Wednesday, January 31, 2007

It's Bad Behavior Wednesday™! -- second coming edition

Nobody said I couldn't do it on Wednesday too.

A 60-year-old Puerto Rican preacher in Florida, head of a group he claims has 300 congregations and 100,000 members, is worshipped as Christ but recently has claimed to be the Anti-Christ, complete with 666 tattoo.

"Critics" claim it's a cult. You think!!?!

I just really like the lede on this story so I'll quote it verbatim:
A Houstonian who invited two men to his townhome after chatting with them on an Internet site late Monday ended up bound in duct tape as the strangers hauled computers, jewelry and other valuables away in his car, police said.
The writer of that tight lede, Houston Chronicle reporter Kevin Moran, is an old hand.

A New York woman who slept in the same bed as her baby to protect him from rats accidentally rolled on top of him, suffocating him. The AP story said: "The building has reportedly been cited by the city for nearly 380 violations, including 20 for mice and rodent infestations. The landlord told the Daily News he was not aware of any rat problems."

A Texas man killed a UT student, decapitated her in the bathtub, then fled to Mexico with his girlfriend. After trying to pin the murder on his girlfriend, he was convicted today and got 55 years. After the jury returned a verdict in 90 minutes, a defense lawyer commented: "The jury considered everything. It was a brutal battle with drugs and alcohol."

No wonder they execute so many people in Texas -- the juries get high.

A South San Francisco man has been accused of biting off his wife's lip. The lip was reattached. The man's name is Akano Nzerem -- a challange when you've got all your lips.

Hilary Clinton says she is "flattered" by people who indulge in character assassination. Well, I hope so, since she's in for another ten years of it -- two years of campaigning, and eight as President.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

All your base are belong to Google

Courtesy Publishers Marketplace, the news that Google's book project includes mapping the locations mentioned in books -- once they're scanned in by Google, that is. The New Yorker has an article about Google's project of scanning all the books ever published (which strikes me as Sisyphean, but if you have all the money in the world, I guess you tackle stuff like that).

What I immediately thought is: What about the fictional locations mentioned in books? For example, the list of fictional counties alone runs more than a page. In my opinion, mapping those is equally important.

Indianism of the day: timepass (n.)

About the novel Londonstani:
In the end, Londonstani came off to me as a somewhat linear and funny portrait of a fictional second generation desi crew in the UK, with some funny dialogue and some interesting twists. Nothing more, nothing less. Still, it makes for a good timepass.
--Sajit, on SepiaMutiny

HOWTO bribe customs guards

At the end of a long account of his visit to a relative's wedding in Nepal, this Indian-American blogger tells how to deal with customs/border guards expecting bribes:
I pulled my decoy wallet out of my pocket. The real one was safe in the other pocket. My carry-on bag was full of the silverware that my brother and mom had offloaded on to me after the wedding. The fact that it was wrapped in dirty laundry made the whole situation rather sketchy. Now the Nepali guards wanted their hard-earned cut.

"Do you have money? You will have to pay tax."

"Why? These aren't commercial goods. I am coming from my brother's wedding. This was all used for the religious ceremony."

"No, we cannot let you pass. Do you have any money? Just give it to him. It is of no use to you now."

After a few moments like this I took a wad of small bills out of my fake wallet and wadded them some more for good measure. Crumpled bills look like they are worth more than neatly folded bills.

"Here, this is everything." I handed it to him but he directed me to put it in my bag instead. Then he pretended to fold my clothes and took the money out of my bag.

Monday, January 29, 2007

Naked lunch

Greased, Naked Student Disrupts Lunch

Westerville, Ohio (AP) -- A high school lunch period was disrupted Monday by a greased, naked student who ran around screaming and flailing his arms until police twice used a stun gun on him, authorities said.

Taylor Killian, 18, had rubbed his body with grapeseed oil to keep from being caught, and got up after the first time he was shocked to continue running toward a group of frightened students huddled in a corner at Westerville North High School, Lt. Jeff Gaylor said.

"That prank went a little farther than he intended, I guess," Gaylor said.
What kind of 18-year-old pulls a "prank" like that -- in Ohio [map] in January? There's more here than meets the eye, I feel. Also, he is described as having "long hair and a full beard." It's like Attack of the Amish! So weird!

Arch-Republicans behind 'Draft Newt' campaign

A press release was issued today by a new organization called Draft Newt -- "to urge Newt Gingrich to run for the Republican Presidential nomination."

Newt Gingrich has said he will run only as a "last resort." To me that meant that he wanted a front organization -- like this one -- so he wouldn't have to follow campaigning rules. They raise and spend money in Gingrich's name, secretly directed by the candidate's agents, while the disgraced, ethics-challenged former House Speaker sits at his master control panel and speaks at Republican banquets. Now the organization has emerged, only days after Gingrich's demurral.

Who's behind this so-called grass roots group? A publicist named David W. Kralik, who I'm supposing must be the same David W. Kralik who is a Manager, Internet Programs & Web Content Editor at the National Association of Manufacturers, a pro-business lobbying group.

Kralik is apparently an old hand at propping up Republican icons, as a Google search shows he has been the director of the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project in Washington, D.C., a group that was founded by Americans for Tax Reform, one of the many projects of hydra-headed arch-conservative Grover Norquist.

So you can bet it's Norquist, ultimately, behind this "draft Newt" con. That's what they mean when they say "grass roots."

Previously:
Newt Gingrich Can't Keep Pants Buttoned, Wants to Be President

Update: Kralik has also been identified as a former Gingrich staffer.

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Haggard sprung from rehab as 'accuser' visits church

As soon as I saw this headline, I said to myself: "Uh oh."
Haggard's accuser visits New Life Church

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) -- The former male prostitute whose accusations against New Life Church founder Ted Haggard led to Haggard's dismissal as pastor visited the megachurch Sunday.

Mike Jones, who has a forthcoming book, told The Denver Post that several people shook his hand and told him, "God bless you."

"I had read a lot about the church, but there's nothing like seeing it for yourself," Jones told the newspaper. "It wasn't to rub anyone's face in it by any means. I was wanting to get some perspective, to see where they are coming from, what the magnet is."
The story ends with the note: "Haggard and his wife, Gayle, completed a counseling program in Arizona and are back in Colorado Springs."

