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nypl:
Elizabeth Gilbert and John Hodgman came to the library on Tuesday to talk about Gilbert’s new/old book, At Home on the Range. Here they explore some of the library’s collection items before the event begins.
Bookmark http://www.nypl.org/live/multimedia and come back in a week or so to see video of the conversation, which was sweet and hilarious.
Photos by Jori Klein.
Ladies and gentlemen, your new Ghostbusters.
(Need I explain that that is untrue? But this is not: http://www.thestatetheatre.org/Events/fullevent.php?id=1120 )
with J. Long and J. Togo in Austin
(Source: areasofmyexpertise)
A brief visual Ragnarok update.
Don’t tell me it’s not happening.
That is all.
(Source: areasofmyexpertise)
Ahh…you see, this is where you make your fundamental mistake, grasshopper. Let us go back to the ancient Hodgmanist Koan: ‘If you see Hodgman on the road, kill him’.
And I think what they were trying to say is that we will all see Hodgman on the road because Hodgman lives in each one of us. Every time someone says, ‘I’m a Mac and I’m a PC’, Hodgman will be there. Every time you walk into a huge building and you see a hastily scrawled hobo sign on the door letting you know that someone on the third floor will give you food and a shower, Hodgman is there with you. And every time you turn on The Daily Show and Hodgman is not on, Hodgman is still with us in some kind of spirit informing The Daily Show just as Hodgman is here right now.
I might be Hodgman. You might be Hodgman.
"Neil Gaiman on John Hodgman via the Nerdist Podcast #106
We are all Hodgman. Amen. (via alexleefitz)
I am Hodgman, and so is my wife. (via wilwheaton)
Happy Last Year.
That is all.
Happy New Year from and to John Hodgman. May all your Ragnarok dreams come true.
(Source: areasofmyexpertise)
I wasn’t sure why I suddenly had a compulsive need to attempt to grow a mustache and goatee UNTIL the one and only John Hodgman sent me this wonderful mustache comb. Moral of the story: my exceptionally whisker-y facial hair knows the future, and I should listen to it more often.
Thanks Mr. Hodgman! I look forward to having the finest-groomed mustache at Fordham, thanks to your generosity.
(Also: anyone reading this who hasn’t read THAT IS ALL, or for that matter, THE AREAS OF MY EXPERTISE and MORE INFORMATION THAN YOU REQUIRE -the complete volumes of world knowledge- I cannot urge you to do so quickly enough. They are three of the funniest books you will ever read.)
![areasofmyexpertise:
“Leon Cooperman the Omega Advisors Inc. chairman and former CEO of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS)’s money-management unit…. [wrote that] Capitalists “are not the scourge that they are too often made out to be….’
“[Now] Cooperman, 68, said in an interview that he can’t walk through the dining room of St. Andrews Country Club in Boca Raton, Florida, without being thanked for speaking up. At least four people expressed their gratitude on Dec. 5 while he was eating an egg-white omelet, he said.”
***
Max Abelson wrote a story today for Bloomberg about the hurt feelings of many bankers and CEOs who feel they are for some weird reason being cast as the villains in “A Christmas Carol” the bleak economy.
Allow me to tell you a story.
At one point on my book tour, I was approached in the airport by a former banker.
He told me he was a life long Democrat and a huge fan of The Daily Show, but he also felt that Jon and the show had it all wrong.
(Because he was a multi millionaire, he has the right to just start critizing anyone in the airport he wants.)
He said that the bankers were not the bad guys in the subprime mortgage scandal and near financial collapse that they had everything to do with. They were just doing what the government allowed them to do.*
And so: he felt it was unfair and hurtful to make the bankers out to be the bad guys.
I was very happy to finally have the chance to say this to someone’s face:
I told him that as a freelance person, I had no idea how much money I would make this year. I never do.
But during the previous few years, due to hard work and exceedingly strange circumstance, I had made more money than I had ever conceived of making in my life. I had also paid a huge bucket of local, state, and city taxes, and that was JUST FINE WITH ME.
Because I knew that I had very little to worry about when it came to providing for my family and me this holiday season. And I suspected he didn’t as well.
But there are many, many people who are VERY worried about this. And out of consideration to them, it seemed to me a little unseemly for wealthy to care so much about the names they might be called.
“From my point of view,” I said, “I think you and me and other wealthy people should just suck it in and take it.”
I have never said anything like this out loud to a stranger before in my life, never mind a stranger who has money; but as I am now a Deranged Millionaire, I now have that right to speak my mind.
Naturally, he just ignored what I said and offered to consult on the Daily Show if we wanted.
***
LOOK: I do not mean to suggest that anyone in this piece is a monster. I am sure they are smart, innovative, and good to their families and employees. I respect success IMMENSELY and I am a capitalist.
However, I know better now than ever that wealth deranges.
It disconnects you from the world. It inflates your self-regard. It allows you to believe that four people congratulating you at your country club makes you a GODDAMN HERO OF AMERICA.
And it leads you to say things like former banker John A. Allison said in the article linked:
“Instead of an attack on the 1 percent, let’s call it an attack on the very productive.”
