Next Time on WOTE: Natalie Portman and her Strange Attraction to Pompous, Overeducated, Underemployed Bloggers

Homunculus blogs and the world follows.

To wit --


July 18, 2008: I discuss -- I mention -- the WBNA for the first time in my life.

Four days later: The biggest event in the history of the league takes place; hockey moms and Joes-six-pack learn what WNBA actually stands for.

Coincidence? Possibly.


Beginning of August: Homunculus visits a friend in Denmark for a week.

The weekend I return: Major stories about Denmark appear in not one, but two of America's finest newspapers.

Coincidence? Unlikely.


Sept. 3, 2008: Homunculus becomes the first blogger in history to devote an entire entry to the Saguaro cactus.

And today: The Times reports on a disturbing new trend in Arizona: Saguaro cactus theft.

Coincidence? Not hardly.


I shall henceforth be known as Homunculus J. Delphic, the Vatic Oracle of the Blogosphere.

...and speaking of corruption, convictions, and monumental idiocy in a leadership position...

...Thailand's prime minister, Samak Sundaravej, was forced to resign on Tuesday for accepting payments for work he did on a Thai cooking show while in office. Apparently Samak made four guest appearances on a show called Tasting and Complaining (in America, this is known as "dinner with Bubby & Zadie"), and pocketed, for his hard work,

[drum roll, please]

$2,350!

Wow, talk about poor choices. I make that much with four blog entries, and I don't get paid for this blog. If only we could have nailed Bush for something like that.

Fortunately for Samak, he will probably remain in office anyway, since his party is naming him its nominee for the upcoming parliamentary vote to determine his successor -- "an outcome," says the Times, "that would seem to defy the spirit of the court ruling." Ya think? The Times would seem to be understating that one.

"The appeal in the defamation case is scheduled to be heard on Sept. 25, when Mr. Samak plans to address the United Nations in New York," according to the Times. "The court said he would face an arrest warrant if he did not appear. Mr. Samak has said he is confident that he will not be ousted while he is away."

Good thinking, Sam, 'cause it's not like that exact same thing happened the last time a Thai prime minister left town to make an appearance at the UN. Ah, Thailand, you never fail to amuse. (It just occurred to me that Thailand is like the half-witted, flakey friend in the group who can't get his act together to save his life, but you keep him around anyway because you know you'll have some crazy-ass stories to tell the next day.)

I miss you, Thailand, and I'll be back soon, no matter who's in charge and fucking things up.

Let's Say You Want to Date an Objectivist Asshole

Those of you who have resorted to online dating or are considering it would be well-served to check out this article from yesterday's Times. (I read it myself, but only for entertainment -- Homunculus's problem, as you know by now, is juggling his many lady-friends, not finding them in the first place.)

Should my pipeline of celebrity-blogger groupies ever run dry (God forbid), here are three niche dating sites I will not be joining:

www.TheAtlasSphere.com
www.DateMyPet.com
www.STDmatch.net

And here's my favorite quote from the article, by James Hancock, of Orillia, Ontario, who met his wife on TheAtlasSphere.com:

"Women who don’t know or follow [Ayn] Rand tend to just accept what they’ve been told. I can’t be with someone like that in the long-term."

God bless you, James. And may I just say, your wife is a very lucky woman. I expect to find her on RepublicanSingles.com by the 2012 primaries.

30 Things NOT to Do Before You Die

If you saw the Sunday Styles section of the Times several weeks ago ("10 Things to Do Before This Article is Finished"), you know that Life Lists are seriously in vogue. There are countless books dedicated explicitly to the concept, including Fifty Places to Play Golf Before You Die, 101 Things to Do Before You Turn 40, 1,000 Places to See Before You Die (the best-seller that spawned a successful travel documentary on the Travel Channel[1]), and the 1001 Books/Movies/Albums/Paintings You Must Read/See/Hear/See Before You Die series, which, were you to attempt to read, see, hear, and see all 4,004 items, would take nearly 142 years. (I calculated. ) There is also a recent novel, The Next Thing on My List: A Novel, by Jill Smolinski, which merely utilizes the (high-as-a-skydiver) concept as the premise, and which will surely be adapted into a mediocre, mid-budget movie. And speaking of upcoming mediocre, mid-budget movies, there's one of those, too: The Bucket List, starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. There’s also a popular website (www.43Things.com) and a ubiquitous ad campaign (Visa’s "Things to Do While You’re Alive"). Even The New Yorker, that pantheon of the highbrow, joined the parade. Last week’s issue includes an article entitled "My Life List," in which John McPhee, that human pantheon of the highbrow, guides us through the catalog of strange foods he has consumed.

