sex and the city

i am normally not a movie critic, but i just have to tell you about SEX AND THE CITY. i am going to write a true, unbiased review of the movie.

WARNING: SPOILER! i cannot make my nuanced critique without leaking a bit of the plot.

1. i think carrie bradshaw's face is large and square and i would not like to have sex with her.
2. every person spoke every word without meditation. the most thoughtful character is dante. he has one line: "would you like to join me? i am dante, come anytime."
3. there was no need for all of the yelling. the normal reason for movie actors getting away with yelling is that they're always about to get murdered. the only man who didn't get yelled at, the bald guy, had little time on camera.
4. i was not aroused by the sex scenes, because there was no foreplay.
5. carrie bradshaw can eat cup o' noodle. if i owned an expensive restaurant i would make it membership based, so that people could not eat there if they were abusive to their palates.
6. there was a preview about richard gere in a beach house, and a lonely woman enthralled by his gravelly voice. his gravelly voice makes the woman say "vous aviez l'air d'être seul" and then he squeezes her ass while they kiss.
7. miranda was angry or crying or having sex in every scene.
8. when people see a flash of light they become excited and start to laugh, but then they are confused and they become angry and when the caretaker breaks up the fight they start to drool and masturbate.
9. excellent camera work. they had to cut from scene to scene very quickly, and one time there was not enough of a pause between the narration and the climax of the scene, which was conveyed by the appearance of steve.
10. carrie ends up married. miranda ends up re-married. charlotte bears a child. samantha turns 50.

can't miss!

vocabulary police 2

i was on to something when inoted that the Times columnists are sharing fancy words. it's happened again with the same two columnists:

Perhaps we wanted to glom onto an earlier America's noble mission because we, unlike "the greatest generation," had none of our own. (Frank Rich, 25-May-08)

You know, Barack, the more I'm seein' what you've got in mind for me, the more I'm worryin' that Hillary's just not cut out for this job. You don't want her glomming on to everythin'. (Maureen Dowd, 28-May-08)

the bible, on bullshit

Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit.
O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.
A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.
But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.
For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.

Matthew 12:33-37

ecriture lisse

here is why i don't like reading books written by journalists:

they want to tell a story about one person's experience. very early in the story comes a paragraph that always is like this:

"Janette is a short woman, five foot two, with a cheerful, engaging personality. She has short brown hair and today it was swept back, a red plastic headband holding it in place."

i don't like knowing anyone's hair color.

notes from the basketball game

in beer advertising

"superior drinkability" = it doesn't taste like beer

from a tide commercial, spoken by a pretty blond woman, and i quote verbatim: "It removes way more stains better than the other guy. So it's two times concentrated."

sordes populi

when debates descends to a certain level, a useful method to you is to start to deny the basic assumptions or to fabricate outrageous premises


e.g.

-all americans are like this.
-i'm not american. i'm lebanese.

-i can't believe this bullshit.
-it's not bullshit. i was there.

new pun

fenerable wealth

qui vive?

And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay;
Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.

Judges 12:5-6

usufruct

i called a number to activate my new credit card. the woman was quite chatty, though with arrière pensée. i was staying on the phone waiting for her to say "your account is activated," but she kept telling me about great new features of the card that i might have been ignorant of.

she mentioned a program whose name sounded like CREDIT PROTECT PLUS, but then moved onto another matter without giving any details. looking at my credit history, she wondered whether i would like to transfer some of the balance of a student loan that i held towards my new card, with its low introductory APR. the student loan allows me to forbear or defer with little hassle, so it is good that it stays where it is.

she mentioned CREDIT PROTECT PLUS again, something of which i would enjoy a free trial, which i would be enrolled in shortly, but then went to the next offer. i could use the card to add some money to my checking account, so that i'd "have a little extra spending money." unless this "spending money" was for drugs or to pay my rent, it wouldn't make sense to do that when i could simply charge expenditures to my new card with its attractive introductory APR.

finally, we come to CREDIT PROTECT PLUS. she said that i would be receiving all of the details in the mail shortly and that my free trial would start right away. if i canceled after 30 days then i would not be charged. the program is a type of insurance: if you go through some important life event, such as a college graduation, marriage, birth of a child, death in the family, hurricane, the policy will activate and it will pay your minimum balance for you for up to six months. the cost of the premium would be $0.98 per billing cycle for every $100 of balance on my account.

a 0.98% interest rate compounded monthly is equivalent to an annualized rate of 12.4%. so if i accept this service, then my APR will effectively be 14.7% during the introductory period and 30.7% afterwards. no shit.


...


now let's calculate the usurer's utility for a customer who agrees to this. we will imagine two types of customers

1) those who pay only the minimum required payment each month, which is equal to the new interest accrued plus 1% of the balance.
2) those who pay their balance in full each month.

the usurer's profit (the interest paid) for a month where the policy is not claimed, (let's say a 30 day month), and b is the balance, is

P(b) = 0.0231b for customer type (1) (to wit, $2.31 per $100 of balance)
P(b) = 0.0098b for customer type (2) (to wit, $0.98 per $100 of balance)

in a month where the policy is claimed, the usurer's profit is

P(b) = -0.0002b for both types of customers (to wit, -$0.02 per $100 of balance)

now we introduce the probability that a given customer successfully makes a claim on the policy, p(1) and p(2) for customer type (1) and (2), respectively.

the expected value of the usurer's profit for a given month is

P(b,p) = b[0.0231(1-p(1)) - 0.0002p(1)) for customer type (1)
P(b,p) = b[0.0098(1-p(2)) - 0.0002p(2)) for customer type (2)

now let's determine the necessary value of p such that the usurer's monthly profit exceeds what it would have been in the event that the customer had not elected to receive the policy,

(to wit,

P'(b) = 0.0133b for customer type (1)
P'(b) = 0 for customer type (2) )

i.e.

