New Year's Resolutions

So, apparently Kevin and I are the only ones at work today. It’s dead here, and I find myself in the curious position of having time to browse.

Found this list of New Year’s Resolutions at Zulkey and it got me to thinking.

I don’t usually make resolutions, but if I did here’s what they would be:

stop complaining about traffic and stop driving like such an asshole
to write more than what i’ve eaten in my journal, and to stop writing down what I’ve eaten
fall in love with music again
stop hating math
Look after my skin better
to stop saying mean things about people, even if they are being dumb
not to kill so many house plants, or maybe just not to buy any more houseplants
to stop buying so much crap, even if it’s pretty or makes my butt look small
figure out what i want to do when i grow up, or at least to find a light at the end of this particular professional tunnel
to try “power skipping” as a form of exercise
to take better care of the people in my life that I really like, and to let those people know that I really like them
to speak up when people cut in front of me in line, possibly by shouting loudly “I am not invisible!”
to read all of the books that I pretend I’ve read when someone starts a stupid pretentious book conversation
to grow taller

Some Spoiled Rich Girls Are Better Than Others

I’ll unashamedly admit that John and I are known to watch the “reality” TV programming. Survivor, Joe Millionaire, Rich Girls, The Simple Life, I’ve pretty much seen em’ all. (I did skip the Bachelorette wedding thing — watching someone else plan a $5M wedding gives me a headache.) But not all reality shows are created equal.

One of our favorites this year has been MTV’s Rich Girls, which followed Ally Hilfiger and Jaime Gleicher through the pampered streets of the Upper West Side. It combines two things that are always highly entertaining — post-adolescent teen drama and high-end designer shopping. But it was also very sweet, and I spent much of the time marveling over how “normal” they seemed. I remember having the same vapid conversations about wanting to save the world, be treated like a grown-up, get the dreamy friend-boy to fall in love with me…

On the opposite side of the spectrum, I only made it through half an episode of the truly awful Simple Life, the Paris Hilton show about how awful it is to live in Arkansas when you’re a complete brat.

A lot of critics were originally comparing the two shows, but this NYT article agrees that Rich Girls wins, hands down.

Oh So Quiet

Well, there’s so much to talk about, but nobody’s talking around here. Must be at a wedding or something… ;-)

No spirit for discussion of current events at the moment, so how about some poetry?

One of the things that makes my morning is Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. A bit pompous yes, some questionable selections yes, but overall an oasis in the commercial radio desert. Every great once in a while I will hear a poem that really speaks to me, even if I don’t really understand why. Below is one of my favorites from the past year.

The Thaw
by Marianne Wolfe, from The Berrypicker

Late in November
The morning sun shows the trees
In white against white.
There is a certainty that
Tomorrow will be the same.

For months thereafter
The days hang onto each other
Like timid sisters.
Nothing is changed but bed sheets
Where I lie white against white.

I move out of the solitude,
Attaching myself
To some sight or sound,
Wrapping myself in it
Like a cocoon inside a leaf.

Then one day in April
The branches of trees claw
At the passing clouds,
And the spaces between
Are filled like lungs in the thaw.

The days move quickly,
Bicycles coasting downhill,
And I wonder if
I am standing still
And the landscape is moving forward.

In the transition I emerge
As if from a cocoon, renewed;
Perhaps nude, I continue
Though no more beautiful
And knowing no more than before.

10 Ads the U.S. Won't See

Your life will not be complete until you check out AdAge.com’s 10 ADS AMERICA WON’T SEE — be sure the see #1, the blasphemous take on the virgin birth, and #4, a daddy remembers his 4-year-old daughter asking where babies come from.

p.s. Anyone want copies of the video for your permanent collection? Let me know.

TreyLa - Get Your GD Car Out of My Yard!

I’ve been more than understanding, Trey, in letting you leave your decrepit Cut-Dog parked in front of my house. I have called the City and if you don’t come get it soon they will impound it as an abandoned vehicle.

Make Your New Year Lucky

Wednesday night (Christmas Eve) as I was getting the ham on the smoker and prepping the ingredients for my famous pineapple-upside-down cake-in-a-skillet I realized I would use up all the butter and brown sugar in the house — leaving us in the lurch for Christmas Day. So, I ran over to HEB…which was already closed, so I had to go to Fiesta which was open for 25 more minutes. I gathered my items, including more non-alcoholic beer for my father-in-law, and headed to the front register with a crowd of others.

I found the line with the least number of items to be purchased (the real way to find the quickest line.) I queued up behind a woman in pajama pants, slippers and a coat. I laid my items down on the conveyer and she noticed the six-pack immediately.

“Are you sure you wanted to buy non-alcoholic beer?” she asked. She was probably in her mid-to-late-30s with short blond disheveled curls and a sweet face.

I explained my father-in-laws poorly performing liver and assured her the beer was not for me. She apologized for being nosy, “I made that mistake once and was so mad when I got home and realized what I had bought.”

I watched the cashier run her items through the scanner: two avocados, a bag of chips, some guacamole mix and a single martini glass. She ran her Lone Star card quickly through the card reader, covered up the card with her right hand as if to hide it and fumbled in a PIN with her left.

“It says your PIN number is invalid, ma’am.” the cashier said.

I could feel the woman’s anxiety increase as she blushed, dropped her shoulders and head slightly and re-entered her PIN.

“The remaining balance is $1.08.”

The woman pulled a single dollar bill from her wallet and fished around in the change pocket for a dime. The cashier gave her the two penny change and she slowly put it in her wallet, folded it up and collected her bags. As she walked a way I called out “Merry Christmas.” In return she only offered me a pleasant tight-lipped smile.

It wasn’t until I was paying for my groceries that I realized the opportunity God had offered me. Our Christmas dinner was bountiful and carried the warm weight that only close friends and family can bring it. One more plate at the table — even a complete stranger’s — would not have been a burden. It would have only increased our blessings.

An article at BBC covers a professor’s study into luck revealing that luck is simply a function of awareness and taking advantage of opportunities that arise. On Christmas Day I decided that my New Year’s Resolution would be to increase my awareness of all the people around me at every possible moment, and to look for ways that I can bring God’s blessings to them through my actions (and then take the action required.) Reading this article the next day was a none-too-subtle reminder to make this happen.

I can’t bring this resolution to fruition on my own, since changing personal behavior is maybe the hardest obstacle all of us face, but in the New Year I would appreciate your help in reminding me of my lofty goal. (And if you share your resolutions with me, I’ll promise to help you with yours.)

Happy New Year!

Fortune's Top 25 Products of 2003

Ah… Here’s an article that brings back the Christmas spirit. These items should have been on my wish list:

• 2004 PRIUS … Actress Lucy Liu; she just ordered one.
• INMOTION SPEAKERS … These battery-powered, paperback book-sized speakers are the iPod’s dream home.
• $20 BILL … The subtle peach and blue hues, the ghostly second image of Andrew Jackson, and the Lilliputian yellow 20s drizzled across the back make this the best-looking—and most secure—greenback ever.
• SCANJET 4670 … It’s the first transparent scanner (both sides are made of clear polycarbonate). And because it can scan standing upright, it takes next to no room on your desk.

p.s. My birthday is only 4 months away, people!

Rumsfeld Cuddled Up To Saddam

Now that the holidays are over, it’s time to continue the slash and burn.

The formerly secret documents reveal the Defence Secretary travelled to Baghdad 20 years ago to assure Iraq that America’s condemnation of its use of chemical weapons was made “strictly” in principle.

Has anyone in the current administration (many/most of whom were in W’s daddy’s administration) admitted that the U.S. has a history of supporting evil people? that the real revolution of the war in Iraq is that it’s a 180-degree about-face in U.S. policy (that looks to some people to just be hypocrisy)?

Earlier this year, Mr Rumsfeld and other members of the Bush administration regularly cited Saddam’s willingness to use chemical weapons against his own people as evidence of the threat presented to the rest of the world.

Sigh. My Christmas spirit is all gone, now.

Merry Christmas

From me and mine to you and yours.

Courtesy of NPR and Art Carney

Don't mess with Ma and Pa Jank

Merry Christmas to all!

So we got a contract to buy a cute, cute house in Mystic last week. Smaller than the one we’re leaving, but the yard is gorgeous, and it’s about 3 miles from the a boat launch on the Mystic River, just across from the seaport about a week ago. The inspection was cake, and financing looks like there’s not a whole lot to wrap up. But we’d been sweating selling the place in Katy.

“Don’t worry,” said Dad Jank. “We’ve been praying that you’d have a contract by Christmas.”

“Riiiight…” said I.

We put the house on the market when we decided to move up to New England, and have shown it maybe 10-15 times since. Granted, there’s been Thanksgiving and the work up to Christmas, not so many folks looking for homes. Plus, it’s Katy, where they’re throwing up new homes like a 16 year old threw up beers in Mama Mia’s. Call me Thomas.

Today, Missy calls, and says she’s faxing up an offer. Overall, we end up as good or better financially than any of the scenarios that she or I had cranked out. The catch is that the buyers want to close EARLY in January. Which isn’t much of a problem; Ma and Pa Watkins have plenty of space for Missy, Jake, and the dog, Sister Jen is willing to take the cat for a little while. Plus, I’m heading down for Christmas anyway… We counter to get a couple grand more for our trouble.

They counter our counter looking for, I kid you not, One Hundred and Fifty Dollars.

Sold, we say.

Dad Jank has the inside line to the man upstairs.

A Reminder

Not all soldiers support the Bush Doctrine, and plenty of people who know what they’re talking about still think that our war on Iraq wasn’t above-board.

Washington Post profiles Anthony Zinni today

And in the interest of a fair and balanced look at this, they also profiled Wolfowitz.

What strikes me (and I’m admittedly biased) is the contrast between their past experiences. Mostly, Zinni has some that’s relevant to the issue at hand.

Unsuprising, but will it be investigated?

Shockingly enough, looks like that Medicare bill was passed with good old-fashioned “elbow grease” in the House. I’m sure LBJ would be proud.

Crazy Japanese Motorcycle Company

Yamaha’s .jp website has a collection of paper craft models that let you make your own table-top motorcylces, animals and more.

Zip Code Map

Pull up this java app that maps all the US zip codes. As you type a zip code it narrows it down to a single dot.

Here’s a couple BPB related zip codes to try for fun:

• 78722
• 71060
• 90067
• 20009

Clinton Administration had evidence Iraq and Al Quaeda were cooperating

And even went so far as Tomahawking Sudan (Where Al Quaeda was headquartered at the time).

“We know for a fact, physical evidence, soil samples of VX precursor—chemical precursor at the site,” said Richardson. “Secondly, Wolf, direct evidence of ties between Osama bin Laden and the Military Industrial Corporation—the al Shifa factory was part of that. This is an operation—a collection of buildings that does a lot of this dirty munitions stuff. And, thirdly, there is no evidence that this precursor has a commercial application. So, you combine that with Sudan support for terrorism, their connections with Iraq on VX, and you combine that, also, with the chemical precursor issue, and Sudan’s leadership support for Osama bin Laden, and you’ve got a pretty clear cut case.”

(From the The Weekly Standard)

Everyone OK out there, BT?

There was an earthquake in LA an hour ago - if you’ve got power and an internet connection, let us know what’s going on.

This reminds me that there is a downside to living in Southern California, besides the real estate prices and smog.

Beantown

Missy’s dad needed one more trip before the new year to maintain Ultra-Unobtanium status on his frequent flier program, so he and my mother-in-law decided to take a pre-Christmas weekend in Boston. Since I’m hanging in Newport without much to do besides work, I went ahead and drove up for the day.