The reason I said "Uh oh" is that when way-out-there rabble rousers start friendly visits to the fundie churches they've been sparring with, it's usually a short distance to a tearful conversion. In fact, if I were New Life's marketing guy, I would say "Hey, we've got an opportunity here. Haggard -- Jones -- they're the same in everyone's eyes now. Let's team them up!"

Just wait.

Friday, January 26, 2007

Readers agog over Lay tribute to Pollock

In advance of the Jan. 28 anniversary of Jackson Pollock's birth, cartoonist Carol Lay posted a tribute in her regular Salon.com slot. but literal minded readers couldn't hack Lay's -- hello?? -- impressionistic use of the elements of Pollock's birth, career and death. Either that, or they're just put off by the image of a baby shooting like an artillery shell from between his mother's legs.

No relation, but I wanted to be sure I posted about this great story about a woman who fought off a mountain lion that was attacking her husband, using only a pen and a stick. Extra style points to the victim who, while his head was in the lion's jaws, was able to tell his wife to remove the pen from his breast pocket and use it against the cougar.

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! -- love triangle edition

A Dutch woman is being charged with murder for tampering with the equipment of a fellow skydiver whom she suspected of having an affair with her boyfriend. All three members of the love triangle, together with a fourth man, jumped from a plane on Nov. 18 and formed a "star" formation, holding hands. When they pulled their ripcords, the victim's chutes failed to deploy. Grisly details: The victim was wearing a video camera on her helmet; a witness described her fall:
I was working on my plane when I heard someone on the ground screaming and pointing to the sky. I looked up and saw a black spot falling quickly to the ground. It was wriggling about and it was pretty obvious it was a person. Above it were three people in parachutes coming down slowly. Then it hit the ground."
The story is slightly confusing because both women have the same first name.

Moving on, we have another instance where the headline encapsulates the whole story to the extent that it is not worth reading the story itself: Rock Fans Boo Jimi Hendrix Energy Drink.

Others cheered the new product, unaware that Jimi's "energy" came from a combination of whiskey and illicit drugs.

Perhaps because the Super Bowl is coming up, there seems to be an obsession with advertising. It's time for all those stories on the television advertisements being shown during the football game, a practice that rivals the coverage of the game itself, with focus on the halftime show coming in third. So we have stories about the worst Super Bowl ads ever and the best and worst car names.

A housekeeper who beat her employer to death to keep him from firing her for stealing from him was sentenced to life without parole in California.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Dinesh D'Sousa is a 'national disgrace'

Quite a blast in the NYT Book Review this weekend at Neocon Dinesh D'Sousa, who is to Desis what Ann Coulter is to women -- a lightweight neocon polemicist who would like to be taken seriously enough to be called a crypto-fascist, but is too much of a twit. Reviewing D'Sousa's book "The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11," Alan Wolfe minces no words in a concluding paragraph I hope gets stuck to D'Sousa like flypaper:
At one point in "The Enemy at Home," D'Souza appeals to "decent liberals and Democrats" to join him in rejecting the American left. Although he does not name me as one of them, I sense he is appealing to people like me because I write for The New Republic, a liberal magazine that distances itself from leftism. So let this "decent" liberal make perfectly clear how thoroughly indecent Dinesh D'Souza is. Like his hero Joe McCarthy, he has no sense of shame. He is a childish thinker and writer tackling subjects about which he knows little to make arguments that reek of political extremism. His book is a national disgrace, a sorry example of a publishing culture more concerned with the sensational than the sensible. People on the left, especially those who have been subjects of D'Souza's previous books, will shrug their shoulders at his latest screed. I look forward to the reaction from decent conservatives and Republicans who will, if they have any sense of honor, distance themselves, quickly and cleanly, from the Rishwain research scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
This from a teacher of political science at Boston College -- I think I detect a certain disdain for the Hoover Institution there.

If you missed D'Sousa's appearance on the Colbert Report last week, it's definitely worth seeing.
Colbert: It's worse than just politics, right? It's worse than just international relations that does it. Isn't our culture itself corrosive, and invites this kind of attack?

D'Sousa: Well, that's what the radical Muslims say. They say America is the fount of global depravity... We in America know there's a big difference between some of the excesses of our popular culture and the way that Americans actually live. But abroad they don't know that... There are a lot of traditional Muslims who have traditional values not very different from traditional Jewish or Christian values.

Colbert: And can we just hold hands in brotherhood -- and use our free hands to stone gay people? Is that possible?

D'Sousa: Look, homosexuality exists all over the world... but there's a difference between something that is allowed or tolerated and something that is given social sanction. That's what I think makes a lot of traditional Muslims uneasy. Here's all I'm saying: Why don't we show them a little more of the traditional America? That will undermine Bin Laden's argument that we're all a bunch of atheists.

Colbert: So what other cultural editing notes should we take from the terrorists?

Zombies really are dangerous

A Hollywood star was injured involved in a very minor crash while filming a zombie movie. Very hard to understand what happened from the report. She was trying to "shake the zombies off the bonnet," or hood, of the car she was apparently driving, but the car was also being towed...

Of course, the movie company blamed a crew member. But what about the zombies? They're supposed to just slide right off. What did they think this was, Mad Max?

Cheney stonewalls

You know, "Stonewall" Jackson, the Confederate General, is regarded as a near-saint in the South. And whether you believe it's good or bad to revere Confederate heroes, it's kind of sad that his name has taken on this negative connotation as a verb, becoming most famous in the Nixon administration response to allegations of corruption and undermining the Constitution.

Today we have a sad echo of that period as the Bush administration tries to put a good face on the mess -- "Mess o'Potamia," as The Daily Show has it -- it has made of Iraq. Yesterday it was Cheney saying the administration -- oh, why hide behind that phrase "the administration" anymore, it's become all too clear it's basically him -- saying he has achieved "enormous successes" in Iraq.
Cheney rejected the gloomy portrayal of Iraq that has become commonly accepted even among Bush supporters. "There's problems" in Iraq, he said, but it is not a "terrible situation."
Here's a transcript. At least he didn't say the insurgency is in its last throes.

Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel blasted fellow Republicans in a hearing on the Senate resolution to oppose the troop "surge." Remarkably, he pretty much blew up in the committee hearing, shaking his finger at fellow senators. This transcript is from an extensive quotation of his remarks broadcast on the Countdown show last night:
This is not a defeatist resolution. This is not a cut-and-run resolution. We are not talking about cutting off funds, not supporting the troops.

This is a very real, responsible addressing of the most divisive issue in this country since Vietnam. Yes, sure, it's tough, absolutely. And I think all 100 senators ought to be on the line on this. What do you believe? What are you willing to support? What do you think? Why were you elected? If you wanted a safe job, go sell shoes. This is a tough business.

But is it any tougher us having to take a tough vote, express ourselves, and have the courage to step up, than what we‘re asking our young men and women to do? I don't think so. I don't know how many United States senators believe we have a coherent strategy in Iraq. I don't think we‘ve ever have a coherent strategy. In fact, I would even challenge the administration today to show us the plan that the president talked about the other night.

There is no plan. And my dear friend Dick Lugar talks about coherence of strategy. There is no strategy. This is a Ping-Pong game with American lives. These young men and women that we put in Anbar Province, in Iraq, in Baghdad, are not beans. They're real lives.

And we better be damn sure we know what we're doing, all of us, before we put 22,000 more Americans into that grinder. We better be as sure as you can be. And I want every one of you, every one of us, 100 senators, to look in that camera, and you tell your people back home what you think. Don't hide anymore. None of us.

That is the essence of our responsibility. And if we're not willing to do it, we're not worthy to be sitting right here. We fail our country. If we don't debate this, if we don't debate this, we are not worthy of our country. We fail our country.

Beirut's post-modern civil war

What a strange picture on the NYT's site today:

Clearly there are some guys -- one dressed in a bandana -- taking shelter behind concrete barriers. But what's that guy in the black t-shirt doing -- relaxing on a couch? They look like they're doing performance art.

It's cloudly and cold today in San Francisco, breaking a string of sunny, warm days that became increasingly smoggy. Perhaps this weak frontal system will clear out the shmutz.

I'm working at home, because I have to go to Oakland tonight. But dig all the literary events in the city tonight that I posted at Metblog. I should be able to catch the last one.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Attorney General: No such thing as habeas corpus

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales astonished members of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week when he asserted, during a hearing, that the Constitution actually contained no guarantee of habeas corpus.

Are you fucking kidding me??!??!

Note that the San Francisco Chronicle didn't run the story til today -- but Bay Area Indymedia had it on the 21st, with video.

I'm so hot for her, but she's so cold

The military has demonstrated a heat ray that is supposed to become a crowd-control device. The weapon, which presently requires a two-man crew, consists of a specially modified antenna dish mounted on a Humvee [see photo]. It produces a ray, accurate to 500 yards, which is said to be non-lethal and acts by heating the skin to 130 degrees, thus giving people the impression that "their clothes were about to ignite."
The weapon could be mounted aboard ships, airplanes and helicopters, and routinely used for security or anti-terrorism operations.

"There should be no collateral damage to this," said Senior Airman Adam Navin, 22, of Green Bay, Wis., who has served several tours in Iraq. Navin and two other airmen were role players in Wednesday's demonstration. They and 10 reporters who volunteered were shot with the beams. The beams easily penetrated various layers of winter clothing.
I guarantee you that the first civilian use of this weapon will be cops shooting it at unsuspecting women to force them to remove their "clothes about to ignite."

Today's fake™ has credulous neighbors

Courtesy Metafilter we have this wonderful story about a Louisiana woman who scammed neighbors for a million dollars by convincing them she was a CIA operative "who could have satellites scan people's bodies for disease, then have CIA agents administer secret medicines to them while they slept."

Sounds like a business just waiting for a daring entrepreneur. Can you see the vans pulling up to people's houses in the middle of the night? Of course, they'd get some of the addresses wrong and wind up administering meds to the wrong people. Comedy ensues.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

'India's tryst with globalisation'

More on the riots that surprised Bangalore this past weekend -- Today a local website, andhracafe.com, published an analysis piece with this paragraph which is practically a blurb for the book I've been working on:
The slang Bangalored depicts the American angst about outsourcing-linked job losses but no similar coinage exists to describe the tormented internal divisions of a city, which overnight became a hotspot during India's tryst with globalisation. Beneath the veneer of the sophisticated comforts of an urban space that has gone places lie the discomforts of inequality and petty politics.
Just put a blond American girl in the middle and you've got my book.

Monday, January 22, 2007

Snowed

It was only two years ago that Bush was crowing about the "political capital" he supposedly earned in the 2004 election. If it was hard then to imagine why someone would vote for Bush, it's even harder now. I was surfing past Fox News tonight and even Bill O'Reilly -- not on his own show, but on Greta Van Susteren's -- was saying the war in Iraq was a "disaster."

So I was grateful when I stumbled across a blog by a Colorado woman who, to my mind, epitomises the type of person who has supported Bush all along and continues to do so:
I have heard some returning soldiers express strong opinions about US politics. They are proud to be in the military and know the media does not tell the entire story of the good they are doing in Iraq. On the home front, some are also concerned about the issue of immigration from Mexico. As I wrapped up yesterday's book fair, a married couple who both returned this week from the war front explained their solution to building a fence at the US/Mexico border: "We need to do it. The entire border. And for those people we let in, there should be a requirement that they must speak English. And they each need to serve one year in the military, defending the country they want to live in. Then they can stay here." I'll admit, it sounds like a good idea to me.
Then I hope you won't mind paying $25/hour to the person who mops the floors at your office, missus, because that's what you'll have to pay to keep that well-educated, English-speaking, legal immigrant from taking another job for which they are qualified.

She goes on:
President Bush has said the Iraq war is about good versus evil. I too believe it is. As a mother of two sons in the military (USAF and USN), I support wholeheartedly the US efforts to conquer the enemy who wants to prevent its own people from being free.
I respect that, I do. She has two kids in the military, she's got a right to have an opinion about the war. That's two kids more than any senior member of the Bush administration, I believe.

