AMERICAN DIGEST: November 2005 Archives

Children of Jihad

"Teach your children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by."
-- Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Posted by Vanderleun Nov 26, 2005 3:12 PM | Comments (1) | QuickLink:

Midtown Manhattan Madness: Launching the Yahoo of Blogs

Roger Simon Launching OSM: "Okay, break's over. Everybody back in their Pajamas."

They came from the hills and mountains, the valleys and the plains.
Some were kind and gentle, and some too wild to tame.
A string of fearless hearts, on an endless ball of twine.
It's the same old train, it's just a different time
-- Marty Stuart, Same Old Train

ROGER SIMON is looking hatted, happy and haggard as we stand on the edge of a crowd that is, in its variations, the most unlikely looking group of people that the revoltingly trendy W Hotel in midtown Manhattan has ever hosted. Downstairs in the lobby with the pile-driving rap soundtrack and $12 drinks, the Pradas and Manolos are piling up on the ever-so-modern and ever-so-uncomfortable sofas, as the Roofies are being fondled in the pockets of sharp-dressed men with black town cars on call. Up here, in our alternate universe, the blogging crowd comes in all sizes and shapes with wardrobes that run the gamut from t-shirts and baggy denims to bespoke suits with pocket squares with custom folds.

"Just look at them," Simon says with the weary tone of man who has accomplished something very difficult and ever so slightly insane. "Just imagine how smart they all are. Just imagine the overwhelming intelligence of this group."

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Nov 23, 2005 11:18 AM | Comments (9) | QuickLink:

A Short Digest of American Digest

IF, FOR ANY REASON, YOU'VE COME HERE FOR THE FIRST TIME I've made a little list of essays and items in various categories that may be of interest to the idle browser.

Spirit

On Advent: "We Are All Lying in the Mud, but Some of Us Are Looking at the Stars"

Things Invisible to See

The Passion of the Pope

The Wind In The Heights

The Arrival

Free Prayers at the Beach

Small Fires on the Deep

Sunday Meditation: The Star

Love Gone Missing

While You Were Out

The Wedding Vows

The Creche By The Side of the Road

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Nov 23, 2005 11:00 AM | QuickLink:

Why Women Should Not Be In Charge of the Remote

And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!

Failed homicide bomber Iraqi Sajida Mubarek Atrous al-Rishawi: "My husband wore an (explosives-packed) belt and put one on me. He taught me how to use it," al-Rishawi said, wearing a white head scarf, a black gown and a disabled bomb belt tied around her waist.
"My husband detonated (his bomb) and I tried to explode my belt but it wouldn't," she said. "People fled running and I left running with them."

Backwards and in high heels I presume.

Posted by Vanderleun Nov 13, 2005 11:57 AM | Comments (3) | QuickLink:

On the "Trial of the Century" So Far

JEANNE DEVOTO OF bitter sanity doesn't post daily, but when she does....

A few predictions
I've been thinking that it's only a matter of time before mainstream thought in this country begins the process of lionizing Saddam Hussein. With his trial beginning, the tone of media coverage is starting to bear out my worst fears. (You wouldn't think it would be possible to admire someone who has done what Saddam has uncontestably done, but in a country where people wear Guevera t-shirts without hiding their faces, I suppose just about anything is possible.)

I predict:...

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Nov 13, 2005 11:45 AM | Comments (6) | QuickLink:

From the Seattle Notebooks

HEADLINE above the fold in Queen Anne's neighborhood newspaper: Grass Roots Local Group Seeks to Save the World.

LEAD SENTENCE of a review we never finished reading of a book we will never read: "This lumbering coming-of-age tale of a boy and his dragon...."

UPON READING a comment by someone who didn't get the joke: "Satire is invisible to those with no moral compass. If good and evil are believed to be relative, if all morality is seen as mere relativity, then that person has no tuning peg upon which his soul can be pitched to perceive either sense or satire."

ONE of the greatest disappointments of the failing feminist mind is the knowledge than it can never be, nor even hope to emulate, Antigone. Even Sappho at her most mundane remains forever out of reach.

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Nov 10, 2005 5:30 PM | Comments (6) | QuickLink:

From the Laguna Notebooks

The Bond of the Band

In the morning in the room where I write I always open all the blinds to my left, liking the cascade of natural light that flows in as the sun rises over the slope of the tree outside and the hill above it. At this time of the year the sun in its arc shines for about twenty minutes directly into the room making everything in front of the window very bright while the rest of the room is held in shadow. This only goes on for such a short time since the space between the tree across the drive and the edge of the roof is quite narrow. And, since the sun moves daily in relationship to this space, the daily effects are different daily too.

This morning over coffee as I was reading this or that page of hope or despair spun out by the Net, I noticed that a gleaming gold light was flitting about the shadowed part of the room in front of my desk. It was a bright lively spirit, almost a Tinkerbell, moving and jumping around the walls or

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Nov 9, 2005 5:56 PM | Comments (1) | QuickLink: