You might have seen that there were thousands of anti-war protesters out and about yesterday. Tens of thousands of them in Washington alone. The real story, of course, is that more than 299 million people had better things to do with their time on a Saturday. But I digress.
I found the Washington protest, with its celebrity luminaries, rather interesting, because it reminded me of the group from the movie Team America: World Police. In that movie, the Film Actors Group (FAG), led by Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, etc., are the tools that Kim Jong-Il uses to try to deceive the American people while he plots their destruction. Well, Alec Baldwin was not there, but "Hanoi Jane" Fonda was there to take his place. Apparently she's changing her name to "Tikrit Jane" or perhaps "Sadr City Jane." And the rest of the usual suspects were there as well, saying the usual suspect things. It could have come straight from my Team America: World Police DVD, only they were uttering their words with a complete lack of irony.
I listened to snippets of her rant-filled speech, and was appalled. Like so many in Tinseltown, she just doesn't get it. There are people over there who want to kill her, and you and me as well. They hate us because our culture lets us do whatever we want, including not being pious Muslims. And unlike the North Vietnamese, they will come here and commit terrorist acts. We know this because they already have done so, and will do so again if we are not vigilant. And vigilance requires that we fight the war on the enemy's turf rather than waiting for them to again bring it to our own. Cutting-and-running will not reduce the threat to America, it will increase it. The problem is not US; the problem is THEM!
One of the memes that the liberal Democrats are putting out is that "The American people spoke loudly for change in November and an end to the war in Iraq." Baloney! Only about 40% of eligible voters showed up at the polls, and only a little over half of those voted for the Democrats. Unless you consider 22% or so to be a majority of the American people, which means that you need remedial math classes, the real message you should have gotten from November was "We don't care. Leave us alone to watch football and play with our new PlayStations." More than half of the people eligible to vote simply did not care enough either way to go to the polls. Not about the war in Iraq; not about the War on Terror (which should really be the War on Terrorist Islamists, if we weren't so damned politically correct); not about George W. Bush; not about the Democrats promises for "change," which will simply change the hands whose palms are getting greased, not the system itself.
In a way, that's too bad. It would be better for America if more people cared about the way this country is being run. On the other hand, I'm constantly seeing polls in which the American people expose colossal amounts of ignorance, much of which was on display at that Washington protest. I don't have a problem with ignorant people not voting. The ones who are not ignorant about the dangers facing this country but just apathetic? Well, they have no one to blame but themselves if and when disaster ensues.
1.28.2007
1.25.2007
Portrait of the Muse as a Young Woman
Not many women can hear a song on the radio and credibly say, "That's MY song! It was written about ME!" The young lady in the picture, however, can do so about not just one song, but at least three. And thereby hangs a tale.Let me start at the beginning. One of my favorite musical groups is the Bangles, especially Susanna Hoffs. Last summer, I learned that she had done a new CD of duets with Matthew Sweet, a collection of fifteen classic rock and pop tunes from the 1960s titled Under the Covers, Vol. 1. I ordered it from Amazon.com and it quickly became one of my favorite CDs. Some of the songs were familiar, some obscure for anyone who wasn't in touch with the music scene during the 1960s. One of the songs, which quickly became the top-rated song on my iPod, was "She May Call You Up Tonight," which was originally done by The Left Banke.
Now, I was unfamiliar with The Left Banke, but fortunately Wikipedia had an article about them. Their biggest hit was "Walk Away Renee," which peaked at #5 on the pop charts in the fall of 1966. Wikipedia explains:
"Walk Away Renée" is a song made popular by the band The Left Banke in 1966 (single release: July 1966, Smash Records), composed by the group's keyboard player Michael Brown (real name Michael Lookofsky). The song was also a chart hit for The Four Tops in 1968.I did some more searching and found Tom Simon's Walk Away Renee page. He expanded on the story:
The song is one of a number Brown wrote about Renee Fladen-Kamm, girlfriend of The Left Banke's bassist Tom Finn and object of Brown's affection. Other songs written about her include the band's second hit "Pretty Ballerina" and "She May Call You Up Tonight". After decades of obscurity, she was identified in 2001 as a noted singer, vocal teacher and artist on the West Coast.
Violinist Harry Lookofsky owned a small storefront recording studio in New York City that he called World United Studios. In 1965, he gave a set of keys to his 16-year-old son, Mike Brown [real name: Mike Lookofsky], who helped out by cleaning up and occasionally sitting in as a session pianist. Mike began bringing in his teenage friends who tinkered with drums, guitars, amplifiers, the Steinway piano, and anything else they might find. Except for Mike, who had a background in classical piano, none of them were top musicians. But they could sing, especially one guy named Steve Martin.Then I found this post from John Stodder's blog back in July: Renee's Still Walking Away, 40 Years On (Be sure to click on this link if you'd like to watch the video of "Walk Away Renee" at the bottom of his post!) He notes:
By 1966 they started to call themselves the Left Banke. In addition to Mike and Steve, they included Rick Brand on lead guitar, Tom Finn on bass, and drummer George Cameron. Finn brought his girlfriend to the studio one day when the group had assembled for a practice session. She was a 5' 6" teenager with platinum blond hair. Mike Brown was infatuated with her the instant he saw her. Her name was Renee Fladen.
The group had begun recording songs, and Harry was particularly impressed with Steve Martin's voice. Mike wrote a song about Renee. Although there was never anything between the two, Mike was fascinated by her and pictured himself standing at the corner of Hampton and Falmouth Avenues in Brooklyn with Renee, beneath the "One Way" sign. In his fantasy, he was telling her to walk away.
...
As for Renee, she moved to Boston with her family shortly after the Left Banke recorded Walk Away Renee, and no one in the group ever saw her again.
Dawn Eden, who is described on Amazon as “a Jewish-born rock journalist turned salty Christian blog queen,” claimed credit on her blog, The Dawn Patrol, for unearthing Renee’s whereabouts, at least as of the time of her posting the information in 2003. Renee Fladen-Kamm is a classical singer and vocal teacher in the Bay Area, who was a member of a medieval English music ensemble, The Sherwood Consort, although does not appear to be a member now. I can find no photo of Renee anywhere on the Internet; not on one of the numerous obsessed Left Banke fan sites, nor on any sites devoted to her own music. Perhaps that’s understandable, and prescient on her part to stay away from cameras. The real-life models for other popular works of art — I’m thinking of Alice Liddell of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland — often wished their genius idolaters had never met them.I was a bit disappointed that there were no pictures of her. I was curious about what the muse looked like, the girl who inspired those songs of unrequited love. And I thought that was the end of it, that my curiosity would go unsatisfied.
Until, by chance, I went back to that blog post a couple of days ago and there was a new comment from December from a man named Phil Garrou. He has a web page dedicated to the members of his junior high school class, and during the search to find some of them, he learned that one had gone on to work with The Left Banke. Mr. Garrou got in touch with the Yahoo! Left Banke fan group and was able to locate his classmate in Florida. He noted in his comment that he had a picture of then 16-year-old Renee Fladen on his web site, which he had obtained from the Left Banke fan group. It was difficult to find it on his site, but after some searching, I found the picture you see at the top of this post. Sort of like finding a picture of Helen of Troy, only in this case, it was the face that launched a thousand turntables.
I guess the best way to put it is to borrow a line from Jerry Garcia: What a long, strange trip it's been! You never knew where an internet search is going to take you.
1.23.2007
Color Me Skeptical
Last night, I turned on the computer before getting ready for work, and I came across this story:
"Edited in secret"?! That was the first thing to set off my bullshit detector. There's often a good reason to do things in secret: In order to deceive someone else about what you are doing, whether a military enemy or a business competitor. For some reason, however, I thought that "science" was supposed to be on the up-and-up, and not about trying to put something over on someone! And who are these international "government officials" who will be doing the secret word-by-word editing? To whom are they accountable, if anyone?
Then there's the question of "Who are these experts they are quoting, and what's their angle?" Because EVERYONE has an angle. It turns out that if you google Jerry Mahlman and Andrew Weaver, you'll find that they have been on the leading edge of the climate change hysteria for years. They're the "hockey stick" guys, telling us that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is taking off on a logarithmic curve and that pretty soon the Earth will be as hot as Venus and we're all going to die! They're both deeply invested in the theory of global warming, and like most scientists, they are mainly looking for data to prove their hypotheses and ignoring data that doesn't fit their models. Mahlman lives in Boulder, Colorado. How's that global warming going, buddy? Let me know when you get your sidewalk shoveled from that fifth snowstorm in five weeks in Colorado.
These are the guys who say things like "Thirty Kyotos might do the job." In other words, the only way for us to "save the planet" is for all of us to return to a pre-industrial existence. Well, almost all of us; the ones who don't starve to death (which would be most of us) would raise crops to feed themselves and the scientific and governmental priesthood who would rule over their neo-feudal lives. The priesthood, of course, would still travel in stretch limo SUVs and private airplanes, and have things like electricity and computers. They would be doing Important Things, and could not be expected to make the sacrifices the rest of us would have to make to "save the planet." After all, it's for The Greater Good. And for The Children. Never forget The Children! Does this sound good to you? Don't you feel guilty about your huge carbon footprint, you planet-raper? Better you should starve to death than to continue to burn those fossil fuels and contribute to global warming!
Pardon me if I remain skeptical. When I was around ten years old or so, I had a really scary book. Not Frankenstein, not Dracula, but The Environmental Handbook, which was put out by Friends of the Earth for the original Earth Day back in 1970. It had a bunch of prophetic chapters about how we were all doomed, doomed! because of the pollution of earth, water and soil. Perhaps the scariest was a futurist prophecy by an ecologist named Paul Ehrlich, titled "Eco-Catastrophe!" It opened with the line "The end of the ocean came late in the summer of 1979." Last time I was at the beach, the ocean was still alive and well, thirty-six years after Ehrlich's laughably bad prognostication. The gloom-and-doomers have been doing the jeremiad thing for many years, and they've always been wrong before. It would be totally out of character for them suddenly to be right.
Report Has 'Smoking Gun' on Climate
By SETH BORENSTEIN (AP Science Writer)
From Associated Press
January 22, 2007 8:58 PM EST
WASHINGTON - Human-caused global warming is here, visible in the air, water and melting ice, and is destined to get much worse in the future, an authoritative global scientific report will warn next week.
"The smoking gun is definitely lying on the table as we speak," said top U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, who reviewed all 1,600 pages of the first segment of a giant four-part report. "The evidence ... is compelling."
Andrew Weaver, a Canadian climate scientist and study co-author, went even further: "This isn't a smoking gun; climate is a batallion of intergalactic smoking missiles."
The first phase of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is being released in Paris next week. This segment, written by more than 600 scientists and reviewed by another 600 experts and edited by bureaucrats from 154 countries, includes "a significantly expanded discussion of observation on the climate," said co-chair Susan Solomon, a senior scientist for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She and other scientists held a telephone briefing on the report Monday.
That report will feature an "explosion of new data" on observations of current global warming, Solomon said.
Solomon and others wouldn't go into specifics about what the report says. They said that the 12-page summary for policymakers will be edited in secret word-by-word by governments officials for several days next week and released to the public on Feb. 2. The rest of that first report from scientists will come out months later.
"Edited in secret"?! That was the first thing to set off my bullshit detector. There's often a good reason to do things in secret: In order to deceive someone else about what you are doing, whether a military enemy or a business competitor. For some reason, however, I thought that "science" was supposed to be on the up-and-up, and not about trying to put something over on someone! And who are these international "government officials" who will be doing the secret word-by-word editing? To whom are they accountable, if anyone?
Then there's the question of "Who are these experts they are quoting, and what's their angle?" Because EVERYONE has an angle. It turns out that if you google Jerry Mahlman and Andrew Weaver, you'll find that they have been on the leading edge of the climate change hysteria for years. They're the "hockey stick" guys, telling us that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is taking off on a logarithmic curve and that pretty soon the Earth will be as hot as Venus and we're all going to die! They're both deeply invested in the theory of global warming, and like most scientists, they are mainly looking for data to prove their hypotheses and ignoring data that doesn't fit their models. Mahlman lives in Boulder, Colorado. How's that global warming going, buddy? Let me know when you get your sidewalk shoveled from that fifth snowstorm in five weeks in Colorado.
These are the guys who say things like "Thirty Kyotos might do the job." In other words, the only way for us to "save the planet" is for all of us to return to a pre-industrial existence. Well, almost all of us; the ones who don't starve to death (which would be most of us) would raise crops to feed themselves and the scientific and governmental priesthood who would rule over their neo-feudal lives. The priesthood, of course, would still travel in stretch limo SUVs and private airplanes, and have things like electricity and computers. They would be doing Important Things, and could not be expected to make the sacrifices the rest of us would have to make to "save the planet." After all, it's for The Greater Good. And for The Children. Never forget The Children! Does this sound good to you? Don't you feel guilty about your huge carbon footprint, you planet-raper? Better you should starve to death than to continue to burn those fossil fuels and contribute to global warming!
Pardon me if I remain skeptical. When I was around ten years old or so, I had a really scary book. Not Frankenstein, not Dracula, but The Environmental Handbook, which was put out by Friends of the Earth for the original Earth Day back in 1970. It had a bunch of prophetic chapters about how we were all doomed, doomed! because of the pollution of earth, water and soil. Perhaps the scariest was a futurist prophecy by an ecologist named Paul Ehrlich, titled "Eco-Catastrophe!" It opened with the line "The end of the ocean came late in the summer of 1979." Last time I was at the beach, the ocean was still alive and well, thirty-six years after Ehrlich's laughably bad prognostication. The gloom-and-doomers have been doing the jeremiad thing for many years, and they've always been wrong before. It would be totally out of character for them suddenly to be right.
1.22.2007
Announcement
I have come before you today to announce that I am forming an exploratory committee for a run for the office of the President of the United States in 2008.
Hey, with all of those bozos who have already thrown their hats into the ring, I figured that I couldn't be any worse. Even better, I know that I'll agree with all of my own positions on the issues. I've over 35, I'm a native-born American citizen, and I'm smarter than most of the politicians who have already announced their candidacies.
Then again, I'd have to put up with the defeatist idiots in the MSM, and I probably wouldn't be lucky enough to have Helen Thomas pre-decease my inauguration in 2009. And I'd have to put up with the idiots in Congress from Pelosi and Reid to Hagel and Specter.
On second thought, I want nothing to do with the job. And I question the wisdom of allowing anyone who is ambitious enough to want the job to actually have it.