Everybody’s doing it. Or at least, you know, making lists about doing it. Freeman apparently wants to attain the perfect golf swing, which may or may not be more attainable than another goal that should be on his List if it isn’t already: playing something other than the Stately Black Man Performing Voiceover Narration to Tell the Story of a White Protagonist. Jerry Rice evidently has more modest aspirations: he wants to visit Rome before he dies. (Jerry, if you’re reading this -- and I know you are -- I’d be happy to schedule your trip for a small charge -- say, a percentage of your Dancing With the Stars appearance fee.)

Having already accomplished many of the feats Listed in the Times story -- skydiving, seeing a dinosaur fossil, swimming with dolphins, living in a beach house, developing a more positive attitude[2], and so on -- ol’ Homunculus has little use for such a List himself. Rather, as someone who sees the glass half full of emptiness, I have chosen to live a slightly different List. My Life List, formulated in 2004 after a particularly nasty bout of gonorrhea (which I contracted, ironically enough, after conquering one item on my previous To-Do List), represents an inventory of things I want to avoid doing before I die.[3]

Thus, without further ado -- life is short, after all -- here is my List of 30 Things NOT to Do Before I Die:

1) Read Fifty Places to Play Golf Before You Die.
2) Play golf in fifty different places.
3) Play golf fifty more times.
4) Pass up the opportunity to have sex with Rachel McAdams if presented with the opportunity.
5) Get a Prince Albert.
6) Visit all of Central Asia's "Stans."
7) Name my son Stan.
8) Name my daughter Stan.
9) Read Pride & Prejudice.
10) Eat a Rocky Mountain oyster.
11) Have my parachute fail on me while skydiving.
12) Have a dolphin eat me while swimming with one.
13) Live in a house built by Habitat for Humanity.
14) Have a threesome (the uncool kind).
15) Watch Michael Bay's entire oeuvre.
16) Watch Kevin Smith's entire oeuvre.
17) See the Eagles in concert.
18) Meet Paris Hilton. *
18a) Bang Paris Hilton. *
18b) Contract Herpes. *
19) Meet Britney Spears.
19a) Bang Britney Spears.
19b) Contract retardation.
20) Find God.
21) Visit Somalia.
22) Visit Irkutsk.
23) Visit Arkansas.
24) Have a shit fit, perhaps literally, as a doctor I just met takes a pen knife to the crown of my jewels and slices away a patch of the most sensitive flesh on my body. *
25) See Stonehenge. (Heard it's overrated.)
26) See Ayres Rock. (Ditto.)
27) See Rockys II, III, V, & VI.
28) See Spider-Men II*, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, & IX.
29) Have my back waxed.
30) Make a list of things to avoid doing before dying. *

---

[1] According to the Times article, Patricia Schultz, the author of 1,000 Places, has visited about 80% of the places listed in the book. The Times sounded impressed, but shouldn't she have had to visit all the places to write about and recommend them? Isn't that like Ebert leaving a movie 20 minutes early and then giving it a thumbs-up?

[2] Ha! Just kidding.

[3] Incidentally, dying is actually number one on my list of things to avoid. However, in light of the technicality that one cannot die before dying, it has been left off the List.

* Too late.

Harry Potter and the Predicament that Revealed Him to be a Selfish Little Prick

For those of us who believe that chess, and not Harry Potter worship, is the only acceptable “geek pursuit” for people who still want to be regarded as essentially normal (I’m sorry, but standing in line for seventeen hours dressed as a Hogwart automatically disqualifies you, even if you’re nine), the first installment in the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, stuck a thorn in our collective side. In the book (which my girlfriend at the time forced me to read), and again in the movie (which my sister forced me to see), Harry and his dweeby friends match wits, in a climactic battle, with some sort of magical force that, if memory serves, can telekinetically transport enormous chess pieces with the skill of a Grandmaster but cannot think of a simpler way to vanquish three 11-year-olds. (The scene is reminiscent of the famous match between a knight and Death in the (recently)-late, great Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal, except that Harry et al.’s duel is not a metaphor representing life’s profoundest mysteries, and also it was directed by the guy who made Bicentennial Man.)

