Focus on the Fundies: Colorado Springs on downswing?

The Colorado Springs Gazette today has a major feature on the prospect of Colorado Springs losing its national influence with the disgrace of Ted Haggard and the midterm lelection loss by Republicans.

Personally I don't care whether Colorado Springs becomes "less influential" in the Republican party or the religious right, but there are a few eyebrow-raising things in the story of how an economically depressed provincial city created "a cluster economy based on Jesus" For one thing, a mysterious foundation donated millions of dollars to build Focus on the Family a headquarters and lure them from Southern California. Then a city development executive used her "born again" status to bond with other Xtian NGOs and draw them in as well.

For all this, the article says only 4000 people work for right-wing Xtian non-profits in Colo. Springs and it is only a "$1 billion industry." So they have been remarkably influential given their actual size.

First printout

After a quick read-through of my manuscript so I could fix some of the worst sentences, and a few words added to the ending to make it make just a bit more sense, I printed out my new novel -- hey, it's the first time I've called it that, like it's a real thing now, not just "the book I've been working on for the last two years" -- and took it to Kinkos to be copied. A few copies will go to people who will mark it up and give me some feedback, and based on that I will make changes for the version that goes to my agent.

It's at this point where I waver between thinking it's kind of good and thinking it's the kind of thing that only my friends will find amusing.

As I said in the last entry, it's about an American girl in India. I found this image on Flickr, and I think it gives a bit of a feeling of the book:

I don't know who this young woman is, but I think she looks and dresses a lot like my protagonist.

Only 25 months later

Hurrah for me, for I have finished the first draft of the novel I've been working on for the last two years, "Dear Prudence." It's about an American girl who is sent by her employer to open up a customer service call center in Bangalore. Comic cultural collisions ensue, and she learns a lot about independence and being her own person.

Read an excerpt (8 page PDF file).

The book was begun in November 2004 for National Novel Writing Month.

I'll spend the next couple of weeks making little adjustments, then send it to my agent, who to her credit has not been holding her breath.

Silly season

The US, of course, is not the only country where the news media focuses on trivia. In fact, so little has actually happened in the last five or six days that I'm sure editors everywhere are thanking James Brown and Gerry Ford for dropping dead.

But in South America: Brazil Transfixed By 4th Anorexia Death.

Meanwhile, you would not be right in guessing that I got a new camera for Xmas. In fact, we bought this camera months ago. But I just took it out for a walk.

A dream come true

I am totally excited that Google has finally mapped Bangalore.

British take on US's Christianists

Very nice article published a week ago in the UK's Independent: America's religious right: God's own country.

Before his fall from grace, Haggard was the poster child of America's religious right, a nationalistic stepchild of Protestantism that is staunchly conservative, xenophobic, politically active, predominately Caucasian and, like Haggard, curiously preoccupied with gay culture.

I found Haggard's obsession with abortion and same-sex marriage -- and the religious right's for that matter -- quite odd. Especially given the enormous, sword-toting, homoerotic angel statue I'd seen in Pastor Ted's church lobby...

Evidently, the Jesus who the religious right prays to is more concerned with boycotting Hollywood for releasing Brokeback Mountain than with feeding the hungry or global warming.

Hilariously, the sculptor of the above statue has another website: bikerartonline.com

Enough already

I'm sure just about everybody in the US is ready for Xmas to be over by the time the wrapping paper is put in the recycle bin. On to the next thing! What are you doing for New Year's?!

To stoke any anti-Christianist sentiment, I am happy to link to a posting by Jeff Sharlett on his site, The Revealer, on an organization called Christian Embassy -- a lobbying group that also performs "outreach" to Pentagon officials. And if that's not enough, please enjoy becoming outraged at Sharlett's article for Rolling Stone on Sen. Sam Brownback, who seems poised to seize the Most Religious Senator title from Rick Santorum.

Columnist Dan Savage played a small part in tearing down Santorum by making his name a synonym for a byproduct of anal sex. In that light, the name "Brownback" raises even more sinister associations, composed of "bareback" and "Brokeback" (Mountain), not to mention the generally unsavory associations the word "brown" has in a sexual context (though in the next breath one must disassociate oneself from any intention to use "brown" in a negatively racial sense).

But speaking of Christianity, for all the times I mock and deride fundamentalists, I actually go to church and, as far as the holiday is concerned, find the whole story about a God who comes as a baby deeply moving. One of the things a liberal Christian can take comfort in is that no matter how thickly the kitsch and sentimentality is spread over the basic story of Jesus, at its base the story is compellingly poetic, full of deep symbolism and meaning for those who seek it out. The notion, for example, that in a world that worships power and celebrity, God chose to be incarnate not as a prince or a warlord but as the most vulnerable of people, a baby born to a craftsman and his teenaged lover in an occupied nation. It takes a lot of doublethink for fundamentalists and power-hungry Republicans to take this story and turn it into Christ-with-a-sword for people like the "Christian Embassy."

But if you're looking for a cute Xmas story, read Anna's.

!Merry Christmas

Did you know that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has his own website? Here is his Christmas greeting. Like many today, the strange man asks, given the world situation, WWJD?

If Jesus Christ (peace be upon Him) was present today, he would order an encounter against those who would propagate corruption, obscenity and perversion, and try to nullify and exterminate the merits and the rights of women and diminish their position -- a position that virgin Mary (peace be upon Her) -- is their role model and sample

Goes on like that for quite a while, never quite making sense.

The most interesting thing is that, though the message is rendered in English, the website is formatted so that the punctuation at the end of each sentence is on the left end of the line.

A little foamer in the making

One of the constant tricks horror movies use to frighten people is to depict monstrous, maniacal babies or small monsters of some kind. It's one thing when you have a big guy in a hockey mask, it's another when you have some squalling little monster with giant fangs -- somehow the smaller ghoul is even more frightening and disgusting.

In this spirit, let me point you to a litter feller named Billy Valentine and his blog, The Franciscan University of Steubenville Conservative. In it he shills for conservative positions to the right of... well, lately it seems he's been picking on Mitt Romney, the now ex-governor of Massachusetts, for not being sufficiently right-wing. In his long list of truth-benders and sharp spikes for the hapless Romney -- who has as much chance of being the Republicans' nominee as, well, as Harriett Miers did of joining the Supreme Court -- he lists the assertion that Romney is anti-Jesse Helms.