Hey, with all of those bozos who have already thrown their hats into the ring, I figured that I couldn't be any worse. Even better, I know that I'll agree with all of my own positions on the issues. I've over 35, I'm a native-born American citizen, and I'm smarter than most of the politicians who have already announced their candidacies.
Then again, I'd have to put up with the defeatist idiots in the MSM, and I probably wouldn't be lucky enough to have Helen Thomas pre-decease my inauguration in 2009. And I'd have to put up with the idiots in Congress from Pelosi and Reid to Hagel and Specter.
On second thought, I want nothing to do with the job. And I question the wisdom of allowing anyone who is ambitious enough to want the job to actually have it.
1.20.2007
Mission Accomplished
I made up a song while working last night, in honor of our leaders. I call it "Arbeit Macht Frei."
I had to work my n/s day, tho' I'm not on the List,
It really made me angry, it really made me pissed,
I asked them why I had to and I got this sad reply:
"Because Bobby Miller told us 'Arbeit macht frei.' "
Chorus:
'Arbeit macht frei!' 'Work makes you free!'
It's bonuses for them, but it's death for you and me,
There's no way to get out of it, so do not even try,
Because Bobby Miller told us 'Arbeit macht frei.'
Well hard work never killed no one, at least that's what they say,
But the ones who tried were amateurs, didn't know the Postal Way,
They'll squeeze you out like toothpaste, until you're in your grave,
And then they'll laugh and high-five at the money that they save.
Chorus:
'Arbeit macht frei!' 'Work makes you free!'
It's bonuses for them, but it's death for you and me,
There's no way to get out of it, so do not even try,
Because Bobby Miller told us 'Arbeit macht frei.'
It probably needs another verse or two. You get the gist of it, though.
I had to work my n/s day, tho' I'm not on the List,
It really made me angry, it really made me pissed,
I asked them why I had to and I got this sad reply:
"Because Bobby Miller told us 'Arbeit macht frei.' "
Chorus:
'Arbeit macht frei!' 'Work makes you free!'
It's bonuses for them, but it's death for you and me,
There's no way to get out of it, so do not even try,
Because Bobby Miller told us 'Arbeit macht frei.'
Well hard work never killed no one, at least that's what they say,
But the ones who tried were amateurs, didn't know the Postal Way,
They'll squeeze you out like toothpaste, until you're in your grave,
And then they'll laugh and high-five at the money that they save.
Chorus:
'Arbeit macht frei!' 'Work makes you free!'
It's bonuses for them, but it's death for you and me,
There's no way to get out of it, so do not even try,
Because Bobby Miller told us 'Arbeit macht frei.'
It probably needs another verse or two. You get the gist of it, though.
1.19.2007
The Other Side of Furious
This morning, on the Anger Continuum, I'm somewhere on the other side of Furious. It starts on the left side with Annoyed, then moves to Ticked Off, then to Angry and then to Furious. What's on the other side of Furious? I'm not sure, but I'm there.
Why? Because this morning, just before 5 a.m., my supervisor comes up to me and tells me that they are forcing all of the non-overtime list people normally scheduled off tonight to work. That includes me, of course. My response was to tell her, "I don't think so. The schedule you put up on Wednesday says that I have Saturday and Sunday off. I'm abiding by that schedule. I have plans. I'm not coming in." Then I put my iPod ear plugs back in and turned my back on her and ignored her.
Shortly thereafter, my union steward came by and told me that was the wrong approach. I should have just nodded my head and then called in and banged out tonight. Instead, I drew attention to myself and they might try to initiate discipline against me if I don't show up. He'd heard them talking in the office.
I saw the supervisor later and told her that my union steward had advised me that I had no other recourse but to come in tonight, but that they might wish that I hadn't when all was said and done. I explained that they might want to take a look at the numbers from my machine from December 30th. 58 full stackers? Not a coincidence. Run rate of 16,000 on the AO run? Not a coincidence. Unhappy employee. The mail made it out, but the numbers that get managers bonuses were shit.
Guess what? Tonight, I'm gonna be uncooperative again. I'll be filing a grievance. And I won't be my normal motivated, hard-working self. That guy only works Monday through Friday. He's not available on any day that starts with an S. As David Banner famously said, "Don't make me angry. You won't like me when I'm angry." Well, I'm angry, and I'm gonna be big and green tonight.
You'll have to excuse me. I'm really in the mood to kill someone, and since the law frowns on that, I'm going to fire up Oblivion and kill pixels instead. See ya later.
Why? Because this morning, just before 5 a.m., my supervisor comes up to me and tells me that they are forcing all of the non-overtime list people normally scheduled off tonight to work. That includes me, of course. My response was to tell her, "I don't think so. The schedule you put up on Wednesday says that I have Saturday and Sunday off. I'm abiding by that schedule. I have plans. I'm not coming in." Then I put my iPod ear plugs back in and turned my back on her and ignored her.
Shortly thereafter, my union steward came by and told me that was the wrong approach. I should have just nodded my head and then called in and banged out tonight. Instead, I drew attention to myself and they might try to initiate discipline against me if I don't show up. He'd heard them talking in the office.
I saw the supervisor later and told her that my union steward had advised me that I had no other recourse but to come in tonight, but that they might wish that I hadn't when all was said and done. I explained that they might want to take a look at the numbers from my machine from December 30th. 58 full stackers? Not a coincidence. Run rate of 16,000 on the AO run? Not a coincidence. Unhappy employee. The mail made it out, but the numbers that get managers bonuses were shit.
Guess what? Tonight, I'm gonna be uncooperative again. I'll be filing a grievance. And I won't be my normal motivated, hard-working self. That guy only works Monday through Friday. He's not available on any day that starts with an S. As David Banner famously said, "Don't make me angry. You won't like me when I'm angry." Well, I'm angry, and I'm gonna be big and green tonight.
You'll have to excuse me. I'm really in the mood to kill someone, and since the law frowns on that, I'm going to fire up Oblivion and kill pixels instead. See ya later.
1.18.2007
An Inconvenient Truth
Hey, Al Gore, how's that "global warming" going? Hint: It snowed yesterday in Malibu and West Los Angeles, in the area where Gore will soon be going to pick up his Oscar for his quasi-scientific documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth."
Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit points out that the "Gore Effect" is well-documented in the Urban Dictionary:
NBC4 forecaster Fritz Coleman said the mixture of precipitation in West Los Angeles at about 3 p.m. included a dusting of snow. Residents in West Los Angeles said the snow accumulated in parking lots, on cars and around palm trees near Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards and other areas.
Most of the snow fell south of Sunset Boulevard and just east of the 405 Freeway. Residents told NBC4 that several inches of snow fell in their yards.
The last snowfall recorded at Los Angeles International Airport was in January 1962, according to the National Weather Service. Trace amounts -- less than 0.5 inches -- were reported, according to the NWS.
Snow fell earlier Wednesday in Malibu and caused traffic problems on the area's winding and narrow roads. Sleet made driving treacherous on Kanan Dume Road, a steep route through the Santa Monica Mountains where it's more typical to see beach-bound cars loaded with surfboards than a snowplow.
Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit points out that the "Gore Effect" is well-documented in the Urban Dictionary:
The well documented phenomenon that leads to very low, unseasonal temperatures, driving rain, hail, snow or all of the above whenever Al Gore visits an area to discuss global "warming". Hence the "Gore Effect"I hope that Gore brings his snowshoes and parka for Oscar night.
Example 1. Australia November 2006. Al Gore is visiting Australia 2 weeks before summer begins. News reports in The Age newspaper. "Ski resort operators gazed at the snow in amazement. Parents took children out of school and headed for the mountains. Cricketers scurried from the MCG amid bullets of hail as Melburnians traded lunchtime tales of the incredible cold. Yesterday, Antarctic winds produced snow across Victoria at levels as low as 400 metres, just two weeks before summer." The Gore Effect in action.
Example 2. New York USA Environment News, March 1, 2004.
"Gore chose January 15, 2004, one of the coldest days in New York City’s history, to rail against the Bush administration and global warming skeptics for their insistence that science should guide public policy, rather than the other way around. Global warming, Gore told a startled audience, is causing record cold temperatures."
1.17.2007
Seeing Stars
Last night, as I was getting ready for work, I had Hannity & Colmes on in the background. One of the show's guests, Greg Gutfeld (of "The Daily Gut" on the sidebar) mentioned that Donald Trump had gotten a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame yesterday. This made me wonder: Did his arch-enemy Rosie O'Donnell have one, too? How does one find out exactly who has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame? Wikipedia to the rescue!
There's a very good Wikipedia article on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and there's a link within it to an alphabetical list of everyone who has a star. I found the trivia on the main article fascinating. Before you click on that first link, see if you can guess the only person to have five stars (one each for radio, television, motion pictures, recording and live theater). I'll even give you a hint: He was known for working with Angels, among other things. (And no, his name isn't Charlie!)
And the answer to the original question: Does Rosie have a star? Nope. But I'll bet she'll be all fired up to get one now!
There's a very good Wikipedia article on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and there's a link within it to an alphabetical list of everyone who has a star. I found the trivia on the main article fascinating. Before you click on that first link, see if you can guess the only person to have five stars (one each for radio, television, motion pictures, recording and live theater). I'll even give you a hint: He was known for working with Angels, among other things. (And no, his name isn't Charlie!)
And the answer to the original question: Does Rosie have a star? Nope. But I'll bet she'll be all fired up to get one now!
1.12.2007
Touchstones, Part 2
Today's topic is food/not-food. The concept of whether a particular food is edible or inedible usually is based in your own particular culture. To put it in simplest terms, "food" is what your mother fed to you as a child growing up. That is when your tastes form, and anything that varies too wildly from those tastes will usually inspire feelings of revulsion. Certain foods are touchstones of cultural identity because nobody else will eat them. The rest of the world considers them to be "not-food," and shuns them.
America is a melting pot culture, and we have long since appropriated things from other cultures, including cuisine, and made them our own. We took pizza and pasta from the Italians and tacos and burritos from the Mexicans and egg rolls and chow mein from the Chinese, although the American version usually differs significantly from the original. We did not, however, take haggis from the Scots or lutefisk from the Norwegians or seal blubber from the Inuit. Why? Because they varied too far from what most of us think of as food. And so, only a Scot will eat haggis, only a Norwegian will eat lutefisk, etc.
There are other culturally-linked food traits. For instance, in Europe, there is the split between southern areas where olive oil is used for cooking and northern areas where butter is used instead. I think that this may be due to the beneficial mutated gene that allows many northern and western European adults (and their descendants world-wide) to digest the lactose in cow's milk. Most of the adults in the rest of the world are lactose-intolerant, and this may be why goat's milk cheese is more popular in Greece, for instance. And while we in America would think nothing of offering someone a glass of cow's milk, in places like China, it would be akin to offering a drink from a spittoon. In China, cow's milk is not considered to be "food."
Sometimes dietary inflexibility can be fatal. For instance, in the book Collapse, Jared Diamond explains why the Inuit thrived in Greenland at the same time that Norse colonists in Greenland were starving themselves to extinction. The Inuit ate whale and seal blubber, as well as fish. The Norse, by contrast, raised grass in their fields for the hay needed to feed their cattle, as well as a few vegetables. Archaelogical studies of the middens (garbage heaps) of Norse Greenlanders indicate that they ate very little fish, which is odd considering that their cousins in Iceland and Norway ate a lot of fish. For some reason, their isolated culture had declared fish, seal and whale to be "not-food." And so they starved amid plentiful sources of food when the climate became too cold and the growing season too erratic to raise hay and maintain their cattle herds.
Mankind is endlessly inventive and often finds ways to convert not-foods into sources of food. For instance, cassava (or manioc) root, an important source of starch in much of the tropics, is poisonous in its raw form. It has to be treated to remove the cyanide. Almond trees originally had the same problem, but the domesticated variety, which yields "sweet" almonds doesn't have that problem. Wild undomesticated almond trees yield "bitter" almonds which also have high amounts of cyanide in them. One wonders how the ancients managed to come up with ways to make poisonous roots and nuts into edible food, and how many poisoned themselves trying to do it.
America is a melting pot culture, and we have long since appropriated things from other cultures, including cuisine, and made them our own. We took pizza and pasta from the Italians and tacos and burritos from the Mexicans and egg rolls and chow mein from the Chinese, although the American version usually differs significantly from the original. We did not, however, take haggis from the Scots or lutefisk from the Norwegians or seal blubber from the Inuit. Why? Because they varied too far from what most of us think of as food. And so, only a Scot will eat haggis, only a Norwegian will eat lutefisk, etc.
There are other culturally-linked food traits. For instance, in Europe, there is the split between southern areas where olive oil is used for cooking and northern areas where butter is used instead. I think that this may be due to the beneficial mutated gene that allows many northern and western European adults (and their descendants world-wide) to digest the lactose in cow's milk. Most of the adults in the rest of the world are lactose-intolerant, and this may be why goat's milk cheese is more popular in Greece, for instance. And while we in America would think nothing of offering someone a glass of cow's milk, in places like China, it would be akin to offering a drink from a spittoon. In China, cow's milk is not considered to be "food."
Sometimes dietary inflexibility can be fatal. For instance, in the book Collapse, Jared Diamond explains why the Inuit thrived in Greenland at the same time that Norse colonists in Greenland were starving themselves to extinction. The Inuit ate whale and seal blubber, as well as fish. The Norse, by contrast, raised grass in their fields for the hay needed to feed their cattle, as well as a few vegetables. Archaelogical studies of the middens (garbage heaps) of Norse Greenlanders indicate that they ate very little fish, which is odd considering that their cousins in Iceland and Norway ate a lot of fish. For some reason, their isolated culture had declared fish, seal and whale to be "not-food." And so they starved amid plentiful sources of food when the climate became too cold and the growing season too erratic to raise hay and maintain their cattle herds.
Mankind is endlessly inventive and often finds ways to convert not-foods into sources of food. For instance, cassava (or manioc) root, an important source of starch in much of the tropics, is poisonous in its raw form. It has to be treated to remove the cyanide. Almond trees originally had the same problem, but the domesticated variety, which yields "sweet" almonds doesn't have that problem. Wild undomesticated almond trees yield "bitter" almonds which also have high amounts of cyanide in them. One wonders how the ancients managed to come up with ways to make poisonous roots and nuts into edible food, and how many poisoned themselves trying to do it.
Touchstones, Part 1a - Sports
Before I start blogging about food/not food, let's talk about sports. In the sports news yesterday, there was breathless coverage of how soccer player David Beckham has signed a multi-million dollar contract to play for the Los Angeles Galaxy starting in June. "He's a cultural icon!" gushed the ESPN talking heads. "He'll make interest in soccer in America grow, just like Pele did."
