TheAgitator.com
Links for 8/26/08
Tuesday, August 26th, 2008How the United States’ drug war fuels profits and violence in Mexico
TSA boldly protecting us from underwire bras
North Korea halts reactor disablement
Time to put The Catcher in the Rye out to pasture?
Backlash against bag tax heating up
Tim Harford on what to expect when you’re expecting the Olympics
Holden Caulfield is a whiny, self-indulgent little prep school turd and, frankly, I hated his guts in high school and still do. He didn’t speak to my experience or pretty much anybody else that I knew.
He’s a waste of space as a “person”, as a character and the book should be immediately shitcanned for something better.
Heh, I’ve never read that book. Doesn’t sound like I’m missing much, tho.
And for the plastic bag tax, why do people think they’re entitled to plastic bags? Would they complain as much if the stores turned them into profit centers, and charged 15 or 20 cents each?
Personally, I’m following this advice: Take your Canvas Bags when you go to the supermarket.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVh15aUt8-c
So are most adolescents. That’s why it resonates.
Personally, I’m ambivalent about the book, but that’s probably because I read it when I was 23 and about to graduate from college. If I’d read it even 2 years earlier when I was goofing around in school and failing my classes, I’d have identified with Holden and probably have loved the book. Even when reading at a more mature point in my life, I could remember back to high school and the first two years of college and think, “This was me.”
And that’s why it’s popular.
Gonna have to come in with the “it doesn’t matter” column on Salinger. We didn’t read it in high school, so I didn’t get around to it until 30. By then, it couldn’t have mattered less. But then again, what did matter in high school? Certainly not Scarlet Letter or Great Expectations or Red Badge of Courage. The only two works that I was exposed to in HS that I developed any appreciation for were both titles that I got to choose myself (though there were a number of other titles that I got to choose myself that ended up not interesting me, as well.) And neither of those were coming-of-age stories.
In conclusion, reading about young people sucks. And yes, I felt that way even when I was young.
Ah, looks like North Korea requires more US taxpayer money, which the administration (either one) will be happen to throw at them.
No.
Melendez said he didn’t have any statistics on how many times passengers are screened because of bras. But he said, “we do everything we can to ensure that a passenger doesn’t feel humiliated.”
Oh, really?
I was pretty fucking humiliated when I had to step to the side in a little cordoned area with a single chair, where the TSA agent said, “I have to touch you here….” In front of ALL my male colleagues, several collaborators, and many others who had been at the scientific conference with me.
It’s a BRA, you jackasses. Get over yourselves!
And oh yeah, that line about “it’s ok to bring strollers through the detector” is also bullshit. Instead, you get to unload the child and carry him while also unpacking your carry-on luggage and taking off your shoes and your coat and placing them in separate bins and no honey, you can’t get down right now, and then gathering it all up again on the other side, trying to get dressed while still holding the wriggling child, while the agent scowls at you because you’re struggling to repack you items, put on your shoes and open up the frickin’ stroller again.
I am done with flying.
And oh yes, the expressed breast milk had to go in a separate bin, too.
I had to read “Catcher” in high school, and it was utter agony. It’s trite, whiny, and just lays there like a dog turd on the sidewalk.
“A Separate Peace” is a coming of age story, though geared to those a few years younger.