She then goes on to comment about the need to judge oneself before judging Ted Haggard:
Let's instead do a personal assessment of our own integrity and honesty and go on to become better people. Because being a hypocrite and deceiver is just as much a sin as any other. Choose good and "right" instead of evil and "wrong." How does one know the difference? I'd suggest start by reading the Bible as an instruction guide for how to do it right.
Hmm, I guess she doesn't mean the part of the Bible that says to put homosexuals to death.

Anyway, it's silly for me to take issue with one person's single entry -- compared, for example, to this goober, she seems reasonably intelligent -- and I'm sure she could find plenty of my posts to take apart. It's just kind of weird to find somebody who is sort of the perfect anti-gay, anti-immigrant, pro-war blogger -- but she can actually spell and type. You know, somebody voted for Bush -- somebody like this.

Women battle police with pepper

Bangalore is not known for frequent disturbances, but the center of the city was gripped by rioting over the weekend. News stories here and here. I was struck by this story which included the evocative scene (emphasis mine):
Police raided many houses which had stockpiled weapons. Here, the women folks came to the rescue of rioters by throwing chili powder on the police.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

I would be content to be merely impressed

Funny piece in the NYT Book Review in which an essayist remarks on the over-use by book reviewers of adjectives like "astonishing."

Previously: Adjectives that appear only in book reviews

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Lede of the week

Leaders at Davenport's New Life Church of God and Christ hope krump drums beat out any humdrums kids may feel about attending church.
I don't think "humdrums" is a noun. Maybe they meant doldrums? From the Davenport, IL Quad Cities Dispatch.

Friday, January 19, 2007

it's Bad Behavior Friday™! -- bonus Republican Edition

Former congressman Bob Ney has been sentenced to 30 months in prison in a case related to the congressional influence-peddling scandal which -- almost as much as the war in Iraq -- was responsible for Republicans being swept from office in the elections last year.

In another Abramoff-related case, a California congressman, John T. Doolittle, promised Saturday to stop employing his wife as a campaign consultant, a practice which funnelled 15% of donations to his household. Doolittle, from the Calif. 4th district in the Sierra Nevada, somehow managed to win his district in 2006 despite being linked to the disgraced lobbyist.

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! -- straight boyfriend edition

Did you know you can order a straight boyfriend on the internet? No, it's not Craigslist, a dating site, or pr0n. Give it a try.

For the record, Cris rejected this choice and ordered hers from the men's department. That's how she plays it.

Speaking of which...

That's my friend Alexis, on vacation from snowy Mlps in sunny PR. She calls it right: "Homage to Stanley Kubrick," missing only the cowboy hat.

I also loved her previous post about a passive-aggressive flight attendant:
After noticing my seatbelt was off while the fasten seatbelt sign was illuminated during flight, asking me about it, then hearing my explanation that I was just getting up to use the bathroom, she said "well, I guess that's your decision."
All right, on to our usual parade of depravity. Here's a very short news story; it's all in the headline: Woman found dead under Houston motel bed. That pretty much sums up Houston -- well, except maybe the Rothko Chapel.

In San Francisco, a man, whom the cops searched and found drugs on, ate the evidence off the hood of a police car while officers were struggling to handcuff him. Unfortunately the baggie wasn't sealed and the man went into convulsions and died on the spot.

The handsome wife of former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevy -- who appeared at his side when he revealed to media "I am a gay American" -- will tell all in a book now that their divorce has been finalized. Her book will give her side of the story McGreevy told in his own book from last year, and apparently she is a lot more pissed off than she's let on til now. So it should be good.

Finally, courtesy galleycat we have Today's Fake™: a woman who described a rape in court was lying about the incident to delay another court hearing about a huge debt she owed. This revelation casts doubt on the memoir she wrote about being a single mother who turned to prostitution.

Oy. Why does everything have to be a memoir? Wouldn't it have been better for her to just write the same book, put the words "a novel" after the title, and let readers wonder how much of it is true?

Maine city bans smoking in cars carrying children

Bangor, Me. has banned smoking in cars carrying children under 18.

How I wish I had grown up in a time and place with that law. My parents' smoking was one of the blights of my childhood -- and that's not too strong a word, considering that I had constant sinus and respiratory problems and had pneumonia when I was 8. (Of course, spending years 1-6 in an oil refinery [map] probably didn't help either.) I have vivid memories of the horror of being trapped in our Ford Fairlane with the windows rolled up and smoke filling the car, and me pleading with my mother to put it out. God, what were people thinking?

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Right-wing foamer goes after civil rights movement

Right-wing talk radio presenter "Michael Savage" -- who is actually a former Allen Ginsburg and Timothy Leary sycophant named Michael Weiner -- launched attacks on the civil rights movement on Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
But basically, if you're talking about a day like today, Martin Luther King Junior Day, and you're gonna understand what civil rights has become, the con it's become in this country. It's a whole industry; it's a racket. It's a racket that is used to exploit primarily heterosexual, Christian, white males' birthright and steal from them what is their birthright and give it to people who didn't qualify for it.

Take a guess out of whose hide all of these rights are coming. They're not coming out of women's hides. Are they? No, there's only one group that's targeted, and that group are white, heterosexual males.

Courtesy Salon.com and Media Matters for America
Yes -- civil rights, a zero-sum game. If you give them to one group, you must take some away from others. Wow.

In addition to the SF Weekly profile linked to above, you can see profiles on Salon.com and again Salon.com; Campus Progress, Free Republic, SFGate, and Associated Content. Clearly this bloviating thug fascinates people, not least because he is based in San Francisco itself. No doubt he likes the close access to plenty of material for his show, on which he commonly mocks anything weird, gay or lefty.

By the way -- according to that SFGate article, Weiner's son invented and manufactures the Rockstar energy drink, and Weiner's wife is the company's chief financial officer. Hmm! Read more here.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Newt Gingrich: Can't keep pants buttoned, wants to be president

Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House, promulgated the neoconservative "Contract With America" legislative agenda after the Republicans swept into control of Congress in 1994...

Then things kind of went downhill. Like Tom DeLay would be 20 years later, Gingrich was repremanded by the House several times for ethics violations. His strategy to shut down the government and hold the country hostage backfired when the Daily News alleged he shut down the government after an alleged snub from President Clinton.

