Ugh. Stanford.

Myself and (surely) all of you good folks use Google "products" all day, everyday, for free. It's that free-ness and ease that makes them seem unlike products, unlike the mastheads of our largest, most influential media corporation. Well, this chipper dame is the head of new products or something. And (not to be crass, but...) since she's the only hot chipmunk blonde in her ENTIRE INDUSTRY, Marissa Mayer (that's her name) has been doing a lot of public appearances for Google, becoming, you know, "the face of." Now, I don't want to be catty or undermining of young women in powerful positions. She is clearly brilliant and ambitious, but also TERRIFYING and so ICE-Y. And there's all this stuff about cupcakes, like she loves cupcakes and talks about them all of the time. I don't know the first thing about computer engineering, but I know all about this grim, moldy mass-cultural cupcake obsession (read: cupcakes, particularly those from chi-chi cupcake bakeries, are all the rage with low-class dumpster people).

Now, I went to the Morgan Library the other month. And it did not escape my notice that the place was chockablock with the stuff of late nineteenth century poor taste, in A&P parlance, de Medici-ed Out. If, a little inconsistently, the folks in Silicon Valley have been our rail titans, then Marissa Mayer's brand of poor taste is worth noting, unpacking. Read it for yourself; here is a profile from San Fransisco Magazine. They mention the price of her apartment in the first paragraph.