A certain childlike innocence...

If you ever want to find out just how uninteresting you really are, get a job where the quality and frequency of your thoughts determine your livelihood.

-Bill Watterson, in a Kenyon College commencement address (1990)



My find (don't you just love how little effort it takes to "discover" something these days, thanks to the internet?) of the week is this page, a chronological archive of every Calvin and Hobbes comic published. The internet is a wonderous thing, non?

Growing up, Calvin and Hobbes was probably my all time favorite comic strip. It's still one of the few things from my childhood I'm able to enjoy equally, if not more today as an adult. What better way to impart the teachings of John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes, than through the eyes of a six-year old kid with a genius-level vocabulary and his beloved stuffed tiger?


While I wouldn't compare their relationship to that of Jack and Tyler Durden, there are definitely deeper philosophical undertones.


Talking to Laura, I've learned that INSEAD where our good friend and proponent of physioeconomics, Dr. Phil Parker is on staff, is regarded as home of the top MBA program in the European Union, and somewhere in the top 10 worldwide...so it appears that our good friend isn't the hack he appears to be. She's apparently impressed that I got a personal reply from the guy...I suppose I was too, since he's in charge of the project, and despite the weakness of that particular reply, the site is still a major accomplishment.

I also got a moving e-mail from her vaguely alluding to some juicy news she has for me, more of the baseless but completely touching flattery she insists on lavishing on me (I love you for it, cherie!) and more potential readers for this fluff I crank out. I'm unceasingly amazed by the calibre of people who choose to have me in their lives. It's really quite a statement about the nature of people, what kinds of characters they run with.

It appears that MasterCard, via their proxy in the ad agency of McCann-Erickson, has made a travesty of one of the most classic moments in film history, the excruciatingly funny phone-call scene where Mikey calls Nikki after he gets her number at the Dresden in Swingers. Who knows how much money they paid to these guys to just rip something off? I could so do that and start an ad agency...oh wait, I have something slightly resembling ethics and couldn't ever, in good conscience, blatantly steal and butcher an idea like that, unless in genuine homage. (Which this definitely isn't, as it sucks compared to the original.)

I'm watching season 11 of ER, and it's not bad so far, but I have to say that I'm increasingly alarmed by the portrayal of Asians in today's media (yesterday's link notwithstanding). Don't get me wrong, they say there's no such thing as bad publicity, and they should get credit for eschewing the stereotypical roles written for Asians. That being said, they've introduced two characters in an episode, a man and a woman, Korean, and while they're not overachieving soft-spoken pillars of the community, they've maybe gone a little too far in the opposite direction. They're incestuous 'tards. Nice. This "teen" girl comes in, has a baby, is in complete denial, they find her family, and it turns out her "developmentally challenged" 23 year-old brother is the father. Hrm. I'd almost be more comfortable with the "Kenneth Park, class of 2005" version, sheesh. Guess we'll see where they take this, but I can't see it ending anything other than farcically poorly.

OK, they didn't make them incestuous, thank god...but it's still goofy...

Ah well, gotta go read more Calvin & Hobbes...