Yawn.
David Beckham may be a cultural icon in Europe and other places where soccer is called "football" and is the most popular sport in the land. America is NOT one of those places. We have our own "football," which is the most popular spectator sport in the country. We also have baseball, basketball, hockey, NASCAR, golf and tennis, all of which are more popular spectator sports than professional soccer. He may be a well-known sports star with a glamorous pop-star wife to most of the world, but most Americans couldn't pick him out of a lineup. To expect him to suddenly kick-start soccer into a wildly popular spectator sport in America is just this side of ridiculous.
And just as there is food/not-food (explication to follow), there is also sports/not-sports. For most Americans, soccer is not one of "our" sports.
Yawn.
David Beckham may be a cultural icon in Europe and other places where soccer is called "football" and is the most popular sport in the land. America is NOT one of those places. We have our own "football," which is the most popular spectator sport in the country. We also have baseball, basketball, hockey, NASCAR, golf and tennis, all of which are more popular spectator sports than professional soccer. He may be a well-known sports star with a glamorous pop-star wife to most of the world, but most Americans couldn't pick him out of a lineup. To expect him to suddenly kick-start soccer into a wildly popular spectator sport in America is just this side of ridiculous.
And just as there is food/not-food (explication to follow), there is also sports/not-sports. For most Americans, soccer is not one of "our" sports.
1.10.2007
Best Laid Plans, Yadda Yadda Yadda
Well, today was supposed to be dedicated to Touchstones, Part 2, Food/Not-Food. Regrettably, due to circumstances beyond my control, it's not happening today. Tomorrow looks pretty good, though.
And the circumstances? Call it donutus interruptus. I left work this morning feeling pretty good, since I'm not getting screwed out of my three-day weekend this time. On the way home, I was jonesing for some of the cinnamon donuts that they sometimes have at the Sweetbay grocery store. So, I stopped off there to see if they had them. They didn't. Instead, I got glazed sour cream donuts. I was in the store all of five minutes. When I got out to my car, it wouldn't start. I said a few choice words at that point, which I will leave to your imagination.
I didn't know if it was the battery or the generator/alternator. Fortunately, my car is still under warranty. I called the dealership and they gave me some numbers for towing companies they work with. I called and got the car towed in to the dealership, and then found out that it was indeed the battery. They replaced it and paid for the towing. All I lost was four hours of my morning. The dealer rep called me on my cell phone around noon to let me know my car was ready, and I walked back over from the mall and picked it up. I took advantage of the opportunity to browse the book store at the mall and to pick up a couple of new pairs of Levi's jeans at Sears. So it wasn't a totally wasted morning.
As I said, I'm getting my three-day weekend for Martin Luther King Day. Interestingly enough, everyone below me on the seniority list is getting screwed out of either one of their days off or their holiday. So I'm the cutoff point. Perhaps someone looked at the horrific number of full stackers and the abysmally low run rates on the DPS deal runs on my machine a couple of Saturdays ago when I was forced to work my day off, and decided that in the words of the immortal Lyndon Johnson, they were better off with me "inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in." Or perhaps it is just a coincidence. Yeah, that's it, just a coincidence. Wise decision, either way.
And the circumstances? Call it donutus interruptus. I left work this morning feeling pretty good, since I'm not getting screwed out of my three-day weekend this time. On the way home, I was jonesing for some of the cinnamon donuts that they sometimes have at the Sweetbay grocery store. So, I stopped off there to see if they had them. They didn't. Instead, I got glazed sour cream donuts. I was in the store all of five minutes. When I got out to my car, it wouldn't start. I said a few choice words at that point, which I will leave to your imagination.
I didn't know if it was the battery or the generator/alternator. Fortunately, my car is still under warranty. I called the dealership and they gave me some numbers for towing companies they work with. I called and got the car towed in to the dealership, and then found out that it was indeed the battery. They replaced it and paid for the towing. All I lost was four hours of my morning. The dealer rep called me on my cell phone around noon to let me know my car was ready, and I walked back over from the mall and picked it up. I took advantage of the opportunity to browse the book store at the mall and to pick up a couple of new pairs of Levi's jeans at Sears. So it wasn't a totally wasted morning.
As I said, I'm getting my three-day weekend for Martin Luther King Day. Interestingly enough, everyone below me on the seniority list is getting screwed out of either one of their days off or their holiday. So I'm the cutoff point. Perhaps someone looked at the horrific number of full stackers and the abysmally low run rates on the DPS deal runs on my machine a couple of Saturdays ago when I was forced to work my day off, and decided that in the words of the immortal Lyndon Johnson, they were better off with me "inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in." Or perhaps it is just a coincidence. Yeah, that's it, just a coincidence. Wise decision, either way.
1.09.2007
Touchstones, Part 1
This may end up being a multi-part post over the next few days.
The other day, I was watching an old movie from 1936, Theodora Goes Wild. It was a comedy about a romance novelist from a small New England town who meets the illustrator of her novel in Manhattan, and he then tracks her back to her hometown. She writes her racy novels under a nom de plume, so the bluenoses in her town have no idea that she is a novelist. Naturally, they are scandalized when this strange man shows up to see her. Outrageously improper! The whole movie doesn't make sense from the modern perspective of a society where women are liberated and no longer are under the thumb of their maiden aunts. Later, it turns out that the illustrator is stuck in a loveless marriage, but has promised his father, a New York politician, that he won't get divorced while his father is in office. Today, of course, we think nothing of the fact that famous politicians themselves have been divorced, and even less about divorce among their family members. This shows how much our society has changed in seventy years.
After the movie ended, there was a short feature that filled the rest of the time slot until the next hour. It seemed to be from about the same time period, and among the characters was a man with a toothbrush mustache who spoke with a thick German accent. He wasn't meant to be Hitler, just your garden-variety German in America in the mid-1930s. Still, when I looked at him I asked myself, "How long will it be until a man can wear a mustache like that and not be thought to be a neo-Nazi or worse?" Different varieties of beards, mustaches and sideburns go in and out of fashion over time, but the Hitler mustache has become permanently verboten. I don't see that changing any time soon, certainly not within the lifetime of anyone who actually remembers Hitler.
So what do these things have to do with each other? It comes down to cultural touchstones, those things that help us define who we are and are not, and more importantly, which people fall into the group defined in the word "we." In my case, "we" means English-speaking American, early 21st Century. Cultural commonalities define the people with which we identify, and the fewer things we have in common with others in our culture, the less we identify with them.
You'll know very quickly when you fall in with a group of people who don't share your cultural touchstones. It's a very alien experience. It may happen when you travel abroad to a country whose inhabitants speak a different language. This happened to me while I was in Germany. I'd go to the beer halls in Munich during the Oktoberfest, and while all the people there knew the words to all of the drinking folk songs, I didn't. (This doesn't include "Ein Prosit, ein Prosit," whose lyrics were simple enough that I could follow along.) Another example would be going to a church of a different denomination, for a wedding or a funeral. You quickly find that no matter what you are used to, they do it differently. Hand motions, genuflecting, rituals and liturgies you don't know. They have different touchstones.
And, as the old movies show, cultural touchstones are specific to a particular time just as much as they are to a language or a religion or a nationality. The American society of today has different popular cultural references than the American society of the 1930s or the 1960s, and unless you are a member of the generation that was actually around at a particular time, you cannot fully understand the cultural touchstones from that time.
By cultural references, I mean the various media and the other experiences and historical events that shaped the society and made them who they were: Music, theater, film, radio, television and the Internet have promulgated information and cultural memes. And of course, each generation has certain events that everyone knows about and was affected by. For people who are senior citizens today, it might be the Great Depression or Pearl Harbor; for middle-aged people, it might be the assassination of John F. Kennedy or the first Moon landing in 1969; for young people, it would probably be 9/11.
If, however, you were not around or were too young to remember a particular event, it's not a touchstone for you. I don't remember the Kennedy assassination; I was too young when it happened. I do, however remember the Moon landing.
When I was a kid, my parents had a book titled Bennett Cerf's Book of Laughs (1959). It was filled with many jokes and puns. Many of them, however, were so topical to the time period in which they were written that someone reading them across a gulf of time might have a hard time finding the humor in them. Often, the pun would reference a person or a song title, etc., that would be instantly familiar to anyone at the time, but today would most likely be greeted by shrugged shoulders and puzzled looks.
More on this tomorrow.
The other day, I was watching an old movie from 1936, Theodora Goes Wild. It was a comedy about a romance novelist from a small New England town who meets the illustrator of her novel in Manhattan, and he then tracks her back to her hometown. She writes her racy novels under a nom de plume, so the bluenoses in her town have no idea that she is a novelist. Naturally, they are scandalized when this strange man shows up to see her. Outrageously improper! The whole movie doesn't make sense from the modern perspective of a society where women are liberated and no longer are under the thumb of their maiden aunts. Later, it turns out that the illustrator is stuck in a loveless marriage, but has promised his father, a New York politician, that he won't get divorced while his father is in office. Today, of course, we think nothing of the fact that famous politicians themselves have been divorced, and even less about divorce among their family members. This shows how much our society has changed in seventy years.
After the movie ended, there was a short feature that filled the rest of the time slot until the next hour. It seemed to be from about the same time period, and among the characters was a man with a toothbrush mustache who spoke with a thick German accent. He wasn't meant to be Hitler, just your garden-variety German in America in the mid-1930s. Still, when I looked at him I asked myself, "How long will it be until a man can wear a mustache like that and not be thought to be a neo-Nazi or worse?" Different varieties of beards, mustaches and sideburns go in and out of fashion over time, but the Hitler mustache has become permanently verboten. I don't see that changing any time soon, certainly not within the lifetime of anyone who actually remembers Hitler.
So what do these things have to do with each other? It comes down to cultural touchstones, those things that help us define who we are and are not, and more importantly, which people fall into the group defined in the word "we." In my case, "we" means English-speaking American, early 21st Century. Cultural commonalities define the people with which we identify, and the fewer things we have in common with others in our culture, the less we identify with them.
You'll know very quickly when you fall in with a group of people who don't share your cultural touchstones. It's a very alien experience. It may happen when you travel abroad to a country whose inhabitants speak a different language. This happened to me while I was in Germany. I'd go to the beer halls in Munich during the Oktoberfest, and while all the people there knew the words to all of the drinking folk songs, I didn't. (This doesn't include "Ein Prosit, ein Prosit," whose lyrics were simple enough that I could follow along.) Another example would be going to a church of a different denomination, for a wedding or a funeral. You quickly find that no matter what you are used to, they do it differently. Hand motions, genuflecting, rituals and liturgies you don't know. They have different touchstones.
And, as the old movies show, cultural touchstones are specific to a particular time just as much as they are to a language or a religion or a nationality. The American society of today has different popular cultural references than the American society of the 1930s or the 1960s, and unless you are a member of the generation that was actually around at a particular time, you cannot fully understand the cultural touchstones from that time.
By cultural references, I mean the various media and the other experiences and historical events that shaped the society and made them who they were: Music, theater, film, radio, television and the Internet have promulgated information and cultural memes. And of course, each generation has certain events that everyone knows about and was affected by. For people who are senior citizens today, it might be the Great Depression or Pearl Harbor; for middle-aged people, it might be the assassination of John F. Kennedy or the first Moon landing in 1969; for young people, it would probably be 9/11.
If, however, you were not around or were too young to remember a particular event, it's not a touchstone for you. I don't remember the Kennedy assassination; I was too young when it happened. I do, however remember the Moon landing.
When I was a kid, my parents had a book titled Bennett Cerf's Book of Laughs (1959). It was filled with many jokes and puns. Many of them, however, were so topical to the time period in which they were written that someone reading them across a gulf of time might have a hard time finding the humor in them. Often, the pun would reference a person or a song title, etc., that would be instantly familiar to anyone at the time, but today would most likely be greeted by shrugged shoulders and puzzled looks.
More on this tomorrow.
1.07.2007
Give Her What She's Asking For
Fiskie Award-winning Idiotarian Cindy Sheehan is in Havana with eleven other anti-war protesters. "Isn't it illegal for Americans to travel to Cuba?" you ask. Why yes, yes it is. Her fellow Idiotarian Medea Benjamin of Code Pink says that the law doesn't apply to them because they are "professional human rights activists" who are traveling to Guantanamo to protest the American internment camp for terrorists. They plan to go to the gates of Gitmo and rattle them and demand entrance.
Well, I say give the Idiotarians what they are asking for! Open the gates, bring them in and arrange accommodations for them. Get those raving moonbats into manacles and orange jumpsuits, pronto, and get them copies of their holy book to read. I'm not sure if that would be Karl Marx's Das Kapital or Mao's Little Red Book. Perhaps they should have both available, just in case.
It's bad enough when our congress-critters go overseas and try to run a rogue foreign policy by kissing up to dictators in Syria, etc. It's even worse when communist-front groups like Code Pink are doing it. When the Cindy Sheehans of our country go out and play hug-a-thug with the Hugo Chavezes of the world, it sends the wrong message. Don't be surprised if she ends up with a photo op with one of the Castro brothers. Does anyone doubt that she would do the same with Moqtada al-Sadr, Ayman al-Zawahiri or even Osama bin Laden himself? She loves anyone who hates this country. She really is a piece of ... work.
Well, I say give the Idiotarians what they are asking for! Open the gates, bring them in and arrange accommodations for them. Get those raving moonbats into manacles and orange jumpsuits, pronto, and get them copies of their holy book to read. I'm not sure if that would be Karl Marx's Das Kapital or Mao's Little Red Book. Perhaps they should have both available, just in case.
It's bad enough when our congress-critters go overseas and try to run a rogue foreign policy by kissing up to dictators in Syria, etc. It's even worse when communist-front groups like Code Pink are doing it. When the Cindy Sheehans of our country go out and play hug-a-thug with the Hugo Chavezes of the world, it sends the wrong message. Don't be surprised if she ends up with a photo op with one of the Castro brothers. Does anyone doubt that she would do the same with Moqtada al-Sadr, Ayman al-Zawahiri or even Osama bin Laden himself? She loves anyone who hates this country. She really is a piece of ... work.
1.02.2007
Random Thoughts During the Ford Funeral
Everyone who is anyone in Washington is there in the National Cathedral. For that matter, any living person who has been anyone is there. The music leading up to the funeral was quite beautiful and stirring.
