badgerbag

G. Gordon Liddy, a right wing talk radio host, had this to say:

LIDDY: Yeah, I don't suppose you've, by any chance, have seen the cover of the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine, which is, you know, a huge thing. It's got Obama in his Muslim dress with a turban, and he's there with his wife. His wife has a "mad at the world" afro, circa 1968, she -- she's got bandoliers and an assault weapon, and there in their fireplace is burning the American flag. The New Yorker finally got it right.

Oh, yeah. It's harmless.

Why don't we ask the Danes about harmless cartoons, shall we? I wonder if their economy has recovered yet, and if it's still safe for Danes to travel and work in the Middle East?

It is amazing, really, how often the fact that it is an offense under the Highway Traffic Act of Ontario[1] to drag a dead horse on Yonge Street comes up in conversation ... and because I think it is perhaps the sekkrit ambition of EVERY TORONTONIAN PAST OR PRESENT to come up with a way around this...

benet
no, Spadina has a streetcar right-of-way.

commodorified
Ok, so Bathurst.

benet
yeah.
Bathurst also goes much farther north.

commodorified
True.
Or Jane to Black Creek?
DVP also an option ...

benet
*throws up hands* too far west and east resp. for me to have an opinion.

commodorified
possibly it would be best to leave the horse where it is and call for transport.
*dials 1 800 DED HORS for advice*

benet
I'd just wait until 2 and bring it on the Vomit Comet[2]. Who'd notice?

commodorified
POINT

benet
nooooobody.

commodorified
*hee* yeah
except maybe 52 Div while you were waaaaaaaaaaaiting for the bus.

[1] Though as I just noted elsewhere, dead cows on the 401 are perfectly tickety-boo. Legally speaking, at least.

[2] All Night Yonge Bus. Rarely ridden sober, and a good thing, too.

[moderate]

i just caught something i had forgotten to do at what is basically the eleventh hour, here. which is good, right? i mean, i caught it. but it makes me wonder: what am i forgetting that i won't remember until hour number thirteen.....

Erm....There's a pair of panties draped over my fence. Ah, the dilemmas I face, from home defense using poultry to vibrators that pack their...bags....and---oh, God, why did I say that?---and go join the Circus, presumably buzzing happily all the way like a busy little bee. There's a joke in there somewhere, but really....I just don't know how to go for it. Anyhoo, did I mention? There's panties on my fence.

Here's the dilemma: they're not mine.

I mean, theoretically, it's possible that they could be mine, assuming I got so plastered last night that I started lobbing my underwear at my fence, possibly in an attempt to liven up the neighborhood. In what way, I'm not sure, athough I will point out proudly that I have quite the colorful selection from which to choose. However, if I did this, the reasoning remains murky and the effort was aborted: just one pair dangle forlornly out there, perhaps longing for the matching bra. I almost hope I'm responsible. I would hate to think of the unsafe acts that would have to go on for these to be flung out the window of a passing car. Not to mention that the unsafe acts change in complexity if you stop and speculate on which direction the car was going.

Another possibility is that the panties were deployed from a stationary car which is...ew. Dudes, dudettes, all combinations, do get a room. Far away. If their taste in music sucks so badly, one can only imagine ---or hallucinate----their choice of sex partners, acts, attire, aphrodisiacs, positions, sound effects and artistry. The mind reels. Judging from my encounters with Stereo Boy, the favored male uniform appears to be baggy jeans---yes, I'm old, I hate them, sue me---and tank tops that display a vista of hairy armpits, flaccid flesh, and an oddly hairless chest, given the nearby foliage. Girls wear normal clothing that doesn't force one to acquaint one's self with their knickers. I just prefer a handshake as a means of introduction.

And I don't want to see anyone's underwear but my own, thanks. Unless it belongs to a carefully-compiled list of Imaginary Boyfriends and then only if I'm drunk enough to find the imaginary spectacle of Gerard Butler whipping off his knickers and flinging them all the way from the bedroom, through the porch--hitting all the windows just right---before finally landing them on my fence. Er. That would require his underwear to take a sharp left. Oh, dear, this is turning into the Warren Commission, complete with Magic Undies. Was there a Lee Harvey Oswald? Was there a book depository? I've heard of people hiding things in various locations, but a book? No. Also, ouch. And I'm not going near the Grassy Knoll concept for obvious reasons.