New York Daily News, November 16, 1995
See also: CNN story

Then, to top it all off, it came out that Gingrich -- leader of the pro-Family Values Republicans -- dumped his wife while she was in a hospital room recovering from cancer surgery. From a 1998 Salon.com article:
Jackie Gingrich raised the daughters, worked to put Newt through graduate school and was a loyal political wife during his two unsuccessful campaigns for Congress in 1974 and 1976. In his make-or-break 1978 race, Gingrich enlisted Jackie to attack his female opponent, who had announced that if elected she would commute to Washington and allow her family to remain in Georgia. At Gingrich's instigation, Jackie wrote a campaign letter declaring that Newt was a fine husband and would take his family with him, although his top aides already knew Gingrich was having affairs and the marriage was falling apart.

The most notorious incident in Gingrich's marriage -- first reported by David Osborne in Mother Jones magazine in 1984 -- was when he cornered Jackie in her hospital room where she was recovering from uterine cancer surgery and insisted on discussing the terms of the divorce he was seeking. Shortly after that infamous encounter, Gingrich refused to pay his alimony and child-support payments. The First Baptist Church in his hometown had to take up a collection to support the family Gingrich had deserted.
Now that he's thinking of running for President, who's he with now?
Also on his third marriage is potential candidate Newt Gingrich -- if you're keeping score, Newt's current wife is the young congressional staffer with whom he was having an affair while helping to engineer Bill Clinton's impeachment over a consensual affair... (Tom Paine.com)
Now he's aiming to be the President. Disgusting idea, but I think all people have to do is spread that Daily News cover around as widely as possible. No man can be president who has been caricatured on the cover of the Daily News as a baby throwing a tantrum.

Indians on American literature

In the comment thread to this post on Sepia Mutiny -- a post on the NYT's review of Vikram Chandra's "Sacred Games" -- a score or more of Indians and (I'm guessing) Indian-Americans get into a long, fascinating conversation on the state of American fiction. After a commenter alleges that American writers have their heads up their collective ass with respect to the rest of the world, a long comment thread develops in which many writers and books are evaluated. Really interesting!

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

A Virginia lawmaker stunned colleagues when, in debate over whether the state of Virginia should apologize to African Americans for slavery, Delegate Frank D. Hargrove said "Our black citizens should get over it," adding, "are we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?" When a Jewish colleague, David L. Englin, rose to protest, Hargrove:
told Englin he didn't care about Englin's religion. "I think your skin was a little too thin," Hargrove said as lawmakers gasped and groaned.
He is 79 years old, has been a legislator since 1982, and in the last election in 2005, ran unopposed.

Pants on fire

A man in the San Francisco suburb of Vallejo was burned when his cellphone caught fire in his pocket. The plastic lawn chair in which he was sleeping when the accident happened melted from the heat of the flames, that's how bad it was.
Tweedy said that from the burn patterns on Picaso's clothes and body, it was clear the fire began in the right front pocket of his polyester-blend slacks.

"There were no matches," Tweedy said. "There were no lighters. He wasn't smoking. The only source was the phone that was in his pocket. I know he didn't spontaneously combust."

Monday, January 15, 2007

Focus on the Fundies: Haggard redux, part 36

Evangelicals are still vibrating with the shock waves from the downfall of Ted Haggard, "one of our brightest stars... assertive and winsome in representing the convictions of 30 million evangelicals in the halls of political power, ... thoughtful and unpredictable in his desire to build partnerships and embrace broad issues of social concern..., a committed charismatic, who reflected the respect Spirit-filled believers are being granted in wider evangelical circles. " (quotes are from the article linked ahead)

Also a cocksucking, meth-snorting Big Gay.

A magazine called Ministry Today has run a major feature glumly entitled What We Lost, in which the author ponders What It All Means for the Xtian mall-arenas they call churches nowadays.

In a typical can't-see-the-forest-for-the-trees passage, the article talks about how common it is for the clergy-executives of such organizations to have secret sex problems, and how it's difficult to see this because "We're still holding pastors to a 17th-century standard of purity." 1

Then drops the other shoe:
(The) solution? Lie detector tests.
Spoken like a true Republican. You go! I can't wait to see Rod Parsley hooked up to a lie detector. Because, it says right here:
The polygraph helps kill the flesh.
Egad! Why don't we just go straight to water-boarding? That'd separate the men from the men-loving boys. The gays would be the most hard-assed ones, the ones who would last the longest.

At the end, the article gets to the point, politically, discussing Haggard's political influence (which Bush tried to downplay after Haggard got caught with his pants down, in much the same way they tried to distance themselves from Abramoff) and who might replace him -- because, in the end, the fundies are all about political power; without it, they'd still be just a bunch of crackers with bad hair.
Haggard's departure reinforces the need for a variety of voices -- each emphasizing different biblical concerns. "The voices will become more sophisticated and focused, not unlike how the major channels have given way to the cable competition. There is not only FOX News, but also the History Channel, movie channels and so on," Hunter predicts. "So there will be different groups of Christians more focused on specific concerns. But what will not change is the requirement for a biblical basis for our voices and votes."
Again, spoken like a Republican. "There is not only FOX news" -- sic. Don't forget to capitalize, boys, or you won't get your goody bags at the next election.

Then, don't miss the sidebar printed at the bottom of the page -- a racy "confessional" titled I Was There, by an anonymous man who describes himself as Nate Larkin, a former staffer of Jim Bakker's PTL who "bailed out of the ministry the year before, during the PTL scandal, resigning my pulpit and fleeing to the anonymity of civilian life. The official reason for my early retirement: I was burned out. The real reason: I was hooked on porn and prostitutes. The contradiction between my professional life and my secret life was killing me, and I was terrified by the prospect of getting caught."

Yee ha, good stuff! I ought to read more o' them Christian ministry magazines! This is better than Penthouse Forum.


1 Why 17th century, anyway? Because that's when the Puritans ruled? I don't get it.

Your scary lesbian date rape bar

Courtesy N Judah Chronicles, this scary advertisement for a bar in San Francisco near Moscone Center:


Photo: Greg Dewar
 
What the hell is happening in that photo exactly? A woman is pretending to be passed out on the bar; her BFF is holding her head down while everyone else cracks up. Very odd.

