Over at Hyperbole, Jim Haefele reminisces about what he refers to as his decade. Well, we can't choose the time and date of our own birth and one's own memories always end up entangled with the cultural detritus of the period, plus he's in Tunisia and I know when you are away from home, it doesn't take much to stir up some warm associationsbut I can't think of a way to let the guy down easy. The '80 sucked rocks. I was moved to write a little screed in his comments:
I hate to tell you this, man, but the '80s were the worst decade of the last handful, the utter bottom of the worst aspects of the '70s, the beginning of the worst parts of the '90s, plus shoulder pads and a Flock of Seagulls.
You know Reagan was president the entire time I was in college! What a nightmare.
There's a reason SNL had that mutant goat boy hosting their spoof MTV '80s nostalgia show. I know the '70s is played out and the corpse of the '90s is still smelly, but I don't think I will ever feel nostalgia for cousin Balki or Hands Across America.
categories: salonika x-syndicate
11:19:21 AM 
say what []
The Raven has, by dint of daily effort, accomplish what many bloggers dream of doing but few manage: He publishes a highly literate, well crafted, thoughtful essay every day (sometimes more than one per day), usually on the newsmedia environment we live in. His audience grows steadily. He has earned each daily reader.
I'm not sure how he does it so consistently and so well, but I suspect his seekrit ingredient is talent.
Today (in Being Critical), the Raven advises us on correcting the astigmatic Hubble-telescope view of current events we may be getting if we rely on any homogeneous hegemonous mediasphere for our perspective. Along the way, he dispenses with lesser lights with quick surgical strikes. Nanoconservative bête noire Robert Fisk is summarily dismissed:
As if there were any doubts, his conclusion tells us he's going for the artistic angle: "We may put on the hairshirt of morality in explaining why these people should die." He was obviously gunning for a shockinaw effect with this, but he only succeeds in further deadening our already-numbed minds and does so while dancing on the corpses of the dead.
The Raven is a new kind of columnist for the post-everything readers he describes as "constantly checking and re-verifying your own assumptions, always asking 'who benefits if I believe this?'"
10:22:31 AM say what []
