Mark Pritchard's blog
For tomorrow's parties, part 2
L.A. Weekly has a major feature on Erowid, a vast website with much information about drugs of all kinds. Unless you're actually doing research on something, much of your browsing fun will come from reading Experience Reports, first-person reports by people who have tried getting high on all manner of substances.
He may have testified with Cheney, but he walked back into the West Wing alone
Here's the the view of the president the White House would like to present all the time. The most commonly cited quote from Bush's after-testimony press briefing: "I answered every question." Man, I wish I had a job where the bar was set that low.
Meanwhile, remember that former pro football player who was acclaimed a hero for forgoing his million-dollar sports career only to get killed in Afghanistan? You thought it was last week's story. No, it's about to get major legs. A single op-ed in a single college newspaper mocked the footballer, saying he "got what was coming to him" and that Latinos would consider him a pendejo for getting himself shot instead of enjoying a pro athlete's prerogatives. Expect the Fox News types to jump all over this and ride it for weeks.
iTunes 4.5
Apple released a new version of iTunes yesterday. This transcript of a short Steve Jobs conference call outlines the new features. This article and this one comment on the new version and Apple's progress.
Huh, I never realized there was a limit to the number of times you could burn a playlist to a CD. That's a drag. But this comment points out you can get around that by redefining a new playlist with essentially the same songs on it.
What's interesting (if you want to dignify it by using that word) about the conference call is the typical self-serving coporate-speak spouted by Jobs. I don't know why anybody thinks Apple as a company or Steve Jobs as a businessman are different from any others. Most CEOs are smug hypocrites, just like most politicians.
Now for all the good news from Iraq
Satire is dead, they say. I haven't watched Saturday Night Live in years, The Simpsons seems tired, and even The Onion isn't all that funny lately. But once in a while something just kind of blows a valve.
Here we go: Sinclair TV -- owner of several dozen TV stations -- says it's tired of all the bad news from Iraq, and has decided to start telling stories about all the good things happening there. It's a little unclear how they intend to accomplish this, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. We're all waiting, fellas, for those feel-good stories from Iraq.
In the spirit of this effort, according to an entry on poynter.org, Sinclair will also black out from its ABC affilliates tomorrow's Nightline broadcast, in which Ted Koppel plans to spend the whole program simply reading and showing pictures of dead U.S. troops killed in Iraq. Too negative.
Nobody cares that Bush can't speak
A Chicago Tribune columnist says the press is unduly protecting Bush by not revealing how inarticulate and "mangled" his speeches and statements are. Here's a nice long excerpt from the column, for those too irritated to fill out one more damn site registration form:
You don't believe it's happening? Well, then, tell me about the furor over W's speech last week to a joint meeting in Washington of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Newspaper Association of America.
You didn't hear about it?
That's the proof.
If the press were not protecting Bush, you'd have read in your Chicago Tribune--or Washington Post or New York Times or Wall Street Journal or USA Today--that he delivered one of the most confusing, inarticulate public addresses since ... well, some people would say since his press conference a week earlier.
As it was, those hopelessly biased reporters who cover Bush overlooked the mangled syntax, penetrated the rhetorical fog and extracted some usable lines from the dross and manufactured stories that had the president sounding, if not quite statesmanlike, then at least intelligible.
The New York Times' Elisabeth Bumiller led with Bush's response to a poll that showed the majority of Americans expect another terrorist attack in the U.S. before the November election. "Well, I understand why they think they're going to get hit again," Bush was quoted as saying. "This is a hard country to defend."
The Washington Post focused on his remarks about Iran's effort to acquire nukes. "The Iranians need to feel the pressure from the world that any nuclear weapons program will be uniformly condemned--it's essential that they hear that message," the president was quoted.
Neither The Wall Street Journal nor the Tribune carried a story about the speech per se, although the Tribune carried an Associated Press story that wove one quote from the speech into a story on the unexpectedly high costs of the Iraqi excursion. "The Iraqi people are looking at Americans and saying, `Are we going to cut and run again?'" the quote ran. "And we're not going to cut and run if I'm in the Oval Office."
I can't prove it, but I would bet that most of the editors and publishers went away from the speech wondering why Bush, who long ago proved that he is no extemporaneous speaker, hadn't ordered up an address for the occasion from his stable of White House speechwriters. I heard more than one of those in attendance say the same thing: "He wasted an opportunity."
But you didn't read about any of that, because the reporters, trained to seek meaning and the meaningful in any utterance by the president, focused on what could be understood.
Bush has benefited from this journalistic professionalism throughout his presidency. In a column almost two years ago, in July 2002, I quoted the complaint of a reader who claimed we had misquoted the president's statement in a press conference denying any "`malfeasance' in his business dealings prior to becoming president."
"The word that he actually used ... sounded to me something like `misfeance'--something which is not a word in any dictionary I've ever seen," the reader, Sean Barnawell of Chicago, wrote. "I feel the Tribune should not be in the business of `cleansing' what the president says in order to make him sound more articulate than he is."
Yes, we all know Bush is a fumblemouth. And we all know there's a vast gap the size of the Grand Canyon between the right wing's description of the press as the "liberal media" and the left wing's impression that the mainstream media is merely the mouthpiece of corporate interests.
But I think I know why Bush and Co. are not worried about the president's inability to spreak Engrish. It's because they know voters have already made their choices. There's a 48-48 split, and nobody in either camp is going to change their minds based on something Bush or Kerry say. People are already set in stone. There's a tiny group in the middle who can't decide whether to vote for Nader, Kerry or nobody at all. And while they may decide the election, they're not paying attention to Bush either. So Bush can go up to the microphone and speak Martian and not even Karl Rove will care.
Those nutty antipodians
It's been a while since there was a really good Australian story, so I was relieved to find this: Kangaroo to receive valor award for saving man
Okay.... right
Because it's my birthday, I checked my horoscope in the local paper. I admit I was underwhelmed:
TAURUS April 20-May 20
It's hard to tell if you're getting a thumbs up. That's because the person cueing isn't in a position to help out yet. Proceed cautiously.
