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the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Cynthia Gorney and Stephen Harrigan

the breakfast table
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from: Stephen Harrigan

In a Graveyard Spiral of Whimsy

Posted Thursday, July 22, 1999, at 4:10 PM ET

Dear Cynthia,

As long as we're talking about cyber protocol, allow me to grouse about why computers constantly have to tell us more about their own internal activities than anybody wants to know. Just signing on to check my e-mail gives me the impression I might be inadvertently launching a nuclear missile: "Dialing", "Communicating at 28,800 bauds," "Starting PPP," "Authenticating," all of this ending up in an inscrutable "Status" box with graphs and blinking lights and various pronouncements whose urgent meanings no human could ever know.

I'm with you on "MacArthur Park"; I'm with you on "Crimson and Clover"; but "Convoy" is one of those songs, like "The Battle of New Orleans," "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport," "Please Mister Custer," and Walter Brennan's unforgettable talking rendition of "The Epic Ride of John H. Glenn" (it's on the flip side of "Old Rivers"), that I'm just going to give a pass to.

This is our last exchange for the week, right? From this distance, our discussions seem to have started out on a suitably high and somber note with the death of John Kennedy Jr., but our ephemeral natures soon got the better of us. Before we could move on to the Republican tax cut, the Mexican banking crisis, or the fate of Taiwan, we found ourselves--to use a phrase from this unfortunate week--in a "graveyard spiral" of whimsy. And it is only with a great effort of will that I now refrain from referring you to my new favorite publication, Beer Frame: The Journal of Inconspicuous Consumption , and its article on the superiority of the Hydrox to the Oreo, its salute to products with "edible spokescharacters" like the Pillsbury Doughboy, Charlie the Tuna, and Slim Jim, and finally its definitive history of the styptic pencil ("styptic," proclaims the editors, "is such an excellent word"). If you can top that for meaninglessness, you are welcome to try. In the meantime, it should be stated for the record that your own book on the history of the abortion wars is a marvel of substance and you should not necessarily be judged by the lowbrow online company you've been keeping all week.

With lard in my pocket (yeccch),
Steve

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Stephen Harrigan

In a Graveyard Spiral of Whimsy

Posted Thursday, July 22, 1999, at 4:10 PM ET
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Cynthia Gorney, a reporter for the Washington Post from 1975 to 1991, will join the faculty at U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism this fall. She is the author of Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars (click here to buy the book). Stephen Harrigan is an occasional columnist for Slate, as well as a screenwriter and novelist. His recent books include Water and Light: A Diver's Journey to a Coral Reef (click here to buy the book).
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