Beyond the Tubes: The Legacy of Senator Ted Stevens

by Nate Freeman

TED STEVENS

It was not his first plane crash. Ted Stevens had been there before-during a rough touch-down in 1978 at Anchorage International, which would later be renamed for the senator. That first crash left Stevens with minor injuries but it killed his wife, Ann.

The circumstances of yesterday’s crash, the one that killed him, when taken in the context of his history, presence and reputation are such that they tempt metaphor and hint at irony. The plane was owned by Alaskan telecom giant GCI (where one of the senior VPs is a former Stevens chief of staff) and was en route to a retreat at the corporation’s Agulowak Lodge. It invokes the scandal over the senator’s own chalet-in Girdwood, Alaska, home of the Alyeska ski resort-that received an alleged $250,000 in renovations comped by the head of the VECO Corp., an Alaska-based oil field services company.

The gifts led to the senator’s conviction for seven counts of felony, a verdict reached while he was in office. The conviction was voided, on grounds of misconduct by the prosecutors.

The work on the chalet was quite substantial. The entire frame had been propped up and a new floor was built beneath it, with two bedroom and two bathrooms. They added a wraparound deck on the second story and a garage with a study. Then came the deck on the first story, and the plastic roof, and the $55,000 lighting system. There were other gifts, too: tool sheds, a new gas grill, a massage chair, a stained glass window, a sled dog, a Land Rover and a backup generator.

The last gift was a trip to an expansive retreat, the plane and lodging provided by GCI. He was, according to the prosecutors, getting paid back for his determined efforts to funnel funding to all corners of Alaskan industry. The billions of dollars he had earmarked for the state had won him the designation of “Alaskan of the Century.”

Ted Stevens had a long time to develop these relationships. He was a man who, at the time of the crash, 17 miles north of Dillingham, had been cultivating them for 86 years. Stevens was gruff and salty, and earned a reputation for being a hothead in and out of the senate chambers. After that first plane crash, he hobbled on crutches into a committee meeting and blamed Democratic Alaskan senator Mike Gravel for forcing him to go to Anchorage on the doomed flight, blamed him for trying to crush the bill he was traveling to save-blamed him, ostensibly, for the death of his wife. Stevens once said, “I’m a mean, miserable S.O.B.”

A few years after his birth in Indianapolis in 1923, Stevens left for Redondo Beach, California with his divorced mother. There he met Russell Green, the son of the president of the Signal Oil & Gas Company. Russ became a surfing buddy, and after Stevens got done with tours in World War II (he was in the Air Force, appropriately enough) he consulted his friend’s father on where to take himself. He attended UCLA-where he joined the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity-and then went off to Harvard Law, all of which was partly funded by the G.I. Bill.

A stint at a D.C. law firm got him another gig in Fairbanks, so he drove up with Ann and stayed in the state for good.

His first bid for a spot in the U.S. Senate eluded him-he lost to incumbent Ernest Gruening, former governor of the Alaska Territory and one of its first senators as a state-so he settled into a role in the Alaska House of Representatives, where he eventually became majority leader. Then, when Senator Bob Bartlett died in office in 1968, Stevens was tapped to replace him. He won the election two years later and served until 2008, when he lost what would be his eight term to Anchorage mayor Mark Begich.

But this being the Internet, it would be a mistake to not give the appropriate credence to what may become-at least in the online world-the senator’s most enduring legacy: his meme-inspiring speech about the internet being “a series of tubes.” On June 28, 2006 Stevens was giving an otherwise inconsequential speech on Net Neutrality, and Public Knowledge intern Bill Herman was recording it for one of his co-workers. That is the source of Stevens’ comments that have become the go-to example of the way The Olds see the this whole crazy “internet” thing:

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?… Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially…They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck. It’s a series of tubes.

As funny as the clip was, it was also a bit disconcerting-as the chairman of the Senate’s Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Ted Stevens was, in a sense, the number one man in charge of creating Internet policy.

