“Who knew biology could be so very sexy?”
“Yes…but not sexier than vector calculus.”

“Give me a minute,” he said. “I just need to talk to Jesus first.”

“What? You’re not tired from that, are you?”

And these are just from two days worth of posts.

Beginning April 6th, MTV will squeeze every last bit of juice out of Lauren Conrad’s feud with Heidi Montag. In this dramatically scored trailer, The Hills showcases what it has to offer: absolutely nothing. Spencer still acts like a douche, Heidi is still obsessed with Lauren, and Lauren breaks the self-pity barometer. At this point, we wouldn’t even want any real action. A Hills without dead air and plotlessness is like The City without Allie’s sad mug and Olivia’s evil smirks. But can we PLEASE get more of that fortune teller?

Srsly, this guy won’t die. You may have heard about his stint as a war reporter last month, but there’s bigger and better news for Joe (Samuel). He’s become a political adviser for the Republican party! Woo-hoo!

Somehow the GOP has allowed this fake-named non-plumber to hop aboard their already sinking ship. Hey, Republicans, let me be a political adviser: having people like Samuel Wurzelbacher around destroys any chance of your party being taken seriously ever even just a little bit. Consider these gems from his first advice session today:

“I don’t believe there’s two sides to every story. It’s black and white. There’s right and wrong.” Cue Katy Perry.

“I don’t know if the American public deserve me.” Just let that settle in. So good. Sooo good.

After impeaching him, the Illinois Senate added insult to injury, barring Blago from ever holding public office again. God, I love it. He is such a scumbag. I’ll miss seeing his hair though.

Seriously, he shouldn’t just put his fabulous coif out there for everyone to see – it’s a f***ing valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing!

Photo courtesy of Flickr user jburwen – used under CC license.

Shorter ad: Men, PETA doesn’t suck.

Do you think it was an accident? I couldn’t embed the audio of the 911 call, but you can hear it here.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user barjack. Used under the Creative Commons license.

But the Times points out that this would not be the first reported death of irony—its most recent other massacre occurred directly after 9/11, when a shell-shocked nation couldn’t even think of wearing their $20 WTC t-shirts to nightclubs. (Actually, that is still more offensive than ironic. Where did I even think of that?)

Well, clearly the Times has not read my pro-Sarah Palin piece or anti-Prop 8 article. But the so stylistic paper may have a point. With a “green” nightclub currently popular in Paris, the MisShapes part of some anti-poverty campaign, and art spaces cheering for an American president(-elect), is irony over? I sure hope not.

Irony is intricately tied to the post-modern movement, which has also recently been declared dead, to be replaced by post-humanism (@ll c0mpu+er$, all the time) or post-post-modernism, which is sort of the antidote to irony.

Harmony Korine’s ’90s film Gummo was a beautiful achievement of post-modern irony—a veritable hodge-podge of low-culture reference points produced by high-end artists. His 2008 film then, Mr. Lonely, may very well have celebrated the death of post-modernism: a film about contemporary impersonators (get it? all dressed up in pop culture reference to the point of no identity?) who eventually shed their costumes when reality sets in. An odd monologue about embracing life authentically is unseemly in a Korine film, but perhaps it is more in line with current zeitgeist.

The problem, perhaps, that irony faces is that authentic issues are less laughable now. A cowboy president and a nation of Wal-Mart enthusiasts are easy for New York City residents to mock by ironically embracing, but progressive, green-thinking innovative companies? Edgy celebrities? The first black president? Less easy to make fun of.

The days of American Psycho-style hyper-commercialism are being replaced by recession chatter: tastamakers like New York magazine are declaring recognizable, high-end accessories like Birkin Bags “embarrassing” and witty gossip-mongers like Gawker placed Entourage in a montage of things that have died with the economic downturn.

As the Times points out, irony will never really die. Satire, the most basic form of stylistic irony, will be around whether we’re mocking faux-progressive ideals like “the end of race,” or no-progressive ideals, like, well, racism. But the golden age of disaffection may have had its heyday.

But still, America is getting more serious in the wake of an era that was, perhaps, so hopeless that it could only be treated ironically. As the country wakes up, is irony at least going to sleep? Or am I just a product of my times: suddenly, inexplicably authentic? NYU: help! Is disaffection passé?

Photo by Flickr user Mat Honan used under the Creative Commons

The NY Post is reporting that Ann Coulter broke her jaw and had to have it wired shut. If you’re like me, you were probably hoping somebody was just trying to shut her up.

In last week’s New York Times, an editorial board with a bit less to mull over between election night and inauguration took a stand on one our generation’s most overlooked issues: should we or should we not resurrect a wooly mammoth? Hold on to your butts, kids—Jurassic Park is becoming a reality.

The op-ed board took a vague opposition to the resurrection on the grounds that the big lug would get lonely. And he’d be such a freak in our world of non-prehistoric creatures. It was all very Mary Shelley. But the paper’s final point is a bit paradoxical: the Times feels that the wooly mammoth would be facing similar global climate conditions to those that wiped him out in the first place. Oh, the irony! Are we just as bad as the dinosaurs?

But from a more optimistic perspective, perhaps resurrecting the wooly mammoth might serve as a symbolic antidote to scientific woes. If this time around we can make dead dinosaurs come to life, what will we think of next? So, resurrecting the wooly mammoth: a) hopeful? b) weird and depressing? or c) totally fucking irrelevant? All of the above, perhaps. All of the above.

Photo by Flickr user Walter Parenteau used under the Creative Commons

The girls are doubtlessly darlings of the discerning fashion and art world—with a successful, high-end clothing line, The Row, under their tiny belts, and pals like Karl Lagerfeld—as well as members of exclusive, Beatrice-frequenting social sets. And so it struck the writer as notable that they have not necessarily eschewed their initially wholesome public image for one more befitting to their mysterious hipness. They maintain both.

“Is commerce their art?” the subtext asked me.

Since the uber-urbane, practically post-sophistication, twenty-two year old sisters are fans of Richard Prince, Terry Richardson, and Jack Pierson, it is unseemly that they could stand by their painfully commercial content (How the West was Fun, New York Minute, “You got it, dude,” etc.) without noting some sad irony.

Or, perhaps the successful sales of their commercial content is a form of art itself!

It was the ever-influential Andy Warhol who said, “The most beautiful thing in Tokyo is McDonalds,” forever solidifying a postmodern passion for the commercial. (Perhaps this is more simply summed up in another Warhol quote: “Making money is art.”) Interpret Warhol as you will, but he has become, amongst his many reputes, an icon of post-insert anything here. Except, perhaps, money. Do the twins subscribe to a similar philosophy?

Or, y’know, maybe the girls are just really rich and don’t think that hard about it. As role models for both pre-pubescent girls and all the sad, young, starry-eyed NYU students, they are girls of many faces! But always pretty ones.

The girls will be signing copies of their well-received coffee table book, Influences, at the Union Square Barnes & Noble on Tuesday at noon. Commercial plug = art = Olsens.