A Small Victory

This is the last post I will make from this house, except for a Memorial Day post I have set to go. I've been here 14 years and one month. When I first moved here, Natalie was an infant. In between then and now, I had another child, got divorced and got remarried. There's a whole lot of history - good and bad - in this place. The thing I will miss the most is having my parents across the street. Oh, we're only moving about six or seven blocks away but the convenience factor of having one's parents across the street can't be beat. On second thought, the irritation factor can't be beat, either. At least now, we'll be close enough to still bum a meal off of my parents, but not close enough so that they are all up in my face all the time. This house - the one I'm leaving - is situated in what we call the compound. It's a corner house and on either side of the home is a relative. Or two or three. So all the yards - from two houses down to the west and the house to the north, all conjoin in some way to form a really big complex of yards and homes. At any given time, there are about ten kids outside, plus various aunts, uncles, cousins and other assorted relatives. It's great when you want to have a family gathering, but other than that, it pretty much sucks. Especially when your family is as nosy as mine. So this flight from "the compoud" rings like freedom. No more aunt and uncle upstairs; that would be the batty uncle who does nothing but scream and curse all day and the aunt who has sneezing fits that last up to an hour. This is the same uncle whose hobby is feeding birds, thus turning our yard into a wildlife sanctuary filled with birds and squirrels who never, ever shut up. No more aunt next door who constantly wants to know what we are doing and why we are doing it. No more little cousins running back and forth by the doorway. No more mental self-torture of comparing myself on a daily basis to the fitter, happier, more productive cousins next door. Now, my yard is mine. No sharing, no dibs on whose friends were playing out on the lawn first. Oh, and no more idiot across the street who revs his truck engine for at least a half hour every morning before he leaves for work. The block we are moving to is not without its share of horrors. For instance, last night one of our new neighbors had a party. A pre-teen girl party. Twenty of them, screaming (and you know that the decibel level of a female pre-teen girl can shatter ear drums), running up and down the street. And there's the guy next door who has a tendency to suck face with his girlfriend for hours at a time in front of his house. Minor things. The best things about the new house? One of DJ's best friends from school lives next door, and about half the boys in his class live on our street. Constant baseball and basketball games outside. Natalie's best friend lives around the corner. The people next door (the one with the kissy face son) are huge Yankee fans. Hey, that's what I like in a neighbor! I've known a lot of the families on this block forever. One couple, I've known for about fifteen years. Another couple - I was close friends with the husband in junior high; we grew up just three houses from each other. This street is famous for its block parties and barbecues. They're the kind of people who will see you doing work on your house and before you know it, they will all be standing in your yard with tools and cold beer, offering help or advice. So today we start taking our belongings out of this home and driving them over to the new home, leaving behind the invasion of privacy issues, the sticky bedroom door, the uneven floor in the kitchen, the noisy uncle, and - most important - the baggage that went with this place. After all, this is where I lived with my ex, where I divorced my ex, where I built a lot of miserable memories. For the first time, Justin will not feel like he is living in an ex-husband zone. This is a grand step forward for us, it's almost like we are starting over. Fresh. No layers of bad marriage dust lurking around the corners and under the beds. We bought paint yesterday. Beautiful bright colors, not a stitch of boring old white. It's our house. We can do whatever we want. If that means golden walls in the living room and a red hallway, so be it. We made plans to gut the bathroom and start over. We ordered new windows for the room where the office will be. Natalie has plans to paint flames all over her walls. DJ wants Justin to paint a mural on his bedroom wall so it looks like he's sleeping in Yankee Stadium. Our fridge makes crushed ice (I know, I'm obsessing over this, but I have a compulsion with eating ice), we have a garbage disposal, I finally have the flat top stove I always wanted, the garage is going to be fantastic rec room and we are determined to make this horrible lawn look decent. We are going to be poor, there is no doubt about that. But we are going to be happy. Sure, I nitpicked and bitched about everything the other day, but I'm feeling better as the days go by. Every crack, every little blemish, they are all mine to fix and I love the way that feels. Now comes the hard part. The actual moving. I'm really not that fond of hard labor. Anyhow, thanks for putting up with my endless posts about home buying and moving the past few weeks. Look for my Memorial Day post tomorrow (or late tonight) and I'll catch up with you on Tuesday. Everyone enjoy your holiday weekend. You know the drill - don't drink and drive, eat lots of burgers and try to visit a local war memorial if there is one near you. You can see photos of my last trip to the Nassau County Memorial here]

Posted by me at 06:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (31) | TrackBacks (3)

[I wish I had a better Memorial Day post to give you, but I am on borrowed computer time here, and won't be back blogging until Tuesday]

John Donavan
The Memorial Day Project
The Command Post

A NATION'S STRENGTH
Ralph Waldo Emerson

What makes a nation's pillars high
And it's foundations strong?
What makes it mighty to defy
The foes that round it throng?
It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand
Go down in battle shock;
Its shafts are laid on sinking sand,
Not on abiding rock.
Is it the sword? Ask the red dust
Of empires passed away;
The blood has turned their stones to rust,
Their glory to decay.
And is it pride? Ah, that bright crown
Has seemed to nations sweet;
But God has struck its luster down
In ashes at his feet.
Not gold but only men can make
A people great and strong;
Men who for truth and honor's sake
Stand fast and suffer long.
Brave men who work while others sleep,
Who dare while others fly...
They build a nation's pillars deep
And lift them to the sky

- In memory of all those who gave their life in service to this great country -

Posted by me at 06:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (8)

I'm taking a half day today, which means I'm leaving soon. We are going to make the great, hallowed trip to Home Depot today and I suspect that by the time we get home, I will be as withered as my bank account. I find that spending money on anything besides entertainment is very stressful. Even the entertainment spending leaves me with an aftertaste of guilt once the movie is over or the game has been defeated. We hit Bed, Bath & Beyond and Target yesterday and the little, inconsequential things we stocked up on there put a huge hole in the budget as is. However, I have to say that brand new outside garbage pails and a new coffee maker go a long, long way towards making one really feel at home in a new place. My garbage pails. Not the landord's garbage pails. Mine. It sounds stupid, but it feels really good to say. We made coffee as we took measurements and made lists last night. The aroma made the house feel homey; even with bare walls and floors and no furniture in sight, I felt the first twinges of home sweet home in my stomach. Excitement, nervousness and a bit of pride. Today, we begin the stripping of some ugly-ass wallpaper and the painting of walls. It's the most pleasurable hard work one can do (that doesn't take place in a bed). I won't be back until late this evening, if I have the energy.

