And The Chances Are Good ...

Still waiting.

"There's a good chance that I will take a nap and then head out to our nearest Wal-Mart to blog it for you"

And sad.

UPDATE (29 November 2009 @ 0025): Nothing yet.

The Commute's a Killer, Eh?

It's 9:11 am, so we can charitably assume Megan's been burning the canola oil for at least 5 minutes. Better take a break.

Hahahahah. Mock iPhone advertisements! And the guy is stalking his ex-girlfriend! And there's an "ap for that!"

I must tell the whole internet!

Bad Influence

Hey, we're on the McArdle schedule. No work on the wknds. (8 May @ 1516, then 11 May @ 1032. Bankers hours.)

Which is fine for us in the forcibly retired field, but not a good thing for Megan. If The Atlantic ever wises up & lets her go, the 40-hrs.-a-wk. thing isn't going to look too good on the resume. That's not the dedication required from someone whose issues require that she be successful & known.

Canned Goods & Ammo

Should I (& I hope I speak for my colleagues here @ FMM as well) ever resort to the vulgar, lazy pandering of an "open thread," I extend an open invitation to anyone willing to do so to come to the editorial offices & plug me right between the eyes, or at least somewhere fatal between the ears.

Also (Megan asking the question at the bottom):

So why buy bonds? Stay in cash, and you get a very similar yield for much less risk.

How long 'til analysts start touting canned goods and ammunition?

Couldn't be soon enough for me.

How's The Weather Up There?

Say what you will about me (& they do!) I'm eco-friendly. So, I'm recycling this, from the Asymmetrical Info comments to an item about a statistical correlation between "intelligence" & (wait for it ...) height! 

(Do note "Fred," who, shark-style, senses "intelligence + height," & seizes the opportunity to remind all how stupid groups X, Y, & Z are, statistically.)

There's a Fred in every woodpile around here, isn't there?

That aside, Megan, we get it already. You're 6' 2" or whatever. If it's that important to you to share it w/ the world, go to the nearest 7-Eleven & have your mugshot taken next to the height indicator on the door. Or borrow the line-up room at the nearest police precinct. Or get The Atlantic to spring for a professional shoot in a fake police station. Then put the picture at the very tippy-tip-top of your blog. For extra emphasis, you could put a shot of yourself stretching to hold up the picture of how tall you are atop the sidebar.

Sheesh!!

At Least She's Consistent

Lazy at work. Lazy in love. Lazy in life. At least our muse has an ethos.

Despite the fact that she started packing what she has declared a small apartment three days ago, Megan is still at it.

I remember hiring movers for me and my roommate's two bedroom when my back was too bad to carry it all myself. It took us the morning before they got there to get everything into boxes.

Megan's one bedroom, on the other hand, is too much for her fully able back to do on her own and it somehow takes her almost a half a week to get it all put into cardboard. She certainly hasn't been distracted by blogging and her recent trope about her awesome friends would lend one to think that she could get a hand or two if needed. Dare we speculate that some OCD has her wrapping each individual cooking utensil in 15 layers of bubble wrap and placing them in specially padded, hermetically sealed boxes? It's be irresponsible not to, as the saying goes.

News Flash!

McArdle links to InstaPundit, who links to...

28 Nov 2008 12:10 pm

Shop online, you might save a life.

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In such a hurry she couldn't conceive of a headline.

Moments later update: 

The diffference between Megan's commentariat:

Doubt you'd see anyone trampled at, say, Norstrom's [sic] or Neiman-Marcus.
Posted by Peter | November 28, 2008 8:18 PM

& the Daily News' commentariat:

Teachem Nov 28, 2008 4:37:23 PM
Da Bruthas n' Sistas gone wild. See, if B. Hussein hadn't won the election, this would not have happened. The celebration is over, get over it, get a better job, work longer hours, stop being lazy, and shop on an off day. Pay a couple of bucks extra you wanton welfare creatures, and stop living off of treats-treats-treats!

is mostly of degree. Well, one difference would be that the Daily News removed the comment at their site. Megan may be too busy packing to do any policing.