Alex Curtis, the director of policy and new media at Public Knowledge, was amused by the comments and posted them. It was picked up by a blog at Wired the next day, and by the time two weeks had passed footage was beaming into households courtesy of a now-famous piece on The Daily Show. The web was relentless, and soon Stevens had been given the full meme treatment-music videos on YouTube, Techno remixes, I Can Has Cheeseburger-style images, picture montages of the senator, messages accompanied by tubes or trucks, LOLcats, etc.

It seems unlikely that a man as old-fashioned as Ted Stevens-though not deeply conservative, still in touch with the independent Alaskan ethos, a man who maintained a streak of loyalty matched only by his tendency toward vengeance-would cement a reputation through the new economy of amusement that is the meme exchange. He clearly had no clue how the Internet works, yet there’s his face flashing between pictures, his voice rasping over trancey synths in a YouTube video that’s been viewed almost four million times. His cry will never again irritate his enemies who work in the Capitol chambers, but there he is repeating those words over and over again. And he’ll always be there, just a few clicks away, forever-maybe!-available on this endless series of tubes.

Having an iPhone Doesn't Mean You're Necessarily a Slut

SLUTTY PHONE FRIENDS

The data suggests that iPhone users have more sex.

I’d suggest that iPhone users are 1. more likely to live in big cities and 2. to work in fields where they don’t have to carry a BlackBerry. You know: slutty fields-like architecture and graphic design and book publishing. And in big cities-where everyone is already a whore. So the iPhone is just a general marker. Like a Foursquare badge. But for casual sex.

More Rapey Insects

Trigger alert

Geez, as if bedbugs stabbing their mates in the stomach with their spearlike penises wasn’t bad enough, look at how water striders do it: “Water strider sex begins unceremoniously: the male mounts the female without any courtship rituals or foreplay. She may resist but if she does, he starts to actively strum the water surface with his legs. Each vibration risks attracting the attention of a hungry predator, like a fish or backswimmer…. And because the female is underneath, she will bear the brunt of any assault. By creating dangerous vibes, the male intimidates the female into submitting to his advances. Faint heart, it is said, never did win fair lady.” You could indeed say that. So much for the sensitive strider theory.

Why We Laugh At Taboo Jokes

“Those theories meant to explain narrow segments of humor, such as jokes, can’t also explain broader humor across domains. For instance, theories underlying general humor would suggest we think things that are incongruous and release tension are funny. But unintentionally killing a loved one, while incongruous and an example of a release of aggressive tension, is unlikely to be funny, the researchers point out.”
-Science thinks it has figured out why we laugh at disgusting jokes: It’s because we’re not the ones actually fucking the chicken. Okay, Science!

Who's Gaming Digg? The Right-Wing Digg Rigging Wigout

THE MIND

Improbably-named political journalist Ole Ole Olson broke a kind of scandalous story on Alternet last week. It appears that a gang of conservatives calling themselves the DiggPatriots had been colluding for over a year on Yahoo! Groups to game the rankings on popular social media site Digg. This they achieved by systematically “burying” targeted liberal publications and stories and uprating conservative ones in order to limit the readership and perceived popularity of liberal stories, to inflate the readership and popularity of conservative ones. It’s against the Digg terms of service to collude in the first place, but Olson claims he’s also documented the DiggPatriots weaseling around their multiple individual “lifetime” bans from Digg by securing new IPs and aliases, using multiple accounts simultaneously, lying about being African-American in order to get some liberal writer or other banned from Digg, and so on.

The moment Olson’s story broke, the DiggPatriots Yahoo! group was deleted. However, Mr. Olson claims to have months and months’ worth of archives of the DiggPatriots message board, which promise hours of ghastly entertainment when they are posted.

