Friday, December 31, 2004
Apparently some tsunami just rolled over someplace halfway around the world where they make jasmine tea and a loaf of bread will buy you a village full of hookers for a month. Hundreds of thousands o' small religious people the color of figs have either drowned to death or are dying in a post-tidal-wave bacterial nightmare.
I don't really care about them so much, but the story reminded me of my lifelong fascination with...and dread of...the tsunami. No other natural disaster inspires such queasiness in me. Earthquakes? I lived through some jaw-rattling temblors when I lived in LA, yet you can still say the word "earthquake" without making me uncomfortable. Volcanoes? I currently live within the danger zone surrounding Mt. St. Helens, which almost blew its lid a couple months ago, and I'm not sweatin' it. Hurricanes? Just a really bad storm. Avalanches? The world's most extreme snowboarding experience. Tornados? Well, yeah, you're getting into spookyville there, but it still can't compare to the terror of seeing a sky-eclipsing wall of water coming toward you at 200MPH.
A 1958 Alaska earthquake knocked loose a giant glacier that fell into Lituya Bay, causing a wave estimated to be...gulp...pardon me while I compose myself... 1,720 feet high and swallowing everything in its path.
This recent so-called petty-ass "tsunami" only had waves estimated to be thirty or forty feet high, so I don't know what everyone's whining about. Fuckin' babies, I swear.
About a dozen times over the course of my life I've dreamed I was at the beach when a hundred-foot tidal wave approached. Each time it would crest directly over my head as I looked up helplessly, knowing that in less than a second I'd be knocked dead by an ungodly fist of vengeful water.
And then I'd wake up.
Happy New Year!
Posted by jg @ 06:17 PM PST []
Monday, December 13, 2004
Dear James Goad,
The PayPal User Agreement states that PayPal, at its sole discretion, reserves the right to close an account for any violation of the User Agreement, including the Acceptable Use Policy. Under the Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments or donations for obscene or sexually oriented goods or services. The complete Acceptable Use Policy addressing Mature Audiences can be found at the following URL:
http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/ua/use/index_frame-outside&ed=mature
We are hereby notifying you that, after a recent review of your website that lists PayPal, it has been determined that you are in violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy. Therefore, your account has been closed.
•••••••••
Mature Audiences Policy
You may not use PayPal in the purchase or sale of, or receipt of donations for, any obscene or sexually oriented goods or services.
In determining what goods or services are prohibited under the Mature Audiences Policy, PayPal will consider some or all of the following factors:
• Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct.
• Representations or descriptions of intercourse, masturbation, excretory functions, or lewd exhibition of the genitals.
• Dominant theme of the material or website.
• Literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
• Safety and protection of its customers, both buyers and sellers.
• Medical or educational usage of the product or service.
Any sexually oriented goods or services involving minors, or made to appear to involve minors, will automatically be treated as violations of the Mature Audiences Policy.
PayPal will not include sexual preferences or viewpoints as a factor in determining what goods or services are prohibited under the Mature Audiences Policy.
Posted by jg @ 12:34 PM PST []
Wednesday, December 8, 2004
Blacks, Jews, gays, and other professional whiny-pants have nothing to complain about, since popular culture's most consistent target of slander, ridicule, and not-so-nice comments is the humble "white rapper with some shtreeet knowledge" known to the world as Vanilla Ice.
A little over a dozen years ago, a dozen million people purchased the first album by the high-cheekboned motocross racer born as Robbie Van Winkle. Mr. Ice Ice Baby was rightfully celebrated because he took a rough-hewn genre of urban mating songs known as "hip-hop," made it palatable and digestible to countless real people instead of a handful of criminally inclined coconut-throwers, and exposed Middle America to the unbridled joy of what the kids call "street dancing."
Yet like Icarus, our hero flew too close to the sun and his wax wings melted. He fluttered down to earth level, only to be picked apart and gnawed at by the same jealous poopstains who'd previously purchased his albums and shaved their eyebrows as homage. Mr. Van Winkle is left to sit in the wings as talentless wiggersicles such as Eminem temporarily convince America that they are something more than the modern version of blackface.
People always think I'm joking when I speak of my fondness for Ice's music or when I express my belief that Cool as Ice is one of American cinema's meisterwerks. Yet I am utterly sincere when I assert that he is a vessel of intergalactic higher learning, and that his cometlike spurt of stardom will one day be placed in its proper messianic context.
Drop all those zeros and get with the real hero.