Posted by me at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (1)

If this were beer, I'd be an alcoholic -- Tony Pierce on blogging, quoted in this New York Times article. I see the Times is still dismissing blogging as unimportant. Only now it's not just unimportant, it's a hobby taken up mostly by losers in bathrobes. Ok, ok. Point taken. But not all of us are like that. The author of the article goes a long way around to make blogs appear to be nothing more than a pointless exercise of talking to yourself.

Sometimes, too, the realization that no one is reading sets in. A few blogs have thousands of readers, but never have so many people written so much to be read by so few. By Jupiter Research's estimate, only 4 percent of online users read blogs.

The decidely negative tone of the article left me wondering why? - why would the NYT care enough about blogging to pay someone to write this pointless drivel? Perhaps Bill Quick figured it out:

Total number of internet users: 785,710,022. Four percent of that number: 31,428,400. Total number of NYT readers: Hard to estimate. Print circulation varies from about 1.16 million daily to 1.8 million on Sunday, website page count 1-2 million per day, total readership somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-5 million. Blogs as a whole are more widely read than the New York Times by a factor of seven plus. As for political blogs? Again, hard to say, just as it is hard to quantify the readership NYT's political offerings (OpEd, news, etc.) garner. But N.Z. Bear's The Truth Laid Bear: Weblog Traffic Rankings gives a total daily visitor count for the top fifty ranked political blogs of about 950,000. That certainly puts these top blogs as a whole in the NYT's daily circulation league. It has apparently also put the NYT into a a dress-rending frenzy.

I'm not suggesting the NYT is afraid of bloggers; but I do think the consistently negative articles are something akin to a pre-emptive strike. bq. Indeed, if a blog is likened to a conversation between a writer and readers, bloggers like Mr. Wiggins are having conversations largely with themselves. I beg to differ. Let's use this week as an example. I tried to use posts on a variety of subjects, so one can't refute this by saying that warblogs or techblogs or X variety of blog topics are the exception to the rule. Little Green Footballs: this post had 132 comments. Atrios: this post had 222 comments. Tim Blair: this post had 43 comments. Sheila O'Malley: 55 comments on this post Bambino's Curse: a lot of comments (he doesn't make the count viewable) on this post. Electric Bugaloo: 43 comments on this post. Talking to ourselves? Hardly. What about the blogs without comments? How do we know they aren't just masturbating with words when they blog? Instapundit 110135 visits/day Gizmodo : The Gadgets Weblog 62990 visits/day Volokh Conspiracy 14038 visits/day Tom Tomorrow 13902 visits/day Well, they still might be masturbating - that's none of our business - but the point is - they are not talking to themselves. Far from it. Now, as far as the painted picture of blogger as obsessive, single-minded, anti-social, basement dwelling dweeb, I think that's all just a ruse by the New York Times to put a pathetic face on blogging. I mean, we know that the NYT would never, ever employ someone as sad and delusional as they make bloggers out to be. Right? Ok, I'll grant them one thing: If this were beer, I'd be an alcoholic I'm already worrying that my ISP is cutting my service on Saturday evening, and won't be hooking up the new house until Tuesday. In fact, I feel a panic attack coming on. Good thing I'll be too busy with the move to really think too hard about it. Well, I may see if any of my neighbors are using wireles routers so I can use the laptop to steal their signal. Or I could always go to Starbucks. Or my mom's. Chug that beer. That's right, keep chugging. Oh, it goes down sooo smooth. Quick, give me another. I do have a question for the people over at the paper of record: If blogs are so damn boring and unimportant, why do you keep printing stories about them? Keep the beer flowing, barkeep.

Posted by me at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (36) | TrackBacks (13)

So, what's OJ doing to mark the tenth anniversary of the murder at his hands of Nicole Kidman Simpson*?

Can't this man be stopped?: Apparently taking a break from his continuing search for the real killers, O.J. Simpson is hoping to mark the 10th anniversary of wife Nicole's savage murder June 12 - along with the fatal knifing of unlucky waiter Ron Goldman - by cashing in big-time. Star Magazine reports that Simpson's attorney, Yale Galanter, has been shopping his client around for paid interviews. "It will be expensive," the mag quotes Galanter. "TV rights are going for $100,000. For print rights, between $20,000 and $25,000." Nothing if not classy, Galanter adds that O.J. might even be willing to do a photo shoot at the Brentwood crime scene and at Nicole's grave site - if the price is right. "It would have to be a multimillion-type deal," Galanter says. A grave site photo would be "worth $500,000 ... Our preference is a standard interview ... but it's just money."

Would it really be so bad if someone put a bounty on this guy's head? Can't we get Ashcroft to add him to some "wanted, dead or alive" list? I mean, who would miss him? Is there a soul alive who still thinks this scumbag is a good man? Oh, gosh. There I go again wishing harm or death to someone. Damn me and my vision of a world without murdering thugs. *This is a lesson: Never, ever blog before two cups of coffee have been finished.