When the chess studs of the world saw that scene, they nearly punched holes through their computer monitors (and they would have, too, if those monitors did not serve as their sole conduits to the outside world). In merging what some still perceive as a pastime for “nerds,” “dweebs,” “geeks,” “losers,” “antisocial misanthropes,” “bald hairy fatties,” and “28-year-old virgins” with the youngest member of the Holy Triad of Obsessive Geekdom (Lord of the Rings, or “LOTR,” and Star Wars being the founding members), J.K. Rowling set us board-game heroes back two or three decades, maybe more. How many handsome, charismatic pawn-pushers will it now take to return the King’s Game to the badass status it enjoyed pre-Potter? No muggle knows.

What all those Harry Potter geeks who are not also chess geeks (and I pity the adolescent who is both) do not know is that a close examination of the climactic game in The Sorcerer’s Stone exposes their hero as a pusillanimous little wanker. In last Sunday’s New York Times’s chess column, Dylan Loeb McClain analyzes the game from the crucial point (the “Sorcerer’s Stone Position”) at which Harry and his fellow whelps have to nerdily strategize their way out of what appears to be certain defeat. Those who remember the film will recall that Harry comes up with the solution, ordering Ron (as a Black knight -- a subconscious homage to Bergman, perhaps?) to sacrifice himself for the good of all wizardkind. As McClain reveals, however, there was a faster way to win: Harry (as a Black bishop -- a subconscious nod to the kid-friendly Catholic Church, perhaps?) could have sacrificed himself instead! McClain seems blasé about the decision (“2…Bc5 wins faster, but Harry gets axed”), probably because he cannot use the phrase “self-serving bastard” in a family newspaper, but the rest of us know better. Harry had a choice: a) martyr himself in the name of Wizardly Honor and endgame expediency, not to mention the cutting of a decidedly mediocre movie by several seconds, b) or sacrifice his best friend. He chose (b), the poltroonish prick. If that cowardice had come to light earlier, you can bet I wouldn’t have been the only muggle rooting for Voldemort in the final installment.

I Do... Hate You

I get the Sunday Times. When news of Iraq, Iran, Darfur, North Korea, Afghanistan, Somalia, Russia, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Tibet, Kashmir, Congo, Chechnya, and Israel becomes too much for me -- not to mention the health care, economic, energy, environmental, and cultural crises that make up the “National Report” -- I turn to the marriage announcements in the Sunday Styles section. Then I get more depressed.

In theory, the three or four pages of vows -- with their anecdotes of courtship and romance and photos of smiling couples, their happy faces touching -- provide the only regular dose of cheer in the paper. In actuality, these theoretically happy announcements just make you feel worse about your own life. I promise you. The anecdotes of courtship and romance make you bitter that you don’t have an anecdote like that yourself, and the happy couples smiling at you are invariably better looking than you and your hypothetical-future spouse will ever be, even if you did have an anecdote like theirs to begin with.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of letting these theoretically happy people share their happiness with you, here is what a typical New York Times marriage announcement looks like:

Hannah Alexandra Shapiro, the daughter of Dr. Larry R. Shapiro and Melinda S. Shapiro of Great Neck, N.Y., was married yesterday to Dr. Tucker Harrison DeWitt IV, the son of Tucker Harrison DeWitt III and Cindy Janet DeWitt of Greenwich, Conn., at the Gables Yacht Club in Coral Gables, Fla. Rabbi David G. Axelrod officiated.

The bride and bridegroom met at Princeton, from which they graduated, she summa cum laude and he magna cum laude.

Mrs. DeWitt, 26, is an associate at the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York. She received a law degree from Yale and was previously a clerk for Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the United States Supreme Court. The bride’s father is the chief of anesthesiology at the Franklin Hospital Medical Center in Valley Stream, N.Y. Her mother is the vice president of news broadcasting at CBS.

Mr. DeWitt, 27, is a neurosurgeon at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. He received a Ph.D.-M.D. combined degree from Harvard. The bridegroom’s father was president and CEO of Morgan-Stanley. His mother co-directs the DeWitt Foundation, which was founded by the bridegroom’s father, who also serves as a co-director.

