The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne on NPR’s This I Believe.
Entries from February 2007
February 28, 2007
Best of all possible worlds
Twice after 9/11 I seriously considered joining the armed forces. I was talked out of it by my father, a career Marine who fought in Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Like a lot of people lucky enough to be in school I felt sort of sick to my stomach going to college classes, writing [...]
February 27, 2007
News Flash: Self-centered college students carrying handbasket in which society is going to hell
NEW YORK (AP) — Today’s college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.
“We need to stop endlessly repeating ‘You’re special’ and having children repeat that back,” said the study’s lead [...]
February 26, 2007
A clear message
GUATEMALA CITY – Emergency crews on Saturday found a third body in a 330-foot-deep sinkhole that had swallowed a dozen homes and forced the evacuation of nearly 1,000 people in a crowded Guatemala City neighborhood.
The body of Domingo Soyos, 53, was carried out of the enormous fissure and identified by family members, medical crews said.
Soyos [...]
February 26, 2007
"And our love become a funeral pyre…"
Can’t sleep tonight.
Can’t write either.
Finished the book I was reading.
So here I am watching VH1 Storytellers: The Doors.
This show is, mostly, a terrible idea. The idea is that some of your favorite musicians will perform some of their greatest hits live and tell you what they’re about, how they were written, more or less completely [...]
February 25, 2007
The Golden Age of the Stewardess, the problem of design
You’ve got to check out these great old glamor photos of sixties stewardesses.
Yeah, I know, they’re all sexed up and objectified and it’s terrible.
But come on…this is great.
It’s the uniforms and the hair, sure — but look at this whole world. The chairs, the planes themselves, the Vespas, the colors.
This was a time when [...]
February 22, 2007
Man, do I miss having a column. That is all.
Man, do I miss having a column.
That is all.
February 20, 2007
John Mayer makes good
Have been listening to the latest John Mayer album and have to say – I really like it.
It finally fulfills the promise blues legend Buddy Guy told me he saw in Mayer when I interviewed him last year. We knew he could, as Guy said, “play his ass off.” We knew he could write. But [...]
February 19, 2007
The sound of Feedback
Eight messages when I came in this morning. Two on Guilford College, six on Howard Coble.
This one, from a Greensboro reader, is indicative of the general sentiment of callers on the Coble piece:
“I want you to let Howard Coble know I think he’s a turncoat to America and to our president and to our boys. [...]
February 17, 2007
Friday night with the Treasonous Slime
Went to PTI late tonight to catch Rep. Howard Coble (R) coming off the plane from Washington. Brought along my nifty new camera and took some shots — one of which is running in the paper tomorrow.
Coble’s been having a busy week. On Wednesday he spoke in opposition to President Bush’s troop surge. Much of [...]
February 16, 2007
Don’t mess with Mr. In Between
One of the only up-sides of my new apartment: if something goes wrong and you call the management company that owns the place, they’re on it pretty damned quick.
When I moved in my hot water heater was, for some reason, not working. They fixed it the next day.
Then I realized there was some sort of [...]
February 13, 2007
Maltese Falcon stolen. For real.
From the San Francisco Chronicle:
It’s been nearly 80 years since Sam Spade wandered the streets of San Francisco in search of the Maltese Falcon. Now, the statue is missing again.
John Konstin, the owner of San Francisco’s John’s Grill on Ellis Street, said someone broke into a locked cabinet on the second floor of his [...]
February 10, 2007
"You have 1,234 messages…"
I usually forward the calls from my office phone to my mobile phone when I’m not at my desk – even when I go home. Sure, this means I get work calls when I’m technically off the clock. But that’s better, to my mind, than missing them because I work a shift that keeps me [...]
February 7, 2007
12 1/2 Rules
News & Record editor John Robinson linked to these “12 1/2 Rules for Journalists” and I think most of them are damned good. As JR points out – most of us will break nearly all of them at some point, but we should keep these in mind as we do the job.
Here they are:
12. DO [...]
February 1, 2007
Molly Ivins Can’t Die…Can She?
Molly Ivins, the acerbic Texas writer who shed her family’s conservative roots to become one of the nation’s best-known, treasured (sometimes vilified) liberal commentators, died Wednesday after battling cancer. She was 62.
Writing on Salon.com in 1990, critic David Rubien compared Ivins to Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Will Rogers, H.L. Mencken and Red Smith, writers [...]
