$6 bucksThe average consumer’s purchase for the kind of food you eat at 3 a.m. in the morning when you have an unexpected hunger for congealed cheese; it’s a very low-margin racket source
When you’re tired and you’ve been going days on end with minimum sleep, and you are not getting the proper meals on time, that hit of tobacco can make a difference.
Retired Gen. Russel Honore • Arguing in favor of allowing soldiers to smoke. The military is discussing banning it, saying it has negative short-term and long-term effects. Honore, known for having a stogie wherever he went, says having tobacco is good for soldiers morale, especially in light of high suicide rates. • source
The CIA’s friendship level with Congress just went way down. Apparently, former veep Dick Cheney ordered the organization to hide an intelligence program from legislators. This is after the whole lying-to-us fiasco earlier this week with current CIA director Leon Panetta. source
If that wasn’t enough bad PR for both the CIA and Bush administration, Obama Attorney General Eric Holder is reportedly looking into investigating their torture policies. Obama doesn’t want the trouble, but Holder’s looking anyway and will decide in the next couple of weeks. source
OK, another interesting animation, but we wonder: Is this guy fiscally conservative? He doesn’t mention a political persuasion in any of his videos but they mostly seem to be anti-Obama. For our curiosity, we just want to know whether they’re pushing an agenda. No matter which way you lean, keep making them. They’re good.source
1. Before Paul Simon got countermelodies and drum backing, he was a busker in England who happened to find himself in a recording studio, doing lo-fi versions of songs that everyone now knows by heart, such as this ragged version of “Kathy’s Song.” 2. Jandek will never be as successful as Jeff Tweedy. He spent three decades hiding from the world, releasing rickety avant-strangeness and getting mentioned in the same sentences as Roky Erickson and The Shaggs, only to finally play in public in the last couple of years. Jeff Tweedy, whose band’s most recent album debuted in the Billboard 200’s top five, does us a favor and makes “Crack a Smile” pretty and palatable. 3. After posting about Leonard Cohen yesterday, it got us to thinking – which song of his would never get covered on “American Idol”? “Chelsea Hotel No. 2” fits the bill: It’s pretty, but about sordid hotel room encounters with famous singers like Janis Joplin. 4. You can’t have a list of mopey strummers without Elliott Smith. You just can’t. His early albums use their lo-fi setting to focus directly on the darkness in the words. “Condor Ave.,” off “Roman Candle,” set Smith’s template. 5. The Tallest Man on Earth pretty much kills this song. The Swede wails at his guitar, putting everything he has into being the best Bob Dylan acolyte he can, and gets closer than most, especially on “This Wind.”source
It takes time to get out of the woods, sez the prez. Barack Obama is facing newfound criticism of the $787 billion economic stimulus plan in the wake of higher unemployment. His plan? No reversals. No second stimulus. Stay the course. “We must let it work the way it’s supposed to,” he says, “with the understanding that in any recession, unemployment tends to recover more slowly than other measures of economic activity.” So yeah. No extra $$$, no appeasing the Republicans. source
At the beginning it was a tough chicken and egg situation. Where I was calling and saying ‘Hi it’s Greg Grunberg, star of NBC’s Heroes, can I talk to the head of marketing please,’ and I would get them on the phone.
Greg Grunberg • On his pretty solid side career producing the Yowza iPhone app, a GPS-aware coupon-referring program that has become a hit. He claims that he’s always been a bit of an entrepreneur and that it’s a solid backup plan just in case he gets killed off on “Heroes” someday. (Not that he should have a problem with that, because his character can read people’s thoughts.) • source