Here is a sample from the DiggPatriots message board, as reported by Olson:

“The more liberal stories that were buried the better chance conservative stories have to get to the front page. I’ll continue to bury their submissions until they change their ways and become conservatives.”
-phoenixtx (aka vrayz)

I am sorry but how many kinds of dumb can you pack into one statement, by golly? If there were the slightest chance of persuading liberals to “change their ways and become conservatives”-I know, it’s happened now and again-the example hereby set isn’t going to help any. Also: how can you be shouting about “democracy” all the time, and then go around actively manipulating the crowd? And calling it patriotism? And how… gah whatever, they are so dumb.)

I’ve got two questions about this incident. First, if the DiggPatriots succeeded in gaming the rankings for a whole year undetected, we can assume that all sorts of other groups are doing so too, still undetected, right? And secondly: if Digg and other social media sites are indeed being gamed by various groups, what effect does this have, exactly?

None of this would be such a big deal, except for two things.

One is that Digg’s audience is so super-giantly large. According to the Guardian Digg had 7.6 million unique visitors in June alone this year. Given that thirteen of the top fifty spots on Alexa are held by Google, because they break out each nation’s Google site on its own, Digg is well within the top hundred of the world’s websites. A place on Digg’s front page guarantees thousands upon thousands of readers for the lucky author of a popular piece.

The other big-deal thing is that a space on the the Digg front page confers a certain crowdsourced stamp of approval: the front page results appear to have been generated by non-colluding individuals with diverse aims and information, like a wonderful snapshot of the hive mind.

James Surowiecki’s book The Wisdom of Crowds is instructive here. Social media sites like Digg rely tangentially on the “wisdom of crowds” principle; if a lot of different people find something engaging or interesting, there’s a reasonable chance you will, too. This is a little bit like the jellybean-counting phenomenon, or like Rotten Tomatoes movie ratings.

There’s a fractal aspect of social networking sites that adds a huge wrinkle, though, as Surowiecki describes. Once we believe that a lot of disparate individuals hold some opinion, by reading a poll or a review, or noting a high Digg ranking, that colors our perception of the facts, and thereby alters our opinions. For example, if you show the jellybean-estimator everyone else’s guesses before he makes his own, the “wisdom” disappears. Or you can game the jellybean results, say by concealing a hollow globe amongst the jellybeans (which is kind of what the DiggPatriots were doing,) or by putting a label on the jellybean jar that says “1000 jellybeans.” It’s very easy to skew the results of such experiments.

The real wisdom of crowds works only in certain circumstances, as Surowiecki notes:

Under what circumstances is the crowd smarter?

There are four key qualities that make a crowd smart. It needs to be diverse, so that people are bringing different pieces of information to the table. It needs to be decentralized, so that no one at the top is dictating the crowd’s answer. It needs a way of summarizing people’s opinions into one collective verdict. And the people in the crowd need to be independent, so that they pay attention mostly to their own information, and not worrying about what everyone around them thinks.

And what circumstances can lead the crowd to make less-than-stellar decisions?

Essentially, any time most of the people in a group are biased in the same direction, it’s probably not going to make good decisions. So when diverse opinions are either frozen out or squelched when they’re voiced, groups tend to be dumb. And when people start paying too much attention to what others in the group think, that usually spells disaster, too. For instance, that’s how we get stock-market bubbles, which are a classic example of group stupidity: instead of worrying about how much a company is really worth, investors start worrying about how much other people will think the company is worth. The paradox of the wisdom of crowds is that the best group decisions come from lots of independent individual decisions.

So many arguments come down to “most people believe …” and “the will of the people,” even in countries governed by autocrats; hence the importance of polls and the attention they are always given. Hence the tacit, almost subconscious trust we put in sites like Digg.

The DiggPatriots story demonstrates that, because it benefits certain individuals to collude in order to game the results, the impression of crowdsourced authenticity on Digg is false. But how false, really, we can’t know. But efforts like these might partly explain why many of us are forever wondering, who ARE all these climate-change deniers, these Tea Partiers, these fans of Sarah Palin? Maybe there really aren’t so many of them as all that.