High schoolers write about sex, adults freak out

The administration of the Danbury, Texas [map] high school stopped the distribution of the school newspaper because it contained articles on sexuality topics. From the description in the Houston Chronicle, it sounds like the articles were written responsibly.

The decision, wrong or right, is constitutional. Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier is the 1998 case (decided almost exactly nine years ago today) that ruled that school districts have the right to censor student publications in public schools. (If you're tired of the MLK stuff today but want to feel virtuous, read the decision! You should know these landmark First Amendment cases.) The case turned on whether a high school newspaper is truly a "public forum" (the majority ruled that it isn't) and whether a public school has a responsiblity to promote -- by subsizing and distributing a publication -- rather than allow student expression (the majority ruled that it didn't).

In his dissent, Justice Brennan wrote:
In my view the principal broke more than just a promise. He violated the First Amendment's prohibitions against censorship of any student expression that neither disrupts classwork nor invades the rights of others, and against any censorship that is not narrowly tailored to serve its purpose. ... If mere incompatibility with the school's pedagogical message were a constitutionally sufficient justification for the suppression of student speech, school officials could censor each of the students or student organizations in the foregoing hypotheticals, converting our public schools into "enclaves of totalitarianism," that "strangle the free mind at its source." The First Amendment permits no such blanket censorship authority.

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Focus on the fundies: If Parsley touches you, fall down

Really funny account on a teenager's MySpace blog of visiting Rod Parsley's church in Ohio. Excerpt:
So anyway......me & Heath are pumped, we've been to see the Crabb Family once, and it went pretty well & we figured we might go see them again in Columbus @ Rod Parsley's Church, World Harvest Something. So we get there, and the gig starts, and everything is goin ok. We're kinda into it, likin' the music & we enjoyed watchin' what I call the "Crazy Steppers"....who were a group of kids that dance, w/e. And then Rod's mom gets up in front of thousands of people, and I shoulda known things would probably go down hill when she start talking about "Mr. Parsley's Seed" & her boobs. I think she refered to them as her "Double D's". So it was kinda funny, but idk..., anyway....

So Rod gets up, and everyone that needed healing formed 2 lines. I dont' actually know if it was healing or annointing or what they called it, but that did it for me. The message I got from all night was that 1)If you sinned, you were NOT a Christian & 2)If you were touched on the head, in a head lock by Rod, or kicked in the stomach...then you were to fall to the ground. It angers me typing it out, I didn't feel God once tonight, and I felt totally disgusted when it was all said and done.
Emphasis mine. Lots more at the post. Wow.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Your moment of Cris

Dressing to go to a concert: "These socks are really on their last legs."

Both of us crack up.

Saturday in the dark

A video artist projected giant letters on the side of the new cathedral in Los Angeles: "YOUR AD HERE." Catholic officials not amused. But the best part of the story is that the artist is dissatisfied with his gig as a v.j. at raves:
It's a niche market. It's very subcultural, but it can be restricting. The audience is there to party and doesn't recognize what we're doing. There's a certain disconnect — a VJ is very much wallpaper."
Therefore:
"The only way to hit a lot of people is on the freeway."
The Guardian (U.K.) has an interview with Man Booker prize winner Kiran Desai. "If you spend that long working on one thing I think you become quite odd."

Badger: "Random thought on listening to music -- sparked a bit by Jam's talk about finding "poly appropriate music" i.e. anything with lyrics that don't ruin your polyamory mix tape by talking too much about jealousy or forever-fidelity. It's a hard task!"

Utterly hilarious piece in the Chronicle showing one of the new owners of the SF Armory -- a porn company bought the massive edifice -- walking around the new digs.
"I see tied-up girls, right here,'' Mogul said, standing in what was the soldiers' gymnasium. "You suspend them from these arches. This will be very cool."

In the boiler room: "You could put a girl right inside the boiler," he said. "Why not? It's a nice little chamber. You wouldn't have to change anything. It's already formidable looking. You don't have to build a fake dungeon; this building is already a dungeon."

Friday, January 12, 2007

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

Two women in Chicago were arrested for pandering after cops investigated their Craigslist postings in which they advertised girls who would date strangers in exchange for "roses" or "donations." These terms were "code words for money," the news story points out helpfully.

A female Air Force sergeant who posed nude for Playboy has been stripped of her duties, nyuck nyuck. Headline writers were working overtime on this one, also described as a "Playboy spread."

A 72-year-old man who killed his wife alleged, essentially, that she was a complete psycho who hoarded bits of soap and spent batteries and taunted him "Piggy, piggy, oink, oink! You fat slob!" For her part, the woman told her mother that he had gone nuts two days before the killing when she served him with divorce papers.

In Florida, a mother-daughter crime team were arrested for a series of generator thefts.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Lots of debut fiction deals

Man, a bunch of deals for debut fiction this week alone. And this was as of this morning.

I cut off the names of publisher and agent that come at the end of each listing.
Former Creative Director at Deutsch, New York David J. Rosen's I JUST WANT MY PANTS BACK, a downtown hipster's "Bright Lights Big City" for today, about a 25 year old who is drifting and living it up, unsure what direction (if any) to go in life, set in a current day New York City that has changed dramatically over the years, but remains the same place of exhilarating possibility and highs, as well as unforseen lows.

Doug Crandell's THE FLAWLESS SKIN OF UGLY PEOPLE, presenting touching, absurdist and sensitive characters.

Daniel Serrano's GUNMETAL BLACK, following a recently paroled gangster who returns to the mean streets of his Chicago neighborhood, determined to save his best friend from a life of crime and find the man responsible for murdering his father when he was a boy.

Margaret Grace's FULL SCALE MURDER, the first in a series of cozy crafts mysteries set in the world of dollhouses and miniature furniture, in which a feisty grandmother and dollhouse aficionado is drawn into sleuthing when she uncovers secrets that shake her small California town and ultimately threaten her life.

Murzban F. Shroff's BREATHLESS IN BOMBAY, a collection of literary short stories set against the backdrop of the author's native Bombay, featuring citizens of different classes and varying trades.

Historical anthropologist Peggy Hodges's NIGHT BATTLES, about the daughter of Italy's most famous crime photographer (inspired by a real woman) and a prominent American archaeologist taken out of Italy after the Mafia murders her mother, who then returns years later and meets an archivist who reveals hidden truths about her mother and allows her finally to understand her own hybrid and conflicted nature.