Your Daily Dose of Libertarian Idiocy

Click on this.

Once you are there you will encounter the dumbest fucking thing ever written by an animal ever.

Or, just read it here:

[Tyler Cowen, June 21, 2005 at 8:26am] Trackbacks
What are the most commonly shoplifted items? First is Advil, here is the longer list,[sic] follow the links for a discussion of caveats and qualifications. My intuitive response to the data is that people shoplift when they are desperate, or feeling some kind of pain or depression, rather than calculating cost and benefit in a rational Beckerian fashion[sic].

We really need to spend more time with her friends

Megan is boring today, but I managed to run across flabtastic following the link train of another site. Check out this wonderful foray into the world of the English language:

The main problems here would be that nobody uses "surge" that way (indeed, John McCain has a long history of using the term "surge" the same way as everyone else) and also that the short form of counterinsurgency the abbreviation-mad military uses is "COIN." But of course maybe McCain will say that he has a private language in which "surge" means "counterinsurgency" and it's therefore wrong to bother him about this. In which case, I suppose it's hard for anyone to ever prove that he's wrong. But on the other hand if that's what he means, then it's hard to make sense of the claim that McCain was "right about the surge" whereas Obama was "wrong" since if "the surge" is just a generic term for the use of counterinsurgency tactics the I don't think McCain and Obama ever really disagreed.

I can't believe these people get paid to write. I don't notice any typos (though I admit that I can't look at it too carefully or else my eyes start to bleed) so he must've proofread it. How did he not notice that horrible string of horrible transitions and run on sentences slamming into each other from behind like a 100 car pile up after a flash fog over the freeway? Seriously, dude, sentences are supposed to be short and sweet, like that candy bar you're munching on right now. They aren't supposed to be a gigantic pile of lard that present an imposing challenge for us to get through, like your regular meals surely are.

I am at such a loss over these people. They clearly aren't paid for their writing - which is shit. I sincerely hope they aren't paid for their ideas - which are standard shallow tripe. What, in God's fucking name, ARE they being paid for? I understand that The Atlantic was purchased to give a right-wing idiot a respectable name to sit behind, but didn't said idiot realize that hiring a bunch of barely literate monkeys would sink that name faster than a tsunami hitting a swift boat? For fuck's sake, couldn't this dipshit at least put aside some of Fatty Matty's candy allowance for a fucking proofreader?

Maybe he's looking for one. I bet I could fleece the bastard. I'll send in a resume and tell him that, for a mere 50 dollars a blog post, I'll proof everyone in the black hole of talent amd ideas they call "The Voices" section. If he's stupid enough to hire these clowns, he'd probably think that that was a bargain.

UPDATE:

A typo has been brought to my attention in the comments, but I don't give a rats ass. I take time off my paid work to write, my paid work isn't writing.

brad adds:

I ain't paid for this, either, but I fixed a few things. I don't want this place to suffer from internet semi-literacy. Fix your oopsies, co-bloggers. All of yah.

Nutella gets all huffy:

Damn it, I do proof read! So a couple things get past. That just means I'm retarded not a bad writer. Oh, wait....

Megan Talks about Orientalism

Considering I just defended my thesis on the subject two days ago, I'm delighted that Megan chose to excrete her thoughts all over Edward Said's landmark tract, Orientalism.

First of all, Megan callers Raphael Patai's The Arab Mind "somewhat kooky." No Megan, its a complete racist piece of shit.

This is basically a fruitless debate, because as in the Israel/Palestine debate--for which this is basically a proxy--there is precious little middle ground. Middle Eastern Studies professors are, as far as I can tell, overwhelmingly in the Edward Said camp; they regard Bernard Lewis the same way those in the Lewis/Pipes camp regard Said.

Um, so the debate over whether intellectuals in France, Britain, and the US possess demeaning and reductionist views of Arabs is a proxy for whether Palestinians should have a state? If I were a reader of Commentary, I would howl, fit, and poop that Megan would denigrate and delegitimized the interests of Israel by comparing them to Renan's 200 year old baseless observations.