Posted by me at 08:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (33) | TrackBacks (3)

Once upon a time there was a neighborhood where people did work on their house daily. Every day, they would add things on. They did all the work themselves; they researched it, they gathered the materials, they put it all together piece by piece and made it look pretty damn good. This is the town we visit today. One of the residents of this town is particularly pleased - as most of these citizens usually are - with the work she did today. She decides (as she does every day, really) to have an open house, inviting anyone and everyone over to see what she did that morning. People come. They comment. Some people love it, some people hate it, some people make suggestions on how to do it better, yet all of them are mostly polite and those who are hating on the new room are debating the pros and cons of certain decor with those who love it. Sometimes the hostess - the person who designed the entire room - will engage in conversation, but mostly she watches from the sideline, curious to hear what people are saying and quietly watching the door to see who else comes in. This guy comes in. He barges in, we should say. He doesn't make a single comment on the new kitchen, he doesn't remark on the work - good or bad - and he doesn't attempt to engage anyone, not even the hostess, in conversation. He just sticks his head in the door and loudly proclaims "I did my kitchen over today as well and it's much better than this. Come on over to my house everyone!" He finishes his announcement, immediately leaving as soon as he's done. The hostess is kind of flabbergasted. She remarks to one of the guests how obnoxious and rude that man was. The guest concurs and says, you know, if he would have just come in, maybe made a short comment or two about your kitchen and then said 'well I did my kitchen too and maybe some of you might want to come over and see it later when you're done here' well that would have been much more polite. The hostess agrees, but decide to let it go, even though this neighbor has annoyed her previously by sending her, all day and night long, unrequested photos and details of every single thing that goes on in his house during the course of the day. She discovers that he does this to a lot of neighbors, none of whom requested these updates. So she decides to take a walk around the neighborhood to see what everyone else in this home improvement crazed development has been up to today. She see everyone has added at least one thing and, coincidentally, her new kitchen decor has a lot in common with the neigbors' additions. She stops, admires and makes a note that when she gets back home, she will tell her visitors to go see all of these houses. However, she notices something disturbing. At almost all the homes she stops to look at, the owners complain about the same obnoxious man that was at her house earlier. He did the same thing to them; barged in with nary a comment, just shouted that he had something better to see at his house. They all thought it was very rude. And they all thought, well the next time I'm giving a tour of this neighborhood, I am going to skip right by his house. And the moral of this story is: In the world of show and tell, manners mean things. Those without manners will end up with no audience to show or tell their stories. The end.

Posted by me at 07:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)

[quotes always taken from here] "Well... it sure ain't "Ozzie and Harriet." And now, the visual, courtesy of reader Kieran: [click for the enermous size which is now my desktop] Or perhaps you prefer this visual, from reader Ellen: Thank you both for the lovely Photoshops. I noticed something strange at Target and Bed, Bath and Beyond yesterday. The latest in kitchen decor seems to be dressing the room up in cocks. Which led to some fun conversation between my husband and myself in both those stores. Honey, what about this lovely cock to hang on the wall? Oh, wouldn't you just love to drink the milk that pours out of this cock? We are easily amused, as well as Beavis and Butthead juveniles.

Posted by me at 05:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

DJ made the All-Star team. We are quite excited in the Catalano household tonight. I just know that you are as well. Thanks to everyone who showed interest in his baseball exploits this season. And now, the playoffs.

Posted by me at 07:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBacks (2)

I thought I would dream last night about the new house crumbling down around me, or being lost in a maze at Home Depot. But no. I had to dream* about Al Gore. Probably because as I downed my third celebratory/stress-relief Captain Morgans and Snapple, I collapsed on the couch mumbling, this man was almost our president! In my dream he was wearing a clown suit and and his name was Spanky, but I knew it was Al Gore by the way he was yelling that the cicadas were coming to get us and it was all Bushitler's fault! So there was this clown, trailed by thousands of cicadas wearing Hitler mustaches and they were chasing me through the streets of New York City, which were covered in snow and ice, due to the global warming effects brought on my too many viewings of The Day After Tomorrow. I finally found sanctuary in a bomb shelter, where I was greeted by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Bush, who had just resigned from their posts and were sitting in this safe haven waiting for the inevitable bombs to fall because it was really a silly thing to make the president and his staff step down during wartime. Oops, here comes another dirty bomb! Can you smell that poisonous gas? Mmmm.... I love the smell of cowardly defeat in the morning! So eventually - I'm talking months here - we leave the bomb shelter and swim through the city, which is now hot as hell and flooded with melted glaciers and we're just lazily swimming away, talking about the good old days when Bush was president, before Kerry sold the Statue of Liberty back to France in exchange for some hair product, before Kerry decided to invite all the world's Imans and Shahs and clerics over for tea, before those same people took advantage of Kerry's appeasing demeanor and started bombarding our cities. In front of Madison Square Garden we meet up with Al Gore himself who is no longer wearing a clown suit, but still quite resembles a clown. He now carries a megaphone and a soapbox around and every so often he stops to address a crowd of young schoolchildren, explaining about the American gulags that exist because of Bush. The children laugh, as children are wont to do when confronted with crazy people. As we stand around watching Al with amusement, this ghost of a guy comes along and says he is the Spirit of What If and he wants to show us, just for shits and giggles, what would have happened if Al Gore was president on 9/11. So we follow this spirit guy to the nearest movie theater, where he projects his vision on a big screen. Comfy theater. Nice, reclining seats and extra big cup holders. Al tags along and sits next between Cheney and myself. I give one look to Cheney and he knows what to do. We exchange cootie shots. There, much better. We never do get to see the movie because Gore freaks out and starts tearing up the theater, like metal fans at the last Guns n Roses concert. Stuffing flies out of the seats, the screen is ripped down and all the while Gore is screaming that Bush is Hitler and George Soros is King. We feel sorry for him at this point and Condi tries to calm him down while Rumsfeld loses all patience and kicks Gore in the balls. Gore cries even louder. Then the damn birds woke me up. I would really like to know how the movie played out. Maybe one of you can finish it for me? _____________ I am off to a celebratory lunch that will consist of giant Bloody Mary's and little else. I will then make my way to the new house to clean it up a bit and then I head to the Little League field for the exciting finale of the 2004 regular season. So, until tonight. *Unlike all of my other long-winded, heavy-plotted, convoluted dreams, this one is purely made up. Why? Just felt like entertaining myself today. That's why.

