" The victim gasped loudly as blood poured from his neck. His killer held up the head at one point, and placed it on top of the body. " -- The killing of Eugene Armstrong
Year upon year in the world's darkest woods
On the dirt at the foot of the ancient trees,
Tangles and brambles and dead brush increase
Which the sunlight can never seize.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
Our ash that descends in our clearest of skies?
Our leapers that swam down the stones?
Best answered by bombs from mid-heaven at prayer,
Bringing that fire which hollows the bones.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
If their god decrees war, war shall prevail.
This lesson is written in stone.
No dreams will defer, nor wishes erase,
The hate that is burnished on bone.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
Only by fire is fascism finished.
This sin is demanded that your line may live.
Only through fire is freedom reborn.
Each generation pulls the sword from the stone.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
"OH FOR A MUSE OF FIRE!
J M Hanes, in the comments to our Shakespearean homage -- The Tragedy of Omlet, Prince of Massachusetts picks up our sorry tale of woe, our slo-mo tragedy, with the ever popular Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, aka Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy
ACT III
Scene I
[Enter THE KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS,
OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN]
THE KING: And can you, by no drift of circumstance,
Get from Omlet why he puts on this confusion,
Grating so harshly all his days of quiet
With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?
ROSENCRANTZ: He does confess he feels himself distracted;
But from what cause he will by no means speak.
GUILDENSTERN: Nor do we find him forward to be sounded,
But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof,
When we would bring him on to some confession.
THE KING: Yet may true stated what you have observed,
Unwrinkle the body politic in parts.
Seated, second from the left.
While riding on a train goin' west,
I fell asleep for to take my rest.
I dreamed a dream that made me sad,
Concerning myself and the first few friends I had.*
Cruising in the bright August morning down Highway 5. California's great central valley, north of Sacramento, where the farm towns roll by, their blunt names like an old catechism of your life, "Willows," "Williams," "Orland," "Nord."
Rice fields shimmer in fives shades of green. Enough rice to feed the Orient with a bunch left over for the States. Old and new orchards in whirring diagonal rows. Roadside attractions promising 20 different varieties of olives. White egrets pacing in the irrigation canals. Yellow crop dusters banking and coming in low over the highway.
Heading south towards San Francisco; towards an appointment with an old friend trapped too early in a brain where all the furniture is fading, dissolving, melting into a blurred now and a bright twenty years ago.
The old story. You wonder about a friend you haven't been in touch with for a decade. You meet someone who knows someone who knows him. Or you run an Internet search and find an email of a person who once knew him. And you ask. Most of the time things are fine, but then there's that time when the news is not good. Not good at all.
How many a year has passed and gone,
And many a gamble has been lost and won,
And many a road taken by many a friend,
And each one I've never seen again. *
You get a phone number for his brother and you call. His brother fills you in on the details.
Several strokes stemming from a traffic accident twenty years gone and an operation on the brain five years later. First wife saw what was coming and cleared out, dumping the marriage to become a poet. Right.
He married again and, by all accounts, married well. Had some good years. Was back to his music and his songs. But then the strokes came, and came again, and his mind began to liquefy. The second wife couldn't handle all the care -- could you? -- and placed him, at last, in a home in San Francisco.
One daughter sees him often, the other daughter seldom, the second wife some times, the brother every six weeks, the first wife never.
And so, because of what was, and because you have to be, at the least, a witness to this part of his life and yours, your arrange a visit.
Continued...
Citizens United
My favorite line from the trailer. (An ernest gray haired woman at the fringe of a demonstration in New York City: "When you talk about a dictator, there's pros and there's cons...
CUT TO: Man tied to post in middle east with his back being whipped to the bone.
".... If a dictator provides free health care, I like that dictator. If a dictator provides a free university education, I like that dictator."
CUT TO: Taliban woman being shot in the head in soccer stadium.
BLOGGER: I wish to complain about these documents you palmed off on your shrinking but credulous audience last week.
RATHER: Oh yes, the, uh, the Bush Guard memos. They are full of accurate facts.... What's,uh... What's wrong with them?
BLOGGER: I'll tell you what's wrong with them, Dan. They're forgeries, that's what's wrong with them!
RATHER: No, no, they're just pretending to be forgeries. They contain accurate facts vetted by all experts we could find that agree with me.
BLOGGER: Look, "Kenneth", I know a forgery when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
RATHER: No no they're not forged because they're accurate! Remarkable set of facts, aren't they. Best I've ever made.
BLOGGER: The "facts" don't enter into it. Forged facts forfiet their factualness.
RATHER: Nononono, no, no! They're accurate in the facts from our carefully checked but secret sources! I know they're true because I've reviewed the tapes of myself claiming they're true.
BLOGGER: Look, I took the liberty of examining those tapes when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason you claimed they were true was the fact they'd been NAILED to your head.
(pause)
RATHER: Well, o'course they was nailed there! If I hadn't nailed them to my head, I would have forgotten where I got them from in the first place. Nailed or not, they'll still fly. They'll still Voooooooom!
BLOGGER: "VOOM"?!? Mate, these documents wouldn't "voom" if you strapped four million frothing moonbats on them! They've been trying that over on Kos for days and there is no lift-off. These documents is bleedin' demised!
RATHER: No no! Don't you understand? They're ACCURATE even if they're FAKE! They're pining for a Democratic Administration. Which makes them TRUE LIES.
BLOGGER: 'They're not pining! They're passed on!
These documents are no more!
They have ceased to be!
They've expired and gone to meet their maker! ... Speaking of which...
They're a set of stiffs!
Bereft of truth, they're a pack of lies!
If you hadn't nailed them to your forehead on national television, they'd be compost in a New Jersey landfill next to Jimmy Hoffa.
These documents are pushing up the daisies!
Their hopes of altering our national election are now 'istory!
They and you are off the twig!
They have kicked the bucket, shuffled off the mortal coil, run down the curtain on your career and joined the Hitler Diaries!!
THESE ARE EX-DOCUMENTS!!
(pause)
RATHER: Well, I'd better replace them with another set of true lies I whipped up on my old Selectric over the weekend. (he takes a quick peek behind the counter) Sorry Blogger, I've had a look 'round the back of CBS News, and uh, we're right out of forged documents with accurate facts.
