Joshuah Bearman

Why is there no anima character named Megadorable?

Did I just coin that? If so, I am very proud. But also disappointed at the Japanese people, for missing the boat. What happens when you google Megadorable? Good question. Here is the answer: 

Really delivers, right? That's it though! Nothing else on megadorable. This video has 138 views, by the way. I love finding such things. And I love the comments, of which there are three, of which one is "your channel hurts me." 

Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space

I love this picture. It's the Discovery docking with the International Space Station: 

It makes me think not so much of 2001 (although I am an incredible sucker for 2001) but rather Chris Jones' top notch Esquire story from way back in 2004, about life for the crew of the ISS after they were stuck in orbit after the Columbia came apart during re-entry. It's called Home. It's good. 

Poetic License

On a cocktail napkin: 

If Steve Elliott was a consultant

This is not the first time I've felt compelled to quote from the Daily Rumpus. But it's probably the funniest: 

Anyway, I was talking to Ben about becoming a consultant. I wouldn't have any slideshows or charts, I would come into your company like a temp. I would figure out how much postage I could steal before you noticed, flirting with the mailroom girl and sending a hundred copies of my unpublished novel all over the country via Fedex. I would find the person who yelled at low level administrative employees and recommend you fire him — that man lacks imagination. I would wonder the halls and look in the drawers and find where the secretaries hid their girl scout cookies. I would write poems, and then I would leave.

 

Reacting to art alone

Nice moment from The Rumpus' Magazine Review, about the pleasure of print: 

All of which is to say that I take comfort in magazines like Esopus. I take refuge from the digital world here. There are no ads in this magazine, no room for debate, no soapboxes, no trends. It’s just a collection of art, presented without comment. I can sit quietly with it and absorb it slowly. This may be why I love all printed matter; it allows me to get away from my screen and interact with something that cannot interact back. It allows me the opportunity to react to art alone, which is almost impossible to do online. The second Stephen’s Marie Calloway interview was up, I instant-messaged a friend to talk about it; it’s become a kneejerk reaction because interaction is the very core of sharing information on the internet. Esopusis an antidote to the chatter that fills much of my day.

Can't remember what's on page 262 of the Principia Mathematica?

Something about the laws of motion. Or gravity, right? Well, if your Latin is still as strong as it should be, just use this handy tool to look at this original, hand-corrected manuscript. 

Give the Bankers Hell -- and Put a Tiny Little Woman on their Laps!

So we all know that last time Wall Street almost destroyed the country, they were at least held to some account. People were angry, as was -- gasp -- the President. In FDR's inaugural address, he blamed the banks directly -- "rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men" -- and thereafter he signed Glass-Steagall, created the FDIC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and, you know, re-organized American society for the better. 

What did we get? A cabinet stocked with Goldman alums, the Tea Party, and a Fox News-era media environment where to even suggest that maybe, just maybe, the banks should be punished for using parlor tricks to get rich while nearly scuttling the economy is "class warfare." 

How times have changed. In 1933 not only were people unafraid of addressing the culpability of Wall Street -- they talked about "banksters." A nice neologism, one coined by Ferdinan Pecora, a self-made Italian lawyer who became famous when he hauled some of the country's leading Wall Street figures before the Senate and publically grilled them about their role in the market crash. I read about Pecora at the Smithsonian Blog, and the brief synposis is wildly entertaining, but also crazy-making, as it invites the question: why can't our representatives question these people, expose their crimes, and have the satisfaction of hearing a sitting Senator say: “The best way to restore confidence in our banks is to take these crooked presidents out of the banks and treat them the same as [we] treated Al Capone.”

Maybe the Capone reference would be dated. Could be changed to Madoff, I guess. But: another sign of how times were different then is a small but strange detail from the Pecora commission story, which I have to admit is my favorite part, despite that it is silly and totally undermines the whole populist anger part. Ready? Ok. Here goes. 

Apparently, during the Pecora commission hearings, the Ringling Brothers circus was in town. And as Pecora and various Senators were questioning J.P. Morgan, Jr., one of the circus attractions, a 21-inch tall woman named Lya Graf, found her way into the Senate room and then onto the lap of the despised banker. This is true. It looked like this: 

“Where do you live?” Morgan asked the girl.

“In a tent, sir,” she answered.

Weird, right? For more detail on Lya, the very weird Quasi-Modo has a circa-1998 html-looking page on her. 

Kim Jong Phil

Artist Philip Toledano accepts the supreme narcissism of the artistic mind and paints himself into propaganda art. Like so: 

The war is over. Are we ready yet for nostalgia?

Or, if not nostalgia, how about just a raucous yarn about Baghdad's one true watering hole during the height of the insurgency? Yes? Good. Because that's the story I recently wrote, and which appears today, in The Atavist, a new online publication of literary and technological note that is one of the few places that would be able to publish 10,000 words about the Rick's Cafe Americain of the Green Zone. 

In the midst of that disastrous war, one soldier-turned-contractor realized that, like everything else in Iraq, the military planners had forgotten about the logistics of leisure. Which meant that, like everything else in Iraq, even R&R was ripe for enterprise. When James (that same soldier-turned contractor) happened into a lead on booze supply, he found himself leaping head first into the warzone hospitality business.

The Baghdad Country Club was the result, and while it lasted, it was the one place were anyone — mercenaries and diplomats, contractors and peacekeepers, aid workers and Iraqis — could walk in, get dinner, open a decent bottle of Bordeaux, and light a cigar from the humidor to go with it. Patrons would check their weapons in a safe, like coats in a coatroom, and leave the war behind as they wandered past a sign that read:

BAGHDAD COUNTRY CLUB

NO GUNS, NO AMMUNITION, NO GRENADES, NO FLASH BANGS, NO KNIVES—

NO EXCEPTIONS!

Is that enough enticement to read the story? I hope so. If not, how about this quite elaborate trailer made by The Atavist's excellent audiovisual brigade:

Also: The Atlantic has a small excerpt!

Wondering what LBJ sounded like when referring to his crotch, and low-hanging nuts?

Wonder no more!