Posted by me at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)

Update: Thanks to Sarah for the most recent Photoshop, that I shall call Neighbors From Hell. You need to click for the big size to get the full effect. All the things that were "no big deal" or "easily fixed" when we first looked at the house loomed like distorted nightmares after we had the keys in hand. I don't recall the shower leaking, but there it was yesterday, leaking away, every drip-drip-drip sounding more like fix-fix-fix. I remember thinking it was quaint how they kept the original 1950's bathroom decor. I could live with a fifties look for a bit, I thought. Kind of nice to have one room that maintains the history of the home. But upon closer inspection last night, my allegiance to the house's history waivered. Suddenly the blue tiles and archaic bathtub lost their charm; they were scowling at me, daring me to talk bad about them. The small hole on the side of the bathtub now seemed the size of infinity. Oh, god. My bathtub is the portal to hell! Don't go near that hole, kids! Look for the light, Carol! I ran screaming from the room, stopping briefly to slam the cover of the bowl down, because I swear that yawning toilet was mocking me. Ok, calm. Made a little note on the notepad I was carrying around: gut bathroom, start over. Exorcise as well. The transition of the house from charming abode to live, gargantuan, soul-eating monster continued as walked through the house, seeing it for the first time as owners. The three walls worth of floor to ceiling windows in the sun room (aka office) that we once thought would allow us to view both sunset and sunrise as we sipped coffee and dreamily stared at nature? They have become looming panes of sudden death. Every time someone takes a step anywhere in the house, these flimsy windows rattle something fierce. And now, standing there wondering what the hell I saw in this room in the first place, the rattling windows stared back, like opaque ghosts shaking their chains at me. Notepad: new windows in sun room. Call priest for holy water. The kitchen is no better. While the appliances are all brand new (take one moment of pure glee for the crushed ice dispenser on the fridge), the fridge itself is off balance. I imagine my ice cubes will all turn out like uneven glaciers. I'm not fond of the light fixture. Ok, not bad, not bad. No monsters in this room. Ah, but then I see it. Winking up at me from the floor, one lone tile that is surrounded by pink grout. Pink. Grout. The rest of the tiles are safely enconsed in normal, grayish white grout. But this one, evil tile ended not like the others. I think it's not happy about that. The floor is now a cyclops with pink eye. Notepad: Gray grout. Crossbow. In Nat's bedroom, the walls are wrapped in a hideous wallpaper that shows old fashioned maps of North and South America and some other places, all in gold and blue and surrounded by dotted lines marking navigation routes and it's tiled in the same way that the hamsters doing that hamster dance are tiled. Yes, like a 1990's web page. Continents and divides dance before my eyes and suddenly a pirate appears, emerging from one of those dotted lines, shivering me timbers for sure. Notepad: Wallpaper stripper. Hire a pirate killer. And so it goes. In every room, another monster or spirit or gnome lurks and every time I see something I actually like - for instance, the light fixture in our bedroom - I half expect Gollum to cry out preciousssssss and fight me for it. The biggest monster of all is the giant ceramic pig that sits by the front door. Sort of like the pig in Amityville Horror which, given the locale, could have just walked over to my place from Amityville, so it's really not far fetched to think that it was Jody, red eyes and all. Except my pig has a huge slit in his back and wants me to deposit money every ten minutes. And when I do drop a hundred dollar bill or a Visa or Mastercard into that slot, Jody makes a loud flushing sound. Ok, so it is my house, haunted, possessed or not. Mine. I can slay these monsters, I know it. I can exorcise the spirts and demons and caulk right over that black hole to hell. I may have to sell a kidney or offer my kids up as house slaves to the locals each weekend, but I am going to do this. This house is not match for me. Right now, with it's evil piggy bank and winking kitchen tile, it thinks it can outdo me. But I am well experienced in the ways of these kinds of goblins. A few magic spells, a dozen or so margaritas and an offer of my soul to the loan officer at the bank ought to work.

Posted by me at 07:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (33) | TrackBacks (2)

RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke, in response to Gore's lunatic fringe tirade yesterday:

“Al Gore served as Vice President of this country for eight years. During that time, Osama Bin Laden declared war on the United States five times and terrorists killed US citizens on at least four different occasions including the first bombing of the World Trade Center, the attacks on Khobar Towers, our embassies in East Africa, and the USS Cole.” “Al Gore’s attacks on the President today demonstrate that he either does not understand the threat of global terror, or he has amnesia.”

That's what I call a smackdown. High-fives all around, Jim.

Posted by me at 06:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (48) | TrackBacks (5)

Yes, this will become a regular morning feature. All quotes pulled from this post. She's a vicious life-sucking bitch from which there is no escape. Which refers to this.

Posted by me at 06:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Brought to you by Chuck Update: My house is number one in the hood, G!

Posted by me at 09:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (2)

Below are the faces of the seven terrorist scumbags Ashcroft and Mueller referred to today. Armed and dangerous, clear and present danger. Click each mug for info on each al Qaeda operative. [Thanks to Puddle Pirate for the code]

Posted by me at 08:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBacks (1)

Is here. Ace tries to follow the Washingtonienne way to fame. bq. And so we began walking to an alley behind the store. He began pulling the rings off his fingers. "Just for safety's sake," he told me. What the hell did that mean? Read it. Don't be drinking anything.

Posted by me at 08:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (1)

Posted by me at 07:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (42) | TrackBacks (16)

It is officially ours. Already nicknamed The Money Pit. More later.

Posted by me at 06:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (54) | TrackBacks (5)

I made some partisan nursery rhymes for Jeff, including this one: Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep And can't tell where to find them. Try Democratic Underground, Bo. and then I wrote Murray a birthday poem. I'm trying to work, really, but I'm incredibly distracted today due to the fact that our on-again/off-again closing on the house is scheduled for later this afternoon. Please, keep your fingers crossed for me that all goes well this time.

Posted by me at 01:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

Several factors at play here: The worry over whether security will be adequate enough; the revelation yesterday of incoming terror attacks this summer (with the Olympics specifically cited); the unwillingness of security officials in Greece to allow Israeli athletes to bring their own security; those same officials warning American and Israeli athletes to not wear their countries colors or symbols in public during the Olympics and the fear that we might antagonize other countries by waving our flag after victories, the question is (and a very hypothetical one(: Do you think we should ask our athletes to stay home from the summer Olympics? Update: Some relevant links.