LOL. Why not come right out and say it, Billy Valentine -- it's like the name of a Kurt Vonnegut character -- Romney is also anti-David Duke.

Strangely, in his "profile" Valentine describes himself as a freshman at his august institution, yet the blog has been going since March. Maybe he already flunked freshman year and is repeating it.

Steubenville, by the way, is most famous as being the bare-knuckles birthplace and home town of Dean Martin. Indeed, the main route through town is named Dean Martin Boulevard. I wonder what Valentine's position on Dean Martin is.

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! -- bonus edition

I just had to start a new entry for this particular story, because it's just so insane. A flight attendant for Quantas has been fired for stuffing blankets down aircraft toilets.

No comment is really necessary on that, I think. It leaves me, at least, speechless.

A Baltimore woman forged the ID of a lawyer so she could impersonate the woman, gain access to an inmate in a Baltimore lockup, and have sex with him.

A reputed mobster has been accused of torching a New York deli owned by a Pakistani immigrant -- a 2001 crime that was initially laid to post 9/11 racism.

But best of all -- this is the reason why you're still surfing the internet when you know you should be helping decorate the tree -- is Wonkette's expose of a racist anti-"liberal" comic book to be issued by the NRA. Be sure to examine the panel they describe thusly:

Here, for example, is one of the biggest threats to the white suburban hunter: dirty hippies and their evil sidekicks: the dynamite-carrying owl, sinister pig, angry Wall Street bull, dire wolf, terror chicken and Land Lobster.

Yes -- the owl is carrying TNT! And the eco-terrorist hippie girl has hairy legs! So best!

Obscure superheroes of the week: The Hawk and the Dove

In 1968, if you were "for" the war, you were a "hawk;" if you were anti-war, you were a "dove." These terms were meant to characterize politicians for the most part, but because everyone was taking sides by then, they also applied to ordinary people.

When I was a kid I got bullied a lot, and thus I got the idea that violence in general was a bad idea; I certainly had no problems being against the war, not as much because I objected to what the US was doing in Vietnam (although I did object, to the extent I knew much about it) but the way the Army treated its own soldiers in boot camp -- the institutionalized hazing, screaming, and bullying of the drill instructors was way too much like the childhood I was already living through. So, yeah, I was a "dove."

So I was somewhat stunned when DC Comics released a new series about a pair of brothers, one who favored violence to solve problems, the other who shrank from violence. The strange thing about the book was that neither character came off well; the Hawk was depicted as an antagonistic bully, the Dove was depicted to be a cowering wimp. It was like the writers and artists were telling you that growing up meant choosing between these equally disgusting caricatures.

As Wikipedia suggests, this was not an audience-pleasing strategy. The book lasted only six issues. According to the entry, they keep bringing the pairing back in various incarnations*, but the terms Hawk and Dove no longer have the same resonance, even though the U.S. is again in the middle of another quagmire.

* WTF:

Another Hawk (Sasha Martens) and Dove (Wiley Wolverman), appeared in a six-issue mini-series in 1997, written by Mike Baron. In this version... the duo's conflicting personalities manifested as "military brat" and "slacker dude," respectively. They gained large bird wings and a telepathic link by receiving experimental medical treatments as children.

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! -- Hole in the Head edition

A Texas teenager is trying to prevent doctors from removing a bullet in his forehead, since cops want to use it as evidence against him.

On the plus side, just think what a rad accoutrement that is. Could replace piercing and tattooing as the next frontier in body modification.

One Todd Shriber, who has served as a press aide to several Republicans and most recently to Rep. Dennis Rehberg (R. - Montana, Montana's only Congressman), has apparently been caught admitted trying to hire hackers to change his college GPA (courtesy Badger). The hacker -- or whoever was answering his plaintive emails -- got him to take pictures of squirrels and pigeons, which brings to mind the scamming the scammer tactics of a guy in Australia who got Nigerian 419 scammers to furnish him with strange objects such as "a wooden carving of UK characters from the Creature Comforts TV series, and a carving of a Commodore 64 computer keyboard."

In California, an anti-gay group is raising money under cover of a bogus "taxpayer census". No surprise, the man behind it is mouth-breather Lou Sheldon.

A woman who was applying makeup while driving lost control of her vehicle and died when it went off the road in New York. Best quote: a policeman said, "There was makeup all over the air bag."

At least she died doing what she loved.

Jeb Bush has done enough

When asked by Spanish-language reporters about his political ambitions after he leaves office as Florida's governor next month, Jeb Bush replied, "No tengo futuro" (courtesy Penisto Review) -- in other words, "I have no future" in politics. Presumably because the President has besmirched the Bush name.

That's okay, Jebby. You've done enough.

Essential laptop utilities for bloggers

Perhaps, like Alexis, you already got yourself a new laptop for Xmas/Hannukah/Diwali/ Eid-al-Futr/Winter Solstice. (Maybe we should rename it the Festival of LEDs.) Or you're getting one in a few days all wrapped up in nice paper. Here are my recommendations for the three most useful laptop utilities. Each has the advantages of being intuitive to use and applicable to multiple tasks.

• Textpad (from Helios) -- A deceptively simple yet powerful text editing tool, indispensible for transferring text from one application to another while stripping it of bad code, graphics and unwanted formatting. Can't decide if the best secret use is doing search-and-replace on multiple files (I've used it to edit over 200 files simultaneously with a single search-and-replace string) or its help in tagging different kinds of HTML tags with colors that make a web page easy to edit. For those situations when you have to edit HTML (or any code) by hand, you can't find a better tool.
• SnagIt (from TechSmith) -- Fantastic screen-capture and picture-editing utility. I use it to grab all sorts of graphics from the web for my nefarious purposes and to edit pictures I take myself. If you think using Photoshop to edit simple photos is like using a cannon to shoot a fly, you'll find yourself using Snagit 99% of the time instead.
• CuteFTP Home (from GlobalScape) -- A lovely simple utility that allows you to upload stuff to your website. In addition to this obvious use, I also use it as a backup tool. I created a hidden directory, named with a nonsense word, on my website, and I FTP drafts of creative projects there. The best part of this is that I can now access the files in this password-protected directory from any web browser.

