Abram Sauer Online

Above: Hip fashion based on nostalgic game. 1990

Below: Hip fashion based on nostalgic game. 2010

In case the (comprehensive) coverage of the unfolding Haiti disaster over at Reuters is too antiseptic and lacks first-person desperation, below is an email from doctors who were already there working at a clinic just outside Port-au-Prince:

We are ok call family members tell them we are ok. Tell them to contact EVERYONE’s family and churches from their group and tell them we are ok.
Please reply to us ASAP tell us if the airport is open and when help from other countries are coming.

many tremors, many haitians hurt. we have triage here in our yard…pray for the docs and nurses here ALL NIGHT. most buildings are not ok at Christianville. Our house seems fine with one crack on NON-weight-bearing wall. we are staying outside until the tremors end. we were told the last AA flight didn’t leave Miami….can you please confirm for sure? I have 4 women that were suppost to be on that flight. Team Leaders name is Kelle M….. R. please call her family to find out. I need to get our visitors out ASAP….please let us know about the airport…. ALSO please EVERYONE…do not flood us with emails. Only info that we need to know.

please pray.

a.

I’m told the clinics will soon run out of supplies and that they will be treating people well into the future. The particular group above can be reached here: Haiti Health Ministries. They accept donations of everything from money to pharmaceuticals to gauze to baby formula.

UPDATE: Below is from another doctor with the same group:

i’m ok, and so is R. and N. [the author’s infant daughter].  our house sustained damage (cracks, flooding, everything off the shelves) but didn’t fall down.  J. and S.’s house (where i used to live) fell down.  so did part of the clinic, the eye clinic, and all of the schools.  the guesthouse is still standing, as well as our house and A. and D.’s house.  everyone else lost their house.  we worked all night trying to help people, and are still working today.  it’s like being in hell… people dying on your doorstep, limbs falling off, gashes and paralysis and everything you’d see in war.  all the missionaries here are ok, only a few bumps and bruises as they scrambled to get out of their houses.  R. and N. and i were outside when it happened, so we were ok.  D. and L. are ok, too.that’s all the update i can give you for now, because i’ve got to go back to more chaos.  thank the Lord E. is here to take care of N. while R. and i work.
love you guys,

t

Here’s a question: How would the current national terrorism conversation be different if the “Christmas Bomber” had succeeded? (Besides, of course, several hundred dead.)

That is to say, had the crotch bomb gone off, would we be reacting differently? We’ve already “upgraded”  airport security to include new searches with plans for full x-ray police state stuff sure to come. There are new restrictive on-board flight rules. Yemen is on our shitlist with people actually talking about military action there. The call for racial/religious profiling is stronger than ever. The president is being called a friend of terror. Intelligence agencies are being taken behind the woodshed. Guantanamo is now back in business.

It’s as if he bomb went off, no? Or did I just blow your mind.

Left: Elian Gonalez, a motherless boy many enraged Americans insisted not be returned to his real father.

Right: Sean Goldman,  a motherless boy many enraged Americans insisted be returned to his real father.

Left: Controversial “King Kongish” photo of Gisele by Annie Leibowitz

Right:  Not controversial (yet) “King Kongish” photo of Lady Gaga by Dave LaChaapelle

Great minds think alike faster than others, apparently:  Die Already, King Kong Racism: Lady Gaga Edition

For a long time now, Gawker has been playing with various forms of ad content. It did it’s blood vampire blog thing, amongst others. And then it began inserting ads that looked like blog posts; though these inclusions always clearly labeled “advertisement”and the color coding (outside Fleshbot) was always a slightly darker shade than the editorial posts. But throughout, its ads have always, if barely, been distinguishable as ads.

Well, no more.

Gizmodo (and maybe others) is now running posts that are labeled “promotion,” under the same color tag as the editoiral posts, that link to what is essentially an giant ad for Johnnie Walker Blue Label. The “Gawker Luxury Gift Guide” even recommends, under a giant Johnnie Walker Blue Label ad banner, a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label.

