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Fine. You win.
The verdict is in and most people hate this new look.
I'll put the old layout or something like it back in the morning and go back to the drawing board.
Now leave me alone while I go contemplate why I spent five hours or more working on this today. First person who says it was a learning experience gets a foot up their ass.
At least those who took the bet.
I do believe the bet was for two out of three which, as you know, the Yankees took. Yes they did.
I'll be checking your blogs tomorrow to make sure you are 1) linking to me and 2) saying nice things about the Yankees.
Enjoy. Hey, enjoy your September, too.
Well, it's a work in progress.
This is way different than any design I've ever had in two and half years of blogging. Not only that, I did it on my own, mostly.
I took the template from Voices (you did see the design there, right?), which came from Miz Graphics and modified it until I had basically what I was going for. Something with a touch of fall and a drastic change.
That photo of that guy was taken by me, last Halloween in front of my house. Freaked us out, he did.
Anyhow, I just want to thank Stacy for teaching me everything I know, including patience.
There's some tweaking to be done, of course. But let me tell you, after the emotional days I've had this past week or so, working on this all day was great therapy.
And yes, it's true. Lenore, the little dead girl, is gone for good this time. Sorry to those of you who loved her so, but you can always purchase all kinds of Lenore stuff if you are so inclined over at Spookyland. When it re-opens, that is.
Now, back to blogging.
[Note: I still have to work on the comments templates and archive templates, so please don't say anything about the ugly black background]
UPDATE: Apparently this layout doesn't render well in Mozilla and I'm just too tired to find a hack for it right now. Sorry to those using that browser, but I just don't have the skills necessary to make a website work right in every browser that's out there and I'm afraid that at this point, you'll either have to deal or, like one guy said in an email, take this site out of your bookmarks.
There's a reason I haven't been blogging today.
Big changes coming.
So is Halloween.
I've been working on the design for the Voices site all morning - I wanted to have a design I like before I started putting up all the entries.
Yes, I am aware that things are buggy around here.
Word of advice: When working on one site, make sure the editing window of your other site is not open as well. Hilarity ensues. Stay tuned while I go stab myself with a fork.
It wasn't until hours later, after I left Faith, after the train ride back to the Island, after getting home and watching a movie with my husband and not until I put the discs in the computer and looked at the photos that I took today that I cried. And here I sit now, crying and typing and uploading those pictures.
I'm writing this straight from my head and my heart; no previewing, no editing. I just really want to get back on the couch and have a glass of wine with my husband and maybe watch a funny movie. So pardon any stilted writing or disjointed phrases. I've done this photoessay style, which turns out to be much better than just putting up pictures with captions because sometimes a photo deserves more than just a caption, sometimes it deserves a story or an emotion.
When you are standing there, looking down into a pit that used to be the foundation for two enormous buildings, and the last time you stood in that spot those buildings were still there, still alive with people, it's just hard to comprehend. All you see is a hole and dirt and the the facade where the subway used to be. And you see workers moving around and Caterpillar trucks driven by burly men smoking cigarettes and wearing hardhats and you think, ok, this isn't so bad, they've rebuilt so much already and maybe, just sitting here watching these men work, I can feel hopeful about what will rise here.
And then you look at the girders that surround the steel fencing that keeps you back from the site and you see the writing all over the girders, black Sharpie marks in a thousand different handwritings and so many different languages, some written by children and it breaks your heart in two. I had to swallow that lump in my throat and take my eyes off of the words of sorrow and the blessings and the poetry that read like a funeral dirge. And then you see the cross and you avert your eyes but youturn back and look again and your stomach does this giant leap into your throat.
And no sooner do I stop looking at the scrawled messages then I look up and see the big boards, the ones that look like marble but maybe aren't and they've got the names on them. The names of every victim, every person who died in and around that building, the workers who never saw it coming, the emergency workers who saw it coming and ran towards it, as is their life's work to do so, the people on the ground, all of them. So I take my camera and point it upwards and walk carefully, slowly towards the G's and I snap one, two, three, I don't know why I kept snapping those photos, I just did. And then I walked towards the R's and looked for Claude Richards and there he was and I snapped again, just two this time before I realized that I did not want to look for any more names of people I knew, people my father knew because - just because. We walked around and Faith was so patient because she had done this before, more than once and I know the last time she was there it was raining and she cried and she was hugged by a stranger and I know it was hard for her to do this again, to be my tour guide of sadness, but she did and she waited while I leaned my face against the fence, my fingers entwined on the metal grates and I stared. And stared. And I still could not comprehend that there used to be two towering buildings there.
We walked further and there were people selling things; trinkets and photo albums of the dead and dying, photos of the smoke and fire and little crystal replicas encased in plastic and I saw one man tentatively pick one of those trinkets up and the man who was selling them, who did not speak English, smiled at the other man and flicked his finger against the plastic case as if to say hey, this World Trade Center is fortified with polysomethingorother and look, it won't fall down! and I felt a bit sick at that.
A few more steps down, next to the people selling FDNY t-shirts and I Survived The Blackout t-shirts, there was a table of more, a sea more, of those plastic trinkets and behind that plastic garbage were three laptops with DVD players and they were all going loud and strong, music with the words of newscasters talking to the beat and the images, all those images, the planes crashing and burning and people running and sobbing. Why? Why would they play that right there? Would it make people by more plastic towers? Why didn't I take my arm and sweep it across the table like someone in a movie would do? I had this sudden image of that scene in Jesus Christ, Superstar, where Jesus goes into the temple and knocks all the wares off the tables and I just choked back my anger and moved on.
We walked some more, I think we were on the west side of the pit now, I'm not sure but on my left were the buildings, the lesser known buildings in this act, the minor characters who still played an impact, which I think is called fifth business in some industry or other. I could see the scars on the buildings and this one was draped in black. Have you ever seen a building draped in black? Like it was in mourning. On the next building there was a mural and I went snap, snap, snap again, just shooting and thinking and maybe keeping myself from looking the other way, where you could still see parts of the concrete of the original foundation and I needed to keep my mind from going in the direction it was headed, which would be the direction where you start thinking about that day and all the strewn pieces of whatever once laid in a heap down there.
And then we were done, I didn't want to see anymore. I had enough. I had enough of the smiling tourists asking people to take their pictures while they held their girlfriends hand and smiled in front of those girders and the workers and right under the plaques with the names of the dead. Enough of the people lining up to buy their photos of fire and their books of the dead with labels like Tragedy! Horror! and enough of the messages of hope and love and Jesus Saves.
And now I'm home and looking at the pictures and I still can't help but wonder why. I mean, even if I know why, even some people think they know why but they don't, I will never understand it and I don't think I want to.
But if feels good to cry. I don't do that enough. I think I'll have that glass of wine now.
I'm here at Faith's apartment in New York City. It is orange. I mean really, really orange. Even her toilet bowl is orange.
She wanted me to blog from her computer because she thinks I have some magic power that will rub off on her.
More on my day when I get home.
This has been a message from the Blog Away From Home system.
Blogging will be non-existent until later tonight.
I am going into NYC today and meeting up with Faith. And then Faith is going to take me by the hand and lead me over to Ground Zero. I have never been there. I just could not, in almost two years, bring myself to view that place.
I know it looks remarkably different now than it did even one year ago. But I am not going so I can see it, I am going so I canfeel it. It's just something I need to do, and there is no other person I would have standing there with me than Faith.
I just want to thank Faith and the wonderful Rossi for being something akin to soul sisters to me when it comes to this subject. They've held my hand for a long time in regards to 9/11 and my never-ending sorrow, anger and grief. They know, because they feel it, too.
Working on the Voices project is a daunting task. I still have 45 emails yet unread, contributions to this gathering of stories. I will get back to each and every one of you and I will begin in earnest tomorrow getting the stories up and the site ready for the anniversary.
Thank you to everyone who has sent a story or linked the project. It's going to be bigger than last year (which had about 100 contributions) and in many ways, the stories this year are more hopeful.
I am closing the comments over at Voices for various reasons. I don't want such a personal place to turn into a political or ideological debate and I certainly do not want anyone's memories or words tarnished by trolls flinging hurtful comments around. If you do want to leave your own story in the comments instead of sending an email, do it right here or, as many people are doing, email me.
I'll be back tonight with plenty of pictures of Faith and myself romping through the city, a little bit of sorrow and hopefully, a shopping bag full of comic books.
Meanwhile, share your voice.
Operation Help Nina's Brother
Nina's brother is in the army in Afghanistan (10th Mountain Division) and they're currently stationed on a base and bored out of their minds.
They could use some reading material from us here on the home front. He requested Maxim, although I'm sure FHM, Stuff, Gear, Razor or, frankly, any other magazine would do. Or books. Or anything at all, really, although I'm not sure how Knitting Quarterly would go over.
Apparently, they also have a playstation and so if you have any old games you're done with, we'll be happy to forward them as well.
I'll be sending some books, games and magazines. What about you?
Go see Swerdloff about it.
You don't see me belting out an opera tune, do you?
Please remember that the bet was for the series, all three games.
I'll let you in on a secret: I used my special voodoo power to make sure the Sox won last night's game. See, I think it's really very amusing to watch Red Sox fans get their hopes up so high and then...well, you know what happens after that.
Round 2 today.
Dean Esmay on Judge Moore and CommandmentPalooza:
Because America's a good, decent place, and future generations will likely be appalled at the anti-Christian paranoia that's led to to ordering him to take those words down.
This has nothing to do - at least on my part - with being anti-Christian and I am insulted that Dean thinks that is where my feelings on this come from.
Judge Moore put that monument there in the middle of the night, without permission.
Judge Moore is a carnival barker, playing this for all he can, getting those born-every-minute suckers to genuflect before a hunk of stone while he does his proselytizing before the television cameras.
It wouldn't matter if he were Jewish, Wiccan or Buddhist - it wouldn't even matter if he were an atheist Secular Humanist touting his beliefs by propping them up on the courthouse steps.
What Judge Moore did was wrong and he was called on the carpet because of it. I, for one, think that this is what Moore wanted all along. A grand circus playing out before him, his fifteen tv minutes where he and his followers can cry about freedom of religion while I sit there and yell at the tv about my freedom from religion.
The bottom line is that monument had no business being placed there at all, especially in the sneaky manner in which it arrived.
I am not anti-Christian. I am anti-people who think they are above the rules and laws. Note, I said rules and laws, not commandments. The commandments are not legal matters that I am beholden to. I do not have to worship that one God that other people do. That makes the rest of the commandments moot for me which is fine, because I have the laws of this country to follow.
It is not "anti-Christian" paranoia that led to the graven image being removed; it's simply a legal matter that a man who is a Judge should think about obeying without putting up a pathetic fight.
Tell me, Dean, would you be so eager to defend a person who wanted the basic ideology of the Koran carved in stone and placed in the Courthouse?
Voices: Stories from 9/11 and Beyond.
Contribute. Read.
[Please pardon the way the Voices site looks while I break tinker with it]
The kids will be home from their trip to Boston soon (I hope, it seems the deep fog has made traffic in and around NYC dreadful) and I have to do all that travel laundry and pack them up again so they can leave for Toronto with their dad tomorrow.
I don't want them to go. Besides the fact that I really miss them, I just feel bad that they will get home tonight, spend a few hours sleeping in their own bed and then get back in a car tomorrow for yet another trip. I know they will have fun once they get there (maybe) but I just feel sorry for them because by the time they get home on Tuesday, they'll be getting ready for school which starts the next day.
Natalie just called from the car and she's in a mood. I heard DJ screaming in the background, stop looking at me!
Well, they will certainly be exhausted and incredibly whiny when they get home tonight, so I guess that will make it easier to see them off tomorrow.
Kids, can't live with 'em, can't sell 'em.
This is Jeffrey Lee Parson, also known as teekid, also known as the guy who wrote the code for the Blaster virus. Here is a screenshot of Mr. t33kid's website, and another, from the Google cache. He is a l33t hax0r. Or was. On his former website (which now just shows an Apache marker), you could actually download viruses (virii?) so you, too could spread them around the internet and cause havoc and mayhem.
Oh what fun it must be to be a l33t hax0r! To sit in your basement all day, sweat staining your t-shirt, mom bringing you big glasses of Jolt soda, making jokes with your other hax0r friends. What a life!
I really want to smack this shitstain upside the head. I mean, look at him. Did this kid ever get out of the house? You can tell from a black and white photo that he has that pasty skin that people who never leave the house often have. Obviously, the only exercise this guy got was doing keyboard push-ups.
As my battle cry says: "I'm going to flog you until the laws of physics are violated!"
I really hate hackers. Though I think we are supposed to call morons like this crackers and not hackers. Whatever, I still want to kick his ass. Being that I can't do that, I could just ask you all to take your Photoshop skills to his picture and be mean about it.
UPDATE: Ok, since someone mentioned Jabba:
There has been much ado about Indymedia on this site lately. And not just here. It seems some of the folks within Indymedia, specifically the NYC site, are getting a little fed up with all the self-moderating that goes. Though Indymedia claims to have rules and regulations for hiding or eliminating posts, it seems that most of the deletions are driven by the agenda of whoever is moderating that particular site at the moment.
One of my big issues with Indymedia is Latuff. For the past few days, I've noticed that many Latuff posts are getting hidden. The Indymedia folk seem to be running scared and getting rid of Latuff's anti-semitic, hateful, bloody posts soon after they are posted.
However, the question remains among the denizens of Indymedia: Is Latuff anti-Semitic? In my eyes, there is no doubt. But that is neither here nor there.
As written here by an IMC moderator, some of their rules for banning a post are:
- Posts that contain generalized and negative assertions about any race, nation, creed, class, ethnic group, sexual orientation, etc.-
Posts that advocate the mass physical elimination of a specific race, nation, creed, class, ethnic group, sexual orientation, etc, or that link to websites that advocate the same.
Take a stroll through Indymedia on any given day and you will see plenty of the above. Latuff, who has been quite the subject of controversy on IMC and, until this week, has seen pretty much free reign on the American IMC sites.
Latuff does not just hate Israel and its inhabitants. He hates America. But that's not a big issue, as (a) Latuff isn't even American and (b) it's pretty much in vogue to hate America now. It's how he carries out his statements that bother me so much. He doesn't just want America to lose the war in Iraq - he wants the U.S. soldiers dead. He wants Israelis dead. And he makes no effort to hide his sentiments. Meanwhile, IMC lets this all go on, declaring that no, Latuff isn't being anti-Semitic at all! He's just pro-Palestinian.
I like to think that I had something to do with the subtle earthquake taking place on some of the IMC sites right now. I called them out, and others followed. A stream of posters went from this site to various IMCs and took them to task for the censorship policies when they are, in fact, supposed to be against censhorship.
So, let's back to the question of Latuff. Is he just an artist expressing his views without really calling for violence, without really being anti-Semetic, or is he a hateful man who wants to watch his enemies bleed and uses IMC to put those views across?
Your call. Click each for bigger image. And there's more where these came from.
[via Nukevet]
Scott Brodeur of Mass Live has taken the Red Sox/Yankees challenge one more step:
Emails Scott:
I will take you up on your Sox-Yanks bet thing. And what about this
sweetener? If there is a sweep, the fan of the losing team must post a
digital photo of her/himself on their site in a garment bearing the
insignia of the winning team?
You're on. Looking forward to seeing you in a Yankees cheerleading outfit. Or maybe just a cap.
Anyone else? Think about it carefully. Do you really want to mess with a higher being?
[Scott also has a bit up about Freakies cereal, the coolest cereal ever - besides Kaboom]
And speaking of sports, I have joined Kevin's excellent sports blog, where I will be musing in OpEds and covering local teams. Go, look. He's done a great job putting this blog together.
[I’ve been trying to get in touch with the author of the comic referenced below. My email to him was bounced back and his site seems to be gone. If anyone knows anything about the whereabouts of Jon “Bean” Hastings, please contact me]
There’s a trade paperback titled 9-11 Emergency Relief. It’s a collection of comics by rather well-known comic artists and writers sharing their stories of September 11.
I’ve read it at least ten times. It’s poignant, it’s sad and at some points it is hopeful. I took it out again yesterday after I became emotionally beaten down while reading all of the stories sent to me for Voices.
I was struck by this one entry from Jon “Bean” Hastings. I don’t have a scanner handy at work, so I will just reprint the relevant words:
Basically, it starts off with Jon himself sitting in front of the tv, watching the news on September 11, 2001. A face that extends from the tv is yelling at Jon telling him that his cartoons are no longer important in the face of all that has happened.
How can you draw your ‘funny books’ with all this carnage and sadness and pain and ruin?! the face shouts at him. To which Jon responds: Why ever bother picking up a pencil again? And then:
Because...
Because stories give us hope.
Expressing our thoughts and feelings is what gives us our humanity. Through stories we can share our grief, our outrage, our horror, but also our dreams, our memories, our hopes for the future.
That’s what they can’t take away and that’s what they don’t understand. We are all more alike than we are different. We are connected by stories.
[Images of Jon turning off the tv and sitting down at his drawing table and these words above his head]:
---- All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story....
—Isak Dinesen
This is what I had in mind when I created No Ordinary Morning last year and decided to carry on with Voices this year.
Because stories give us hope.
I wanted to get permission from Jon Hastings to use his comic on the Voices page, but he seems unreachable at this point.
Just go buy the book. There’s so much more you should see in those pages.
Yanks. Red Sox. Three games. Fenway. September approaches quickly and the Yanks are up by 4 1/2 5 games over the hated Sox.
Jim, a vile, disgusting Red Sox fan (is there any other kind) has offered up a little wager. He wants to bet that the Sox take two of three from the Yanks. Winner gets a daily link from the loser, plus the loser has to say nice things about the winner's team.
What a sucker. He's on.
Any other Red Sox fans want to take this bet? Solly? Ed?
Sure, I may eat my words later, but what's a little fun between friends to break up the dread of September?
"You got a guy here. People stuck in the stairway. Open up the goddamn doors!"
Imagine my horror when I went to the CNN page this morning and saw an image of the Word Trade Center towers, smoking, burning, on the verge of collapse.
My stomach clenched and my heart stopped, briefly. Of course, the towers couldn't be burning again, because they are no longer there. Still, seeing that image jarred the most basic part of my memory from that day. That entire sinking, drowning feeling hit me with full force.
I recovered within seconds and my stomach eased itself back into place before it went into a tailspin all over again, reading the transcripts of the Port Authority radio and phone transmissions from 9/11.
Christine Olender died along with 72 other Windows on the World employees and nearly 100 people who rode the elevators to the 106th floor restaurant for breakfast that morning. Among the diners were stockbrokers who worked in the towers, executives attending a conference and Neil Levin, the executive director of the Port Authority.
"We're getting no direction up here. We're having a smoke condition ... We need direction as to where we need to direct our guests and our employees, as soon as possible," Olender told Officer Steve Maggett, a Port Authority police officer who fielded numerous frantic calls to a police desk based at the World Trade Center.
So much for that French hack who thought that he needed to make up the stories of the victims in that restaurant.
The argument today will be between those who thought it necessary to release these transcripts and those that are horrified. And, even then, there will be sub-arguments between those on either side. Should they have been released to get a better grip on what went wrong? Or was it so we would relive the horror of the victims so we would never forget? Perhaps the New York Times is just looking to be sensational or, and one can never forget the arguments that come flying at you from the far left, perhaps they were released by Karl Rove, in an attempt to get Bush to look sympathetic again?
Most of the families of the Port Authority employees - and the Port Authory itself - were against the tapes being released, and it's obvious why. The pain, still fresh only two years later, would now be compounded by knowing the dread, the fear and the sorrow of their loved ones last minutes.