It was a beautiful winter solstice, mid-to-high 30’s, pretty calm, and sunny, so we did a walking tour, starting in Copely Square, and going past the Public Gardens which should be familiar to fans of a certain children’s book. Here’s me with the protagonists, Mrs. Mallard, Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Oack, Pack, and Quack:

We continued on past the site of the Boston Massacre, Paul Revere’s House, (Which, BTW, is way too easy to miss - there’s a tiny black sign that says “Paul Revere House” about 8 feet off the ground around the corner) The Old North Church, (Don’t you love public domain? Yeah? Write your congressman and tell them to reform current copyright law which essentially guarantees that there will never again be any material entering the public domain), and, possibly coolest of all, Copp’s Hill Burial Ground featuring graves from the 1600’s which is old, even by Alamo standards.

The highlight, though, was down by the New England Aquarium in a late lunch at Legal Seafood. (One quick note: If shrimp’s your thing, stay in Texas. Gulf of Mexico shrimp surpass any other shrimp in the world. So the next time you see the dude with the pickup full of 40 quart coolers on the side of IH-10, IH-37, or IH-45, stop off and pick up a couple of pounds of one of this planet’s finest treats) And it was good. I’m still working the butter and garlic out of my system. I had Cioppino (‘cause it sounds like Cipollini - honestly, click on the link. cool cycling stuff, and Eurotrash vibes out the wazoo) which is “lobster, scallops, shrimp, calamari, littlenecks, mussels, and whitefish in a light tomato broth with a side of jasmine rice” (check out the menu). Amazing. The chowda - Well, Matt, I’d kill Mom if I could get a bowl for my last meal. I love my mother, but it’s that good.

(BTW - The wharf just north of Long Wharf, where the Aquarium and the Legal at which we ate is sometimes known as “Hancock Wharf”, ‘cause that’s where John Hancock, he of the Declaration of Independence fame, had a run in with the British over a shipment of Spanish Wine. Talk about a conservative/libertarian wet dream - the big signature on the Declaration comes from a dude who believed in Free Trade, low taxes, and booze. When I read that historical marker today, I almost wet my pants. The warehouse on the wharf [1830’s vintage- practically new construction!] is an extremely solid granite fixture, turned into office space and extremely high-dollar condos now.)

We ended the day by riding the T over to Fenway, and lounging in the glory of the crappiest park in the Majors. I can dig it for the nostalgia factor, but in all honesty it’s a bad place to see a game. The seats suck unless you’re 5’ 7” or shorter (my size or smaller), there’s only like 2 beer stands in the whole place, and less bathrooms, and the sight lines are all screwed up. Yep, it’s got the Green Monster, but that’s just because the Sox’s management is too cheap to do much ‘cept perpetuate the myth of the Curse of the Bambino. (I was worried I wasn’t going to be able to fit that in the same paragraph as the first mention of the ‘Sox) For crying out loud, even the Astros got their guy.

This is the obligatory “artsy” shot of the T. Red Line, JFK station, waiting for the Braintree train, moving the camera before it was done processing data…

New hero for the DNC

He doesn’t like Reagan, thinks that incumbents should be able to have HUGE advantages in re-election, and swears like a drunken sailor.

No interns under the desk, though. Well, maybe two.

Jesus - could the Bush Doctrine actually work?

Libya?

No bombs, no threats - just “unilateral” action by the Bush Administration, not lifting US sanctions when the rest of the world was ready, but continuing to hold a tough line with a guy who’s an evil bastard in anyone’s book.

More on why inspections worked here, as opposed to Iraq:

Intelligence officials said that after the October visit, the Libyans became convinced that much was known about the weapons programs. They said that made the December visit even more productive because the Libyans were more open. Libya revealed chemical weapon stockpiles, the existence of precursor materials used to develop other nerve agents and the fledgling nuclear weapons program, with centrifuges to enrich uranium for weapons fuel. The discoveries raised the question of what countries had supplied components like centrifuges, which intelligence officials said had not been assembled in the “cascade” necessary to begin weapons-grade fuel production. The officials said that Libya had obtained long-range Scud C-type missiles, with a range of 800 kilometers, or 500 miles, from North Korea.

Even NPR was pretty open to the idea that this might have been a direct result of the combination of ‘unilateral’ sanctions and the invasion of Iraq. (I shouldn’t do that - I honestly do think that NPR is above average as far as fairness and balance go - on a par with Fox News - because they, like Fox, make it clear the perspective the reporters and commentators bring to the table. The dying networks - CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC - fail to acknowledge that their reporters have any bias at all.)

In related news, I heard a Beeb commentator complaining that the Israelis weren’t sticking to the roadmap (Like the Palestinians were even pretending to…) when they announced a potential unilateral withdrawal from large parts of the West Bank.

It may not be pretty, but the Bush Doctrine (short form: “F’em, I’m going to do what I think is right”) seems to be working better than the UN model (short form: “Who’s got the next round of taxpayer financed drinks?”) has in 60 years.

Al Franken: Books and the Writing Writers Who Write Them (or Speak Them)

I’ve been on the fence about getting Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them because I like Al Franken, but I expect his book to be unbalanced. When I read his 20 questions in the 50th Anniversary Issue of Playboy, I decided to go ahead and grab a copy at iTunes. (It helps that I’ve got a 5 hour drive to S’port this coming weekend and the audio book is 10 hours.)

PLAYBOY: Now that Bob Hope has departed the scene, will we be seeing Al Franken entertaining the troops every Christmas?
FRANKEN: This Christmas I’m going to Afghanistan and Kuwait. We’re not going to Saudia Arabia, but we are going to Irag, and I think we can take cheerleaders there. It will be my fourth time entertaining overseas, but I’ve never been this far forward. I went to Kosovo while there was still some shooting. I was shot at. We were going over the Sar Mountains in a helicopter. I could see the tracers, and it made me really nervous. But the guys in the helicopter didn’t seem nervous. They get shot at, and they take evasive action. I love our men and women in uniform, and it breaks my heart that they’re getting killed day in and day out and that the president lied to us about why we were going to war. There was a case to be made about this war — Saddam defied the UN for 12 years — if Bush had only treated us like adults.

Seems the man and I are on the same wave-length. It should be a good read…or listen.

Globulos

More time wastin’ for your holiday laziness. This is even better than the last one. Play online against real opponents, trying to bounce them and their balls [IAJH] into goals.

South Park

HOLY CRAP -

I’m not quite sure when it premiered, but the Christmas show this week featured Ike being taken back to Canada by his birth parents. Long story short, the climax featured … well, let’s go to the ‘Extended Entry’ to avoid leaving a spoiler above the cut

The climax featured Sadaam Hussein as the Prime Minister of Canada. Not just Sadaam, but captured Sadaam from less than a week ago, including quotes such as “I’d like to negotiate” and the fuzzy beard.

Contrarian

Look, I hate to rain on Peter Jackson’s parade, but I’m pretty disappointed with the Return of the King (ROTK). This is meant mainly to capture my thoughts after seeing it the first time. I didn’t like the Two Towers much the first time I saw it, but upon watching the DVD Thursday night it’s grown on me quite a bit.

Spoilers to follow

I wanted to love the RotK. I really, really wanted to love it. But I don’t. As a matter of fact, I’m more disappointed with the RotK than I was with the Two Towers. Here’s the deal:

HOW IN THE HELL CAN HE JUST COMPLETELY IGNORE … sorry, sorry, didn’t mean to shout.

How can he completely ignore Sauraman and Wormtongue’s presence in the Shire? The industrialization of the hobbits was, IMO, a critical part of the book. As much if not more so than the entire war for Middle Earth. The four hobbits were the central characters of the LotR; the four non-halflings were there to provide a background by which the hobbits could grow from characters without any real depth beyond drinking beer and eating mushrooms and ‘taters to actual, functional people. The “scouring of the Shire” was the essential denoument of the series, and was fundamental to Tolkien’s metaphysics.

But the hobbits go traipsing back to the Shire, take up their table at the Green Dragon, and Sam Gamgee gets a piece of ass. Whoop-de-frickin’ doo. What had changed in Middle Earth? What was the cost of the War of the Ring?

Instead of the powerful, poingnant world that Tolkien created, the LotR in Peter Jackson’s mind is wrapped up at the end just like another episode of the Cosby Show. Sam gets laid. Aragorn and Liv Tyler are knocking boots. And Frodo’s off to take care of Bilbo with the Elves and the Wizard. Like I said, whoop-de-fricking doo. Twenty hours of film for another treachly ending.

The weak ending really miffs me because up until the hobbits ride off into the sunset, I was awed by the flick. Frodo and Sam’s journey up the mountain and through Mordor were phenomenal. The interplay between Frodo/Sam/Gollum would be almost impossible to top. Even Sam sitting on the rock wishing he had settled down with the barmaid in the Shire was touching, creating a real sense of sacrifice and loss for the members of the Fellowship. Aragorn’s speech before the Black Gate will get played in more leadership forums, locker rooms, and summer camps than anything I can think of at the moment. Really reminded me of Gen McArthur’s farewell speech at West Point - “Duty,” “Honor,” “Country” - those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you want to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. … Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory, that if you lose, the Nation will be destroyed, that the very obsession of your public service must be Duty, Honor, Country. Really, read the speech. The dude was tottering and looking for a place to rest when he gave it, but it’s a classic. The movie was clipping along.

Then suddenly, abruptly, without warning … Everything’s OK. Hey, the bad guys are defeated, the war is over, and we’re all going to drink beer and get us a little.

Whaa???

I know, I know, he was pressed for time, the visuals are fantastic, blah, blah, blah blah… But to have nailed everything in the book until he gets to the ending - Suddenly the 18 hours leading up to this point seem somewhat trivial.

Tolkien didn’t write the LotR as an allegory; didn’t want to do anything except for create his own world. But in doing so he painted a clearer picture of the real world than he could have if he had written allegory. It’s something that Tolkien uniquely got. CS Lewis and even Orwell, both masters of allegory as much as has existed in Western Lit, come off as completely heavyhanded, missing much of the intracies of humanity that Tolkien is able to capture even in creatures not explicitly human. The hobbits in the LotR are you and me…

Up until the end of the RotK, there was much carrying on about dealing with the hand that life deals. Even during the battle for Miinas Tirth, Gandalf gives the hobbit a speech about the White Shores, and the beauty of death that one cannot hope for in life. But then, 40 minutes later - guess what? The hobbit’s back in the Shire with nothing to do for the rest of his days besides wrinkle his toes in the grass and drink ale down at the pub. No realization that each solution brings its own problems, no acknowledgement of the inexorable march of time. Everything is cleaned up neatly for presentation to the Academy.

On its own merits, the RotK is a fine movie. The trilogy does surpass the first Star Wars set, IMO. Even if Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones hadn’t been made to besmirch Lucas, I’d still stack LotR on top of any other trilogy out there. Much has been written on that; I won’t dwell on it. - One last thought on that - Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Western Trilogy beats LotR for consistiency, origninality, and fealty to an idea.

I’ve been able to get over most of the areas where the LotR was different in different media by acknowledging that we were dealing with drastically different audiences, and different timeframes for the story. I forgave the omission of Tom Bombadil in Fellowship without second thought or hesitation. Bombadil was Tolkien putting himself directly into the story, or so I thought; Jackson left Tom out since there was a different vision looking at Middle Earth. But taking out the Scouring of the Shire, and leaving Sauraman to rot in Isengard is a direct potshot at the intelligence of the audience, assuming that we aren’t sophisticated enough to realize that even though the War cost the hobbits the Shire, that it was necessary and proper that it was fought.

I cannot in any way, shape, or form say that the RotK was bad because it’s been a long, long time since anyone has even attempted a work on this scale, much less pulled it off like Jackson did. I can no longer believe that Jackson was faithful to Tolkien.