BLOGGER: I see. I see, I get the picture.
Rather: I got a John Kerry.
(pause)
BLOGGER: Pray, does it talk?
RATHER: Not to the press.
FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS I'll be in the process of relocating from Laguna Beach, California to Seattle, Washington. In the interim, I'll be driving Highway 1 up the coastline of California, Oregon, and Washington and I don't plan to push it. One thousand miles of coastline is nothing to just zoom past if you've got the chance. (See Laguna Dawn for my observations on part of this route.)
UPDATE: The Getty, Cambria, the Sur, Berkeley, Mill Valley, Stinson Beach, Bolinas, .... currently in Mendocino. The road goes on forever.
During this period, my ability and desire to update this page is likely to be intermittent. In the meantime, I've made a little list of essays and items in various categories that may be of interest to the idle browser.
Omlet | Act 3, Scene 1
SCENE I. A cabin in the Gulfsteam, 40,000 feet over New Jersey.
Omlet
To be or not to be President: that is my platform:
Whether 'tis more nuanced to vote for before against
The 87 billion of outrageous appropriation,
Or to make my case upon the seas of health care,
And by raising taxes get it fully funded? To windsurf: to trap-shoot:
To say "I cannot bring a gun to the debate." Oh end
The heart-ache and the thousand polling shocks
This campaign is heir to, tis a consomme
Devoutly to be reheated. To be elected, to rule;
To rule: perchance to decide: ay, there's the belly rub;
For in decision what results may come
When we have pulled out and hugged Chirac
Must give us all pause: I can't get no respect
That makes worthwhile of so long campaign.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of November;
The Limbaugh laugh, the Clintonian contumely,
The wrath of despising wife, the landslide votes of scorn,
The insolence of Begala, and the spurns
Of all my ambitions to be an aging JFK,
When I myself might my quietus make
With a pump-action? Who would Carville bear,
His grunts and sweating items of "To-Do,"
But that the dread of always junior senator,
That obscurity where I shall sink, from which
No non-Kennedy emerges, freezes me like headlighted deer,
And makes me bear John Edwards' southern drawl,
Than fly off to Nantucket or Gstaad to sport until December.
Thus candidacy doth make mincemeat of my myth;
And thus my native shape of waffle
Is amplified by my pale cast of speech
And my life's enterprise of "It's my ambition, stupid!,"
With view of my face their votes turn awry,
And lose the name of Winner. -- Soft me now!
The fair Teresa! Nymph, in thy checkbook
Be all my ambitions, stubs.
===
SOOTH! The Tragedy of Omlet, Prince of Massachusetts, doth continue at Protein Wisdom
Omlet | Act 5, Scene 1
SCENE I. A field in Red Bank, New Jersey. Prince Omlet examines the skull of a famous news anchor....
SOOTH! SCENE III. A lavish hotel room in Cleveland Enter OMLET and JOHN EDWARDS as described by Blogfonte.
===
UPDATETH:
Sooth, fair Instapunditeers, who, upon this plain of Mars
Hath joined good Sir Jeff and I, old Gerard of Gaunt,
To ponder demons from the Democratic depths
That rise with juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of our ears do pour
Their leperous distilment. Abide in this abode,
And with keyboards brave and full of wit
Inscribe your scenes in comments that will fit.
Their silence keeps me sleepless for I know
Within the smoke their ash revolves as snow,
To settle on our skin as fading stars
Dissolve into pure dust at break of day.
At dawn a distant shudder in the earth
Disclosed the fold of fire into steel,
The rumbles not of crossings underground
But screams from out of flowers built from flame.
We stood upon the Heights like men of straw
Transfixed by flames that started in the sky,
And watched them plunging down in death�s ballet
To land among those dying deep below.
By noon the band of smoke leaned low
Upon the harbor�s skin like some dark shawl,
A pall of smoke that in its curdled crawl
Kept reaching to extend its fatal fall.
The harp strung bridge held up ten thousand souls
Who�d screaming run beneath the paws of death,
As dusted ghosts that lived but were not sure
They lived in light or only in reprieve.
They'�d writhed and spun within a storm of smoke
And stumbled out to light and clearer air,
To find upon the river�s further shore
That sanctuary is not savored but secured.
The sirens scraped the sky and jets carved arcs
Within a heaven empty of all hope,
And marked its epicenter with one streak
Of black on polished bone where silver stood.
By evening all their ash had settled so
That on the leaves outside my window glowed
Their souls in small bright stars until the rain
Cleaned all that could not be clean again.
We breathed the smoke that bent and crept and crawled.
We learned to hate the smoke that lingered so.
We knew that blood could only answer blood,
And so we yearned to go and not to go.
That last, lost summer faded into ash
Their faces faded as endless autumn flowed
Through chill and heat into the winter sea
Where warships prowled in search of stones.
Within the city, shrines were our resolve.
We placed them where we stood or where they lay.
Upon our bricks and stones their faces loomed
To gaze at us from times beyond repeal.
In time, their ash and smoke became the shapes
Of stories told at dinner, found in books,
Or in the comments made by magazines
For whom the larger issues were of worth.
At first their faces faded with the rains,
The little altars thick with wax were scraped,
But now beneath clear plastic they endure
To remind those passing that we�ve not escaped.
Their silence keeps me sleepless for I know.
Their silence keeps me sleepless for I know
Within the smoke their ash revolves as snow,
To settle on our skin as fading stars
Dissolve into pure dust at break of day.
At dawn a distant shudder in the earth
Disclosed the fold of fire into steel,
The rumbles not of crossings underground
But screams from out of flowers built from flame.
We stood upon the Heights like men of straw
Transfixed by flames that started in the sky,
And watched them plunging down in death’s ballet
To land among those dying deep below.
By noon the band of smoke leaned low
Upon the harbor’s skin like some dark shawl,
A pall of smoke that in its curdled crawl
Kept reaching to extend its fatal fall.
The harp strung bridge held up ten thousand souls
Who’d screaming run beneath the paws of death,
As dusted ghosts that lived but were not sure
They lived in light or only in reprieve.
They’d writhed and spun within a storm of smoke
And stumbled out to light and clearer air,
To find upon the river’s further shore
That sanctuary is not savored but secured.
The sirens scraped the sky and jets carved arcs
Within a heaven empty of all hope,
And marked its epicenter with one streak
Of black on polished bone where silver stood.
By evening all their ash had settled so
That on the leaves outside my window glowed
Their souls in small bright stars until the rain
Cleaned all that could not be clean again.
We breathed the smoke that bent and crept and crawled.
We learned to hate the smoke that lingered so.
We knew that blood could only answer blood,
And so we yearned to go and not to go.
That last, lost summer faded into ash
Their faces faded as endless autumn flowed
Through chill and heat into the winter sea
Where warships prowled in search of stones.
Within the city, shrines were our resolve.
We placed them where we stood or where they lay.
Upon our bricks and stones their faces loomed
To gaze at us from times beyond repeal.
In time, their ash and smoke became the shapes
Of stories told at dinner, found in books,
Or in the comments made by magazines
For whom the larger issues were of worth.
At first their faces faded with the rains,
The little altars thick with wax were scraped,
But now beneath clear plastic they endure
To remind those passing that we’ve not escaped.
Their silence keeps me sleepless for I know.
You know it is time for an emergency reboot of your brain when you read a paragraph like this in the New York Times on the death of Star Trek:
Some people suggest the problem is audience fatigue. Some say it is creative exhaustion. One solution to both, several actors, writers, producers and directors of past "Star Trek" incarnations say, may be to stop making new "Star Trek" stories for a while. -- Fans Hope Suns Can Rise Again on 'Star Trek'
and your mind instantly translates the paragraph into:
Some people suggest the problem is with the New York Times is audience fatigue. Some say it is creative exhaustion. One solution to both, many editors, writers, reporters and readers of past "New York Times" incarnations say, may be to stop publishing The New York Times for a while.On the other hand....
"It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom. " -- Lincoln
He or she does not yet have a name although that dark fact will emerge from behind a bullet or in the explosion of a coward's car bomb. When their paths intersect we will all know the name and most of us will mourn. That mourning will be fitting and proper. What will not be proper, what will repulse, is that some Americans, and not a small number, will rejoice at this death of an American soldier.
The 1,000th American to die in Iraq will be marked by most Americans as both tragic and yet another reason to continue to crush Islamic terrorism relentlessly, using whatever it takes. When the word of the 1000th death is passed the words of Abraham Lincoln above will live again in the hearts of every American that understands every generation must pull the sword of freedom from the stone.
But because of freedom and what it means, this country will also allow the
Continued..."If you do not join the dancing, you will feel foolish. If you dance, you will also feel foolish. So, why not dance? And I will tell you a secret: If you do not join the dance, we will know you are a fool. But if you dance, we will think well of you for trying. And if you dance badly to begin and we laugh, what's the sin in that? We all begin there. Come on."
-- Robert Fulghum
"The most important sort of disobedience is to write essays at all. Fortunately, this sort of disobedience shows signs of becoming rampant. It used to be that only a tiny number of officially approved writers were allowed to write essays. Magazines published few of them, and judged them less by what they said than who wrote them; a magazine might publish a story by an unknown writer if it was good enough, but if they published an essay on x it had to be by someone who was at least forty and whose job title had x in it. Which is a problem, because there are a lot of things insiders can't say precisely because they're insiders.
"The Internet is changing that. Anyone can publish an essay on the Web, and it gets judged, as any writing should, by what it says, not who wrote it. Who are you to write about x? You are whatever you wrote.
"Popular magazines made the period between the spread of literacy and the arrival of TV the golden age of the short story. The Web may well make this the golden age of the essay. And that's certainly not something I realized when I started writing this."
-- Paul Graham: The Age of the Essay
Children are easy.
One gun will rule dozens.
Shoot one, the rest will obey.
Children are easy
To keep and control.
No need to water or feed.
Children are easy.
Their tears are quite tiny.
No need to hear them or heed.
Children are easy.
They gather in schools.
It's simple to beat them en masse.
Children are easy.
Their bones are like sticks.
You can snap them in two if you please.
Children are easy,
And much cheaper to kill.
One bullet can blow away three.
Children are easy.
There will always be more
For the bags, for the bags, for the bags on the floor.
Once you understand the Pravadaesque Mindset that marks a New York Times lifer, the paper's capacity to irritate usually subsides into wry amusement. But every so often, the paper describes its own limited mindset so well it is hard to just let it slide. This morning's lead editorial on Russia is a textbook example of denial, incapacity and intellectual insanity: ( Deadly Stalemate in Chechnya ) It leads with:
A staggering series of recent terrorist attacks rooted in the Chechen conflict have been both horrific and remote to most Americans. It's hard to imagine what the public reaction would have been here if terrorists had seized a school full of children, blown up two passenger planes and set off a deadly suicide bomb outside a subway station in Western Europe or Canada.It would be difficult for most honest reporters to write a more labored lead, but we aren't dealing with honest reporters here, we're dealing with a New York Times editorial.
To begin with I suppose that if by 'most Americans' you mean those who do not read newspapers, fail to watch television or listen to the radio, who never collect information from the web, and live in caves under the rich soil of Amish country, it might be conceivable that those Americans feel a terrorist attack on children in a school to be a "remote" event -- but only the ones with no children. This sort of shrink-wrapping the vast 'unwashed-unreaders' of the New York Times is a hallmark of the Times editorial page. It is a kind of noblesse distress signal in which the self-appointed and unelected media government distinguishes itself from the rabble. It is unfortunate that, to judge by declining circulation and audience figures, the rabble is also distinguishing itself from the major media.
After cleansing the room of the Yahoos, the editorial whips out the show stopper: "It's hard to imagine what the public reaction would have been here if terrorists had seized a school full of children, blown up two passenger planes and set off a deadly suicide bomb outside a subway station in Western Europe or Canada."
Actually it is hard to imagine that there breathes an imagination so dead that it thinks the Chechen atrocity is hard to imagine at all. Imagining it doesn't take more than three brain cells. If, lacking those three brain cells, you still struggle to imagine it, the media is chock full of aids to you imagination in the form of pictures, first hand accounts, and video. Pick up any newspaper or turn on any news station on the radio and television. These aids will be along right after the extensive reports on William Clinton's Big Mac bill coming due. The Russian outrage is many things, but "hard to imagine" doesn't make the list.