Sonia Lambert's THREE MOTHERS, exploring the very different lives of three generations of women in one extraordinary family and the complex nature of mother-daughter bonds.

Still here

Man, I'm boring this week. Sorry! Just busy at work.

Just posted something on metblog though.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

They're coming

Check out this awesome thirty second long film showing the consequences of doing a Google Earth search on your own address. Works just as well with the sound off. So boss.

Somewhat reminiscent of the series of photographs, which I can't find on Flickr now, showing a man posing with a giant red Google map teardrop in the commons outside his apartment building.

Monday, January 08, 2007

Focus on the Fundies™: Documentation mounts

Joining in the rising chorus of condemnation for the methods of modern-day evangelicals and fundamentalist Christians, a new book on the movement and its influence has the non-word mincing title American Fascists. Today Salon.com interviews the author.
You say they would like to impose a totalitarian system. How much of a conscious goal do you think that is at the upper levels of organizing, with, say, somebody like Rod Parsley?

I think they're completely conscious of it. The level of manipulation is quite sophisticated. These people understand the medium of television, they understand the despair and brokenness of the people they appeal to, and how to manipulate them both for personal and financial gain. I look at these figures, and I would certainly throw James Dobson in there, or Pat Robertson, as really dark figures.
The link to Parsley is to a Sep. 2005 story which quotes Parsley as saying "Americans must become 'Christocrats'."

More fun in Colo. Springs

From the Colorado Springs suburb of Monument comes a shocking tale of a coach abusing players with punches to the groin, as well as pouring water on them and then making them ride in his car with the windows down during the winter. The coach and students attended the Monument Academy, a secular charter school whose "core virtues" include "self control/self-discipline" and "respect." The guy's wife, whose improbable first name is Sharalee, was the school's athletic director and said she has been fired.

Indians laugh at Americans doing yoga

Very funny compilation of clips about Americanized yoga from an Indian guy, including a film where Madonna plays a yoga instructor, a few bits about a wedding between two "star" yoga teachers, and a "yoga for dogs" class.

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Curved

You know how your friends and ex-lovers change over the years, and sometimes that change is painful to watch and sometimes wonderful? One of the most wonderful transformations I've had the pleasure of witnessing has been the way my ex-lover and collaborator Chris Carraher went from a dancer and performance artist living in the heart of the urban Mission District in San Francisco to a lesbian painter living in the middle of the Mojave desert. She has a fabulous blog and does fabulous artwork.

This month her work is featured in Curve magazine (the Jan. 2007 issue pictured here), and she has been getting other notice as well, as much for her writing (which I love) as for her art. Ya know, we were performance artists together twenty years ago! (see picture below)

Yesterday I spent 11 hours engaged in an intentional marathon talk session with other artists and writers addressing the evolution of our careers. I reflected that while I wish I had decided sooner in life to concentrate on my writing to the exclusion of some of the other creative stuff I spent the first half of my adult life focusing on (dance, music, performance art, magazine editing, activism), I don't regret having done that instead of writing. It was hugely fun, I met the best friends of my life, and I learned an awful lot -- scraps of which I still use in my life as a writer --the performing experience certainly comes in handy when I do public readings. But the period of working with Christine (as I knew her then -- lower left) and Jody (upper right) was a happy and fruitful period. I wouldn't exchange it for two novels.

(Our collaborator Jody Suden, by the way, seems to have found her way to a life in the U.K.)

Cris took that picture 20 years ago. We had met only a few weeks before. She's the one who evoked that charming expression on my face.

Focus on the fundies: The Ted Haggard Story

The Colorado Springs Gazette today published a long account of Ted Haggard's rise and fall. It contains this hilarious quip from a former Haggard colleague:
The church is still grieving. Haggard was pastor, mentor, even spiritual father to many.

"I always assumed that the grief cycle was like a Trivial Pursuit game, where you get your orange piece, and then your blue one," said associate pastor Rob Brendle. "And when you get them all, you check it off and you get your grief-cycle merit badge and you go on with life. What I found is that I'm on the grief-cycle wheel of fortune."
And a few days ago in the same city, the conservative rector of the city's largest Episcopal church -- for all intents and purposes, a megachurch not dissimilar from Haggard's nondenominational Christianist mall -- was suspended while his congregation investigates him for misuse of funds. (Link courtesy Pam Spaulding.)The Rev. Donald Armstrong was a vocal critic of the national church's sympathy for women and gays; the Rocky Mountain News called him a national leader of the homophobic movement.

Friday, January 05, 2007

Thomas Jefferson's Koran

Most people know about the ginned-up controversy over newly elected congressman Keith Ellison (D. - Minn.) and his plans to use a Koran for symbolic oaths of office. First of all, the oath of office was administered to the entire Congress at one time, yesterday, by newly-minted Speaker Nancy Pelosi, so all other ceremonies -- such as the one shown on C-Span where members of the Congressional Black Caucus were sworn in -- are simply ceremonial. Second of all, it's a completely stupid controversy, and Ellison has handled it with aplomb.

Today the Washington Post revealed an interesting tidbit about the Ellison flap. Ellison got the copy of the Koran owned by Thomas Jefferson from the Library of Congress for his ceremonies. (Thanks, Jym)

When I first heard of this, I thought that perhaps Jefferson had taken a scissors to the Koran as he did with the Bible. Thankfully -- I think Muslims would object -- he did not.

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! -- Mission Accomplished edition

A 10-year-old boy in suburban Houston hung himself attempting to imitate the execution of Saddam Hussein, police said.

The story includes a mention that another kid in Pakistan hung himself for a similar reason. Texas... Pakistan. I guess they're more alike than we've always known. Each raises completely stupid children. Update: Also in India.

In the Bronx, a man opened a donut shop next door to a fried chicken place; when the donut shop began also selling chicken, the chicken shop owner burned the other place down. Coutesy Sepia Mutiny, who points out that both proprietors are Indian immigrants ("desis").

In Pennsylvania, authorities charged a 12-year-old special ed student with disorderly conduct for wetting her pants. Strangest part of the story is that after students and teachers ate "a holiday lunch" at the Danville (Penna.) Middle School, "the girl was told to go to the kitchen to wash some pots and pans," and the pants-wetting followed. What, the retarded kid is some kind of scullery slave? I guess she was pissed off.