Which, in the end, is a fitting and proper ending. Triumph tinged with loss as a result of human nature and the general unfairness of life.

Hell yeah.

Merry Christmas (insert politically correct version of sentiment here if this offends you) to all the mo’ fo’s on the pizz-orch! See y’all in ‘05. Keep the dream alive. How about a high five? Put your car in drive. I’m just trying to survive. Don’t gimme no jive.

Take it, JRO.

Don't F@#* With Bush

I’m serious. Just read what happened to the Mainer responsible for the OUI report released just before the 2000 vote.

WhizzBall!

Here’s a fun little time-waster from the folks over at Discovery. I think it’s more fun to create puzzles then play them. (Since most of the puzzles are user-created, they aren’t always well planned.)

Man... Jank was on target.

We ARE right. Case in point…

Happy holidays, everyone. Enjoy your family, warm home, blessings of the season, and the fact that you aren’t facing the death penalty for a bumbersticker someone doesn’t like.

Yes...I live in Houston and there are really strange people here

I don’t know how to post a web link but if you cut and paste this link, you won’t be sorry…it’s an article about furries..freaks who like to dress up like animals.

P.S…Our world is going to hell and I think this is proof…

http://www.houstonpress.com/issues/current/feature.html/1/index.html

jen

Quiz: You Know Yer Indie. Let's Sub-Categorize

Take this quiz and post your results.

You’re a Britpopper. The UK is your thing. The
Smiths really were ‘terrif’ and Blur are indie
no matter how much money they made. You could
drink all the other indie kids under the table.
You plan on moving to London someday and dream
of one day owning every Beatles release on
vinyl.


You Know Yer Indie. Let’s Sub-Categorize.
brought to you by Quizilla

…not really me. Maybe I got a question wrong.

New Google Tools

Google introduced a few new features to help in your web search:

• Definitions - use “define World Wide Web” to get a definition search.
• Number - UPS tracking numbers, FedEx, patents, FAA, FCC
• Travel Conditions - use “sfo airport” and get delay and weather info.

Dwindling Civil Libierties

Salon is starting a series “exploring the erosion of civil rights and personal freedom in the United States since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.” They kick it off re-covering the Miami FTAA protests (that we discussed awhile back) that seem to indicate an increased violent reaction by local police against protestors.

They were bolstered by an $8.5 million appropriation that President Bush tacked onto the $87 billion Iraq reconstruction bill to pay for FTAA security.
…
Miami Mayor Manny Diaz called the cops’ performance “a model for homeland security.”

I guess I was mistaken when I thought “Homeland Security” was about protecting the citizens of this country from foreign attacks.

The slides also identified the lime-green baseball caps donned by the legal observers who accompany most major protests. According to Rodriguez-Taseff, when the slide appeared, Fernandez said, “These are their lawyers. They’re there to antagonize police.”

A lot of this article focuses on the politicization of the police. From quotes like this it seems clear that they were certainly biased against the protestors. Pre-emptive strikes seemed to be the police’s m.o. in Miami. It’s not surprising to know this state is run by a Bush.

At that point, the police finally issued an order to disperse, but at the same time, they started closing in. Video from the scene shows people chanting, “We are dispersing. We are dispersing.” But the police wouldn’t let them.
…
Still, it could have been worse: “I talked to a couple of women who were strip-searched by male officers,” she says.

Yo-Yo Geeks Go Extreme (, Baby)

Check out this video covering a few tricks from the Japan National Yo-Yo Contest. Extreme geeks are the best geeks.

More Newport

Here and here is where I’ve been running at lunch. From my apartment to the trailhead to Narragansett Ave and back makes about a three mile loop. Not bad for a fat white boy.

The bay on the east side of Newport proper has been spectacular the last couple of days as the most recent storm system has been blowing in. It opens straight onto the Atlantic, and the waves pile in creating huge, pyramid shaped waves that I understand are perfect to surf.

Becky- it looks like I’m not making a marathon this winter. Good luck with Houston, and I’m sending karma from my miles your way. And to anyone else on the porch who’s planning a long run.

wha? Safire Makes Sense

Safire makes a good point today - “sauce for the Clintons is sauce for the Bushes”.

Hey, if Jank can agree with Krugman, I can agree with Safire.

A Nude Page

Amidst the whirlwind of cruel (but funny) jokes of the Hugh Hefner roast, Dick Gregory stepped to the mic and told his story of meeting Hefner and being invited to perform at the Playboy Club. It was a revolutionary turn for black comedians to play in a club that was not a “black” club. His thanks to Hef brought a crowd that was in tears from laughter to a standing ovation in admiration for a man who has always seen beyond society’s values to a world that inteligently makes sense.

^{(l-r): Hugh M. Hefner, Dick Gregory; photo by: Marion Curtis/DMI}

While many of you BPBer’s are blessed with SOs of varied fortunes, a few of you aren’t allowed to get Hef’s product delivered to your door. Of Becky’s many wonderful traits is her recognition that Playboy is about pornography the way The New Yorker is about New York. This month her acceptance blessed me with one of the best essays I’ve read in as long as I can remember. If you have the means and an accepting SO, grab a copy of the new 50th Anniversary Issue of Playboy on newsstands now. If not, here’s a scan of the essay minus the content-contributing formatting and photographs.

emptiness

by Jonathan Safran Foer

The First Empty Page

I started collecting empty paper soon after I finished my first novel, about two years ago. A family friend had been helping to archive Isaac Bashevis Singer’s belongings for the university where his papers and artifacts were to be kept. Among the many items to be disposed of was a stack of Singer’s unused typewriter paper. (Understandably it had been deemed to have no archival value.) My friend sent the top page to me—the next sheet on which Singer would have written—suspecting that I might take some pleasure in the remnant of the great writer’s life.

Once white, the paper had started to yellow, and, at the corners, to brown. There was a slight wrinkle across the bottom (or was it the top?), and scattered about were specks of dust that were resistant to my gentle brushes, apparently having been ground into the paper fibers. (I’ve read that 90 percent of household dust is actually composed of human epidermal matter. So I like to think of the page as holding the lice that once looked over it—the wrinkle corresponds to Singer’s pinched forehead.) But to the casual glance, it’s a clean, perfectly ordinary sheet of typing paper.

For weeks, I kept it in the envelope in which it was sent. Only occasionally did I take it out to look at or to show to a visiting friend when conversation slowed. I thought it was an interesting oddity and nothing more.

But I was wrong about the empty page. Or I was wrong about myself. A relationship developed. I found myself thinking about the piece of paper, being moved by it, taking it out of its envelope several times a day, wanting to see it. I had the page framed and put it on my living room wall. Many of the breaks I took from looking at my own empty paper were spent looking at Singer’s.

Looking at what?

There were so many things to look at. There were the phantom words that Singer hadn’t written and would never write, the arrangements of ink that would have turned the most common of all objects—the empty page—into the most valuable: a great work of art. The blank sheet of paper was at once empty and infinite. It contained no words and every word Singer hadn’t yet written. The page was perhaps the best portrait of Singer—not only because it held his skin (or so I liked to think) but because it was free to echo and change. His books could be interpreted and reinterpreted, but they would never gain or lose words; his image was always bound to the moment of its creation. But the blank page contained everything Singer could have written and everyone he could have become.

And it was also a mirror. As a young writer—I was then contemplating how to move forward after my first effort – I felt so enthusiastically and agonizingly aware of the blank pages in front of me. How could I fill them? Did I even want to fill them? Was I becoming a writer because I wanted to be come a writer or because I was becoming a writer? I stared into empty pages day after day, looking, like Narcissus, for myself.

More Emptiness

I decided to expand my collection. Singer’s paper was not enough, just as Singer’s books would not be enough in a library, even if they were your favorites. I wanted to see how other pieces of paper would speak to Singer’s and to one another, how the physical differences among them would echo differences among the writers. I wanted to see if the accumulation of emptiness would be greater than the sum of its parts. So I began writing letters to authors—all of whom I admired, only one or two of whom I had ever corresponded with—asking for the next sheet of paper that he or she would have written on.

Richard Powers was the first to respond. “The favor is indeed strange,” he wrote, “but wonderful. The more I think about it, the more resonance it gets: a museum of pure potential, the unfilled page!” He sent along the next sheet from the yellow legal pad on which he writes. When I held it to my face, I could see the indentations from the writing on the page that was once above it. Within a week the indentations had disappeared—the ghost words were gone—and the page was again perfectly flat.

I received a piece of paper from Susan Sontag. It was slightly smaller than the standard 8 ½”x11”, and her name was printed across the top—for archival purposes, I imagined. John Barth sent me an empty page. It was classic three-hole style with light-blue horizontal lines and a red stripe up the margin. (How strange, I thought, that America’s most famous metafictionist should compose on the most traditional, childlike paper.) His note: “Yours takes the prize for odd requests and quite intrigues me.” A sheet of empty graph paper from Paul Auster, which evoked his style. An absolutely gorgeous mathematician’s log from Helen DeWitt, accompanied by advice to the young writer about getting to know one’s typesetter. A page ripped from David Grossman’s notebook—small, worn even in its new ness, somehow strong. He sent along a beautiful letter filled with observations, opinions, regrets, hopes and no mention of blank paper. A clean white page from Arthur Miller, no accompanying note. Paper from Zadie Smith, Victor Pelevin, David Foster Wallace (“You are a weird bird, JSF”), Peter Carey, John Updike…. Jonathan Franzen sent his page back in an envelope with no return address. Attached to the sheet was a note that read simply, “Guess whose?” (The postmark betrayed him.) A length wise-folded sheet of paper from Joyce Carol Oates. She explained that she likes to write on narrow pages so that she can view all of the text at once and complete pages twice as quickly. At the end of the three-page letter in which she carefully described her process of composition she wrote, “Truly, I believe.. .what we write is what we are.”

I received an empty page from Don DeLillo. The paper itself was relatively ordinary: a uniform field of yellow,

Dear Jonathan,

Don DeLillo

Empty Freud

My most recent addition to the Empty Page Project came this past fall when I was paying a visit to the Freud Museum in London. (For those who haven’t been there, it’s the house in which Freud spent the last year of his life after having fled Nazi-occupied Austria. The books are left as he left them. His figurines haven’t been moved. The famous couch draped in Persian carpets seems to hold the indentation of his final patient.) It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, and with the help of a friend I was able to arrange for a private tour. The director led a memorable walk through the house, filling my head as we went with touching, funny anecdotes. At the end as we were about to part ways, I explained my collection to her. “I’m sure you can’t help,” I said, “but I’d hate myself if I left without asking.”

She gave it a thought, which in itself was more than I ever would have anticipated, and then smiled wryly. I don’t remember us speaking any more words to each other. She led me back to Freud’s office, a room filled well be yond its capacity with busts, vases, books, ashtrays, rugs, prints, ancient artifacts, magnifying glasses, pieces of glass.. .things—the things one can’t help but think of as expressing the man who collected them. One at a time and slowly, she moved aside the velvet ropes that marked off the protected area. (You know your heart is beating heavily when you become aware of the spaces between the beats.) She led me to Freud’s desk, which hadn’t been moved since his death, and opened the center drawer. It was filled with such beautiful… things: a velvet pouch, which held a lock of his wife’s hair; appointment cards for his patients; the pieces of a broken statuette; and a stack of his blank paper. Across the top of each page read:

Prof Sigm. Freud
20 Maresftld Gardens
London, N.W3.
Tel: Hampstead 2002

Carefully she slid off the top sheet and handed it to me.

