davidthompson

When the Onion is Redundant

Ace’s headline pretty much sums it up: 

Selfless Crusader Against Income Inequality to Heroically Accept $225,000 for Nine Months of Sub-Part-Time Work from State-Funded Organisation to Occasionally Give a Few Quotes About the Scourge of Income Inequality.

Hiring Paul Krugman, a Guardian contributor and the left-leaning owner of this humble abode, is part of the City University of New York’s latest “inequality initiative.” Mr Krugman’s will be “a modest role” with no teaching or supervision commitments. In fact, neither party seems able to define what, exactly, that “modest role” will be. Hence the salary of $25,000 per month. 

Update, via the comments:

A Helpline for the Modern Savage

Tim Blair quotes Mark Steyn: 

The gentleman had called the Female Genital Mutilation Helpline thinking it was a helpline set up by Her Majesty’s Government to help you find someone to genitally mutilate your daughters. 

And no, he’s not joking.

When Man-Children Weep

Man paints own building. Graffiti vandals devastated: 

The owner of a building in Queens used a crew of painters to work overnight and paint over graffiti on a warehouse in Long Island City, wiping clean a canvas that was used by thousands of artists over the years to transform an otherwise nondescript, abandoned brick building in a working-class neighbourhood into 5Pointz, a mecca for street artists from around the world. By morning, the work of some 1,500 artists had been wiped clean, the Brobdingnagian bubble letters and the colourful cartoons spray painted on the building’s brick walls all covered in a fresh coat of white paint. “We are supposed to be the vandals, but this is the biggest rag and disrespect in the history of graffiti,” said Marie Cecile Flageul, an unofficial curator for 5Pointz.

The moral of the story, gentlemen, is buy your own canvas.

And Now a Word from Our Sponsors

Or, Dissonance, Baby. Laurie Penny alerts us to a major cultural breakthrough: 

For those who missed it, Laurie’s own contribution to this “deeply, unapologetically intellectual” venture can be savoured here.