I wonder what it is like for the other former presidents who watch this pomp and circumstance whenever one of their number passes permanently from the scene. Do they wonder if they will be the next one in the flag-draped coffin, taking that slow ride down Pennsylvania Avenue to the National Cathedral?
George H.W. Bush's invocation of Dana Carvey's "Not gonna do it, wouldn't be prudent" cracked me up, and seemed to be a welcome light-hearted moment. The look on Bill Clinton's face at that moment was priceless. Tom Brokaw's description of those awful '70s clothes was amusing, too.
I wonder what it is like for the other former presidents who watch this pomp and circumstance whenever one of their number passes permanently from the scene. Do they wonder if they will be the next one in the flag-draped coffin, taking that slow ride down Pennsylvania Avenue to the National Cathedral?
George H.W. Bush's invocation of Dana Carvey's "Not gonna do it, wouldn't be prudent" cracked me up, and seemed to be a welcome light-hearted moment. The look on Bill Clinton's face at that moment was priceless. Tom Brokaw's description of those awful '70s clothes was amusing, too.
12.31.2006
It's Never Too Late
I'm not sure which story is more disturbing: The 67-year-old woman in Spain who gave birth to twins and is now the world's oldest mother, or the news that Harrison Ford is going to be filming "Indiana Jones 4" next year. Ford is currently 64 years old, and it's been 17 years since the last Indiana Jones movie; I would have loved to have seen another Indiana Jones movie in the early '90s or even the mid '90s, but that ship has sailed.
What are they going to call this one? "Raiders of the Lost Social Security Check"? "Indiana Jones and the Walker of Doom"? "Indiana Jones and the Last Quadruple Bypass"? Action movies should be the realm of younger men. On the plus side, at least Sean Connery is still around to play his dad. Film quickly, guys. Mr. Connery won't last forever.
Back to the granny story. The woman had gone to the U.S. for in vitro fertilization. What kind of doctor is going to agree to do something like that? Answer: One with no ethics. There's a very good possibility that the woman will be muerto before her kids get out of high school. She'll probably be buying Huggies and Depends at the same time (or whatever the local equivalent brands are in Spain).
What are they going to call this one? "Raiders of the Lost Social Security Check"? "Indiana Jones and the Walker of Doom"? "Indiana Jones and the Last Quadruple Bypass"? Action movies should be the realm of younger men. On the plus side, at least Sean Connery is still around to play his dad. Film quickly, guys. Mr. Connery won't last forever.
Back to the granny story. The woman had gone to the U.S. for in vitro fertilization. What kind of doctor is going to agree to do something like that? Answer: One with no ethics. There's a very good possibility that the woman will be muerto before her kids get out of high school. She'll probably be buying Huggies and Depends at the same time (or whatever the local equivalent brands are in Spain).
12.30.2006
On A More Cheerful Note
Murderous Iraqi thug Saddam Hussein was hanged last night while I was getting ready for work, which cheered me up a bit. Any day that an evil tyrant gets sent to his final justice can't be completely bad. Even if you are forced to work that day on your normal day off!
Somewhere in Hell right now, Saddam is singing "I Can Change" to Satan. (You must have seen the movie South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut to understand the joke!)
Hopefully that cockroach Kim Jong Il is next. (And you need to have seen Team America: World Police to understand the cockroach part of that comment!)
Somewhere in Hell right now, Saddam is singing "I Can Change" to Satan. (You must have seen the movie South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut to understand the joke!)
Hopefully that cockroach Kim Jong Il is next. (And you need to have seen Team America: World Police to understand the cockroach part of that comment!)
Uncooperative
Somewhere at work, a beancounter is goggling at a number and shitting a brick. I take grim pleasure in that thought. My night's work should stick out like a big red sore thumb, right in the eye. There are many ways that I normally cooperate with management to make them look good. Today, however, I did none of those things. I was uncooperative from the moment I arrived until the moment I left.
There was nothing subtle about it, but I didn't want to be subtle. I want the lesson to be learned: Mess with me and you'll regret it; force me to work on my weekend and you won't get the hard-working, motivated employee who shows up Monday through Friday. Hopefully I won't need to give them a further remedial lesson on Martin Luther King Day weekend.
There was nothing subtle about it, but I didn't want to be subtle. I want the lesson to be learned: Mess with me and you'll regret it; force me to work on my weekend and you won't get the hard-working, motivated employee who shows up Monday through Friday. Hopefully I won't need to give them a further remedial lesson on Martin Luther King Day weekend.
12.29.2006
Update
"Two to three hours" ended up being six hours by the time it was all said and done, including travel time. The day was not, however, a total loss. Let me explain:
I got a road tour of much of Lee County. We went down to Dad's old office in south Fort Myers to pick up some furniture, along with Dad's handyman who helped with the lifting. The handyman drove the U-Haul truck, while I rode with the old man in his blue Caddy. Once we got everything loaded up, we stopped off in Jamaica Bay where we picked up a computer desk that Dad had bought from a little old lady. The next stop would be Dad's new office in Cape Coral.
Dad gave the handyman the directions, but unfortunately, when we made the turn into the little strip mall, the handyman missed the turn and drove on down the road. Dad had me stand by the road to watch for him and wave him in when he came back. Five minutes passed, then ten. This was getting ridiculous; the handyman could have made it all the way to Pine Island by that time. Finally, Dad and I got in the car and drove down the road a few miles.
We didn't see the U-Haul, which should have stuck out like a sore thumb. After a while, Dad decided to turn around. We drove back and I spotted the U-Haul parked at the side of a building. About this time, Dad's cell phone rang: It was the handyman. Well, we pulled into the parking lot by the building and Dad went in, chattering on the phone as he walked in.
I followed him in. The store was a Maytag appliance store, but interestingly, in one corner there was an amazing collecti0n of vinyl record albums, 45 RPM singles, VHS movie videotapes and even a few compact discs. Among the latter, I spotted Styx's Greatest Hits in a plain jewel case, no liner notes. $2.99. It had a bunch of great songs on it, and at that price, I wasn't going to say no. I paid the lady at the front desk and left with my souvenir of the day. Then we went to Dad's new office and unloaded the stuff, back to his new manufactured home in North Fort Myers to drop off the computer desk, and then I was outta there.
The CD turned out to have some minor scratches on it, and one song ("Renegade") skipped a bit on my car's CD player. However, when I got it home, it imported perfectly into iTunes. That'll do.
I also found out that two CDs that I ordered from Amazon.com arrived today: Simon and Garfunkel's Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme (1966) and Proto-Kaw's Before Became After - Special Edition (with a DVD) from 2004.
Who is Proto-Kaw? Well, the band Kansas that you are probably familiar with was the third incarnation of the band. Proto-Kaw is the lineup from the second incarnation, including Kerry Livgren. They had another CD out before this one, which I'll get if I like this one, which was mostly demos and unreleased tracks from the early 1970s. This CD/DVD set is the 21st century reunion of the band. Progressive rock, like Kansas, unsurprisingly. I put the CD on my iPod and will listen to it tonight at work.
I got a road tour of much of Lee County. We went down to Dad's old office in south Fort Myers to pick up some furniture, along with Dad's handyman who helped with the lifting. The handyman drove the U-Haul truck, while I rode with the old man in his blue Caddy. Once we got everything loaded up, we stopped off in Jamaica Bay where we picked up a computer desk that Dad had bought from a little old lady. The next stop would be Dad's new office in Cape Coral.
Dad gave the handyman the directions, but unfortunately, when we made the turn into the little strip mall, the handyman missed the turn and drove on down the road. Dad had me stand by the road to watch for him and wave him in when he came back. Five minutes passed, then ten. This was getting ridiculous; the handyman could have made it all the way to Pine Island by that time. Finally, Dad and I got in the car and drove down the road a few miles.
We didn't see the U-Haul, which should have stuck out like a sore thumb. After a while, Dad decided to turn around. We drove back and I spotted the U-Haul parked at the side of a building. About this time, Dad's cell phone rang: It was the handyman. Well, we pulled into the parking lot by the building and Dad went in, chattering on the phone as he walked in.
I followed him in. The store was a Maytag appliance store, but interestingly, in one corner there was an amazing collecti0n of vinyl record albums, 45 RPM singles, VHS movie videotapes and even a few compact discs. Among the latter, I spotted Styx's Greatest Hits in a plain jewel case, no liner notes. $2.99. It had a bunch of great songs on it, and at that price, I wasn't going to say no. I paid the lady at the front desk and left with my souvenir of the day. Then we went to Dad's new office and unloaded the stuff, back to his new manufactured home in North Fort Myers to drop off the computer desk, and then I was outta there.
The CD turned out to have some minor scratches on it, and one song ("Renegade") skipped a bit on my car's CD player. However, when I got it home, it imported perfectly into iTunes. That'll do.
I also found out that two CDs that I ordered from Amazon.com arrived today: Simon and Garfunkel's Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme (1966) and Proto-Kaw's Before Became After - Special Edition (with a DVD) from 2004.
Who is Proto-Kaw? Well, the band Kansas that you are probably familiar with was the third incarnation of the band. Proto-Kaw is the lineup from the second incarnation, including Kerry Livgren. They had another CD out before this one, which I'll get if I like this one, which was mostly demos and unreleased tracks from the early 1970s. This CD/DVD set is the 21st century reunion of the band. Progressive rock, like Kansas, unsurprisingly. I put the CD on my iPod and will listen to it tonight at work.
Not a Happy Camper
It's Friday, and by rights, I should be in a cheerful mood. I most emphatically am not, however; the diametric opposite is true. I'm angry enough to spit nails. Why? Because I'm being screwed out of my three-day weekend by being forced to work my non-scheduled day tonight. Why? Because the people in charge are drunk with power. They've been pushing around the casuals and PTFs, because they can, and so they think they can do the same thing to regulars with a lot of seniority. They must not realize that they are not dealing with casuals and PTFs. This ain't my first rodeo. They need my cooperation in a lot of ways, and tonight, they are not going to get anything beyond the bare minimum.
Also, I've been roped by bonds of filial piety into going to North Fort Myers this morning to help my dad move furniture. He told me that "it will only take two or three hours," which shoots my whole day to hell. I'm not really happy about doing this, either, given the mood I am in, but I don't have much choice. I can say with certainty, however, that my dad is the last person who will get ANY cooperation out of me this year.
Also, I've been roped by bonds of filial piety into going to North Fort Myers this morning to help my dad move furniture. He told me that "it will only take two or three hours," which shoots my whole day to hell. I'm not really happy about doing this, either, given the mood I am in, but I don't have much choice. I can say with certainty, however, that my dad is the last person who will get ANY cooperation out of me this year.
12.27.2006
Godspeed, Gerald Ford
Former President Gerald Ford passed away last night in California at the age of 93. Those of us old enough to remember him do so mostly for his pardon of his predecessor, Richard Nixon. He also is remembered as a good, honest, decent man by just about everyone who knew him. There are far worse ways to be remembered.
Interestingly, just a couple of days ago I had looked at a picture of him along with comedian Chevy Chase, in the booklet that came with the Saturday Night Live First Season box set that my brother, Kurt, gave me for Christmas. We know now that the reputation that Ford got for klutziness was unfair and inaccurate, but that's the power of television for you. I thought it was pretty gracious of Ford to get together with Chase at the time.
So, for the next few days, we're going to be reflecting a lot on that period from 1974-76. It wasn't a happy time in our nation's history, the Bicentennial celebration notwithstanding, and it only got worse when Jimmy Carter was elected. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the Watergate scandal had never come to light. Nixon would have completed his term, but then what? Without Nixon's disgrace, there would have been no Ford presidency; without the weak incumbency of an unelected president, would Carter's disastrous administration have followed? And without Carter's impotent response to the Iranians holding Americans hostage for 444 days, would Reagan have been elected and implemented the policies that brought down the Soviet Union? If Watergate had not occurred, the Soviet Union might still exist.
Interestingly, just a couple of days ago I had looked at a picture of him along with comedian Chevy Chase, in the booklet that came with the Saturday Night Live First Season box set that my brother, Kurt, gave me for Christmas. We know now that the reputation that Ford got for klutziness was unfair and inaccurate, but that's the power of television for you. I thought it was pretty gracious of Ford to get together with Chase at the time.
So, for the next few days, we're going to be reflecting a lot on that period from 1974-76. It wasn't a happy time in our nation's history, the Bicentennial celebration notwithstanding, and it only got worse when Jimmy Carter was elected. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the Watergate scandal had never come to light. Nixon would have completed his term, but then what? Without Nixon's disgrace, there would have been no Ford presidency; without the weak incumbency of an unelected president, would Carter's disastrous administration have followed? And without Carter's impotent response to the Iranians holding Americans hostage for 444 days, would Reagan have been elected and implemented the policies that brought down the Soviet Union? If Watergate had not occurred, the Soviet Union might still exist.
12.25.2006
Merry Christmas!
Wishing you and yours a joyous holiday. Hopefully Santa brought the presents you wanted.
Here's a few things that I hope he brought to some other people:
Donald Trump: Ego reduction surgery.
Rosie O'Donnell: Ditto.
Britney Spears: Panties, panties, panties!
Lindsey Lohan and Paris Hilton: Ditto, x2.
Arnold Schwarzenegger: Titanium Terminator skeletal femur replacement part 1001001-SOS-1984XXXL
Tara Connor, Miss USA: A copy of Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Freshly Updated, by Judith Martin and Gloria Kamen
Katie Rees, the former Miss Nevada: Ditto.
James Brown: A performance on center stage in Heaven, with God in the front row.
Retiring UN Secretary General Kofi Annan: A conscience.
The rest of the UN: Ditto.
Here's a few things that I hope he brought to some other people:
Donald Trump: Ego reduction surgery.
Rosie O'Donnell: Ditto.
Britney Spears: Panties, panties, panties!
Lindsey Lohan and Paris Hilton: Ditto, x2.
Arnold Schwarzenegger: Titanium Terminator skeletal femur replacement part 1001001-SOS-1984XXXL
Tara Connor, Miss USA: A copy of Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Freshly Updated, by Judith Martin and Gloria Kamen
Katie Rees, the former Miss Nevada: Ditto.
James Brown: A performance on center stage in Heaven, with God in the front row.
Retiring UN Secretary General Kofi Annan: A conscience.
The rest of the UN: Ditto.
12.21.2006
Spotted in the Mail #3
The other day, I spotted an unusual Christmas card in the mail. It was a large glossy postcard, similar to the kind politicians send out during their campaigns. It showed a couple and their three children perched on a low, large tree. Mom and Dad had reasonably normal first names, but the children (two girls and a boy) were "Davis, Kennedy and Porter." No telling which one was the boy, although I'm guessing "Porter," simply because of country music singer Porter Waggoner.