Ideal Emptiness

What would be the ideal sheet of empty paper? I know which ones I’d like. Kafka’s would be wonderful. As would one of Beckett’s. I’d love an empty page of Bruno Schulz’s. That would mean the world to me. Nietzsche. Rilke. Why not Shakespeare while we’re at it? Or Newton? More realistically a sheet from WG. Sebald would be great. (Would it have been as great, though, if he hadn’t died, too young, in a car crash? And if not, what does that say about the collection?)

The ideal sheet would not necessarily be that of the greatest writer but that which held the most potential.

Through a lot of difficult research I was able to find out that Anne Frank’s diary was not completely filled. (The family was betrayed and arrested; her writing ended abruptly.) There are empty pages, waiting there for the touch of a pen that will never come.

I read the diary as a child and have reread it several times since. But it wasn’t until last year that I first visited the Anne Frank House. I was in Amsterdam to give a lecture for the release of my novel’s Dutch translation. In one afternoon I saw the foreign edition of my book and the Anne Frank diary itself. Each experience moved me strongly, in what I now realize were opposite ways:

In the case of my book, I had become so accustomed to its familiar physical presence that to witness it as an idea— which it necessarily was for me, as I couldn’t understand the Dutch—was jarring. I saw the ripples that emanated from the words I threw in the lake. The book—the ink that I had applied to the paper—had taken on a life in the world. It had grown in directions not under my control, or even in my view. It was becoming an abstraction.

And in the case of the diary, I was so accustomed to think ing of it as an idea, a sadness that resonated across languages and generations, that to see the physical referent, the actual book, was not only moving but shocking. I couldn’t believe that the thing we had been thinking and talking about all of that time was actually a thing.

Naked Pages

I’m writing this essay for a magazine that, for all of its other attributes, is distinguished by its unclothed women. What about an unclothed page? Is that the page’s “natural” state? And is there something equally taboo about it? Equally erotic? Does it make it more exciting to know that the advertising space in this issue runs somewhere in the neighborhood of $l00,000 a page? And if so, why?

If I insert one blank page, when the magazine is printed it will become more than 3 million blank pages. Stacked, these blank pages would form an empty column the height of the Empire State Building. Laid end-to-end they could cover a path from Boston to Washington, D.C. And more than that, as PLAYBOY has a readership of close to 10 million, the mental space that these empty pages would occupy is breathtaking. One blank page, created with the ease of a single hard return, will contain the potential of each of the 10 million people who look at it. What might they draw on it? What might they write? What thoughts might it inspire in them? What image would they see in its depths? What image do you see?

Please cut the empty page from this article and mail it to:

The Naked Page Project, C/ PLAYBOY, 730 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10019.

The Last Emptiness

My little brother is going to be a senior in college this year. He’s already started to worry about what to do with his life. (My telling him that he can be anything he wants doesn’t help him at all. It hurts him.) He has some interest in documentary filmmaking, although he’s done nothing to prepare himself for such a path; architecture seems interesting, but he’s afraid of designing suburban kitchens for the rest of his life; writing would be a consideration, except that both of his older brothers do it.

When he was a baby, I would carry him up and down the stairs even though my parents told me not to hold him un less they were watching. I knew even as a seven-year-old that I was putting him in danger. But I had to put him in danger so I could protect him from danger.

He’s envious of me, and I’m envious of him. He wants direction in his life. He wants to have words to apply to his interests, recognizable ways to describe himself. (It isn’t acceptable simply being someone who experiences the world deeply.) He wants an unchanging mailing address. He wants to accomplish things, to put empty paper behind him—whatever form that empty paper should take. I remember what it was like to be so uncertain, so scared. And I remember the joy of not knowing, of everything seeming possible and possibly wonderful. Or horrible. Or mediocre.

Every day I better know what to expect, and so the days grow shorter and fit tighter, and if it isn’t like dying, it’s like disappointment. But I can remember, as if it were yesterday, turning on my laptop, knowing that I was about to start my first novel—the moment before life wrote on me.

In his story “Gimpel the Fool,” Singer writes of a “once removed” world, a better world in which the foolish are redeemed and everyone gets what he deserves. In that world we never say all of the things we wish we hadn’t said. And we say all of the things we wish we had. It’s easy and impossible to imagine. We are graceful, in that world, and patient, the full expressions of what we know ourselves to be. It’s nice to think about.

Iraq's Ambassador to the UN

No love for the UN in the Iraqi Governing Council:

“One year ago, the Security Council was divided between those who wanted to appease Saddam Hussein and those who wanted to hold him accountable,” (Iraqi Ambassador to the UN) Zebari told the 15-nation council, which was sharply divided over the war. “The UN as an organisation failed to help rescue the Iraqi people from a murderous tyranny of 35 years,” he said. “The UN must not fail the Iraqi people again.”

And let’s hear it for those champions of freedom, the French:

“The fact that the war was won doesn’t make legitimate something that was not legitimate,” France’s UN ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere said after the council meeting

Ambassador Zebari’s reply wasn’t included in the article. I’m guessing it probably wasn’t printable.

Bumped this up from a comment since I love it. Iraqis ‘thank’ the UN, and the French endorse Sadaam. OK, the French don’t endorse Sadaam, but they still can’t admit it was a good thing to get rid of the Baathists.

Why not go shopping?

For a new pair of shoes? SAS gave all its employees a $1,000 bonus for each year they’d worked at a Maine factory. US company, US workers, and decent shoes, from what I understand…

She Speaks for me...

Madonna endorses Clark.

She’s got great taste in chicks, why not trust her for president? Wonder if the Nuge is going to come public for GWB.

NB on the Nuge - He’s got a Reagan quote and dead animals on his front page. Does it get any better?

We've got to work

on our geekiness. The folks over at The Goat start their metareview of LotR:RotK with The first sentence of the Washington Post review reads:
“It may help if you know an orc from a Ringwraith or Aragorn from Gimli or Gandalf from Maiar.”

Gandalf is a Maiar. Thus, there is no difference between them as the sentence implies.

Wow. Just wow.

Dean v. Bush

David Brooks in today’s NYT:

Dean is not a modern-day Woodrow Wilson. He is not a mushy idealist who dreams of a world government. Instead, he spoke of international institutions as if they were big versions of the National Governors Association, as places where pragmatic leaders can go to leverage their own resources and solve problems.

The world Dean described is largely devoid of grand conflicts or moral, cultural and ideological divides. It is a world without passionate nationalism, a world in which Europe and the United States are not riven by any serious cultural differences, in which sensible people from around the globe would find common solutions, if only Bush weren’t so unilateral.

At first, the Bush worldview seems far more airy-fairy and idealistic. The man talks about God, and good versus evil. But in reality, Dean is the more idealistic and naïve one. Bush at least recognizes the existence of intellectual and cultural conflict. He acknowledges that different value systems are incompatible.

In the world Dean describes, people, other than a few bizarre terrorists, would be working together if not for Bush. In the Dean worldview, all problems are matters of technique and negotiation.

I’ve been mulling much the same around lately. Governments of men do not continue to work unless there is an idea underlying the organization that exists independent of men, and supercedes the people who run the government.

Beer-dipped CDs

Dip your CDs in beer, (let them dry off - duh,) and you’ll experience their familiar sounds in a whole new way.

The fungus had not ruined the disc - the original audio was still there - but it would sometimes change in pitch and there were small staccato noises in the background.

This bears remarkable similarity to my experience of dipping my brain in LSD and listening to CDs before it dried off.

White House Christmas Video

From the first dog. Includes cameo by Ari Fleischer, who apparently is evil in his NYY cap.

More proof the Rocket is Evil

I’m going to have to get out of my head that Roger Clemens is evil if he decides to un-retire to play with Andy Pettitt in Houston. Although the biggest temptation thrown his way so far was a free Hummer he’s still holding out the possibility of playing downtown, and working out with his kid’s high-school team.

Regardless, the off-season is ending up extremely interesting in Houston, making me kind of sad to have left it behind. There’s a decent chance that the Round Rock Express will get bumped from AA to AAA, and rumors that the Ryan Express may be added to the ‘Stros pitching staff, splitting time with his duties as owner of the Round Rock Express. Imagine a lineup of Pettitt, Clemens, Oswalt, and Miller, with Octavio Dotel as closer… Wow. ‘Stros pitching goes from questionable to scary in a season.

The only question is if the Houston offense will be able to perform. Bagwell, Biggio, and Berkman have not been able to all fire in sync since 2001, and Bags and Bigs are both getting a little long in the tooth. My only suggestion would be to potentially grab another offensive player who’s available and who fits into a slot in the ‘Stros offense. If Drayton McClane is really serious about bringing the World Series to Houston, he’s already made some great moves; he may as well go whole hog at this point.

BTW- is the NBA midwest division out of control? The Rockets are 13and 9, and still back in fifth place. In the Atlantic Division, they’d be way out in first place over the 12/12 Sixers, and they’d be in third in the Pacific or Central. The Midwest is nuts. Hopefully NBA realignment next year will bring a little bit of parity to the league…

'Allo? Mah rah-dio station needs whine...

Now you can listen to the folks begging for cash do it drunk. NPR’s started its own label of wines. Sign up for monthly delivery!

I just can’t wait to hear Bob Edwards slur one morning “You know what Danny Shore? I like you. You’re a heck of a guy. I don’t care what Maura says. She can go get bent…”

The wine, BTW, is Californian, not French.

Geek Cool Beyond Cool: BMP2HTML

This guy wrote a program that converts a .bmp picture to an html table — I know, I know: why?

You see I was challenged about two years ago to come up with a way to embed an image right into a web page, so that there would only be one file to download. It’s a pointless challenge, I know, but I thought what the heck, why not have a bit of fun and see if I can actually do it. In order to keep it strictly pointless, I decided to keep things strictly HTML. How boring it would be if we just embedded the raw binary data into a PHP page and use the “imagecreatetruecolour” function to build the image, or some other cheap method like that.

Here’s the original picture of my favorite Season 6 Survivor”

Here’s the html converted verson.

History of Campaign Finance

In the Toledo Blade

In the battle to win the hearts of voters, George Washington knew what it would take to get him elected:

- 46 gallons of beer. - 40 gallons of rum.
- 35 gallons of wine.
- 2 gallons of cider.
- 31/2 pints of brandy.

Wow. Whaddya say we go back to the old system?

Was Saddam Held Hostage?

This article suggests that the condition of Saddam Hussein and the hovel he was found in indicate that he was being held there captive.

After his last audiotaped message was delivered and aired over al Arabiya TV on Sunday November 16, on the occasion of Ramadan, Saddam was seized, possibly with the connivance of his own men, and held in that hole in Adwar for three weeks or more, which would have accounted for his appearance and condition. Meanwhile, his captors bargained for the $25 m prize the Americans promised for information leading to his capture alive or dead. The negotiations were mediated by Jalal Talabani’s Kurdish PUK militia.

More bad news for the DNC

John Breaux (D-LA) is not going to run for re-election to the Senate. That’s five (5) southern Democrats who are bowing out for next year’s election.

Run Away! Run Away!

I ran across an article this morning about the climatic battle sequence from the Return of the King. Apparently, programmers created virtual armies in which each combatant had a repertoire of physical moves, the ability to analyze his surroundings, and the choice to make what he deemed to be the correct and most advantageous moves.

Result? The heroic defenders of Middle Earth consistently ran away.

Eventually, the geeks decided that the program needed some tweaks.

Holiday Treats

Some of my favorite things about the holidays are all the great food/drinks that come out each year.

This year I’m especially digging on Anchor Steam Christmas Ale. Wonderful body and great lingering flavors. The perfect drink to help recover after that long day at work or following a final.

I’m also a true egg nog fan. My personal favorite is made by Southern Comfort. But this year I’m watching the waist line and have discovered Silk Soy Nog. Excellent stuff. Suprisingly similar flavor to egg nog, or at least light egg nog.