Because of course, you non-millionaires are not productive, and not worthy.
I know this from experience: when wealth takes hold, the brain creates a new reality in order to explain your new fortune over the poor fortunes of others.
It is not enough to say, as some of these men do, “I am wealthy, and I got some lucky advantages, but I also worked really hard and found some opportunities, and I am proud of it.”
You must instead say: “my extreme wealth proves that I DESERVE to be wealthy, because I am better.”
This logical fallacy is the core of Social Darwinism, but you’d think after a while that Homo Robber Baronensis would have bred some thicker skin.
But it’s like no one around these rich and powerful men have ever called them a name or even disagreed with them!
Oh! That’s right: no one has. At least, not for a long time.
Well, some of these guys are childish, and some of them are creeps.
That is all.
AMAZING IMAGE OF ME AS A POOR DERANGED MILLIONAIRE COURTESY: THE AMAZING APE-LAD.
*This was his actual argument. It is not an argument an adult makes. It’s the actual argument that TEENAGERS make at prestigious high schools where cheating is rampant: everyone was doing it, and no teacher was stopping them. So they WERE FORCED to cheat in order to be competitive. TEENAGERS ARE NOT JOB CREATORS.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lwiwq9TMyY1r2luwko1_1280.jpg)
“Leon Cooperman the Omega Advisors Inc. chairman and former CEO of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS)’s money-management unit…. [wrote that] Capitalists “are not the scourge that they are too often made out to be….’
“[Now] Cooperman, 68, said in an interview that he can’t walk through the dining room of St. Andrews Country Club in Boca Raton, Florida, without being thanked for speaking up. At least four people expressed their gratitude on Dec. 5 while he was eating an egg-white omelet, he said.”
***
Max Abelson wrote a story today for Bloomberg about the hurt feelings of many bankers and CEOs who feel they are for some weird reason being cast as the villains in
“A Christmas Carol”the bleak economy.Allow me to tell you a story.
At one point on my book tour, I was approached in the airport by a former banker.
He told me he was a life long Democrat and a huge fan of The Daily Show, but he also felt that Jon and the show had it all wrong.
(Because he was a multi millionaire, he has the right to just start critizing anyone in the airport he wants.)
He said that the bankers were not the bad guys in the subprime mortgage scandal and near financial collapse that they had everything to do with. They were just doing what the government allowed them to do.*
And so: he felt it was unfair and hurtful to make the bankers out to be the bad guys.
I was very happy to finally have the chance to say this to someone’s face:
I told him that as a freelance person, I had no idea how much money I would make this year. I never do.
But during the previous few years, due to hard work and exceedingly strange circumstance, I had made more money than I had ever conceived of making in my life. I had also paid a huge bucket of local, state, and city taxes, and that was JUST FINE WITH ME.
Because I knew that I had very little to worry about when it came to providing for my family and me this holiday season. And I suspected he didn’t as well.
But there are many, many people who are VERY worried about this. And out of consideration to them, it seemed to me a little unseemly for wealthy to care so much about the names they might be called.
“From my point of view,” I said, “I think you and me and other wealthy people should just suck it in and take it.”
I have never said anything like this out loud to a stranger before in my life, never mind a stranger who has money; but as I am now a Deranged Millionaire, I now have that right to speak my mind.
Naturally, he just ignored what I said and offered to consult on the Daily Show if we wanted.
***
LOOK: I do not mean to suggest that anyone in this piece is a monster. I am sure they are smart, innovative, and good to their families and employees. I respect success IMMENSELY and I am a capitalist.
However, I know better now than ever that wealth deranges.
It disconnects you from the world. It inflates your self-regard. It allows you to believe that four people congratulating you at your country club makes you a GODDAMN HERO OF AMERICA.
And it leads you to say things like former banker John A. Allison said in the article linked:
“Instead of an attack on the 1 percent, let’s call it an attack on the very productive.”
Because of course, you non-millionaires are not productive, and not worthy.
I know this from experience: when wealth takes hold, the brain creates a new reality in order to explain your new fortune over the poor fortunes of others.
It is not enough to say, as some of these men do, “I am wealthy, and I got some lucky advantages, but I also worked really hard and found some opportunities, and I am proud of it.”
You must instead say: “my extreme wealth proves that I DESERVE to be wealthy, because I am better.”
This logical fallacy is the core of Social Darwinism, but you’d think after a while that Homo Robber Baronensis would have bred some thicker skin.
But it’s like no one around these rich and powerful men have ever called them a name or even disagreed with them!
Oh! That’s right: no one has. At least, not for a long time.
Well, some of these guys are childish, and some of them are creeps.
That is all.
AMAZING IMAGE OF ME AS A POOR DERANGED MILLIONAIRE COURTESY: THE AMAZING APE-LAD.
*This was his actual argument. It is not an argument an adult makes. It’s the actual argument that TEENAGERS make at prestigious high schools where cheating is rampant: everyone was doing it, and no teacher was stopping them. So they WERE FORCED to cheat in order to be competitive. TEENAGERS ARE NOT JOB CREATORS.
(Source: areasofmyexpertise)
(Source: slackjot)