Altogether, these tools will cost you a hundred bucks. Don't you have three friends who are scratching their heads for something to get you for Xmas? Problem solved!

The dark

Welcome to year's darkest day. Here in the Bay Area the sky is appropriately dark, as a storm is blowing in. The rain's just started falling in Redwood City as I write.

I've been vastly amused this week by reading a piece in the Dec. 4 New Yorker, "Voice of the Cabal," about seminal presenter Bob Fass (Wikipedia article), who apparently invented the "free form radio" genre made famous on Pacifica stations. (The article is not online, but the New Yorker has posted an audio feature with the article's author, Marc Fisher, discussing Fass and playing clips from his shows. Update: Turns out the article is a side project, or perhaps an excerpt, from an upcoming book by Fisher, Something in the Air.)

I say "Pacifica stations" because I spent some formative years in suburban Houston listening to KPFT, though Fass broadcast (and still broadcasts) on New York's WBAI. The time was the early 70s and KPFT subscribed absolutely to the free-form radio ethos. I loved it so much that becoming a radio announcer became my first (and first to fall) career ambition.

The article has some fascinating information about Fass's development of the format, including some hilarious anecdotes about a then-unknown Bob Dylan doing characters, and later Abbie Hoffman becoming a regular presence. The article also describes what must have been the first-ever flash mob:

Back in the fifties, Fass's radio hero, Jean Shepherd, suffering a moment of overwhelming doubt, had asked his listeners to gather in an even he called the Milling. Hundreds of people convened on a dark street corner in lower Manhattan and just stood around. The police arrived and asked questions, and, as Shepherd had instructed them, the listeners declined, politely, to respond. Then, without further communication, they went home. Shepherd returned the next night to his studio, revived.

I experienced a moment of synchronicity this morning while driving in to work. A reporter on "Morning Edition" was riffing on this being the winter solstice and included a minute on light pollution and the International Dark Sky Association. It occured to me that, just as a predominance of artificial light has polluted the night skies over populated areas and taken away the pleasure of star-gazing, nowadays the frantic pace and rampant commercialization of media has all but driven out the quiet, conversational style of programming developed by Shepherd and Fass during the graveyard shift when "no one" was listening.

Weird book deal of the month

Michael Snyder's MY NAME IS RUSSELL FINK, a romantic comedy written from a Christian worldview, about an artist trapped in the body of a copier salesman with a psychotic fiancee -- and someone has murdered his allegedly clairvoyant basset hound, to Andy Meisenheimer at Zondervan, in a nice deal, for two books...

Read that all the way through three times, then take two aspirin and call me in the morning.

It works on my radio, too

Whatever's giving you problems, a good thwack usually helps.

Racehorse heals blind man: Well-placed head butt restores vet's sight lost in WWII blast

A racehorse named My Buddy Chimo has been a real friend to World War II veteran Don Karkos. With one head butt, the Monticello Raceway-stabled pedigree did what medical experts have failed to do for more than 60 years -- bring back sight in Karkos' blind eye.

... "I was putting a [collar] around his chest, and he whacked me real hard with his head," Karkos said. "It was totally out of character. He's been a good horse, very well-mannered, and then he did this."

My Buddy Chimo's noggin hit Karkos in exactly the same spot as the shrapnel 64 years ago, he said. "Being kicked is part of the job, but I've never been hit that hard," he said. "I was pretty shaken up, kind of dazed. Then, later that night, I started to get the vision back in my right eye.

Courtesy BoingBoing.

Bill O'Reilly in Iraq "thanking the troops"

Don't ask me how I ended up at the blog of right-wing mouthpiece Michelle Malkin, but I really giggled when I saw this post of hers:

O'Reilly in Iraq. Hannity went last week. O'Reilly was there this week to thank the troops. ... O'Reilly visited the Soldiers [sic] of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) and other units at the Baghdad base camp to thank them for their service, he said.

"I came to see the Soldiers and say thanks to all the forces," he said. "That's our primary purpose over here."

WTF -- as if Bill O'Reilly were some kind of government official. There are those who say the line between Karl Rove's office and Fox News is way too thin, and this only reinforces that impression. But at least he was honest and didn't try to assert he was actually practicing journalism!

Note that capitalization of Soldiers. Because Supporting Our Troops means making them God-like.

But what's really funny is that now Malkin herself is jumping on the bandwagon -- she wants to go to Iraq to -- in the hilarious words of one blogger -- "assist in clearing the reputation" of the Associated Press. The whole quote is just too good:

AP's reputation is clearly on the line. What better way to restore it than to have a journalist of Michelle Malkin's stature assist in clearing that reputation?

AH HA HA HA HA HA HA.

People continue to take "JT LeRoy" writer seriously

On the Zen Monkeys site is a big interview with Laura Albert, the woman who wrote the JT LeRoy books, conducted by the pre-Web 1.0 personage RU Sirius.

I have never cottoned to the work of either person, in any of their roles. I always hated Mondo 2000, the magazine edited by RU Sirius -- it was the epitome of flashy cool crap, with startling, fluorescent eye-catching graphics accompanying articles about bullshit. It was like porn for Burning Man types before there was Burning Man and before porn was cool, though it wasn't porn except in the sense of being masturbation material about "alternative" future crap, like "smart drugs" and hypertext fiction -- stuff that might have been interesting if it had existed, but which they treated totally seriously as if it did. (At one point, about 1992, another magazine came along that tried to look similar and was porn -- "Future Sex," which was almost as bad, though it was at least about something.)

I guess that makes RU Sirius the perfect person to interview Laura Albert, who wrote books that were considered to be good mainly because they were supposed to be not just novels but the merely lightly fictionalized story of a tragically victimized person whom, as it turned out, did not exist, thus rendering the books uninteresting. On the subject of Albert having been interviewed by the Paris Review (which was careful to characterize it not as an interview but an "encounter"), RU Sirius says, apparently with an absolute straight face: "It's a sign of respect for your work."