Posted by me at 09:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (55) | TrackBacks (1)

What was I saying in the post below? That we should trust our troops to take care of the terrorists gathering in Iraq. al-Sadr's cult of terror took a big blow today. Next. Update: More. bq. U.S. warplanes helped Afghan forces pound Taliban militants in the mountains of southern Afghanistan Tuesday, killing some 20 suspected insurgents at a recently discovered camp, a senior Afghan commander said.

Posted by me at 09:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

The big news today would be Terror, with a capital T. 'They Are Going to Attack and Hit Us Hard' Sources: Major terror attack possible this summer Terror fear Agents in Country Said To Be Planning Attack Am I suprised? Not at all. Scared? You bet. Then again, I've been scared since September 11, 2001. However, two and half years have gone by and we have yet to be attacked again on American soil. Today's frightening headlines are brought to in you part by an International Institute of Strategic Studies report stating (pdf format) that al Qaeda still has 18,000 members. The spin that followed went in two different directions, depending on your outlook. What's not up for argument is that the Iraq war has strengthened the terrorist base in the Middle East. Where paths diverge is when you ask why. The left will maintain that our occupation of Iraq has so angered the Arab world that they signed up by the thousands to join the jihad against America. I am going to beg to differ. The people who joined the ranks of al Qaeda (and I will say that while the report states AQ has 18,000 members, it's a good bet that most of those members are recent inductees) and other terrorist organizations since March of 2003 were jihadists beforehand. They were in the death-to-America camp long before we landed in Iraq. But the gathering of forces in Fallujah, Pakistan and other hotspots gave these sideline terrorists strength by numbers. Muqtada al-Sadr and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are no different that Jim Jones or David Koresh, in that they have cult-like followings, people following them blindly into battle. The battles themselves, even the enemies may be different, but in the end, the loyalists of both men will meet the same fate as the followers of Jones and Koresh. Who deals that fate out - their own leaders or their enemies - is all that remains to be seen. While the war in Iraq has certainly been a catalyst for jihad recruitment, let's not delude ourselves (I'm looking at the left here) into thinking that the hatred and death wishes did not exist beforehand. Which makes the Iraq war less of a reason and more of an excuse. Some of these terrorists have been sharpening their knives for years, just waiting for that moment when they could rise up with thousands of others and whoop their war cries. Iraq is it. al-Sadr knows this. al-Zarqawi knows this. If bin Laden is still alive, he knows it. Every jihad leader worth their 72 virgins fully understands that the war in Iraq is the opportunity of a lifetime; it's like Bill Gates getting an invitation to the graduation ceremony of The School For Brilliant Computer Programmers. It's a grand buffet of potential employees. And that's what Iraq is to Arab terrorists; a buffet. The leaders are lining up and filling their plates, even coming back for seconds. Them's good eatings! I swear I overheard someone say that once at a buffet So, while Iraq is not the reason for the upswing in threat theory, it is the central force at play here. I'm pretty sure that most of the recent al Qaeda recruits don't give a damn about what we are doing in Iraq. They just want to be where the action is; they just want to be part of the game. And the game is getting huge. Their hatred for us - and thus, their death wishes upon us - did not begin with the start of the invasion of Iraq. I think that should be obvious to anyone who lives with their head above the sand. You can go back to February 1993, but that's just a stopping point on the long, long timeline of the Arabs v. U.S. World Tour. We could take you back to 1983 if you'd like, too. How about 1979? Different factions, you say? Different countries? Different terrorist groups? Yes, but no. It's all related. It's all steeped in the history of radical Islam, in the history of militant Arabs - a history of a movement that demands a call to arms against the west and against Israel. Iraq and Afghanistan are nothing more than giant gathering places for all these factions to come together and join up for the same cause. Think of it as a reverse Lord of the Rings, where a combination of races and tribes spend generations battling together against Sauron. Here, we have a combination of countries and terrorists groups battling together against America. Combine forces. Work together. You can strike the enemy harder and faster that way. So into battle they go, finally learning that singularly, they probably could not launch a great attack against their common enemy, but together they can finally conquer that bastard. Which would be us. Us. That includes you with the anti-war sign. And you, with your conspiracy theories. It includes whether you are voting for Bush or Kerry, whether you drive an SUV or a hybrid, whether you listen to Hannity or Franken. It includes those of you who don't care about politics, who don't watch the news. We are their enemy. Do you think that Sauron would have taken the time to find out if anyone was sympathetic to him before he unleashed his evil army upon the tribes? Hardly. Which is why it really is an us v. them world. Usama bin Laden's network appears to be operating in more than 60 nations, often in concert with local allies... The U.S. occupation of Iraq brought Al Qaeda recruits from across Islamic nations, the study said. Up to 1,000 foreign Islamic fighters have infiltrated Iraqi territory, where they are cooperating with Iraqi insurgents, the survey said. Hmm. Do you still want us to leave Iraq? Still want us to pack up our troops and go home? I'd venture to say that most of those Islamic fighters are hanging out in Fallujah and Najaf, using mosques, shrines and holy cemeteries as their base. Should we attack any of those places, we're the bad guys. Never mind that the people who want to burn down America are hiding in those holy sites. We can't go after them, lest we be labeled the aggressors. Meanwhile, they are making plans, signing up new recruits, combining forces, sharing weapons and plans and generally becoming the lone horseman of our apocalypse. All right under our nose, in the countries that we our currently occupying. Yet so many want us to leave those countries. So many think we are wrong for being there, that Iraq has nothing to do with the war on terror, that Afghanistan is a waste of our time. A little wake up call might be in order, but I do not wish for your wake-up call to come in the form of an explosion. I do not want to leave the investigation and rooting out of terrorists and discovery of potential terrorists plots to the FBI or CIA. Sure, they've been doing a pretty good job (when they haven't been arresting the wrong people). All those flights that were grounded back in the winter showed me that our intelligence is working, but I think this war on terror has been stripped down to the most primitive level. It's not intelligence alone that will save us. It's the war that will, in the end, save us from doom. While all these forces are gathered in Iraq and Afghanistan and probably Pakistan, we need to let our troops loose to do the right thing. The right thing is? Protecting us from the what ifs that rattle inside our heads every time we watch the news or read a paper. "There is clearly a steady drumbeat of information that they are going to attack and hit us hard," said another senior federal counterterrorism official, who described the intelligence as highly credible. The summer of 2002 was what I called the Summer of Fear:

Summer of Fear. That's what this is. No matter how much you say you do not fear them, you don't believe the hype, you don't watch the news, I am willing to bet that the drone of a crop duster flying over your house will send you running for a gas mask. I'm willing to bet that you feel it. You feel the blanket of unease that our own security agencies have covered us with. I'm waiting for the comic book ending. For the superheroes to band together and form an alliance and kick the shit out their enemies. Or at least foil their evil plans and put us all back into our safe, comfortable place, where panic doesn't spark the air, where our lives don't exist in a constant state of electricity, like we just collectively stepped on a third rail.

That was when the terror alert changed nearly every day, where every morning brought another new warning, another shout to be vigilant, be alert. Hell, I couldn't be more alert if stuck toothpicks in my eyes. Two years later, I still believe in superheroes. I still believe we will win the war on terror. But you have to let us win it. You cannot stand between our troops and a holy shrine if that shrine is crawling with people plotting terror attacks. It doesn't even matter if the plans they are drawing out are against us, or Israel or the citizens of Baghdad who are just trying to find some kind of good life. Because we are all part of the same coalition, the same combined force of tribes and nations that are gunning for the bad guys. So, what to do with these headlines today? Do I cower? Do I end up the way I did in 2002, with a case of agoraphobia? Or do I trust that we will prevail? Choosing trust is much more relaxing, I'll tell you that. It's better than fearing planes and avoiding trains and dreaming of underground bunkers and rockets red glare landing at my feet. Yes, they are coming for us. Well, they are going to try their damndest. And we cannot, and should not ever think of standing in the way of those who are going to protect us from them. We know where they are. They are in Afghanistan and they are in Iraq and, brace yourself, they are right here on our soil. Those who are already here are just waiting for instructions. It is our job to cut down those who are supposed to give those instructions out. It is our job to cut the ties between here and there and that means mainly striking them over there. To cut and run from Iraq now would be to lose the war on terror. I don't think that's what you want, is it? Ridicule all you want. Choose your theories. Ignore at will. Laugh, point finger and call it all a lie. What does it take to make some people see that the war on terror is real, that our enemies are not a result of the Iraq war, but the result of a culture war. I suppose that if 3,000 dead in one day didn't convince them, nothing will. But you can bet that if a bomb ever dropped on their neighborhood, they would be the first ones crying that we didn't take the war on terror seriously enough. I hope it never comes to that. I hope we never have to say we were right about the terrorists coming for us. And if they never come, to the left it will all have been a bold lie, rather than a good job done by those fighting the terror war. I am not going to spend my summer hiding under the bed again. I am going to trust that we will get this war won, despite those who want to stand in our way. That's not to say I'm not scared because I still shake in my boots some days, especially when I think about the Olympics. But I am not as convinced of the coming Armageddon of America as I used to be. A lot has changed in the two years since the Summer of Fear. Main thing is, I figured out who the real enemy is, and it's not us. Those guys coming toward us with swords raised and torches blazing? splinter cells and offshoots make for one pretty big army of darkness coming at us. I hope that we have the strength to take them down.

Posted by me at 07:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (65) | TrackBacks (4)

I am working on a rather lengthy post about terrorism. Don't know when it will be ready. In the meantime, I can't tell you how much fun I'm having reading your movie quotes, as well as guessing where some of them came from. On that note, my movie quote of the day goes out to...oh, most of you could probably figure it out. '"Son, this is what happens when you FUCK A STRANGER IN THE ASS!" Back later with some long-winded essay on the Summer of Fear. ALSO: Poor Stacy. She tries to do something good with the Hooters thing and she ends up being praised by Al Franken. However, Stacy proves that Al Franken just does not produce the buzz the way the blogosphere does. I think I'll go compose some nursery rhymes before I get myself too worked up about potential terrorism to do anything else.

Posted by me at 06:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (1)

And now (following another dinner and a trip to the hazy, cloudy and cold beach), a family viewing of Return of the King will round out the 24 hour birthday celebration. See you tomorrow. [I did read all your movie quotes. more on that tomorrow]

Posted by me at 07:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

Call it burn out, call it what you will. I'm feeling it today. Temporary, yes, but stifling nonetheless. I find myself just not caring today. Let's move away from the ugly world of politics, news and bicycle spills. Let's go to the wonderful world of movies, via Emily: (Well, via Emily's place, but in a post written by the lovely Ken Summers) bq. I’d like to ask what you think are the greatest movie lines of all time. The best lines should be stand-alone great, but I realize that most are context-sensitive. That’s okay, but supply the context if necessary. Below are some of my favorites. I'll post mine here and at Emily's in a bit. It takes time to cull these lists down to a manageable hundred or so. But you go right ahead and start. No limit. Knock yourselves out. Hell, I don't care if you write a 78 paragraph statement on why a particular line means so much to you. Just entertain me, damn it! Have at it. Update: It's actually twice as much fun when you don't source the quote. Update 2: Here's one of my all time favorites: bq. I'd like Frank Shirley, my boss, right here tonight. I want him brought from his happy holiday slumber over there on Melody Lane, with all the other rich people, and I want him brought right here with a big ribbon on his head. And, I want to look him straight in the eye and I want to tell him what a cheap, lying, no good, rotten, floor-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed, sack of monkey shit he is! Hallelujah! Holy Shit! Where's the Tylenol?

