Justice schmustice
Does the driver of a suicide car-bomb buckle up before setting out on his holy mission, I wonder?
Just
like a mobster never pays for a drink, neither do I would ever pay
money for a book. Of course, I hope that other people keep buying my
books. However, just like a lawyer who presents himself has a fool for
a client, a writer who self-publishes using a vanity press is a dweeb.
Or is he? The more I think about it, the more appealing the basic idea
of Lulu.com seems to me. This is
like really "long tail" and all that other crap. I promise that if I
ever happen to write a novel or a cookbook (since it is clear that the
world doesn't have enough of those already), I will publish it in Lulu
and market it here in my blog for all my numerous readers. Imagine
that, a whole novel that was written in the style and spirit of Sixteen
Volts. I must have written enough words here already to fill a
normal-sized paperback.
I wouldn't really know what the kids are
listening to these days and talking about on their hippity hop
blackberries and MySpace pages, but I have understood that at some
point Britney Spears was the idol of all little girls everywhere and
that she was on the top of the pop music scene. I do have to wonder if
anyone can remain on the top if she essentially takes off three years
from all that singing and performing business to have babies, though.
Hey, maybe Linda Hirshman
would have something to say about that. But what I sure didn't know
(but should have guessed) that even though this is Britney's second
kid, it is already the fourth for her hubby K-Fed, as reported in "Britney Spears Is a Mom Again" by "What Would Tyler Durden Do?"
Of course, for all his supposed stupidity, a man simply has to have
more that just a little something going for him to be able to
monopolize the affections of the current top female artist in the music
business. This therefore makes me wonder whether the whole K-Fed thing
is mostly an act, the same way that I suspect Paris Hilton's public
persona to be mostly an act, while privately both Paris and Kevin laugh
all the way to the bank. And what truly beautiful acts they are:
everybody throughout the ideological spectrum so badly wants it to be
the truth that they can't even for a moment think about the possibility
that it might be only an act. As the journalistic expression puts it,
it is "too good to check".
And if it is not an act, perhaps in
fifteen years we will see a reality show "Growing up Federline", with
the rowdy boys trying to be like their father. Speaking of reality
shows, the post "Narcissism" by Kevin Drum (how the heck does that guy get to use the domain name of a magazine as the address of his blog?) links to the news article "Celebrities Are Their Own Biggest Fans"
that tells us that celebrities are more narcissistic as average people.
Big surprise there, but like Kevin points out, scoring only two points
more on a scale that goes up to 40 is not really that big a difference,
once we remember that you necessarily need to have some narcissistic
traits to even try to become a celebrity by climbing over millions of
others who desire the same.
The study reveals that the female
reality show contestants are the most narcissistic of the bunch, which
is not really that surprising. On the very top where people such as
Brad Pitt, Bono or Bill Gates reside, I have to wonder if we can even
talk about "narcissism" in any meaningful way, since as they say, it is
not bragging if you can back it up. If somebody really were more
talented and successful than other people, would it be psychologically
wrong for him to also think that he is? If such a person does not
suffer fools lightly in his busy life, but surrounds himself only with
the very best, and he expects to be pampered and treated like royalty
instead of buying his own groceries, is there anything fundamentally
wrong with this behaviour?
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