Oh well, at least they didn't name any of them Biff or Muffy, and given that we're talking about the toniest part of Naples, those wouldn't have been out of the question.
Oh well, at least they didn't name any of them Biff or Muffy, and given that we're talking about the toniest part of Naples, those wouldn't have been out of the question.
12.20.2006
Volcanic Jealousy?
I saw in the news from yesterday that the ongoing eruption at Mount St. Helens in Washington became a little more active yesterday, with a big plume of steam rising from the volcano. I have a theory about this: I think that Mount St. Helens was jealous about being upstaged by the search for the missing mountain climbers on Mount Hood in Oregon.
"Hey! Look at me! I'm erupting here, I'm erupting here!"
(Mount Hood is also a volcano, albeit a dormant one. So is Mount Rainier, near the Seattle-Tacoma area, and it gave off smoke as recently as the turn of the 20th century.)
"Hey! Look at me! I'm erupting here, I'm erupting here!"
(Mount Hood is also a volcano, albeit a dormant one. So is Mount Rainier, near the Seattle-Tacoma area, and it gave off smoke as recently as the turn of the 20th century.)
It Figures
We have an artificial Christmas tree at work. Going around the base of it is a small toy train, about five cars long, that has been around for several years. In the locomotive car is a jolly Santa, giving an open-handed greeting that reminds me of a Nazi salute. This year, for some reason, the train won't run forward; it will only run in reverse. This seems oddly appropriate. Santa is taking the toys from the little children and sending them in reverse back to the North Pole. Given the holiday schedule for next week, which is requiring all of our PTFs and casuals to work 12 hours on Christmas, the grinchiness of the backtracking sieg-heiling Santa fits right in.
Even though I'm a regular with 15 years seniority and am getting my three-day weekend, I don't like seeing other people getting screwed over. I went in to the office and put in my two cents with the supervisors about the holiday schedule, given that there won't be anywhere near enough work to justify having all of those people there, but it didn't do any good. The supervisor who does the schedule told me that because some regulars on one of the other tours are being forced to work their holiday, it means that ALL of the PTFs and casuals have to work as well. His hands are tied. I don't understand why ANY regulars are being forced to work, considering that there are NO dispatches on Christmas. But because someone in charge on one of the other tours was a Scrooge, all of the PTFs and casuals are getting lumps of coal in their stockings. I only hope that the Scrooge on the other tour gets a visit from three ghosts, or perhaps gets that three-sizes-too-small heart enlarged.
Traditionally, we've always only had a skeleton crew of greedy volunteer regulars work on Christmas, since they get paid double-time-and-a-half that day. I've done it myself once or twice, a long time ago. Non-volunteers were rarely if ever forced to work Christmas, because there really was no reason for them to have to do so.
A common refrain among my co-workers is that in retrospect, perhaps the old plant manager wasn't so bad after all. He suddenly has a golden glow about him that wasn't just the glare of the lights beaming off the top of his bald head. I heard the saying "Better the devil that you know than the devil that you don't know" from more than one co-worker today.
Even though I'm a regular with 15 years seniority and am getting my three-day weekend, I don't like seeing other people getting screwed over. I went in to the office and put in my two cents with the supervisors about the holiday schedule, given that there won't be anywhere near enough work to justify having all of those people there, but it didn't do any good. The supervisor who does the schedule told me that because some regulars on one of the other tours are being forced to work their holiday, it means that ALL of the PTFs and casuals have to work as well. His hands are tied. I don't understand why ANY regulars are being forced to work, considering that there are NO dispatches on Christmas. But because someone in charge on one of the other tours was a Scrooge, all of the PTFs and casuals are getting lumps of coal in their stockings. I only hope that the Scrooge on the other tour gets a visit from three ghosts, or perhaps gets that three-sizes-too-small heart enlarged.
Traditionally, we've always only had a skeleton crew of greedy volunteer regulars work on Christmas, since they get paid double-time-and-a-half that day. I've done it myself once or twice, a long time ago. Non-volunteers were rarely if ever forced to work Christmas, because there really was no reason for them to have to do so.
A common refrain among my co-workers is that in retrospect, perhaps the old plant manager wasn't so bad after all. He suddenly has a golden glow about him that wasn't just the glare of the lights beaming off the top of his bald head. I heard the saying "Better the devil that you know than the devil that you don't know" from more than one co-worker today.
12.16.2006
What's Wrong With This Story?
Record high winter temperature set in Moscow
Also, there's the question of how long the Russians have been keeping record of daily high and low temperatures. It all sounds alarming until you realize that their temperature records probably don't go back more than a century at most. It's not like Moscow is suddenly going to become a winter vacation destination like Florida!
MOSCOW, December 15 (RIA Novosti) - A winter maximum temperature record for Moscow was set Friday, the capital's weather bureau said Friday.So, what's wrong with that story? Look at the date. And then consider the fact that "winter" doesn't officially begin until December 21st.
Friday's maximum of 8.6°C (47.48°F) is the highest winter temperature on record for the Russian capital, the spokesman said.
The previous winter record for Moscow was 8.1 °C (46.5°F), set on February 17, 1989.
Extreme deviations in weather patterns have been observed before, but over the past decade they have become more and more frequent, the Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring said.
Following near-record low temperatures during last winter's cold spell, which saw the mercury plummet to -31°C (-23.8°F) January 19 - one degree above the all-time low for Moscow - European Russia has experienced record warm temperatures this month.
Forecasters believe the temperature may be even higher in coming days, possibly reaching 9°C (48.2 °F).
Also, there's the question of how long the Russians have been keeping record of daily high and low temperatures. It all sounds alarming until you realize that their temperature records probably don't go back more than a century at most. It's not like Moscow is suddenly going to become a winter vacation destination like Florida!
12.14.2006
Gott Sei Dank I'm Not German
Or I'd be in jail for life if this silly legislation goes through in Germany: German gamers face jail for acts of virtual violence
Ach du lieber! Those krazy Krauts* actually want to put people in jail for cruelly murdering PIXELS! It doesn't get any sillier than this. Don't the polizei have some real criminals to pursue? How about those Muslim terrorist cells working out of Hamburg, for instance? Nein, they want to go after the komputerkriminalen, who are much less likely to have real guns than Mohammed Atta wannabes. That game controller doesn't do scheisse against real cops.
* - Being part German, I'm allowed to use the term "Krauts," just as black people can use the N-word with impunity. It's a term of endearment. If you have a problem with that, es tut mir leid.
Players and creators of video games could face imprisonment for acts of virtual violence under draft legislation being drawn up by two of Germany's state governments.
Politicians in Bavaria and Lower Saxony have proposed a new offence that will punish "cruel violence on humans or human-looking characters" inside games. Early drafts suggest that infringers should face fines or up to 12 months' jail for promoting or enacting in-game violence.
Ach du lieber! Those krazy Krauts* actually want to put people in jail for cruelly murdering PIXELS! It doesn't get any sillier than this. Don't the polizei have some real criminals to pursue? How about those Muslim terrorist cells working out of Hamburg, for instance? Nein, they want to go after the komputerkriminalen, who are much less likely to have real guns than Mohammed Atta wannabes. That game controller doesn't do scheisse against real cops.
* - Being part German, I'm allowed to use the term "Krauts," just as black people can use the N-word with impunity. It's a term of endearment. If you have a problem with that, es tut mir leid.
12.13.2006
I Comment on the News
I'm sure you've already heard about Nicole Ritchie getting busted for DUI in California the other day. If not, here's the skinny (pardon the expression): Somebody called 911 when they spotted her driving the wrong way on a highway. The cops stopped her and she admitted to have taken Vicodin and and to have smoked marijuana. The cops arrested her, and her booking information got leaked to the press. She told the cops she was 5'1" tall and weighed 85 pounds. 85 pounds?! Two thoughts came to mind when I read that: First, I thought dope smokers got the munchies! Evidently she didn't, though. Second, girl, have a sandwich! Better yet, have two. She should stay away from tomato juice, though, because it would make her look like a thermometer.
12.12.2006
Toyland, Toyland
When I was a kid, the harbinger of the Christmas season was the arrival of the J.C. Penney Christmas catalogue, with its pages and pages of toys. My brothers and I would leaf through it, looking at all of the things we wanted. We didn't always get everything on our lists, but we usually had a pretty good haul.
The other day when I was on jury duty, CNN was on in the waiting room, and they had a story about nostalgic middle-aged Baby Boomers seeking out the toys of their youth. They showed Mr. Potato Head (and some of his other vegetable friends), Gumby and Pokey, G.I. Joe and Barbie, etc. They were all very familiar, but then again, I'm one of those middle-aged Baby Boomers myself. It got me to thinking about some of the cool toys I had many years ago.
The world has changed, of course. I don't imagine that they sell toys like Mattel's Thingmaker any more, which cooked "Plastigoop" into rubbery toys (my favorites were the Mini-Dragons, which was made in several parts and then put together with arrows through loopholes, and the original Creepy Crawlers set, with molds for bugs, spiders, rats, snakes, etc.). Can you imagine the lawsuits from children burning themselves if they put out something like that today? I had a chemistry set, too. I don't know if they'd let kids have them these days, especially without adult supervision. Too dangerous. (I also rode a bicycle without ever wearing a helmet, and for that matter, I don't think we even had seat belts in the cars we had back in the 1960s. Amazingly enough, I survived to adulthood.)
A lot of things are still around. Hot Wheels cars, for instance. I got them back in the late 1960s when they first came out. We also had the orange plastic strips of track so we could race the cars. The kid who had a Supercharger to propel the cars around an oval loop of track was an object of envy. My favorite cars included the Red Baron (with its silver German helmet) and the Evil Weevil, a modified VW Bug, but I had dozens of them over the years.
We also had a lot of Lego blocks. Lego wasn't the only kind of plastic construction blocks we had, though. There was TOG'L, colorful plastic cubes about an inch square, with holes in some of the faces, pegs sticking out of others and some of the faces were hinged and would open. My brothers and I would make robots out of the TOG'L blocks and have boxing matches with them, moving the shoulders to throw punches at the other robot's head to try to knock his block off.
I had the Major Matt Mason ("Mattel's Man in Space!") action figure, as well as G.I. Joes at a time when they were still the same size as Barbie dolls and still military men, complete with toy weapons and uniforms, rather than some sort of sci-fi ninja figure. And we had Gumby and Pokey, as well as Mr. Potato Head. Also lots and lots of plastic toy soldiers, plastic cowboys and Indians, plastic Roman soldiers and Crusaders, and Lincoln Logs to build forts for them to garrison.
We also had a square wooden game table, with a netted pocket in each corner. It came with miniature wooden pins like bowling pins, and colored plastic rings in red and green and white and black. I'm not sure what they were actually supposed to be used for, but we made up our own games with them.
Finally, we had some early electronic games. We had a game system (Atari?) that attached to the television and allowed us to play Pong and Hockey. And we had a hand-held electronic football game that was actually just three rows of red LEDs, and the arrows would allow the runner to move up and down and forward trying to avoid the bright red tacklers. A kid today would roll his eyes, laugh at it and put it back on the shelf, but we didn't have XBoxes or Playstations or computers back then. Pong was high tech thirty-odd years ago. We're far more jaded now.
The other day when I was on jury duty, CNN was on in the waiting room, and they had a story about nostalgic middle-aged Baby Boomers seeking out the toys of their youth. They showed Mr. Potato Head (and some of his other vegetable friends), Gumby and Pokey, G.I. Joe and Barbie, etc. They were all very familiar, but then again, I'm one of those middle-aged Baby Boomers myself. It got me to thinking about some of the cool toys I had many years ago.
The world has changed, of course. I don't imagine that they sell toys like Mattel's Thingmaker any more, which cooked "Plastigoop" into rubbery toys (my favorites were the Mini-Dragons, which was made in several parts and then put together with arrows through loopholes, and the original Creepy Crawlers set, with molds for bugs, spiders, rats, snakes, etc.). Can you imagine the lawsuits from children burning themselves if they put out something like that today? I had a chemistry set, too. I don't know if they'd let kids have them these days, especially without adult supervision. Too dangerous. (I also rode a bicycle without ever wearing a helmet, and for that matter, I don't think we even had seat belts in the cars we had back in the 1960s. Amazingly enough, I survived to adulthood.)
A lot of things are still around. Hot Wheels cars, for instance. I got them back in the late 1960s when they first came out. We also had the orange plastic strips of track so we could race the cars. The kid who had a Supercharger to propel the cars around an oval loop of track was an object of envy. My favorite cars included the Red Baron (with its silver German helmet) and the Evil Weevil, a modified VW Bug, but I had dozens of them over the years.
We also had a lot of Lego blocks. Lego wasn't the only kind of plastic construction blocks we had, though. There was TOG'L, colorful plastic cubes about an inch square, with holes in some of the faces, pegs sticking out of others and some of the faces were hinged and would open. My brothers and I would make robots out of the TOG'L blocks and have boxing matches with them, moving the shoulders to throw punches at the other robot's head to try to knock his block off.
I had the Major Matt Mason ("Mattel's Man in Space!") action figure, as well as G.I. Joes at a time when they were still the same size as Barbie dolls and still military men, complete with toy weapons and uniforms, rather than some sort of sci-fi ninja figure. And we had Gumby and Pokey, as well as Mr. Potato Head. Also lots and lots of plastic toy soldiers, plastic cowboys and Indians, plastic Roman soldiers and Crusaders, and Lincoln Logs to build forts for them to garrison.
We also had a square wooden game table, with a netted pocket in each corner. It came with miniature wooden pins like bowling pins, and colored plastic rings in red and green and white and black. I'm not sure what they were actually supposed to be used for, but we made up our own games with them.
Finally, we had some early electronic games. We had a game system (Atari?) that attached to the television and allowed us to play Pong and Hockey. And we had a hand-held electronic football game that was actually just three rows of red LEDs, and the arrows would allow the runner to move up and down and forward trying to avoid the bright red tacklers. A kid today would roll his eyes, laugh at it and put it back on the shelf, but we didn't have XBoxes or Playstations or computers back then. Pong was high tech thirty-odd years ago. We're far more jaded now.
12.08.2006
Must Be December
It's chilly outside today here in Florida. It won't reach 70 today, and will drop down into the 40s tonight. Overcast. Windy. A good day to stay inside and drink hot chocolate and shop online.