Again, problematical from a logistical point of view. I'm so glad I didn't choose to use the word 'logic' there. If there were logic involved, I wouldn't be puzzling over someone's gaudy underwear on my fence post. Okay, that's it. Whew. It's definitely not my own. These have a pattern all over them and they're larger than mine. Okay, screw it. They're not mine! This is disturbing.

Yeah. Disturbing. A good word.

See, if it was my own undies, I could speculate on whether or not Morgie and Jezzie had colluded to unlock the door and let Morgie out to bestow my undies on the fence as some kind of....prank....But why? Hell, Jezzie can open doors, but if they can accomplish all that why not just take the damned cat food already?

There's also the possiblity that Morgie and Jezzie conspired together and somehow acquired the underwear elsewhere.

This means Morgie is cheating on my underwear with someone else's underwear.

You know, I didn't need to explore the depths of Morgie's perviness. Thank you, unknown Panty Punter! Appreciate that!

And of course you know that there's the possibility that the underwear have been worn. THis means there's health issues, ew issues, and etiquette issues. Also, should I check? Perhaps I'd better not check. Perhaps ignorance is bliss. What if the person was just walking by and decided to ditch their knickers? Exactly what leads one to this kind of giddy act? There's also that possibility. "Hey, I'm just strolling down the street, let's...just take off my undies! Air the bits! Ventilate the vagina!" After all, there was a refreshing breeze last night. Perhaps it inspired someone.

Oh, God.

Perhaps I better hope for rain tonight. Then I'll creep out with a stick and dispose of this puzzling enigma. I just hope the neighbors don't see me.

Or Morgie.

Here's a choice Alan Moore quote on 300:

"I've not seen any recent comic book films, but I didn't particularly like the book 300. I had a lot of problems with it, and everything I heard or saw about the film tended to increase [those problems] rather than reduce them: [that] it was racist, it was homophobic, and above all it was sublimely stupid. I know that that's not what people going in to see a film like 300 are thinking about but...I wasn't impressed with that...."

The rest of the interview is on the Entertainment Weekly website.

Tonight:
I am abandoning the fun of summer in the City and driving to Woodland to visit my mother, watch movies, play WoW with her, and clean her house and do grocery shopping.  And further expose my lungs to whatever it is in my house that drives them insane. 

Tomorrow:
I will be returning to Oakland at approximately 6pm although I do not know my plans, I know it involves hanging out with Chris and Matt, people I have not seen nearly enough of recently.  There are rumors of a Bat-movie.  I'd rather see Hellboy, BUT WHATEVER.  I'm never going to get to see that movie.  *cuts, cries*

Sunday:
There's a party for GOOD magazine in SF at 111 Minna from 1pm - 8pm that promises free food and beer.  That is tempting.
Dim Sum prior is tempting too.
If we're too lazy and half to keep it in the EB, we'll probably stop by the Salsa at the Lake at the Lake Merritt boathouse from 2:30 on.

AS ALWAYS comment, e-mail, or twitter me if you want to do something with me or if I'm forgetting some event that's super awesome.

Okay, so if you know my know you that I have a slight obsession with the coming apocolypse (the end of the world as we know it), so that when I saw a book on Paperbackswap.com called "Nightmare Age" I had to get it.

I read a lot of old science fiction. And what is most interesting about it is the extent to which old science fiction reflects old fears and concerns. The futures that these different writers imagine is ever so frequently limited by what they see in the world around them; not just in the small things, like technology (the writers can by forgiven for imagining a future in which punch cards still ruled the computer world) but in the conflicts and underlying causes which they extrapolate into the future into a world which often, from today's perspective, seems ridiculous, or impossible.

ETA: As I'm writing about the stories that interested me, I realize that some of them do seem fairly prescient; it's only the second half of the book that seems out of touch.