“I agree with the PA completely. This isn't going to help anybody, and this isn't going to save anybody in the future - this is only going to hurt the people involved in it,” said Sonny Goldstein, whose daughter was killed on 9/11.
So why release this 2,000 page transcript? Does the New York Times think it will accomplish anything drastic in the field of emergency services by making the last words of the victims of a terrorist attack public? I'm skeptical that knowing these words and actions will do any good; mainly because the Port Authority itself is skeptical.
260 hours of disjointed phrases like:
"Yo, I've got dozens of bodies, people just jumping from the top of the building," a male caller said.
"They said another plane just ... flew by and hit Building 2."
"Evacuate the building! Hit the stairwells and get the heck out of here."
"Honey, when the building started coming down, I ran for my life, honey! I survived."
Perhaps these transcripts will jar the emotions of those who have become complacent or those whose mantra has become get over it, already. I'm not sure how I feel about these tapes but, then again, it's not father or daughter whose voices are heard on the tapes. I just observe. I just feel the same exact way I did on that Tuesday morning almost two years ago.
Nothing can bring these people back, but nothing can make us forget. I think we all need a little push into the frame of that day once in a while.
*From transcript here
I'm reading Fishticks: The Rise and Fall of The New York Islanders. Coincidentally, Metro TV was showing an Islander retrospective today, going back to the good old days of four Stanley Cups and the greatest team ever assembled on ice. Gillies, Nystrom, Bossy, Trottier. The ultimate team.
I was there when the Islanders one their second championship, against the Minnesota North Stars. Watching the team circle the ice with the cup held up high, standing right there watching it - that was one of my best sports fan moments ever.
I miss the old days of hockey. I miss the guys without helmets, Ron Duguay's hair flying in the wind, bare-knuckle punches landing on hardened heads.
I miss the bench-clearing brawls, sticks and gloves littering the ice, Billy Smith leading the charge from the opposite end of the rink, goaltenders locked in battle. I miss the old Flyers and Bruins, the ones who would climb into the stands to beat up on fans. I miss the rivalry between the Rangers and the Islanders, one that is just a shadow of its former self, with none of the vile emotion that used to carry it.
I can never get enough of watching Clark Gillies one-punch Terry O'Reilly into neverland. Old Time Hockey. Back when men were men and the Islanders uniform did not have the Gorton's fisherman on it.
Call me a neanderthal, I don't care. I miss Bobby Clarke and Dave Semenko and Dave "Tiger" Williams and Dave Schultz.
The Islanders were ruined by bad management and ownership who did not understand, or care about, the fans. Hockey was ruined by people who did not understand what they fans came to the game for. Sure, a smooth-skating, high-scoring game is exciting. But given the opportunity to watch Gretzky slink his way around the boards and try to evade being checked because he might, you know, break, and the opportunity to once again see a game that lies just short of something out of Slapshot, I'll take a combination of the two.
Old time hockey. Eddie Shore.
I'm not going to add my own memories to the Voices project; I do that here enough and that project is for everyone else to share their stories.
I've been going through the scrapbook my mother kept in the days following 9/11. I know, it seems weird to keep a scrapbook of such an event, but I guess it was my mother's way of coping when she couldn't console my father. It just hit me right now, two years later, that I was so concerned about how my father was getting through the long days of nights of bad news after bad news and funeral upon funeral, that I didn't realize my mother was probably as much of a wreck as my dad. After all, she knew all those firemen, too. I see by looking through her scrapbook that her heart was broken. You can tell in the care and personal touch she put into compiling every story of 9/11.
I went back and looked through my archives from 2001 and then from this time last year. If time heals all wounds, I'm not feeling it yet. I'll probably post a lot of repeats in the coming days. Just because I need to.
Written last September:
Three Years Later: Moving Forward
The thing I remember most about the early part of that day is the weather. It was a perfect day; the sky was a deep, cloudless blue and the air was filled with the comforting warmth that comes when summer starts slinking into autumn.
What I remember most about the moments after the news broke was my drive home from work. I fled my federal office building in a panic that day, still not sure if more attacks were coming, if they were happening elsewhere, if the world was ending. I drove east, towards my home, but kept looking back in my rear view mirror at the brown, smoky haze filling the sky. My hands were shaking and tears were streaming down my face and I was frightened, so frightened, because we didn't know. We did not know what would come next, or if that was the end. I looked at every car that drove next to me, at every other driver at the stop lights. They were all crying or wide-eyed or clutching their steering wheel so hard I could see their knuckles turning white.
When I got home, I woke Justin, who was still sleeping after spending all night working on a project. In my fear and disbelief, I blurted out something like, wake up the world is ending, and we turned on the television and stared for hours and I just remember this numbness going through me, the goosebumps of fear and horror that rose on my arms. Justin's mother called from Pennsylvania. It was her birthday. We talked to her for a while, assured her we were ok and then she told us to stock up on toilet paper. There was no point in wishing her a happy birthday.
What I remember most about the subsequent days is the sky and the silence. The roar of planes is a constant soundtrack when you live so close to an airport. But for those days, four of them I believe, there was not a sound coming from the skies. The silence was so huge, so cavernous, and the only thing you could see when you looked up to the sky was thin wisps of smoke rising from the west. Those days seemed like they were lived out in a dream world.
What I remember most about the nights are the candles. On the sidewalks and curbs, on stoops and porches and stairs and driveways, lined up like soldiers of flame. It was beautiful and sad, so very sad and I wondered how far a line of candles would stretch if we lit one for every victim, and the family members of every victim.
I remember these things because I never forget anything. I have never forgotten the night when my family stood out on the porch, flipping the porch light on and off in some odd celebration when the Vietnam War ended. I can remember what Natalie was wearing the day the Gulf War started - the day she took her first steps. I remember air raid drills in grammar school, questioning the futility of holding your head between your legs as bombs were going off and thinking that if it ever did come down to that, I was just going to run for it, out the front door of the school, up the slope, across the street and down the block all the way home where I would hold my mother tight and she wouldn't make me spend my last moments crouched in a hallway.
I keep every memory locked away, not just the big parts of the memories, but the little things too; the way the air felt, the way the sky looked, the smells and sounds that shared the moment with me. I write it all down, every last detail and I never forget anything.
What I remember about the first few nights after that day was hugging my children a little too tight, a little too often. I remember clinging to Justin and walking across the street to my parents' house every few minutes and just sitting there with them, not saying anything, just staring at the tv and crying. I remember feeling like one big walking cliche when I told everyone how thankful I was to have them in my life.
What I remember most about the next month is thinking how much this space meant to me at that time. How the people who read this weblog embraced me in my sadness and fear, how my words came to mean something to various people, how I had a place to get it all down, every last detail, every last sigh and tear, and how important it became to share. One year later, I still have that need, it is still important to me, and I will still continue to record every memory so that some day, I will remember everything; not just the funerals and memorial services and falling bodies and crumbling cement and steel, but the candles and the voices lifted in song and any glimpses of hope and love that lay among the rubble of the day.
I suppose the perfect thing to take my mind off of all the 9/11 stuff and Indymedia and Mars making people go insane for a while would be the MTV Video Music Awards. There's just so much to look forward to:
Christina Aguilera dressing like a nun
James Hetfield trying to growl like he used to but just looking very constipated
50 Cent singing out of the side of his mouth
Mary Kate and Ashley looking very grown up
Madonna and Britney swapping spit
Or I can just stick pins in my eyes and run my nails down a blackboard a few times. Should have the same result, with less time wasted.
Back to being a zionazi, then.
I'm trying to figure out a way to make the Voices project more readable than it was last year. I don't want people to have to scroll eight miles down a page to read all the stories because most likely they won't. Yet I want all the stories to be right there, at a glance, preferably with the author's name and a title for the story. I guess all as separate links so if someone wanted to link to a specific story, they could.
Is that making sense? Anyone have any ideas?
UPDATE: What I meant was I wanted to do it without MT tricks, because I didn't want to make each story and individual post. This is more of a design/creative question than a technical one, but I'm probably making sense only to myself, so I'll just go stand in the corner now.
[Thanks, Chris]
You guys really outdid yourselves on that caption contest. I'm still laughing over here.
Just how much do those Iraqis hate us for giving them freedom from Saddam? This much:
An Iraqi couple has named their 6-week-old baby boy George Bush to show their appreciation for U.S. efforts to force Saddam Hussein out of power.
"He saved us from Saddam and that's why we named our son after him," the baby's mother, Nadia Jergis Mohammed, told the Associated Press Television News. "It was George Bush who liberated us; without him it wouldn't have happened."
Notice they didn't name the kid Jacques Chirac.
Yep, they really hate us, don't they?
Even if I the gods of Mars have aligned to allow me brief access at work, it does not matter. I've been on a vacation for a week. Any idea what my desk looks like today?
I do have something for you to do while I'm hard at work, though.
Caption either of these two pictures taken in Alabama at CommandmentPallooza.
I've been having fun imagining just what that soul-enriched, commandment loving man in the first picture is saying.
Fake prizes awarded later. Have fun, entertain me while I slay the file monster residing on my desk.
I realize that the mood of this blog is cyclical, much like my own moods. You can pretty much check your calendar and figure out which days I will be writing angry, vulgar responses to moonbats and which days I will be introspective and which days I will find comic relief in absurd stories. Sometimes, I get fixated. I know this, as it happens away from the computer as well.
Once my mind goes in a direction, once I get the fire lit under my ass to delve into a particular subject, there is no rest for the weary. Or the wicked. I go in full tilt, sometimes obscuring everything else that needs my attention.
I've got a folder filled with links about the Yankees and comic books and those stupid little stories you find at Obscure Store or Fark. I've got a folder with ideas for contests and pictures to photoshop and people to pick on. But not today. Maybe not even this week.
I'll be stuck on the whole 9/11 issue for at least two weeks. I suspect that if it goes like last year, once that day passes I will emerge feeling relieved and and with a bit more sense of closure, though that closure will probably never fully be realized, a fact which I am okay with.
In addition to the raw, honest and nearly heartbreaking emails I've received about the Voices project, I get mail that says things like Can you please write about something else, this is getting boring. Or, that's not what I come to your site for, you are being depressing. And the ever present, Stop being so self-centered. Get over it. Move on. The world is not about you or your feelings.
Oh, but guess what people? This blog is mostly about me and my feelings, so why don't you just turn the dial for a little bit, go find a blog where the talk is cheap, the girls are cheaper and the beer is warm and you can come back here next month or so for your bottle of Cristal and your thousand dollar hooker.
No idea where that came from. It makes no sense, but it was fun to write.
Of course, this could all be the product of PMS. Yea, just like a woman to blame her mood swings on hormones. Deal with it.
It's going to be one of those days when my teeth will remained clenched and the residue of last night's dreams will haunt me all day and people will just piss me off to no end and there will be nothing I can do about it because I go back to work today and, as we all now know, there is no internet access from work, so no venting, no spleening, no screaming at the walls of cyberspace because my sister, who normally would post my screeds for me when I email them to her, is on vacation.
I have my ways, however. There are way too many people who have a login to my Moveable Type. You cannot keep me down! I will not be silenced! I...
I better go before you all realize that today is the day I've completely lost my mind.
If I can't blame it on Mars then I blame it on seeing this.
Someone help me out with this, please. I'm just too weary to write anything but a string of curses.
Excerpts:
That what happened was a tragedy can't be denied. That it was a lesson that America needed to learn can not be denied either, and sadly, it was.
She's [meaning me] angry at the people who hijacked the planes, the people who sent them there, the people who paid for it, and mostly (it seems) at anyone who utters one "anti-american" word in reference to the events. I suppose that means she's gonna be angry at me too, and that's a shame...
The people who hijacked the planes, the people who sent them there, and the people who've paid for it all......they are religious idealists and bigots....to blinded by there own hatred to see what they are doing. Much like the American government.
But the instituions that comprise the American government, that's a different matter. They've committed far to many crimes to be forgotten. Literally millions dead at their hands, entire countrysides laid waste and baren due to their presence, sovereign nations and cultures interferred with to suit American purposes.
What I am saying, is that America (the governent) has waged war upon the world for a long time now, and America (the people) have done nothing about it. I'm saying that it's not surprising that religious and extremist groups are starting to do to America...exactly what America has done to them.
At the same time, there was an undercurrent of optimism. Now, at least, Americans would come to understand how people overseas felt when the US military came to town, when the CIA played with there goverments and their destinies. Now Americans would understand, and empathise, and hold there own leaders accountable. It didn't take long for me to realize the futility of my hopes.
You're right sweetheart, it was no ordinary day. It was a day when everything should have changed. And it did....alas not for the better. You are right to remember your dead, but unless you remember theirs, they will keep on coming back to haunt you.
I don't know what to say right now. Someone say something for me, please?
I'm completely exhausted and I have to stop working on Voices for the night or my mind will explode. I wore myself out mentally today.
Thank you to everyone who sent sent stories for the project. They made me cry, they made me feel warmth and they made me feel sorrow. And that's all ok, because as long as the warmth is there, as long as I feel like there are people who are willing to hold hands and share once again, it's ok.
I'll start putting the stories up on the page tomorrow night.
I'll be accepting stories right up until September 10. Please, contribute your voice, share your words.
Note to Spiderman (and his mom): Thanks for the postcard. You made my day.
I think I read this somewhere - perhaps it was one of those Nostradamus books, but I don't remember, so I'll just quote it as best I can from memory. If that memory serves me right, we are doomed.
"And so it will be that when the stone symbol is removed from its base and god is thusly murdered, on the same calendar month that the planet of Mars causes buildings to explode in India, in the same week Mars causes a shift in hormones that shall make women want to lay down with a monster called Frankenstein, then that is when the apocalypse shall come forth and obliterate us once and for all. And not a moment too soon, I tell you."
Scary shit out there, folks. Be careful. And whatever you do, don't look directly into the face of Mars or you will spontaneously combust. I think Nostradamus said that too.
I ask, she makes. What more could someone want from a master?
Feel free to steal it, but save it to your own damned server or I'll bust a cap in yo ass.
Don't forget, the friend of an enemy is an enemy as well, so that makes all of you enemies of Indymedia. Guilt by association and all.
That person from Indymedia who thought he could shut me up by shutting me down was obviously mistaken. I give him an A for Effort, though. He posted his screed on several Indymedia sites in an effort to spread the word. However, the San Francisco/Bay Area site decided to put his post into the hidden bin.
Why do you suppose they did that? Because it was encouraging censorship? Because he used words like zionazi and jewpropaganda? Because it's wrong to threaten to shut down someone's site when they disagree with you?
If you answered None of the Above, you win the prize.
An IMC moderator/editor wrote:
This was hidden because it contained a link to an enemy website. No, you may *not* advertise enemy websites here.
The maturity of the editors of such a "powerful and imporant" news outlet makes me laugh and laugh and laugh.
I've made it to enemy status and for that, I am proud. I wonder if they can make me a small button to put on this site. Enemy of Indymedia, 2003. I think I'll go and ask.
[click for bigger image, read further to discover what it is]
Grandma would have been 90something today (I lost count after she died). I think I'll channel her spirit, let her ask me a few questions that I know she would ask if she could. Sort of a birthday present.
Yes, I gave the kids sweatshirts before they left.
Yes, I always turn the bathroom light off when I leave the room.
It is not chilly, I'll leave the windows open, thank you.
No, I don't have anything better to do than read all day long.
Yes, I will tell Jo-Anne to put a hat on that baby.
No, Lisa did not move out of my mother's house yet. Just kidding!
It's too hot for soup, thanks.
Yep, Wheel of Fortune is still on. Sure, that whore Vanna is still turning letters.
Yes, Grandma. I'm sorry we got drunk at your funeral. Yes, I'll yell at all of them for you.
Hey Grandma? I still have those meatballs you gave me a couple of days before you went into the hospital and never came back. They're in the freezer.
Hell no, I'm not cooking them.
I miss you Grandma. Happy Birthday.
I'd like to continue with the project I started last year. If all the voices gather together, we will never forget. I'm going to change the name of the project from No Ordinary Day to Voices.
I will add to the voices as you wish; memories, memorials, a few sentences a lengthy essay. Unlike last year, it doesn't have to be about your memories of that day, though it could be. Just use your voice so we don't forget. If we speak loud enough, if there are enough of us, we can become a symphony of shouts and tears and whispered pain, so we can always be heard and never, ever forget.
You can add your comments here and I will transfer them to the project, or you can add them to the comments there, or you can email them to me.
[When you are done reading this, please go here]
As we make our slow crawl towards September 11, 2003 and the second anniversary of that day, I can't help but notice that the media has decided to move on.
With the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks only three weeks away, TV networks have planned nearly no special programming to commemorate the horrible events of that day.
In New York, many of the Sept. 11-related events will be private and attended only by the families of the victims.
Instead of breaking into regular programming, the major broadcasters will cover the day in their regular newscasts.
I felt a small fist of fury take hold of my heart when I read that. The fury is mingled with sadness and fear and that strong voice that has resided in my head for almost two years now keeps repeating: We Must Not Forget.
We do not need another slo-motion replay of those enormous blades of steel crashing into the World Trade Center, for that image is surely burned on the retinas of every single person who was witness, whether physically or through the television.
We do not have to play a repeat of that day's events in order to commemerate the lives lost and the lives ruined. There are so many other things that could be said and most important of those things is how we are rebuilding; our lives, our spirits, America. We can do nothing worse than to make our enemies think that 9/11 has become an afterthought and two years later we are complacent and forgetful and perhaps we need another wake up call.
No, we should be showing progress while still paying tribute to those left behind. The coverage of 9/11/03 should show the babies of the widows of 9/11, carrying on the spirit and personalities of their fathers. It should show the plans for the rebirth of the site of the World Trade Center, the gardens that will spring to life there, the entries for the memorial design contest.
There should be investigative pieces on how far we've come in the War on Terror, all the terrorists who had their hands in that day who have been captured, all the cells that have been broken up. There should be a big reminder flashing across the screen at one point that there have been no terrorist attacks on American soil since that day.
How are the firemen who walked out of the burning rubble coping? What about the people who made it down the stairwell and out into the open air and safety? Yes, there should be images of that day shown, perhaps a short montage just to jar our memories and wake whatever fight that was in our souls that has since gone to sleep.
I want to remember. I never want to lose that memory of the smoky sky above Manhattan that I viewed from my office window. I want to remember Pete Ganci's wake and the sharpshooters atop my neighbor's house during the memorial service for Claude Richards, I want to remember the haunted look in my firefighter cousin's eyes and the look of despair on my father's face. I want to remember the chilling feeling of looking at a sky free of jumbo jets for days on end and the quiet, the unnerving quiet, that made those days after so surreal and chilling. I need to remember these things because to forget would be to spit in the face of every single person who died that day.
Relive those events, if only for a moment. There are a million places to look in case you have forgotten, in case you turn on your television on September 11, 2003, hoping for something to help you remember that day, to live through it again just to not forget.
We cannot move on because we are still there. There are 12,000 body parts yet to be identified. There are people still in mourning, people who will never, ever get over seeing their loved one's name on this list. There are still people who want us dead, animals who would stop at nothing to see that the events of 9/11 are repeated, maybe somewhere else. Maybe your own backyard this time.
What does it say about our country when the protesters and conspiracy theorists will mark the day with more of an effort than the mainstream media is? When activists who want to put salt in our wounds and rip open our scars are commemorating that day (albeit in a disgusting way) more than our own media, who will be continuing on with soap operas and Jerry Springer as if this was just another day?