Saying that there is 'precious little middle ground' between these two paradigms is complete ignorance. There are numerous works that don't use Said's or Lewis' paradigm, e.g., Gran, Yaqub, every realist writer on US foreign relations, and my own work.

You don't have to be a disciple of Said to know that Bernard Lewis and Daniel Pipes are complete hacks.

BTW, if anyone can parse this sentence I'll reward you:

"And I'd say that Edward Said's main error was in thinking that because the west is the hegemonic culture, he was immune from this problem."

UPDATE:

I wanted to add a couple of observations regarding the commentors in Megan's post.

Edward Said, in addition to being a first-rate intellectual, was morally brave, and his reputation deserves not to be sullied. Anyway, Megan's commentors spout the usual anti-intellectual tripe.

JoshK writes:

Said was an English professor, not a real deep middle eastern expert. IMHO, his work caught on with the general anti-everything-western movement in academia that was taking place in the 70's.

I must have missed that movement. Citing Said's formal appointment as some sort of slander against the man reminds me of that line from Kinsey when Kinsey says "How long do I have to study humans to not be considered just an etymologist?"

Another commentor: "Actually Edward Said was pretty standard academic Western babyboomer leftist in approach."

got that? A Christian Palestinian refugee born under the mandate is a babyboomer.

Then Sigivald says to me that its "Interesting that you don't include Said in the "has-been hacks" category, despite it fitting him, on the scholarly evidence, better than Lewis."

BTW, Said was a has-been, despite being a prolific writer and lecturer until the day he died.

If only they'd let her spread her wings and fly!

OMG! OMG! It's another of those oh-so-rare self awareness alerts! The buzzers are going off! Red lights are flashing! Watchmen are on lookout for nefarious creatures on horseback and meteorologists have been dispatched to hell!

President Bush is having a press conference on the economy this morning. For the life of me, I can't imagine why. No one is exactly waiting with bated breath for his crack assessment of the nation's economic problems

(...)

Nonetheless, I, like all the other reporters, will dutifully discuss this press conference as if it mattered

Oh, woe is Megan! She'd be trenchantly analyzing what really mattered if only those stupid rubes in the public cared! It's not her fault for pandering!

So, wait, does it count as self awareness when you realize your own fault yet still blame your audience for making it so? I guess not, huh?

Call back the meteorologists, and stand down the watchmen. False alarm.

Guess what's in my leek soup!

Leeks!

Guys, I'm gonna share with you my macaroni and cheese recipe now. Here goes

Ingredients
Macaroni
Cheese

Directions
Cook the macaroni
Add the cheese

Serve hot

UPDATE:

A couple people like the comment that I posted for the recipe, so I'll reprint here:

Wow, that looks really good. I kept putting boots in my potato leek soup and, while it was good, it tastes nothing like potato and leek soup. I now see where I went wrong.

I've also been having trouble with my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Do you have a recipe for that you might share? I like to use mayonnaise and ham on mine and again, it's good, but it tastes nothing like peanut butter and jelly! In fact, it ends up tasting just like a ham sandwich!!! What am I doing wrong?!?!

I just Boscov'd

Its impressive how many things Megan' gets wrong in this post.

Megan claims that Obama's masculinity will be questioned because the role of "building understanding and reconciliation between hostile voter grops [sic]" is generally seen as a woman's role. Further compounding Obama's trouble is that he's running against a "much-decorated fighter pilot."

So now I see why Obama's masculinity will be questioned: he's a 'Uniter' running against a combat-worn Vietnam vet! I remember in 2004 when the press lampooned Bush for being totally metro and touted Kerry's tough guy war experience. Bee tee dub, Megan, McCain isn't really "much-decorated."

As usual, the stupidity drips into the comments section, where DaveM claims that "Barack also has a problem in that he's a lawyer" and thus "he will come across to men as either weak or devious (a new Laval or Petain) or both." Got it? Obama=Petain. The similarities are striking! Long Live Liberal Fascism!