Eco-Catastrophe! by Paul Ehrlich

Developed countries dump all their toxic chemicals into the third world and overpopulation causes environmental catastrophes.

Okay, so they aren't all ridiculous. Paul Ehrlich was a pessimist in his timing (he thought the world would have collapsed by now) but I don't think we can entirely discount the guy.

The Marching Morons by C.M. Kornluth

Only the unintelligent breed, so it's the future and everyone is stupid.

WARNING: POLITICAL INCORRECTNESS TO FOLLOW

I know this was a movie that came out recently (I didn't see it), but I have to admit, it's crossed my mind. I mean, the incentives in our culture very much seem to be more and more against having children. A recent study showed that people with kids are less happy--that doesn't seem like a good incentive.

I don't know that many people with kids. I don't plan to have any kids. Most people I know don't plan to have any kids.

I'd like to think that I'm smarter than the average bear. I'm not having kids for a variety of reasons, but I know that I would be a good mother, psychologically and (mostly) genetically. I'd like to think that most of my friends are above average. But they are not breeding. It seems that the more people wait, the less they breed--maybe not at all, or maybe just one child. They think about it carefully. They weigh their option. They have a kid when it is exactly right.


Lots of people have lots of kids, of course. Some of them want lots of kids, and plan it, and that's great. A huge number of them don't have the were-withal, or the desire, to not have kids. So they have lots. It's kinda hard to escape the logic that the people who are least responsible, have the least forethought, are the ones who are having kids, because in our world it is so clearly advantageous in so many ways not to have kids.

I have no idea if this is going to be controversial or not. It is not meant to imply anything about my friends who do (or don't) have children--I think y'all are very smart, and I'm glad you're making those choices. This is what happens when I read science fiction and philosophy in the same week!

How long do we have to go?

"The Final Days" was published in 1976, two years after Nixon abdicated in disgrace. With the Bush presidency, no journalist (or turncoat White House memoirist) is waiting for the corpse to be carted away. The latest and perhaps most chilling example arrives this week from Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, long a relentless journalist on the war-on-terror torture beat. Her book "The Dark Side" connects the dots of her own past reporting and that of her top-tier colleagues (including James Risen and Scott Shane of The New York Times) to portray a White House that, like its prototype, savaged its enemies within almost as ferociously as it did the Constitution.

Some of "The Dark Side" seems right out of "The Final Days," minus Nixon's operatic boozing and weeping. We learn, for instance, that in 2004 two conservative Republican Justice Department officials had become "so paranoid" that "they actually thought they might be in physical danger." The fear of being wiretapped by their own peers drove them to speak in code.

The men were John Ashcroft's deputy attorney general, James Comey, and an assistant attorney general, Jack Goldsmith. Their sin was to challenge the White House's don, Dick Cheney, and his consigliere, his chief of staff David Addington, when they circumvented the Geneva Conventions to make torture the covert law of the land. Mr. Comey and Mr. Goldsmith failed to stop the "torture memos" and are long gone from the White House. But Vice President Cheney and Mr. Addington remain enabled by a president, attorney general (Michael Mukasey) and C.I.A. director (Michael Hayden) who won't shut the door firmly on torture even now.

Nixon parallels take us only so far, however. "The Dark Side" is scarier than "The Final Days" because these final days aren't over yet and because the stakes are much higher. Watergate was all about a paranoid president's narcissistic determination to cling to power at any cost. In Ms. Mayer's portrayal of the Bush White House, the president is a secondary, even passive, figure, and the motives invoked by Mr. Cheney to restore Nixon-style executive powers are theoretically selfless. Possessed by the ticking-bomb scenarios of television's "24," all they want to do is protect America from further terrorist strikes.

Two:

"The Military is none of our fucking concern.

Heckuva job, Brownie, er, KBR. You know, if they just even tried to do their jobs, it wouldn't be so fucking bad, but they just take the money and bugger off.

