"Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country," said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor. "All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day...is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation." Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
www.dol.gov - History of Labor Day Labor Day doesn't really mean the same to us slacker, gen-x, po-mo ironic corporate drones... nonetheless, Happy Laboring Day!!
How to Talk About Israel
"Even legitimate criticism of Israel, or of Zionism, is often quickly denounced as anti-Semitism by various watchdogs"
Israel makes my head hurt. Being a doofus, non-jewish honky American means that I know less than zip about Israel except that if news coverage was nickels, they'd have a lot of nickels. This article was in the NYT magazine and covers lot of interesting points - most disturbingly American fundamentalist christian's and their undying support for the state of Israel. Good article. Print it out and read it during lunch or your commute. Side Note- peep the URL for this article: www.nytimes.com/2003/08/31/magazine/31ANTISEMITISM.html "ANTI SEMITISM"?! Does the NYT consider this article anti-semitic? Odd. How to Talk About Israel
Metropolitan Diary
Overheard at an Amsterdam Avenue pizza joint: Pizza Man No. 1: "When you put your cellphone in the 550-degree pizza oven, you voided the warranty." Pizza Man No. 2: "Oh, so now all of a sudden you're an expert on cellphones."
One of my favorite NYT features (one of which our palaver pal David was once in). Always a fun read. Metropolitan Diary
Evite's Pixel Emails When you do an Evite invite your pals, the email sent contains a nice little 1px by 1px image. This image, which is invisible to the user, will let Evite know that your email address was active and that you received the email and opened it. This has been a common trick by spammers and marketers to learn which addresses are live - and it's use by Evite makes me feel a bit uneasy (actually, Evite has never been on my 'fan' list). The image points to this: http://www.evite.com/mailDetect?iid=UEWKDMEFVRIPVJHFJAGO&src=email I wish I knew how that 'iid" worked - if I did, I could have fun with that.
Bad Reviews on ShittySearch It's the mean cranky streak in me I suppose, but I love crappy reviews on ShittySearch. There is this theatre near our apartment that has gotten some of the worst reviews. I should start collecting bad CS reviews. United Artists Court Street Stadium 12
Single Malt Scotch Yesterday I invited some boys over to help me open and try a bunch of scotch I have been collecting. We had about 8-10 different ones to taste and it was lots of fun. It was a lovely afternoon and then some of us walked around the neighborhood and ended up in a local bar where we discussed matters of love and boobies and other drunken boy talk. I need to figure out which one we all agreed on, but I think it was between the two I had bought when we were in Edinburgh. The highland malts with their burny/peaty taste were good, but not as easy to drink as their southern counterparts. For dinner, I left the boys and went on a double date to Blue Ribbon Sushi where I inhaled a large amount of fish. Dessert was at the Chip Shop where we had amazingly delicious fried Twix bars. A Tasty Evening.
Sea biscuit We saw that Seabiscuit movie the other night, it got lots of mixed reviews from our pals - but we liked it. Maybe it was because we had read the book. Who knows. Sure there was some goofy Hollywood shitz, but the majority was true to the book and the book was pretty true to the true story.
Did anyone of you see the PBS documentary about Seabiscuit? That was pretty good.
Digital Cable We got a fancy new digital cable box last week. Same price, but now you have even more channels of nothing you want to watch. Actually, we are happy to have the BBC America channel which is fun. And M2 and VH1 Classics that show those music video things that we all used to like. But, lord, sometimes the channels just look like shit. Stupid digital crap-nology. Everything looks much softer than the old-style cable box (we have a pretty dope-n-fly TV so you can tell).
Guestbook Spam I love the guestbook spam. We had these three that came in today. I didn't list their URL because, well, then the terrorists have won haven't they?
abelko (abelko@pobladores.com) ip:80.58.15.235 | http://www.someshit.com Thank you for the wonderful website and information I will be back soon, nice Site, greetings from Spain...
marhta (marhtacom@mixmail.com) ip:80.58.15.235 | http://www.someothershit.com I just want to say hello. Your site is on the very high level and includes a lot of very interesting features and was very useful for me. I wish you a huge succes to the future. Greetings...
sonhia (sonhia23@terra.es) ip:80.58.15.235 | http://www.yetagainanothershit.net Hello, I just wanted to say you have a very informative site which really made me think, Thanks !