It seems clear that finding hidden disinformation is of the utmost importance; but even if we can’t eliminate disinformation entirely, we should at least know that there’s a chance it’s already there. Consequently, it’s worth trying to understand the nature and purposes of such collusion as we know to have occurred.

It was a mistake though for Mr. Olson to use the word “censorship” to describe the activities of the Digg Patriots. Censorship suggests an abuse of power, but the DiggPatriots haven’t got any power. What they’ve got is the will to be dishonest. It’s not censorship; it’s nowhere near that dignified. It’s plain cheating, sinc ethere are rules.

The activities of the Digg Patriots far more closely resemble these things:

Publishing photos of a huge crowd at your rally, only they weren’t taken at your rally and you know it.

Sending salaried party operatives to pretend to be concerned residents of Florida and stage a riot.

Publishing photographs of calm lovely Istanbul that you claim to have taken yourself in Baghdad.

Heavily doctoring a video by adding in unrelated footage of yourself dressed as a cartoon pimp in order to discredit an organization dedicated to helping the poor.

Editing a video in which a black woman speaks in favor of racial harmony and understanding to make it look as if she’s saying the opposite.

All of which are cheating things that right-wing activists have done in a fraudulent attempt to make their numbers look bigger, their adherents more committed, their opponents less trustworthy, and their policy positions more popular, wise and/or secure.

Lest it be supposed that I favor the left: I do. One of the main reasons for that is that there are far fewer such incidents to report from the contemporary left. I regret that it has to be said, and I wish more on the right were smart and principled like David Gergen and Dwight D. Eisenhower and Colin Powell. I do not believe that any of those guys would cheat, and I would love it if there more like them. Note to Republicans: if you can run some guys who are as smart and principled as David Gergen, I, a liberal, might even vote for them.

However, there is a trend on the American right of behaving in a manner that indicates they believe it is better to cheat than lose. That’s not so surprising, really. Among people who think that Ayn Rand is a visionary, and even a novelist, it is not just okay but practically obligatory to believe that anything goes. The ends justify the means. You just grab! Greed is good! Until they change their ways and actively state that they have given up cheating because it is contemptible and wrong, then, we can assume we will be seeing more of the same (to clarify, I don’t demand that the DiggPatriots become liberals, only that they stop cheating.)

The “popular news” Digg is showing us is already polluted by nonindependent judgment, presumably of many different kinds; in response to last week’s revelations, new suspicions are already being aired, like this post about the possible burying of Linux-related stories. There’s lesser gaming left and right-lots of websites hire “Digg consultants.” You can hire Digg Front for a month to get your story on the front page for $495-and if they don’t get you there, they’ll do it again next month for free.

You could say all this is like the stock market, which has already been gamed all to hell with all sorts of insider trading and self-serving shenanigans before you ever get near it. Maybe you still want to have a flutter, and see what’s doing in such places. But you should do so in the full, clear knowledge that the information we get is liable to be tainted in all manner of ways.

Maria Bustillos is the author of Dorkismo: The Macho of the Dork and

Act Like a Gentleman, Think Like a Woman.

Photo from Flickr by Paul McGuire.

Kool Keith And Denis Deft, "Shopping At The Mall"

Kool Keith is looking fly in his new video, boasting about sponsorship deals with Tampax and Coca-Cola. In related news, Anthony Bragalia shares interesting thoughts at The UFO Iconoclast(s) website about “How The Roswell Crash Happened.”

Sir Harry Evans Weighs In On Latest Will Ferrell Vehicle

Agony sitting through Thr Other Guy. Michael Keaton great, Wahlberg ok rest hyped to deathTue Aug 10 01:51:41 via OpenBeak

Harold Evans
sirharryevans

"Like Eating Fridge Magnets": A Journey To Pop-Tarts World

THIS PICTURE IS ALMOST AS GOOD AS POP-TARTS WORLD

Mary HK Choi: SO DAVID CHO.
David Cho: Yes?
MHKC: We had a fascinating evening last night didn’t we?
DC: : Stop burying the lede.
MHKC: Ahahahah
DC: Let’s talk Pop-Tarts Toaster Pastries.
MHKC: OMGAWG HOW AMAZiNG WAS POP-TARTS Toaster Pastries WORLD?