Gee, that's... uh, thanks. Actually I have no idea what it means.
So I checked Bob Brezsny, the horoscope carried in most alt.weeklies. It was a little more positive:
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Close your eyes and take yourself back in time to the moment when you slipped free of your mother's womb. Imagine your original breath; recreate the sensation of air rushing into your lungs for the first time. Remember it as the end of your warm, dark, watery existence and the beginning of your sojourn in this bright, dry, spacious world. Dwell in that simulation for a while, Taurus, then consider this: You will soon experience, in a metaphorical way and on a higher level, another first breath. Like the earlier version, it will be both unsettling and vivifying, a time of poignancy and celebration.
Pfff... Well, yeah, but frankly, I'm looking for something a little more lively than just "rebirth." How about a nice corporate opinion? I found one on msnbc.com:
You're on the home stretch now, dear Taurus! Kiss your worries good-bye. Your efforts pay off in spades, as people listen to your advice and bend over backwards to try and please you. Although certain details in your love life still need to be ironed out, it's safe to coast for a while. You've spent months in this process of self-transformation, and you deserve a little rest...
Gee, that would be nice, if everybody just listened to my opinion and then "tried to please me."
We'll see about that. In the meantime, I think I'll just buy a lottery ticket.
Beyond Chron scoop: notorious developer plans supe run
A few weeks ago, some disaffected local "housing activists" and former SF Chronicle employees started an online daily called Beyond Chron. Today the paper makes it first scoop: an interview with Joe O’Donoghue of the Residential Builders Association, the man responsible for much of the pomo condo development in San Francisco, in which he says he will probably run for the Board of Supervisors.
Lit news
Dying this week were Hubert Selby, Jr. and poet Thom Gunn. A 25-year-old Nigerian teacher's novel is making a big splash in England. The SF Bay Guardian reviews Michelle Tea's new anthology.
Gun racks, 'logos everywhere,' lots of Republicans = 'Utopia'
A Washington Post story about affluent Republican suburbanites attempts to put George Bush's base under a microscope. Pretty entertaining. Though I went to high school in a different Houston suburb, everything in this story is what I found excruciating about living there.
The only hope really offered is the detailed description of the diet of the man who is the main focus of the piece.
Breakfast: "scrambled eggs over congealed grits fried in butter."
Lunch: "a brisket-and-sausage barbecue sandwich."
Dinner: "hamburgers with American cheese, salad and Tater Tots."
So fortunately the guy is going to keel over before age 65, relieving the younger generation of paying his Social Security and medical benefits.
"Penniless" student's account holding up, so far
After the New York Times wrote yesterday about an NYU student who couldn't afford housing and had spent the semester sleeping in the library basement, I mocked his tale and suggested it was a hoax. But today the New York Daily News jumped on the story and didn't seem to uncover any big holes. They found the kid's parents, and didn't contradict the story that he's 20 years old. (I think his picture makes him look a lot older.) Last night on MSNBC, Keith Olbermann interviewed the editor of NYU's student paper, which broke the story last week, and she confirmed the story as well.
A play at the plate
Birthday today. I almost never wake up with a sad memory, but today, for some reason, I did. I was 9 or 10 years old -- the time when Bruce H. was bullying me constantly -- and our class was playing softball. I was playing catcher, Bruce was on the other team, and there was a play at the plate. I received the ball in plenty of time to make the tag, but instead of burying the ball in my mitt and tagging him with the mitt, which you're supposed to do, I tried to tag him with the ball itself. (I think I was a little unclear on both the rule, which says tagging with the mitt is okay, and on how the play was supposed to be performed.)
With a banshee cry, Bruce yanked the ball out of my hand and tossed it away while crossing the plate. Big crybaby that I was, I loudly protested that Bruce's action had been unfair. My perspective was that yanking the ball from a fielder was unheard of. Sometimes the runner knocks the ball away (as happened in the stunning play at the plate in the Giants-Marlins playoff game last year) and sometimes the catcher hangs on (ibid.). But you don't reach out and just take the ball away.
Our teacher the umpire called Bruce out -- though from my perspective nearly 40 years later, he should have been called safe, frankly.
What's significant about this incident is how typical it is of the way Bruce bullied me. Very seldom did he actually beat me or physically push me around. Mostly, he simply used his size and strength to intimidate and humiliate me, doing things that were so startling and unexpected that before I figured out how to respond, the moment was over, and Bruce had delivered his annoying victory cry and moved on. The only atypical thing about this incident is that there was an adult there to intervene and rule against Bruce; usually the teachers, Scout leaders and others who were supposed to be in charge just looked the other way.
Yeah. Still pissed off about this nearly 40 years later. I guess I should get over it!
In another hemisphere
In Michel Houellebecq's novel Platform, Muslim extremists attack a (fictional) sex-tourist resort in southernmost Thailand, wreaking havoc among the revelers. Today real Muslim extremists attacked the same area. Somewhere between 75 and 95 people were killed in the fighting -- though government outposts, not resorts, were attacked.
How's that war going?
"Heavy fighting" as well as bombing killed "scores" in Fallujah and Najaf as hopes for peace dwindled.
A leaked report from a (now former) Coalition Authority spook/string puller is still hawkish on the occupation of Iraq, but admits the effort to promote a democratic Iraq is disorganized, rife with nepotism and cronyism, and "the progress evident happens despite us rather than because of us."
But here's my favorite: The Army asked two California ski resorts to return a couple of howitzers it loaned them for avalanche control, saying the artillery pieces were needed in the war.
Meanwhile, in Spain, the new prime minister is doing more than just pulling Spain out of Iraq. He's launching a campaign against domestic violence, making it subject of the first law drafted by his new administration.
When in doubt, answer 'MLK'
A "review sheet" distrubuted to Texas teachers -- what level, it doesn't say -- has some helpful hints for students:
"1. If it is a question about a person from the Revolutionary Era, the answer is George Washington or Thomas Jefferson.