To get into the spirit of the season, I'm importing my Christmas CDs into iTunes so that I can put them on my iPod. So far, I've imported Mojo Nixon & the Toadliquors' Horny Holidays, a collection of Easy Listening classics called Do You Hear What I Hear?, and A Very Special Christmas 1, 2 and 5. I'll have to clear some space on the iPod so that they'll all fit... Ah, there we go... 70 MB to spare.
To get into the spirit of the season, I'm importing my Christmas CDs into iTunes so that I can put them on my iPod. So far, I've imported Mojo Nixon & the Toadliquors' Horny Holidays, a collection of Easy Listening classics called Do You Hear What I Hear?, and A Very Special Christmas 1, 2 and 5. I'll have to clear some space on the iPod so that they'll all fit... Ah, there we go... 70 MB to spare.
12.05.2006
I'm Not the Only One...
The Hollywood Reporter web site says [Britney] Spears tops Yahoo!'s searches:
Hmmmm... I must admit, I was one of those with prurient curiosity. And after tracking down the Britney pics, I then had to go looking for the similarly exposed Lindsay "Firecrotch" Lohan pics. The verdict: Ehhh. Nothing I haven't seen before. Lindsay's at least didn't have a C-section scar. The funny part was that after Britney was caught flashing panty-less for about the third time in a week, she went out and spent $3000 on lingerie.
As I told a friend, P.T. Barnum reportedly said, "There's a sucker born every minute." Robin Williams said that "Cocaine is God's way of telling you you are making too much money." There's probably a corollary to that one involving a $333 yellow bra-and-thong set.
I think I'd rather see the money in the hands of the lingerie boutique owners than Britney. God bless capitalism! God bless America!
Bereft of any new music to promote, Britney Spears was nevertheless the hottest thing on the Internet this year, judging from Yahoo!'s annual list of popular search terms.
Of course, a surge in online voyeurs seeking recently posted pictures of Britney sans panties didn't hurt. But a Yahoo! spokeswoman said "Britney" had the title of No. 1 search term sewed up even before the risque photos surfaced.
Hmmmm... I must admit, I was one of those with prurient curiosity. And after tracking down the Britney pics, I then had to go looking for the similarly exposed Lindsay "Firecrotch" Lohan pics. The verdict: Ehhh. Nothing I haven't seen before. Lindsay's at least didn't have a C-section scar. The funny part was that after Britney was caught flashing panty-less for about the third time in a week, she went out and spent $3000 on lingerie.
As I told a friend, P.T. Barnum reportedly said, "There's a sucker born every minute." Robin Williams said that "Cocaine is God's way of telling you you are making too much money." There's probably a corollary to that one involving a $333 yellow bra-and-thong set.
I think I'd rather see the money in the hands of the lingerie boutique owners than Britney. God bless capitalism! God bless America!
12.04.2006
Friday's Jury Duty
Friday was a pretty boring day, sitting around at the Justice Center (the postmodern terminology for "courthouse"). I spent most of the day waiting around, until we were all finally called up to the courtroom. There was only one judge working Friday, and everything on the docket had been settled by plea bargaining except for one case. We stood in the hallway outside the courtoom for about ten minutes, then they led us in. I noted with some interest that the sign on the door said "Felony Court." The judge quickly informed us that he had only brought us in to tell us "hi" and "bye," because the final case had just been settled. A good thing too, as he told us that if the case had gone in front of a jury, it would have been a two-day case.
One other oddity I noticed while waiting around: All of the other prospective jurors in my group were white. The jury pool in our county is selected from driver's license registrations, so you can't get out of jury duty by just not registering to vote. There were somewhere between 40 and 50 of us present (and some 250 others had not had to come in). And yes, there are a lot of minorities living in the county. Might just have been a quirk in the system, but I certainly wouldn't have wanted to have been a prosecutor trying a minority defendant if everyone in the prospective jury pool was white, because I'm sure any defense attorney worth his salt would have used that as grounds for an appeal of any conviction.
One other oddity I noticed while waiting around: All of the other prospective jurors in my group were white. The jury pool in our county is selected from driver's license registrations, so you can't get out of jury duty by just not registering to vote. There were somewhere between 40 and 50 of us present (and some 250 others had not had to come in). And yes, there are a lot of minorities living in the county. Might just have been a quirk in the system, but I certainly wouldn't have wanted to have been a prosecutor trying a minority defendant if everyone in the prospective jury pool was white, because I'm sure any defense attorney worth his salt would have used that as grounds for an appeal of any conviction.
11.30.2006
Jury Duty Tomorrow
I really would rather have gone to work tonight and started my weekend tomorrow morning at 7:30. Instead, I have jury duty. They called the first 60-some numbers in, and the other 250 or so were excused. They got me by three four numbers. Three Four lousy numbers. *Sigh*
I guess this means I get to watch Thursday night football and drink a couple of beers, since I won't be going in to work tonight. Whoopee. It's past my normal bedtime now, but I'm going to try and stay up for a while longer so that I can hopefully sleep through most of the night and then be alert during the day tomorrow. And oh, joy, I get to drive in rush hour traffic. Normally I'm driving the other direction and I never run into any traffic. I'm wondering how much extra time I should allow to get downtown? Probably at least a half hour. Tomorrow promises to be most annoying.
I guess this means I get to watch Thursday night football and drink a couple of beers, since I won't be going in to work tonight. Whoopee. It's past my normal bedtime now, but I'm going to try and stay up for a while longer so that I can hopefully sleep through most of the night and then be alert during the day tomorrow. And oh, joy, I get to drive in rush hour traffic. Normally I'm driving the other direction and I never run into any traffic. I'm wondering how much extra time I should allow to get downtown? Probably at least a half hour. Tomorrow promises to be most annoying.
Absinthe of Malice
As you might have guessed from the title, today's topic is alcohol. Here are a couple of stories for you.
First, I read this online yesterday in The Scotsman: Grapes of wrath for French vineyards as millions of bottles are destroyed
The article notes that due to a huge glut of wine overproduction in France, 8 million liters of wine (that's around 2 million gallons to us) are being distilled into pure alcohol for other uses. Also noted is that fact that French consumption of wine has dropped dramatically over the past couple of generations, from 3.1 bottles per week per person in 1960 down to 1.4 bottles today. I wondered how much the growing Islamification of Europe might have to do with this number, since Muslims are forbidden to drink alcohol. One of the commenters at the bottom of the article (#22, Jericho, Anytown, USA) summed it up nicely.
Second, I was talking with a friend at work about the French wine glut story and the conversation moved to a show he'd recently seen on television about absinthe. We were both pretty sure that absinthe is still illegal to sell in the U.S., although I told him I'd seen ads for what claimed to be absinthe on some political web sites, and had seen a product called "Absente" at the liquor store, which it turns out is made from a different kind of wormwood than true absinthe, thus making it legal to sell in the U.S. I told him I'd look it up on Wikipedia when I got home, and those links are the fruits of my search labors. I'm not sure that I'd want to drink anything with that high an alcohol content anyway, although I might try it once if it was available, just to see what all the fuss was about.
First, I read this online yesterday in The Scotsman: Grapes of wrath for French vineyards as millions of bottles are destroyed
The article notes that due to a huge glut of wine overproduction in France, 8 million liters of wine (that's around 2 million gallons to us) are being distilled into pure alcohol for other uses. Also noted is that fact that French consumption of wine has dropped dramatically over the past couple of generations, from 3.1 bottles per week per person in 1960 down to 1.4 bottles today. I wondered how much the growing Islamification of Europe might have to do with this number, since Muslims are forbidden to drink alcohol. One of the commenters at the bottom of the article (#22, Jericho, Anytown, USA) summed it up nicely.
Second, I was talking with a friend at work about the French wine glut story and the conversation moved to a show he'd recently seen on television about absinthe. We were both pretty sure that absinthe is still illegal to sell in the U.S., although I told him I'd seen ads for what claimed to be absinthe on some political web sites, and had seen a product called "Absente" at the liquor store, which it turns out is made from a different kind of wormwood than true absinthe, thus making it legal to sell in the U.S. I told him I'd look it up on Wikipedia when I got home, and those links are the fruits of my search labors. I'm not sure that I'd want to drink anything with that high an alcohol content anyway, although I might try it once if it was available, just to see what all the fuss was about.
11.29.2006
A Warning For the Ladies
I was reading the local section of yesterday's Naples Daily News in the break room this morning, and found this story: Man arrested at Beall's outlet store in women's dressing room
This is the second recent case of a peeping Tom in a department store dressing room. The other guy had drilled peepholes to look into the next dressing stall. The store security people had found the holes and filled them up, but he came back and re-drilled them! Amazing chutzpah.
So ladies, the next time you go to a department store and are going to try on some clothes, check the walls for peepholes and the floor, etc., for pervs with cameras, before you disrobe. In this day and age of miniaturized electronics, you can't be too careful. If the voyeurs down here in Florida are doing it, the odds are that your local ones are thinking of ways to do the same sort of thing.
When 48-year-old Christopher Reed Oslin walked into the Beall's Outlet Store in East Naples on Sunday, authorities say he had more than Christmas shopping in mind.Amazingly, he was only charged with "loitering and prowling," because for him to be charged with "voyeurism," the cops would have had to know who the victims were.
At about 2:40 p.m. a Collier County sheriff's deputy received a telephone call from his wife who was shopping at Beall's at 2710 U.S. 41 E. and reported seeing a man acting strangely in the women's dressing room. When the deputy arrived he saw a person with "manly looking hairy ankles" standing in one of the stalls, an arrest report stated.
When a woman entered the next stall, the man with the hairy ankles placed what appeared to be a bundle of clothes on the ground. He then reached down to turn and angle the clothing, authorities reported.
The deputy called for backup, talked to a store manager and then knocked on the stall door and asked to speak to the man. Authorities said the man, identified as Oslin, of 265 Georgetown Blvd., opened the stall door dressed only in socks, white underwear and a T-shirt.
Oslin appeared to be sexually aroused, an arrest report stated.
After Oslin put on his pants and exited the stall, the deputy found a pair of blue work shorts on the ground with a Sony camcorder hidden inside them.
Authorities said Oslin was inside the dressing room for more than an hour. Investigators reviewed the video from the camcorder and observed several people changing clothes, including several scenes of people in the nude, an arrest report indicates.
This is the second recent case of a peeping Tom in a department store dressing room. The other guy had drilled peepholes to look into the next dressing stall. The store security people had found the holes and filled them up, but he came back and re-drilled them! Amazing chutzpah.
So ladies, the next time you go to a department store and are going to try on some clothes, check the walls for peepholes and the floor, etc., for pervs with cameras, before you disrobe. In this day and age of miniaturized electronics, you can't be too careful. If the voyeurs down here in Florida are doing it, the odds are that your local ones are thinking of ways to do the same sort of thing.
11.28.2006
While I'm On a Video Kick...
This song is getting played a lot on my iPod:
Yes, it's the classic "Turning Japanese" by the Vapors, off their 1980 New Clear Days album. I don't think the CD format was out yet at that time; it seems like it didn't come out until the mid-'80s. Great song, but man, that lead singer looks way too scrawny to be slinging a katana around. Of course, that wasn't really what the song was about... Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more! This is a very early music video, and looks pretty primitive by modern standards. Sometimes, of course, that's a good thing. Newer isn't always better.
Yes, it's the classic "Turning Japanese" by the Vapors, off their 1980 New Clear Days album. I don't think the CD format was out yet at that time; it seems like it didn't come out until the mid-'80s. Great song, but man, that lead singer looks way too scrawny to be slinging a katana around. Of course, that wasn't really what the song was about... Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more! This is a very early music video, and looks pretty primitive by modern standards. Sometimes, of course, that's a good thing. Newer isn't always better.
11.27.2006
"All Your Bsae Are Belong To Us!"
Sorry, I couldn't resist.I saw this picture on Power Line of
One More For the Road
If Susanna Hoffs is your cup of (Ming) Tea, then you should go to Bill Bonk's web site, click on the Songwriter tab and scroll down to the bottom of the page. Under "Unreleased Tracks" is a song by Susanna Hoffs titled "Pride," in both RealAudio and MP3 formats. It's a fairly quick download, and a good song. I like it better than some of the ones she actually used on the 1996 album!
Other leftover weekend stuff: The nice folks at Gillette sent me a freebie Fusion razor, which came in my mailbox on Saturday. I haven't tried it out yet, but I will soon. Interesting tidbit: The razor's shipping address shows that it came from Devens, Massachusetts. Yes, the same Devens that used to be Fort Devens, where I went for Advanced Individual Training in 1981 (after Basic Training at Fort Dix, New Jersey), and where I returned in 1985 for a two-month course at the Army Intelligence school there. They closed it down back in the 1990s; I think they consolidated all of the schools for the Intelligence branch at Fort Huachuca, Arizona after that. It couldn't have been good for the little town of Ayer, which was just outside of the post. And yes, in the winter, it was definitely a "cold Ayer, Mass." I have fond memories of my times in the Bay State, and Boston was one of my favorite cities to visit.
Other leftover weekend stuff: The nice folks at Gillette sent me a freebie Fusion razor, which came in my mailbox on Saturday. I haven't tried it out yet, but I will soon. Interesting tidbit: The razor's shipping address shows that it came from Devens, Massachusetts. Yes, the same Devens that used to be Fort Devens, where I went for Advanced Individual Training in 1981 (after Basic Training at Fort Dix, New Jersey), and where I returned in 1985 for a two-month course at the Army Intelligence school there. They closed it down back in the 1990s; I think they consolidated all of the schools for the Intelligence branch at Fort Huachuca, Arizona after that. It couldn't have been good for the little town of Ayer, which was just outside of the post. And yes, in the winter, it was definitely a "cold Ayer, Mass." I have fond memories of my times in the Bay State, and Boston was one of my favorite cities to visit.
11.24.2006
What I'm Listening To
Lately, a lot of Susanna Hoffs, both solo and with others. She was in the Bangles back in the '80s, of course, and then she put out a pair of solo albums, When You're A Boy in 1991 and the eponymous Susanna Hoffs in 1996. This year, she and Matthew Sweet came out with a superb collection of '60s cover tunes titled Under the Covers, Vol. 1, which has been in heavy rotation on my iPod.
When You're A Boy is one of my favorite CDs, because it showcases her clear, sweet voice so well. All four of the Bangles took turns on lead vocals on their albums, which often left fans of Susanna wanting more, and her first solo album delivered. Here is a video of one of the songs, "Unconditional Love":
I didn't really like her second solo album all that well. Her voice sounded a bit worn and strained, and she wasn't able to hit the soaring high notes that she had five years earlier. She had also taken more of a folk turn, thinking that her previous work had been too commercial and over-produced.