No, it's a sign that the Paris Review has changed its focus and now interviews freaks, like the Serbian assassin they talked with the issue before that. That was also an "encounter." (From a piece on the Paris Review's new editor Philip Gourevitch:

Best of all, he added a feature he calls Encounter, a short Q & A with interesting, obscure people.

One Encounter was an interview with a professional mourner in China. "We used to treat every funeral like a contest," he said. "There were lead wailers and backup wailers, and after the gig was over, members would get together and critique each other's performances." Another Encounter was with a Chinese public toilet manager. ... Those Encounters were amusing, but the Encounter with Nikola Kavaja was chilling. Kavaja is a Serb assassin who served 18 years in U.S. prisons for hijacking an American Airlines jet in Chicago in 1979...)

I'm still waiting for an agent to sell a book with Laura Albert's name on it. According to Publisher's Marketplace, that is yet to happen.

Update: Apparently Albert is really making the rounds. Here's a USA Today -- or rather, a USA Today blog -- interview in which she starts crying when asked "is JT's voice completely gone from your head now, or does it still come back?" Utterly shameless.

Previously:
The Fake Patrol
Suckers line up to claim they were duped by LeRoy hoax
'Other writers latched onto JT as career move'

Fixing a hole

During the basic-cable Lord of the Rings orgy on TNT this weekend, even people who don't care much about the LOTR series or books probably found themselves watching a few segments from one of the films. It occured to me today that the enterprising people of New Zealand, where the films were shot, must have set up a cottage tourism industry showing people locations.

Sure enough:

He's gotta have it

A British man is suing his employer after a head injury at work left him with "severe sexual disinhibition, which is destroying his marriage."

The man's name: Tame. Stephen Tame.

Another megachurch resignation over sex

Yet another staffer at New Life Church, the Colorado Springs megachurch founded by now-disgraced Ted Haggard, has resigned over an "improper sexual relationship" -- albeit one that took place "several years ago."

Hilarious that the church felt it necessary to announce that the improper sexual relationship in question was not with the Rev. Haggard.

Christopher Beard led a youth program called "twentyfourseven." He has an online profile here, a church webpage here (permalink screenshot) and here's a longer Denver Post article. In the latter, note the part about how he was repremanded in 2002 for staging a "missionary training drill" with fake weapons. The "drill" was held outdoors and a passing motorist called police; a SWAT team was dispatched. The guy sounds like a real dumbass.

Here's a cached version of a news story about that event.

Finally, check out this MySpace profile for a lad who identifies himself as a "twentyfourseven" student. He has a list of heroes under the heading "OF THE FAITH": Paul the Apostle, Martin Luther, and Christopher Beard. Right under that is a picture of JFK with the legend "You like power because it increases your sexual options... You are a thrill seeker by nature and don't shy away from risky behavior."

Ha ha ha ha! I'll say. (Here's a permalink screenshot in case the kid takes the page down.)

Satire is Dead, #9823490823550

A company contracted to build a fence along the Mexican border will pay a $5 million fine for -- what else -- employing undocumented workers. (Courtesy Wonkette and LAist)

Haggard rent boy inks book deal

That didn't take long: Mike Jones, the male hooker who outed right-wing Xtian Ted Haggard, has a book deal. The publish date is June and the publisher is Seven Stories Press.

Meanwhile I ran across this blog entry (courtesy some other evangelical's blog). In it the writer compares what he felt as a child when his family was shunned after his father was uncovered as a pedophile, and he is all concerned about protecting Ted Haggard's kids from the same public shame. Seems to miss the point, which is that Haggard himself helped to create the environment in which he is now shamed and mocked, by publicly condemning homosexuals and presenting himself as superior. His hard fall is a function of how high he rode that hobbyhorse before falling off.

But as for Haggard's children, they may be learning something entirely different from their father's situation than what the very concerned writer thinks they are learning. As we saw earlier this week, not only are many of Haggard's former followers so eager to demonstrate their pious forgiveness of his betrayal that they gave what I suppose are thousands of dollars for the family's support, but the congregation itself is calculating a severance package for the man. So what are the kids learning from that? That the consequences of extraordinarily bad behavior -- of lying to your family, your church, and Karl Rove; of tossing your reputation into the toilet; of doing drugs with a male prostitute -- are really not so bad?

Obscure superhero of the week: Jade

Jade is a black-haired, big-knockered green girl who is like superhero slut royalty. Her whole family is superheroes, she only dates superheroes... She can photosynthesize sunlight like a plant. She has "a weakness to wood and cellulose," and jokes about being a paper tiger are appropriate here.

She lost her super powers at one point, then got back in the game big time when her boyfriend, a part-time Green Lantern, gave her a "copy" of his power ring. They have copies??

This paragraph, covering the origin of an "alternate Jade" who emerged after the original's death, is priceless:

In 52 #29, a young woman named Nicki Jones is introduced as ... a vegetarian graphic arts student from the San Francisco Art Institute, (possessing) the ability to project glowing vines from her fingertips, the ability to fly, and green energy powers. She debuted at a Thanksgiving parade only to be attacked by Obsidian, who accused her of trying to steal his sister's legacy.

Green energy powers. Is that like from ethanol?

Don't forget "honor among thieves"

A feature on Salon today discusses a supposedly well-known gossip journalist-slash-barnacle who calls himself Perez Hilton. The story is that a growing distaste for the man's methods led celebrity photographers to "turn their lenses to the ground" when he passed by, thereby performing what must be the first documented instance of paparazzi showing any moral existence whatsoever.

The notion that even paparazzi have their limits reminded me of the story from earlier this week which CNN headlined Paris Hilton (no relation to Perez Hilton) Defends Britney's 'Partying Ethics'. This, too, was a novel idea -- that scantily-clad post-adoloscents with more money than underpants still follow a code of some sort.

The question is, how do these moral codes compare to other dubious sets of rules? In this exercise, rank the moral codes in order, with the most honorable and durable at the top.