Oh, but you say it’s just a legitimate editorial gift guide sponsored by Johnnie Walker?  Then why is the “Check it out!” link over from the post to the guide have an “ad.doublelclik.net…” tag? Because it is straight-up advertorial, that’s why.

It turns out the post does have a “sponsored post” tag. You see it there way down on the lower right, floating between two posts almost as if it doesn’t want to associate itself with anything specific?

What does power have in common? Shaving.

We may not agree on a basis for society, nuclear policy or a religion. But we appear to agree, by personal endorsement, that full beards are bad. (Except for Rene Preval of Haiti.)

The Awl posted a little note about how Gawker will now be offering employees the option of, you know, becoming actual employees. The interesting thing that came out of this announcement? In the comments, there was speculation that this change came about because former Gawker writer Sheila M won her unemployment case:

“This is due to Sheila winning her unemployment case, which must have resulted in the state government following up with Gawker to see why it wasn’t paying state employment taxes. Way to go!”

A few comments later, it appears this speculation is confirmed by commenter “Sheila M” herself:

“Hahaha. I’m going to go ahead and take some credit here for calling his ass out. Jesus fucking Christ Denton, I bet the IRS got real interested in your book-cooking and shoddy-ass legal counsel.”

If that’s true and Denton was not paying unemployment tax for any of his writers, it’s, well, shameful. This is especially true for a publication that cremes its britches over pointing out the employment condition failings of other institutions… such as:

• Calling restaurant owners “evil.“
• Having a laugh at Google’s policies.
• “Shaming” ALM over the conditions of its bathroom (Bathrooms!)
• Or, maybe best of all, listing “stupid corporate cost-cutting tricks.”

Of course this hypocrisy doesn’t include the way this kind of (awfully, awfully Republican!) activity fucks New York state in general (though that doesn’t stop Gawker from laughing at the “scumbags” in Albany).

Update: Doree puts the pieces together.

It appears the Salahi couple who crashed the White House dinner the other evening are looking to get paid for their story. Not surprising at all.

But others? Dumb:

Casey Margenau, a real estate agent and longtime friend of Tareq Salahi’s, said he had talked with the couple on Thursday. He said the investigation was “hard on them,” because the couple believed they “really were invited guests.”

“There’s a video out there of Tareq opening a champagne bottle with a saber,” Margenau said. “That’s him. That’s his personality. . . . They’ve always loved living large, always loved living in the spotlight. They have strong personalities and are very outgoing. Some people like that and some people really dislike it, so much that, well, sometimes people hate you when you’re like that.”

And:

“She’d always call and want to come in, but always expected Erwin to comp her,” [James] Packard-Gomez said, referring to his business partner at the salon.

Mr. Packard-Gomez said Mrs. Salahi called him just 20 hours before the state dinner to schedule an appointment. Mr. Packard-Gomez dropped everything, he said, even helping Mrs. Salahi arrange her now famous red sari. She mentioned having asked the White House if it was appropriate attire. But when he asked Mrs. Salahi to show him her White House invitation, he was startled that she could not produce it.

“My guests pretty much always show me the invitation when it’s the hottest party in town,” Mr. Packard-Gomez said.

It appears Casey and James did not read what I wrote weeks ago: “…if you know somebody, however tangentially, who may have been, for even an instant, in the national consciousness, by God do not just tell anyone about it. Send an email to tips@gawker.com”

Just look at this person named Ashley Samson. It appears she got $25,000 to tell the National Enquirer about Tiger Woods and Rachel Uchitel.

Casey and James are just cold talking for free to the Philadelphia Enquirer and New York Times as if they owe them something. They, and others who know the Salahis, are giving away what they could otherwise be making some vacation money on. Dumb. Very dumb.

It’s one photo of one sign in a local North Dakota grocery store. Can you identify the fundamental problem this photo represents?

Where exactly the failure pictured here occurred is open to debate. But when retailers have to hide the pregnancy tests from teens for fear of theft while packs of condoms sit out, apparently at no risk, well…