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

DC: What is your past history with Pop-Tarts Toaster Pastries?
MHKC: Well, I deliberately never ate Toaster Strudel because i was a Pop-Tarts loyalist
MHKC: I enjoy them immensely.
MHKC: But I did, admittedly, stop eating them with regularity when I graduated college.
DC: What is your favorite flavor?
MHKC: S’mores.
DC: ME TOO.
MHKC: Because it is DELiCiOUS
MHKC: That’s the thing
MHKC: AND I always eat one toasted
MHKC: And the other cold
DC: That’s just weird.
MHKC: AND I think it’s excellent for morale that there are two to a packet
MHKC: It’s like Twix
MHKC: Another excellent foodstuff
DC: I think the reason that S’more Pop Tarts are the best tasting ones, is because it is the least contrived of all the Pop-Tarts.
MHKC: Contrived is an interesting word.
DC: So like, all the flavors in a S’more Pop-Tart are like, exactly what they should be.
DC: In a grape Pop-Tart or a blueberry Pop-Tart, there’s no real grape or blueberry in there.
DC: Or if there is, it’s really limited.
MHKC: Exactly.
MHKC: I think it helps that it isn’t like some facsimile of a food that exists in life
MHKC: OR they have to stabalize it in some form.
DC: In a S’more Pop-Tart it’s like, chocolate, marshmallow, and graham cracker.
DC: That’s just straight up what it is.
MHKC: YES.
MHKC: And it’s riddled with preservatives and artificialness in its “natural” state.
MHKC: Less variables
DC: And the execution is more on point than it would be even if you were trying to make it at a campfire.
DC: Has anyone ever made a really good S’more at a campfire?
DC: Like, toasting a marshmallow is hard!
MHKC: Well
MHKC: I have
DC: Shut up.
DC: No you haven’t.
MHKC: But i don’t use pedestrian ingredients
MHKC: I use marshmallows and Petit Ecolier cookies
MHKC: It’s unorthodox
MHKC: But it’s absolutely retarded tasty
DC: I mean, regardless of the composition.
DC: Toasting a marshmallow is legitimately really hard!
DC: And you have to be really patient.
MHKC: Yes.
MHKC: It’s like smoking meat.
MHKC: Low.
MHKC: Slow.
MHKC: Rotation is also key.
DC: I DON’T HAVE TIME TO HOLD A MARSHMALLOW ABOVE AMBERS FOR 5 MiNUTES!
DC: GIMME A S’MORE!
DC: OH, HELLO, POP-TART.
MHKC: Oh david
MHKC: How Millennial
DC: ANYWAYS
DC: Onto the store!
DC: /World!
MHKC: YES

THE VARIETIZER

WHAT WILL MARY HK CHOOSE?

DC: So let’s talk about the Varietizer!
MHKC: So the Varietizer allows you to create a 12 count box of any flavor you like in packages of two
MHKC: And it looks like a MONDO big vending machine basically
DC: What did you think?
MHKC: I think it’s attractive. But then again i would since everything in that store looks like a Trapper Keeper and i enjoy that immensely
DC: The store looks like Lisa Frank threw up everywhere, but in a good way.
MHKC: Absolutely
MHKC: MAN LISA FRANK IS AMAZiNG AND IT IS SO SAD THAT HER EMPIRE iS ALL FAKAKTA AFTER HER DiVORCE.
DC: Focus.
DC: What did you put in your box?
DC: (LOL!)
MHKC: LOL
MHKC: What did i put in my box?
MHKC: Well, we consulted a great many people
MHKC: Asked some hard-hitting questions
MHKC: Really analyzed the flavors
DC: Wait
DC: Sidebar
MHKC: Yes?
DC: Can we talk about how you were grilling the guy who was showing us around?
DC: “What sort of blanks are these shirts on?”
DC: “How did you pick the employees who worked in the store?”
DC: “Etc. etc.”
MHKC: Well, I knew it would be our only shot to get some face time with the big guns (the brand manager for Pop-Tarts’ parent company)!
MHKC: I wanted to know how deeply involved he was in the process!
MHKC: These details are HUGE for the overall user experience
DC: He answered all your questions!
DC: Kudos to Andy!
MHKC: Oh totally
MHKC: In fact not only did he answer all my questions, he answered them quickly
MHKC: I think he appreciated the chance to flex a little
DC: I took some notes and one of the things i wrote was: “Mary was sort of aggro w this guy”
MHKC: I wasn’t aggro at all
MHKC: That’s inaccurate!
MHKC: People aren’t aggro at PTW
DC: Shrug, i just call it like i see it
MHKC: i wanted some answers
DC: You didn’t let yourself go at Pop-Tart World
DC: You were so nervous to let them in.
MHKC: You don’t think it’s important to know that they’re not cutting corners by printing on Hanes beefy tees for their blanks?
DC: All I’m saying is, it’s like, you can trust them.
DC: They’ve never wronged you in the past.
MHKC: No way man
DC: I don’t know, I think you just have to be more willing to let them in. Lower the barrier to entry.
MHKC: They’re purveyors of deliciousness that I want.
MHKC: I’m immediately suspicious when the power dynamic is not in my favor.
DC: Sure.
DC: Anyways, what did you put in your box!
DC: (LOL AGAiN)
MHKC: PUT IT IN YOUR BOX.
DC: Just answer the question.
MHKC: Well, I decided right away (after asking Andy about limited-edition offerings) that I’d get an Orange Creme since that’s a Quickstrike that is specific to the store opening event.
MHKC: So duh, I got an Orange Creme and an Ice Cream Sandwich, Blueberry MUFFIN (not to be confused with regular Blueberry), S’mores, Brown Sugar Cinnamon FROSTED, and Strawberry Milkshake
MHKC: ALSO, we were instructed to put the orange cremes in the FREEZER which was a nice servicey touch from the Varietizer operator.
MHKC: David
MHKC: What did YOU get?
MHKC: OR PUT iN YOUR BOX
DC: Stop it.
DC: Grow up.
MHKC: *eyerollz*
MHKC: *flicks Silly Bandz*
DC: So unlike you, I am more into having things that other people can’t have.
MHKC: Because you are a fucking hypebeast.
DC: So I made half of my box the LIMITED EDITION Orange Cream ones.
DC: The other three packs I got were: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Strawberry Milkshake, and Ice Cream Sandwich
DC: That being said, Orange Cream is one of my favorite flavors of all time.
MHKC: Right. And gloating is one of your overall favorite activities of all time.
DC: I would open an Orange Julius franchise on St Marks if I could.
MHKC: That is a million dollar idea
MHKC: But it would be a shitshow
DC: Yeah, I mean, I don’t have a Twitter so that I can tell people my hopes and dreams.
DC: It’s primarily so that people will know that ME (David Cho) is doing something that YOU (AVERAGE PLEBE) can’t do.
DC: And what is that?
DC: EATING 6 ORANGE CREAMSICLE POP-TARTS, LOSERS!!!!!
DC: Anyways, yeah, so that was my box.