( ) Britney's Partying Ethics
( ) The Uniform Code of Military Justice
( ) Rules followed by Republican-led Congressional ethics committees
( ) Omerta
( ) Establishment white men protecting each other
( ) Paparazzi in a snit
( ) Presidential Oath of Office
( ) Green Lantern's Oath
( ) California Bar Code of Ethics (for lawyers)
( ) EULA Agreement on Microsoft software

Happy traveling!

For you holiday travelers, I would like to recount an incident that happened to me at the Oakland airport several months ago, which I was reminded of by an entry in Strip Mining for Whimsy where he says the TSA security guys are thieves.

INT. - OAKLAND AIRPORT SECURITY LINE

I unload my laptop into one bin, my shoes, wallet, watch and change into another, and send 'em through.

On the other side, I pick it all up again, but -- hey, wait a minute...

ME: Hey, excuse me, where's my watch? Hey... excuse me, I put my watch in my shoes when it went through and it's not here.

SECURITY GUY 1: What? Whatever. (Shrugs, walks away.)

ME: Hey! My watch is *missing.* Where's my watch?!

SECURITY GUY 2 (utterly bored voice): Anybody see a watch?

(No reponse.)

I look around and see there's a little podium about 20 feet away with an Okaland Police Dept. logo and a cop standing there.

ME: Excuse me -- police! Could you come over here? (He comes over.) (Really loud:) I put my watch in my shoes on the front side and now it's not here. These guys *stole my watch.*

COP (bored): Anybody find a watch?

SECURITY GUY 2 (five seconds later): This it?

ME (still loud): Oh yeah! Here it is! Wonder what happened to it? (To cop:) This happen a lot here?

(Everyone walks away.)

Tannenhaus agonistes

NYT Book Review editor San Tannenhaus continues answering questions from readers this week -- each day one or two more questions and answers are added. The cumulative effect is numbing. From his statements, Tannenhaus treats the Book Review -- one of the most influential publications for readers and writers in the country -- like a slaughterhouse, where the most essential thing is to keep the flow of reviews moving lest he and his staff be overwhelmed by the weekly avalanche of new books coming in. All are treated humanely, though things get nasty sometimes, and in any case, they've asked for it. ("I'm an author myself and know what it's like to have my work treated roughly by reviewers. In one instance, I sent a note to the editor of the publication where a negative and, I thought, unjust review of my work had appeared. The editor replied that as an author I had offered my work up to the public and had no business complaining because I had been criticized. It was good advice.") Then there's his dissembling:

Is it a big deal to have a book included in our "10 Best"? I suppose so...

Earlier this week I noted Tannenhaus's facial expression in the photograph printed with these exchanges "makes him look like an exhausted high school department chairman who has just been told the school district wants him to nominate a teacher for a coming layoff." (I thought that was clever, so I just pasted it here.) As the week goes by, his expression seems to become increasingly tortured, like the famous Kuleshov demonstration of film editing where a shot of an actor's neutral face was intercut with various scenes (a wedding, a funeral, an attack, etc.) and the viewers perceive subtle, insightful changes "reacting" to the scenes. By Friday there may be miraculous tears coming from the picture.

Sick senator update

Did Tim Johnson have a stroke or not? Still don't know.

Meanwhile MSNBC has the best story on the whole issue of senatorial vacancies in cases of illness, pointing out that some senators refused to yield despite incapacitation.

HOLY SHIT BREAKING: Dem Senator with stroke, could lose Senate

A Democratic US Senator from South Dakota, Tim Johnson, has been hospitalized with "stroke-like" symptoms.

If he cannot continue to serve, the Republican governor could appoint a Republican replacement, tilting the balance of power in the Senate back to the Republicans.

Rumsfeld: I-what?

According to this transcript of a Dec. 7 interview between a Fox News person -- Cal Thomas, who has the personality of a palm buzzer and about as much depth -- and Donald Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld had not read the Iraq Study Group's report, even though it was released that day.

MR. THOMAS: Yeah. The Iraq Study Group Report -- you've read it, I'm sure.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I haven't.

MR. THOMAS: You haven't?

SEC. RUMSFELD: No.

Just goes to show you: never ask a leading question when you don't know the answer.

You might think, hell, he's on the way out, he just doesn't give a shit anymore -- he's doing stuff like having a circle jerk with Sean Hannity in Baghdad.

But no -- he was still on the job as of yesterday, since he led a meeting on Iraq with Bush and incoming Sec'ty Gates in attendance. I wonder if he's read it yet.

Also says:

• In retrospect, "I don't think I would have called it a war on terror.... It's not a war on terror."
• On the US's parental relationship with Iraq: "So at some point, you've got to take your hand off the bicycle seat. You get the bicycle running down the middle of the street with your youngster on it, and you're pushing and you're holding it up, and you know if you let go -- you go from a full hand to three fingers to two fingers to one finger, and you know if you let go, they might fall. You also know if you don't let go, you're going to end up with a 40-year-old that can't ride a bike. Now, that's not a happy prospect."

Also, don't miss the happy talk at the end, like:

MR. THOMAS: We got a movie theater we kind of like in our house.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, do you really?

MR. THOMAS: Yeah, we decided we're not leaving anything to the kids, so we're spending it on ourselves since I earned it.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah, damn right. That's my answer. (Laughter.)

MR. THOMAS: (Laughs.) There you go. And so we have this nice movie theater with surround sound --

SEC. RUMSFELD: I've heard these home theaters -- you have chairs that --

MR. THOMAS: Oh, they're fun. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah do that. You can sleep, you can do anything. It's very cool.

SEC. RUMSFELD: My wife --

MR. THOMAS: Juke box, all kinds of stuff.

SEC. RUMSFELD: My wife loves movies.

MR. THOMAS: Oh, good. Well --

SEC. RUMSFELD: She goes all the time with a group of women, and I have not been in six years to the movies.

MR. THOMAS: It'll be fun. I got one for you that'd you'd really love. You got it this Christmas. Get for her and watch it together. It's called "Akeelah and the Bee."

Link courtesy Wonkette.

Conspiracy theory of the month

Somehow linked to the "Thank God for testosterone" sentiment I blogged last week is this article on something called World Net Daily:

A devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals

There's a slow poison out there that's severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture. The ironic part is, it's a "health food," one of our most popular.