Anybody have any personal holiday favorites?

Pat Oliphant Goes Too Far?

The latest political cartoon from Pat Oliphant has a sidebar joke that seems awfully racist to me. Maybe the term Polly Wanna Cracker is more recent than Pat’s era, but portraying Condi Rice as a parrot is offensive.

So Long Saddam

Must be a slow day on the porch when no one else has posted this yet.

Woo hoo! Let’s hope this may save some lives.

The Filthy Sex Quiz

Take this little quiz and find out how much you know about dirty filthy disgusting sex.

Your score is: 19 out of 40. I thought I would do better…but I’m glad I didn’t.

Scale 2x

Here’s a project over at SourceForge.net — the guys who organize open-source projects — that’s doing some pretty cool work updating the graphics on old Arcade games. Scale2x is “able to increase the size of small bitmaps guessing the missing pixels without blurring the images.” It was originally developed for AdvanceMAME — an emulator for old arcade and console games.

original

scale2x

John Titor's Story

John Titor’s Story is the story of a man who traveled back in time from the year 2036 and offers his version of his history (our future) including an upcoming American civil war that will destroy us all.

<grain>salt</grain>

Then GWB comes back and redeems himself

By essentially saying “If you didn’t bleed in Iraq, don’t bid.” Before you go crying about this being all about payoffs and cronyism, note that

1. Iraqis are eligible for reconstruction contracts; and
2. It’s not like there isn’t ample evidence that France, Russia, and Germany were violating the “Oil for Food” program before the war, including selling arms to Iraq as recently as 2002.

BTW - I’ve been digging on Australian wines lately. Taste like French, ‘cept less jingoism and more dingo-ism. AND the labels are all in English.

Good reasons not to vote for Bush

1. Campaign Finance Reform: Remember back when he signed McCain-Finegold and all the talking heads said “Hey, this’ll get overturned in the courts”? Well, GWB was an idiot - the SCOTUS upheld this monstrosity. I’m losing much sleep over the ban on soft money - what I do think is a travesty is that they upheld the limitation on non-campaign sponsored issue ads within 60 days of an election. So, say I wanted to take cash out of my savings, go over to Iowa and buy an ad to say “Hey, Cornholios - Joe Lieberman has got the right idea on foreign policy, and he’s a great dancer. Sponsored by the Beer Drinkers for America and Lieberman”, well Justice O’Connor says that that’s not protected speech.

Great, you freakin’ lefties say. The rich shouldn’t be able to control the messages getting out.

Hmmm.

Let’s say that unlike someone we know I left my options in a computer company until, say, 1999, and walked away with a metric butt ton of cash in the bank. Then, let’s say I bought a controlling interest in a radio station in Des Moines, for instance. Now guess what - I’m “the Media”, and I can run programming 24 hours a day, 7 days a week saying that Our Station thinks Joe Lieberman is the Bee’s Kuh-nees right up until the polls close, and that’s editorial content, which remains protected.

So who’s speech has been silenced? Yours and mine, who could come up with twenty or so $K to run an issue ad close to the election without scraping too hard or hitting up too many of our friends and families (Hey, guess what - that’d be a PAC)? Apparently folks rich enough to own media outlets aren’t subject to the “corruption of money” that you and I are.

Limbaugh’s a nut, we all can agree, but even a stopped, obsolete, analog clock is right twice a day. He’s been referring to McCain/Feingold as the “Incumbent Protection Act” since it was proposed way back when, and IMO he’s right. The only people that MFA protects is folks who are already in office, who have almost unlimited access to the media, and who can bring home the people’s bacon.

GWB’s already on the record congratulating the SCOTUS for making a wise decision. Guess that’s since he’s already in office.

By the by, MFA’s ban on soft money hurts the Jackasses more than it hurts the Pachyderms. The DNC’s been far more dependent on large soft money contributions, hence the far more rapid rise of organizations like Move On on the left than on the right. The Republicans are more than happy to suck down hard-money contributions of up to $2K per individual per candidate per election (primary, general, runoff) just like they have since the early-80’s. No wonder GWB’s all over MCA.

2. Idiot Appointees Tom Ridge, secretary of Homeland Security, wants some kind of legal status for the millions of undocumented aliens living in the US. “I’m not saying make them citizens, because they violated the law to get here,” Ridge said. “You determine how you can legalize their presence. Then, as a country, you make a decision that from this day forward … this is the process of entry, and if you violate that process of entry we have the resources to cope with it.”

- Uh, Tom? … Last I checked we HAD a process of entry - that’s why undocumented aliens used to be called “illegal immigrants”, since they’d decided to bypass that process.

Most of the articles I found referred back to RWR’s legalization of 2.7 million illegals back in 1986, and commented that the rate of immigration had almost doubled since then. I’ve just got to wonder if the previous legalization had anything to do with it. I doubt it; I realize that most of the immigrants just want to work, and they do jobs that Americans won’t, or won’t pay for.

But the SoHS saying “Hey, we oughta just legalize everyone who’s already here” sounds like an open invitation for anyone thinking of coming over to hurry up and get ‘feet dry’ as soon as possible. ‘Specially if you’re thinking of, say, committing some act of terrorism. What safer way to be a sleeper than to have paperwork stamped by DoHS allowing you to stay in the country.

(3) Other Crap I’m tired and depressed after writing this, and I haven’t even gotten to Medicare, Steel Tarriffs, etc. I’ve heard bunches of folks theorize that GWB’s strategy is to completely gut the DNC and force them way, way, way to the left, so far that we do go over to a one-party system, essentially.

Look at just the above two issues - MFA appeals to politico types and WASPs (protects power from ‘New Money’), and the immigration amnesty may as well be subtitled “I’d like to buy your vote” en espanol.

My question - what’s the point of having a country if you’ve abandoned your principles?

But there’s no real alternative for folks of my political persuasion (Suppose I might be the only one, but still…). I honestly could see myself voting for Lieberman - he’s not completely out to lunch on entitlements; he’s beat up on the slow decline of western civilization before; he’s a hawk, possibly to the right of GWB on terrorism; and he’s effectively back on the message he’d carried for years before he got tapped to be VeeP nominee.

Biggest apparent non-story of yesterday

Massive anti-terrorism rally in Iraq yesterday. Featuring slogans like “NO NO to terrorism, YES YES for peace” and people telling Al-Arabiyah network reporters “For once, speak the truth”.

Aziz Al-Yassiri secretary of the Iraqi Democratic Trend described the daily attacks in Iraq as acts of terrorism and that any attempt to legitimize or justify these acts as ‘resistance’ are ridiculous. … Protestors carried signs and banners that said ‘No to terrorism’, ‘Yes for peace’, ‘Iraqis stand united against terror and violence’, ‘Thanks to CPA soldiers’, ‘We thank the coalition for our FREEDOM’.

BTW, in another underreported story, the Iraqi Army officer responsible for the 45-minute claim regarding the lead time for Hussein to launch a WMD attack has come forward and is sticking with his story.

“Forget 45 minutes, we could have fired these within half an hour,” al-Dabbagh added.

He said the weapons were not used because most of the Iraqi army did not want to fight for Saddam.

The newspaper said al-Dabbagh works as an adviser to the Iraqi Governing Council and said he has received death threats from Saddam loyalists.

It reported that Iyad Allawi, the head of the Iraqi National Accord and a prominent council member, confirmed he had passed information from al-Dabbagh on Saddam’s weapons to British and American intelligence officials in the spring and summer of 2002

But guess what - Folks are going to spin that all of this is manipulation by the Bush media machine, all designed to guarantee his re-election.

But we all know that Howard Dean is right: “It only becomes more and more clear every day what a mistake this administration made in launching a preemptive war in Iraq”. I’m sure the folks at Healing Iraq would agree completely. We should have left Saddam in power, for sure.

26 million Iraqis freed, and at least 10,000 not murdered by their own government. Ten thousand. At 400 a year, that’s more than everyone who’s ever graduated from Caddo Magnet High School.

Look, I support freedom of ideas as much as the next person, but why the heck can’t a non-kook garner a decent amount of support?

All I Want For Christmas by Norman Rockwell

We all have images we associate with Norman Rockwell that tend to evoke a Currier and Ives or Saturday Evening Post quiet American family image. I saw a PBS special on Rockwell a couple Christmases ago and was enthralled with some of his lesser know civil rights paintings. I asked for a print of Southern Justice for my birthday and the next Christmas, but it was hard to find even a mention of it in most places. It looks like the Rockwell copyright holders have loosened the reigns a bit on Rockwell’s image and are starting to authorize his darker paintings for release. Here’s a nice article about Rockwell on a Finnish site.

It has been said that Norman Rockwell was a conservative with a small ‘c’ in his love for small-town and rural America, but liberal with a capital ‘L’ when it came to the crunch. Whenever he felt the cause was right, he was ready to fight for it. World War II had inspired Rockwell to paint with a purpose: the civil rights movement, astronauts, the Peace Corps, and poverty programs. This phase of artistic activism produced some of Rockwell’s finest works. “Look” magazine published two of his most famous civil-rights pictures.

CYOA Summaries

This site features summaries/reviews and pictures of book covers of the Choose Your Own Adventure books. At one time I had collected over 20 consecutive episodes starting at #1. I wonder where those books are now…

The Look

Then came “Look three.” This “Look” I liked. I liked it A LOT. This was the look that came right after she said the simple words, “My parents are going away for the weekened with the rest of the family.” Oh, really?

The whole story can be found here.

Landover Baptist: Return of the King

Cynthia’s favorite church has a review for “Return of the King”.

Three hours into the movie, after patiently waiting for a 300-foot Jesus to descend from the clouds and begin dismembering and Kung-Fu kicking the living hell out of unsaved people, the shocking truth that the devout audience had been hoodwinked into watching pagan, Christ-hating propaganda was finally revealed.

Book Store Follies

If you work retail, I’m so sorry. If you don’t, remind yourself how lucky you are by reading this list of book store stories by a Barnes&Noble employee.

This is the most fucked up thing to ever happen to me at work: Basically, I am calling a customer because the book she ordered has come in. A three year old picks up the phone and gargles into my ear before handing the phone to her father. I ask for the woman who ordered the book by name and he asks rather suspiciously: “Who is this?” I tell him it is “Barnes and Noble in Northville calling,” and he says “Okay hold on.” Five minutes (literally) later he yells to his wife (I presume) in an extremely sarcastic manner that “Barnes and Noble is on the phone!” Another few minutes later she picks up, and the other line hangs up. Before I can say anything she whispers in a shrill voice: “I know it’s you! I told you never to call me at home!” This catches me a little bit off guard. All I can manage to say is “Excuse me?” to which she replies: “Ohmygod. Ohmygod. I thought you were someone else.” I then tell her that her book is in and hang up.

The Passion of the Christ

I finished my review of The Passion of the Christ over at WW.

What's Up Terry Gross?

I know Tom Jones has some fans on the porch. Don’t much care for him, myself, but thought you guys would want to know about this.

Psycho Pong

Here’s a twist on Pong that makes for a nice (if frustrating) diversion.

Military Responsible For Blackout?

My paranoia-babble translation skills are weak, but I think this article suggests that the miltary was responsible for the 8/14 blackout.

Martians Destroying Environment

An article at Yahoo! News — Mars Emerging from Ice Age, Data Suggest — makes it clear that Martians have abused their environment! Their overuse of SUVs and coal-burning power plants is going to destroy thier planet.

(had to be done before reeder jumped on it.)