2. If it is a question about a women's rights leader, the answer has to be Susan B. Anthony.
3. If it is a question about a civil rights leader, the answer will likely be Martin Luther King."
I'm guessing this has something to do with a standardized test which Texas students have to take. What a farce.
Seventies shrine for sale
The "Mary Tyler Moore House" -- a large Victorian in Minneapolis used for exterior shots of the lead character's residence on "the Mary Tyler Moore Show" in the 70s -- is for sale for $1.2 million. Among the amusing details in the story is the bit about how, during the early 70s, the residents got so tired of TV crews taking photos of the manse that they hung a huge IMPEACH NIXON banner across the front.
Long after the show was off the air, it continued to draw pilgrims:
In a 1995 article published in the New York Times, the Maurers said they seldom watched television and were unaware of the significant landmark status of the house when they bought it in 1988.
But they soon found out, the newspaper reported. On moving day, while they were sitting on the porch, a van stopped in front and a dozen people climbed out. They trooped onto the lawn, arranged a tripod camera and then, on signal, threw their hats into the air for a photo.
That makes me wonder: how might fans of other TV series register their devotion? Perhaps fans of "Friends" carry armchairs and reading lamps and set them up in front of fountains, while fans of "The West Wing" try to escape from the White House tour and walk purposefully through the corridors, carrying papers and having humorous, oblique conversations about politics.
Creative writer of the month
That "penniless" NYU student who supposedly spent the semester sleeping in the library basement because he couldn't afford housing? I don't believe it for a second. Just look at the guy's picture -- he's not 20! Come on! He wouldn't identify his parents, there's nothing about where he went to high school, and:
As he put it on his Web site: "I am a writer at heart, and go to N.Y.U. for creative writing, and this seemed like an experience I just couldn't pass up. I am an idealistic dreamer, and this seemed like something I could do, that would benefit me financially and creatively."
The decision to share his experiences with the world came later, he said, as he grew tired of explaining to friends what he was doing and why. He simply posted an explanation on the Internet.
The more he wrote about his life as "the Bobst Boy," as he christened himself, the more it became a kind of "stress relief," he said.
Gawker suggests, "You know he's gotten emails from about 34 hungry agents this morning. Sell that book, little fella."
The hissing of summer blondes
Really funny NYT article on what is expected to be this summer's gossippy best-seller, The Right Address. For some reason, it's common for two people to write books like this (cf.The Nanny Diaries) -- thus the reporter mentions two names.
Ms. Karasyov said she and Ms. Kargman never intended to write a great literary novel, even though they both graduated from Ivy League colleges and Ms. Karasyov studied Russian literature. In the — ahem — original Russian.
"Well, sure, I would have loved to have written `War and Peace,' " Ms. Karasyov said. "But this is not a book we're spending 10 years writing while we live on grants from Yaddo. There's always that one book every year that everyone talks about, and it can be really dramatic and heavy — you know, like the one with the dead girl watching down on us from above."
Ms. Karasyov, who was referring to Alice Sebold's literary novel, "The Lovely Bones," made an impressed-sounding "woo-ooh!" noise. She continued: "But our book is what you read between oiling up and then hopping back into the pool."
Also, be sure to look for the word trough toward the end of the story, and the image that it conjures.
Rumsfeld a la carte
Here's Def. Sec. Don. Rumsf., speaking last Thursday, on the odds of soldiers surviving at Fallujah:
For example, you take the Marines. They have been trained, they believe, for urban warfare and for the kind of problems that they're facing. It doesn't mean that you're going to be able to live through that in a perfect way without people being killed or without people being wounded, and the tragedy of the reality we live in is that that's happening. People are being killed and wounded, and God bless these wonderful young people.
(Scroll down to about 85% through the speech.)
Pretty good idea, really
A British poll found that 25% of workers admitted to napping on the job -- on or under desks, on the floor of staff showers, in cars in the parking lot. I'm feeling pretty wooly this morning and like I could use a nap myself.
It's a hot day all around the bay. But on days like this, the location of my workplace, only a mile from the ocean, is a real plus. While it's still warm, it's not like the inland suburbs, which hit 100 on days like this.
Also from the Guardian: Mike Skinner, the white English rapper whose Original Pirate Material was a fascinating and hilarious take on urban hiphop, has a new album out.
Classic NYer neurosis competition
The New York Observer has a funny piece on Netflix and the psychological ingredients of having a longer "queue" than others. It contains this classic bit of competitive neurosis:
For Elaine Chen, an ad copywriter at Wunderman, though, the problem is more mundane:
When a friend at work suggested she add Netflix to her already overloaded entertainment smorgasbord, the thought made her cringe. "We all basically have a bottom-line amount of information we can handle, so I thought, ‘I can’t be spending any more money on this crap than I already am,’" Ms. Chen said. "If I already have a cable bill, you throw in my Internet and my TiVo, it’s $100 a month!’ So I’m like, ‘If I pay another 20 bucks for Netflix, I’ll just feel like I’m an asshole.’ It’s particularly bad because I really have an extremely frightening home theater system for a single woman. At some point, I really need a reason to leave the house."
Elaine, huh? It does sound like a Seinfield bit.
'The world revolves around my cunt!'
Canadian high school students get high and talk about sex while one of them obsessively blogs the conversation.
Obligatory weblink dept.
In the most recent issue of Get Your War On, Garfield and Bill the Cat suddenly appear. Plus, it's funny and articulate, as usual. (Background for those who came in late: Get Your War On started as a thrown-together screed of post-9/11 anxiety and rage. It perfectly captured the modern patois of sarcasm, profanity and over-education. It caught on big, getting cited all over newspapers, TV and the internet. Plus the artist donates profits from the books to anti-landmine efforts.)