A big problem with re-using the contaminated waste water is the increase of contaminants previously in the raw water. For example, let's say there are 100 giardia cysts [giardia is an infectious parasite which lodges in the intestines and causes vomiting, diarrhea, weight loss and dehydration] in each gallon of raw water run into the R.O. unit. We could reasonably expect the R.O. to remove 90% to 95% of the cysts, which would be flushed out in the reject effluent drain line. This process would therefore produce about 1/3 gallon of very high quality drinking water and the other 2/3 gallon was being sent back to the collection tank for the water plant. When they dumped that water with a now higher concentration of cysts back into the feed water, eventually the treated drinking water and non-potable water would no longer be safe to use. Eventually that number of 100 cysts per gallon would become 1,000 per gallon, then 10,0000, etc.

As long as the money rolls in, who gives a fuck about soldiers, sailors, Marines and Air Force? Not KBR, evidently.

And now for something good

Has anybody heard of this before? Because I hadn't, and it's amazing.

- There are no foreigners in Albania, there are only guests.

The words of Drita Veseli, a member of a family of Albanian Muslims who sheltered Jews during World War II, express the spirit of Besa, an unconditional hospitality unmatched in the world.

Albanian Muslims from Waterbury's Albanian-American community were guests of honor last week at Yom HaShoah, a Holocaust Remembrance program sponsored by the Federation, Jewish Communities of Western Connecticut.

Doesn't fit into the 'All Muslims and/or Arabs and/or Persians are terrorists thing" though, does it? And Muslims and Jews being friends?! Who ever heard of that?! ARe you pulling my leg?!

Current reading (among others--I have magpie!brain, as usual): Jurgen Brauer & Hubert Van Tuyll's Castles, Battles, and Bombs: How Economics Explains Military History. I'll be completely honest. I bought this book on the strength of the fact that it had a chapter on the condottieri! I haven't gotten to it yet, but I am eagerly awaiting it. one of my regrets is not taking Econ 101 while I was in college (okay, along with FIFTY GAZILLION other regrets, like also not taking music theory, or that course on electronic music, or more history courses...or...or...).

Meanwhile, I should watch what there is of Dr. Horrible sometime today. My sister: "If you liked the Buffy musical episode..." HAHAHAHAHAHA ZOMG YES I DID. But first, I have another ~100 words to write on igloo!fic today (~150 so far; the goal is ~250/day). Brio is being a complete pain. I think Tamalat needs to whap him over the head...and I'm still nowhere near the igloo.

---

( Webreadings: writing, books, Avatar, miscellany. )

These are the soldiers we lost earlier this week. They will soon be replaced by more dead soldiers, as the wars grind on and Americans continue in their quest to forget the wars being fought in our names.

(CNN) -- Cpl. Gunnar Zwilling suspected his days were numbered last week, while he and his band of brothers in the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team prepared for a mission near Wanat, Afghanistan.
Cpl. Gunnar Zwilling had a bad feeling about his final mission in Afghanistan, said his father, Kurt.

"It's gonna be a bloodbath," he told his father, Kurt Zwilling, on the phone, in what would be their last conversation.

Kurt Zwilling braced himself for the worst but held out hope that his son would make it home.

"They were in the most dangerous place on Earth. They were in mortal danger, and there was nothing they could do it about it," he said. "But they were soldiers, so they had to do their job."

With just a few days left in their 15-month tour, Gunnar Zwilling and eight of his comrades were killed July 13 in a clash with as many as 200 Taliban militants during a mission to set up an outpost near Wanat. It was the deadliest attack on U.S. troops in Afghanistan in three years.

In the wake of their deaths, the paratroopers have become symbols of what many say is a forgotten war, prompting the U.S. military to draw up plans for putting more troops and resources into the war in Afghanistan. Video Watch why troops may have to wait for help »

But before they were national heroes, the young soldiers were beloved sons, brothers, fathers and husbands who were drawn to the Army for different reasons.

