June 14, 2005
More than Just a Prefuse 73 Song
Look, I don't want to bum anybody out here, but I'm hoping that by sharing my story, I might be able to help some of you who share my dread affliction. You see...
My name is Matt, and I'm a mint-o-holic.
It started recently when I was socializing actively, and I started getting really obsessed with having fresh breath. I'd always have a tin of Eclipse mints on me. Then it became more about being really bored at work and just needing something to break up the strings of e-mails and phone calls that fill up my time these days.
Now it's a bona fide addiction. I realized this today when I was eating one Certs Powerful Mint (the ones in the flat plastic rectangle) every few minutes. What happened next was positively horrifying. I ate one mint before checking my Outlook, and then, upon seeing an e-mail from this really stupid lady who'd been bugging me all day, I reached for the mints again without even realizing it. Somehow, I've turned retsin into some kind of narcotic.
God only knows where this will lead. All I ask is that, if you see me on the street, with flavor crystals caked on my lips offering sexual favors to a Blonde British woman in tennis whites, remember that I was once like you.
Posted by matt at 07:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 02, 2005
Please Kill Me
I have to say that I'm of two minds regarding how lovely the park looks in bloom. It's pretty and all, but I'm also at the point where I'd rip my nose off of my face if I didn't fear the inevtiable snot deluge (By the way, any metal bands wishing to call themselves "snot deluge" should give me a shout out in the liner notes). I'd take a Benadryl and check out, but I'm still neck deep in work because of that feeding tube lady.
Aside from my seasonal infirmity, I feel like I'm at the height of my powers. greenideas looks so sexy, I almost can't restrain my lust for it. Also, you can now get to hcb by pointing your web machines towards hotchocolateboy.com. I think that's very cool.
Um, okaybyebyeiloveyou!
Posted by matt at 11:09 AM | TrackBack
April 27, 2005
Amatuer Webbery
If anybody tells you that it is easy to build a website, you may punch them in their dirty mouth. It's okay. Go nuts.
Posted by matt at 01:35 PM
April 25, 2005
Prepare for Boredom: HCB on Chinese Monetary Policy & Trade
[Note: this isn't really a standard hcb-style posting, but it's boring enough (to many) that I thought I'd put it here instead of my bread & butter blog.]
On the one hand, I've got to give Chuck Schumer a lot of credit for pushing legislation to put some pressure on China to revalue the renminbi. Historically, the democratic party isn't the one that's most likely to crow about international monetary policy. The problem is that it's just not in America's best interests for China to revalue. At first blush, it may seem like the reason we have such a huge trade deficit with China is because, by maintaining their dollar peg at its current rate, they're making their goods so cheap for us that we can't help but buy them. The thinking then, is that a more realistic peg, or even a floating yuan would make Chinese goods less attractive to US consumers, and so narrow the trade gap somewhat.
There's nothing wrong with that reasoning as far as it goes, but it omits one important point. China has the world's highest concentration and largest amount of dollars in its forex reserves. This is mostly an effort to prop up the dollar. If China revalued or let her currency float, she would have no reason to artificially bolster the dollar, and would likely sell off many of its US currency reserves. A sell-off by China would cause other Asian nations to follow suit, with the result that the already ailing dollar would bottom out.
This is to say nothing of the fact that any unilateral action by the US against China on matters of trade and currency would surely fall in breach of the WTO. In order for the US strategy to pass WTO muster, we would have to demonstrate that China is manipulating its currency to keep it artificially low. Considering the Renminbi has a stable peg, that would be more than a little difficult to show.
Joseph Stiglitz and Lawerence Lau put forward an interesting alternative to revaluation in today's FT (Paid subscription required. Just pick up the print edition if you're interested. There's also an interesting comment piece on what the EU could do in the wake of a 'Non' in the French referendum on the EU Constitution at the end of the month). Their idea is that China should impose a tax on all exports. It would cool growth in their domestic manufacturing sector, thereby encouraging its trading partners (especially the US, EU, and Japan) to back off, and it would generate some revenue for the state.
We can't let the "obvious" (i.e. politically popular) solution to our widening trade gap with China get in the way of our big-picture thinking. If we're going to push China (which isn't necessarily wrong), we should be mindful what we're pushing her towards.
Posted by matt at 04:55 PM
My Friend, John Bolton
I had the weirdest dream ever on Saturday night (not, as far as I can gather, a nightmare induced by my filmic experience that night): I was somewhere on a business trip, and John Bolton, George Bush's embattled nominee for UN Ambassador, was staying in my hotel. Somehow, I ended up sitting on a curb somewhere with him. We just sat there and talked about foreign policy and just life in general. It was totally congenial, and dream-me came away from it thinking he was a pretty good guy.*
The weirdest part was how, when I woke up in the morning and saw him all over the Sunday shows, I was like "aww, it's John," like we'd actually hung out and been cool. Too weird.