Okay, now that I've fulfilled my basic duty as a blogger -- actually linking to something on the web -- I'll just say hello. it's a beautiful Sunday morning; I awoke to birdsong, made myself some coffee, and read the Sunday paper in the sunlight-splashed front room, while Six alertly snoozed in front of me. Today, a typical Sunday: church, watching the Giants game on TV while exercising, then a trip to the store to pick up a pie, then the usual Sopranos-watching evening at Sara's.
Does this fool ANYBODY?? What is the point??!?
New York Times: Bush, Campaigning in Florida, Promotes the Environment
President Bush sought to burnish his environmental credentials again today, this time in the state that was the most bitterly contested of all in 2000, Florida.
Mr. Bush, in a noontime speech at the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, noted that this is National Volunteer Week. "This week, we observed Earth Day, and one way to honor the day is to honor those citizens in our country who understand the definition of stewardship, citizens who work to make sure that our environment is as clean as possible."
Meanwhile, in Yosemite yesterday, Bush's Interior Secretary thought she was going to do an Earth Day photo op, but instead was "peppered with questions" on the administration's commitment to rebuild park facilities after a federal judge halted the work.
Lede of the month
That's from the St. Paul Pioneer-Press.Mr. Monkey and three other topiaries kidnapped from a Maplewood greenhouse were placed in protective custody at a St. Paul neighborhood bar Thursday until their owner could pick them up.
Make it up, it sounds better
Really interesting take in Amy Langfield's blog about all the reporting fabrication scandals of the past few years. She manages to boil down all the scandals from Boston Globe columnist Pat Smith to Jayson Blair with a few words:
I can tell you that in every newsroom I've worked in - sometimes as soon as the first day -- you start to figure out which reporters and editors play loose with the facts. And it tends to be common knowledge among the reporters, desk editors, copy editors and even the photographers... As for USA Today, if it's like most other newsrooms, (and like Jayson Blair and the New York Times) the top brass probably knew Kelley's work needed extra scrutiny.
Dept. of apologies
Many years ago, during my college years, Austin was still going through the post-hippie era. Among the wares that street vendors sold on the Drag were shirts that had been fashioned from Mexican flour sacks. I wore one when I went home for a visit, and my mother said suspiciously, "What does that say?"
I said, "I dunno -- it's just a flour sack."
"You don't know what it says?" she worried. "They could be mocking you! Maybe it reads 'My father is a fool!'"
So she fantasized an insult, not to me or to Americans, but to my mild-mannered father. This was typical of her paranoid relationship to modern culture.
I was reminded of this incident when I saw this story about a handbag company whose products had bilingual labels. But instead of a translation of the cleaning instructions, the French part of the label read: "We are sorry our President is an idiot. We didn't vote for him."
The best part of the story is that the head of the company isn't mad at the perpetrator; he wants to give whoever it was a raise. Because sales have taken off due to word of mouth.
Music for writing
If you have the Flash plugin and some bandwidth, go to The Rurals' site and listen to five songs they have available for streaming. Smooth modern soul music. Very nice.
Voting
Very nice map showing county-by-county results for the 2000 election. Mark Shields on Pennsylvania's swing voters, who "like Bush, but not his war;" a new poll shows Bush still has an edge there.
Health exec's compensation: $94 million A YEAR
Space Waitress links to this article about a bus strike in Minneapolis. It contains the astonishing factoid that the chairman of the UnitedHealth HMO got $94.2 million in compensation in 2003 alone. How fucked up is that?
McGuire was named one of the best managers by Business Week, which pointed out that UnitedHealth's revenues for 2004 are expected to top $33.5 billion. What the fuck is going on in this country?
Around the horn
That's a baseball term. It means to throw the ball all around the baseball diamond, usually just for fun, but sometimes as part of a complex play, from third to second to first base. So what, you may ask. I have to call these omnibus entries something, that's all.
Subversive Russian prison tattoos on the BBC News site include one of a fat pig in a Soviet general's uniform and Boris Yeltsin swilling liquor.
In California, a bill to legalize gay marriage made it out of committee, but that's as far as it'll go.
Remember those dunken antics by former Enron CEO J. Skilling earlier this month? Now federal prosecutors want the judge in the case to impose further restrictions on the former corporate magnate/monumental scam artist.
In a shocking move, a Texas appeals court commuted the death sentence of a man because he is retarded. Usually they can't wait to kill 'em.
A "civilian contractor" who took a dramatic picture of a planeload of flag-draped coffins on its way back from Iraq has been fired by her employer. The U.S. tries to keep photographs of flag-draped coffins out of the news -- so when someone actually comes up with such a photo, it's played on front pages. Somebody explain that cause and effect to Wolfowitz, okay?
And get Charley off the MTA, while you're at it
Nigerian "419" scams hit new heights with this doozy, which posits a secret Nigerian astronaut who has been stuck on the International Space Station for 14 years because his place on a return Soyuz capsule was taken up by "cargo." He needs a small cash advance to get home, and then you can share in the more than $15 million in flight pay he has accumulated during his sojourn in space. I find that irresistible, don't you?
Dept. of Quagmires
Christine sends a picture taken at "an alterations shop in (the town of) 29 Palms where I get my own alterations done. There are always Marines in there, getting their stripes sewn on or whatever. The last time I was there a big guy in fatigues was asked if he could pick up his stuff in a week, and he just shook his head and said something to the effect that, You never know these days. This was right as they were getting ready to ship a bunch more guys back to Iraq."
I decided this was inspiring, right after I decided to commit suicide
Fifteen-year-old writes best seller:
Writing "was a passion for me since I was very young," Bujor, now 15, said.
Somebody get Negroponte on the phone
Kind of boggles the mind -- if today's car bomb in Riyadh is any indication, even Saudi Arabia is not far-right enough for the lunatics of Al Qaeda.
Meanwhile, what's more startling in today's Doonesbury -- the image of B.D. without his lower leg, or without headgear? This is the first time since 1968 that he's been shown without some sort of helmet.
At the other end of the spectrum, some people are still upset about the performance of "Hey Ya!" on the Grammy Awards in February. (As far as I know, nobody has even asked what the connection is supposed to be between the pop-hiphop "Hey Ya!" and Native Americans.)