What is hard to imagine is that a newspaper which was once an American newspaper could write about such a thing happening and not reflect on what would happen if it the events actually took place in America. But that's what the Times does in the same sentence. Notice how the hypothetical 'happening' takes place "outside a subway station in Western Europe or Canada." A curious bit of localization for a newspaper whose offices are over a subway in New York City and only a few blocks from several schools.
Somehow the terrorist killings at Russian schools cannot be imagined by the Times to happen in America, in New York City, where 3,000 died. No, they have to be moved off, placed at a politically correct distance. With that, I suppose, no avid reader of the New York Times will imagine that what was done to the children of Russians will ever, could ever, happen to their own children in the city of New York.
If the readers could imagine such a thing then they certainly might not support the forthright Times editorial board in the one thing it wants out of the entire episode: "Unless Vladimir Putin opens up negotiations with legitimate Chechen leaders, Russia will not be the only nation to suffer more terrorist attacks."
Ah, the New York Times wants -- after the slaughter of hundreds of children -- appeasement and negotiation. On a certain level, it is comforting to known that in a world awash in fear and fascism, the New York Times remains true to the obsessions of its publisher and his editors. What would it take for this to change? It is hard to imagine, but at some future dark day the sight of dozens of the children of New York's media elite lying shot and burned in body bags on the sidewalk outside their private schools in New York City might do the trick.
I wonder whether, if that terrible day should ever come, the editorial staff of the New York Times will use copies of today's editorial to cover the faces of their own dead.
It wasn't in what Bush said or how he said it. Nor was it in what he didn't say. it wasn't in the common touch parts, or the "Memo to America Re: My Upcoming Programs" part. It wasn't in the cheers or the protesters hustled out. It really wasn't in any of that because every part was what was expected, and what was practiced -- over and over again. Smooth and, you will excuse me, not entirely lacking in nuance. Yesterday was Miller Time. Tonight was a Noh Drama. It contrasted well with the D'oh Drama played out last month in Boston.
What it was in was the way in which the erstwhile "opponent" felt so behind, so defeated, so crushed that he felt he had to, he just had to, rush onto the airwaves and froth into the slipstream. Except for his dwindling pack of true believers, nobody watched, nobody listened --except to mock -- and nobody waved goodbye.
If I had any secret doubts that John Kerry has lost this election , and lost it big-time, they are now swept away by his blast of blather in the last hour.
I don't expect Bush or the RNC to back off of Kerry one centimeter for one nanosecond. It is important, for many reasons, that Kerry and the depraved version of the Democratic Party he leads to be crushed into compost so that a new party can grow back in its place. But I do expect Senator Kerry to sleep with Senator Kennedy's fishes.
Now, if we could just figure out how to start a recall election in Massachusetts.
The great British statesman, Benjamin Disraeli once said: "My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me." The inaptly-aptly named 'Wretchard' of Belmont Club certainly fills out that notion admirably.
But it is more than just mere agreement that makes The Belmont Club a force for good in the blogsphere as well as the world. The real drawing power of the Belmont Club is the author's almost flawless melding of scholarship with style.
Many in the blogsphere write well, but few write as well and fewer still better. The prose of Wretchard is, on a day to day basis, clean, clear and spare with just a soupcon of poetry thrown in -- not just in his frequent pointed quotations from the masters. It's a prose that illuminates not only the insights but the great range of his mind.
Continued...
"Say goodnight, Gracie."
"Goodnight Gracie."
"Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me
I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed
I was looking kind of dumb
With my finger and my thumb
In the shape of an "L" on my forehead "
-- SmashMouth, All Star
In the last few days there have been a lot of cycles wasted by people on the left, right, and center noting how badly the Kerry campaign is doing. To my mind, this is like suddenly discovering gravity.
The Kerry Campaign is doing badly because it has always done badly. Snagging the nomination from eight or nine less-electable clowns doesn't mean you're doing well, it just means you're not doing as poorly as the rest of the pack.
Still, I will admit that the campaign itself has, over the last fortnight, begun to do poorly in a more visible fashion than the performance of the previous year. Usually, they were able to keep the lid on somehow keep the right face on things, but of late this mask has begun to slip and that's a sign of deep existential distress on the inside.
The big question that keeps the keyboards humming at this point is : "Why?" This meditation is usually answered by some pundit or another hauling out the quick fix, the sure tactic, and the smooth move that will set things right and put John Kerry back on the path to the big chair in the oval office. Some have even gone so far as to propose Joe Trippi be brought in from the fields of clover he is currently cavorting in to right the good ship Kerry and send it smoothly into the harbor.
All these answers and suggestions are rank nonsense.
The single and only internal reason that things are now seen to be going badly inside the Kerry campaign is that deep inside the Kerry campaign, in the very core of the candidate himself, the have seen the fiery finger of fate write in glowing and deeply etched letters the single word: LOSER.
That's right -- down in the center where the Kerryites are sifting their statistics and spreadsheets and seeding their spin they already know what most of us are just beginning to sense-- THEY'VE LOST AND THERE IS NOTHING, BUT NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT.
Continued...
Times Square Then Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt
Times Square Now: Was it worth it? Photo by Van der Leun
Donald Sensing reminds us that history is "what happened when" and why it means something more than "today is the first day of the rest of your life." At One Hand Clapping he reminds us that: On this date in 1945, the Empire of Japan surrendered almost without conditions to the United States and our allied nations, ending World War II.
I love it when card-carrying Upper Westside Wackos like Donna Leiberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union proclaims "We are not some fringe lunatics, we are the people. We are the mainstream of America!"
It makes me feel good to know that even after years of abuse, Prozac is still working for people like Donna. It confirms my judgment that people like Donna have been so nuts for so long that they actually think the life they lead is normal. I'm all for extending and heightening this delusion for as long as possible so that their crack-up after the looming November Bush Blow-Out will be permanent.