Nothing to Post

So Megan comes out and says that the US is responsible for the mess in Iraq, so I really don't have much to complain about (unless one forays into the comments).

So, my question for y'all is, how many of you are academics, or in between graduate degrees? Its a trend I've noticed after click on a few profiles of commentators.

Layz

So Megan can't bother to look up a timeline of the great depression, and thinks that a poll taken in 1941 gives us some information on the causes of the great depression.

Did she spend a week in Amsterdam?

I beg to differ

M. B. says below that there's nothing worthy of snark posted today. He clearly missed this little line:

Many thanks to Megan for allowing me to help blog-sit while she gets some much-needed rest.

Blog sit, shit on her blog - same difference! Then again, her blog is pretty much a toilet so I guess he did his job ably.

Still, one can't help but wonder why someone would think that Ms. McLazy would need a rest. She's written - what - like two articles and a steaming pile of craptastic blogposts in her tenure at the atlantic, which is speedily approaching a year in length.

Bitch needs a rest like I need to read her blog. for serious.

Things I learned in Community College: How to be Megan McArdle

Our oh so balanced econo-Englishcist decides it's been too long since she wrote a book report and, after the usual long winded and pointless anecdotal preamble, decides to go ahead and give us her thoughts on her current read. (Question about those preambles; why do you have to tell people WHY you're making a post? If it's not apparent from the content of the post, the post prolly wasn't worth writing. Then again, none of your posts are worth writing so... nevermind. Carry on.)

So how does she start this return to her undergrad days? Why, with shit ass freshmen level writing that looks like a perfunctory attempt at summarizing a book that was merely skimmed so that adequate time for preening and getting drunk was still had, of course. Megan strive for authenticity, if nothing else. I must say, this is the one area in which she succeeds. Everything she produces is authentically and unabashedly, Megan McArdle.

The first thing that strikes you is her hero-worship of her father. Modern people don't write like this; we want to see parents as people. In Addams' portrayal, her father comes across as a sort of Christ-like figure--endlessly patient, kind, generous, modest, and so forth. The childhood she describes in a small Illinois town is so perfectly idyllic that you can't help but wonder what dark secret she was hiding

Now, let's play "you're a TA teaching freshmen comp"

The first thing that strikes you (uneccessary) is her hero-worship of her father. Modern people (who?!) don't write like this; w. We want to see parents as people (we do? citation! provide examples!). In Addams' portrayal, her father comes across as a sort of(if he's sort of christ-like, why not skip that and tell us what he actually is?) Christ-like figure --(. He is)endlessly patient, kind, generous, modest, and so forth. The childhood she describes in a small Illinois town is so perfectly idyllic (idllyic means perfect! don't use words you don't know!) that you can't help but wonder what dark secret she was hiding( awkward. also provide examples from the text!).

Megan,

Please see me after class.

Sincerely,
your professor, who writes crap like this for his second semester community college English class, but knows better than to be proud of it (or even think that anywhere else it'd get anything other than a gigantic freaking F and the continuous scorn of anyone who ever gazed upon it)

Rapid Fire Retard

Megan just unleashed a triplet of banal observations on the topics of soy milk, Cambodian techno, and acupuncture.

When did the Atlantic start hosting livejournals?

Current mood: 82% aloof

I deserve her job

No posts today, one can only guess that poor MM woke up a bit groggy, what with having stayed up past her bedtime last night watching the primaries.

God, I wish I had her job. She spends a few hours writing meaningless crap, and then calls out the next day cause she was up late doing it. Can you imagine if you worked at a car factory and pulled this crap?

Worker: Can't come in today boss.
Boss: Why not?
Worker: Well, I was up really late last night, but I was making cars out tinker toys so technically it was working.
Boss: Oh, well, that's okie. As long as you were being productive.

Seriously, I'm chronically injured. I am FORCED to sit around all day, but no one pays me for my skills. MM, who has a strong back and could easily be doing something productive, like serving coffee or mopping jizz, gets paid to be lazy and useless.

The world is unfair.