Gay marriages halted in Portland
Though courts stopped gay weddings in San Francisco in March, same-sex nuptuals continued in Multnomah County, Oregon, until today when a judge ruled they should stop until a formal court decision is handed down. More than 3000 weddings were performed since Feburary.
How our downfall started
BoingBoing, which posts more interesting things than any other blog, links to a scan of the cover of a pamphlet entitled "Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles." I found a bio of the pamphlet's author and found he has also written such works as "The Marxist Minstrels," "Rhythm, Riots and Revolution" and "The Beatles: A Study in Drugs, Sex and Revolution." His organization also has a "journal" where he posts these thoughts:
Some things you can change and some you can't. You can raise a pig in your parlor. It won't change the pig—only your parlor. Be for change -- as long as it's change for the better. Ruts are just graves with the ends removed. The most inevitable thing in life is change. But why change the American system which produced the greatest freedom for the greatest number of people in human history, along with the world's highest standard of living, for Socialism? The "Liberals" now prefer to call Socialism the 'Welfare State.' That means that the Power Elite -- those who run the Establishment -- get well and you pay the fare. Under any name, Socialism has been a miserable failure for a thousand years. All Welfare States finally become Dictatorships.
Dept. of quagmires
Sometimes the shadows on the wall tell you more than the real action. This week a Doonesbury character is seriously injured in Iraq. The character of B.D. -- who started in artist Garry Trudeau's Harvard days as the glamorous football team captain who ended up in Vietnam, later became the coach of the college team and recently was reactivated and sent to Iraq -- got blown up on Monday. Today they're trying to save his life, and an Associated Presss story revealed he would survive but lose a leg.
Another strip had a similar storyline. The main character in "Get Fuzzy" discovers that a "cousin" has lost a leg in Iraq.
What a contrast to the Vietnam-era Doonesburys, where the war was treated as a serious joke.
Liberals come out boring
An L.A. Times critic listened to 17 straight hours of Air America and came away with this opinion: "It may have been the most boring day of my life."
I already know I liked the book better
Who owns the film rights to On the Road? Francis Ford Coppola. But after 36 years, he still can't get a film version off the ground. You know, some things are better left alone.
Supersize my morning news
Roundup of the morning's intrigue:
The CEO of McDonald's died of a heart attack this morning while attending a company event in Orlando.
Paris Hilton is having her "memoirs" ghost-written, but reportedly she can not only not write, she can't even read. So her obliging editor got someone to read her book to her over the phone while she stared at the picture that will adorn the book cover. (via Gawker)
I finally found where to download The Grey Album, the rap mix based on the Beatles' White Album. Explanation, if you need one, is at that link. And speaking of music industry mysteries, that William Hung CD (the one by the frighteningly bad Chinese-American singer who turned his humiliation on American Idol into a record deal) is the locker room pep-me-up for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Says the SF Chronicle: "He can't carry a tune, but he has carried the Dodgers into first place."
Tell me about it. Cris and I went to the game on Sunday, and despite an inclement drizzle that should have discouraged the visitors, the hated Dodgers won for the third game in a row. Bonds, who went 4 for 4 with 5 RBIs, muttered that he couldn't carry the team on his own. Hey, I know the feeling, big guy.
Sun everywhere
I spent sunny yeserday wandering around the city on foot and by transit, as the pictures on the photoblog show. It was supposed to rain, but instead it was gorgeously sunny and cool. I wish Marilyn, who visited last week, could have seen this weather.
And speaking of erotica-writing friends, Susie Hara has a new piece on Cleansheets, the first one she's published without a pseudonym. Or maybe they just goofed. Anyway, read it, I like her writing.
At one point I rode the streetcars all the way from Castro to the Embarcadero, and then around to Broadway. Every tourist to SF should do this ride -- right down the main drag of the city, from neighborhood to neighborhood, all of them interesting.
Update later: We went out to Mt. Tam for a little hike. Specifically this meant about 2.5 hours of driving for an hour or so of hiking, but I wanted to see the wildflowers. We saw a few of those Calipso orchids -- tiny little purple things. I would have missed it, but one of them had a crowd around it taking pictures. "They're very rare," one of the people assured us.
"Oh yeah, like, um, that other one over there?" I asked, pointing a few feet away. Then a few feet farther we saw one more. But that was it.
Woodward book: Bush planned Iraq invasion in early 2002
Bob Woodward's new book "Plan of Attack" says Bush secretly planned an invasion of Iraq soon after going into Afghanistan, and kept it so secret he ordered Rumsfield not to tell the CIA director. Meanwhile, Tenet was assuring Bush that Iraq had chemical weapons.
Let's think that through. That means Bush planned the invasion assuming U.S. troops would get attacked with chemical weapons. But they evidently had no idea elements of post-Saddam forces and Muslim armies would wage a guerilla war.
Meanwhile, yesterday a retired Marine general criticized Rumsfield for being naive about what it would take to pacify Iraq.
Frisco piggyback!
This vintage jacket bearing the logo of a defunct railroad could be a big seller. Somebody take that picture to a manufacturer and get a volume discount.
Rpublican gaffe of the month
Responding to reporter's questions, Def. Sec. Donald Rumsfield allowed as how the current chaos in Iraq is "not exactly" what the administration might have envisioned when it invaded the country. But that's as far as he would go. He also put his foot in his mouth when he said:
...the reason it is contained is because we have the extra troops there. That is self-evident. Come on, people are fungible. You can have them here or there.
The Kerry campaign immediately jumped on this, saying Rumsfield's statement "is further indication of this Administration's continuing disregard for the men and women who put their lives on the line," blah blah blah.
Maybe the SUV was just a bad idea in the first place
A friend, Philip Klasky, has been an environmental activist for many years, leading, among other things, opposition to a huge landfill in the Mojave Desert as well as a nuclear waste dump in Ward Valley. Now he's trying to rein in off-road vehicles that tear up desert habitat and produce noise pollution. I had to laugh, though, at the mention of the "Gammel Township Neighborhood Association." I think that's probably Philip, my friend Christine, maybe Jerry, and a couple other people. But more power to 'em. Those fucking off-roaders are bad news.