CUSTOM T-SHIRTS

TARTS

DC: Explain the t-shirt customizer.
MHKC: So, first off, they print on American Apparel blanks and it’s $20 a go
MHKC: And you get to select designs from, ooooh, like 20 different options, and they silkscreen it onto the shirt for you.
MHKC: There are like half eaten Pop-Tarts
MHKC: Sprinkles
MHKC: Toasters
MHKC: Cinnamon rolls
MHKC: THE NEW YORK CiTY SKYLiNE
DC: What more could a person who likes Pop-Tarts want!
MHKC: EXACTLY
MHKC: So you get to make a fancy design and, boy, it’s like the permutations are ENDLESS!
DC: Fun fact: I’m wearing my Pop-Tarts t-shirt right now!
MHKC: You’re wearing your Pop-Tarts t-shirt? You know what your Pop-Tarts t-shirt looks like? MY POP-TARTS T-SHIRT
MHKC: Remember when i labored over my design
MHKC: And you COLD BIT IT?
MHKC: Because you went after me
DC: The only qualm i had with the Pop-Tarts t-shirt customizer
DC: Is that you can’t pick the colors for each design, each design has a specific color associated with it.
MHKC: Right
MHKC: Because we both LOVED the pink
DC: (This is obviously to save costs on screens and avoid logistical hurdles, because you can only have one ink color per screen, or else you would have to have a design for each design and screen, which would mean instead of having 20 screens, you would have to have like 100)
DC: (I used to run a t-shirt company!)
MHKC: (you would! *hypebeast*)
MHKC: And weirdly one of the Pop-Tarts (kinda the cutest one in fact) you could only get in black.
DC: Wait, we didn’t both “LOVE” the pink
DC: Also, as far as “biting your design goes”
DC: All i did was, take the design that was on the back of my shirt and put it on the front
DC: You originally had a toaster on the front and then put a Pop-Tart on the back
DC: And what you did was audible your design after I had put in my design to completely change yours
DC: To what mine actually was.
DC: No one cares about this though.
MHKC: I WILL KILL YOU
DC: Go to Pop-Tart World and make a t-shirt everyone, they’re great!
MHKC: They’re totally great

THE CAFE

MHKC: Dude
MHKC: Pop-Tarts sushi?
MHKC: Not really fucking with it
MHKC: BOOM
DC: Then what was your favorite thing you had?
MHKC: I really liked the cinnamon roll crunch and the sour apple cobbler situation
MHKC: They were pretty and SUPER artificial tasting. It was like eating fridge magnets.
MHKC: In a good way
DC: I really liked the peanut butter and jelly Pop-Tart thing
DC: In fact, i had one when i got home last night and then again for breakfast this morning!
DC: It was two grape Pop-Tarts acting as the bread of a sandwich with bananas and peanut butter in the middle.
DC: I actually did like the sushi though.
DC: I love Fruit Roll-Ups but I also love traditional Japanese cuisine, so obviously that was right up my alley.
MHKC: I needed a more aggressive crunch factor for the sushi. I too adore Fruit Roll-Ups but everything gets way too squishy. But yeah for sure the Elvis thing was DEELiSH.
MHKC: Ew, how gross was ants on a log though?
DC: I didn’t even eat that.
MHKC: it was REAL celery
DC: I did not go to Pop-Tarts World to eat celery.
MHKC: Yeah it was incongruous
MHKC: I mean, does Kellogg’s know where celery even lives?
DC: OK
MHKC: BUT
DC: Final thoughts?
MHKC: NO
DC: yes?
MHKC: MORE
DC: Oh, ok.
MHKC: OK, i think it is significant to point out that they will have soft serve ice cream with Pop-Tarts crush ins and SPRINKLES
MHKC: I think it might be the closest thing to a Dairy Queen Blizzard that we have
MHKC: Like, i’m not thinking they will be THE SAME THiNG because DQ is this whole other ‘nother beast
DC: Coldstone exists too though?
DC: I think?
DC: On like Broadway and Astor Place
MHKC: Fuck a Coldstone
MHKC: Fuck outta here with a Coldstone
MHKC: Nah dude
MHKC: Textural differences
DC: Although it might have closed.
MHKC: GOOD
DC: What’s the difference, it’s ice cream with stuff in it.
DC: Oh, also at the cafe, you get to make your own Pop-Tart
DC: With Toppings
MHKC: And the icings
MHKC: Yes
MHKC: That was cool
MHKC: Mine rules
MHKC: You hate coconut though
MHKC: Which i get
DC: Yeah i really hate coconut.
DC: I don’t like anything about it.
MHKC: It’s unpleasant to chew
MHKC: But i like it
DC: The texture, the flavor, everything.
DC: Although I kind of like how they look.
MHKC: Hmm…
DC: I like the colorway of a coconut.
MHKC: THAT is interesting

