This is all the police were able to recover after I found parts of my beloved scooter for sale on Craigslist last week. (background: my grandpa’s scooter, which he gave my family in the 90s and I fixed up in 2009, was stolen in broad daylight last August)

The guy who was selling them bought a box of miscellaneous parts at a flea market and didn’t have any information about the guy he bought them from, so no chance at getting the motor or chassis.

I don’t really need these parts, but they are better than nothing and they will make great wall art in my apartment and one hell of a conversation starter.

It’s sick to see a fully functional, beautiful machine stripped to nothing by someone looking to make a quick buck, but such is life and all that crap. I suppose I can take the key off my keyring now and start shopping for motorcycles for the spring.

27.7 million: Viewers for the season premiere of Two and a Half Men — a shockingly high number, and the most-watched sitcom since 2005′s Everybody Loves Raymond series finale.

27.3 million: Viewers who watched a rerun of Grace Under Fire on a Tuesday in March 1995. A rerun.

Taken near Loveland, CO.

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We haven’t left the city in many, many months so this felt fantastic, even if it was only for a few hours. Townes – about the most urban/neurotic/easily frightened dog in existence – took to the water like a champ. Already shopping for log cabins and an even bigger beard for our inevitable moment of clarity when we cast off society and move to the mountains.

VID_20110831_070040.m4v
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Just realized that in the video, you can catch glimpses of the spider web. #SECRETSREVEALED

“He was so terrible that he was no longer terrible, only dehumanized.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night

This is a strange experience. I can now identify events solely from reading jokes about it on Twitter. I recognized the above scene on sight, *despite* the fact that I have not seen a single frame of the VMAs this year. #FUTURETHINK

I shudder to think how disenfranchised I would have felt if I had been deprived of that long list of privileges.

That state of deprivation though is, of course, the condition that many of those rioting endure as their unbending reality. No education, a weakened family unit, no money and no way of getting any. JD Sports is probably easier to desecrate if you can’t afford what’s in there and the few poorly paid jobs there are taken. Amidst the bleakness of this social landscape, squinting all the while in the glare of a culture that radiates ultraviolet consumerism and infrared celebrity. That daily, hourly, incessantly enforces the egregious, deceitful message that you are what you wear, what you drive, what you watch and what you watch it on, in livid, neon pixels. The only light in their lives comes from these luminous corporate messages. No wonder they have their fucking hoods up.

Why am I surprised that these young people behave destructively, “mindlessly”, motivated only by self-interest? How should we describe the actions of the city bankers who brought our economy to its knees in 2010? Altruistic? Mindful? Kind? But then again, they do wear suits, so they deserve to be bailed out, perhaps that’s why not one of them has been imprisoned. And they got away with a lot more than a few fucking pairs of trainers.

These young people have no sense of community because they haven’t been given one. They have no stake in society because Cameron’s mentor Margaret Thatcher told us there’s no such thing.

It starts out a little rambling, but about midway through, Mr. Katy Perry actually makes some salient and thoughtful observations and expresses them better than most I’ve seen. Between this and his also surprisingly good column on Amy Winehouse, I suppose I need to stop being surprised by him.

14. What is this gentleman reacting to?

(Via Jose3030)

1. Kevin Garnett turned around, pointed at him, and said, “I choose you to be the next President of the United States”

2. The Nets started a mountain lion cub as power forward, and not only can it dribble/pass the ball with its nose, it’s friendly to all the human players and seems to understand when they tell it things

3. A man approached him and said, “I will give you a million dollars for each shirt you are wearing”

4. Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov admits clerical error, releases this guy’s family from underground dungeon fortress that is shaped like a giant snake with an ox’s head and perpetually burrows through the Earth’s mantle so as to avoid prosecution from the world’s governments and evade the single-celled, yet 4,000-foot-long Colossus worms that lie in wait until the day someone recites the Forgotten Verses, at which point they will devour us all

5. The realization, precisely one moment prior, that dribbling is basically passing to yourself

I want #2 to be animated in the style of Winnie the Pooh and run on NBC for 10 years.