I will never forget. And I will do my best to make sure no one else does either because, obviously, the media has decided to just blow this day off in favor of ratings and advertising dollars.
For starters, you can go here and read the personal accounts I collected one year ago, for a project alled No Ordinary Day. There are more here. They will break your heart, they will make you cry and most of all, they will make you remember. Which you damn well better do.
I miss my kids.
They've been gone only since Sunday afternoon and we've done the whole run around the house naked/turn the stereo up/watch violent movies thing.
I miss their noise. It's much to quiet, which is odd since the quiet is what I was most looking forward to.
If they were home, the would be complaining and whining and fighting over the computer and begging to watch South Park and DJ would be screeching on the guitar and Natalie would be screeching on the phone and I would pour a glass of wine and tell them to please.shut.up.now.
I don't know why I miss that, but I do. They'll be home on Friday and then they take off again until Monday evening. And then school starts and bam! the summer is gone and all those days that stretched out before us will somehow come to an abrupt end.
Then it's homework and baseball and guitar lessons and more homework, all smashed like like peanut butter between two silces of bread that are Saturday and Sunday, days which, unfortunately, they spend with their father.
They just called from the pool at the hotel and they're having a grand time. Natalie wants to move to Salem and live like a witch. DJ thinks he crashed into Plymouth Rock in a past life. They love Massachussets. They don't want to come home.
Don't they know I miss them?
I'll clean up their room while they are gone and hope my mother remembers to make them buckle up in the car. I'll eat Fruit Pebbles for breakfast just because.
And then I'll find a broken CD or a ten day old cheese sandwhich under Natalie's bed and I won't miss them, not at all.
But then I will.
It's oh, so quiet.
[In essay form, with props.]
[click for bigger, crappier image]
I really did take all your suggestions to heart. Some of them I just couldn't find and some of them just didn't appeal to me, but I really looked at each and every book suggested, if it was on the shelves. Yes, I know that's a crappy picture and frankly, I'm sure most of you aren't even interested in what I bought today but that's just tough crap, because I'm telling you anyhow. I told you shopping makes me cranky.
I also had many of the things suggested, especially the Gaiman stuff.
On the DVDs, we got a bonus pack of El Mariachi with Desparado; Requiem For A Dream (Director's Cut); Animal House (Double Secret Probation Edition); Legends Of The Fall; The Simpons Season 3 package; Fistful Of Dollars; For A Few Dollars More; Pink Floyd: Dark Side Of The Moon.
At Borders, we came away with the paperback versions (I have the hardcovers) of Gaiman's Good Omens and Neverwhere; Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game; The Sandman Companion; Glen Cook's Black Company; Phillip Pullman's The Subtle Knife (I loaned that someone and never got it back); Complete Works of Poe; Lovecraft's Call Of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories; Fishticks (The Rise and Fall Of The New York Islanders) and Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash.
After that was Hot Topic, where I bought some band shirts (New Found Glory, Sum 41, Good Charlotte and Simple Plan)for DJ to wear to school because he has declared that the only thing he will wear is band shirts (remind me to write about his clothing idiosyncracies sometimes). By the way, Hot Topic is running a a buy one, get one half price sale on band shirts. We also picked up an Invader Zim notebook for each of us at HT. And I replaced my Short Music For Short People CD, which had fallen into the vortex of missing things that lies somewhere in my closet and was never seen again.
We went to Ruby Tuesday's for lunch where I negated my workout at the gym today by having dessert for my meal.
Except for the maddening crowds at every store, and except for the idiots at Roosevelt Field mall and except for the madmen on the road today, it was a stellar day.
Oh and mothers of teenage girls: Why do you let your daughters walk around with pants so low that you can practically see what their natural hair color is? Not only is it disgusting and whorish looking, but the fact that most of these girls were with their mothers and/or fathers made me want to stab those parents in the eyes. Three times.
Now, which book to read and which DVD to watch first when I get back from my therapy at the batting cages?
[Jeez. He's such a woman sometimes.]
Ben Weasel notes in the comments here that Bill Maher was making a joke about SUVs and dead babies. Jeff Jarvis noted the same. Now, I think I have a pretty good sense of humor and I'm quite adept at recognizing jokes when they appear, but that one just went wooosh! right over my head. Perhaps because I am so used to viewing Maher as an uglier version of Ted Rall, I failed to see the humor. Oh, wait. I know why I didn't see it. Because it wasn't the least bit funny!
Ben then goes on to ask:
What does it mean to be a "card-carrying member" of the Left? Where do you get the cards and who hands them out? What do you have to do to get one? Is "card carrying member" the highest honor? Why carry the card? Does it get you seated fast at the best restaurants? Do you get discounts on oil changes? Do those who carry the cards look down on those who leave them in a drawer at home? Do they need to be renewed? Is there a charge?
That really should have read Far Left for, as far as I know, the straight old regular left has no cohesive organization under which they rest, unlike, say the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. I believe the cards are handed out by Susan Sarandon and, no, that is not the hightest honor. The highest honor belongs to those called Chomskyites, who get hemp plaques to hang in their bedroom.
If you flash the card at a restaurant, you get half price on all vegan meals. That whole parking thing is not required, as card-carrying members do not use gas-consumption vehicles. However, if you show up on a Segway or in an electric car, the first appetizer is free. And that oil change question is just silly. Members of the far-left do not consume oil! Ever! For anything!
If you get a card it would be best to carry it with you at all times so you don't get your ass knocked down by someone charging a Starbucks window with a brick. Just flash your card and he'll step out of your way. The cards are free (provided you join ANSWER first), they are emblazoned with a photo of Che and a Free Mumia! sticker and are good for life unless, like me, you decide to burn yours at some point in which case, make sure to use lots of oil.
Hope I helped!
When we have days like this (which are rare) when the hours ahead are filled with nothing but fun shopping (thanks to a handful of gift cards, mostly), I like to know what I want ahead of time in order to decrease the time needed to spend in stores because, in all honesty, I hate shopping. I hate shoppers, I hate salespeople, I basically hate people in general when they are in my way, which they always are in malls and crowded stores.
Anyhow:
Books - any suggestions for books? I have a Border's gift card burning a hole in my pocket and I'm just about finished with Black House and I need to start stacking up on my fall reading pile. Any genre, I don't care. Fiction, non-fiction, books of Tibetan rap lyrics, doesn't matter. I just want your recommendations.
DVDs - Our Best Buy card, plus two returns I have to make there, will afford us both the Simpsons Season 3 DVD as well as the Two Towers DVD. Any suggestions for other movies you think I that should be part of my collection, let me know.
Comics - we will probably stop at least two comic shops, just to browse and see what looks interesting. I already bought Gaiman's 1602, so no sense in recommending that. Any new titles (or even old ones) you think I would like, pass it along.
We are leaving in about two hours. I'll take your list with me. Help a fellow consumer whore out, will ya? If I can get in and out of stores quickly, you just may save the life of a rude shopper.
Yet another baby was found dead in a locked SUV. How come this always happens in SUVs? You never heard about somebody locking a baby in, say, a Toyota Prius, do you? Of course, one of the reasons this happens mostly in SUVs is because they're too high up to see inside. I mean, how do you explain forgetting a baby? It's not some Ethan Hawke movie you forgot to return to Blockbuster in the backseat, it's a living, drooling human being.
Ok, Bill. I'll bite. How come this always happens in SUVs? Oh, wait. It doesn't. See, this one died in a Mitsubishi sedan. This one died in a minivan, which is not really an SUV. This one died in a simple old car, not an SUV.
The title of Maher's post is SUVs = Trouble.
It seems to me that the problem is not SUVs, it is inattentive parents and caregivers. I don't care if you own a Hummer the size of Texas, you don't forget your baby is in the car simply because you can't see them. You forget because you are thinking of something else, or rushing somewhere or just not thinking at all.
Sometimes the parent or caregiver leaves the child in the car on purpose while they go shop or gamble or drink. That is bad parenting, it has nothing to do with what type of car you own.
I found fifteen more stories about children who died from being left in hot cars (and also several about children who died after being left in cars in frigid temperatures). These were sedans and sports cars; Hondas, Saturns and the like. Maher only had to do a little bit of research before he went off and claimed that SUVs are to blame for the deaths of these poor children.
Once again, the far left - of which Maher is a card-carrying member - blame something other than the person at fault. I'm waiting for the inevitable class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of SUV owners whose children died in that horrible way, claiming that they made the cars too big or too wide or the seat backs too high.
It's just another case of Maher and his like wanting to blame the ills of the world on SUV owners. It's the parents and caregivers, stupid. Not the car.
I'm up way too early after having a bit too much to drink - and eat - last night. But I have to get some things done, like going to the gym which I haven't been to since I got sick, and getting the house clean, which I haven't touched since Saturday or so, before we head out on a day long shopping extravaganza as we treat ourselves to birthday/anniversary presents.
The day will include stops at several comic book stores, Borders, Best Buy and wherever else our road trip radar takes us. Later tonight, it's a quiet dinner (I'm still thinking of the LI/NY blogger bash, but it won't be this week) with Faith and tomorrow it's back to work after a wonderful mini-vacation. So yes, posting will be light today, heavy tonight as I gloat over all the stupid stuff we spent our money on and bitch and moan about the comic book stores around here.
I just want to send thanks everyone who sent/posted birthday and anniversary wishes, and everyone who sent me cards and presents and to the very lovely, generous people who donated to Magen David Adom in my name this week. While it sounds a bit sappy, your friendship is what I treasure most but hey, I'm not one to turn down material possessions, either. I am, after all, a capitalist pig at heart.
Thanks to my lovely sisters and their spouses and my nephew David for joining us for a drunken, fattening evening and to the dork waiters at Friday's for singing that stupid birthday song to me while I tried to light my cherry on fire.
Did I say I would be at Bertucci's? I guess I meant Fridays. So sorry about that. So if any of you NYC Indymedia fans really came out to Long Island to throw blood on my SUV, maybe next time. It's just as well, anyhow, as my Jewish brother-in-law was with us and he was packing heat and more than willing to defend his zionazi sister-in-law.
Just another half hour of sleep, I think, before I rant about the idiocy of Bill Maher.
Unfortunately for the Indymedia trolls, this site still stands. Apparently the call to arms to shut me down has resulted in a total of about eight hits from various Indymedia sites today. I am disappointed. I thought that those moonbats had it all together when it came to activism.
A few items of interest for those who have arrived here in a zealous effort to shut me up:
Reading through this novel-length comment from an IMC Moderator sure did give me some laughs.
Wow. It must be especially galling for a bunch of right-wing extremists (used to having the American system schill for their every beck and call) to be confronted with a left-wing news alternative that is actually both powerful AND popular. "A Small Victory"? Ha. I'm sure that all five people that have heard of you wish that they had 1/10th as much influence on the political scene as Indymedia.[read the rest of the comment here]
Not that I need to prove anything to those who can't take the time to figure things out for themselves, but I should tell you that if you take a look around here, you will see that I am pretty far from a right-wing extremist.
There is no thought in my mind that I have any influence on the political scene. However, this is just a weblog; I don't purport to be any sort of media maven. Rest assured, however, that my readers (which include liberals as well as conservatives) number in the thousands and collectively they have more common sense, dignity, respect and brains than the entire roster of writers, publishers, editors and posters of Indymedia combined.
The anti-semitic, socialism-loving people of Indymedia indeed have some guidelines to posting. However, their guidelines are broken on a daily basis. For instance, the moderator claims that the reason for hiding posts include:
- Posts which are obviously incorrect or misleading. This includes attempts to spread dis-information or to impersonate another individual. For example, a poster once posted a cartoon under the name “Latuff” when in fact it was drawn by another artist.
But if they are posted by the real Latuff, then that's ok. Nevermind that Latuff's cartoons often depict dead Jews and advocate killing Jews. As for the disinformation, all the conspiracy posts that appear on Indymedia (meaning the "Bush is responsible for...." without any factual data to back up the claim) are often misleading or obviously incorrect.
Posts that contain generalized and negative assertions about any race, nation, creed, class, ethnic group, sexual orientation, etc.
You are kidding me, right? Every day you can find on any Indymedia site posts of that nature. Especially if they are about Jews. Negative assertions about a nation? Hell, what would IMC be without negative assertions of America? It would be empty!
Anyhow, thanks for all the attention and laughs today. I find it sort of thrilling to be called a zionazi jewpropagandist, so much so that I think I'll have it inscribed on my office door. Zionazi would make a really nice vanity license plate as well.
I'd love to play with you more and sit around watching you try to take down my site (which, by the way, is so much of that censorship you are always crying about), but I've got things to do. See, it's my birthday and I'm going to celebrate by getting into my SUV and driving to a corporate owned chain restaurant, where I will dine on some dead animals. Why don't you stop by? I'll be at Bertucci's in Westbury at about 6:15. You can come and throw a bucket of blood on my car and I'll buy you a drink.
Oh yippee, the Indymedia freaks are coming after me!
The Far-Right is targeting Indymedia with slander and threats of censorship. We need to shut down these extreem rightwing threats! Overload their servers, Far right sites, of the Zionazi variety, are planning on undermining Indymedia with slander and lies. The main culprits is a right-wing operator running a site called "A Small Victory" (see link below). The gameplan is to censor Indymedia by claiming (lying) that Indymedia censors. Yes Indymedia removes trash from far-right freepers who spam Indymedi with filthy jewpropganda. But that is not censorship! See this link and help us shut down this site:http://asmallvictory.net/archives/004293.html#004293
What a fabulous birthday present. Thanks, moonbats!
Most recent post on NYC Indymedia:
A Muslim woman is under arrest and the media is lying to us again.
Ayesha Akter, a Muslim woman, is in New York police custody, under arrest for defending herself from a violent attack. The police say Ayesha used a cleaver to kill a woman named Farida Begum. There is no information on Farida's religion, but some have said that she was a Jew.
Akter was charged yesterday with second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon. The Muslim community demands that Ayesha be freed.
Article in Newsday, that I read at 6am this morning:
A woman with a history of mental illness allegedly hacked her elderly mother-in-law to death with a meat cleaver after the mother-in-law refused to give her rice, saying it would make the daughter-in-law fat, police said.
Ayesha Akter, 32, is undergoing psychiatric evaluation after she was arrested in connection with the attack on her mother-in-law, Farida Begum, with a meat cleaver about 7:40 p.m. Saturday. Begum was repeatedly hit in the head, chest and legs and lost a finger in the savage assault, police said.
I don't even know what to say at the disparity between the Newsday story and the version that Indymedia is showing. I guess that Indy poster spent a good deal of energy jumping to conclusions this morning. Watch the post disappear into the netherworld of Indymedia when someone checks the facts.
[via Jeff Jarvis]
The answer, of course, is when the terrorist is a suicide bomber in a foreign country.
Manning Pynn, "public editor" of the Orlando Sentinel, on referring to members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad as terrorists:
In April, the committee adopted this standard: "Use caution when using these terms [militants, terrorists], which can show bias toward one side in a conflict. Generally, 'bombers,"attackers' or 'suicide bombers' are preferred terms."
The term "terrorist" certainly expresses judgment: It imputes to the person or organization being described the motive of trying to instill fear. "Militant" seems to me much more neutral. And that may be why the Sentinel, despite its style committee's decision, continues to use that term to describe Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Bias. Judgment. Neutral.
So what do you think Hamas and Islamic Jihad are doing if not trying to install fear? Are they just calling Israelis out for a friendly game of dodgeball? Perhaps blowing up a bus filled with innocent people is just their way of clacking some beer bottles together and smirking "Warriors, come out and plaaa-aay!"
Why are so many editors (Reuters, NYT, etc.) afraid to show bias in a situation like this? As if siding with people who strap bombs to themselves and blow up little babies is an option.
I'm afraid that the horse is out of the barn on the labeling of al-Qaeda. Although journalists strive to avoid expressing bias in reporting the news, the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, so shocked Americans -- including the news media -- that they almost universally applied the term "terrorism" to what had happened. I don't think the Sentinel will retreat from that.
Does that mean, though, that we should extend that judgment to all attacks on civilians?
I see. So until some hell-bent on martyrdom Palestinian blows himself to bits in say, downtown Dallas, they should be referred to as militants. You know, people sending a dire message by use of symbolism. Remember kids, it's not terrorism until it happens on your doorstep!
[Sami] Qubty [president of the Arab-American Community Center of Central Florida] acknowledged that suicide bombings resemble terrorism but likened them to the actions of Israelis "when they go out and shoot a missile and kill innocent bystanders."
I'd sure like to have some of what Qubty has been inhaling. Maybe it's some new Palestinian math, where an equation would look like this:
man strapping bomb to self and climbing aboard a bus packed with women, kids and non-military people, then detonating that bomb in order to provide maximum death and carnage = Israeli soldiers leveling the home of the leader of a terrorist organization, in the process killing a few terrorists and their supporters, and, on occassion accidently killing an innocent bystander.
It's moral equivalence run amok.
Pynn concludes:
But my belief -- and those of others who recoil at the violence -- doesn't warrant further injecting judgmental terms into impartial news reporting.
I have only this to say to Mr. Pynn: Get a dictionary.
terrorism n : the systematic use of violence as a means to intimidate or coerce societies or governments.
terrorist n. one that engages in acts or an act of terrorism.
militant n. A fighting, warring, or aggressive person or party.
So under which part of those definitions to the words 'bombers,"attackers' or 'suicide bombers' not fit?
Stop holding the hands of the over-the-edge left. Stop with this P.C. bullshit that threatens to make a friend of everyone, even our enemies. Call a spade a spade. Call a murdering martyr a terrorist.
Sure, it's also Sean Connery's birthday, but I have better people to share my day with than a crusty old mysogynist actor, or a crusty old mysgoynist member of Kiss, for that matter.
There's Elvis Costello and Rollie Fingers. And, on a lesser known note, Oddibe McDowell, who was born on the exact same day as me, and Bill DeLargo, who was one of my most favorite hockey players ever, if not for his play than for the fact that he had the same birthday as me.
By far my favorite birthday twin is Tim Burton, whose creations have a special place in our DVD collection, filed under, of course, Tim Burton masterpieces. No, Planet of the Apes is not there.
This day in history:
Paris was liberated (1944), Truman Capote died (1984), and New Orleans was founded (1718).
Boston released their first album (1976), Aaliyah died in a plane crash (2001), as did Samantha Smith (1985). Mark McGwire hit his first major league home run (1986).
On the day I was born (1962), bread was 21 cents a loaf, minimum wage was $1.15 and a stamp cost four cents.
People were reading A Clockwork Orange and Silent Spring, were listening to Sherry by the Four Seasons and watching Gregory Peck in To Kill A Mockingbird.
And, of course, on this day in 2002, I married Justin. Happy anniversary, baby. [see the two posts below this one for the treacly love stuff]
I've developed a new hobby in regards to this email virus going around: email address watching.
The way the virus spreads like a spider web through the address books of email users means that it eventually will come crawling back into your mailbox via the contacts of other people. Like the old commercial - and she tells a friend, and she tells two friends...
I've received the re:wicked screensaver email, as well as at least a dozen variation of that header from people at Fox News, the New York Times, several universities, Honest Reporting, Music Match and many other well-known websites or media outlets.
I lost count of the amount of bloggers whose address book has sent out hundreds of emails to me; apparently I am also spamming myself, but I have done the good samaritan thing and deleted the entire contents of the Contact list in my copy of Outlook. I would suggest you all do the same. And if you emailed me and are waiting for a reply, it's probably safe to assume that your email got mixed in with the 700 wicked screensaver emails I delete a day. Please make your headers clear that your email is disease free, thank you.
