Can't Sleep, might as well masterb...blog! Vol. 1

This week or last I encountered and had the misfortune of reading, in the Voice and the Times (decent periodicals, I like to think), two articles essentially in the form of your garden variety high school-style compare & contrast assignments...on Farenheit 9/11 and Spiderman 2. These, my friends, were Toilet Reading: shit to read while shit squeezes out.

The NYT's trend toward a news-magazine, narrativistic mode of journalism irks me to no end; compare any NYT's piece with the same in BBC News: the Times reads like friggin' D.H. Lawrence while the BBC sticks to the traditional, one-sentence paragraphs, who/what/when/where/why, upside down pyramid/iceberg style of reporting. And now the NYT, an ostensibly well-regarded daily, is printing stuff I expect to read in some BLOG. The Voice, I suppose, was always a magazine, a rag. (Not simply because the final third of the paper is comprised of softcore porn...I'm not complaining.) Still, it must have been a slow summer week for the Voice if a juxtaposition of Farenheit and Spiderman gets cover story.

So I Get It. Our President is a moron. George W. Bush is a retard. He's Patrick Ewing. I get it. Meanwhile, Peter Parker is thoughtful, ambivalent, and ultimately responsible in the use of his power. But um Spiderman is fictional, man. Galaxy-surfing, silver-bodied, one time enemy of Xanthos, and fellow Marvel Comics hero, the Silver Surfer, was a nicer guy than Stalin. Big fucking deal. And anyway, is this news?

Not to mention, I don't read a newspaper for ideas that are more appropriate in a room hazy with the smoke billowing out of a bong, and shaking with Band of Gypsies-era Hendrix. I've got that covered. I've got that under control. And when my thoughts shift from the texture of the wall or Hendrix's badass, tweaked solos to the similarities/dissimilarities of escapist summer movies I've recently seen, I keep these idiotic thoughts to myself.