Over the years I probably attended more than two dozen Civil Liberty Union parties and somewhere, to my shame, I probably have a sheaf of cancelled checks. Between the cocaine, the marijuana, and the booze found and served at these little autofornication festivals, I can assure you that at no time did the word "normal" enter my thinking when discussing the parties. Among the many
Continued...Stan at Logic & Sanity: School seized in Russia reads Russian and is translating, summarizing and blogging the details of this unfolding atrocity from the Russian wires whenever a new item surfaces.
Earlier today, the animals who did this released 26 hostages. They still hold and threaten to kill hundreds .... of children.
Here's what the hostages they released look like:
On Loaves, Fishes, and LILEKS (James)
I'm always among the last to be persuaded of the miracles of loaves and fishes to be found in "new" technologies and "new" media [see item just below this one], but during my recent month's break from blogging I took in a lot of arguments about the significance of blogs in this election cycle. Still, with all the citations of this study and the pointers to that study and the constant links to this issue provided by Reynolds I was, due to my innate conservatism on this issue, not quite persuaded. Until today when, at last, LILEKS (James) put paid to this issue in his usual offhand. "oh, by the way," manner.
James Lileks, the Mark Twain of our era, is always at the top of my must read list. He's best taken with the first cup of coffee in the morning. Although he's at the top of my list, I hesitate to link to him since I assume anybody coming here has already been there.
This morning, however, he serves up a textbook example of why blogging matters.
===
Hmm. First, Hewitt's interview with Terry McAuliffe.
HEWITT: I want to start with some very easy questions.
MCAULIFFE: Yeah.
HEWITT: Do you believe that John Kerry took a CIA man into Cambodia and kept his hat?
MCAULIFFE: Uh, I have no idea.
HEWITT: You have no idea that he made that story to the Washington Post and that he made it again in 2004 to the LA Times?
MCAULIFFE: If John Kerry said he did something, I'll take John Kerry at his word.
HEWITT: Do you think that he ran guns to anti-communists in Cambodia which he told the U.S. News & World Report on May of 2000? MCAULIFFE: I don't know. You'd have to ask John Kerry about that. I don't know what he did in Cambodia or didn't. That was a war 35 years ago. I want to talk about this year.
HEWITT: Did he go to Cambodia on Christmas Eve -- your understanding-- in 1968?
MCAULIFFE: I think he probably did and probably George Bush when he was in the Alabama National Guard was driving the boat.
"Now watch this.
"In one instance, it's "I have no idea," and in the other he's quite certain what Kerry did. In McAuliffe's mind, the contradiction doesn't matter -- who'll notice? He's compartmentalizing. The Hewitt interview ceased to exist, or matter, the moment it was over. On to the next engagement. But that's oldthink, brother. If you want an example of how blogging can impact elections, this is a perfect example. Radio host blogs an interview with big-time party strategist. Another blogger uses a camcorder, iMovie and a .mac account to post a snippet of an interview with the same guy on the same subject. A third party draws a connection between the two statements. You can hunt and link and draw your own conclusions. You're no longer the reader, absorbing what the editors have sought fit to give you. You are the editor."
===
Who are you going to believe? Us or your lying eyes?
Lileks, as usual, is the polite Minnesotan in his use of "compartmentalizing." What is really going on is that McAuliffe is lying through his bleached porcelain inlays. He is lying as fast as he can and as hard as he can. He is lying because he knows that his candidate has lied, that his party has bought the lie and that the only slim, razor thin hope, for victory lies in more lying.
The only problem is, as Lileks so deftly demonstrates with one excerpt and one link, is that lies that previously "didn't matter" are now blood simple to expose and distribute.
And with tens of thousands of blogs eager to participate in the exposure of lies and real-time fact-checking it becomes harder and harder to disavow them. Blogs stand McLuhan on his head as a medium that instantly massages messages and finds all the lumps, bumps and blockages.
This current electoral campaign has exposed in harsh and brilliant light the brutal fact that the major media does not now have, nor has ever possessed, a self-policing mechanism. (Spare me the pointers to Dan Okrant, the clean-up of the Jason Blair hoax or any of the numerous other items. These are either desperation moves or post mortem effects -- most likely the latter.)
For a long time it has been obvious that the major media has become, through sloth, attrition, nepotism and cronyism, a self-selected and unelected shadow
Continued...On the Recurring Plague of the Technocrits, the Global Swarming of the Internet, and the Flaming Ozone Holes of the Blogsphere
NOTE: When I initially wrote this response to one of the endless Technology-As-Messiah manifestos that polluted the Net in the boom-boom days of the dot.bomb bubble, I had assumed that the then looming blow-out would put paid to the mouthbreathers who then spewed their gospel on the rubber-tofu circuit of conferences and seminars. Of course, I was wrong.
I failed to take into account that these perverted purveyors of pap had no second careers lined up and were indeed members of the hard-core unemployable. (Which is probably why so many have failed to see any improvement in their personal economies of late.) I did not foresee that their bodies would no be exposed to the elements and recycled by roaches, but that they would simply enter a state of stasis until reanimated by foreclosures on their jumbo mortgages, or the need to put their spawn into useless colleges.
With the advent of the GoogleSpasm, they have all returned to life and are again selling the same old spew in the same old bottles but with a few new fonts on the label.
Watching their tsunami of crapola again infest the Net, it seems appropriate to return to this essay and update it just a tad to acknowledge that the undead spawn of Neuromancer lurch among us again. The Technocrits are back. Time to get out the sledgehammer and sharpen several dozen wooden stakes.
In this besotted age of unremitting technological spasms, we all struggle to maintain our consciousness, social position, phony-baloney jobs and inadequate incomes through rigidly researched and needlessly reiterated blather. The Ponzi schemes that unfold each day in communications and computing can be numbing, yet still personally enriching -- which is why we need to pay attention to who's got the honey pot.
One understandable reaction is to blather: "Are these changes good, bad, or profitable? Should we sell out or buy in?"
The answer is "Both, frequently, and 'SHOW ME THE MONEY!'"
"But how, Uncle Gerard," you ask, "can we buy in?"
My children, nothing could be simpler. Just look around and whip out the cash. You are The Consuming Class, do what you do best. When in doubt, buy the bullshit.