The dangerous food I'm speaking of is soy. ... Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because "I can't remember a time when I wasn't homosexual." No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can't remember a time when excess estrogen wasn't influencing them.

That's courtesy People for the American Way. The author is someone named Jim Rutz -- "chairman" of something called Megashift Ministries. Their logo has queer freedom rings! -- could they possibly not realize?

Go to the Megashift site and prepared to be boggled. They seem to be selling something called "open Christianity," but it's hard to figure out what it is. Nevertheless, it has "dozens of new benefits and privileges" and "24/7 support." How you buy it, I can't tell. So weird!!

One man LotR

There's a guy named Charles Ross who is apparently known for performing a one-man "Star Wars." He now is doing all three Lord of the Rings movies live on stage in an hour. Sounds exhausting. Here's his site.

The reviewer didn't realize it at the time, but Ian McKellan was sitting right behind him during the show and was said to have loved it. (Update: Yikes, apparently that was in 2004. So, old news. Still impressive.)

The man in the paper suit

The editor of the NYT Book Review, Sam Tannenhaus, answers readers' questions today as part of a continuing series of appearances by NYT editors.

Tannenhaus' picture, with its strained, disbelieving grin, makes him look like an exhausted high school department chairman who has just been told the school district wants him to nominate a teacher for a coming layoff. Presumably it wasn't taken while he was responding to readers' questions, but he looks beleaguered enough. So far, most of the obvious questions are up there: How do you choose and reject books for review? What's the deal with those strange pieces where the reviewer talks about everything but the book? Why so few books from foreign shores?

In most cases, when asked "Why aren't the reviews more x?" Tannenhaus answers "Well, some of them are." He doesn't really seem to have a guiding vision of what the NYT Review should be. The main feeling you're left with is that he is bailing as hard as he can just to keep up with the avalanche of books each week, and we're lucky the section is as good as it is. Perhaps, or maybe he's just a sort of functionary in a post meant for an aesthete.

Conservative

I have been ignoring the whole spat around whether Ian McEwan plagarized a nurse's account of her work in London during World War II -- a 1977 memoir by Lucilla Andrews, "No Time for Romance" -- even though it is normally the kind of thing I jump all over. I think the main reason I'm not jumping on it is that I think McEwan is a terrific writer and I thought "Atonement" was great. Knowing that he lifted phrases or passages from Andrews' book doesn't ruin his novel for me. Jack Shafer, in that Slate piece, suggests that McEwan is getting a pass because he's already a big shot. Shafer means that in an uncomplimentary way, but my feeling is, well, yeah. Barry Bonds is getting a pass on steroids for the same reason. Call him what you will, but it sure is fun to see those home runs fly out of the yard.

My friend Badger disagrees fervently. To her, the right and ability of women to speak for themselves is practically a life-or-death issue. Read her entry about the affair; it's more passionate and pointed than anything else you'll find, and has none of the cynicism that characterizes most treatments.

Coincidentally, the Guardian (U.K.) published an odd piece by a Muslim writer alleging the existence of a
group of "Blitcon" or British literary neoconservative writers, among whom he includes McEwan, Martin Amis, and Salman Rushdie. I don't like the latter two very much, though I think Amis is much the worse, and that since 2001 has become a sort of crackpot like Robert Heinlein or Harlan Ellison. As for Rushdie, I just can't get into his books, but I think he has generally shown a lot more courage and class than the writer, one Ziauddin Sardar, gives him credit for.

But to understand more about why Sardar lumped McEwan in with these other two, I read another of McEwan's books. Not "Saturday," the one he cites, but "Amsterdam"*, and here I see more of what Sardar means, perhaps more than Sardar himself intended. In "Saturday" McEwan is indeed conservative in the book's identification with high culture and its contempt for low, and while separating indulgences in sex and drugs from any moral or political stance -- a very British stance -- it is rooted in a rather conventional sense of morality about fairness, hubris, and humanity. What seems particularly conservative about this to me is the certainty expressed by the author in the values that the characters either hold or do not uphold in the course of the book. Liberals are rarely certain; conservatives and radicals always are. McEwan is also conservative in his use of language and style. He writes good, clean sentences and paragraphs, doesn't try any tricks -- certainly unlike the other two cited.

I guess I ought to read "Saturday" to see traces of the same "conservatism" I found in "Amsterdam," though I don't find what he says about "Saturday" very convincing. (This blogger really goes at Sardar, at length and with vigor.)

One more thing about "Amsterdam" -- I also admired the book's economy. I read it in two sittings, but this is mainly because the whole thing is simply enormously compact, and I found this quality quite admirable. I wish every 193-page novel had this much good writing and tight plotting; most short books seem short to me because the writer didn't have much to say; most long books seem too long to me because the writer couldn't decide what he wanted to say.

* The reviewer is no relation to me.

Aw, he's no fun, he fell right over

Another Colorado megachurch pastor has quit after admitting same-sex relationships. The Rev. Paul Barnes, who helmed a Christian-themed arena in the Denver suburb of Englewood, quit in a videotaped address to his 2100-member congregation.

Unlike the huge church run by Ted Haggard in Colorado Springs, Barnes' church stayed out of the campaign over Colorado's anti-gay marriage amendment, according to the story. Here's an AP story.

I notice no one is saying this is politically movtivated, unlike the charges against Haggard.

Who says all the good domain names are taken?

As of this moment, the following suggestive .com domain names were unregistered. They might be the only ones left you could actually make something of:

weekendish
stopmebeforeiblogagain
unbefuckkingbelievable
drippingsantorum
barryonsteroids

However, a 'Girls Gone Wild' promotion was better received

The city of Galveston, Tex., eager to upgrade its image from a shabby beach town where nothing much happens aside from Spring Break and the occasional hurricane, hired a PR firm. The flacks recommended the city enthusiastically promote "Talk Like a Pirate Day," but no one liked the idea.

The idea of having local waitresses, bellhops and police officers greeting tourists with an "Aarggh, matey!" had tourists Dustin and Katrina Thornton of Huntsville laughing out loud.