Anyhow, I can always claim later on that I received emails from several famous people - I don't have to mention anything about that email being nothing more than a virus, right?
On another technical note, I have forgiven Google for installing its new toolbar without asking me if I wanted to update. I am very impressed with its capabilities.
Oh, and Natalie just called from the road somewhere in Connecticut. My mother's car broke down. They're being towed to a rent-a-car place where they will proceed with the trip to Boston eventually. I didn't want to alarm Natalie or the other occupants of the two-car caravan, but I know it's all the evil cross-eyed girl's fault.
[click for bigger image]Some time this afternoon, my kids will be on their way to Boston with my mother, her sister and most of their collective grandchildren. I tend to worry when my kids go away without me. You know how that worry is; it's like a slow-moving car full of horrible ideas that gathers speed until it's an out-of-control semi hurtling off of a cliff.
Oh, I trust my mother implicitly. It's other people I don't trust. I think of highway wrecks and bad weather and sinister roller coasters and, in the ridiculous notions that come to you at 3am, the ghost of the Redcoats taking hold of the kids while they are on some historic tour.
They'll be gone most of the week and then they'll be home just long enough for me to throw their clothes in the laundry and pack them up once again, and they'll head off for another trip, this time with their father and his girlfriend and her kids, to Toronto.
They are going to make a stop in Syracuse, New York to stroll around the New York State Fair on Friday evening. And this is where that hurtling semi of worry crashes and burns. No, I'm not worried about simple amusement park rides or escaped wild pigs or the way kids have of getting lost in the crowd. It's that poster you see up there.
That's the poster for the New York State Fair. It is obvious from viewing that picture that my ex is taking my kids into the land of Satan, where evil bunny rabbits hide in the bushes and dragons come galloping down the countryside, ready to eat small children like so much cotton candy or toupee wearing cows perch in the cornstalks, waiting to tear babies from their parents while the evil, cross-eyed girl turns their parents into butter sculptures. Oh, you think I'm the only one who sees that? Hell awaits you, State Fair revelers! [more like that here].
Of course, it doesn't help that I am in the midst of reading Black House, with its missing children and cannibalistic creatures that speak in tongues about children hobbling on bloody feet.
This is the curse of the imaginative mind. You can't turn it off at will, nor can you control the dark depths to which that imagination will take you.
I'll be here all week, thank you, telling you about my nightmares and fretting the lack of text messages from my daughter.
Back in January, Judge Roy Moore - you know, the guy who idolizes a graven image - said the following:
Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore warned a religious audience Tuesday night of "great consequences" when America turns away from God and suggested the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks might be an example....
"How many of you remember Americans running to get gas masks because (of) some bearded man in Afghanistan?" Moore asked during his address at Georgetown University. "Fear struck this country...You see, there are consequences when we turn away from our source of our strength."
Take from that what you will. What puzzles me more than Moore's assertion that 9/11 may have been caused by a lack of faith in his God is what John Derbyshire had to say yesterday:
Roy Moore's comments...that 9/11 was a judgment on us, were common at the time, and are theologically perfectly respectable in both the Judaic and Christian (and therefore, presumably, also the Muslim) traditions.
Perfectly respectable. Then Derbyshire points us to a "brilliant and perceptive" article he wrote on the subject one month after 9/11.
Perhaps from his point of view, the article was perceptive. I would hardly call it brilliant in terms of what Derbyshire wrote yesterday because he doesn't really make the point of what he believes, but he makes his views knowb by taking what certain evangelists believed right after 9/11 - Pat [Robertson] and Jerry [Falwell] think that the events of last week are a judgment on us for our sinful ways, a call to repentance and saying:
Theologically speaking, the position Pat and Jerry are promoting has a long and respectable pedigree.
I find it no more respectable than the terrorists who claimed the same thing, than the jihad-makers say they are exacting revenge for their god, when any religion - be it Christianity, Judaism, or any kind of ism or theism - claims that world events are a direct result of us not being religious enough or straying away from a, no their, god.
I do understand that neither Moore nor Derbyshire is saying that God is the one responsible for planes being flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon; they are more or less preaching that if we were more religious, more in tune with God, then we would, in turn, not be idolizing celebrities and dollar bills or making R-rated movies or being fat, lazy Americans, and then we would not be so hated by the practitioners of radical Islam and they would have no reason to attack us.
So, if we accept God, accept the ten commandments as written, bow before the deity that Moore and Derbyshire and Falwell believe in and behave according to their moral standards; if we go to church and take communion and confess our sins or, better yet, don't commit any sins, then we will be safe from terrorist attacks from those praising Allah and waiting for their virginal rewards in the afterlife.
Sure, I'm being obtuse and maybe just a bit belligerent, but that's the way I'm reading Derbyshire and Moore, and that's why I am just a bit pissed off that Derbyshire thinks Moore's views, and the views of those other evangelical Christians, are respectable. Even within the confines of their respective religious beliefs, I cannot fathom that placing the blame for 9/11 on the downfall of religion in America is in any way respectable.
I hope it feels so good to be right. There's nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others, is there?
He had all the best lines in that movie.
Karma.
John Geoghan, a defrocked Roman Catholic priest and convicted child molester, died Saturday after he was assaulted in prison, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department of Corrections told CNN.
John Geoghan:
Defrocked priest
130 alleged victims
Serial molester whose exploits go as far back as 1962
Protected by the church
Convict
A product of Cardinal Law's corruption.
Karma.
Thank you so much to Rob and Joy for the very thoughtful birthday gift, the DVD of Singles. We are going to watch it tonight, so tomorrow I will be running around saying things like "A compliment for us is a compliment for you!" I adore this movie and I adore both Rob and Joy. And Noah! Thank you so much.
And another package! This one from Jonno, the man I love like the Italian goomba brother I never had but always wanted. Steam Punk: Manimatron by Joe Kelly will be read after Singles is over, out on the porch with the stars and the moonligh and Mars and a rum and coke. Thank you, Jonno!
[Reason via Joanne Jacobs]
Ray Bradbury is 83 today. Happy birthday to a man who understands the fight against censorship dressed up as multiculturalism:
For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule. If Mormons do not like my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent typewriters. If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmild teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture. If the Chicano intellectuals wish to re-cut my "Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" so it shapes "Zoot," may the belt unravel and the pants fall.
Bravo, Mr. Bradbury. And happy birthday.
For those who don't remember Bobby Bonds, think Rickey Henderson without the attitude. Speed, power and class. That was Bonds.
Bonds was employed by the San Fransisco Giants when he passed away today, at the age of 57. It was his 23rd season working for the team he started out with.
Career totals for Bobby Bonds [Giants, Yankees, Angels, White Sox, Rangers Indians, Cardinals, Cubs]:
Games:1849 Hits:1886 Home Runs:332 RBIs:1024 Stolen Bases:461 Batting Average:.268 Sons who are home run kings: 1
It is imperative to take your posts off of "draft" position if you want anyone to actually read them, or you will sit around all day checking your email for comments and wondering why no one has anything to say about that post you wrote at 7am.
Class dismissed.
[via Kathy K]
Let us once again remind ourselves what we are up against in our battle vs. those who have declared jihad against the United States and its allies.
Here is the homepage for Al Muhajioroun UK, a group which proclaims itself to be the voice, the eyes and the ears of the Muslims.
They are holding a conference on September 11, 2003: The Magnificent 19 That Divided The World on September 11th.
Basically, it is a celebration of 9/11. From the official press release:
Almost two years on from September the 11th 2001 the world embraces itself for another anniversary. Many Muslims worldwide will be celebrating the comeuppance of the USA in what they see as retribution for the atrocities that the US has committed, and indeed continues to commit, against Muslims. Afghanistan and Iraq being the most recent examples.
The release then goes on to explain how important it is to make sure the world converts to the Muslim relgion:
..[T]he call for the return of the Khilafah system, of ruling solely by the Shari'ah, can be heard. The hatred towards the US and UK, and their evil plans to crush Islam and Muslims, and to force a washed-down version of Islam on Muslims, similar to Christianity, has backfired, and instead, more and more Muslims are queuing up to fight Jihad and are willing to die to see the domination of divine law over man made law.
They praise recent acts of terrorism and wear the badge of hatred for America and its allies proudly. They are fighting a war and their main weapon is martyrdom:
...[W]e see how a comparatively tiny army, with rudimentary weapons, have imposed such heavy casualties and losses on the alliances of Shaytaan in these areas. How, armed mainly with their Tawheed, Imaan and Tawakkul, the Mujahideen have brought dignity and honour back to the Muslims worldwide and how they have revitalized the Passion for Jihad.
Dignity and honor. Any religon that can find dignity and honor in the murder of innocent people is a fraud. To be overjoyed when people die, to perpetuate the notion that killing is good and you will be rewarded by the Great and Powerful American-Hating God upon your bloody, self-inflicted demise seems almost too absurd to be true.
Yet it is true. In the 21st century, there are still people who believe that hatred is a virtue, that murder is a gift to their god, that the death of thousands is a cause for celebration.
So what will the followers of this jihad, this disgusting offshoot of a religion, be doing on September 11, 2003?
Two years on then, it seems that during their customary 1 minutes silence in NewYork and elsewhere on September the 11th 2003, Muslims worldwide will again be watching replays of the collapse of the Twin Towers, praying to Allah (SWT) to grant those magnificent 19, Paradise. They will also be praying for the reverberations to continue until the eradication of all man-made law and the implementation of divine law in the form of the Khilafah - carrying the message of Islam to the world and striving for Izhar ud-Deen i.e. the total domination of the world by Islam.
Is this enough of a reminder of who our enemy is? Our enemy is not George Bush, not capitalism, not our own way of life. Our enemy has made itself known. To think otherwise is naive and foolish.
But hey, let's go hold their hands and try to understand them, ok?
No.
I couldn't even get through most of Morford's rant about the Bush action figure without having to consult Babelfish, but then I remembered that Babelfish doesn't translate gibberish or magnetic poetry paragraphs so I just shrugged it off and plowed on, hoping to find some clue that there is indeed lifeform within Morford's brain and he is not really a LeftyBot as some people have suggested.
Down towards the bottom of Morford's nonsensical ode to glass dildos (I think that's what it was about, anyhow), comes his definition of a hero:
Maybe we've forgotten that a hero is, of course, someone who goes deep into the underworld and has terrifically spiritual and self-revealing adventures full of danger and mystery and hot moist goddesses who offer him magic and mysteriously juicy fruit.
All coupled with the ever-present threat of death and/or immortality, endless failures and setbacks and strange gifts, and yet he re-emerges above ground stronger, more aware, attuned, enlightened and potent.
I took an Excedrin Migraine, which I always keep handy when reading Morford, and read through the definition again and then last sentence of his screed:
Because the hero you most need? It's you. Simple, really.
Well yea, if you're playing Zork or Zelda.
Which leads me to believe that Morford is, indeed, nothing more than a computer program designed to spit out the most inane drivel ever (as its fed a litany of keywords including BushCo, dildos, asexual, daddy and stolen), and some strain of a nasty virus infected the inner workings of its code so it got mixed up with the ROMs for adventure games and this is what we get.
We've all been had. The virus IS Morford and he's infecting your computer right this minute, downloading naked pictures of Arianna Huffington and sending emails to A.N.S.W.E.R.
Ctrl-Alt-Dlt! Now!
One of my favorite women in the blogosphere has ditched blogspot and made a run for the border. I mean, a run to her own domain.
Visit Anna's very funny blog right here.
Now!
For those who wondered why there was nothing about the suicide bombing in Israel this week on (spefically the NYC) Indymedia, it's because the moderators of Indymedia pulled any such posts down.
Here is where all the hidden posts go.
To their credit, the moderators also hid some posts by anti-semite Latuff, and with good reason. However, I can not see their reasoning in pulling a post that just announced the news of the bus bomb attack.
They also think it's ok to post pictures of dying and injured children in Iraq so they can blame our soldiers, but it's not ok to post pictures of injured Israeli children. Why? Out of fear that it might make their pro-terrorism sentiments less palatable?
I don't know if this is just specific for the NYC Indymedia, or if it happens at the other sites, but I was under the impression that Indymedia stood for free speech, free press, the right to speak out and print the news stories and opinion you wanted to without any capitalist pig editor hanging a red marker over your head. Or something like that.
Yet the NYC Indymedia hides posts on a daily basis, and not all of them are pro-Israel or pro-Bush; some of them are decidedly leftists posts. I'm just curious as to why this organization that so cries at every turn how our freedoms have been diminished since 9/11 and screams They ar stifling my dissent! at every turn is so knee-jerk and free-wheeling with their own editing policies.
Anyone?
[via Blue Green Egg]
A classroom lesson on pirates yields the following observation:
Pirates were big mean guys on a ship that sailed the big blue wet thing.
(That might mean the Caribbean Sea.)
Pirates can get really fussy when it comes to drinking rum.
Heck, thats there main drink.
Drink too much rum and you get very fat.
So don't drink too much rum you pirates.
And they say our kids aren't learning anything these days.
I found it!
I have been searching for proof of the existence of this album for years. Unfortunately, it's not available. But I least my treasure hunt is complete.
My cousin Stan gave me Superstars of the 70's for Christmas when I was 11 or 12. Stan wanted me to hear bands like The Kinks and The Rolling Stones.
Instead, I played Paranoid over and over until my mother told me she would break the record if I played it one more time.
I felt cheated when I realized later on that Roundabout and Whole Lotta Love were entirely misrepresented on this album, as they were the shortened radio-edit versions.
I remember exactly which songs I skipped and which I played. I know precisely which songs I played on repeat, meaning I would pick up the needle and plop it down on the deep, black edge of the song to start again.
I know that at some point a skip developed halway through Doctor My Eyes, and to this day I still sing it with that Doc..Doc..Doc.. hiccup. The album cover was blue with a rocketship that had flames coming out of the end and the song names were written in the flames.
I would give anything (well almost anything) to have a copy of this album again. It will be my birthday present to myself and I will spend every waking moment between now and Monday scouring garage sales and auction sites and used record stores until I find this.
And then I'll remember that I don't have a turntable but that doesn't matter, because I can play the album in my head from memory.
And continuing with the Friday night mindless blogging:
We'v been watching VH1's I Love the 70's almost non-stop and I have come to the conclusion that the 70's were way cooler than the 80's.
This is an educated opinion, having lived through both eras and being old enough to actually remember the 70's and young enough to have embarassed myself in the 80's.
Commence with the 70's v. 80's arguments.
I have this sudden urge to track down a K-Tel best of the 70's album.
I am in love with Hal Sparks.
A deep, stalkerish, obsessive sort of love. The most delicious kind.
Does anyone know his address?
Memo to Bill O'Reilly:
Wesley Willis died last night. He was forty years old.
Wesley made his mark on the world first as a street performer in Chicago, commenting on the world at large to the tune of a Casio keyboard. He gained some fame when he signed with Jello Biafra's Alternative Tentacle records, recording 50 albums.
Most of his songs were odes to other bands and other popular figures. They mostly had the same tune, repeated the title over and over and ended with some catch phrase like Timex, it takes a licking and keeps on ticking.
I love your movies
I love you too
You are the best man that I have ever liked
You are my rich man
You are my big millionaire
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Wheaties, breakfast of champions
There was something about this schizophrenic performer that made me love him, despite his simple lyrics and nonsenical music. He was earnest, straightfoward and a simply fascinating figure.
Sleep well, Wesley.
Superman had a big "S" on his chest
He was drawing on my nerves
I got mad at his drunk ass
I gave him a war hell ride
I whipped Superman's ass
I whipped Superman's ass
I whipped Superman's ass
I whipped Superman's ass
See post below for reference.
It is not a matter of being offended at the ten commandents per se. We can, however, be offended in the manner in which the monument of the ten commandments was erected in front of the courthouse:
Moore...installed..the monument in the rotunda of the judicial building two years ago in the middle of the night.
In what is described as a "smug," "brazen" and secretive move, Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore has ordered stealth placement of a 5,280-pound monument to the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the state's Judicial Building.
Moore also has opened his courtroom with prayer:
"Good morning, ladies and gentleman, I think we've got a roomful here today," Alabama Judge Roy Moore said as he greeted the crowd of spectators and prospective jurors packed into his courtroom on February 24. "As we have always done in Etowah County, we're going to be opening with prayer
Contrary to what some people are stating, Moore does not want the monument there as a testament to our legal heritage, but as a morality statement:
The chief justice testified that he installed the monument partly because of concern the country has suffered a moral decline over the past 40 or 50 years as a result of federal court rulings, including those against prayer in public schools
Moore has used his courtroom to rant against homosexuality on religious ground, he has posted the ten commandments in his courtroom and has traveled the nation telling kids to post the commandments in their classrooms.
He believes that posting the commandments in classrooms would stop school violence and that school shootings happen because the kids involved did not have a copy of the ten commandments handy.
Why have I posted all this? To back up my contention that Justice Roy Moore is using the monument in front of his courthouse as a rallying point for his religious agenda. This is not really about a piece of granite to Moore. It is about hard line Christianity and Moore's notion that we should all grasp his concept of religion, lest we roast in the fires of hell.
He is seriously misleading the Christian faithful who are guarding the monument day and night and taking Moore's mission to heart. For them, it may be about the commandments. For Moore, the followers are nothing more than a means to an end. He is using them and the publicity they are generating with their histrionics to spread the word of - not Jesus Christ or Moses or God - but Justice Roy Moore.
Justice Roy Moore's problem is his arrogance in believing that the words of his God should be standing in front of a federal building.
I say let Moore have his way. And then erect similar statues inscribed with the faith guidelines according to not only Christians and Jews, but Buddhists and Hindus and Muslims and Wiccans and Mormons, Baptists, Protestants, Satanists, Scientoligists and whoever else has a religions whose people may work in that courthouse or walk through its doors.
All this crying and genuflecting/going on over a piece of stone reminds me of this portion of the commandments:
I AM THE LORD THY GOD, THOU SHALT NOT HAVE strange gods BEFORE ME.
"Idolizing material images to the point they are held in superstition, and as men would suspect, suppose, determine 'The Creator of All Things' would be like; such as idols of human form or animal likeness also.
Eliminating the Mystery of a Divine Being that no man can touch, see or feel. Replacing this Mystery with physical means and emphasis put on knowledge and man's own senses.
Then I remember the words a priest told me, back in ninth grade when I was questioning my faith. He said "You do not need to carry symbols or enter a church if God is truly in your heart."
Is the morality of Alabama going to plunge to dark depths if the monument is removed? Will fires reign from the sky and the ground open up to swallow souls? Locusts? Frogs?
No?
Unless Justice Moore wants to embrace every religion that exists by erecting similar monuments for their dogmas, then he must abide and let it be removed. Besides admitting the the fact that the law, the consitution and his peers on the bench all agree that the monument must go, Moore also needs to recognize that not everyone in the world is a member of his church and as much as he would not want to be confronted by a statue of a Hindu god in a state-run building, there are people who do not want to be confronted by this 5,300 momument to Moore's particular faith.
UPDATE: For those commenting and emailing that this country was founded on the basis of Christian values, etc., please read below.
Thanks to Ken for the link.
The entry below has been turned into a photoessay, over at Retrovertigo.
A few days ago David asked "do you love where you live," and I answered in the affirmative.
The real question today is, do I love where I live enough to sacrifice my dream of home-ownership?
A Newsday article today reveals that the median price for a home in Nassau County, Long Island is $400,000.
For those of you in smaller markets, I'll give you a few minutes to wrap your mind around that figure. $400,000.