Cpl. Jason D. Hovater, 24, of Clinton, Tennessee, joined the Army against his family's wishes with the intention of jump-starting his college education.
U.S. soldiers killed
The Defense Department on Wednesday identified the U.S. soldiers killed Sunday when their outpost was overrun in Afghanistan.
• 1st Lt. Jonathan P. Brostrom, 24, of Aiea, Hawaii.
• Sgt. Israel Garcia, 24, of Long Beach, California.
• Cpl. Jonathan R. Ayers, 24, of Snellville, Georgia.
• Cpl. Jason M. Bogar, 25, of Seattle, Washington.
• Cpl. Jason D. Hovater, 24, of Clinton, Tennessee.
• Cpl. Matthew B. Phillips, 27, of Jasper, Georgia.
• Cpl. Pruitt A. Rainey, 22, of Haw River, North Carolina.
• Cpl. Gunnar W. Zwilling, 20, of Florissant, Missouri.
• Pfc. Sergio S. Abad, 21, of Morganfield, Kentucky.

Before joining the service in 2006, Hovater was a "man of God" who divided his time between his father-in-law's landscaping company and playing songs of worship with his family.

"Everything that God deposited in that boy came out when he played the piano," said his mother, Kathy Hovater, who home-schooled her son and his three siblings.

Shortly after Hovater joined his combat team in Italy, his sister said he called home and said he had made a "mistake," but was committed to following through with his service.

"He was a dedicated soldier. He did what he was supposed to do because he said if he weren't over there, all that horror and torment that was going on in the war, it would be over here," said his sister, Jessica Davis.

Cpl. Pruitt A. Rainey, 22, of Haw River, North Carolina, also joined the Army as a means to pay for his college education so he could become a teacher, according to Jeff Terrell, the leader of the youth group at the Glen Hope Baptist Church.

"He wasn't going to be a career military guy, but he believed in what he was doing," said Terrell, who knew Rainey since his teen years. "He felt like this would help him. He enjoyed it, but he had other plans.

"He really wanted to teach. He had a good way with kids. Kids flocked to him."

Before joining the Army, Rainey spent his time doing martial arts, a pastime that came naturally to the high school wrestling star, and volunteering for his church's youth ministry.

"The kids loved to jump on him like he was a big bear," Terrell said. "He was a big kid, but he was gentle."

Cpl. Jonathan R. Ayers, 24, of Snellville, Georgia, seemed destined for military service since childhood.

"Jon was just very military since he was 3 years old. He looked at your shoes, and if they weren't perfect, they were no good," said his father, Bill Ayers. "He loved the regiment of the military; he loved order and schedule."

Despite his fastidious tendencies, Ayers' father remembers him as a "cutup" who never failed to amuse with his Jeff Foxworthy impersonation.

"He loved to see people smile and laugh," Ayers said. "He was not a prankster, but he loved to tell jokes."

For the free-spirited Cpl. Matthew B. Phillips, 27, of Jasper, Georgia, the armed forces satisfied a need for adventure while providing a service to his country.

"Matt had a very individualistic personality. He loved living life," said his father, Michael Phillips. "Even though he was afraid at times, in every photo from Afghanistan, he had a big smile on his face."

Phillips, who left a wife behind, died on the same day that his sister gave birth to her first son, whom she named after him.

No, I'm not cutting this.

You know you want some nice turkey, stuffing, potatoes, pumpkin pie and all that. It's a long time until the traditional season.

So you should come over to our place Sunday afternoon. Arrive anytime after 4, food around 6ish. Games. Desserts. Wii.

We'd love to feed you.

I know I'm late to the party on this one, but I just couldn't stand to watch the whole thing. Until I did, well, you know, don't ask someone to do something you can't do yourself.



Have fun!

For folks like borggrrl and fd_midori, via tyrannio (thanks!):

Octopi with extra tentacles. Really cool photos follow.

Many of my books are still in boxes. I try hard to be a good sport about this, but sometimes I crave something I know I own, but is in a BOX somewhere. (Imajica, I'm looking at you!)

Today's passionate craving is for one of the few plays I own in printed form (besides a very large Shakespeare book, and The Lady's Not for Burning): Arcadia. I'm not sure how it is that I remember watching it with Del (rich godfather character). If it came out in London in '93, and I left Seattle in mid '94.... and yet I do, vividly, and I know I have also seen it in MSP, but that was a sadly sub-par production. The Thomasina, meh.