Posted by me at 02:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (208) | TrackBacks (1)

Behind every great blog is a spouse/partner/friend who puts up with the obsession. Happy Birthday to the man behind ASV. Without his love, comfort, guidance, humor and strength (not to mention massages and kisses), I would not be sane enough to do this every day. I owe it all to the birthday guy. I would like to repeat what I said on this day last year (with a slight number change), because it still rings true. Happy Birthday to the perfect husband - the one who shares my obsessions with comic books and action figures and cheesy kung-fu movies and Faith No More, to the man who makes me feel like I'm 24. Yep, 24. I am one lucky gal, in so many ways. Tonight's radio station will be dedicated to my man. and man, am I getting mileage out of that one pic, I know, but he really likes this one

Posted by me at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (2)

And now, the entertainment portion of the blog. Read. Refresh. Enjoy.

Random Family Guy Quotes

[via Scott]

Posted by me at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (1)

As I mentioned, I watched the President's speech at Damon's Grill last night, surrounded by eight family members and a bunch of strangers. I'm glad I watched it there; had I been home and realized early on that the speech was not being broadcast by any of the major networks, I might have put something large and heavy through the tv. It probably says something about the state of America when television stations would prefer to run The Swan instead of an important speech, but it probably says even more about America that most people didn't think the speech was all that important and were quite happy to see The Swan instead of Bush. Why was the speech so important? Well, you would think that with all the complaining the media and the Bush opposers do about not knowing what's going on with the handover, or how there is never any good news coming out of Iraq, they would jump on this chance to actually hear about these things. Hah. So there I was in Damon's, waiting for the speech to begin. We're in this part of the restaurant that is lower than the rest. I guess it's set up like theater seating, but with booths and tables. On the upper level is the bar and some tables. The middle level has several booths, all semi-circles facing the huge tv screens below. The last level is where we were; long tables to fit large parties, but set at an angle so that if you want to look at the large screens, you must twist and crane in such a fashion that leaves you needing a massage at the end of dinner. Which, by the way, they do not offer. I asked. There are three screens. One shows FOX News (I've been there other times where it was CNN or even CNBC. But never MSNBC). One shows ESPN. The other shows trivia questions. Each table gets these little computerized boxes that remind one of a Speak and Spell (tm) and you enter your name using the keyboard. Your name - or whatever name or acronym you give yourself or your team for this purpose, appears on the large screen for all to see. The trivia questions appear, you type in your answer and the whole restaurant gets to see who got the question wrong. When the scoreboard shows after every question, you mentally try to match up the childish team/personal nicknames on the screen to the people in the room. Oh yea, I just know which guy is using GoldsGymGuy as his moniker. And yes, that chick must be MyTitsAreHuge. My sister and I tried to put in BUSH04 just to piss off the people next to us that were using KERRYPRZ (and discussing the topic loudly), but apparently Damon's thinks that Bush is a bad word, so we settled for GWB. When the game started and the list first appeared, I noticed someone was using KERRYSUX and I thought, heh, that was probably another response to KERRYPRZ and I looked around to see if I could figure out which family (this place is all families. Loud, obnoxious families like my own. Do not go there on a date during the week) and I noticed DJ smirking. Yes, that was my son's name. My sister high-fived him and the games began on TV3. At the same time, President Bush was getting ready to speak on TV1. A baseball game - Astros v. Reds - was on TV3. Now, each table has it's own volume control, with a switch to turn the sound to whichever tv you want to watch. If you choose trivia, you get inoffensive pop music, which I find, ironically, to be pretty offensive. We chose FOX. We turned it up loud. A few other tables also chose FOX and the president's voice wafted through the restaurant, booming over the shouts of Hey, waiter did you forget about us? and Mooooom, Bobby spit in my dinner! Bush started right in. The actions of our enemies over the last few weeks have been brutal, calculating, and instructive. Good. He was addressing the bad stuff early on. I was pleased to hear him be so frank and bold about it and to use it to segue right into a "free and self-governing Iraq." ....a pilot? My mother was saying something. A pilot. John Travolta. Movie. Oh yes, the trivia! I was part of a team, I needed to pay attention! No, no not Look Who's Talking. I think he just wanted to be a pilot in that movie. Broken Arrow. Yes, the movie with Howie Long. Trivia. FOX. President. Travolta. Babies crying. Kids shouting. Enormous claps of thunder outside. My head began to swim. I look at TV1 and Howie Long is giving a speech about Iraq and he's winking at me. Awww yea, baby. Come to me, Howie! My sister slaps me on the back of the head. Hello?? The food is here. Wake up. I ordered the steak that comes with the grilled portabello mushroom and some decadant sauces or glazes or something that for some reason make me think of Steve. The dinner comes with grilled slices of a zuchinni that must have been so large, which for some reason made me think of Howie Long again. Iraq now faces a critical moment. As the Iraqi people move closer to governing themselves, the terrorists are likely to become more active and more brutal.. This is really important. He's being completely honest, facing the truth head on and letting people know what to expect in the coming weeks. I like the way he looks. Determined, full of resolve. ....magnesium sulphur? How the hell am I supposed to know that? This is supposed to be fun trivia? I'm sorry, but I don't know anyone who thinks that gathering around a huge tv screen, eating steak and drinking beers while answering questions about chemistry is fun. This was followed by a question dealing with molecular biology, followed by a question about some long-forgotten television show, probably from the days back when people used tin-foil to get the best reception from the two channels they got, both of which would have carried any speech the president made. There are five steps in our plan to help Iraq achieve democracy and freedom. Yes, and all of America should know about these five plans. They should not, at that very moment, be watching some chick get her boobs surgically lifted. We are a nation at war and our president is addressing not only how the rest of the war is going to play out, but how the war is going to end. I notice a few people starting intently at Bush. The people next to me, the KERRYPRZ table, they are staring intently as well, but I think they are using the advantage of hi-def television to see if the scrapes on Bush's face are consistent with the topographic generalities of Crawford, Texas. My steak sucks. Too much peppercorn. Not cooked the way I like it. The portabello mushroom has the consistency of rubber dabbed in motor oil. I eat anyhow, because I am completely unaware that I am shoveling food in my mouth as I turn from TV1 to TV2, from Iraq’s infrastructure to a question about Tatum O'Neal. The thunder booms on, the babies scream, the kids whine, someone in the Reds game scores. Most people have lost interest in Bush by now and I think, how can you not see this as important? But before I can make my move to stand up on the table and make an impassioned speech about Bush and Iraq and freedom, my mother starts to whoop and holler that she won the damn trivia game, all because of a question about Elvis that of course she would know and GWB is in second to last place. KERRYSUX comes in third. URMOM - and I'm sure URMOM is that sixty year old guy in the Green Lantern shirt and Marvel hat, dining by himself - finishes in second. In last place is KERRYPRZ and for some reason, that makes me feel good. I decide to take it as an omen, like a fortune cookie in a steak house. These two visions — one of tyranny and murder, the other of liberty and life — clashed in Afghanistan. And thanks to brave U.S. and coalition forces and to Afghan patriots, the nightmare of the Taliban is over, and that nation is coming to life again. These two visions have now met in Iraq, and are contending for the future of that country. That, my friends, is how the war on terror involves Iraq. That is why we are fighting this war, because if you chase terror out of one place, it will simply find another to harbor it and it is our job, as defenders of the universe, to make sure that democracy exists in these places so that terror networks can't turn them into their own rogue nations. That's my take, anyhow. So Bush finishes, dinner is done, trivia is over. We escape into the rain and lightning and cross the parking lot to Best Buy, where I cross my fingers that some naive floor clerk will understand my plight about it being my husband's birthday the next day and how I really need to have LoTR all wrapped up for him in the morning, but the clerk suggest that I dress up like a hobbit and hand him a Best Buy gift card instead. Thanks, buddy. And now, I must devise my plot against the birds.