Mister fatso millionaire
Perhaps desperate for some positive publicity, Simpsonscreator Matt Groening is set to appear for the first time as a character in the show itself. (I wonder if this has anything to do with the strike by series voice actors for more money.)
What I'm really concerned with is the picture of Groening that accompanies the BBC story. You know how rich that guy is? (I don't know either, but this 1997 article says his income was $18 million annually "and that was a few years ago.") And he looks like the weird hippie at your sister's wedding.
Tired of the same old thing?
This satirical piece from the Onion perfectly captures the attitude of acedia -- what we now call plain old burnout. Pretty funny.
Nader trouble in Oregon
Ralph Nader failed to draw 1000 supporters to a Portland appearance, and if he can't draw in Portland, it's hard to see him getting on the ballot in Oregon at all. That crucial swing state barely went for Gore in 2000, with Nader polling ten times the margin between the two major-party candidates. In other states (famously, Florida), Nader stole tens of thousands of votes from the Democrat, who lost the state by 537 votes and thus the Presidency. (And that's if you accept the official count.)
Go ahead, ask him anything
Romenesko today collects a consensus of press views on yesterday's Bush news conference: that the Pres. was particularly unhelpful. Maybe the best link is to this Time magazine piece:
The event felt more like an intervention, with a psychoanalytic press corps trying to goad the president into admitting that he had made a mistake, if not in the run up to 9/11, then in his administration’s cheerful prediction that coalition forces would be met with cheers or that there’d be weapons of mass destruction turned into ploughshares when the U.S. pulled into Baghdad. They tried to make the press conference a presidential 12-step program. But Bush wasn’t going to go down that road. Sure, he said he’s thought about what he might have done differently. But when my colleague John Dickerson asked the president if he could think of any mistake he’d made since September 11, a tongue-tied Bush couldn’t think of one. “Maybe I’m not as quick as I should be,” he said.
Yeah, I managed to listen to about 40 minutes of it on the radio, sitting at a corner in Berkeley marking up a chapter by one of the members of my writing group.
Report: Starbucks coffee has twice the caffeine
So says the Wall St. Journal. The article goes on to say (emphasis mine):
The more robust taste certainly lures many consumers. But in light of mounting research on how the body reacts to higher caffeine, the stronger brew suggests another reason coffeehouses have resurrected a beverage that once had considerably less buzz in the U.S. However accidentally, their business may be thriving in part because customers are habituated to a drug, albeit one legal and relatively harmless.
For caffeine, scientists usually use the term "physically dependent" rather than "addicted," a term they reserve for severe cases, as in a hooked heroin user or someone who smokes a few packs of cigarettes a day. But in recent years researchers have quantified specific doses of caffeine and linked them with withdrawal symptoms including headache, drowsiness and difficulty concentrating.
These ill effects are important. Recent research has shown people often choose to maintain their caffeine intake more to avoid the irritable results when they don't get it, than for the positive effects when they do. Caffeine withdrawal usually begins within 12 to 24 hours after the last coffee was drunk, which may neatly explain why people often reach for their mug first thing in the morning.
"You wake up in a state of withdrawal," says Laura Juliano, an assistant professor of psychology at American University who has studied caffeine.
I doubt this is what they had in mind
Pick up the nearest book.
Open it to page 23.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
Everybody's doing it today. So okay: here's what I got:
Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel.
(from the gospel of Luke, as quoted in Eucharistic Readings, a Episcopal Church publication.)
Apples fall far from tree
To Vice President Cheney's lesbian daughter, Newt Gingrich's lesbian half-sister, the gay son* of frightening right-wing foamer Phyllis Schlafly, and Chastity Bono, add to the list of arch-conservatives' gay relatives the gay adopted son of anti-abortion fanatic Randall Terry.** Here's an article discussing the phenomenon of high-profile conservative activists with gay children or siblings.
* BTW, my search turned up the appalling fact that John Schafly is still working for his mother's arch-conservative organization, Eagle Forum -- or was, at least, in 2002.
** Randall Terry himself today published a pre-emptive defense of... himself... in the conservatives' own Washington Times.
I'll bet insurance doesn't cover it, either
Several homeowners along a busy road in suburban Minneapolis sold to a developer who wanted to demolish their houses and put in a strip mall. He told them they could take any fixtures, so they took apart their homes, ripping out everything from lighting fixtures to central air conditioning to landscaping. Then the developer pulled out of the deal, leaving the flabbergasted residents with uninhabitable heaps. Said one dispossed housewife: "We are simple people."
The new Bohemians
Typical Chronicle sentimentality today in a feature about the Fillmore St. building that once housed the Six Gallery -- the site of birth of all Beatnikism. The news hook is that the rug merchant who has owned the building for the last 25 years has sold it; the writer spends a good amount of time on the ruggist and his immigrant tale and attempts to draw parallels between the merchant and the Beat forerunners. What the article doesn't say is that the neighborhood, known as Cow Hollow, is known as one of the rich neighborhoods of the city now. Wealthy heterosexuals live down there, with Union St. the cruising spot of choice for rich, young, drunken youths living out "Ally McBeal" fantasies. I doubt Allen Ginsburg et al. would recognize it -- but they probably wouldn't recognize most of SF now, 50 years later.
Memo to Hunter S. Thompson
One of the grandest Las Vegas "resort casinos," the Bellagio, suffered "a massive electrical generating trauma" yesterday, and the power is still out. Weirdly, the news report depends on anecdotal information from hotel spokesmen to trace the source of the power outage. Why not just call the power company, for goodness sake?