Koppel Taking Notes from Houston

In this Washington Post article about Ted Koppel’s preparation for moderating the recent Democratic debate, I found the following very interesting:

>The ABC staff had dismissed the idea of asking the candidates to name favorite books or songs or movies, since they all had rehearsed answers by now. But on Saturday, stranded in New York by a major snowstorm, Halperin had read a transcript of a Houston mayoral debate in which the candidates had been asked what book about urban policy they would recommend.

and I thought of our friend Jenna, who was the moderator in a recent Houston mayoral debate. Care to tell us who asked that fateful question, J?

RSS resource

This is mainly a personal memo, blog as ‘To Do’ list, but I wanted to remind myself to do a little more RSS learning when I got home this evening.

Irresponsible Bum paying for his crime

I looked for the thread we had about South Dakota Rep. Bill Janklow was convicted of manslaughter for running a stop sign at about 70 MPH and plowing into a motorcyclist, killing the biker. He’s resigned, and is possibly going to prison.

Sometimes, the system works.

Great move by the Bush Administration!

James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, has been appointed the Secretary of Soul and Foreign Minister of Funk by Secretary of State Colin Powell. Good God!

Secretary Powell (full text of speech here ) did not miss an opportunity to criticize our long-time allies (Wow. Anti-administration spin is easy to do), however, saying ““I could use you on those diplomatic conferences that I have to go to, sitting there all day long (in) meetings that went on forever and ever.” There was no immediate reaction from the French or Russians. CAN WE HIT IT AND QUIT? I SAID, CAN WE HIT IT AND QUIT?

LL Cool J also had great things to say about the Hardest Working Man in Show Business: “He’s one of the cornerstones of Hip Hop. …In music law there are three Bs — there’s Bach. …There’s Beethoven. …And then there’s Brown — James Brown! … I couldn’t leave here without commenting on one thing. …I love that hair! I’m wearing this hat because I don’t have that hair!”

Changing Focus at Worth Watching

Anyone monitoring WW knows that I don’t update it nearly enough. So, I’m re-focusing my energies and realigning with my core values. Worth Watching will now be subtitled An Alamo Drafthouse Fansite and it will be oriented to Drafthouse related materials. So, it will continue to have movie reviews in addition to discussing Drafthouse events and such.

That means my TV review material will move to this site to torture all of you!

Earthquake in DC

So turns out that BT’s not involved in the first newsworthy earthquake since we leaned back and put up our feet. DC got hit this afternoon, apparently.

I’ve spent about the last 10 minutes trying to come up with a “someone buried in the area rolling over in their grave” joke in conjunction with Medicare Reform or something, but can’t. All I can say is “cool” as it looks like there was no-one really hurt. I’ve always kind of wanted to be in an earthquake. I’ve hit most other natural disasters (Hurricanes, blizzards, minor floods, sandstorms) but haven’t had an earthquake yet.

Kelly, Cyn - any stories?

As they say in The South, "UN-yun"

One of the few times when the article is better than the title.

Race Issues Where "The Majority" Is The Minority

Interesting article from SFGate.com discussing white students trying to find their heritage at truly diverse schools that celebrate other cultures. The article is weakened by the sources since high school students are not the most articulate or well-thought, but it makes for nice contemplative material.

If/when I have kids, I look forward to exposing them alternately to their German, Native American, Polish, Irish and Italian (if Becky’s hasn’t kicked me to the curb by then) heritage/cultures.

Paris Hilton Does Jimmy Fallon

If you didn’t catch the Al Sharpton SNL this past weekend, it was a hoot. The highlight for us celebrity adicts was a visit to the set of Weekend Update by Paris Hilton.

JF: I hear the Paris Hilton is very beautiful.
PH: I’m glad that you’ve heard that.
…
JF: I’m a VIP, I might need to go through the back entrance.
PH: Doesn’t matter who are you – it’s not going to happen.

How To Pop a Zit

The sexist jerks at MSN Women continue to provide insider information allowing women to increase their beauty quotient while keeping men down with unpopped zits. Read up on the proper way to pop a zit and fight the power!

20 Most Annoying Conservatives

Can’t believe y’all missed this here.

The onset of the war on Iraq has created a very, very small, but very, very vocal group of ex-liberals (Mickey Kaus, Dennis Miller, a few internet bloggers, etc.) who have become “disgusted” with the Democratic Party. Getting them to explain why, however, is the rough equivalent of a shell game with a spastic, incontinent carnie. The “left”, which is basically Michael Moore and three asshole college kids, is responsible for everything that’s wrong with politics. If only they’d do their jobs correctly, and become big-daddy Republicans on foreign policy, everything would be okay. Oh, and tax cuts. Gotta have the tax cuts.

WDYLIA Episode 4 - BNAT5

WDYLIA Episode 4 is brought to you by the letters AICN and the Alamo Drafthouse — Thanks, Harry and Tim-n-Carrie!

BNAT5 was possibly the best way to spend 26 hours without sleep — book-ended by the most awesome premieres I have ever attended. (Although seeing Gordon Liu for the Kill Bill Vol. 1 premiere here in Austin was hard to displace.)

Here’s a list of the things we saw with brief reviews/descriptions which I hope to expound on later.

• Haunted Gold with John Wayne as a girlie-fightin’ ranch owner reclaiming his stake in an abandon mine. Nice to see John Wayne’s early work but the racist remarks (somewhat understandable in a 1932 film but still utterly unacceptable) garnered a lot of boos and hisses from the crowd.
• Return of Captain Marvel (originally titled “Adventures of Captain Marvel”) is a 1942 series — you know they used to show them before movies — about…well, Shazam and all that. It was a trick, though, because, Harry told us we’d see the whole series but he cut it near the end of the first episode and started:
• Lord of the Rings: Return of the King was awesome! The only thing the movie suffers from is the same thing the book suffers from: once the climax is reached there’s still a lot of content to go. Even more awesome than the film was that Harry blessed us with:
• Live In-person Q&A with Peter Jackson, Frances Walsh and Philippa Boyens - a chance to chat with all three of them was once-in-a-lifetime. I can only hope they enjoyed it as much as we all did. It was something I thought couldn’t be topped and a great way to start our journey. After the Q&A Harry arranged a great print for PJ and company to enjoy with us…
• The General with Buster Keaton and a live soundtrack from Guy Forsyth - unquestionably one of my most memorable events at the Drafthouse many years ago and it definitely holds up to a second viewing. Even without the genius of Guy Forsyth, Buster Keaton blows every comedic actor away in this simply hilarious silent film.
• Oldboy from Chan Wook Park who apparently has a thing about revenge — this writer/director’s earlier notable film is Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance . This is an amazing but incredibly disturbing film that takes revenge beyond anything you’ve even thought of.
• Trailer for Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow - (this may be listed out of order, but we got to see it three times over the night) I’m still up in the air on my prediction for the quality of this upcoming film, but the trailer looks pretty damn cool, and Harry snagging it fresh from the lab was one more gift under our BNAT tree. You should see it attached to Return of the King.
• The Nest - Every time Harry mentions the number of times he’s seen this french flick it grows. Saturday night it was 40, now he says 60 on his website. It is a pretty cool action/adventure ala The Italian Job, where a group of professional thieves intersect with a special forces army trying to rescue their former leader who is being escorted to his war crimes tribunal. It’s a little complicated, but it’s a great form for the genre. I just hope the US remake (of this remake of a remake) that’s been optioned is close to as good.
• Ginger Snaps: Unleashed - this is a sequel to a Canadian STV release — now a small cult hit — that adds a twist to the whole werewolf story. The sequel involves the sister of the girl in the original trying to stave off the werewolf thing herself. The twist at the end is super unexpected, but this film is probably only for genre lovers.
• Anchorman excerpt - (this may be out of order, too) Harry got a recently finished scene from the cutting room of Will Ferrel’s next film and it was hilarious! Kudos to Christina Applegate for scoring a role in it — her comedic chops have been underused.
• Haute Tension is a horror film that genre enthusiasts who want more accurate special effects will love. Otherwise, the story is pretty transparent and the surprise twists don’t surprise.
• Teenage Mother is a 1968 exploitation movie that for 90% of the film seems like your run-of-the-mill mid-60’s “don’t have sex or tell lies, but sex education is a good thing” film…then it cuts to a clinical film of a live birth using forceps. o…m…g… It was hard to sit through it this late in the game — as Harry tends to do in the wee hours — but then the last bit woke us up. (Oh! Fred Willard has a small role in it!)
• Undead - this Aussie zombie movie was well-made, but a little cheesy — as you’d expect from a zombie movie — and it had an interesting twist.
• “The Passion of The Christ”: - shocked to see that title there? We were all utterly amazed when Harry announced it. It would have been hard to top a visit from PJ and the gang at the top of the event, but Harry did it. There are already reviews at AICN from Nordling, Ravvy and a Catholic and an Atheist if you want to skip to full-on review mode. I will do a full review later, but for now I’ll quote Nordling and say “This is an Important Film. Possible the first real Important Film of the 21st Century.” Harry topped this topper even further with:
• Live In-person Q&A with Mel Gibson - It was so gracious for Mel to stop in Austin and let us sleep-deprived geeks fawn over this amazing work of art. I hope in some small way he benefits from the visit (and I hope I can remember enough of what he said to include it in my review.)

That’s the best of my memory. Again, thanks Harry! I hope your birthday was as great for you as you made it for us.

Worthless question

So I’m watching T2 while waiting for Battlestar Galactica to come on (Yes, I need to get a ration of grief for that), and I’m just wondering - how come at the end when the T2000 (or whatever the dude from the X-Files was called) is being lowered into the molten metal he doesn’t infect the rest of the batch of metal?

That, and doesn’t Terminator Arnie leave his hand stuck in the cog?

poseur library

Every week, my employer receives dozens of scholarly books for review purposes. Once they’ve been reviewed or listed, they go up for grabs. Many of them sound like they would be quite interesting. Usually they are not.

I’m in the process of packing up for a move to a new office, so I thought I’d share some of the riveting titles I’ve grabbed over the years. They tend to use a lot of colons. If anything strikes your fancy, let me know and I’ll pass it along for your library-padding pleasure.

Napoleon on the Art of War; selected, edited, and translated by Jay Luvaas
Hemingway, the Final Years
Out of the Garden: Toys and Children’s Culture in the Age of TV Marketing
Ariadne’s Clue: A Guide to the Symbols of Humankind
Cajun Country Guide
The Science of Harry Potter: How Magic Really Works
The Road to Middle Earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology
Global Noise: Rap and Hip Hop Outside the USA
The Mystical Arts of Tibet, Featuring Personal Sacred Objects of the Dalai Lama
Women in Scripture: A Dictionary of Named and Unnamed Women in the Hebrew Bible, the Apocryphal/Deutorocanonical Books, and the New Testament
Einstein and Religion
Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences
The Graffiti Subculture: Youth, Masculinity, and Identity in London and New York
On Jesus
The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science
The Magic Furnace: The Search for the Origins of Atoms
Excavation (from the Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology)
Buddhist Learning and Textual Practice in Eighteenth-Century Lankan Monastic Culture
Gender and Boyle’s Law of Gases
The People’s Forests
The Puzzle Instinct: The Meaning of Puzzles in Human Life
Inventing the 20th Century: 100 Inventions that Shaped the World; From the Airplane to the Zipper
Numerical Discourse of the Buddha: An Anthology of Suttas from the Anguttara Nikaya
The Salt Merchants of Tianjin: State Making and Civil Society in Late Imperial China
The Wonderful Wizard in You!

no substitutions

Seriously, don’t go trying to pass off your lame-ass local Sierra Leonian midget comedy duo in place of a genuine article Nigerian midget comedy duo. Those Sierra Leonians will smack your ass down!

Google Bombing

Go to google and enter “miserable failure” and then hit “I’m feeling lucky”

HA! Someone has been google bombed!