Posted by me at 06:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (54) | TrackBacks (9)

So why did I hate WordPress, you ask? Most of the reasons probably have more to do with me than WP itself; I'm not that great with big, wholesale changes and I got a little unnerved while trying to navigate through WP. However, there were some things I just didn't like. For instance, no comment preview and no post preview. Yes, I know those things are available through hacks, but that right there is my number one problem with WP; a lot of the features I was used to having in MT were only available by using hack scripts in WP. I also didn't like the way the comment section looked. It was too busy and shorter comments got lost between all the other things going on, like the RSS feed, permalinks, etc. One thing I love about MT is being able to fool around with the templates right inside the program. With WP, everything is done using ftp. I also found the interface kind of clunky. What I like about is there were no rebuilds; that is something that irks me about MT. And the longer I use MT, the more I feel like my rebuilds are taking longer or that MT is going to crush under the weight of how many posts I have. But that just might be leftover baggage from my Greymatter days - that system actually did collapse on me at one point. There are many, many good features of WP. They just aren't the right featurs that will make me continue to use it. MT is simple enough for people like me who have a fear of coding. WP requires a degree in blog coding to get it to do exactly what you want it to. Some people will comment here or email me and say how easy it is to implement all the hacks and scripts, how easy it is to fool with the templates and that's great for those people. It's not great for me because I don't do code. I'm an HTML kind of gal. Also, I tend to break things a lot when I fool around with code. Just ask Stacy (if it weren't for Stacy, I would probably still be using Tripod and Front Page Express. She taught me everything I know, including how to redesign my own site without killing it. But I would never be daring enough to try different things if I didn't know she was there to mop up my messes. Which is why I am flying down to Florida in July just to buy her dinner). So that's my deal with WP. I will stay with this version of MT for the foreseeable future. I'll never, ever switch to the paid version, as I outlined my problems with that already. Despite my feelilngs right now about Six Apart, I still think MT is a pretty solid, easy system to use for less-than-geeks like myself. And that's the story.

Posted by me at 05:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (2)

Really, really tired. Quick posting of things I wanted to blog about but will not due to the fact that my pillow and blanket keep calling my name and which I may or may not expand on tomorrow. * Went back to Moveable Type. Hated Word Press. HATED it. * Shrek 2 was absolutely delightful. * The reason for the free-floating mouth was because I promised Nat I wouldn't put her face on the internet. * The Sopranos was really good last night and more than made up for the wretched dream episode the week before. * Several people have asked if I'm going to comment on the whole Washingtonienne thing. The only thing I would have to say is, a whore by any other name...(and anything else I said on the subject would, if previous situations are any indication, be taken as petty jealousy. Ass fucking for money is not really high on my to-do list, though) * Sgt. Hook is compiling the Blogosphere's 101 Great Books for Real Readers of All Ages and would like your help. * I loved Bush's speech, which I watched at Damon's Grill while everyone else around us (save for my sister) played the giant video trivia game or watched basketball. We turned it up real loud and applauded in all the right places. * For all of you who ordered prints of my husband's masterful art, we apologize for the delay in sending them out; we've been caught up in house stuff and got backtracked on his business; we finally got the prints, they look fantastic and they'll be going out Wednesday. * Lost in all the hustle and bustle and aggravation of closing on the house/not closing on the house/packing/unpacking/moving/not moving is the fact that tomorrow is my wonderful husband's birthday. Just in time for both LoTR and Bubba Ho-Tep on DVD. Ok, don't tell him. I got him this and this for the new office/studio. Feel free to wish him a happy birthday if you so desire. I'm going to follow the directions of the pillow and blanket and go to bed. [One question: This can't possibly be right, can it? NO network covered what was a pretty important speech for the people of this country to hear?]

Posted by me at 09:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (23) | TrackBacks (2)

So Nat got her braces today. And yes, they are pink. She thought the color would go nice with her predominantly black wardrobe. She's got a real 80's new wave thing going on. She just doesn't know it. We didn't have colors when I was young. Nope, just plain old metal. Hence the lovely moniker metal mouth. [Update: I've gone back to MT - more on that later] We're off to see Shrek 2.

Posted by me at 04:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

I apolize to the residents of Queens, NY for saying that their borough is home to the wimpy. Maybe I was confusing the entire borough with Shea Stadium. Anyhow, sorry about that. What about just Forest Hills people? Are they considered wimpy?

Posted by me at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)