This joyful Eastertide
For a church secretary, big Christian holidays can be a little stressful. Fortunately, the music director at the church I work at got all his service material to me a couple weeks in advance, and I was able to spread out all the bulletin duplicating and folding over several days, so last week was actually fairly easy. At my own church, I didn't even attend any Holy Week stuff until Friday, though they had something going every evening. Finally the Easter Vigil on Saturday went off without a hitch, though not very well attended.
At the third church I regularly enter -- where I do morning prayer every weekday morning -- they have a tumultuous Easter Vigil service which ends with snacks and champagne. This morning the place was still a mess, with champagne bottles all over the altar. (Yes, you read that right. They do things a little differently.)
Sunday evening I had the pleasure of meeting Marilyn, a writer friend, in San Francisco, where she was visiting relatives. We had dinner, and then she went off to more relatives.
"Oh my God!" doesn't count
A poll of 500 Washington state residents found that more than half pray daily. Sounds like a pretty small sample to me. Here's another poll, but web polls are for shit -- of course the people who go to a site called faith.com pray a lot. (Here's a similar survey on a Buddhist site -- must be using the same software. Still farther out, 21% of visitors to a fundamentalist site say they pray "every moment."
Save the girls
Here's something fun to do tonight, courtesy of tribe.net:
Wicked Messenger -- Tonight!
Wicked Messenger 4.11 (Being for the Benefit of Heather MacAllister)
Easter Sunday, April 11, 7pm at The Dark Room (formerly Mission Records) 2263 Mission between 18th and 19th
$5, 18 and over
Catering by Ya Mo Thai Kitchen at 18th and Mission
The 21st century variant kabaret returns with a benefit for Big Burlesque's Heather MacAllister! Heather was recently diagnosed with ovarian cancer, so please come show your support.
Featuring:
The Lollies with Kitten on the Keys (girl burlesque)
Roky Roulette (boy burlesque)
Larry, Hall & Jack (queer music)
Dattner (comedy)
butcH Greenblatt (queerer music)
Karuna Tanahashi (slam poetry)
...and an open mic. (anarchy)
Hosted by Sherilyn Connelly. (don't ask)
Did I mention the free Thai food? You really don't want to miss this one. www.sfgoth.com/~sherilyn/wickedmessenger/index.html
This just in: Democrats, liberals welcome at Eucharistic feast
John Kerry will be allowed to receive communion on Easter (and presumably indefinitely) after the Boston archdiocese rejected pleas from right-wingers to deny the Democratic Dauphin the sacrament for his "softness" on abortion. Fuck, the difference between this country and those Muslim ones we're bombing is merely a matter of degree, you know?
Dept. of Schadenfreude
A few days after posting $5 million bond for ripping off billions from investors, former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was arrested at 4 a.m. Friday morning in New York for "accusing passersby and restaurant patrons of being FBI agents and had pulled at their clothes in search of hidden microphones." The AP story has a slightly different take:
The police source said Skilling ran up to patrons at two bars and pulled open their clothes. "He was shouting at them, 'You're an FBI agent and you're following me,'" the source said.
By the way, how's John Ashcroft's royal pain? Ah, he's okay. Bring on the 9/11 commission.
'Our time will come'
An artist-prankster, disguised as a museum worker, installed an un-approved work of art into a British museum of natural history, where it hung on the wall for most of a day before it was identified and removed.
The rat was stuffed and clad in scaled-down wraparound sunglasses, and had a rucksack on its back and a microphone in one paw. A miniature spraycan sat at its feet, while above it was sprayed in graffiti-style lettering "our time will come".
Control freak
Aging monster Jerry Lewis is interviewed in the Guardian (U.K.). He dictates the article's lead, "is little changed" (though the picture shows him still bloated), and berates the interviewer. "You're sloppier than hell aren't you, Simon?" He squeal-laughs like the Kid. I find my pen. The laughter stops. "You're not gonna write are you Simon? You got tape. You don't need notes."
'Unholy mess'
Elderly Newsday columnist Jimmy Breslin proves he can still shit-distrub with the best of them by publishing several columns this week on the imbecility of fundamentalism.
"Homosexuals are dangerous," [The Rev. Lou] Sheldon assured me one day. He was a short man with eyes gleaming when he mentioned how bad homosexuals truly are.
"How?"
"They proselytize. They come to the door, and if your son answers and nobody is there to stop it, they grab the son and run off with him. They steal him. They take him away and turn him into a homosexual."
"You should be confined," I told him.
"I speak the truth for the Lord," he said.
"You're a fruitcake," I told him.
"No, I speak the truth. They steal your son."
That's from Breslin's Tuesday column, reflecting on distasteful right-wingers and how they're little different from the guys shooting at Marines in Iraq. The next day, he defended the quotes in the column after interview subject Lou Sheldon denied them, taking the opportunity to print a number of other Sheldon whoopers. And today the editorial staff of Newsday gets in on the act.
The world of San Francisco
In San Francisco, housing prices are insane, so we have people and organizations devoted to "housing activism." That means trying to get affordable housing for working class people, and in many cases it also means desperate opposition to the city's political power structure. Some of these nay-sayers have started their own online daily, BeyondChron. They call it that because they think the local paper, the Chronicle, is too friendly to big business and developers. Worth catching for columnists Michelle Tea, whose combination of glamor and street cred could only be found in San Francisco, and Henry Norr, tech columnist fired by the Chronicle last year for participating in antiwar demonstrations.
In other literary news, increasingly famous poet Kim Addonizio -- whose website I am honored to be able to list among those of my "friends" -- is reading this Saturday at the Make Out Room to benefit Other magazine.
We're doomed again
Just a reminder: The jig is up. You know it's not a good report when "a new Ice Age" and "the collapse of the Gulf Stream" are cited as possible positive things.
Or you could have too many chickens.
Raise your hands!
The Olympic bid committee for New York City has rolled out a logo, and New Yorkers are having fun with it. Gawker published a hilarious rant: "The two color blocks look like the freaking WTC... Hooray! It's death! Gay death!"
The apparition of these faces in a crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough
Worshippers in an English church have seen a vision of the Holy Mother -- Marge Simpson, that is.