But now, ten years after that, she teamed up with Matthew Sweet on a their cover song project, and her voice is back in fine form. The songs run the gamut from familiar favorites originally done by the Beatles, the Who, Neil Young, the Mamas & the Papas, etc. to more obscure songs done by groups like The Left Banke and Sandy Denny, but there's not a bad song in the bunch. For anyone who enjoys her music, this one is a must have and well worth buying.
Here's a video of them singing Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl":
Enjoy!
When You're A Boy is one of my favorite CDs, because it showcases her clear, sweet voice so well. All four of the Bangles took turns on lead vocals on their albums, which often left fans of Susanna wanting more, and her first solo album delivered. Here is a video of one of the songs, "Unconditional Love":
I didn't really like her second solo album all that well. Her voice sounded a bit worn and strained, and she wasn't able to hit the soaring high notes that she had five years earlier. She had also taken more of a folk turn, thinking that her previous work had been too commercial and over-produced.
But now, ten years after that, she teamed up with Matthew Sweet on a their cover song project, and her voice is back in fine form. The songs run the gamut from familiar favorites originally done by the Beatles, the Who, Neil Young, the Mamas & the Papas, etc. to more obscure songs done by groups like The Left Banke and Sandy Denny, but there's not a bad song in the bunch. For anyone who enjoys her music, this one is a must have and well worth buying.
Here's a video of them singing Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl":
Enjoy!
11.23.2006
This Morning's Moment of Zen
I was up around 4 a.m., channel-surfing. VH1 Classic had a show on called "The Vault," featuring music videos from the '80s. Back in that distant mist-shrouded time, MTV and VH1 actually showed music videos most of the time. Think of that!
Anyway, after a while, a video comes on by Billy Bragg, titled "Waiting For The Great Leap Forward":
It's a paean to communist revolution from late 1988. It starts with lots of black-and-white hagiographic imagery of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong and Nikita Khruschev, and lots of shiny happy communist youth parading in front of their leaders and chanting slogans, with Bragg moving Forrest Gump-like through the scenes, intercut with other scenes of Bragg on tour somewhere in Eastern Europe, probably the Soviet Union. Ronald Reagan makes a cameo appearance at the end, hawking Boraxo soap in a vintage commercial. He is obviously a figure of derision, a dangerous cowboy who is trying to prevent the historically inevitable victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie. The fool!
Now, ANYTHING from 1988 involving the possibility of a victorious communist revolution looks ridiculously dated today (and indeed, ever since 1992). Bragg was one of those who was on the wrong side of history in the 1980s, he just didn't know it yet. (And indeed, perhaps like many socialists in Europe today, he may not yet know it even now!) The Soviet Union was a doddering 71-year-old and only three years away from its winding shroud. The Berlin Wall, which I was still three months away from vandalizing, loomed high and dark, but was only one brittle year away from falling to hammer-smashed rubble.
And here's this guy who thinks it's the wave of the future. It actually made me laugh as I watched it, because he was so earnestly, spectacularly wrong. He probably had a Betamax videotape recorder, too.
Anyway, after a while, a video comes on by Billy Bragg, titled "Waiting For The Great Leap Forward":
It's a paean to communist revolution from late 1988. It starts with lots of black-and-white hagiographic imagery of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong and Nikita Khruschev, and lots of shiny happy communist youth parading in front of their leaders and chanting slogans, with Bragg moving Forrest Gump-like through the scenes, intercut with other scenes of Bragg on tour somewhere in Eastern Europe, probably the Soviet Union. Ronald Reagan makes a cameo appearance at the end, hawking Boraxo soap in a vintage commercial. He is obviously a figure of derision, a dangerous cowboy who is trying to prevent the historically inevitable victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie. The fool!
Now, ANYTHING from 1988 involving the possibility of a victorious communist revolution looks ridiculously dated today (and indeed, ever since 1992). Bragg was one of those who was on the wrong side of history in the 1980s, he just didn't know it yet. (And indeed, perhaps like many socialists in Europe today, he may not yet know it even now!) The Soviet Union was a doddering 71-year-old and only three years away from its winding shroud. The Berlin Wall, which I was still three months away from vandalizing, loomed high and dark, but was only one brittle year away from falling to hammer-smashed rubble.
And here's this guy who thinks it's the wave of the future. It actually made me laugh as I watched it, because he was so earnestly, spectacularly wrong. He probably had a Betamax videotape recorder, too.
Plan B
In which Thanksgiving Dinner doesn't go exactly as planned:
I went over to my dad's around 11:00 this morning. He had said that he would cook. Unfortunately, when I got there, I learned that he hadn't read the directions on the three-pound turkey loaf thoroughly, and had only just discovered that it was supposed to thaw for a couple of days before being cooked. We're not always good at reading directions in my family.
Dad tried defrosting it in the microwave, but that didn't seem to be going very well. While all this was going on, I went out to the back porch and called my brother up in Kansas City, where the rest of my family is celebrating the holiday. I chatted with both of my brothers, my mom and my niece. Then, after about twenty minutes, I went back inside. Dad then informed me that we would be dining out, as he wasn't pleased with the defrosting turkey experiment.
So we went to Perkins. There we met Dad's friend Dick, who had been in the hospital until yesterday and thus wasn't in condition to travel up to Ohio for Thanksgiving with his family, as he had planned. We had a nice lunch, even if the service was slow and somewhat inattentive. Dad wasn't pleased; the waitress got a smaller tip than she might have otherwise. He also didn't particularly like the stuffing, and was amazed to learn that pie no longer came with the traditional turkey dinner, as it did as recently as a couple of years ago. And then the waitress didn't even ask if we wanted dessert, just brought the check. No, she didn't deserve more than the minimum.
I myself had the Ultimate Club Melt sandwich (which did contain turkey, meeting the requirement for the day) and fries. I could have done the traditional turkey dinner like Dad and Dick both did, but sometimes you just have to blaze your own trail.
I went over to my dad's around 11:00 this morning. He had said that he would cook. Unfortunately, when I got there, I learned that he hadn't read the directions on the three-pound turkey loaf thoroughly, and had only just discovered that it was supposed to thaw for a couple of days before being cooked. We're not always good at reading directions in my family.
Dad tried defrosting it in the microwave, but that didn't seem to be going very well. While all this was going on, I went out to the back porch and called my brother up in Kansas City, where the rest of my family is celebrating the holiday. I chatted with both of my brothers, my mom and my niece. Then, after about twenty minutes, I went back inside. Dad then informed me that we would be dining out, as he wasn't pleased with the defrosting turkey experiment.
So we went to Perkins. There we met Dad's friend Dick, who had been in the hospital until yesterday and thus wasn't in condition to travel up to Ohio for Thanksgiving with his family, as he had planned. We had a nice lunch, even if the service was slow and somewhat inattentive. Dad wasn't pleased; the waitress got a smaller tip than she might have otherwise. He also didn't particularly like the stuffing, and was amazed to learn that pie no longer came with the traditional turkey dinner, as it did as recently as a couple of years ago. And then the waitress didn't even ask if we wanted dessert, just brought the check. No, she didn't deserve more than the minimum.
I myself had the Ultimate Club Melt sandwich (which did contain turkey, meeting the requirement for the day) and fries. I could have done the traditional turkey dinner like Dad and Dick both did, but sometimes you just have to blaze your own trail.
11.22.2006
Another Victim in the War on Drugs
Perhaps you've already seen this story, which is your "what the hell?!" moment for today: Questions surround fatal shooting of woman, 92
There have been numerous cases of the cops breaking down the wrong door and shooting people, and God help the homeowner who sees potential home invaders breaking down his door and shoots them. People who were innocent of any other crime have gone to jail for shooting non-uniformed cops that broke down their doors.
And now some thieves have taken a page from the cops' book and have broken into people's homes announcing that they are cops and then proceeded to rob them.
The War on (some) Drugs makes criminals out of people who are engaging in consensual activities that may cause harm to themselves but don't usual cause harm to others. It means that we, the taxpayers, have to pay for the room and board of non-violent consensual criminals in our state prisons. Frankly, I'd rather have the drug "criminals" out in the community paying for their own room and board.
And I'd certainly rather see drugs legalized (and taxed, heavily) and the cops going after REAL criminals rather than blowing away little old ladies. You know, murderers, rapists, thieves, that kind of thing. Not somebody who wants to smoke a joint or snort a line of coke. If they're stupid enough to use drugs, it should be their own damn business, not the government's. If they commit a real crime, whether one of violence or against property, while under the influence, make that an aggravating factor in sentencing. But for chrissakes, it's time to stop throwing dopers in jail just for being dopers!
/rant
Now, I don't know what the facts are in this case, regarding whether the 92-year-old woman was dealing drugs or not. But the very fact that the cops are engaging in this kind of behavior, bashing down people's doors and shooting them, is troublesome, and is far worse than than any potential lawbreaking going on in the home of a nonagenarian.There are more questions than answers this morning in a northwest Atlanta neighborhood where a 92-year-old woman was killed in a shootout with police on Tuesday night. Three officers were wounded in the shooting.
State Rep. "Able" Mable Thomas (D-Atlanta) on Wednesday called Kathryn Johnston's death "unfortunate" and said a number of upset neighbors and other residents called to say neither Johnston nor her Neal Street home were in any way connected to illegal drug activity, as police suggested.
Thomas said neighbors who have contacted her described Johnston as a "good neighbor" and "law abiding."
Johnston, who lived alone, allegedly fired on three Atlanta narcotics officers who broke down her front door trying to serve a search warrant. The officers were taken to Grady Memorial Hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
There have been numerous cases of the cops breaking down the wrong door and shooting people, and God help the homeowner who sees potential home invaders breaking down his door and shoots them. People who were innocent of any other crime have gone to jail for shooting non-uniformed cops that broke down their doors.
And now some thieves have taken a page from the cops' book and have broken into people's homes announcing that they are cops and then proceeded to rob them.
The War on (some) Drugs makes criminals out of people who are engaging in consensual activities that may cause harm to themselves but don't usual cause harm to others. It means that we, the taxpayers, have to pay for the room and board of non-violent consensual criminals in our state prisons. Frankly, I'd rather have the drug "criminals" out in the community paying for their own room and board.
And I'd certainly rather see drugs legalized (and taxed, heavily) and the cops going after REAL criminals rather than blowing away little old ladies. You know, murderers, rapists, thieves, that kind of thing. Not somebody who wants to smoke a joint or snort a line of coke. If they're stupid enough to use drugs, it should be their own damn business, not the government's. If they commit a real crime, whether one of violence or against property, while under the influence, make that an aggravating factor in sentencing. But for chrissakes, it's time to stop throwing dopers in jail just for being dopers!
/rant
Not Funny
Another thought on Michael Richards' offensive rant: What is wrong with these idiots like Mel Gibson and Richards? You can't use ethnic slurs in America today, period. And you especially can't use the N-word. It's the third rail of public discourse today and will electrocute anyone who touches it.
Frankly, it's not even funny when most black comedians use it. The only exception I can think of was the scene in Blazing Saddles when Cleavon Little, the black sheriff, runs afoul of a group of redneck cowboys. He quickly whips out his pistol and holds it to his own head and yells menacingly, "One move and the n----- gets it!" Then he bugs out his eyes and looks pleadingly at the cowboys, saying, "He means it! He means it!" That was funny. Unfortunately, most of what passes for comedy today is just offensive insults and foul language.
Frankly, it's not even funny when most black comedians use it. The only exception I can think of was the scene in Blazing Saddles when Cleavon Little, the black sheriff, runs afoul of a group of redneck cowboys. He quickly whips out his pistol and holds it to his own head and yells menacingly, "One move and the n----- gets it!" Then he bugs out his eyes and looks pleadingly at the cowboys, saying, "He means it! He means it!" That was funny. Unfortunately, most of what passes for comedy today is just offensive insults and foul language.
11.21.2006
Since Murdoch Cancelled the Fox O.J. Interview...
Maybe they could use that time slot for a 10-round cage match between O.J. and Michael "Kramer" Richards. Give 'em each a chair to bust over the other's head. I think a lot of people would find that appropriate.
11.17.2006
Jeez-O-Pete!
Would somebody please tell O.J. Simpson that unless he kills someone else, his 15 minutes are up?
11.16.2006
Patience Rewarded
I had holds for two books at my local library. One, S.M. Stirling's A Meeting At Corvallis, had been on hold for several weeks. It's the sequel to Dies the Fire and The Protector's War, and I've really been itching to read it. I had to fight the impulse to just buy it in hardcover instead of waiting on the library (I own the first two books in paperback, and will get the third when it comes out in paperback to complete the set). The other one, for Jacqueline Carey's Banewreaker, I had just put on hold last Friday. I had been noodling around on Wikipedia early last week, reading some articles about various genres of fiction, and Carey's name came up. I read some reviews of Banewreaker on Amazon.com, and while some claimed that the book was highly derivative of both J.R.R. Tolkien and David Eddings, others claimed that her plot twist of having the "world-saving" quest written from the point-of-view of the "evil" characters made it rather interesting. I decided to at least try to find a copy at the library, and while there were two available, they weren't at my branch.
Anyway, yesterday morning the phone rang, with a recorded message from the library, telling me that I had one item being held until November 20th. I figured that it was probably Banewreaker. Since it's about a 20-mile round trip to the library, and I was doing some cleaning, I decided to go in to get the book today. However, today the weather was rather unsettled, so I figured I could wait until Friday. Then, around noon, the phone rang again: Another recorded message from the library, telling me that I had one item being held until November 21st.
Aha! Now my second book was in as well. The rain had stopped, so I decided to go get my books and then grab some lunch on the way back home. Sure enough, both books were there, and surprisingly enough, A Meeting At Corvallis wasn't even stickered as a New Book, which would have only given me two weeks to read it. Being as how it was "in transit," it's almost certain that this was an oversight, but I'll take the added flexibility having a full month to read the two books gives me.
And lunch? Wendy's 1/2-pound bacon cheddar melt sandwich and fries. Mmmmmmmm... I'll sleep like a log later this afternoon.
Anyway, yesterday morning the phone rang, with a recorded message from the library, telling me that I had one item being held until November 20th. I figured that it was probably Banewreaker. Since it's about a 20-mile round trip to the library, and I was doing some cleaning, I decided to go in to get the book today. However, today the weather was rather unsettled, so I figured I could wait until Friday. Then, around noon, the phone rang again: Another recorded message from the library, telling me that I had one item being held until November 21st.