We live in my late grandmother's house, which is now owned by my father and aunt. Another aunt and uncle also live in this house, upstairs from us.
We've wanted to move for a quite a while and set a goal for ourselves that we would be out of here once DJ finishes elementary school, a little less than a year from now. Our reasoning is that once he hits middle school, he will get a bus and I will no longer have to depend on my mother, who lives across the street, to take him to and from school.
The problem is, we do not want to leave this town. I've lived here my whole life, all almost-41 years of it, starting in the house I'm in now, then across the street, then to a house on the other side of town and, completing the full circle, back in grandma's house where I lived in my infancy.
I love where I live but it's getting hard to afford the cost of living here. The taxes are high, the home prices are high, the cost of car insurance, utilities and property taxes keep skyrocketing.
You probably think that $400,000 would buy a nice piece of property and a beautiful home. Think again. A home down the block from us sold last month for $320k. One level. Two bedrooms. The house is basically a box sitting on some grass. Everything in the home, from the walls to the floors to the plumbing is at least 40 years old. Yet the owners asked for, and received, over $300k for their home.
What could that kind of money buy you in upstate New York or Pennsylvania or South Carolina? Something larger, roomier and more modern, I'm sure.
So now we have to weigh the benefits of buying a home against the benefits of living here. Because, if we were to really, honestly think about becoming homeowners, it would have to be elsewhere. Even the most worn-down, crime-ridden neighborhoods of Long Island have become financially out of reach for us.
What keeps me here then? First, there's my family. My parents, my sisters, aunts and uncles and cousins that live so close we share a yard. I grew up with my cousins as my best friends, my kids now have the same. They walk out the door and there are ten kids, all related, ready to play baseball or go swimming or just hang out and play video games. It's a benefit that cannot be outweighed by anything, not even rural night skies or wide country lanes or peaceful nights without the honking of horns and the sounds of sirens disturbing the sleep.
It's the four distinct seasons with blizzard-like snowstorms and thunderous summer rains and autumn trees that light the sky on fire. It's the snow days when everyone in town gathers in the same spot and we watch our kids slide down the same hill that we tumbled down as children. It's the familiar faces at school, the music teacher that has been there since time began, the way the cashier at Burger King remarks on how much your son has grown, the way your neighbors and the local deli clerk and the postman all show up at the funeral of your grandfather.
We are in the middle of nowhere if we want to be, but in the middle of everything should we desire it. We can ensconce ourselves in the compound we created by running paths and walkways from one family house to another, and it is just us, laughing, drinking, enjoying the closeness that so few families get to share these days. Even my ex-husband, the father of my kids, lives in this town. We work down the block from each other. Our mothers work in the same library. It's not just this town itself, but the whole of this county, this township that weaves all of us together like a blended family.
We are a pleasant drive from the tip of Long Island, where we can whale watch or see beautiful sunsets and wave to passing boats. We are ten minutes from the beach, where we can swim in the Atlantic ocean until sunset and watch as the sky turns a hundred shades of beautiful.
40 minutes by car or train and we are in New York City, attending concerts, going to museums or just walking the streets and acting like tourists.
Long Island has its own museums, its own places of beauty and reverence, a whole history to explore and nature trails to walk. Aquariums, arboretums, bird sanctuaries and miles and miles of beaches, parks and woods all lay before us.
People stay here. My kids go to school with children of the people I went to school with. This is not a town that people pack up and leave in a hurry when they get married and start families. We are grounded here. We are settlers.
So I have to make a choice. Do I give up the dream of owning a home and stay here where we are happy, where my kids are thriving, where my extended family reaches beyond the boundaries of my own walls, where the entire town is my home?
Or do we pack up and leave all this and move to a less expensive place where property tax costs don't require you to have a second job and a four bedroom palace costs the same as a Long Island bungalow in deteriorating condition?
We could rent here, probably for the cost of what a mortgage would be but without the property taxes and utilities weighing us down. We could take second jobs each and buy a home but not have any time to enjoy it or to watch the children enjoy it.
We could leave Long Island, leave my hometown of East Meadow and spend the rest of my life being homesick.
I love it here. I hate the traffic, I hate the cost of living, I hate the way strip malls have permeated the highways and left not a tree standing.
But I love everything else so much - the family, the friends, the small-town feel in a rather large town - that I would spend the rest of my life cursing the crowded parkways rather than leave everything that comes with Long Island Expressway behind.
I don't have $400,000 to spend on a home that has no more room than where we live now. I have kids who are fast approaching college days. My money is earmarked for that now. So I'll defer the dream of owning my own house and live here, renting away, in the knowledge that my children will head off to college having had the best possible life - one filled with family and the comfort of a town that is honestly their own.
[If you liked this post, check back later, as I'm going to transform it into a photo essay]
Guess what book is number five (presumably with a bullet) on the Amazon France bestseller's list?
That's right - Windows on the World, the fictionalized, pornagraphic, badly written account of one man's obsession with trivializing the deaths of thousands of people.
Merde in France has another excerpt today:
8:48 AM Other possible names for the restaurant in the World Trade Center: - Windows on the Planes - Windows on the Crash - Windows on the Smoke - Broken Windows
Yesterday's excerpt was laughable for the cheesy yet disturbing dialogue.
Today's reads more like a late night comedian throwing out one-liners about 9/11, a David Letterman-esque top ten list that would draw ire instead of laughter and possibly leave the comedian running from the studio with hundreds of angry audience members holding blunt instruments trailing him.
Nevermind that the alternate names listed in that excerpt are stupid. The point is, author Beigbeder is clearly going for shock value and I imagine that he smirked in that French sort of way - maybe even sneered - when he wrote those lines, thinking he was being so clever and so daring.
I haven't been able to find a review yet, but I can review it one word with only having read the few bits and pieces translated at MiF:
Revolting.
Thank you, French readers, for making this book a big hit and proving that your sneering pomposity towards America is not some big myth.
I feel that those who have taken Instapundit's side in his war against Frank have not done enough to show their support. So I am taking matters into my own hands.
Read the whole thing below.
The nomination portion of the Worst Album Ever poll is over.
Using a series of mathematical equations, statistics stolen from the MIT computer database and the sorting hat from Harry Potter, it has become undoubtedly clear that the worst album ever by a mostly decent band is....
[insert drum roll]
U2's Zooropa!
What I actually did was use the Design Your Own Hell program and had the bands fight to the death in an all-out, click-this-space war.
It is quite the comfort to note that any Post-Hagar Van Halen is Buried for Eternity in the fourth circle of Rock and Roll Hell.
In fact, most of the albums ended up in circles of hell where the description of their afterlife suits them perfectly.
Wu-Tang - Wu Tang Forever
Circle I Limbo
Bjork - Homogenous
Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind
Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville
Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow
REM - Monster
Circle IV Rolling Weights
Guns N Roses - Use Your Illusion I & II
Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled
River Styx
Any Post-Hagar Van Halen
Circle VI Buried for Eternity
River Phlegyas
Clash - Cut the Crap
Circle VII Burning Sands
Pink Floyd - Division Bell
Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement
U2- Zooropa
Circle IX Frozen in Ice
Thanks to everyone who participated, except for the person who deemed it necessary to make a snarky comment about the album of a musician who participated in the voting. Totally unecessary.
I'm already thinking of a way to use this hell generator for another vote-a-thon.
I'm not sure if the ending was supposed to be scary, but I laughed so hard I started choking.
As for the rest of the movie, I suppose if you're stuck in the house and there's crap on tv and you just took some NyQuil combined with Motrin and you haven't eaten in three days or slept well in four nights and your mind is in the space that exists between brain dead and comatose, FD2 might provide some weak-smiled moments, most likely in the all the places where you aren't supposed to smile at all.
Conversation with my friend Barbara, who had the same virus (human, not computer) as me:
Me: It's just a mix of really weird symptoms.
B: I think it attacked every part of my body.
Me: What do you suppose it is? I bet it's some kind of terrorism!
B: Bio-chemical, I bet.
Me: Oh no, I have anthrax!
B: Anthrax? You couldn't come up with something newer than that?
Me: Hey, I'm an old school kinda girl.
B: I'm almost embarassed for you for saying that. It's so last year.
Me: Well, at least I didn't say Mad Cow. Maybe it's Monkeypox.
B: SARS...
Me: SARS is passé.
B: West Nile.
Me: Now there's a disease that never goes out of fashion.
Sad thing is, most of our conversations are like that.
Home with this nasty virus today and catching up on my blog reading and was rather taken aback by some posts.
I have this problem with bloggers of a certain political persuasion being lumped together as if they were all of one mind. We are not identical twins or triplets or quadhundreds. While we each may lean this way or that, it does not mean we are tied at the brain to each other or that our ideologies run neck and neck around the length of the global wars on terror.
I am seriously going to start distancing myself from certain rabid factions of the blogosphere.
A cease-fire relates only to firearms and missiles. It does not apply to say, bombs on buses that kill twenty people, including children.
That Palestinian dictionary sure is tricky.
Mark Morford is back from vacation. Oh, how I missed him. Looks like he spent some time in Reno, contemplating how he could use the seedy, desperate throngs of fortune-seekers to vomit up another column about how ugly Bush's America is. Using his special Distorted Vision Glasses, Morford hit triple 7's on his left-slanted slot machine.
He starts off innocently enough, comparing Reno and all of its smoky casinos and its air of despair to Hell itself, rings upon rings of different versions of a netherworld where forlorn people stare fixedly at numbers and fruits waiting for the sound of the jackpot.
And then he digresses, of course.
Here is your metaphor. Here is your ideal and painfully real analogy. The dank and stained bingo room in the Sands, in Reno. This is exactly what is happening in this country. This is what we have become.
We have become a Bingo Hall filled with middle-aged desperados, smoking and lifeless and clinging to hope that our number will come up. I think.
Because it is but a short little spiritual/psychological leap to note how we all have our bingo rooms and we all feel that soft whooshing, that sinister tug from the demons of mass cultural stasis and inertia and noxious television and poisonous junk food and Wal-Mart and BushCo squinting and trying to look all fierce and manly when he can't even pronounce the name of the latest country we're about to massacre.
He's losing me at this point. Is Bush the bingo master and we are the gray-haired, lonely people sitting with bingo markers hoping that Bush calls our number? Wal-Mart! McDonald's! Bingo!
The bingo room is in you, always. It is latent and cancerous and it is like "Everybody Loves Raymond" or born-again Christianity or the Olsen twins, weirdly tantalizing and notoriously toxic and yet part of you wants to succumb to its poisonous charms, its slow-motion heart attack, its river of Lethe.
Ok, so the bingo room is America, right? And we love it like we love the Olsen twins and if we go with the flow of that love we get poisoned and....wait, I'm still lost.
Because in the bingo room, there is no pain. There is no suffering or political bickering or gutted school budgets or taxes or screaming breakups or bad sex or rampant lies about endless wars.
So, the bingo room is crack? No, that can't be it. I don't see what this has to do with Bush's America yet. But I'm sure Morford will get there eventually. Sometimes he just takes a few paragraphs too many to get to his point.
There is only the harmless shifting of numb buttock muscles, the marking of bingo cards, and of time. There are only the tiny but endlessly alluring cash prizes, the haze of menthol smoke, a makeshift community of lostness and decay and happy emphysemic stupor, that sinking feeling that it's all going to be over soon anyway so might as well just plop down and order another white zin and wait for your number to be called. Because it always comes.
Ok, I think I got it. America, you see, is a stinking hellhole of sadness and depression and Bush is, indeed the bingo caller. And we are all just numbly sitting here waiting for Bush to call our number and when he does we commit suicide.
No, that can't be it. Oh, I see it! America sucks and Bush is the reason it does so. And we are all just smoking cigarettes and drinking wine and eating fast food and ogling Mary-Kate and Ashley while we are waiting for Bush's America to kill us because he is responsible for all of our vices, we can just blame him for the fact that we are consumers and we like Big Macs.
All of this deciphering is making me hungry. Hang on while I get some coffee and a big, hearty, greasy breakfast from Burger King.
Ok, now that I've thought about it I realize my mistake in trying to analyze Morford, much in the same way that I realized my mistake about analyzing Ted Rall. See, no matter what Ted Rall writes or draws or spews out of his mouth on Bill Maher's show, it all comes down to the same robotic gesture: Bush stole the election.
With Morford it's the same but a bit different. No matter what he writes, no matter what comes out of that deranged, juvenile mind of his, no matter how many nicknames he comes up with for Bush or how many heavy-handed metaphors he finds to describe America, it all comes down to the same gesture: He does not know how to say "America sucks and it's all your fault, Bush" in less than 500 words.
But herein lies the difference between Rall and Morford; Morford can sometimes be amusing. Where Rall is often hateful, deceitful, arrogant and deliberately mean-spirited, Morford is almost silly. Rall's columns usually leave me with a feeling of digust and reaching for the Tums.
Reading Morford's columns is more akin to standing in the hallway of an elementary school and reading the essays tacked to the wall. You point and laugh slyly at how cute and innocent the children and their grammatical and spelling errors are. You grin at the simplistic views of the worlrd. You chuckle at their artistic renditions of family members.
Rall is the obnoxious high-school kid whose ass you want to kick down the stairs. Morford is the five year old daydreamer whose head you pat while giving a knowing smile to the teacher. He's special, isn't he?
Morford: The internet's version of the kid with the helmet.
I'm going back to the couch to feel sorry for my virus infested self. Why doesn't someone make a anti-virus program for the human body? Norton's For Humans v.1.0. It would be a big seller, I bet.
Don't forget about the worst album post - I'm going to be using the Design Your Own Hell program to narrow down the contestants so you can vote on the finalists.
One question before I go: Futurama has won an emmy every year since 1999. So why did Fox cancel it instead of finding a better timeslot for the show. Yes, the obvious answer is because they are idiots, but I'm sure there is some other explanation.
UPDATE: Go cast your vote for Jim's Juxebox From Hell. Thanks, Matt.
Merde in France ("W") writes to tell me that Frédéric Beigbeder's book, Windows on the World, was officially released this morning.
You'll recall that Mr. Beigbeder's book is a fictional telling of what happened in the Windows on the World restaurant atop the World Trade Center the morning of September 11th. He made the story up because, as the teaser for the book stated: "The only way to know what happened in the restaurant at the 107th floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center on September 11 2001, between 8:30 and 10:29 AM is to make it up." You can find more of my posts about Beigbeder and the ensuing arguments here, here and here.
Well its out. Beigbeder's book was released this morning so I'll be providing unauthorized excerpts here from time to time. The book was prominently displayed along with Why are We at War?, Le monde secret de Bush : La Religion - Les Affaires - Les Réseaux occultes (The secret world of Bush : Religion - Business - Hidden networks), and the Che Guevara 'Say no to globalisation' calendar 2004. If you get the impression that the book is poorly written, take it from me, it has nothing to do with my translation.
The first translation proves that the earlier excerpts were very foretelling of the book's literary quality. That is to say, none.
- As far as I'm concerned, it's simple: forget the Porsche, I'm liquid, said the brown haired guy wearing Kenneth Cole. But I'm sure that 2002 will be better, just wait until Greenspan does his thing on the rates. - I love you, said the blond wearing Ralph Lauren. - I want to launch a hostile takeover on you, said the brown haired guy wearing Kenneth Cole. - Leave your fucking wife, said the blond wearing Ralph Lauren. - OK, I swear I'll tell her everything this evening when I get back from the health spa, said the brown haired guy wearing Kenneth Cole. And they French kissed real deep, using alot of tongue just like in the California made porno films and perfume commercials.
Perhaps my anger and outrage over the printing of this book was all in vain. If the above excerpt is any indication, the book is poorly written and almost laughable.
Still, it does exploit the real victims of 9/11 and for that, Beigbeder deserves scorn. For the dialogue and writing, he deserves ridicule. Yet this man is a bit of an icon in France, inasmuch as hating America is a faddish sort of thing to do over there.
It remains to be seen how the book sells. Should it become a bestseller, as is expected, it will speak volumes about the views of the French towards the events of 9/11 and America itself. The reviews should also be interesting.
Meanwhile, Beigbeder is still on my "people to disdain" list not just for his turning the death of thousands into third-rate porn, but for the worst love scene dialogue this side of Attack of the Clones.
As W posts more excerpts at Merde in France, I will post the English translations here. Why? Because I think it is important for us to know who is laughing and who is ridiculing the pain and suffering of so many and, most importantly, laughing all the way to the bank.
And while you are over there, read the second post down in which another French author and quasi-celebrity writes: 'Let us hope that the next [attack] will come quickly and that, in order to increase its educational efficiency, it hits stronger and more accurately.
The French are no more our allies than the Saudis puport themselves to be.
I've come down with something that my doctor has diagnosed as a slow-moving virus. I very rarely go to the doctor, so you can be sure that the symptoms I felt today made me believe that I was suffering from a rare, complicated and potentially fatal disease that would require my admittance into a specialized clinic in a faraway country immediately. I mean, stat!
Apparently it's just some run-of-the-mill virus that happens to have mutant genes and it has taken root in my head, chest, lungs, stomach, back and skin. Yes, even my skin hurts.
Isn't it funny how just the other day I was feeling fit and healthy and coincidentally I came down with a bug about the same time I was planning nasty hijinks against Frank, a/k/a The Man Who Would Defame Glenn Reynolds. I think it's very interesting that I suddenly become stricken with a nasty, perhaps even fatal bug at the same time my email has been assaulted with a nasty bug so soon after Frank himself has come down with some sickness that he probably created himself in a lab just for the purpose of smiting his enemies. I'll get you, Frank. And your little monkey, too!
There's no point in trying to post my twenty page essay on comic books, censorship and children without the appropriate links which I can't look up because well, you know the story.
So what better way to lift the tedium of all work and no play than by having my comments emailed to me after I make a post that just begs for comments?
I'm in the midst of an email discussion with a friend about the worst albums ever. I don't mean albums like William Shatner sings the Best of The Pixies, which no one in their right mind would buy, or any effort by any American Idol participant, because that reaches levels of suckiness not yet invented.
Think albums from your favorite bands. Albums that you bought with mouth-watering anticipation only to get home, tear off the wrapper, hit play and sink into an abyss of despair after realizing that your favorite band has jumped the shark.
Think of all those bands that made you wait five years in between albums, only to put out something that sounded as if it took five seconds to put together [coughweezercough].
It doesn't even have to be from a band you loved, just an album you bought that made you immediately reach for the barf bag or demand a refund.
List as many as you want and I'll try to narrow them as we go along until Friday afternoon, when the last two remaining suckfest albums from the list culled from your responses will fight to the death for the title of Worst.Album.Ever.
Even if flame wars and band-fights ensue in the comments, at least I'll be entertained while I'm chained here to my desk reading my email and wondering what the hell is going on in the world.
Have at it.
Brought to you by Lisa, the original Sister Christian.
I've arranged for my minions to help me blog today through the use of super encrypted email and double secret logins, should there be anything I have the urgent need to get off my chest or if perhaps I should overhear a great fart joke or want to discuss world views and politics.
I can quit anytime I want. Any. Time. At. All.
I was told yesterday that the age you are officially over the hill is 41. I wish I knew that sooner, for I would have spent this past year standing at the very top of the hill screaming I am king of the world! before I began my descent. As it is, I've got one foot poised on the downward slope and in five days I will officially have crossed that other side. Which is fine with me as I believe the after-40 side is the one on which the grass is greener.
It's not going to be hard to forget all the things that came before my walk down to old age. The media is flush with retro stylings and bittersweet glimpses of the past. It seems the new trend is to talk about things that are old.
