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politicalprof:

There is no crisis over the debt ceiling. At least, there’s not a real one.

A real crisis is an unanticipated event of cataclysmic consequences. Hurricane Katrina was a crisis. The Japanese tsunami and nuclear reactor fiasco were crises. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a crisis. A heart attack is…

workaholics:

Music is a big part of making Workaholics, and from time to time the guys like to kick back with a song to celebrate a joke well done.

When a particularly well told laugher, slam, one-liner or pun is delivered, Paul Simon’s “Call Me Al” is one of the songs most often cued up to play as the writers exchange hearty handshakes, hugs, and congratulations. It’s a heartwarming few minutes.

Doubt it’s power? Invite some friends over, sit in a room for a few hours discussing ideas, and then play this song after an A+ of an offering. If you’re not out of your seat with a smile on your face, you clearly are suffering a deep depression from which there is no return. Or you need to fire the friends you brought over first, for some new, fresher-voiced friends. We’re sorry for your situation and wish you the best as you struggle to right the ship in either instance.

In researching this post, I learned Paul Simon decided to stick with the music thing after this song was released (from the album Graceland), and has had some mild success.

The other guy in the video is apparently still performing, too. I bet his name is Al, hence the inclusion. We here at Workaholics want to wish them the best in their struggles to make it in this crazy world. Maybe one day we’ll make a song that they play to celebrate their good deeds.

If so, you can call us Workaholics.

The four most over-rated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex and picnics.

—

Christopher Hitchens (post inspired by this post at MetroDad)

I strongly concur on the lobster issue.

(via karion)

Backstory of this quote: I used to run a politics/culture roundtable called The Christopher Hitchens Drinking Club and promoted it on my pre-Gawker personal blog. It had nothing to do with Hitchens, actually, and was just predicated on the Babylonian tradition of debating things twice—once sober and once drunk. But I wrote a bit about Hitchens on my blog, and it caught the attention of the guy who runs his unofficial website. I asked him if he had ever met Hitchens and he said yes, once, in a bar (naturally.) And he said the most memorable part of it was something Hitchens told him—the quote above. So with his permission, I published it. Funny to see it still floating around.

Update: I totally forgot, but I actually used this is an essay once.