Aha! Now my second book was in as well. The rain had stopped, so I decided to go get my books and then grab some lunch on the way back home. Sure enough, both books were there, and surprisingly enough, A Meeting At Corvallis wasn't even stickered as a New Book, which would have only given me two weeks to read it. Being as how it was "in transit," it's almost certain that this was an oversight, but I'll take the added flexibility having a full month to read the two books gives me.
And lunch? Wendy's 1/2-pound bacon cheddar melt sandwich and fries. Mmmmmmmm... I'll sleep like a log later this afternoon.
11.15.2006
Thoughts on the Democratic Government Experiment
I read a novel over the weekend by Harry Turtledove. His ouvre is alternative history, and he's a very prolific writer. This particular book is titled The Disunited States of America and it is the fourth book in his "Crosstime Traffic" series. The series' plot supposition is that while time travel is not possible, it is possible to move into alternative realities at the same point in time. In the late 21st Century, scientists in our timeline discover how to do this, and send traders to other timelines in order to trade for resources that have become scarce in our future but not in the other timelines. Naturally, they don't tell the natives of those other timelines who they are and how they got there.
Unlike the novels in many Turtledove series, Disunited States can stand alone; you don't need to have read the first three books in the series (and indeed, I haven't) to understand what is going on, since Turtledove fills the reader in early about what is going on. The timeline that the traders are visiting was identical to ours until the late 1700s, when their U.S. constitutional convention failed to come up with a compromise between the small states, who wanted equal representation for each state, and the large states, who wanted represtation to be based upon each state's population. In our timeline, we ended up with a constitution with a bicameral legislature. In theirs, the United States continued to muddle along under the Articles of Confederation until the early 1800s and then things fell apart. The states became separate countries, fighting innumberable little wars with their neighbors. There was no central government.
The traders are based in Charleston, Virginia, and a couple of them, including Justin, the teenaged protagonist, get stuck in a town near the Ohio border when war breaks out between those two states, and Ohio sends a tailored virus into Virginia, causing a quarantine. Justin meets Beckie, a girl about his age from the state of California, who is visiting the small Virginia town with her grandmother, who was born there. They are all stuck there for several days as the story unfolds.
The story's concept is intriguing: What would have happened had our Founding Fathers not had the wisdom to compromise? Our democratic experiment could have ended a long time ago, and we could be living under any of a number of types of despotic government. Instead of a powerful nation, we might be living in the North American equivalent of Portugal or Belgium.
I thought about this as I looked at what is happening in Iraq, and it seemed to be relevant. Just as in Iraq today, there were various factions among the early United States who didn't like each other and who had conflicting interests. What was good for a Yankee merchant might be bad for a western frontiersman or a southern slaveowner. But with a still-unfriendly Britain perched along our northern border, with many Tories settling into being Canadians who might have wanted to return to claim what they had left behind when they fled America, it was urgent that there be a federal government so that the states could act in their common interest. As Benjamin Franklin said, "We must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
As individual states, they were weak and vulnerable to British aggression. As a unified nation, they were too strong to be conquered. Look at the bundle of thirteen arrows that the eagle clutches on the back of a (non-state design) quarter: The symbolism is that an individual arrow can be easily snapped, but a bundle of arrows cannot.
Iraq has three main factions as well as many smaller ones, and unlike the early Americans, some of them may see their interest in siding with others outside of Iraq. Many Iraqis don't think of themselves as Iraqis, but rather as Sunnis or Shiites or Kurds, or members of a particular tribe. Early Americans were more likely to identify themselves as residents of their home state than as Americans, and this was true up through the Civil War, which decisively settled the struggle for power between the federal government and the individual state governments. Look at how many U.S. Army generals resigned their commissions to join the Confederate Army and defend their home states (Robert E. Lee, for instance). Today, however, we are all Americans with a strong sense of national identity. It took a while to achieve that. It's an open question whether the Iraqis are capable of doing the same thing or not. For their sake, I hope so.
Unlike the novels in many Turtledove series, Disunited States can stand alone; you don't need to have read the first three books in the series (and indeed, I haven't) to understand what is going on, since Turtledove fills the reader in early about what is going on. The timeline that the traders are visiting was identical to ours until the late 1700s, when their U.S. constitutional convention failed to come up with a compromise between the small states, who wanted equal representation for each state, and the large states, who wanted represtation to be based upon each state's population. In our timeline, we ended up with a constitution with a bicameral legislature. In theirs, the United States continued to muddle along under the Articles of Confederation until the early 1800s and then things fell apart. The states became separate countries, fighting innumberable little wars with their neighbors. There was no central government.
The traders are based in Charleston, Virginia, and a couple of them, including Justin, the teenaged protagonist, get stuck in a town near the Ohio border when war breaks out between those two states, and Ohio sends a tailored virus into Virginia, causing a quarantine. Justin meets Beckie, a girl about his age from the state of California, who is visiting the small Virginia town with her grandmother, who was born there. They are all stuck there for several days as the story unfolds.
The story's concept is intriguing: What would have happened had our Founding Fathers not had the wisdom to compromise? Our democratic experiment could have ended a long time ago, and we could be living under any of a number of types of despotic government. Instead of a powerful nation, we might be living in the North American equivalent of Portugal or Belgium.
I thought about this as I looked at what is happening in Iraq, and it seemed to be relevant. Just as in Iraq today, there were various factions among the early United States who didn't like each other and who had conflicting interests. What was good for a Yankee merchant might be bad for a western frontiersman or a southern slaveowner. But with a still-unfriendly Britain perched along our northern border, with many Tories settling into being Canadians who might have wanted to return to claim what they had left behind when they fled America, it was urgent that there be a federal government so that the states could act in their common interest. As Benjamin Franklin said, "We must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
As individual states, they were weak and vulnerable to British aggression. As a unified nation, they were too strong to be conquered. Look at the bundle of thirteen arrows that the eagle clutches on the back of a (non-state design) quarter: The symbolism is that an individual arrow can be easily snapped, but a bundle of arrows cannot.
Iraq has three main factions as well as many smaller ones, and unlike the early Americans, some of them may see their interest in siding with others outside of Iraq. Many Iraqis don't think of themselves as Iraqis, but rather as Sunnis or Shiites or Kurds, or members of a particular tribe. Early Americans were more likely to identify themselves as residents of their home state than as Americans, and this was true up through the Civil War, which decisively settled the struggle for power between the federal government and the individual state governments. Look at how many U.S. Army generals resigned their commissions to join the Confederate Army and defend their home states (Robert E. Lee, for instance). Today, however, we are all Americans with a strong sense of national identity. It took a while to achieve that. It's an open question whether the Iraqis are capable of doing the same thing or not. For their sake, I hope so.
11.14.2006
Line of the Day
It comes from Howard Gensler at the Philadelphia Daily News, in an article about the Britney Spears sex tape:
The anchors on one of the Fox News shows mentioned this story yesterday, with the addendum that "Britney is worried about the tape affecting her 'wholesome' image," and then they all dissolved in helpless laughter. Somebody commented, "Chess?! Britney plays chess?!" More laughter.
It's comedy gold, folks. Comedy gold. "Is that a bishop in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?" Etc. Feel free to come up with your own chess-related Britney joke.
The home video is alleged to show the couple early in their relationship two years ago, holed up at the Beverly Hills Hotel.Ba-dum-dum!Said a source: "They did nothing all day but have sex - and play the odd game of chess."
Chess?
(Could we go from "One Night in Paris" to "One Knight in Britney"?)
The anchors on one of the Fox News shows mentioned this story yesterday, with the addendum that "Britney is worried about the tape affecting her 'wholesome' image," and then they all dissolved in helpless laughter. Somebody commented, "Chess?! Britney plays chess?!" More laughter.
It's comedy gold, folks. Comedy gold. "Is that a bishop in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?" Etc. Feel free to come up with your own chess-related Britney joke.
11.13.2006
"Dude! Your Shirt Rocks!"
From today's news: Scientists in Australia have come up with a t-shirt that would be a "virtual instrument," allowing aspiring air guitarists to actually make music with the t-shirt. Really! For the Bill & Teds of the world, this promises an excellent adventure.
Dude!The T-shirt has motion sensors built into its elbows that pick up the wearer's arm motions and relay them wirelessly to a computer which interprets them as guitar rifts, said Richard Helmer, an engineer who leads the research team from the government's Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.
One arm is interpreted as picking chords while the other strums. The "wearable instrument shirt" is adaptable to both right and left-handed would-be rock stars.
"It's an easy-to-use, virtual instrument that allows real-time music making even by players without significant musical or computing skills," Helmer said in a statement.
11.12.2006
Rectum? Darn Near Killed 'im!
"Scorched colon." Those are words you don't see in the same phrase every day, but this fellow made it necessary:
Bonus points if you know what "bonfire night" is all about. (And yes, I know the British holiday that occurs on November 5th; I'm just wondering if you do. The Grauniad's article certainly says nothing about it. I think it's no longer politically correct.)Man injured by launching firework from his bottom
A man has suffered severe internal injuries after trying to launch a powerful firework from his bottom on bonfire night, it emerged today....
The man is reported to have got down on all fours, lowered his trousers and fixed a Black Cat Thunderbolt rocket to himself in front of a group of friends at the end of a firework display in the Monkwearmouth area of Sunderland on Sunday.
...
The man, whose injuries include a scorched colon, is still in hospital.
Hat tip: Winds of Change
11.09.2006
"Bitter Much?"
I'm sure that's what some of my readers are thinking. The answer is "No, not really." I'm not upset about the rejection of the Republicans per se. But I am upset about the fact that the voters who showed up voted against the only party that is serious about how to deal with those people in this world who hate our guts and would kill us if they could, and are actively trying to do so. I remembered that we are at war, a war with Islamofascism that WE did not start; unfortunately, the majority of the voters who showed up did not. I took the lesson of 9/11 to heart, but then again, I was off that day and watched the whole damn thing on television, all day long. Apparently most of the rest of the nation wasn't, and didn't. I learned the lesson about the Islamofascists on that awful day. Most of the rest of you didn't. You'll have to learn it again when the next attack comes, and your votes on Tuesday made that attack all the more likely. Thanks a lot.
Perhaps you heard Democratic House Speaker-Elect Pelosi saying that Iraq isn't something to worry about "winning," but "a problem to be solved." When you aren't concerned with "winning," the solution to the problem is easy: Leave, ASAP. Get the hell out of Dodge. Devil take the hindmost. Don't worry about those Iraqis hanging onto the runners of the last chopper out of Baghdad. Not our problem. Right?
A lot of this is the fault of Republican leadership for failing to emphasize all along the dangers that confront us. We've become complacent because there has been no follow-up attack to 9/11 over the past five years. Be assured that it hasn't been due to a lack of trying by our enemies. We've been able to hold off the barbarians at our gates, so far, but we owe no thanks to the Democrats, who would hamstring those trying to protect us out of some misplaced sense of "fairness" for the terrorists. And now they've been elected to leadership roles in both the House and the Senate. I shudder for the fate of our nation.
So was this a "Democrat tsunami"? Hardly. Turnout nationwide was about 40%. About 52% of that 40% voted Democrat. So we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 21% of the nation's registered voters who have decided that it's a good idea to lay down before our enemies and be "humbled." Just remember, Democrats, that YOU are the ones who live in New York and Washington and Los Angeles. YOU are the ones who are most likely to be killed in the terrorist attacks that the people YOU elected are likely to enable. Don't come crying to me when it happens, because I'll only say "I told you so." If you're looking for Sympathy, you'll find it in the dictionary between Shit and Syphilis.
And the rest of you gutless pukes, the 60% who couldn't be bothered to show up to vote this time? What's your excuse? I'm talking to YOU, 2004 Bush voters who were nowhere to be seen on Tuesday. Do you think that bin Laden and Zawahiri and their evil henchmen have forgotten us? Do you think that if we bug out of Iraq that they'll say, "Okay, that's all over and done now, we'll let bygones be bygones, have a nice day, Americans?" If so, you're too damn stupid to still be breathing. "Oh, those nasty Republicans were corrupt! They were sending nasty messages to teenagers!" And so you were willing to put the fate of this nation in the hands of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid? You idiots! Do you have any idea how badly you screwed up? You will when the bomb goes off in New York Harbor or the Port of Long Beach! And then it'll be too damn late!
Perhaps you heard Democratic House Speaker-Elect Pelosi saying that Iraq isn't something to worry about "winning," but "a problem to be solved." When you aren't concerned with "winning," the solution to the problem is easy: Leave, ASAP. Get the hell out of Dodge. Devil take the hindmost. Don't worry about those Iraqis hanging onto the runners of the last chopper out of Baghdad. Not our problem. Right?
A lot of this is the fault of Republican leadership for failing to emphasize all along the dangers that confront us. We've become complacent because there has been no follow-up attack to 9/11 over the past five years. Be assured that it hasn't been due to a lack of trying by our enemies. We've been able to hold off the barbarians at our gates, so far, but we owe no thanks to the Democrats, who would hamstring those trying to protect us out of some misplaced sense of "fairness" for the terrorists. And now they've been elected to leadership roles in both the House and the Senate. I shudder for the fate of our nation.
So was this a "Democrat tsunami"? Hardly. Turnout nationwide was about 40%. About 52% of that 40% voted Democrat. So we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 21% of the nation's registered voters who have decided that it's a good idea to lay down before our enemies and be "humbled." Just remember, Democrats, that YOU are the ones who live in New York and Washington and Los Angeles. YOU are the ones who are most likely to be killed in the terrorist attacks that the people YOU elected are likely to enable. Don't come crying to me when it happens, because I'll only say "I told you so." If you're looking for Sympathy, you'll find it in the dictionary between Shit and Syphilis.
And the rest of you gutless pukes, the 60% who couldn't be bothered to show up to vote this time? What's your excuse? I'm talking to YOU, 2004 Bush voters who were nowhere to be seen on Tuesday. Do you think that bin Laden and Zawahiri and their evil henchmen have forgotten us? Do you think that if we bug out of Iraq that they'll say, "Okay, that's all over and done now, we'll let bygones be bygones, have a nice day, Americans?" If so, you're too damn stupid to still be breathing. "Oh, those nasty Republicans were corrupt! They were sending nasty messages to teenagers!" And so you were willing to put the fate of this nation in the hands of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid? You idiots! Do you have any idea how badly you screwed up? You will when the bomb goes off in New York Harbor or the Port of Long Beach! And then it'll be too damn late!
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