Weekend Reading Roundup (Bring Me Darin Strauss’ Head on a Hubcap Edition)

— Remember that link a couple weeks back to the Suicide Catcher over on that jumpers’ paradise of a bridge in China? There’s also one on a cliff in Australia, and Don Ritchie’s saved 160 lives there. (Inquirer, via AP).

– Blago! So smooth. Trial don’t phase him, bro. (Inquirer, via AP)

– Seth Williams! So new. Abraham’s old-school complaints don’t phase him, bro. (NY Times)

– ‘Allo, CEO Hayward. I have an idea about image reparation as your company torches turtles and ruins an ecological generation: How about watching your 52-foot yacht take a leisurely, but competitive spin around the Isle of Wight? Brilliant, Tony Hayward, you pasty fuck you. Just brilliant. Nobody cares what the little people think, anyway. (Inquirer, via AP)

– As someone named Brian Patrick Hickey, I would be remiss not to acknowledge David Cameron’s apology for “Bloody Sunday.” How Bono reacted to it. And how BP’s shameful PR savages tried to exploit the reaction to it. (NY Times)

– This proves that the machines are nearly end-stage in their rising-up initiative. What is Watson prepping for a test run on Jeopardy? (NYTimes Magazine)

– Confession: I’ve been a skimmer my whole life. Ripping through all reading materials to pinpoint passages/sections/chapters worthy of a return for deeper reading and, hopefully, comprehension. Which is why I don’t necessarily agree with the premise of Nicholas Carr’s book, “The Shallows,” which maintains that such behavior undermines “deep, immersive focus.” In fact, I’d say it makes it deeper, and more immersive … provided the reader goes back. That said, society-wide, there are some awfully major concerns generationally-speaking. Did you read all that? Well, if not, at least read this: It’s likely a book worth purchasing; if I wasn’t about to become a daddy, I would. But, I don’t want to dilute my attention, nahmean? (NY Times)

– How’s this for a sentence: When I was younger, I took a hydrofoil from Malaga, Spain to Tangiers, Morocco and, ever since, I’ve wondered what life was like on that big rock we cruised past on the way. Well, a travel story in the Inky today answered that to a certain extent.

— I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that, despite the Lautner cover, GQ has a decent July issue, what with stories about Taser Nation and a blow-by-blow of the hours leading to and fro the explosion that turned the Gulf of Mexico into Texas Tea Lake. (The stories aren’t online yet, though.)
BUT, if I might speak with GQ editor-in-chief Jim Nelson alone for a moment: Instead of running a wah-wah treatise excerpted from a book by Darin Strauss about how he’s had to live with fatally striking a girl on a bike with his car, how about you run pieces about, you know, real victims who get hit by cars to the extent that their lives are ended or forever altered? Translation:
I. Don’t. Care. If. Life’s. Been. Hard. For. The. Type. Of. Prick. Who’d. Write. About. Misfortune. He. Brought. Upon. Himself. So. Please. Tell. Mr. Strauss. To. Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
Oh, and Darin: Spend your blood money wisely, vulture. Can you get whomever ran me over a book deal, too? I’d actually read a word of that one.
“Brave new voice in literature,” my titanium skull. (GQ)