I've been watching VH1's I Love the 70's. Of course I remember all the fun fads and toys like Weebles (who wobble but don't fall down) and extra-wide bellbottoms and Bo Derek's cornrows and Joe Namath's silky smooth legs. It's not just the fads and stars themselves one remembers, however. You remember every single episode of your own sit-com like life that went along with them.
If I fell down this hill and tumbled through the 60's and 70's and 80's, I would see a blurry movie of sex, drugs and rock and roll, though not so much the sex and maybe too much of the drugs. Never enough rock and roll. There would be heartache and angst and so much laughter and love and the whole thing would have a soundtrack that would sell ten million copies as people like me clamored to relive their formative years through the music of the times. Nothing shakes a memory like a song.
My neighbor Diane died this week. She was just a few years older than me and I shared part of my past with her, the most memorable event being the day when we stood in the middle of the street, screaming curses at each other for something I fail to remember right now. Most of the kids on the block were out there watching as I flailed my arms in that Italian way while shouting that Diane was a bitch and a whore and then she called me that unspeakable word that girls sometimes call each other and I think the whole neighborhood gasped at once. Diane's mother came out of the house and dragged Diane in by her hair and that was the end of the show.
I saw Diane's mother yesterday at the wake and we talked a bit, but we talked about her grandson, who is 13 years old and now stands 6'2", and we talked about getting old and how the golden years aren't so golden when you're using a walker to get around and your knees won't bend anymore. We talked about everything but Diane because the only thing I could remember about her was the incident in the street and I don't think her mother wanted to relive that moment when everyone in town heard her daughter use that nasty word.
Diane's son was there. He must be about 16 now and he looked somber yet so very adult-like as he greeted mourners at the door and thanked them for coming and asked them to sign the guest book so he would know who came. It broke my heart to see this kid becoming a man for all the wrong reasons. Some day when he is standing at the top of this hill of ages and looking back at his youth, this is probably what he will remember most, the day he had to dress up and accept a million I'm sorrys for the death of his mother.
I saw some old neighbors in the funeral home, people who still, after all these years, give me the creeps and make me want to crawl into a corner and hide. They represent the worst times, the worst emotions of my growing up and growing bitter days and I still resent them with all the force of a speeding tornado. I don't forgive because they never asked and anytime I see one of them, I look them in the eyes to search for some glint of shame or spark of apology and there is nothing there, as if it all didn't matter to them. I'm sure when they looked down the younger side of their hills, they skipped right over the rocks and stones that represent their small torturings of me.
I suppose I should look past that as well and focus on the summer days spent barefoot and the winter days wading through snowdrifts as high as my waist and the sweet smell of the mimeograph copier in the principal's office or my mother teaching us how to play real Brooklyn style stickball. Sundays at grandma's and weeks spent upstate searching for snakes under rocks and driving down to Florida in a the brown station wagon while we sat in the back and made peace signs out the window to other drivers.
I turn towards the other side of the hill now and look down towards my kids getting older and sweeter and smarter, to weddings and births and new challenges that all my experiences have taught me to deal with. One year of a new marraige under my belt and so many to go, and they all are over that hill. It seems like a pretty good place to spend the rest of my life and as I start thinking about new directions and finally setting out to accomplish the goals I set for myself and looking around and seeing all the people who will accompany me on this walk down the second half of my life, I can't help but smile, welcome it and enjoy the feel of the grassy slope on my bare feet.
Is armeggedon on the way? You be the judge. Some headlines from Drudge:
FLASH FLOODS HIT VEGAS...
BOMB BLAST BAGHDAD...
Jerusalem Bus Bomb Kills 20+...
Blackout Fears Loom in Ontario as Mercury to Rise...
Health officials: Be alert for mosquito-borne illnesses...
New Computer Virus snarls whacks Air Canada...
SHARK ATTACK OFF CENTRAL CALIF. COAST...
RADIO'S SAVAGE GETS NEW YORK CLEARANCE...
It's a great time to be alive, eh?
00:16 Witnesses: Hundreds take to streets of Palestinian camp in Lebanon, hand out sweets to celebrate Jerusalem attack.
The terrorist suicide bomber's wife:
Arij Mesk said she was not sad. "God gave Raed something he always dreamed of. All of his life he dreamed of being a martyr," she said. The couple has two children, ages two and three.
Lovely people. Just lovely.
[both links via lgf]
This would be a good time to donate to Magen David Adom if you haven't already. Remember, they don't discriminate. They would just as soon save the life of one of the creatures dancing in celebration at the death of children as they would a child blown out of a bus by a terrorist.
Where the hell did all this virus email come from today and what kind of idiot thinks I'm going to open it?
I'm not ignoring the fact that there was a lot of terrible news today. I just don't feel like writing about it.
Command Post has you covered in those areas. I'm angry and upset over today's events. Guess which event the anger goes with?
Oh, If you're looking for an explanation as to why I no longer have internet access at work, it's too long and boring a story to go into. Bottom line: we weren't supposed to have it to begin with and I most likely won't miss it too much as I'm pretty busy these days.
Besides, my sister can always post for me. Where there's a will there's a way, you know.
Yea, I can stop blogging any time I want to.
Really. I mean it.
I could start a band with some of the defendants showing up at my place of work next month.
On September 6 the drummer for Iron Maiden, Nicko McBrain will be making his appearance at court. McBrain was arrested last month for trying to run down a parking attendant at Jones Beach, where the band was performing.
On September 29, Phish bassist Mike Gordon will be our guest in arraignment. Gordon was "charged with endangering the welfare of a minor and trespassing following a concert by The Dead at Jones Beach Theater."
All this and the Sex Pistols and Chili Peppers haven't even gotten to Long Island yet.
My days of internet access at work are over, which means lots of dead air for this blog on weekdays.
I consoled myself by leaving work and spending $400 at BJ's (think Costco for those who don't know what BJ's is) which is not much consolation at all considering it was mostly food, paper goods and cleaning supplies. I did pick up the Futurama Season 2 DVD, so all is not lost.
And now I have to go to a wake.
You're all gonna leave me now that my blog time is cut in half, aren't you? I promise to make it up to you during the evening hours, I swear...don't go.....hey, wait! Where are you going? Don't go to that blog, it's not half as...
Eh, whatever.
Please Stand By.
Actually, Michele's server (at her job) is down. Please check back, and check back often. Your mind may depend on it...
[Posted by Michele's sister Lisa]
I suppose I could do this all day. There isn't enough room in hell to condemn all the people I loathe to eternal damnation. But I must say, I got off to a good start:
Hipsters
Circle I Limbo
Greens
Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind
General asshats
Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow
Arianna Huffington
Circle IV Rolling Weights
Mark Morford
Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled
River Styx
PETA Members
Circle VI Buried for Eternity
River Phlegyas
The Pope
Circle VII Burning Sands
Militant Vegans
Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement
Ted Rall
Circle IX Frozen in Ice
Have you ever read a novel that is written so poorly, you cringe when you read it?
I'm reading Jeffrey Deaver's The Blue Nowhere. The paragraphs are filled with cliches, the descriptive narrative is in the style of third-grade essays and the action is tedious. Even the lingo of the hacking community inspired plot feels forced and almost like name-dropping (lingo dropping?).
I keep reading because it's the only book in the house I haven't read yet and because the author has written at least a dozen other books, including one made into a major motion picture that wasn't half bad, so I feel like I must be missing something by not enjoying this one.
I have this habit of completing books even though it's a chore to get through them. Maybe I'll find something redeeming as I go on. I hate to think that someday I'll finally publish a book and some hack with a weblog will be unapologetically tearing it apart.
Which is why I'm being apologetic about it. Karma is a bitch.
I'm convinced Bill O'Reilly lives in an alternate reality, one where everyone agrees with him and watches Fox News 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Most of that time is spent waiting with bated breath for The O'Reilly Factor to come on because he is the only important thing that exists in the World of Bill.
O'Reilly is still a bit pissed at Al Franken, it appears, and he's also upset that there are some people out there who would dare to say bad things about O'Reilly and his beloved Fox News.
It makes me sick to see intellectually dishonest individuals hide behind the First Amendment to spread propaganda, libel and slander. But this is a growing trend in America, where the exchange of ideas often degenerates into verbal mud wrestling with intent to injure.
See, if you read that quote out of context of O'Reilly's opinion article, you just might think he was talking about the Princess of Darkness herself, Ann Coulter and not Al Franken.
I think you all know what side of the imaginary political ideology line I stand on. But I am not blind, nor am I deaf and I certainly don't see the world through Fox-colored glasses.
O'Reilly sees the world in terms of what he believes to be right, true and just. Unfortunately, not everyone sees it the same way as him and rather than let others have their say, O'Reilly does nothing but condemn them for not living in his little slice of reality. For a man who spends a good portion of his career interviewing people, he does an awful lot of foaming at the mouth while his interview subjects are basically gagged and tied.
O'Reilly continues:
This country is a better place because Fox News has succeeded. Now there is a wider range of thought and expression available 2-4/7. But the country is worse off because of the brutal repercussions of that success. A nation that prides itself on diversity of opinion and acceptance of differing political points of view is being subjected to an orgy of media defamation and sometimes outright hatred.
O'Reilly is suffering from delusions of grandeur. While I am a viewer of Fox News, I cannot come up with one single way in which this country is a better place because Fox exists. That is such a grandiose statement so full of hot air that it could fan the flame wars of Democratic Undeground forever.
Yes, the media is biased. Some of it is liberal bias and some of it (Sean Hannity and O'Reilly himself come to mind) is conservative bias, filled with blind loyalty to an administration that does not always deserve it. But that's America. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press and all that. O'Reilly should know that. We can turn on any channel at any time and see or hear a variety of views on a variety of subject and sometimes you won't even get the same views twice. Some views will be liberal and some will be conservative and that's why there's 300 channels on my television. And I'm ok with that because I like choice.
I'm no fan of Al Franken; I've always found him more droll and boring than funny. But O'Reilly has taken this war of words to histrionic proportions.
Using liberal-leaning newspapers and publishing houses, the critics of Fox have unleashed defamatory personal attacks on me and other Fox news analysts and have attempted to denigrate the entire network. If Fox News crashed and burned tomorrow, these people would toast marshmallows in the flames.
So what? We're talking about a news channel here. I laugh at MSNBC's ratings and I bet O'Reilly does too, which makes him a bit of a marshmallow toaster himself. And Bill is hardly clean in the personal attack category. In fact, every interview he does with a liberal is nothing but a personal attack. Even when I abhor the person O'Reilly is interviewing, I still cringe at his tactics because it makes everyone who agrees with O'Reilly look bad. He comes off as an arrogant, pompous, overbearing ass most of the time.
Why does O'Reilly not complain about Coulter using right-leaning newspapers and publishing houses to denigrate her opponents? Because Coulter's opponents are O'Reilly's opponents and I guess what's good for the goose is not good for the gander in the World of Bill.
If O'Reilly was as smart and astute as he claims to be, he would shut up now before his alternate world comes crashing down around him as even the most ultra conservatives who live and breathe Fox News will be forced to admit that O'Reilly is nothing but an egotistical bore who probably kisses himself to sleep at night.
The Blackout was 'a Realization of bin Laden's Promise to Offer the Iraqi People a Present'
"A communiqué attributed to Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the power blackout that happened in the U.S. last Thursday, saying that the brigades of Abu Fahes Al Masri had hit two main power plants supplying the East of the U.S., as well as major industrial cities in the U.S. and Canada, 'its ally in the war against Islam (New York and Toronto) and their neighbors.'
If you find that all hard to swallow, there's always the UFO theory.
The best cure for the Monday "I want to stab someone in the face" blues is to go to the gym.
I'm telling you, this [joining the gym] is the best thing I ever did. Even though my arms hurt and my abs ache, I'm not just looking better, but feeling better.
Which means it's time for my every-six-months bout of the "I have to quit smoking again" blues.
Here I go again.
What would a Monday be without irritation, anger and general hatred for all of humanity?
I was exchanging emails with Faith this morning and I mentioned that I was looking for volunteers for an experiment. It's called the great I Want To Stab Someone In The Face Today experiment.
Seeing as that Faith blogged that I was looking for participants, I felt the urgent need to write something about it.
Is there someone you would like to volunteer for this great undertaking of mine? And should I use a spork or a rusty nail?
I promise that when I do get around to venting my anger on an unsuspecting victim, your name will remain anonymous, should I choose to use your victim.
Anyone who volunteers Chirac has to pay the airfare.
[This offer not valid for convicts, ex-convicts, parolees, Red Sox fans or the French. Void where prohibited. Side effects of participating in this experiment may include incarceration, death or gastrointestinal bloating]
11:30 a.m. and I've got two long rants under my belt already.
Time for something else.
Will my fascination with zombies haunt me forever?
YOU EAT PEOPLE!!!
what's YOUR deepest secret?
brought to you by Quizilla
You would do best to remember this if I ever invite you over for dinner.
[via reader Amy]
Faith rips David Appell a new one, and rightfully so.
David writes about The Blackout (you know that get's capitalized now, right?) and starts off by saying:
OK, the blackout is over. So what, really, was all the fuss about? A few NYers couldn't make it home Thursday night and had to sleep on the steps of the Post Office. This is a good thing--losing one's bed makes one appreciate it all the more when you do eventually land in it.
You can just hear the cliches rumbling out of that sentence. There are people starving in Africa. There are poor people in Ethiopa. Eat your vegetables. Appreciate that meager allowance you get, kid.
When I wrote about my experience with The Blackout, it was my experience, nobody's else's. I was lucky to be at safe at home, with my friends and family and a pizza delivery guy willing to brave the broken traffic lights so I could eat. Poolside, no less.
Yet I knew that other people were not having the same experience as me. People stuck in subways and elevators, hospitals whose backup power did not come on right away, elderly and sick people stuck in the heat and humidity without much needed air conditioning, the hundreds of people involved in traffic accidents due to the lights being down, just to name a few. People did die. I guess Appell just chose not to track those stories down before he went on his "America is spoiled" tirade:
We're a deeply spoiled country. We think hardship is 24 hours without electricity, with little idea what real pain and suffering might entail, or how much of the rest of the world lives. (Do you realize that one billion people live with no shoes?)
Why oh why must people always invoke the "there are those less fortunate than you, damn it!" when something like this strikes? Just because we complain about our 24 hour loss of electricity does not mean we are not attuned to our fellow planet inhabiters. I don't recall anyone on the news using the words "pain and suffering." though I'm sure the little girl stuck in the elevator for three hours might have been thinking along those lines. And I'm quite sure that the businesses that lost a large amount of money in those blackened hours certainly are suffering.
Here's the kicker - David was not even in a place where a blackout occurred. No, he was in another state that was still flush with the glow of lights and air conditioning and working traffic lights. But that didn't stop him from taking the time to point his finger and say "shame on you" to New Yorkers inparticular.
The man is a professional scientific writer who still believes in the fairy tale of global warming, so maybe we should cut him a little slack.
Besides, if you want to talk pain and suffering, I know someone who was stuck in a room with Hillary Clinton when the lights went out.
Violent activism is not something new. Back in the 60's, a radical group known as the Weathermen - an offshoot of Students for a Democratic Society - decided to protest the violence in Vietnam by being equally violent.
The first national action of the Weather Underground occurred on October 8, 1969 in Chicago, in a four day protest against the Vietnam War known as the "Days of Rage." Hundreds of members used clubs and chains to vandalize shops and cars in Chicago’s business district.
March, 1970:
In the basement of a member’s Greenwich Village townhouse in New York City, members had created a bomb factory.
Three Weather Undeground members died while preparing a bomb.
Bomb manufacturing heightened, and in May of 1970, the Weather Underground issued a 'declaration of war:" "Within the next fourteen days we will attack a symbol or institution of American justice. This is the way we celebrate the example of Eldridge Cleaver and H. Rap Brown, and all black revolutionaries who first inspired us by their fight behind enemy lines for the liberation of their people." The group’s declaration proved to be true, as they soon bombed the headquarters of the New York Police Department and the barber shop at the U.S. Capitol Building. Twenty more bombings occurred between 1970 and 1975.
In Friday's Washington Post, staff writer Desson Howe reviewed a documentary, The Weather Undeground. It wasn't so much a review; it was more like eight paragraphs of an apologetic look at the radical group and one paragraph about the film.
THEY HAVE weathered, almost Mount Rushmore-like faces: Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers and Mark Rudd. Without even listening to their words, you can read auspicious histories in their middle-aged faces. What they did in their youth -- the terrible follies and short-lived glories -- is the intriguing subject of "The Weather Underground," a documentary about a social protest group that literally declared war on the United States government.
"Follies" would be the understatement of the century. Bomb making and inciting riots hardly qualify as youthful follies. Nor do they qualify as glories. To compare the faces of these extremists to the faces on Mount Rushmore is evidence of either a seriously overwrought writing technique or very telling of which side of the law the author would have cheered for in 1969.
Make no mistake about the goals of the Weathermen. In this Reason article from June 2003, Mark Rudd, a former member of the band of merry bombmakers, says:
When Vietnam comes up, my students will ask me: 'What did you do in the 60s?" Rudd says. "Well ... I helped found an organization dedicated to the violent overthrow of the United States government." [emphasis mine]
In the Post piece, Howe states:
But under the leadership of mostly upper-class white kids, the breakaway movement was mainly a tragic, disaster-prone endeavor as the Weathermen conducted guerilla-style bombings around the country, targeting government and other establishment buildings (including the U.S. Capitol). Although they took great pains to ensure those buildings were empty of people, they soon became pariahs to more people than they bargained for.
They took great pains to ensure those buildings were empty of people....
I suppose this is meant to invoke some sort of sympathy for the bombers. The qualifying word there is although, making it appear as if the author would want us to believe that they were humane bombers.
But for their uncompromising idealism, they paid the price of Rip Van Winkle. Emerging after years of hiding (when they surrendered, individual by individual, to federal authorities in the late 1980s and 1990s), they returned to an America that had long since passed them by.
Ah, uncompromising idealism. The hallmark of extremists everywhere. As long as you are fighting for your ideals, not compromising with say, the law, is justified.
I certainly would like to know more about the film itself and the makers of the documentary piece. I know nothing about it except that it will make you appreciate the bittersweet vision of hindsight.
Yes, something along the lines of "Gee, maybe blowing up federal buildings wasn't such a great idea after all."
Perhaps some day in the future there will be a similar documentary about ELF, ALF, PETA and all the violent protesters of the WTO and their window-smashing activism. And from certain media outlets we can expect a sympathetic look at the plight of the misguided youth who were only setting fire to buildings because of their uncompromising idealism.
--Marc Almond/Soft Cell - Say Hello, Wave Goodbye
This is probably the greatest breakup song ever written.
Aside from the warm fuzzy memories I get from this song (black leather skirt, spiked hair, ridiculous lipstick, dancing at Spit), it has the most biting, sneering yet lovelorn lyrics.
Lyrics below. Don't read the lyrics without listening to the song. Marc Almond's voice conveys both contempt and heartache so perfectly pitched, it could tear you apart.
Standing in the door of the pink flamingo
crying in the rain.
It was a kind of so-so-love and I'm gonna make sure
It never happens again.
You and I - it had to be the standing joke of the year
You were a sleep-around
a lost-and-found and not for me - I fear
I tried to make it work
you in a cocktail-skirt
And me in a suit (well
it just wasn't me).
You're used to wearing less and now your life's a mess -
So insecure you see.
I put up with all the scenes and this is one scene
That's going to be played my way.
Take your hands off me
I don't belong to you
you see.