Hypnotic technologies, such as voice mail, Gmail, feature-glutted and overpriced software, fertility drugs, boner pills, Spam, genetic engineering, instant messaging, Gameboy, cruise missiles, online conferencing, Black Tar Heroin and Roofies are making business, dating and life itself more convenient and enjoyable, and many (white) people in San Jose, New York, Boston, Washington, Seattle, Bern and the Grand Cayman Islands healthier, wealthier, and wiser.
So get yours now while the getting is good. With Google on the Big Board, Technocrit is back in play.
Technology is again working hard at trivializing work, atomizing families, and puffing up the economy in utterly predictable ways. Our cool new technologies -- now wireless! with snapshots! -- are also reintroducing every single day age-old forms of muscular tension, wrist damage, sight impairment, mental distraction, goofing off, and spiritual and physical masturbation. You also get useless gadgets you just gotta have to organize a life that has no purpose beyond the next
Continued...The American Left, the Democratic Party, and John Kerry's "message" is that everyone should just back off on this "War on Terror" business and look to their wallets and their health care plans. This group of unhinged allies seems to feel the important things at this time are entitlements and more taxes. Check that-- their only real idea is that George Bush must go. Beyond that, they have no real feelings or plans or proposals whatsoever.
But all their hate and all their rabid insanity comes to nothing, to less than nothing when, looking about the world, you see that the psychopaths of the Islamic religion are capable of this:
School seized in Russia.An elderly woman -- shot. An 11th grade girl -- shot in the back.Details... ~50 children managed to escape at the time of seizure. 11 students and 4 adults hid in the boiler room (from where they were safely led out by the police). Later on, 2 girls managed to escape. They report that the terrorists are acting very aggresively and are scaring the children. One of the terrorists is wounded. The hostages are being kept in the school's gymnasium. The number of hostages mentioned here is 500 . Terrorists have mined the area around the school.
There are about 25 terrorists, 4 of them are women with bomb belts, and they also have 2 dogs. now being re enforced with troops. No more specifics are given.21 year old Kazik brought his sister to school. He tells the journalist what he witnessed.
Around 9 am, an old truck pulled up and about 20 heavily armed terrorists dressed in black and wear black masks and 4 women with bomb belts came out.
Children started to run. Those who were standing closest to the street were able to make it out. Terorrists starting pushing others, and throwing some children through windows (!!!).And elderly woman was shot, and a girl who looked like an 11th grader was shot in the back. She died on the spot.
I've long realized that a small page on the web is not a tool for convincing anyone of anything they don't already believe, but it just stops me cold when -- knowing what these people are capable of, and having been shown it time and time again -- there are still people who are my fellow citizens that actually believe anything other than killing will work with this pathology. Instead, the tens of thousands of Left/Democrat demonstrators are using their time to dance, jump, and posture around Manhattan today. I've heard this lauded as an admirable exercise in freedom and perhaps it is. It's also just sick.
We once would have said that an attack on a school and the threatened killing of hundreds of school children couldn't happen here. Nobody says that anymore. And if it did?
Would that finally wake us up? Would it? And if not that, what, exactly will it take? You don't root out this kind of psychopathology with talk therapy, you quarantine and then cauterize it.
And it will come to that. Yes, it will.
Glenn Reynolds in the Wall St. Journal on why old media can't seem to bail out Kerry's swamped boat.
Ten Bullets from Stephen Green that are shooting .527 holes in the hull of said boat.
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Gorism
Al Gore as our soon-to-be, first carbon billionaire.
Accounts included both his earlier and contemporary angry denials that he was greedy, or had used his vast network of government contacts to influence public loans, contracts, and regulations, in parlaying a 2001 net worth of $2 million apparently into a green empire of several hundred million....
To distill Gorism is to live in a 1,000 sq. ft. solar house, bike to work, and take the train on long distances; but to promote Gorism, one lives in a mansion, jets on private planes, and is chauffeured from airport to conference center—a rather heavy carbon footprint indeed. I mention that because this week he has insisted that he only invested in what he believes in and is thus not a hypocrite—sort of like a 1990s Fannie or Freddie director saying he is only taking mega-bonuses because he believes in public support for housing.
Works and Days » The Discreet Charm of the Left-wing Plutocracy
PermaLinkRush Limbaugh: The Interview
Worth listening to. Just click play and listen in the background. You'll come back to the foreground often.
Headslap
At their Monday night poker game in hell, I’ll bet Stalin, Hitler and Mao are kicking themselves: “ ‘It’s about leaving a better planet to our children?’ Why didn’t I think of that?†This is Two-Ply Totalitarianism—no jackboots, no goose steps, just soft and gentle all the way. Nevertheless, occasionally the mask drops and the totalitarian underpinnings become explicit. Take Elizabeth May’s latest promotional poster: “Your parents f*cked up the planet. It’s time to do something about it. Live Green. Vote Green.†As Saskatchewan blogger Kate McMillan pointed out, the tactic of “convincing youth to reject their parents in favour of The Party†is a time-honoured tradition. -- Gullible eager-beaver planet savers - Mark Steyn - Macleans.ca
Dr. Johnson on the dangers of drinking kool-aid on command
"Yes, Sir; and from what I have heard of him, one would not wish to sacrifice himself to such a man. If he must always have somebody to drink with him, he should buy a slave, and then he would be sure to have it. They who submit to drink as another pleases, make themselves his slaves."Paging Newt Gingrich.
In Real Times
The Tea Party world
is still that of genuinely funny things -- not the sour mordancy of Letterman; it is still one of basic fears and simple joys, of aching feet and a welcome ice-cream soda at the end of the day. Some people spend their whole lives trying to get away from it; to forget the memory of people sitting around a sunny porch eating peanuts, to try with various expensive unguents to wash the smell of new-mown grass and two stroke gasoline fumes from their hair. That is what "success" all too often means in certain circles. That and a line of white powder across a table. In the end they may arrive at a palace of chrome and glass, all cold air and ice at some dizzying height above the world. But they must always remember, or forget at their peril, that it is all upborne by truth and human love. -- Belmont Club » Bows and Flows
No PROBLEM. We've Done This Thousands of Times
of the old inboard motors in these vintage wooden boats you'll know what I mean when I say heads all over the marina snapped 'round when the twin Chrysler Hemi V-8's caught a spark and roared to life. Idling out and clearing the end of the marina, there was a small voice on one shoulder telling me to start slow and take it easy as the old power plants probably hadn't been run hard in who knows how long. On the other shoulder however was the slightly more insistent voice of "Old Vatted Demerara Rum" saying "Pour the coals to her!" Throwing caution to the wind, I pushed the throttles forward as far as they would go and the old wooden boat surged out of the water and was at top speed as I passed the last dock in the marina and burst into the open water of Lake Washington.