Coming soon
Men who ejaculate frequently -- at least every two days -- are at less risk of prostate cancer, a study finds. (I like the sentence, "He praised the study's large size.") And there's good news: masturbation's just as good as any other way of provoking an orgasm. So if you'll excuse me...
I am not afraid, 'cause you see this too
Nobody's doing LSD, says a Slate article from last week. Well, it's from April 1. I suppose it's real, though. Sekretnaut?
Memo to Marilyn: Glen Campbell rocks
Cris continues to order products for the cats, especially for Six, the devil cat. He is relatively under-equipped compared to our other cats. One of the things she got was called a Stink Finder, essentially just a portable ultraviolet light which will help you find, according to the box, "blood, urine, feces, saliva, semen, vomit and all other bodily fluids."
It didn't say tears.
Then today, on Engadget, there was this: the VerifEYE, a wall-mounted blue-light scanner you're supposed to run your hands under. I won't explain why. You read it.
Recycling is bad, when it comes to news
Baseball season opened this weekend -- the Giants open this evening in Houston -- which allows me to indulge one of my regretful reveries. If only I'd decided to be a sportswriter instead of a movie reviewer back in college, I might be coving the Giants today.
But life as a sportswriter isn't all fun. Consider this (speaking of Houston): A Houston Chronicle sportswriter was suspended yesterday when it was discovered that a column he turned in last week was virtually identical to one he'd written on the same sports figure -- a college basketball coach -- 14 years ago when he worked for a different (now defunct) Houston paper.
Okay, you're not supposed to palgarize, even yourself. But a month without pay seems pretty harsh. Take this guy John Wooden, the basketball coach. He's 93 YEARS OLD. So the sportswriter wrote about him 14 years ago when he was 79. You think the old fart really changed a lot between ages 79 and 93? Imagine trying to come up with a new angle on that guy, year after year.
Bummer of a commute
U.S. "and Iraqi troops" (wtf? I thought we'd disbanded the Iraqi army. Where'd the "troops" come from?) surrounded Fallujah today, giving rise to sights like tanks sitting in the middle of the freeway. Just what you don't want to see on your trip to work, a tank pointing its cannon right at you.
Know the enemy
John was married and the father of three teenage sons, but throughout his 20-year marriage, he had been involved in anonymous homosexual encounters. Early on, he was so desperate for help he moved his entire family to New York City, stating he wanted to earn a Ph.D. at a theological school there. But his real motivation was to receive help from a psychoanalyst in Manhattan well known for his successful treatment of homosexuality. Through this doctor's care, John came alive to his sexual need for his wife.
Once in a while, it's good for you to read what the other side has to say, to remind yourself how full of shit they are.
Then there's this: French film critics say Gibson's 'Passion' is "sadistic", "manipulative" and "boring", and "undoubtedly the most dangerous and most violent interpretation ever made of the Passion of Christ."
And: this piece about how right-wing Christians support Zionism because they think Israeli-Palestinian strife will hasten the Second Cmoing.
Carnage continues in NASA/Clear Lake area
Here's yet another heinous murder perpetrated by a resident of the horrid suburb I lived in during my high school years. I was keeping a list of these killings, but there have been so many that I'm tired of maintaining the list.
Martyr complex
Last year I copied a story off the L.A. Times site on "The Fellowship," the shady Christian-right group that works behind the scenes with right-wing Republicans and others to influence national and international policy. That article is one of the main reasons people actually come to my website, because I'm the only person who makes it available. Now I'm posting a new article on a different right-wing Christian group, The Voice of the Martyrs. They raise money by publicizing the persecution of Christians in third-world countries. Excellent comments on the article at The Revealer, the site of Jeff Sharlett, who wrote the article in Harpers that got everybody interested in "The Fellowship."
We are not amused
On the day the Commerce Dept. announced there were 300,000 new jobs in March, Sun Microsystems announced 3300 layoffs.
Brits ho-hum gigabyte
Heard a funny little conversation on the BBC World Service while driving this evening. It went something like this:
Male announcer: In technology news, the American company Google is in the news again, Camilla.
Female announcer: Yes, Google, which is, of course, a "search engine" company, has announced it will begin offering free email.
Him: Now, many companies already offer a free email service, so what is distinctive about Google's offering?
Her: The company plans to give users nearly unlimited storage space -- so that you could, for example, keep all the email messages you have ever sent.
Him: My goodness, is there much demand for that?
Her: Yes, seems rather pointless. Probably it will appear to only a small segment of computer users.
Just one
I've always hated being the victim of pranks, so I'll tell you straight up: This is a funny satire of Salon.com.
The four dead 'civilian contractors'
The four "civilian contractors" who were killed yesterday in Iraq -- shot, burned to a crisp, dragged through the streets and then hung off a bridge -- were employees of a private security firm called Blackwater USA, according to Reuters. Today Mother Jones reprinted a 2003 article about Blackwater. The more you read about them, the creepier it all becomes. Not that that makes their fate any less horrific.
And by... viewers like you
Really strange and interesting episode of "The West Wing" last night -- it started off thanking fictitious "underwriters," as if we were watching PBS and not NBC. And then the entire episode was essentially a parody of PBS's Frontline documentary series, with the same voice-over announcer, same graphics, and same tone. A friend who works on the Frontline website (she edits the Reporters' Stories section) saw the show and thought it was hilarious. Unfortunately, the gal at Television Without Pity, a site which is usually extremely sharp-eyed, missed the whole joke.
Make Nice
How They Scored
I Saw You, Ed. by Julia Wertz
(contributor)
Best Sex Writing 2006 (contributor)
Lesbian Camp Girls
Too Beautiful and Other Stories
How I Adore You
Sara Miles's
Jesus Freak
Bob Ostertag's
Creative Life
Liz Henry, Ed.
Wiscon Chronicles vol. 3
Andrew Zornoza's
Where I Stay
Sara Miles'
Take This Bread
A Radical Conversion