Take a look at my face for the last time -
I never knew you - you never knew me.
Say hello
goodbye - say hello
wave goodbye.
Under the deep red light I can see the make-up sliding down.
Hey little girl
you will always make up
So take off that unbecoming frown
what about me?
Well I'll find someone that's not going cheap in the sales
A nice little house-wife who'll give me a steady life
And won't keep going off the rails.
Take your hands off me
I don't belong to you
you see. . . .
We've been involved for quite a while now
And to keep you secret has been hell.
We're strangers meeting for the first time
o.k.?
Just smile and say "hello" -
Say hello
then wave goodbye - say hello
then wave goodbye
Say hello
then wave goodbye - .
Whenever I'm feeling the weight of writer's block, I take out the camera. I just shoot whatever is around me at the moment, getting a little creative with the settings sometimes, and then write about at least one of the photos.
[click for bigger images]
I took these three photos of the same statue about an hour ago, as the sky and the clouds were doing a color dance of yellows, grays and browns - what I call a wicked storm a-comin' sky.
As I looked at the results, a story took shape in my head. You can look forward(?) to that tomorrow, meanwhile I thought I'd share the photos with you and see what kind of thoughts you conjure up from them.
Meanwhile, this girl's story is almost done, but you won't see that until September 11th or so.
Imagine paying fifty dollars for the privilege of standing in line.
That's exactly what you are doing if you are on the wait-list for New York Jets season tickets.
From Phil Mushnick, New York Post sportswriter:
In the 20-plus years this column has addressed sports-based extortions, we've never experienced a greater nor angrier response to a fleecing than in the last week, after the Jets quietly decided to charge the roughly 22,000 people on their season-tickets waiting list a $50 annual fee. That figures to be roughly $1 million a year. You can do hard time for stealing a million bucks, no?
Imagine if your local movie theater or concert arena asked you to pay for standing in line for tickets, even if you may never get those tickets. I think there is a correct phrase for this: rip-off.
So why are the Jets allowed to get away with this? Let's see what Jets president Jay Cross has to say:
This week [Cross] explained the $50 annual charge as a means to "keep them in the family" and a way to "treat them like valued customers, even though they're in waiting."
Excuse me? I guess all those college courses I took in sports marketing and sports arena management neglected to mention that you can show a fan how much you value them by robbing them. Silly me, I thought you were supposed to treat them as if you thought they had brains.
When Leon Hess owned the Jets I observed my hatred towards the man by never going to Hess gas station. Never even bought one of those ubiquitous Hess Trucks. I know it didn't make a dent in old Leon's moneybags, but it made me feel like I was doing something instead of just sitting on the sidelines stewing.
Mushnick wants to employ similar tactics against the current owner of the team:
The Jets are owned by Robert Wood (Woody) Johnson IV, of Johnson & Johnson fame and fortune. My suggestion is for people on the Jets' waiting list to send in their $50 bucks and include a written and sincere vow to spend a lot less - perhaps even hundreds of dollars less per year - on Johnson & Johnson products.
While I am not a season-ticket holder in waiting and no one is asking me for fifty bucks, I am still outraged at the audacity of the Jets to think that charging people for absolutely nothing is ok.
This is the time of Jets Fest. Jets training camp operates out of Hofstra University, just five minutes from my front door. We go every year and enjoy the games and displays they have set up and watch the Jets train and scrimmage.
This time, I have a different plan. I am going to head over there with bows and arrows (shut up, I'll find them somewhere) and I am going to attach Monopoly $50 bills to the end of the arrows and I'm going to shoot them into the big, inflatable Jet that sits outside of Hofstra. On those fake bills, I will be sure to write some kind of message like, oh, "Fuck you, you greedy bastards. I hope Shockey breaks his leg and the Jets lose every game this season and Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder is the target of an ugly rumor about anthrax and terrorists."
Or maybe I'll just write them an angry letter.
Today is Late Final day.
Sometimes I'll go to a blog on my blogroll and wonder why there are no comments and why the blog does not have a bigger audience.
So I decided to do something useful with my traffic and - pardon the phrase that might make you think of a really crappy movie - pay it foward. I'll point you toward one of these blogs each day. Maybe two. Or three.
For now, please go read Late Final. Ed Moltzen is interesting, informative, intelligent and writes on a host of subjects, mostly politics and news. He has recurring themes such as Death Row Watch, California's Law and Order Deficit and a Corrpution Watch. He also adds baseball, music and book reviews into the mix. He throws out links to plenty of other blogs - some of you may find yourself if you read through his posts - and not a day goes by that I don't find something at Late Final that I didn't know about.
Please, leave him some comments, let him know you dropped by and think about adding him to your blogroll.
Go, read. I want to see evidence that you were there.
If you know of a blog that doesn't get the amount of attention you think it deserves, please let me know and I'll highlight it.
WASHINGTON — Some members of the Green Party are reserving much of their anger for Democrats these days, and say they don’t care if another third-party run by Ralph Nader wrecks the Democrats' opportunity to replace President Bush in 2004.
Yippee. That would give us four more years of Ted Rall bitching about a ruined election. Way to go, Greenies.
Buzz writes today:
I guess it all started with the whole Idi Amin thing. You know, the coma, the death, the stories of his life (the bastard!). The stories of how the Saudis kept him in relative luxury because he was a Muslim.
The Saudis. That's where my confusion comes in. The more I read about that nation, the more I don't understand why they are our friends. They seem (to my pea brain anyway) like the bad guys. What am I missing? This isn't just because of the oil, is it?
So, can anyone help me out here? *cough* Michele *cough* Anyone at all?
Would anyone like to contribute to the Educate Buzz on the Saudis class today?
Maybe I'm related to Barnabas Collins!
[via chad]
Of course, I could basically play with the code and fix this up to fit my purposes in the Great War:
Two images taken from NYC Indymedia, both by noted Anti-American Latuff.
[click for bigger images]
Discuss amongst yourselves.
I'm very disturbed by something I read today.
Making assumptions and passing them off as truth is a poor reflection on someone's character. Believing those assumptions without proof or facts makes you no better.
I don't understand how people can be so cruel and unfeeling as to create havoc and distress in another person's life based on nothing but innuendos and rumors.
I've been the victim of rumors myself. I've been at the receiving ends of lies and malicious gossip. Thankfully, no one acted on those lies and I was left only with simmering anger and a lingering feeling of unease that just a few words typed on a keyboard could smear a person's character forever. Even if those words are lies.
Words are powerful things, whether they are true or not. All it takes is one gullible, naive person to believe those lies and spread them around like tar and then the instigator can sit back and watch while the feathers fly, grinning mischeviously.
To have a family nearly destroyed because someone has chosen to take a personal battle into a public arena and use a vague notion of reality to fan the flames is unseemly and nauseating.
The old adage "think before you speak" has taken on new life in this electronic age. Think before you write now applies as well.
It is so easy to cast aspersions on someone else. What scares me is how easily some people soak up those dispersions and pass them on without ever questioning or asking for proof. Everyone involved in this chain of events that led to Child Proctetion Services needlessly knocking on someone's door should be ashamed. If you think you were acting in the best interest of this person's children, then you really need to turn off your computer and and find another hobby. It would be too easy for you to do this again, turning your inner anger against someone else, using another person and their life as an outlet for whatever is ailing your soul.
Please do not ask for a link to the respective participants. You will not get it from me. I did not want to get involved, but the ugliness of this situation has all but ruined my Sunday. I consider that small potatoes, considering that a family was almost destroyed yesterday.
The fact that CPS found absolutely no basis for the complaint speaks volumes and answers any questions about proof, facts and sick revenge.
"Armando Benitez!" my grandchildren will gasp, "He's history's greatest monster!"
I was going to write about the Yankees' wild weekend, but instead of regaling you with my string of obscenities and a novel-length diatrabe on how wins are a beautiful thing but when you analyze them, it's sort of like looking at Cameron Diaz on a High Definition TV and realizing that her face is covered with zits and wrinkles and weird blotches, I'm just going to make you go and read Larry Mahnken's futuristic tale of a Yankee fan, his grandchildren and Aaron Boone, the suckiest suck that ever sucked.
Drink alert.
Now that Idi Amin is dead, can we find a way to make sure Fred Phelps goes next? [caution, link goes to a PDF of a Phelps press release about protesting the opening of the Harvey Milk school in New York, complete with the usual hateful wording]
I would love to see the look on his face when he tries to get into the gates of whatever heaven he thinks awaits him and finds himself locked out. If there is a god, there will be a sign waiting for Phelps that says God Hates You, Fred.
I may not believe in an afterlife, but I do believe in karma. Someday Phelps will feel all the hatred he spreads in the form of exruciating pain. One can hope, at least.
[via Uffish Thoughts, who has some great tips and links on how to counter-protest Phelps]
I felt a great disturbance in the force today and a message came to me from on high: Stake your claim. Make your stance. Trust your feelings, you know them to be true.
And to beat another movie/book analogy to death, I am heading to Colorado to join the war against Randall Flagg.
Yes, that's right....
I am wearing my allegiance on my sleeve boobs:
Sorry Frank, but I got three emails from Glenn today. I got zero from you. I guess you didn't want me to be your evil henchman as much as you claimed last month.
Finding something to blog about on a Saturday night, of course.
Did you know there's a war going on? No, not that one.
Frank J.has declared war on Glenn Reynolds. He wants to know whose side you are on.
Glenn has warned Frank that resistance is futile, but Frank seems intent on winning this one.
While everyone lines up on either side of the blog fence, I am declaring that I am Switzerland on this one. Neutral, fair and balanced. For now.
If anyone can convince me why I should side with one or the other, I may consider taking a biased stance in this war. But I need incontrovertable proof that one is more evil than the other, or that siding with one over the other will somehow benefit me in the end.
Also, bribes are accepted. Frank has offered those in his alliance bags filled with money, but I think he's a liar. But Glenn hasn't answered my email from Friday, so I can always hold that against him. Lawyer v. gun nut. Sword wielder v. link wielder. Professor v.....what is it Frank does for a living anyhow? Besides stand around pretending he's a jedi knight?
I'm only doing this because I've received several "I am going to buy you a birthday present whether you like it or not" emails.
In all honesty your coming here, reading and commenting is really a gift that I treasure every day, and I don't care how treacly that sounds, it's true. I also value the friendships I have made through this site as lasting gifts.
However, if you are so inclined, I do have a wishlist and the link is over to the right on the sidebar.
If you are tempted to throw something into my tip jar, you could give me a greater gift instead and donate something to Magen David Adom .
Thank you for all the wonderful pre-birthday/annivesary wishes I've received so far.
Here's one way to get rid of a player on your favorite team who is just weighing the team down:
A frustrated New York Yankees fan has taken his displeasure of pitcher Jeff Weaver to the Internet. The fan is trying to use eBay to auction off the struggling right-hander, who's 6-and-9 with a hefty 5.78 ERA this year.
I guess I wasn't the only one disgusted and frustrated after Weaver's latest outing - an 11-0 loss to the Royals. My mother and I argued over this - she says Weaver never gets support and she feels sorry for him. My argument is simple: he sucks.
The fan -- known as "free range veal" on eBay, describes Weaver as a pitcher "in fair-to-good condition, hardly used and showing minor wear." He notes that he'll only sell Weaver to Boston, the Yankees' chief rival in the American League East.
Although, he'll also accept a white turtle neck and a bag of batting practice balls in lieu of payment for Weaver.
Hell, I would take a firm handshake and a promise that they wouldn't try to return him. Keep the shirt and balls.
So, about that $400 check I got from the nice government people, which I was first going to use for back to school shopping and then I was going to spend the whole thing at Best Buy....I decided to give each kid $200 instead. There are things each of them had been saving for and I figured I would reward them for their good saving habits by adding to their bankroll.
I am most likely insane for doing that because the thing DJ was saving for is an electric guitar. And now he owns one.
He spent two days doing research online, talking to his guitar playing buddies and debating exactly what he wanted. He finally picked out everything, from the guitar to picks to the strap and amp, wrote it all down and came up with the exact cost. I gave his father the money and he took him yesterday to make his purchase.
So now, my son has his guitar. And I may never have peace again. Keep in mind that Natalie plays the drums.
DJ is pretty adept at playing by ear, basically hearing something and being able to recreate it on whatever instrument he picks up (before the guitar, he used his Casio keyboard). He also reads music (yes, they still teach music theory in elementary school). I think I'll still hook him up with some lesson, though.
So, I called his father's house this morning and spoke to my ex-mother-in-law (whom I still adore). She said that DJ has spent the morning perfecting his punk rock look and manner, snarling and jumping around and playing along to his Sum 41 and AFI CDs. Great, I'm sure my neighbors are going to just love this.
I wonder when he's going to ask for his first tattoo.
Hey, Dr. Frank, if you ever need a new guitar player, I'll ship DJ over there for free! Overnight delivery!
And they say there's never anything good in the news.
It's unfortunate that the former President of Uganda will now share a "died on" date with the former King of Rock -n- Roll.
More on Idi later. For now, I offer a repeat of last year's Elvis post on the anniversary of his death:
It was one of those moments when you say something you know you shouldn't. But I couldn't help myself. I was fourteen and still in the throes of teenage-girl-smart-ass disease.
25 years ago tomorrow, I was sitting in the backyard listening to the radio when I heard the news. I went inside and found my mother in her room, making her bed.
"Hey, mom. Guess you won't be going to that Elvis concert next week."
"What?"
"He's dead."
I may have snickered, I don't know.
Mom ran into the bathroom and turned on the little radio she kept in there. I remember the voice. I remember the exact sound of the tinny, staticy voice that relayed the news to my mother in a much softer way than I did.
Elvis was dead.
My mother's eyes filled with tears and despair while her face registered only that small "o" one's mouth makes when they hear shocking news. That "o" stayed there for a while, but the despair in her eyes had become hard and angry. She was pissed at me.
How could I have told her like that, knowing that she idolized Elvis in a pure, passionate way? How could I do that? What kind of daughter was i?
Well, I was fourteen. That's my only excuse.
I was a fourteen year old whose mother made fun of her own idolization of another self-obsessed, overly dramatic singer who similarly became a bloated replica of himself. And later, dead and bloated. Maybe it was my way of evening up the score.
My mother had this friend Noreen. Noreen was the largest woman I ever knew. Not just heavy large, but tall and wide and her hair was piled up on her head so she looked even taller. Her voice roared even when she whispered and her sneezes were legend in the neighborhood, said to be heard from at least three blocks away. She wore mumus and housecoats and tons of hairspray and sometimes she wore an ugly fur coat that made her look like a small woodland creature was nesting on her shouler.
Noreen and my mom were the Elvis duo. They worshiped him. They loved him. They knew everything about him and owned everything to do with him including Elvis commemorative plates and I think one of them had an Elvis wristwatch.
I grew up with Elvis's hips grinding in my face and his voice grinding in my ears and I have to admit that at some point, I realized what the attraction was. When I would lay in bed on summer nights, trying to sleep while my mother and Noreen and the rest of their crew played Pinochle in the kitchen and had Elvis on the stereo, I knew. His voice would come drifting into my room and I could feel the sensuality, the danger, the passion that lied within his words.
I would never tell anyone this, of course. I went about my daily business of bowing before Jim Morrison and Robert Plant and never let on that I thought Elvis was cool. Especially to my mother. That would just ruin the taut, tenous relationship that we both thrived on. Who was I to break the rite of passage of mother-teenage daughter bitterness and anger?
Noreen and my mother were going to see Elvis in August, 1977 at the Nassau Coliseum. They had seen him many times before but this one was special. They had a feeling this would be his last tour ever.
They were like little giddy school girls in the weeks leading up to the show. Sometimes my mother would take out her ticket and look at it. As I write this I realize that my mother was 39 at the time. The same age I am now. When I was fourteen, 39 was old and withered and wrinkled. 39 was too old to be getting worked up over a hip-shaking idol. Yet, here I am at 39 and I'm not old or withered or wrinkled and I would certainly get worked up over my hip-gyrating idol.
She was so happy. And I crushed her world. It would have been a much softer blow if it came from Cousin Brucie or Uncle somebody on whichever oldies station she was listening to. It would have been a bit easier to take if her teenage bag of hormones didn't make some smarmy remark about dying like a fat, beached whale.
When Noreen found out we heard her from two blocks away, bellowing and carrying on. Her booming voice sounded through the neighborhood like a siren, a mourning call for all Elvis fans in East Meadow to gather on her lawn and weep.
Not really. But it was something like that. I don't think my mother ever told Noreen the way in which she found out about the death of their hero. I probably wouldn't have lived to tell this tale if she knew. She would have kicked my ass all over town.
When Noreen died, my first thought was that she would finally get to see Elvis again. My second was that I was now safe from my mother ever spilling the beans to Noreen about my youthful indiscretion.
25 years later,my mother still has not forgiven me. Maybe that's what drives every argument we have, every nit-picky little fight we endure. Maybe she's still mad at me. I know she still resents it, still thinks about because yesterday she told my daughter that I laughed at her when Elvis died.
I didn't laugh. I may have snickered a little. Maybe.
I sent an email to my mother this morning:
I'm sorry, mom. I'm sorry I told you like that. But in a way it's your fault for making me sit through Viva Las Vegas and Jailhouse Rock, for forcing that horrid "In the Ghetto" on my ears, for making me tried fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches.It's been 25 years, mom. I promise to play Elvis at my wedding next week if you promise to get over it already. Deal?
Maybe I should reword that.
[My personal account of the blackout is here.]
Lost in the blackout news - at least to me - is the fact that today is Fair and Balanced Day.
I did not have a Fair and Balanced sleep last night. In fact, I slept perhaps an hour. I am now going to have a Fair and Balanced nap, as the kids have been shipped to their father's for the weekend as part of our Fair and Balanced divorce decree.
First, I will have a not quite so Fair and Balanced rum and coke, as it is mostly rum, very little (cherry) coke. And then I will pass out and return later for more Fair and Balanced coverage of The Great Blackout of 2003, as well as the usual Friday night Fair and Balanced inane blogging.
Great comic from Cox & Forkum today.
In answer to the question the strip asks (any way can blame this on Bush?), the bats are it already:
This column on how Bush is at fault and this Indymedia post:
Maybe it's just a failed attempt by the electric companies to create a fake power shortage in order to ramp up electric rates, like Enron and the California electric companies pulled a while back, robbing the people of California of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Of course, there's always the lovely Democratic Underground, the mossy basement of the internet where conspiracy theories grow and are nutured.
From Kevin Patrick, of the BushCheney 2004 Weblog:
"The report we issued last month presented more than 100 recommendations covering virtually the entire range of concerns that face the American people. One of the concerns, obviously, is the aging power grid and the growing problem that we have in getting electricity from the power plant to the light switch. It's clear that we must upgrade and expand the power grid. If we put more connections in place, we'll go a long way towards avoiding future blackouts. Another broad aim is to increase energy supplies from diverse sources; from oil and gas, renewables, coal, hydro and nuclear. This is the kind of balanced approach we think is essential if we're going to meet the country's energy needs down the road and take care of many of our other concerns, especially with respect to the environment."-- Vice President Dick Cheney, U.S. Energy Association Efficiency Forum Washington, D.C. June 13, 2001
Thanks for the link, Kevin.
The real culprit behind the power outage has been discovered:
The Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) has been asked to dump 46,000 megawatts of power - meaning approximately 45,000 homes who had electricity stored will go without once more, as rolling blackouts go into effect.
They are trying to conserve energy around here, especially as the temperature and humidity rises. Government businesses are being asked to close down for the day and they are practically begging people to not turn their air conditioners on.