When something of a mechanical nature goes sideways on a boat running at speed.... -- The Demon Rum: « WESTSOUND MODERN
Another Burning Question of Life
"When was the last time you sat on a couch upside down and looked about the house? Kids do that all the time, and I have done it again and thought, "Whoa - I seriously need to vacuum." And "So that's where that [object/thing] went." -- Mikey commenting on Side-Lines: One of the Burning Questions of Life
Know When to Hold Them. Know When to Fold Them.
What happens next?
The President took a lot of the nation's hopes as political capital into the Big Casino. Now, after sitting at the tables for 9 months, there's only a small pile left of what was once a mountain of chips. Is the next hand going to win him big? Is he going to double down again? Or get up and catch a cab home, in case what's left in his pocket will cover it. Or will he write out a check on the basis of the family farm and spin the wheel of fortune again on the basis of his faith in the fundamental goodness of America's enemies? Order another round of drinks for everybody on the house? Go watch a play on Broadway and keep being Diamond Jim long after all the real diamonds have been hocked for paste? Is there a point where betting on hope means stuck on stupid? -- Belmont Club ï½» Another turn of the wheel
Great Question
Exurban Jon asks:
With all the advances in scientific knowledge why has no one designed a manlier Kleenex box?
One of the Burning Questions of Life
Here's a burning question I was reminded of by the video: do you eat your candy corn in sections? And, if so, do you consider the top to be the yellow part or the white part? I've always seen the little white triangle as the "foot" of the candy corn, but I learned when I designed my costume years ago that most people see it the other way. -- neo-neocon » Blog Archive » Get ready for Candy Corn Day
The Haywood Jablome Memorial Quote of the Day
Image via Wikipedia
Would Larry David Piss On an Image of Obama?
Image via Wikipedia
"Northwest Nap"
Urban DictionaryA very deep sleep where you are unable to hear telephones, text messages, and even the Air Force. Named to honor the two fine pilots from Northwest Airlines and there little "in flight snooze"
A Cow Is Born
Ms. McCain's failure to grasp that her prominence as a "writer," rather than as a Paris Hilton-style reality show performer, is owed first to her famous father, and second, to the fact that this is the Age of the Idiot.
Idiots have come into their own in a big way, courtesy of depraved consumers, and complicit TV producers and publishers, of pixel and paper alike. The duller you are and the louder you crow in contemporary America, the better you do. Clearly, Meghan McCain is not working with much ─ and is eminently qualified to dim debate in the Age of the Idiot. A familial predisposition, it would seem. John McCain finished 894th out of 899 at the Naval Academy and lost five jets. As IQ ace Steve Sailer once quipped, "To lose one plane over Vietnam may be regarded as a heroic tragedy; to lose five planes here and there looks like carelessness." -- By ILANA MERCER
Steve Jobs Hates Halloween
The next year, I get a bunch of guys from Pixar to come over and we make the most amazing Halloween lawn you've ever seen, with shitloads of stupid coffins and ghosts and a skeleton playing the piano. We have music, and lights, the whole works. Meanwhile, Larry comes over and brings a bunch of Navy SEAL type guys that he knows. In addition to all the stupid Halloween decorations, we rig up water cannons on the perimeter of the yard and up in the trees, loaded with a mixture of water, bleach and gasoline. We plant IEDs in the lawn, loaded with rock salt, and at each corner we put a dispenser that blasts pepper gel. We lay exposed wires across the lawn carrying enough current to knock you out, but not kill you. Then we put on our black commando outfits, and blacken our faces, and we wait. -- The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs
Hand me the gun. No, the bigger one.
Watching this will be either the funniest or most disgusting 2-minutes of your day.
Gearslamming Candidate Grabs Coveted Iowahawk Endorsement
"Canuck reader Maryann Crabtree forwards this photo of the candidate posing proudly in front of his Two Lane Blacktop - worthy 1955 Chevy 210 2-door sedan. Note missing rear bumper. Note radiused rear wheel well. Note nose-up gasser stance. Note the all-bidness custom paint, which appears to be a blend of Hugger Orange and Riverside Red. An educated guess tells me that lurking under the hood is a high winding destroked 301 small block, mating a 2-bolt main 327 with a 283 crank, with a set of Doug Thorley or Hooker headers huffing through glass packs. White ball Hurst shifter atop a Muncie 4-speed, natch. Visual cues indicate this photo was taken circa 1969; thus, while his Congressional cohort was tripping on brown acid in the mud at Max Yasgur's farm, Mr. Hoffman was gearslamming down the quarter mile at Fulton Speedway. (via iowahawk: Iowahawk Endorses ) @ Van der Leun
“Hey boys, We’re from Seattle and we’re lost…Can you help us out?â€
filmed in and around these counties, understand that the foul mouthed, hot tempered, illiterate rednecks featured on this show are the creme de la creme of mossback society. Supported mostly by what is left of the logging industry in these parts, they live largely in dilapidated singlewides surrounded by clearcut woodlands and collections of the rusted remains of every car, truck, motor, transmission, and assorted piece of machinery or scrap metal that have been handed down through generations from father to son. To a city boy like I was at the time, they were suspect in every way. Which leads me to the proverbial hole in the donut of this tale. -- WESTSOUND MODERN
I'm slowly becoming convinced I have Attention Deficit Diso-look-a-puppy!
The Spirit Of Ecstasy
is the name of the hood ornament on Rolls-Royce cars. It is in the form of a woman leaning forwards with her arms outstretched behind and above her. The Spirit of Ecstasy carries with it a story about a secret passion between John Walter Edward Scott-Montagu and his secret love Eleanor Velasco Thornton, his secretary. -- Best of Wikipedia
Peggy Noonan Still Doesn't Get It...