There’s good reason to hate these announcements, to use them as the protective layer between the litter box and the floor, as I do. With the exception of a few that include anecdotes about how the couple fell in love or how the guy proposed, which are even more nauseating than the boring ones (yes, I’m talking to you, Matthew Lance Slonim, who left an envelope entitled “The Quest for Yes” in your woman’s cell phone, a quest that ultimately took her on a flight across five states and ended in her grandfather’s nursing-home room, where Mr. Slonim was waiting, ring in hand -- cue index finger, open mouth, & gagging sound), every announcement lists the same prosaic details in the same prosaic prose. Do you think we care that Richard Primus went to Harvard? The dude’s 37. He graduated when the first Bush was president. Telling us where he went to college is akin to what they do at NBA games when they announce the starting lineups, and they say, “…out of Duke, Luol Deng!” Luol Deng is not “out of Duke.” He played one year at Duke. He is out of Sudan. Tell us something interesting about Richard Primus instead. Something unique, something criminal. Tell us how he received that eight-inch-long scar on his leg on an African hunting safari. Tell us why he made eight trips to Bangkok in a three-year span during the mid-‘90s. Tell us how many chicks (and guys) he banged before scoring with the lucky bride. Tell us anything other than the fact that his mother is a retired allergist and clinical immunologist who practiced in Groton, Conn.

Then there are the ones that make you wonder why they’re in the Times at all. Oftentimes the couple’s connection to the Tri-State Area is tenuous at best. The groom can be from California and the bride from Texas, the wedding was on Key West, and the couple will be settling in Chicago… and they post in the Times because the bride’s stepfather lives in Poughkeepsie. Cut us a break, will ya. Just invite the stepfather and leave it at that.

There. Now you hate them too. And so far I’ve only offered you small potatoes as fodder. Here are the big potatoes, my friend, potatoes big enough to be used for the au gratin served at a 250-guest reception at the Waldorf:

Mostly, you hate these people for the same reasons you hate Derek Jeter or Scarlett Johansson: for being young and rich and successful and talented, and for being far more attractive than someone who is young and rich and successful and talented deserves to be. You hate them for going to Princeton, like approximately one-third of the people getting married in the New York metropolitan area did. (The other two-thirds went to Harvard or Dartmouth. And once, there was a chick from USC.) You hate them for having their whole perfect lives perfectly planned out by the time they’re 27. And yes, admit it: you hate these newlyweds for announcing their newlyweddedness to the world in the first place.

So say it with me! Sing it from the altar of your 400-square-foot studio where you live -- alone:

Fuck you, Daniel Yaron Maman -- sorry, Dr. Daniel Yaron Maman -- for being a 28-year-old plastic surgeon with an MBA from Oxford, and for marrying an absolute hottie like Stacey Robin Harris despite obviously being a giant nerd yourself. And fuck you, Victoria Kathryn Potterton, who, after finishing at Dartmouth, are now graduating from Yale, at 26, with a combined medical and MBA degree. And fuck you, also, for holding the wedding at the Yale Club, whatever that is.

Fuck you, Yus -- yeah, you, Helena Yu and Anthony Yu -- who begin your medical residencies next month at Penn, and who coordinated your life together so expertly that you married partners with the same last name. And fuck you, Andy Bellin, the author of Poker Nation, whose mother was a model with Wilhelmina Models in the 1960s, and whose maternal grandmother, Countess Alicia Spaulding Paolozzi (I am not making this up, I swear), helped Gian Carlo Menotti found the Spoleto Festival USA and also drove for the winning women’s team in the 1958 automotive Tour de France (automotive Tour de France?).

Fuck you, John Marter Timken Jr., for being a descendant of John Adams and J.P. Morgan. Fuck you, Boji Wong and Benjamin Berkman, for having David Dinkins officiate your wedding even though he couldn’t even handle the duties himself (a rabbi/cantor also took part, presumably because Dinkins needed brushing up on his Hebrew chanting). And fuck you, Minor Myers III, for being named Minor Myers III, and also for getting married at Anderson House, the home of the Society of the Cincinnati, "an association of the descendants of officers in the American Revolutionary War, of which you are a member."

I hope you all get divorced.