The Long Island Railroad is still down - even if your workplace in the city is open, it's not advised that you try to get there.
I don't know if my power will stay on, but Command Post is doing a bang-up job of covering all the affected areas.
Susanna is covering Bloomberg's press conference live.
[My personal account of the blackout is here.]
"The disturbance appears to have been caused by the loss of several major transmission lines in the upper Midwestern United States, but investigations and data collections continue," the North American Electric Reliability Council, a not-for-profit private group, said in a written statement.
This is the area affected by the blackout. That's approximately 50 million people who were taken back to the dark ages by one single surge/mistake/lightning strike/insert conspiracy theory here.
"This blackout is obviously a Bush administration plot to slow the booming sales of electric cars," the vehicle owner said. "Dick Cheney is doing this for his buddies at Halliburton. Well, those neocons are not going to get me. I would rather die than burn fossil fuel in my car." Of course, that's Scrappleface.
More from the master of subtle humor:
With no electricity, many "bloggers" were forced to post their latest musings to the Internet by candlelight. Some resorted to using old-fashioned kerosene-fueled personal computers. Others wrote their thoughts out longhand on paper then ran through the streets reading them aloud to the passing crowds of stranded commuters
WOR (Channel 9, New York) and WNYW (Channel 5, New York) are both still off the air.
Mayor Bloomberg is suggesting that non-essential employees take the day off today to cut down on traffic. There is still no transportation into NYC from Long Island.
The NYFD responded to hundreds of fires last night, most caused by careless use of candles.
Of course, the blame game has started and there still is no definitive cause for the blackout that affected most of the North East as well as points west. New York Newsday has a slide show with explanations of the power grid and a chart of past blackouts.
Beaches and courts in New York are closed, There is no subway service for the morning rush and it's not expected for evening either. Metro-North running 1 train each way on all lines. No LIRR service. MTA buses are running and the fare has been waived. There are still many traffic lights out.
While I have power here in East Meadow, Long Island, my ex-husband just called to say he is still without power - in East Meadow.
My sister in Levittown (about two miles away) still has no power. I understand they have power in Hempstead, where I work, but I'll be damned if I'm heading out there while there are still traffic lights out.
Jeff Jarvis brought up something I had written down yesterday (to remember to blog): When Bloomberg gave his first press conference of the day yesterday, he remarked that shelters would open up in the city and you could find a list of those shelters on the city website. Idiot.
Jeff has a great array of links of stories as well.
I'd like to comment my fellow Command-Post contributors on a great job covering the blackout.
LIPA (Long Island Power Authority) is warning of rolling blackouts today and asking people to keep their air conditoners off.
I'll have more, lots more, power permitting.
It was about 4:15 when the power went off and I just assumed that the air conditioners were sucking the life out of our power, so I headed for the fuse box. Damn. Wasn't a fuse.
Within five minutes, all the neighbors were out, asking each other do you have power? We hung around outside complaining about the humidity and waiting for the buzz and hum of the return of power.
Nothing.
Several minutes later we heard sirens. And then again, coming from another direction. A stream of cars came down our side street, indicating an accident on the main road. Several minutes later and sirens again, coming from elsewhere.
Streetlights must be out, our neighor Rick said. Rick, a retired policeman, turned on his police scanner. He listened quietly on his front lawn for a few minutes and then came running over, breathless. Whole northeast! Even Detroit!
So, what would your first reaction be? Yes, terrorism. We took it in stride, however, and everyone went in to their respective houses to check for candles, batteries and all the necessities.
WABC 770 was the only station I could get on the car radio. Sean Hannity was on the air, taking phone calls from all over and getting on the spot reporting. He reiterated one very important fact over and over. This was not a terrorist attack. Something went wrong upstate, perhaps in Buffalo.
I listened to a stream of on-the-spot reporters detailing all the ways in which New Yorkers were helping each other: sharing cabs; giving rides to strangers; directing traffic and just being patient. Those who still had connections on their cell phones were lending the phones to strangers to make calls to loved ones.
The comparisons to the '77 blackout in NYC, rife with looting and danger, are inevitable. And so are the comparisons to 9/11. While some of you may cringe or roll your eyes the truth remains; we've learned a lot from 9/11.
The city appeared to be in a complete state of calm. People walked the bridges just as they did on 9/11, in massive throngs of strangers among strangers, sharing the misery of the day.
I think we learned how to cope with both the big and the small, and to take situations like this in stride. It's as if a fire drill had rung, and everyone went to their proper places and did what they were supposed to and no one pushed or shoved.
Even with thoughts of terrorism still creeping into the back of our minds, we remained calm, if not a little pissed off that it had to happen on such a hot and humid day. Sure, I worried about the ton of meat I had in the freezer, and I worried about elderly relatives and I sort of shuddered remembering what happened after it got dark in New York in 1977, but I still retained my air of complacency. After all, we've been through worse things than this. Much. much worse.
Out here on Long Island, we mostly went on with our day, while keeping an ear tuned to the radio. The kids stayed in the pool until almost nightfall. We ordered pizza (thank goodness for gas-powered ovens), drank a few beers and waited for some good news.
As darkness approached, we headed across the street to my parents house, where my sister and her husband had already decided to camp out for a while. We listened to the Yankee game on the radio and read, talked and played games and told spooky stories and made spooky faces with the flashlight until we had to squint to see each other.
Such darkness. No streetlights, no light residue from the city, no planes streaking across the horizon, no neon or amber waves of sale signs sucking the pitch black from the sky. It was a sight to behold, looking upwards and we all craned our necks and admired the stars because there were more than we had ever seen before.
DJ took out his telescope and scanned the sky for Mars. The rest of us laid on the grass and soaked up the scenery. The sky was flooded with constellations we never get to see. We pointed this way and that and looked for more and someone joked that they would go inside and print out a chart of the stars.
We felt lucky to be able to what people in other parts of the country whose sky isn't saturated with electric lights get to see every night, and as we lay there on the grass scanning the heavens, we let out a collective gasp as a bright shooting star sailed past us.
Eventually the moon made its way over our part of the world, an almost full moon glowing orange and resembling a partly deflated basketball. We sat in silence for a while until the we had to turn our chairs to keep our eyes on the moon and then I realized how late it was.
We took the kids home and waited. We heard that power was coming back on sporadically in parts of New York. We all camped out in the living room, but it was too hot to sleep well. I read by candlelight as the kids slept and woke and slept and woke, each time asking if the electricity was back.
It came back in fits and starts. I would hear the fan start whirring or the cable box click on and we would get all excited and prepare to move ourselves into the bedrooms and cool air and then the hum of electricity would become more like a moan and darkness would fall again.
This went on most of the night and we finally fell dead asleep at about five, too exhausted to even care about being hot. When I woke up at seven, the fan was on. I waited, held my breath even, but it seemed to be permanent. We were back.
The first thing I did was not reach for the computer or turn on the tv. I sleepily lumbered into the kitchen and kissed the coffee maker. Welcome back, buddy, I said and hurredly scooped some grounds into the basket in case this was just a tease and I would be submurged into a coffee-less world again.
Now it's 8am, the coffee is made, the fans are on (we decided to hold off on the air conditioning to be kind to the power plants), my inbox is full and there are stories of the wonderful camraderie of New Yorkers in the paper.
And I'm going back to bed.
The perfect gift for that nostalgia obsessed friend of yours: a phone call from a Hollywood has been. I can imagine how it would go:
(phone rings)
Friend: hello?
Hollywood Caller: Hi, is this Miss Mary Smith?
Friend: Yes
Hollywood Caller: Hi, this is a special call from Hollywood!
Friend: I’m sorry, I’m not interested in buying anything right now.
Hollywood Caller: No, you don’t understand. This phone call is a gift from a friend. I’m Corey Feldman!
Friend: Corey who?
Hollywood Caller: Corey Feldman...
Friend: Why are you calling me?
Hollywood Caller: It’s what I do now. I make calls to fans for a fee.
Friend: What’s your name again?
Hollywood Caller: Corey. Corey Feldman.
Friend: Oh! The guy who sang Sunglasses at Night?
Hollywood Caller: No, that was Corey Hart, I’m Corey..
Friend: Oh, I know! You were in First Born!
Hollywood Caller: Uh..no. That was Corey Haim.
Friend: Got it, you’re the other Corey!
Hollywood Caller: Yea, the other Corey. That’s me.
Friend: So, why are you calling me again?
Hollywood Caller: I work for Hollywood is Calling. Celebrities making personal calls...
Friend: Hey, you were on that reality show last month.
Hollywood Caller: Yes! You saw me?
Friend: Well I watched it once. It wasn’t all that good..
Hollywood Caller: oh...
Friend: Everyone said you cried a lot on that show.
Hollywood Caller: Well, yeah. Man, no one liked me. It’s like, I don’t know..I was an outsider. I mean, I made some good movies. I was sort of a star.
Friend: Lost Boys was good.
Hollywood Caller: Thank you. I didn’t mean to cry that much, it’s just that my career has sucked lately and I’ve been really down. Geez it’s good to talk to someone about this, I was just thinking that...
Friend: OH.MY.GOD!
Hollywood Caller: What?!?
Friend: I just found the Hollywood is Calling website, and you have Fred Berry! ReRun!
Hollywood Caller: Yea, Fred is...
Friend: Holy shit, Fred Berry! Can you put him on the phone? Can I talk to him?
Hollywood Caller: I’m not with him, I’m calling from my house, it’s not like we all work in some big office or something.
Friend: You do this from home? On a Friday night?
Hollywood Caller: Yea...
Friend: How pathetic. No wonder you cry a lot.
Hollywood Caller: (Sobbing sounds as phone drops to floor)
For just $19.95, you too can make a former celebrity cry. Even Lorenzo Lamas.
[thanks to everyone who sacrificed small, virginal animals for me. everything seems to be working now]
I got an email today from one Jeff S., who takes issue with my defense of Jesus Castillo in the Texas v. Castillo case involving the sale of an adult comic book to an adult.
Texas is right and you are wrong. This country is loose with its morals and stores sell sex and violence to impressionable young children and see nothing wrong with it. Comic books are meant for children. Just the word comic alone would seem to indicate that the books and things they sell in the store are for kids. Most comic book stores have brightly painted superheroes on their windows, pictures of Spiderman and Hulk and all the familiar cartoon characters. My eight year old son should not walk in there to buy Pokemon cards and be confronted with images of violence and sex and he should not be able to buy sexually explicit comics.
Even superheroes are suspect in dealing with a child’s life’s lesson. Most of the creators of these pieces of crap are Godless fools who force children to worship flying men and women who resort to violence on a daily basis in the name of saving the world. Children should look to people with good moral judgment who do not mess with God’s creation (meaning man, who cannot fly or perform miracles). Thou shalt not have false idols, the bible says. Superheroes are false idols and not only that, but the comics that don’t have superheroes are full of dark images, the occult and things that give children nightmares.
I see you also defend makers of pornography and violent video games. It is people like you that contribute to the downfall of America and the morals on which it was founded. You and video game producers and makers of filthy or violent movies are helping to turn my child against my values. This must stop. People must be held accountable for the trash they produce and for the army of arrogant bullies and sexually active children that they create with their products. Stores that sell these items should be closed down.
Stop defending the demoralizers. Keep America clean. Kudos to the state of Texas and John Ashcroft for being the real defenders of truth, justice and the American Way.
My reply to Jeff:
It is a pity that you cannot see the error of your ways. The comic book industry is not in the field of child-rearing. Your responsibility as a parent does not stop at the door to the comic shop. It is up to you, Jeff S., to teach your child the morals that you hold dear.
Authors, musicians, artists, directors and video game producers do not have your specific child in mind when they create. It is up to you as a parent to decide what your child can and can’t purchase, view, read or play with.
America is not the land of the free, the home of the religious. The entertainment industry does not cater to your particular religion or morals. The rest of the population of this country is not a watchdog group for you children. You are. You decide where he can and can’t go, what he can and can’t see. You pass on your moral judgment to him and when he’s old enough to decide for himself, he may or may not follow in your footsteps. But for the time being, while he’s just a small kid, it is up to you to instill the values you would like him to grow up with. If that means not going to comic book stores or video rental stores because you don’t like what is on view there, so be it. But do not expect that the rest of us are going to bow down to your morals and religion and remove anything that offends you from the public eye. Perhaps you would be happy with nothing but Veggie Tales to peruse, but most of us wouldn’t. The fallacy that the comic book industry is just for kids needs to be addressed in a longer statement than I have the time or patience to make right now.
Jeff, you may consider certain forms of entertainment a threat to your values, but I consider people like you a threat to my freedoms. I understand if you want to keep your child from viewing potentially harmful material. As a parent myself I know your dilemma. That’s what I use rating systems for. But unlike you, I see a Parental Warning sticker on a CD as a sign that my child shouldn’t listen to it. You see it as a sign that the store should be shut down for selling the CD - even to adults.
There is a moral to this story, Jeff: Raise your child yourself. Don't expect the creators of entertainment to give a shit about your kid, because they don't, nor should they be expected to. Nobody making an R-rated movie is going to worry about the implications of its imagery on the mind of an eight year old. The guy drawing the flying superhero does not care if it offends your religion, nor should he. The simple solution is to, so to speak, turn the channel if you don't like it. But don't think we are all going to change the channel with you.
M
The internet is not cooperating with me today, neither at work or at home.
Someone please go leave a (possibly human, virgin if possible) sacrifice at the altar of The Gods of Connectivity so I can get on with blogging.
Thanks.
I love Ray Smuckles as if he were my own talking, typing pet. I adore his advice colum. I love Achewood.
But Ray has slung an arrow through my heart by dissing Nick Cave. So has Tim Blair. A double blow to my heart.
I suppose Nick Cave is one of those things in life that people either loathe with ubridled hatred or love with all their heart. Sort of like Courtney Love. Who, by the way, turns out to be Marlon Brando's grandaughter.
For all of you who made Futurama references this morning:
[click for big-head size]
Crude but effective, as they say.
Going through the backlog of links in my "to blog about" list and found this, Stephen's list of things to do before you die.
Stephen's list is elistist and classist, as not many of us can afford to crack up a brand new sports car or buy a $500 bottle of wine.
There's only a couple of things I'd like to do before I die, and only one of them - see the Northern Lights - is a serious task that I fully intend to undertake one day.
I've had this fascination with the aurora borealis since I was a child. I would often (and still do) dream about standing under those lights, my breath taken away by the color and shape of the ghostly patterns. In some of those dreams, the light would filter right through me and my skin would be aglow with colors and tones. In other dreams I would fly, lifting myself higher and higher until I could dive right into the light and swim around, feeling the softness of the colors rub against my skin like crushed velvet.
I can only imagine what it's like to stand in full view of this or this. It must be like standing insde of a dream.
So that (and attending a game at Lambeau Field) are the things I most want to do before I die - at least the most reasonable things I'd like to do.
The other things, like bitchslap Ted Rall, would all require having a stash of bail money ready. But hey, if I can't get to see those lights or hang out in the frozen tundra of Lambeau, I'll settle for beating the crap out of Robert Fisk.
[Of course, there's always that "have my book published" thing, but I think that's (1) pretty much out of my hands, as I am at the mercy of the publishing industry and (2) more along the lines of a dream rather than a tangible goal. It would probably be easier to sneak porn by Ashcroft than to get a book deal.]
Workout, Day 2:
Ow.
[You're tired of my whining, aren't you? I'll take a break from my angst and wallowing and get to something ridiculous instead]
I bet you had no idea that today is National Underwear Day.
Starting a national day when underwear will take center stage is a daunting task, so we need some help from you. Freshpair.com wants you to join the leagues of "seeable" underwear wearers on August 13th by showcasing a bit of your underwear. You can show your support simply by leaving a shirt button undone, exposing your undergarments.
Now, I consider this a good thing, though I normall scoff at people who walk around, Britney Spears style, with their thong sticking out of their low-rise jeans, or guys whose boxers are sticking out of their pants.
But we could all use a frivilous, silly holiday. Let's show our support for this day. It's only 2:30 in the afternoon, which leaves you plenty of time to get into the spirit of things by letting your undies peek out of your pants a bit or flashing a complete stranger so you can show off that multi-colored bra. I mean, Sponge Bob walks around in his tighty whities, so why can't we be as proud of our undergarments?
Let's see those unmentionables! Send me a safe for work picture of your boxers emerging from your waistband or your bra strap slipping down your shoulder. Pull that thong up a bit and show us what you're made of. Take those Spiderman underoos out of your drawer and snap a shot of them.
Ok, if you're camera shy you can just take part in the great debate. Boxers, briefs of commando, guys? Panties, thongs or grandma-style bloomers, ladies?
Then join the thousands of voices and sign the petiton to make August 13th National Underwear Day and finally give this fine a month a holiday to call its own.
UPDATE: I've got Tanya's panties right here. Yea, baby.
Behind every idiotic lawsuit is an asshole with an agenda. This time, the asshole is none other than Bill O'Reilly.
FOX NEWS star Bill O'Reilly lobbied his network to file suit against author Al Franken and his upcoming book "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," top sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.
"For Bill, above all other things, this was a matter of honor and support," a top source explained from New York.
In the battle of who could care less, O'Reilly wins the asshole award in this story hands down.
Now, what about that title could possibly make O'Reilly thinks this is a case of defending honor? Oh, there's this...
In his book, Franken directly challenges O'Reilly on his journalistic record and aggressively accuses cable's top-rated host of exaggeration, padding of his resume and other claims.
Well, of course. O'Reilly couldn't sue Franken for saying O'Reilly is a lousy reporter and interviewer, because, well, he is. So he decided to use his employer to "get even" with Franken.
Basically, this has nothing to do with the phrase fair and balanced at all. It's more about one man's bloated ego and (ok two men's bloated egos), and a child-like game where two kids tweak each other's feelings until one cries uncle.
If O'Reilly is really hurt over Franken's words, perhaps he should have sued for libel. Granted, he wouldn't win that one, either, but he would not have made his employers look like such asses.
UPDATE: Cats and dogs! Eating together! I'm actually going to take part in something that Atrios is involved in: Friday is Fair and Balanced day on the internet, by decree of Neal Pollack.
Dear Mr. Bush,
Thank you so much for the $400 check I received in the mail yesterday. I know some people are angry with you for putting this plan in motion but I, for one, am very grateful.
I will be a good citizen and put this money back into the economy immediately. I suppose that as this money came about because of my kids, I should spend it on them, purchasing their back-to-schoo clothing and supplies with this bounty.
Maybe while I'm at the mall, I'll pick up the Futurama Season 2 DVD, which came out this week. And maybe, just maybe, I'll pre-order the Simpsons Season 3 DVD which comes out the day after my birthday. It's not so bad to buy myself a small birthday present with this money, is it?
Oh, I just want to take a few bucks for the first issue of Neil Gaiman's 1602. And I wanted to be the first buy Baby Tobyn a Miyazaki film.
But I promise to spend some money on the kids. Oh wait, the phone just rang. Hang on.
Ok, I'm going out to lunch now. If there's any money left after I treat everyone to drinks (hey, it's Wednesday, it's hump day drink day!), I'll be sure to do my part to upstart the economy. If I don't fall asleep at my desk after having too many colorful drinks for lunch.
Thanks, George. Have a nice day. And don't let the blogging candidates get you down.
MC
UPDATE: Contrary to popular belief, I did not get screwed. My ex and I each claim one kid a year, so he gets the other check. All's fair in divorce and war.
Oh, and we skipped the drinks at lunch because I have to hit the gym after work. Note to Jane Darcy: I work for the government. Does that explain everything?