P(b,p) > P'(b)

the solutions are

p(1) < 0.42
p(2) < 0.98

this means that the program is of positive utility to the usurer if customers of type (1) are less than 42% likely, in a given month, to successfully claim against the policy, and if customers of type (2) are less than 98% likely to do the same.

fabule

1. i drive a late model silver colored LEXUS through the parking lot of a luxury hotel in honolulu. i was there a week previously for legitimate reasons, but this time i had gone back to my old room and found it undisturbed, my key still worked, the bed still rumpled as on the morning i had left. professional athletes entered the room because there was the NFL pro-bowl happening. they were blind, or at least they were blind about seeing me. i tip-toed around the room to not make noise, but that's why i left; i wouldn't have the room to myself. in the parking lot, a dark man with shellacked hair an open-collared suit, bid me follow him to a parking spot. we went down stairs so i had to pick the car up and hold it like a briefcase. this is one of the lighter models. the stairs became larger and more irregular, making the walk more and more difficult. i thought that it would be even more difficult when it was time to leave. he motioned to a large, leather recliner and ottoman, but for cars. i put the car there and he told me i would pay $55 for parking. i started giving him a speech in the formula "if i spent lavishly, i, one who is of modest means, [for the wedding of X] and [for the wedding of Y], and [for the wedding of Z] ... (where X, Y, ... are types of kinsman) and my speech got cut off when a woman entered from a bedroom. my parking spot was directly in the man's living room, and we were standing over a minibar that communicated the kitchen with the living room. i then noticed that there were many pieces of paper folded up and cast on to the counter as tokens cast by a diviner. the man said that his wife was crazy, but i didn't know if he meant lovably crazy or clinically crazy. the woman had brown hair and she said that indeed she was crazy. the room was dark and only lit by a small reading lamp on an end table behind my parking spot. she said that she was crazy and that they made her take all of this expensive medication and she was amused with the ordeal. she dropped a few pills on the counter in front of me, then started showering them over my head like confetti. they were getting in my ear. i picked up one of the pieces of paper, thinking i could use it to bundle some of pills and exchange it for my parking pass for the evening, but the woman objected, saying that they were important papers and that i wasn't to touch any of them. but i saw that the papers were all made from other documents that had been divided into eight identical rectangles so that no individual piece contained any important information, like the papers that are made available at the university library so that you can jot down the call number and have it with you as you search the stacks...

2. i had committed a burglary, or at least i was an accomplice to a burglary, and the police pulled my car over. i got out of the car and started walking towards the police car, and it was then that i thought that i would be in a better position to explain myself if i had remained in the car. i was in a jail, or rather i had been made to sit on the floor against the wall in a hall with wood-panel flooring. a police officer was sitting on a bean bag next to me, looking over his geometry notes. i said that i would help him with the problems if he could tell me what time it was. he said it was 1:59pm. i thought about calling into work, asking the same helpful cop to call my work for me and excuse myself for not having come in, and say that i was ill and wouldn't be able to make it for the rest of the day either. but could it really be 1:59pm? i woke up and found out that it was instead 9:27am. and if i'm awake i'm no longer a criminal so that's a fine reason to get out of bed.

toasts

the mexican delegation at the party had a cheer:

A las mujeres,
que son bellas.
Y lo que queremos hacer con ellas

the english translation that would still rhyme was carefully wrought:

Fine lady!
Behold thine pulchritude!
Do accede to mine solicitude!

nand gate

i got to the part where Lazzari dies in Il deserto dei tartari.

it's so sad.

comedy is timing

from The Daily Show:

"Today's women have trouble balancing family and career . . . with being crazy."

whose word is life, whose work is death

early records of bribery reported in Noonan, Bribes:

"The same rule is reflected in complaints circa 1500 B.C. from another Mesopotamian city, Nuzi. An investigation into the conduct of Kushshiharbe, its mayor, and Peskilisu, the mayor's lieutenant, reports these charges:

Thus Hinzurima the wife of Ziliya: I gave one sheep to Peskilisu as an offering . . . saying: 'Concerning my fields, attend to my lawsuit with Kariru.' But he did not attend to my lawsuit, and when I spoke concerning my sheep he struck me and kept my sheep.
Thus Hatartema: When I arrived from Hanigalbat, on account of my lawsuit they handed me over to Peskilisu. Ahumisa gave a sheep, a mixing bowl of bronze, and two doors to Peskilisu as an offering, yet he did not attend to my lawsuit.
Thus Huzirima: I gave Peskilisu six shekels of purified silver, saying: 'Give to Kushshiharbe in order that he should attend to my lawsuit.' . . . But they did not attend to my lawsuit.' "

taken out of context

"...cause like her feelings get hurt if you don't like talk about your feelings..."

that i'm ordinary

Mortals are immortals and immortals are mortals, the one living the others' death and dying the others' life.

Heraclitus, Fragment 62