What Noonan is so far refusing to understand is that, although Obama is narcissistic and likes adulation, he's not primarily interested in popularity -- except as a tool to policy. Policy is paramount, and his goal is not to be responsive to what the American people want, nor to hear their actual concerns and then to shape policy around them. His goal is to tell them what they want, to lie if required, to silence and ridicule and chastise and threaten the opposition, and if necessary to pull every political trick he can get away with in order to ram his agenda down our recalcitrant throats.Why neo-neocon is not writing a column for the Wall Street Journal is a mystery that passeth all understanding.
The Four Rules of Lying
That way even those who know he is lying will think he is lying in a “good†cause. If the last refuge of scoundrels is the flag, the ultimate protective banner is the Red Flag. Hannah Arendt once wrote “Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear.†Find the hole in your audience’s brain and drive your truck of manure through it.The second rule is to put forward the most extravagant claims.
Don’t be half-assed about lying. The more extravagant the fib the better. A sufficiently resourceful fraud clears his path of unbelievers by sheer audacity alone. Tell a big enough lie and no one would believe you could be so bold. As the fictional Rudolf Rassendyl proved in the Prisoner of Zenda that it is better to pass yourself off as King of Ruritania rather than a minor noble. A minor noble may be questioned, but the King will not be. It is all or nothing. And given that no one wants to tug at the Royal Robe to see if it is real ermine, the fraudster often gets it “allâ€.The third rule is that when questioned, destroy the questioner.
When impersonating the King be determined to have everyone who doubts your identity thrown in the tower for treason. Once you succeed in beheading the first challenger there will be no second challenges.The fourth rule is the most important. Avoid trying to bluff those who are too big to be faced down.
What undid both Fairey and Ward Churchill was that they didn’t know when to stop their imposture. They finally took it too far. Fairey, who had been successful up to that point tried to bluff his way past a major news organization and failed. Ward Churchill was already a professor when he made his “little Eichmanns†speech after 9/11 unleashed a tide of outrage he couldn’t outface. If Fairey had not launched his poster and Churchill had not made his “little Eichmanns†speech, they might still be intellectuals in good standing.
WH: 'If we've lost Anderson Cooper, we've lost one of our best tea-baggers."
I have an uneasy feeling only 10 months into the new administration that we're beginning to see the symptoms of this same kind of animus developing in the Obama administration. And as those of use who served in the Nixon administration know, that can get you in a lot of trouble... Don't create an enemies list." -- Anderson Cooper Compares Obama to Nixon, Spotlights Declining Approval Ratings | NewsBusters.org
You must remember this....
Opening Paragraphs That Strangely Compel You to Read On
"Apparently pussy makes some people bat shit crazier than others, for a certain group of lesbians the pink ruff ratchets up a high level of full-blowninsanity, similar to the levels of irrationality seen only in rat-tailed crackers tweaking that next meth fix...." -- Thank God They Won't Breed ｫ Jaded Haven
QUAGMIRE! This just in...
THE WHITE HOUSE - Despite the President's promise of a swift and decisive victory, Obama's War on Fox News has developed all signs of an unwinnable quagmire, making the White House even more isolated in its unilateral attempts to crush the growing media insurgency. As the war continues to grind on for a second month, public opinion is shifting towards a quick and complete withdrawal. While many observers still agree that the "War on Limbaugh" is a "just and necessary war," even the former supporters of the war effort are now labeling the War on Fox an "unnecessary war of choice" and claim that the cable channel had nothing to do with Obama's falling approval numbers.
Wait for It
THEY'RE COMING TO TAKE ME AWAY, HA HA!" THIS JUST IN FROM THE CRACK INDIA DAILY TECHNOLOGY TEAM
I love the India Daily Technology Team. Whenever you think there a no new frontiers in technoblather, "The Team" always comes through. This just in....
Billion light years away the prospering extraterrestrial civilization in the dark matter universe harnessing gravity wave from higher dimensions India Daily Technology Team Jul. 31, 2009
Advanced extraterrestrial civilizations are mostly in the dark matter universe. They harness the gravity waves from higher dimensions. They are able to manipulate time and space. They use singularities within the physical universe to extract zero point energy to make high impact energy accessible. Many of the Type IV advanced extraterrestrial civilizations are on the edge of the universe. They can create star systems artificially. They can colonize the black holes. They can use the black holes for bending space and time. These advanced extraterrestrial civilizations use zero pint energy modules to recycle their spiritual entities so that they can migrate to the state of quantum vacuum and eventually to the chilled universe. They colonize fourth generation start systems like that of ours to recycle the Zero Point Energy Modules (ZPEM) to achieve higher quantum energy states. Some of these civilizations can even create artificial big bangs in a preset environment to start an expanding universe of matter, antimatter, or a combination of both. (via the crack India DailyTechnology Team)
Romanian River Deep Trash Mountain High
Vacation on Sunny HD 209458b: You Get Water Methane and CO2. You Also Get Flattened and a Crispy Sunburn
Bad News: NASA scientists have been able to decipher what chemicals HD 209458b's atmosphere contains even though it is 150 light years from Earth. This exoplanet is a very large gas giant which has a very tight orbit around the star (it is therefore dubbed a "Hot Jupiter"), so life isn't expected to be a possibility, but HD 209458b contains the basic organic chemicals as used, and produced, by life as we know it.
(via Space Disco : Discovery Space: Basic Chemistry for Life Detected on Exoplanet HD 209458b)
- Only By Fire Is Fascism Finished
- The Tragedy of Omlet, Prince of Massachusetts, Redux
- Visit to an Old Friend
- Movie Most Unlikely to Be Applauded at Cannes or Given an Oscar
- The Dead Documents Sketch
- The American Digest Reader: A Short Selection
- The Tragedy of Omlet, Prince of Massachusetts
- The Missing
- The Missing
- Times Fatigue
- On Media Ghouls, American Decency, and the 1000th Soldier
- Will You Won't You Come and Join the Dance?
- CHILD CARE
- The Dead Imagination of the New York Times
- The Victory Speech
- The Belmont Stakes
- Post-Mortem Effects: The Kerry Campaign is Over
- VJ Day, September 2, 1945
- Just Your Average American
- The Islamic Terrorists and Their Child Hostages