The late Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist was addicted to Placidyl, a prescription sleep medication to the point where he was delusional.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Bush claims new snooping powers

Using one of those infamous "signing statements," Bush created a new power for himself last month. He was signing a "postal reform" bill, and used the opportunity to tack on a provision that he could order anyone's mail opened without a warrant.

I've got some Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes stuff he can handle for me.

Mob violence just under the surface in India?

Courtesy Sepia Mutiny, a distrubing story: during an outdoor New Years celebration in Mumbai, a mob of 60 men tore off the clothing of a young woman and groped her while a crowd watched. The news account says the incident "has also left Mumbai asking: Are we a sex-starved state?" and quotes a "social psychologist" who seems to suggest the incident happened because the crowd was high on ecstasy. or maybe he just means they were very excited. Here is the whole quote:
'In the US there are more rape cases reported. In India, I would say the business of deterrence is missing and there is also a collapse of judicial mechanism. Also, we do not know how to enjoy alcohol. Besides, there is this global selling of ecstasy pushed forward by a market-driven economy, and so, the line of demarcation between fun and ecstasy is getting blurred. Hence, we find some youngsters indulging in such behaviour," says Dr Harish Shetty, social psychologist, says.
You should read the over 100 comments to the blogger's entry, where people raise all sorts of issues both interesting and weird, including this doozy:
india is sitting on a volcano of envy and greed. the misery of those who arent part of the boom will be nurtured and exacerbated by those who are riding the boom. it is a vicious cycle, because those who risk easing up on their brutality against the masses must themselves fall beneath the wheels and get crushed to a mass of pink and white ooze. it has been this way for a while and is only going to get worse. you will see a rise in private militia, contract killings and gated communities. you will see vile sex crimes from the rich like you could never imagine -- because the lust of the indolent needs to be appeased through new depths of depravity. you will see violent robberies from the poor like you could never imagine - because you can only beat a person only so much until he loses all that defines humanity. ...
This isn't the first time I've seen someone in a blog or blog comments talking about a current of underclass violence running under the surface of the "world's largest democracy." But I don't know how accurate this picture is -- it might just be the paranoid fears of the nouveau riche. In fact, there seems to be nothing in the news story that suggests the attackers were of the lower classes.

Most of the comments diagnose the incident as an extreme version of sexual harrassment and point out that groping is so frequent in public areas of Indian cities that women have started an anti-harrassment movement -- something I blogged about several months ago.

Nothing to see here

Sometimes BoingBoing.net is just so good that it seems useless to add anything. In addition to the one story I heard last night on the BBC and was going to mention today -- about the heavily disabled American girl whose parents had her surgically altered so she would stay small enough for them to care for -- they have about ten other interesting things, and that's just this morning. So why bother? It's not like I'm depressed or something, it's just, hey, I bow in their direction.

The antidote to the feeling of being scooped by the world is to get small and personal. So I can report that: Cris is staying in Oakland for a few days to catsit for Six, otherwise called the six-toed monster. I overslept this morning and missed Morning Prayer. I had a great breakfast at Main Street Coffee on the way to work in Redwood City. I had dinner with Shannon O'Leary the other night; she recently got back from an east coast tour for Pet Noir, and she's planning a northwest tour for next month. The place we ate, a new Italian restaurant on Mission Street near 29th, sucked.

And I am resting my brain after finishing the first draft of my new novel, "Dear Prudence," while friends read it.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Robertson, sensing an opening, prophecies catastrophe

Pat Robertson is all over the news today for predicting that "mass killing" would somehow befall the U.S. this year.

I'm not sure why this guy's pronouncements garner such attention. He is clearly nuttier than a Baby Ruth. Maybe it's just the cognitive dissonance that happens when you remember that he ran for President in 1988 and garnered enough votes in Iowa to put a scare into Bob Dole.

You also have to wonder what sets him off. The last time he was in the news was when he asked God to strike down the president of Venuzuela, I seem to remember. What was it this time? Seeing all those politicians on TV at Ford's funeral and feeling left out?

Of course, Robertson's main purpose is to anchor the nut wing of the Republican Party and make people like Sam Brownback and Tom Tancredo seem positively rational by comparison.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Future Haggard book deals doubtful

The publisher who signed Ted Haggard to a multi-book six-figure contract in 2004 says of the disgraced televangelist "He has devalued his message" and that he doesn't see much point in trying to publish anything Haggard has to say about religion.

His wife, on the other hand -- that's a different story.
Pape also signed Haggard's wife, Gayle, to write about her marriage in A Life Embraced. He thinks the author with a real future is Gayle, who, when the lurid scandal crested in November, issued a courageous statement of painful yet abiding loyalty to her husband.

Pape emphatically said he would consider publishing Gayle Haggard again.

"I think her story is the bigger story, to be honest. She's a very talented and gifted woman, and her heartache gives her a broader message: 'How could you live with deceiving me and how could I not have known, and now how can I love you through this?'"
Yup -- and call Oprah while you're at it.

Problems with GMail, other Google services

Several dozen users of Google's GMail service had their entire mailboxes deleted by accident in December, one of several hiccups the search and online services giant suffered in recent weeks.

You can read the plaintive screams of the GMail users here in their GMail support forum. There are 60 users out of luck -- a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the millions who use the service, but enough that it's making news around the world. The problem is especially embarrassing coming on the heels of some inexplicable search-ranking problems experienced by a number of bloggers and small business people.

The email problem is difficult because there is no feature allowing Google mail users to archive their messages on a HD. But there is a way:
  1. Download an email client like Thunderbird from Mozilla.org
  2. Install Thunderbird
  3. Configure Thunderbird, designating your GMail account as the source of your email, but making sure it does NOT delete messages "on the server," i.e. at Google
  4. Have Thunderbird download all your GMail messages to your HD
Now Thunderbird thinks it's your primary email client. If you don't want to use Thunderbird as your primary email client, but continue using GMail on the web as usual, that's OK; Thunderbird will merely download all your new email messages whenever it's opened.

I don't think there's a way to upload them back to GMail in case of massive failure, but at least you have a copy.