So a few months ago when that Ukranian ship with dozens of Russian Tanks was hijacked by pirates off of Somalia, I posited that Blackwater et al. should get into the business of privateering.  Now, in this article about Africa being the new hotspot for private security firms a Blackwater executive discusses seeing great, “‘opportunity in the area of “maritime security,‘” with the article continuing, “In mid-October, Blackwater had announced that its 183-foot, helipad-equipped ship, the McArthur, was standing by to assist shipping companies in the area. (After being contacted by at least 70 shipping and insurance firms interested in its anti-piracy services, Blackwater in December held three days of meetings in London with prospective clients.)”

Snap!  It was obvious but still feels good to have seen it coming.

Blackwater’s New Frontier: Their Own Private Africa

what will happen when we run out of existing aesthetics to recycle (regurgitate)? And you can’t even call this a pastiche–they’re exact replicas. Lazy much?

image from thedieline

retro cereal boxes

flickr user slworking2

Nice little bit of retroactive justification over at the boston globe editorial page—gen X “slackers” were actually keenly preparing for the economic contraction, “busy working on a more workable model … creating something worthwhile – a sustainable neighborhood, a tech future, a life we can manage.”  Vindication is the sweetest nectar.  And even through the hubris (granted, lip service given to “indulgences” and “frivolity”) the premise still stands.

So maybe the slackers had it right after all

from an email sent to us by a HAVC professor:

This was not hard to recognize as a fraud. but should you warn others?

[redacted]
Professor Emerita of History of Art and Visual Culture
[redacted]
University of California
1156 High Street
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
[redacted]@ucsc.edu

>To: tech.service8@live.com
>From: [redacted] <[redacted]@ucsc.edu>
>Subject: Re: EMAIL ACCOUNT MAINTENANCE
> >if you can’t write proper english you should go soak your head.
>
>At 04:02 PM 2/23/2009, you wrote:
>
>
>
>>Dear campus e-mail User,
>>
>>  A Computer Database Maintainance is currently going on. This Message is
>>Very Important. We are very concerned with stopping the proliferation of
>>spam. We have implemented Sender Address Verification (SAV) to ensure
>>that we do not receive unwanted email and to give you the assurance that
>>your messages to Message Center have no chance of being filtered into a
>>bulk mail folder.
>>
>>  To help us re-set your password on our database prior to maintaining our
>>database, you must reply to this e-mail and enter your Current Full email
>>address ( ) and Password ( ). Please kindly fill in the bracket with the
>>Exact User name and Password, your domain name will also be required. If
>>you are the rightful owner of this account, Our message center will
>>confirm your identity including the secret question and answer
>>immediately and We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause you.We
>>assure you more quality service at the end of this maintenance.
>>
>>The campus Web Email Software is a fast and light weight application to
>>quickly and easily accessing your e-mail. Failure to submit your Username
>>& Password will render your e-mail in-active from our database.
>>
>>Thank you for using the campus Web Email!
>>WEBMAIL TECHNICAL ADMIN
>>https://www.webmaster.org

and perhaps your edification, too:

filched from i love typography

just… fun to read.

“Picture a cross between Pee-wee Herman and Nurse Ratched, only more obsessive-compulsive.”

An Uneasy Hug From Thom Browne

some young people (less now than before koolaid of my father was released) have a hard time understanding how national politics is relevant to their everyday lives.  this is especially true in cases when the topic of discussion is how to spend dollar figures that have more zeros behind them than Isoroku Yamamoto.  some individuals on a forum I frequent came up with two excellent, real-world examples of exactly how much the stimulus could cost:

1. Enough to buy every US citizen about 87 grams of high-quality cocaine OR
2. Enough to rebuild the Twin Towers. Five and a half times. Out of weed.

Or, given the fact that indulgences are back in style, you could probably get a few choice 20th century genocide-enthusiasts into the Kingdom.  Or at least John Thain into purgatory.  So many choices!

wherein the author pretends to be a food critic and falls short:

over the past few months I have been compiling an unofficial mental list of the best mexican places in santa cruz.  above is a prime example of the kind of food I’m looking for: the machete taco from taqueria los pinos downtown.  As you can see from the (mouthwatering) picture, it consists of only four ingredients: two corn tortillas, carne asada, sauteed onions, and a few wedges of avocado.  with lime juice drizzled over it, the machete taco approaches my platonic ideal of mexican food, a meal where to remove any of the components would destroy its harmony, and adding anything would simply complicate it.  the tortillas are fresh and soft, the beef perfectly seasoned and tender, onions add a sweet note and melt into the avocado, which is always ripe and rich.  without the lime juice the tastes are slighly muddled, but the citrus bite adds needed clarity.  and for $3.29 the price is perfect, too.

what? machete taco not doing it for you?

you want a burrito?

los pericos: get the carnitas, they’re wonderfully crispy and are generously diced so that sometimes you’ll pull out a huge hunk of melting pork and the joy you feel is mirrored by the giant void left in the burrito. brian points out that this cavity is ideal for flooding with salsa.  plus, the self-serve chips and totally acceptable house salsa on the dry side (my preference for salsa) are pluses.

taqueria Michoacán: shrimp burrito is amazing, the shrimp are fat and juicy and the salsa they include is the perfect temprature for my sensitive gringo palette.

taqueria cabana: mushroom burrito is the best vegetarian burrito I’ve had, theirs are a little moister than normal but it works.  the fact that they use entire caps really is what does it, because the meatiness of the fungus is a better substitute for meat than anything else I can think of.

tacos more your deal?

obviously, los pinos.  machete taco, end of story. taqueria santa cruz has really good carne asada tacos with salsa verde, but I really only have eyes for the machete.

and guacamole, the king of condiments?  los pinos, again.  their ‘mole is more like a chutney, with giant half-mashed wedges of avocado, onions, cilantro, and plenty of lime.  probably best guac I’ve had the honor of eating.

here endeth the lesson.

This archeological layer dates from present -3 days to 0 days (present).  the society that discarded these emptied vessels must have been engaging in some manner of prolonged celebration, perhaps heralding the visit of some prominent emissary from a neighboring tribe.  traditionally such visitors brought gifts in the form of glass bottles, but any such artifacts that may have existed were most likely placed in sacred receptacles that line the byways of the village and were collected semifortnightly by men who wore ritualized attire and traveled in great clockwork coaches.  proximate discoveries indicate that the feasting that empied these urns may have been preceded by a ritualised burning of a carefully cultivated herbage, though more research will have to be undertaken to confirm this hypothesis.  in any case, this represents a truly splendid find which will add much to our knowledge of these secretive and rare individuals, homo bourgeoisus collegius.

so the campus email system took a nap this afternoon apparently—I left right when we noticed that the bank of uptime indicators resembled a lite-brite if you were only using red pegs.  When I returned everybody had that frazzled, mussed-up look where either they all just finished a department-wide makeout session or they had spent the last two hours dealing with the ire of academic-types.  I figured it was probably the latter when the first call I had ended with the very frustrated humanities professor first suggesting that there be an entirely seperate email system for faculty, and when that wasn’t enough, asking me who held the post of IT vice provost and then informing me that he was going to put a bomb in his car.  How do you respond to that?