I want the wit and the fizz and the casual references and the sheer Stoppardliness of it.

Sigh. I miss watching theater. It's not that the tickets are so prohibitive, it's that the babysitting is.

The Uhura promotional poster, with Zoe Saldana is underneath ( the cut )

The only thing I hate more than discussions of "violence is NEVER the answer!" and "If X group behaves this way, they will bring more discrimination on themselves!" is discussions of "Jews are white!"  "No they aren't!"  "Yes they are!"

UGH.

(And I'm fully willing to admit that both the violence thing and the Jew thing are complicated, complicated issues but that doesn't mean people are less of douchebags while discussing them)

Internets, I'm going to finish my work and make some personal phone calls and listen to Marketplace and basically ignore you becuase you suck

( Read more... )

The Watchmen trailer: very intriguing. It certainly looks right, doesn't it? I am suspicious enough to hold my judgment until I see some actual acting, however. And I confess that the words "From the visionary director of 300" did not exactly have their intended effect on me.

This is an online Star Trek (TOS) short film in three acts. It's directed by Tim Russ, and stars many familiar people, including Nichele Nichols. :)

It's somewhat cheesy, but it's pretty good anyhow.

http://startrekofgodsandmen.net/main/index.php

On there you can sign up with your email to get a link to see it. There are also interviews and other things on the site.

This is the link they sent me, it might work for you to go there directly:
http://scifi.dragonfly.com/renegade/stogamst448/

El ministro and I had a long talk the other day about self reliance, a do it yourself ethic, and the capitalist system. It was an interesting and wide-ranging discussion, but what was interesting to me was how very personal it felt to me. The basics of the discussion are to what extent it is valuable to pay an expert to do things for you that'd you could, conceivably, do yourself. Matthew's contention, and this may be entirely correct, is that in a capitalist system one is better served using ones time to improve ones own skills while letting others take care of the things that they do best--plumbing, car repair, etc.

First it struck me that if this is true; if learning to do a variety of things independents is less valuable then learning to do one thing well, maybe I was all along teaching my students the wrong thing. I was always teaching them to be independent, find the answers on their own, not ask others to do for them when they could,and should, in my opinion, do it themselves. Maybe somewhere in there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the point, but there may also be a hint at a fundamental failure of the educational system. Most teachers are more like me then not. Most teachers are not rich, do not come from much wealth, and don't have any reasonable chance of ever becoming rich. Teachers are generally the educated middle class passing on the lessons of their lives to their students that may not be the best model for growing students destined to become truly wealthy.

Secondly, this idea bothers me because it enshrines the ideal of learned helplessness. I was talking to a friend from Kansas who bought a house and became a successful landlord because he saw that his neighbors couldn't do any of the basic house repairs. Their first thought, like many New Yorkers, like many apartmer dwellers, is to call the super. As a landlord who can snake out a toilet, he's miles above many, so his tenants are happy, he's happy, everybody's happy.

Now, I am not, compared to him, a particularly handy girl. I come from a family that is not, in Kansas terms, very do it yourselfy--we didn't even change our own oil. But I can do some basic things, like check my own oil, add wiper fluid, and put things up on the wall. When I moved here, I discovered that my mother and sister in law had been so strangled by the tyranny of super-dom that they didn't know that one could just put a nail in the wall and hang things from it.

All this sort of came together when I started reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (which I read until it became an extended religious tract, and now I've sent it on)--certain people want to know how the world runs, want to get under the hood and get involved, other people want it to just work. I don't think anybody is all one way or the other--it's just that each of us has different areas where we want to know and where we don't. And there's fear and ego all wrapped up in it, and everyone sorta wants to think that the way that they do it (and usually, by extension, the way their family does it) is the way that is the best, or most successful. If they even notice that other people do things differently. Because all of this is in some ways so fundamental that, unless you are solving an everyday problem with someone, you would never know. How often do you discuss who plunges the toilet?