"I think that would be kind of dumb," Dustin Thornton said.

"They kept mentioning pirates," Paula Brown, spokeswoman for the convention and visitors bureau, said. "I think they went a little overboard on the pirates."

I'm not so sure about the running part

A Texas lawmaker has introduced a bill that would make it easier for legally blind people to hunt game.

The bill would allow legally blind people -- who have impared sight -- to use laser pointers, which are forbidden for regular hunters.

"This opens up the fun of hunting to additional people, and I think that's great," (Rep. Edmund) Kuempel said. "I've seen this on TV before, when they're taking target practice. When they aim the gun, the guide tells them, aim two inches higher or two inches lower and you're on the target, and you're off and running."

Haggard update: receives "generous outpouring" of cash; severance TK

Now let's catch up with Ted Haggard. Remember Ted Haggard, the Colorado Springs megachurch head who was outed by a Denver rent boy as a meth-snorting, cocksucking sinner?

Well, this week he is due to officially begin his "restoration" -- a sort of hyper-Xtian rehab. A trio of fundie pastors will give him a thorough going-over, doesn't that sound like fun for him? But here's the point: now that he's out of a job (and has been for six weeks), how's his family making out?

According to the news story, members of the congregation he founded and then betrayed have made a "generous outpouring" of donations to the family, and the church is yet to decide on his severance package.

Severance? For living a double life as a drug-snorting cocksucker? Those nutty Republicans!

Pinochet dead

Speaking of fascists, Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet has died comfortably in a hospital bed, surrounded by his family, without ever spending a day in jail for the thousands of deaths and victims of torture created by his regime.


He's laughing right now.

View from beyond the right-field foul line

To continue our morbid fascination with what passes for conservatism in the US today, here is -- more or less at random -- a right-wing blogger for whom Newt Gingrich is a "leftoid," who calls Hillary Clinton "Her Heinous," and uses colorful phrases like "nutroots and Hollyweirdos." Entertaining, in the same way a zombie movie is.

Santorum's swan song

There are only two types of people who will read Santorum's farewell speech to the Senate -- it's 6790 words, by the way -- wonks, who are by definition masochists, and mad far-right-wingers in whose minds the pipes are constantly skirling, skirling, driving them to think Santorum should be president. (Link courtesy Hot Air)

But out of morbid fascination, and because I'm home sick, I will capture Santorum's main points:

• "We" have "an enemy," to wit, "Islamic fascism... this relentless and determined radical enemy that is not just a group of rag-tag people living in caves but, in fact, people with an ideology, a plan, and increasingly the resources to carry out that plan, as well as, increasingly, a bigger and larger presence throughout the Islamic world, these radical Islamic fascists.
• "This is the biggest issue of our time."
• The U.S. is in a state of war, not only with this "presence," but with the nation of Iran. "The State of Iran specifically has been at war with us since 1979 when they declared war against the United States. They have not rescinded that declaration." Who knew!?
• The CIA, the State Department, and the Pentagon are part of the problem. They don't realize the US is at war; they want to deal with Iran.
• "The Baker-Hamilton report ... is a prescription for surrender."
• Many things "the Islamic fascists" have done are evil. Santorum embarks on a long passage where he relates several incidents he says have taken place in recent months, and then intones: "This is evil."
• Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the other evil Muslims understand America and how to exploit our weaknesses; "they respect us enough so they know what buttons to push and how hard to push them. They respect us enough to figure out what it will take to defeat us. I wish that were the case for the American people."
• "We have not only the Islamic fascists led by Iran, but we now have an alliance between Iran and North Korea."
• Something about Venuzuela.
• A lot more about Venuzuela and a completely nutty theory that Hugo Chavez has a plan to develop military bases across South America, creating a Soviet-style bloc.
• "Let's not overlook the role of Russia in working with all of these governments--Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela."
• Compares himself repeatedly to Churchill.

This is the guy who lost his Senate race in a moderate state by 59-41. You can see why.

Roman legion geeks

This morning, for some reason, I woke up thinking about Doonesbury and how Garry Trudeau depicts each president with some kind of icon. In Bush's case, it's a Roman helmet, signifying his empire-like approach to foreign policy. The helmet is topped by a crest that has grown increasingly threadbare over time as Bush's policies are seen as failed. Anyway, I couldn't think of the word for the crest for some reason, so after I got up I did a little searching and discovered this page, which tells you how to make your own helmet crest.

And why would you want to? It turns out to be only one page in an extensive website of a group of mid-Atlantic geeks who like to dress up as first-century Romans. According to their newsletter -- which appears to have been produced with unbelievable consistency for over seven years -- December is a busy time, as the group is invited to appear in Christmas pageants (Easter time must be even busier) as well as the opening of a museum exhibit on Pompeii.

Just one of those strange things on the internet. Because much of the personal internet -- the blogs, personal websites, etc., the vox populi if you will -- has become somewhat tamed, it's refreshing to discover some real geeks who not only have their own weird thing going but seem to be coding their website using the WYSIWYG editing feature of Mozilla, resulting in an old-school default-font look. No Verdana to be seen!

Another closet case for the Lord

A Xtian evangelist is drawing crowds of would-be he-men with exclamations like "Thank you, Lord, for our testosterone!" (Courtesy Metafilter)

Brad Stine runs onstage in ripped blue jeans, his shirt untucked, his long hair shaggy. He's a stand-up comic by trade, but he's here today as an evangelist, on a mission to build up a new Christian man — one profanity at a time. "It's the wuss-ification of America that's getting us!" screeches Stine, 46.

Jesus Christ. Don't miss the lyrics of one of the songs played at the event:

Forget the yin and the yang
I'll take the boom and the bang.
Don't need in touch with my feminine side!
All I want is my testosterone high.

This is why satire like The Reverend Billy will never gain much of a foothold. You can't satirize a movement that is all too full of self-satire.

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! -- drinking antifreeze edition

We begin with a cartoon:


See, the guys are Indian, get it. Courtesy Manish on Ultrabrown.