*Note: While he probably isn't as bad a guy as he's being made out to be, he's most definitely not a good guy, and he has no business representing this country in the UN.
Posted by matt at 10:43 AM
April 21, 2005
Devil, Begone!
Are you looking for someone to take that extra room in your apartment? Should he be a professional graduate "student" in his mid-to-late 20s? Maybe you want someone who doesn't have so much a personality as a loose-knit hodgepodge of affectations that he reeeally hopes might someday get him laid, but insofar as he does have a stable personality, it's that of a compulsively lying borderline pedophile. If you like your alone time, you're in luck! You'll never see or hear him (but he'll be watching and listening), except for when you catch him masturbating on the living room sofa to Degrassi High. Interested parties should have plenty of space in their living room to accomodate several shelves of arcane critical theory books used to justify the aformentioned pedophilia. If you want this person living with you, drop me a line and I'll pass along your info.
Intimately related to the above, there will be a small room opening up in greennideas/hcb hq on July 1st or sooner.
Posted by matt at 03:06 PM | Comments (1)
April 20, 2005
Doin' It
It's starting to warm up, which means that there's all kinds of irrational doin'-it related goings on in my head. Why do I have to be like some kind of animal that feels like it has to rub up against something just because the air around me gets warmer? I don't know, but I clearly am that kind of animal.
So is Jeff R. of Wigu and Overcompensating. To wit:
Posted by matt at 03:22 PM
October 01, 2004
Blinky
I've already said most of what I want to say about the debate, but I do wonder if anybody else noticed how much The President was blinking during his closing statement. It was really freaky--like he had two strobe lights strapped to his face. My co-debate-watchers kept pointing out that conventional wisdom has it that that indicates that the blinker is lying. I don't know about all that, but he was clearly uncomfortable.
It might be worth thinking about why.
Posted by matt at 12:54 PM
September 23, 2004
Double Yup
Yeah, that about sucked.
On the plus side, it was over early enough that I got to see the last couple minutes of Celebrity Poker Showdown. Maura Tierney playing Lauren Graham in poker. Hott.
Posted by matt at 11:02 PM
Yup
15 minutes till West Wing and ER still sucks.
Somehow, Miss Piggy is rappelling down Mt. Rushmore hawking Pizza Hut. I'm very confused. Is that awesome? Non-awesome? Why?
Posted by matt at 10:46 PM
Call It
You know, I had this crazy idea to blog the ER premiere in real-time, but the first five minutes sucked so hard I figured I'd be doing more harm than good by chronicling the destruction.
Anybody who's known me for more than a little while knows that I go through periods of deep, abiding love for this show. But over the last couple of seasons, it's like the writers have been carrying out an aggresive program to destroy everything about it that's worth caring about.
It's cool though. The 11:00 West Wing is on Bravo in 33 minutes.
Posted by matt at 10:27 PM
September 22, 2004
John Schaefer is Boring!
Okay, so that might not be entirely fair. I do like Soundcheck from time to time. But just look at the line-up for this season of New Sounds Live. If it were possible to cry from boredom, I'd be blubbering all over the place!
For what is ostensibly supposed to be a festival of so-called "new music," I don't think I could really imagine a more boring, or, might I add, predictable line-up (oh, it's New Sounds at Merkin, and Bang on a Can is playing? Really?)
Jesus! Exclamation point!
Posted by matt at 11:36 AM | Comments (1)
September 19, 2004
What's Wrong with Korea?
As I celebrate my very own quartacentennial I have but one regret. It is the weird Korean vodka-like liquid I imbibed not 45 minutes ago that is now playing havoc with my stomach. At the urging of a good friend of mine as well as the lovely and talented bartendress at Patio (here in the Slope), I threw caution to the wind and drank deeply of the sickly sweet dram.
Bad idea jeans.
It's not even that I've had too much to drink. It's really just the case that stupid Korean vodka-like drinks are neither good nor good for you. Nobody should drink them.
Sorry, Korea. It's really nothing personal.
Posted by matt at 01:39 AM
September 02, 2004
She's Totally an Artiste
I don't want to talk too much smack about Bravo, since they show the best drama on TV, but whose idea was it to put Jennifer fucking Lopez on Inside the Actors Studio?
Posted by matt at 12:54 PM
August 26, 2004
I Don't Like TV On the Radio
I don't like TV On the Radio. Like, not even a little bit.
Posted by matt at 01:47 PM | Comments (2)
A Quandry
So, there's this aspiring pop-star in China. His name is Mao Hai (I think), and his body is covered in hair, in the venerable tradition of other so-called "hair children."
If you want to learn more about him, you can read "Meet 'Hair Child' Singer by Coincidence" or "Do Not Fight But the Sad Feeling of First Love."
I can't for the life of me figure out whether or not it's acceptable to think this is hilarious. To be sure, I have no doubts as to its overwhelming hilarity. My problem concerns the morality of revelling in said hilarity versus just, you know, letting it go.
Posted by matt at 10:24 AM | Comments (2)