Apparently, it just takes a cabal of web-savvy types to make it happen. So, my question is this - who can we google bomb?

(You may remember that I’m a fan of google-smacking, too)

Nickel and dimed II

Can we all agree that this has gone too far?

My personal pipe dream

Has been stolen by someone else. I’ve found The Drake, a fishing magazine for folks who really like to fish, and who can’t care too much for wasting cash. It comes out once a year, apparently, and features such wondrous stuff as

“I never thought I’d become a fishing writer,” (John Gierach) says—a rather surprising statement coming from one of the most successful fishing writers of all time. “I thought I’d be a poet or a novelist or something. I started writing about fishing because I was doing a lot of fishing anyway and I figured, ‘Hey, why not do this?’

The 2003 (I just thought deux mille trois) issue has PJ O’Rourke, and a bunch of vignettes that don’t feature any high dollar gear or anything except for love of the water (an exhortation in 52 weeks of fishing suggests going kayaking or rafting during the spring runoff, since in the end it’s not about the fish, it’s about rocks, water, and fresh air), and appreciation of fisher(folk) and fish.

"I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant."

Just a reminder that 62 years ago, 3,000+ Americans died in a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, dragging the US into WWII . Ultimately, more than 55,000 Marines and Sailors, and over 300,000 Army soldiers would be killed, two cities would be leveled by atomic bombs, and Europe would be pretty uniformly leveled by a half decade of strategic bombing. More than 16 million Americans, out of a population of about 100 million, would serve in the armed forces. Cost of liberating the world - Approx $335 billion dollars in 1945 dollars.

I hope that we can continue the tradition of our grandparents, and may the American giant never sleep again.

Boomer Sooner!

Here’s another reason that DI sports blow - Who is going to be the “National Champion” now? Looks like Sen’s Biden and Hatch may have to hold some emergency committee meetings. Go K-State!

Ah, but it’s nice. I need to give Granny a call, to continue the family tradition of rooting for Texas and whoever’s playing against Oklahoma (Love you Doc).

BTW- Navy beat Army. And it looks like the USNA is going to the GalleryFurniture.com Bowl (or Houston Bowl, or whatever the heck it is).

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.

Nor'Easter

I’m honestly loving life. Not sure why, but snow always makes me feel like a little boy all over again. It started coming down hard about 3 PM, so after a little rice for supper and a few beers, I figured it was time to go wander about Newport snapping pics.

The first picture is looking up the street I’m staying on towards some old church. The next is the same church from the side. One of the things I really liked about the pictures I took last night was snapping pics without flash. The snow reflects streetlights really well, making a lot of ambient light, and some stunning pictures. Notice the streaks from the headlights/taillights from the car going past.

I thought this was a pretty neat juxtaposition - bike near the mailboxes. The snow here in New England tends to be pretty sticky, especially early and late in the winter. The first pic is the bike w/o flash, second is bike with flash. Pictures with the flash tend to be extremely sparkly, and only capture objects within about 15 feet.

The next one is looking down towards the harbor, past what I think is Trinity Episcopal Church, where George Washington went a few times, and where ADM Oliver Hazard Perry was baptized. Freaky.

This dude was out in the middle of the night making a buck taking Christmas card pics for the shopowners. He didn’t object to my snapping a picture of him.

Like I mentioned, there’s something magical about snow like no other weather. It’s extremely reflective, so when it’s snowing at night, the air seems to glow regardless of the amount of light available. It also is extremely absorbent of sound when it’s fresh, before gravity and melting begins to compact it, so walking while it’s snowing is pretty surreal, provided the wind isn’t blowing. There is little silence in the world like the silence of new-fallen snow. Even in Newport, a pretty well developed area, it’s stunning. Most of the cars are off the road, and there’s no sound except for wind and snowflakes hitting my hood. In the woods it’s even eerier, with the added surprise of the occasional CRACK of a branch giving way under the weight of the snow.

This place seemed cool to me - bronze statue of some old guy out front. Then I caught the sign saying what it was. And how old it was. I’m not in Texas any more…

Yeah. That’s 1747. As in 260 years old. As in there had been people here long enough in 1747 to set up an art museum.

OK, one last one that I really liked: Breakfast.

Student Expelled for Advil

It’s not quite the home-town scene, but the Bossier City School Board (the other river city — the one with the most casinos) expelled a Parkway High student. A teacher had chased her into the bathroom smelling cigarette smoke, but all a search revealed was some Advil. Implementing their no-common-sense rule…no, I read that wrong…no-tolerance rule they decided her offense justified delaying her education a year. I completely agree with this no-sense approach to handling teenagers. If they mis-behave (or even if you just suspect they do and all you can catch them on is a technicality) you should make sure they have plenty of idle time to consider their crime and feel remorse. I am sure when Amanda Stiles returns to public school next year she will be more motivated to better achieve.

Trouble for Lance?

With the recent signing of Lance’s archrival Jan Ullrich back to an already loaded T-Mobile squade, there was already a great soap opera developing for next year’s Tour.

This move makes things even more interesting. Lance’s corp of luitenents is losing one of its best. Roberto Heras, winner of this years Vuelta D’ Espania, who guided Lance so well through the TdeF mountains the last 3 years, is leaving to join the remnants of the ONCE squad.

This move places 3 legitimate contenders as head’s of their own team. Can’t wait. I’m booking my tickets soon.

My Next Project: Brew Your Own

Since I’ve had to give up beer other than special occasions — it disrupts my sleeping — I may try this as my next big project. I’d love to have home-brewed ginger ale.

(Hey, Rick — brewing your own soda is banned by our firewall. I wouldn’t even mention it out on the sidewalk or you are sure to get fired!)

Rock n Roll / Love is Hell pt. 1

Got these new ones from Ryan Adams yesterday after much anticipation. I was all set to love the hell out of Rock n Roll with what I had heard about it, ready to have Ryan finally show other bands how to be the next Exile on Main St-era Stones, ready for him to be on record what he was when I saw him live at SXSW right before Gold was released. After a few listens, I just don’t know what my problem is.

It rocks out all right, but also ends up sounding like part Pete Yorn collaboration, part Replacements/U2/Echo & the Bunnymen/Jackson Browne rehashing. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. There are some instant connections with songs like Burning Photographs, but for the most part I felt his emotion was lost in the channeling of his influences. Supposedly he rushed this one through after Love is Hell was rejected by his record company (Lost Highway) as a follow-up to Gold, and that shows a bit. Maybe his punk band side project The Finger and annoying girlfriend Parker Posey are to blame. Who knows. I’m sure it will grow on me. Just wanted something more assured I guess.

Assurance that he’s still Got It actually comes with the companion EP Love is Hell pt.1. Seven great slow, melancholy, reflective songs with a nice cover of Oasis’ Wonderwall thrown in for good measure. I have to question what LH’s alleged problems were with this disc, it’s not another odds and ends project like Demolition, all of these songs stand on their own. Maybe I’m getting old, I kind of prefer this to rocking out at the moment.

Vets Won't Vote Bush

Don’t let the right-wingers on the porch over-hear, but “this letter”: at Salon.com makes it seem that Bush has lost the support of veterans.

I had a bumper sticker on my vehicle that stated “We Support the Troops” in bold letters and then below in smaller letters “But NOT the unelected residents of the White House!” … Greg then asked, “How many feel the way the bumper sticker reads today?” … Amazingly, I observed even the staff members at the counter with their hands up! If there were more than a just a few in the room who didn’t have their hands shown, I don’t know where they were.

Googling the author, Terry Dobbelaere, reveals an online activist who presents himself like this:

Hello all!
I am Terry from the Upper Midwest, a early retired USPS worker and
Union Advocate. … I’m here to “stay
informed” and get away from the extreme viciousness of the “ditto
heads” …

1000 words

no time to comment, but i think this speaks for itself. who knows what to believe anymore?

Fly Guy. Ahhhh....

This interactive animation will you leave feeling calm and refreshed. It’s quite entertaining and worth spending five or so minutes on.

War-on-Drugs Guerillas Ecstatic at Retraction

Remember my missive on my summer of drugs and concern that I had damaged my brain. Part of that concern was based on research that is now being retracted thanks to foul-ups at the lab where research was done.

It turned out that the $1.3 million study, led by Dr. George A. Ricaurte of Johns Hopkins University, had not used Ecstasy at all. … It was not the first time Dr. Ricaurte’s lab was accused of using flawed studies to suggest that recreational drugs are highly dangerous. In previous years he was accused of publicizing doubtful results without checking them, and was criticized for research that contributed to a government campaign suggesting that Ecstasy made “holes in the brain.”

Dr. Ricaurte, a 50-year-old neurologist at Hopkins since 1988, is probably the best-known Ecstasy expert in the war on drugs.

Some expert, there. I still think research needs to be done on the effects of “recreational” pharamaceuticals on the brain, but it should be funded by “sin taxes” imposed on drug sales. (Yes, I believe in sin taxes.) The government shouldn’t be paying for this kind of biased research, and putzes like this guy shouldn’t be doing the work.

This One's for the ladies in the house

Every now and then, my favorite advice columnist in the entire world (Cary Tennis on Salon), answers a question with such insight that I’m totally blown away.

Today, a young woman asked if she should go ahead and make a move on her co-worker, who she gets along great with, tons of chemistry, and all that. Problem is, he mentioned that he likes skinny chicks (which she’s not).

An excerpt of his response:

“You’re living in a world of men’s bodies. It’s our bodies and their responses to your body that fill you with doubt. So how do you get from a man’s mental picture of a 17-year-old cheerleader with thin hips and pointy tits kicking her leg high in the air after a touchdown to your screaming night as a bucking bronco under this cowboy at the next desk?

I don’t think it’s about waiting for him to superimpose his mental picture of the cheerleader over your face. You have to break through his billboard and wake him up. There is a place where men and women meet that is so deep there are no billboards anymore, there is just the desert sky and a scary howling that you’re not even sure is coming from you or him, it’s so animal.

Yes, many men get hard over skinny hips and big tits. Big deal.”

Magic Cone

NSFW - Rick, this means you.

This website shows a patented device for women to use that makes urination more convenient. There’s even an animation showing how to use it. If I were the more motivated type, I might steal this animation and make her write her name in snow.

This Rep doesn't want you to Enjoy Better Sex!

You remember the Change the Climate ad I posted about so long ago, right? Well, apparently the ad’s placement pissed of some Oklahoma congressman. Now he wants to cut DC Metro’s funding by approx $92,000, or twice what the ad cost. As a warning to other metro systems.

Never mind that Metro initially refused the ad and only accepted it after CTC threatened a lawsuit. Never mind that Boston is still (three years later) fighting such a lawsuit. So Metro will be punished for showing good judgement.

Let’s all send this guy an email (istook@mail.house.gov) and tell him to get a life, shall we?

Nickel and Dimed

Thanks again to the NY Times Most-Emailed articles for leading me to this article about the newest form of inflation - in addition to charging extra “fees” rather than raising rates, are companies making “mistakes” that result in overcharging customers?

Doesn’t seem far-fetched to me at all. He makes a good point - if it were totally benign, these mistakes would go both ways. But in my experience, that is not the case.

To The Moon (Alice!)

I just ran across this article indicating that GWB is about to announce an initiative to return to the moon.

My head says “What a waste of money,” but my heart says “I wanna go!” One thing is certain. I am never again going to believe anyone who says that Republicans are fiscally responsible.

Hell Freezes over

I agree with Krugman

The point is that you don’t have to believe in a central conspiracy to worry that partisans will take advantage of an insecure, unverifiable voting system to manipulate election results. Why expose them to temptation?

(Insert “Luddites” comment from John)

Hold Me, I'm Scared

Since John’s on the wagon today, I thought I’d fill in.