This story sounds like it goes beyond the usual "thousands of images found on a computer" (which usually just means some wanker didn't clear his cache) -- a man whose mother runs a day care center in the San Jose suburb of Newark was found to have lots of child pr0n including pix of a girl under his mother's care. He was caught at the airport trying to flee the country.

A man, now 28, pretended for 20 years to be retarded so his mother could receive benefits for his handicap.

Now that he has been found out, the man now has to resign from his job as host of a right-wing talk-show.

Valleywag offers a helpful guide for whistleblowers: How to leak information to the news media. Tip no. 1: Don't leak from work.

Headline of the week: The New York Post, for I Adore A Girl Without Spellcheck Or Panties.

Finally, a movie starring Charlize Theron is filming in Seattle this weekend and re-enacting the 1999 WTO protests that rocked the city's downtown. Best line's in the lede:

Seattle police say this weekend's filming of a movie based on the 1999 WTO riots will have "minimal" impact on commuters and shoppers. Of course, they said the same thing seven years ago before the anti-globalization protests erupted into full-scale, tear-gas-choked riots.

Of course, this time they won't use real tear gas. Maybe.

Area man convicted for pranking coworkers

A man who forged a "winning" Powerball ticket -- not to try to win the lottery with it, but merely to prank unsuspecting co-workers -- has been sentenced to a year on probation for forgery.

The Pennsylvania man created the ticket for the multimillion-dollar lottery prize and planted it at the shipping company where he worked. Sure enough, some shmuck found the ticket and tried to cash it -- he was, at least, acquitted by a jury of "unsworn falsification." But the guy who created the ticket, as well as another that was also planted and apparently discarded, got a $2500 fine and a year's probation.

Good thing he didn't print bogus boarding passes -- then he'd really be in trouble.

Too much work

Christ, is today only Wednesday? I feel like I've put in a whole week's worth of work already -- I am speaking of my job at the d.b.t.s. -- and, in truth, I've probably done more in two days than I usually do in a week, if only because most weeks are not that busy.

Last night's brief visit to the launch party of my friend Shannon's graphic anthology Pet Noir I will post on the Metroblog. I'm putting all my SF-related stuff there nowadays. There's an automatic list of my recent postings on the right side of this page if you scroll down.

Anyway, the release of our next version of the d.b.t. is next week, so my postings will be on the light side for a few more days.

Adventures in Homeland Security: Farts on a plane

Here, in its entirety, is a story about a lady who got kicked off a plane:

Plane Lands After Matches Used to Hide Odor

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 6, 2006

An American Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing on Monday morning after a passenger lighted a match to disguise the scent of flatulence, the authorities said.

The Dallas-bound flight was diverted to Nashville after several passengers reported smelling burning sulfur from the matches, said Lynne Lowrance, spokeswoman for the Nashville International Airport Authority. All 99 passengers and 5 crew members were taken off and screened while the plane was searched and luggage was screened.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation questioned a passenger who admitted that she struck the matches in an effort to conceal a "body odor," Ms. Lowrance said. The passenger had an unspecified medical condition, the authorities said.

The flight took off again, but the woman was not allowed back on the plane. The woman, who was not identified, was not charged in the incident.

Sigh. Stuck inside of Nashville with the evil farts again.

Host you too

According to this awesome article (link courtesy (Language Log) in the Washington Post, Quebequois use exclusively religious swear words like "tablernacle," "chalice" and "host." A professor explains:

"When you get mad, you look for words that attack what represses you," said Louise Lamarre, a Montreal cinematographer who must tread lightly around the language, depending on whether her films are in French or English. "In America, you are so Puritan that the swearing is mostly about sex. Here, since we were repressed so long by the church, people use religious terms."

Just a day full of work

All I did today was work hard. The few moments I took for looking around the internet, I found little interesting, except the nice article about an ambigulously gendered Oakland child, and the related article (r.r.) from the Magazine of a few months back, What if It's (Sort of) a Boy and (Sort of) a Girl?. And I didn't even have time to blog them until I got home.

Sorry, wrong number

Jaw-dropping piece of news that crossed the wires in garbage time, late on Friday:

The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone's microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.

The technique is called a "roving bug," and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him.

Nextel cell phones owned by two alleged mobsters, John Ardito and his attorney Peter Peluso, were used by the FBI to listen in on nearby conversations. The FBI views Ardito as one of the most powerful men in the Genovese family, a major part of the national Mafia.

The surveillance technique came to light in an opinion published this week by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan. He ruled that the "roving bug" was legal because federal wiretapping law is broad enough to permit eavesdropping even of conversations that take place near a suspect's cell phone.

Whoa. Much more at the news.com story. Link courtesy Nuke Gingrich.

Large box attends Mexican presidential inauguration

What the hell does this picture, taken at the swearing-in ceremony of the new Mexican president, actually show?

Is it a pedestal for the new, shorter president to stand on? That's all I can guess.

I fought the law

In today's best lawsuit evar, a women is suing Kraft Foods, claiming Kraft's guacamole dip is a fraud upon the public (courtesy The Morning News). It contains only 2% avocado.

Best part: the avocado growers' association is taking an interest! They are donning helmets at Kraft now!

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! -- holiday edition

It's holiday time, and look what Santa has brought (via Wonkette): a "well-known GOP activist" in Seattle has been arrested for trying to arrange sex with a 13-year-old girl. There wasn't really a girl, it was just an internet sting run by the cops. But there really was a lonely, sexually frustrated 54-year-old Republican functionary looking for some trim. Bye, fella!

A Georgia man was arrested for trying to put his wife into an oven in front of his family on Thanksgiving. And in an obscure, unpronounceable New York town, a man broke into a barn on Thanksgiving and spray-painted three goats. What color? Orange. Glad you asked.

In a more extreme, if mundane, story a man in Oakland killed three family members during a Txg gathering -- in self-defense, he says. How do you kill three members of your family, at home, in self-defense?

Salon pulled out the stops Wednesday for Stephen Elliott's masochistical book My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up with a review and an excerpt. Coincidentally, the next day they published one of their literary travelogue pieces, this one on the Netherlands. The piece doesn't mention that Elliott's book contains an evocative chapter set in Amsterdam's sex underground.