, even when does it mean anything. hehe.

the new red lobster

these days, my work focuses more and more on solving this difficult challenge: how to attract customers despite an inferior product. and every time i sit down and think about it, i'm reminded of one of my favorite moments from the greatest television show ever made, the wire, where baltimore drug cartel leader stringer bell asks his business professor how to gain market share with an inferior product. (answer: change the name. won't work for my biz, unfortunately)

so stuck for answers, i find myself increasingly drawn toward articles about branding and market positioning, hoping i serendipitously discover a pearl of wisdom that will help me lead my company out of the jungle.

today i ran across a piece in the nyt about red lobster's effort to revamp their image, just the type of article i thought could be helpful. plus, as a child, red lobster represented fine dining for my family and really lent credence to that belief that seafood -- especially shellfish -- was an expensive, culinary treat. (multiple trips to cheap las vegas buffets have cured me of that belief)

apparently, the restaurant chain realized that their image has deteriorated to the point where descriptors such as "frumpy" or "downscale" are now the most common associations. no argument here. i'd skip my mom's 70th birthday party if she told me it was time to rediscover the "seafood lover in you" (note: no longer their slogan). in fact -- and this is and is going to sound ridiculously racist -- the only people i find who still possess that esteemed view of the restaurant that i once did are ghetto black people for whom shrimpfest still represents the "can't miss event" of the year.

but red lobster's new image has nothing to do with all-you-can-eat popcorn shrimp and now is trying to capture what they feel is their rightful part of the slow-food part of the seafood restaurant market. still i don't think they quite grasp what it's all about. case and point:

Asked to define what Red Lobster means by fresh, Ms. Setta responded, “It’s as fresh as anything you’d find in a top-tier seafood restaurant.” The chain delivers fish to its restaurants six days a week.

uh, isn't there seven days in a week? i'd sure like to know which day they don't deliver and miss the day-old flounder.

this is so web 1.0

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dashed dreams

and on a seemingly innocuous monday, my hopes of riding diet coke to a slimmed-down waistline and unlocking my remaining physical potential vanquished by a b.u. medical prof's long-term study. apparently, diet soda, just like the regular sugary version, ups the ante when it comes to metabolic syndrome, an oft-precursor to heart disease development.

looks like it's back to water for me. maybe i'll start infusing water with fruit so it actually, tastes like something.

yippee, really can't wait to get home and start that.

these bodies of ours, a wonder they work at all.

what?????

i clicked through to an article about india electing its first female president, only to find bewilderment. and not because i had run across another country, this one with among the most distinguished pasts in gender discrimination, to elect a woman to the top political position before the united states.

While India has had several women in positions of power — most notably Gandhi and her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi, who was elected to the more powerful position of prime minister in 1966 — women still face rampant discrimination.

uhh, in my recollection gandhi was male. did gavin rabinowitz not know ben kingsley played him in the film?

now i am no expert in the history of india, so i remain open to the notion that there could have been a prominent women -- not named indira -- who shared mahatma gandhi's namesake. but if this is the case, the writer absolutely needs to identify who that is. for regardless of her accomplishments and accolades, "she" does not rank as top dog among those sharing her surname. not within india, the world, and likely her immediate family.

granted, this is likely a typo that was intended to say gandhi's mother-in-law indira gandhi. but damn that is a poor job of editing.

hong kong suffers along with sf

according to the nyt, gough street has transformed itself from a place of retail decrepitude to hipster prestige. it's pulled ahead of the sf version, which claims only old-money pacific heights palaces, a few struggling kitsch shops, and jade (beautiful place, but a steamroom on weekends)

but how exactly do you pronounce that particular street name?

gough, as in rhymes with rough and tough?

or does it follow the pattern of trough and cough?

perhaps neither. maybe it rhymes with bough (as in a branch of a tree)? or through? or though?

this could be a real problem for cool people in hk sometime soon...what if they start calling it goo street? they could tumble quickly from their perch.

documentation of a bold prediction

a frequent topic of discussion amongst my two closest friends and i has always been the golden state warriors. and while discussing this year's draft crop, i've realized that there is a chasm between how i feel (correctly) and how they feel (erroneously).

first, i'm not a brandan wright guy. he struck me as soft when watching him play at unc. not particularly replete with the good ol' "basketball iq" either. plus, he's currently so scrawny (6'10 200) that i'd give myself a realistic chance of taking him down in arm wrestling. but he's got potential and they picked up a $10 million trade exception, which seems to be the underrated part of the deal. all in all, i like this move.

their other pickup, marco belinelli, i'm not sold on -- at all. he's white shooting guard, slightly undersized for the position, who has made less than 1/3 of his triples over the past two years. oh, and that was playing in europe. sweeeet.

however, my impetus for writing this entry comes from my friend's contention that i am a recent addition -- more like founding member -- to the andris biedrins' bandwagon. of course, i have no way to substantiate this one way or the other. but i'll say this, if i were the warriors, i'd be willing to trade anyone else on the roster before biedrins -- including baron davis.

so now i must document another prediction: kevin durant will be a bust. not of sam bowie proportions, but a disappointment. he'll make a few all-star teams but never be a legit mvp candidate.

this goes against virtually everything i've heard or read about kd, but ultimately i see a lack of explosiveness that will prevent him from being the superstar that everybody imagines. the combine confirmed that feeling, when he rated as the worst athlete of all those tested. yes, i know he'd been on the banquet circuit, but worst athelete? i say red flag.

beijing 2008

i really hope this guy wins gold in the quarter mile at next year's olympics.

if such a thing as "olympic spirit" exists, this exemplifies it.