Let me start with this quote from Gen. Tommy Franks (he was asked about the repercussions of another catastrophic terrorist event in the US):

“… the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy.”

Further, such an attack may cause us “to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution.”

Scary line of thinking. If more terrorist attacks then loss of all freedoms, tear Constitution in two and military/police state. Neat.

The quotes came from an interview that Franks gave for Cigar Aficionado, of all magazines. Their website doesn’t have a link to the article. If you’re interested in more commentary about the article, look here. Franks also says that peace will never reign in our lifetimes and “never has in the history of mankind.” Lets all go ahead and shoot ourselves now.

Discovery: Extreme Martial Arts

NPPFE Day

As a fan of the marial arts movies, I gotta remember to record this Discovery show about the martial arts styles and their advantages/disadvantages. They’ve got a cool collection of CGMC videos. The show will be re-aired on Thursday at 9 p.m. ET.

Get Email About Your Reps and Sens Votes

Check out this service that will send you the votes your political representatives have made.

(No, it’s not politics! See the dang sports icon over there?)

Vanagon Ads

NPPFE Day

I really wanted to get a Vanagon at one point until I read that they have a metal plate on the underside that has to be removed to do even a simple oil change. When the RAV4 is paid off, I may get one as our third vehicle. Kind of a blend of “yuppie third car wealth bragging” and “hippie creedo VW van show-off”.

Here’s a bunch of Vanagon print ads through history. Some are quite compelling.

"Oh f***, not another elf!"

Although I knew that they were writing around the same times, it never occured to me that Tolkien and C.S. Lewis knew each other, let alone that they had this much influence on each other’s lives and works.

Both authors have had a huge influence on me personally, and the idea that they shaped each other’s creations is just…magical.

TLOTR was the first series that I loved as a kid, and I remember the weeks I spent curled up reading the dog eared copies that my dad had loaned me. I didn’t read any Lewis til I was a grown-up (John blames my Catholic upbringing), but The Chronicles of Narnia is one of the most lovely and simply moving things I’ve ever read.

I guess my fascination with this is also tied in to the summer that I spent at Oxford. I didn’t meet anyone even half as interesting, but I do remember feeling smarter, braver, and more true to myself than I had ever felt before. Part of that was just me being drunk a lot of the time, but I think there was also something in the air — history, maybe, but more like an electricity that left you feeling like great things were happening all around you.

So, maybe exchanges like this one are where that feeling comes from.

Dick

NPPFE Day

How many disturbing phallic references can you find in this picture of Dick Gephardt?

What Sex Is Your Brain?

NPPFE Day

Those guys at BBC really have some cool stuff going on including this brain sex test which shows that I am apparently more female-brained. (For lack of them producing an actual number, I was 2 clicks into the female section of the brain shaped monitor.) I do have some problems with 3D rotational comprehension, but I don’t know if I’m THAT female-brained.

Movie Lists

NPPFE Day

From Independent Digital (UK) comes this list of the 10 best black comedies including many that I’ve never seen. I’ll have to look them up since I’m a fan of the style.

From Men’s Journal (another closeted gay men’s magazine) comes this list of the 50 best guy movies of all time. These movies I’m not that excited to look up. I can honestly say I’ve only seen 4 or 5 of the top 10, and only 3 of those could I talk about intelligently. I don’t know that I even need to see the others.

Poll the Porch

So I keep seeing this commercial from a watch company. It features a bunch of attractive people saying “It’s not your laugh…” “It’s not your job…” etc. It closes by saying “It’s your watch” and pitching the product.

I don’t wear a watch. I’ve got a clock on my computer, clock on my palm, clock on my iPod, clock in my car and so on. I’ve got a couple of cheapish watches I drag out when I think I want to get ‘serious’ about running and start another short-lived stint of timing my runs, but have no real interest in getting a swanky wrist-watch.

How about y’all? Anyone else bumming time off devices other than a wrist-watch? Or am I severely deranged in this, too?

Leaving a Job

A couple years back I decided to leave the company I had worked at for 8 years to get a 40%+ raise. The letter I wrote was short and generally nice. I had no need to burn bridges and I was happy to work there — but a 40% pay difference is hard to pass up. (I ended up staying when I got a matching offer but only after I sent in my letter.) I hope I never have to leave a job on bad terms, but if I do I hope my resignation letter has to be published in the company’s public files.

Texas it ain't

The lead story on WPRI’s 10 PM news was all about the high school football playoffs, which started tonight. Not such a stretch yet, right?

The kicker was that a lot of teams with home field advantage for the first round of the playoffs weren’t playing at home since their high school football fields DIDN’T HAVE LIGHTS!

That, and there were about 50 people in the stands, total. There were more people showing up for Magnet soccer games. Granted, it’s colder than the proverbial Wiccan’s bosom today, but still. And it’s not like it’s a long drive to get to the playoff games. Do these folks think that school’s about education or something?

Copyright Infringement by the RIAA

Thanks to the guys at LinkFilter.net and ultimately, this guy for finding a spot on the RIAA’s website that infringes on a copyright of Paul Simon’s without following the proper rules of “Fair Use”.

The song “Boy in the Bubble” is the first track on Paul Simon’s Grammy-winning album Graceland. The lyrics to one verse:

It’s a turn-around jump shot
It’s everybody jump start
It’s every generation throws a hero up the pop charts
Medicine is magical and magical is art
The Boy in the Bubble
And the baby with the baboon heart

Paul Simon owns the copyright to that song and those lyrics (and I’m pretty sure I’m legally entitled, under the rules of “Fair Use”, to post it here, since I just gave you a small section and I credited him).

The Recording Industry Association of America claims to be protecting the rights of copyright owners like Simon. I wanted to know more about this whole copyright issue, so I went to the RIAA’s web site. Check out this page (click, you fool). Specifically, check out the first nine words of the third paragraph. They read: “Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts.”

The phrase is not in quotes, and no one is credited.

So, unless I’m mistaken and the pharse “Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts,” is some sort of common expression, the RIAA is doing a pretty good job of showing us how not to respect copyrights.

Commentors over at Linfilter note that MSNBC and ABC News understand the rules. I’d love to hear from our resident lawyers…

Corporations to foot state budget crunch bills?

I’m not sure what the ramifications of this might be, but I certainly approve of sticking it to corporations (particularly credit card companies, although they don’t make any mention of them specifically).

Basically, Maryland has outlawed an accounting practice that allowed companies to funnel income through Delaware-based holding companies (no taxes in Delaware) and is now offering them a deal on the penalties if they pay the back taxes and interest.

With so many state budgets in crisis, I wonder if legislatures across the country might try similar tricks.

If you believe that the state budget crunches are an intentional by-product of federal tax cuts meant to streamline state governments, this would be a pretty interesting bit of backlash.

Colorado GOP Dealt a Blow -- Is Texas Next?

(Stop me before I over-post!)

The Colorado Republicans are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stay a decision by the Colorado Supreme Court saying the new legislative-drawn maps were not passed legitamately. The Texas maps won’t face the exact same problem, but they may get tossed because they’re infringing on minority voting power.

One More Presidential Dig

Getting tired of seeing my icon next to the little ass and elephant? Gotta be me!

Molly Ivins (who has one sexy soul and is a great writer) has a great article about The UncompassionateConservative (our POTUS ) at MotherJones.com.

What you end up with is a guy who sees himself as a perfectly nice fellow — and who is genuinely disconnected from the impact of his decisions on people.

During the presidential debate in Boston in 2000, Bush said, “First and foremost, we’ve got to make sure we fully fund LIHEAP [the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program], which is a way to help low-income folks, particularly here in the East, pay their high fuel bills.” He then sliced $300 million out of that sucker, even as people were dying of hypothermia, or, to put it bluntly, freezing to death.

Media Suppresion

An OpEd at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer discusses the American-backed Iraqi officials shutting down a Baghdad television station on Monday. I did not see this bit of news yesterday or I surely would have posted it. I could probably start a diatribe around American censorship, or even worse American backed governments that start with the letter I doing deplorable things on our tax dollars. Instead I want to question who names their newspaper the “Post Intelligencer” — and what does it mean? Is this paper about senility?

Christian America

Here’s a wordy but well-written editorial from the Illinois Leader (Illinois’ Conservative Politics) refuting a previous letter stating America is a Christian nation . I don’t understand how Conservative media could allow this paper to break ranks and publish a thoughtful missive on the seperation of church and state, but it gives me hope for them.

"Gay" Is a Dirty Word

It’s not quite from the home-town, but Lafayette can be just as backwards as the S’port. A 7-year-old boy was punished for telling another student his mom is “gay”.

Yoshimi Rehash...Is Awesome

You may remember my favorable review of The Flaming Lips’ “Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots” a few months ago? Well, it’s back with a vengeance. If you didn’t catch the now-blaze stereo version last time, grab it at Apple’s iTunes if you wanna be a luddite. The recently released 5.1 surround sound DVD version of this album is mind-blowing good. It’s been a long time since I put on an album and sat in the living room just listening — being stoned doesn’t count. The gimmick of surround sound music may wear off like Stereo sound did, but I bet this DVD Audio is filed in history right next to Are You Experienced for it’s innovative use of audio technology.

If you have at least 5 speakers in your home theater sound system and a DVD player, I can’t harrass you enough to buy this album.

A Good and Healthy Breakfast!

In my pre-teen years my mother decided to return to college and several previous “Mom-jobs” fell to my shoulders including selecting and preparing my own breakfast. Being the unorthodox John that I am, I wandered the aisles of the grocery store selecting cans of chilli and Spaghettios©. My mother was appalled but I ate and ate happily. Now, I’ve got a wife who is insistent on the importance of breakfast (which we all know isn’t that important.) I’ve changed my eating habits, but I’m still unorthodox.

God bless America, Kellog’s and Disney for the cereal called Mud and Bugs which is a “naturally sweetened cereal with bug-shaped marshmallows”. Just as many people would be appalled if I were eating actual mud and bugs, but compared to other cereals this stuff isn’t that bad.

Cereal: 
  Mud & Bugs, Frosted Mini-wheats, Special K
Calories (from fat):  
    110 (10),            180 (10),   110 (0)
Carbohydrates (sugars):  
     25 (15),             41 (10),    22 (4)
Dietary Fiber:  
          <1,                   5,        <1

It always surprises me how similar cereals are to each other. (Unless you are eating Becky’s “Twigs and Leaves©” — made from twigs and leaves.)

What's next - Turkey Cheesecake?

I assume we aren’t the only ones with 87 pounds of leftover turkey and dressing in the fridge. Not to mention green beans, pies, etc. I’ll confess that over the weekend the two of us managed to eat both quarts of leftover mac and cheese, along with three quarters of a pecan pie.

But what to do with all that turkey and white bread stuffing? (the sausage and cornbread stuffing is tasty by itself) My (what I thought was totally original) answer - turkey cakes. Think crab cake, only with turkey and dressing instead of crab and bread crumbs. Very tasty, if I do say so myself - and quite presentable, especially with leftover gravy and cranberry sauce! See below:

So that takes care of the leftover stuffing and about 1/10 of the turkey we have on hand. Come to find out, “turkey croquettes” are nothing new. New to me, though!

What are y’all doing with your leftovers?

Being The President's Brother

Here’s a funny editorial about the perks of being the President’s brother from a San Antonio paper.

The deposition also revealed that Bush had signed a contract with a Chinese semiconductor firm backed by the son of a former Chinese president. Bush would receive $2 million in stock over five years for consulting even though he admitted to not having any knowledge about semiconductors.

Cynics suggest Bush received these generous gifts because of his name. But I don’t see what’s so great about “Neil.”

Bubba

Bubba Bubba