FINAL THOUGHTS

MHKC: OH
MHKC: DUDE
MHKC: The music!
MHKC: We HAVE to talk about the original songs selected from teen artists from YouTube and Facebook
MHKC: There was that fake Jason Mraz Pop-Tarts song
DC: It was called “Start the Day”
DC: Can i tell you something though?
MHKC: Yes.
DC: So when we were at the computers where you could browse what Pop-Tarts was doing with social media (Fun fact: Pop Tart is a top 20 American Facebook fan pages with almost 2mm fans)
DC: There was a YouTube page that I was browsing
DC: But before you came over, i actually was looking at someone whose name was “David Choi” and i like, quickly scrolled down the page from that because I didn’t want to hear your “ribbing” about how his name and my name were similar.
DC: Sorry, i just had to get that off my chest.
DC: Anyways
DC: Would you recommend Pop-Tarts World?
MHKC: Um not to anybody i know
MHKC: BUT
MHKC: I definitely have seen people in the greater Times Square area who would lose their damn minds and have a crazy good time
MHKC: AND
MHKC: I also think they need to pop up some varietizers in different parts of town
DC: Haha stop.
MHKC: Chuck one in the BAMN automat!
DC: That place is a Baoguette now
MHKC: OH RIGHT
DC: You can get overpriced Banh Mi there
DC: I would recommend people go check it out for the sake of seeing it and being like “Hey, i went to Pop-Tarts World”
MHKC: Yeah
DC: But gauge your expectations appropriately
DC: It’s a store that sells Pop-Tarts, you know?
MHKC: Totes
DC: Also, if you go up there, check out Szechuan Gourmet
MHKC: PORK
DC: It’s a Chinese place on 39th street between 5th and 6th with two of my favorite things to eat of all time.
MHKC: I went home thinking about the pork
DC: Sliced pork belly with chili leeks and this string bean dish.
DC: Both of them are insanely awesome.
DC: And it’s right by Pop-Tarts World!
MHKC: it would be a good palette cleanser after you blasted your tastebuds with all those Pop-Tarts
DC: What more could you want!
MHKC: Srs.

The Menace of the Professional Left

Duly denoted

“Of those who complain that Obama caved to centrists on issues such as healthcare reform, [White House spokesman Robert] Gibbs said: ‘They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.’” I’m sorry… what? You mean your grassroots movement of the youngs and their fellow travelers that put a president in the White House five dollars at a time? Oh, no, not them: “Gibbs said the professional left is not representative of the progressives who organized, campaigned, raised money and ultimately voted for Obama. Progressives, Gibbs said, are the liberals outside of Washington ‘in America,’ and they are grateful for what Obama has accomplished in a shattered economy with uniform Republican opposition and a short amount of time.” According to approval rating polls, that seems to be largely true! So the White House is mad at a couple op-ed columnists and TV people. And the ACLU. Well, doesn’t that just sound like the Bush White House.

Steven Slater The George Mallory of Escaping Jet Blue Flight Attendants

“It was right there.”
Howard Turman, court-appointed lawyer to American hero Steven Slater, explains why his client chose to activate the emergency slide to make his exit from the JetBlue flight he was attending yesterday. This report contains a wealth of further detail on this story, but I’m still in love with the basic summary: “Law enforcement officials said that after the passenger cursed at Mr. Slater, he grabbed the intercom, cursed her out, bid passengers goodbye, grabbed a beer, and activated the inflatable exit chute. In court, an assistant district attorney, Benjamin Martell, said that Mr. Slater said over the plane’s intercom, ‘Those of you who have shown dignity and respect for 20 years, have a great ride,’ before making his final exit.” Slater remains in custody.