journal features

eight pina coladas

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

The Cottage, 2001.06.23

In an effort to relate the problems she'd had last night with heartburn, my grandmother was describing the last time she'd felt the same symptoms; when she'd had 8 pina coladas in one day during a trip to Mexico. Heh, heh, heh. That's my grandma.

My marine sandals fell apart today. One of the straps just tore right through while I was wading around in the bay. Lousy Nike pieces of cr*p. Cost me $100 when I bought them, and that was just less than three years ago!

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton