David Foster Wallace

A continuation of my pet Best Commencements project. David Foster Wallace says it like no other. In all his psychological melee the only truth he was able to find--that anybody's been able to find as far as I know--was in a platitude.

The Birthday Issue

On this 33rd anniversary of my birth, that day in West Lafayette, IN, known cosmically as "Houston: We Have A Problem," or "Woops!" I find myself ascribing meaning to every little thing I see and hear, which many people do when it is New Years Eve or when they're about to die.
So, when I heard "Jack and Diane" by John Cougar Mellencamp on the classic rock station first thing this morning, and listened to that poor Springsteen-knockoff's bluesy refrain, "Life goes on/Long after the thrill of livin it is gone...," I paused. Sure, he was talking about a mediocre career, foretelling a rapid descent after he got rid of his middle name. But what about me? Was it true?
Was the thrill gone?
And then I proceeded to have a "duh" moment and reject his premise entirely. The thrill will never leave, because I carry thrill inside of me like a flower carries pollen, like computers carry software, like Ridonkucris carries vanilla candles. But also, the thrill will never leave in no small way because of you guys -- my friends, old and new, distant and familiar. So, I wanted to express my gratitude to you all for your friendships. I hope we can be, stay or become closer, and potentially all live near each other, near a beach somewhere, perhaps a Mediterranean coast -- some place involving date palm trees. That'd be good.
At one time or another, you all have either invited me to your house, fed me, counseled me, dissed me, made me laugh, sought to understand me, gotten a headache as a result, hugged me, given me gifts for no particular reason, or been supportive and wonderful and generally people I emulate, esteem and love. So thank you.
Love,
Porcupine

What Is The What

Sorry for the recent absence. It is part lack of inspiration, part lack of will. Mostly, I am jealous of Sean's web site and don't feel like investing in this mediocre operation when there is such HTML beauty to be had.
Here's what's going on:
--I can only talk about my recent life, which is a string of increasingly bewildering struggles against the forces of evil. I will define the evil in future posts. Suffice to say, they are an insidious bunch and I need to move to another country.
--Coincidentally, I am looking for a new job. In another country.
--I watch the following T.V. shows: Battlestar Galactica, Grey's Anatomy, Lost, Heroes, Veronica Mars. I do it with joy.
--I love people from Minnesota. A LOT.
--Hillary needs to not run. Giuliani and McCain are snakes in the grass. I like saying Vilsack. Sounds dirty.
--All good writers should write books like What Is The What.

Virulent Anti-American Propoganda To Follow

I got nothing. Our country is grrrreat! I've so lightened up.

Arrogance repudiated

First things first:
Onion Headline "Politicians Sweep Midterm Elections"
--
Arrogance only ends in humiliation. And so it goes with Donald Rumsfeld.
Here's a frightening thought: How would the election have turned out had Bush's "guy for life" been fired before Nov. 7? A related queasy feeling everyone has about this whole election is that the Democrats are winning because the war is a failure. The liberals would not be cheering if soldiers weren't dying in increasing numbers. What if we were "winning" the war? What does winning the war mean -- to Democrats?

So this is a repudiation of Bush's incompetence and arrogance. But it's not an affirmation of Democrats.
It's fun to watch the X+Y=Zcause and effect -- get your ass kicked in an election and fire your widely hated defense secretary the next day. It has a narrative with a strong punch line, but getting caught up in that narrative might fool us. The real problem, is best summed up in this essay from the London Review of Books. It's hard to read -- in typical fuck-you-i'm-smart intellectual fashion that is inaccessible (triangulation? deliquiescence? WTF dude) but illuminating, as long as you've got a dictionary next to you. It's got America's left down pat and it aint pretty.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n18/judt01_.html

And here's the American left's response:
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=12138

Dude.

So, George Allen and Michael Steele went down hard. Democrats inched back into relevance, taking over the House and possibly the Senate (Virginia! Montana!), a holyfuckingshit development of the shut-the-hell-up! variety.
It's like the Democrats should have carried brooms with them the way fans do at the end of baseball sweeps. Would that the Orioles made the playoffs this year, or, heh, any of the last six to ten years. Life woulda been that much sweeter.
Anyhow, today's an important day. After recounts and election talk, it'll be a delicate Democrat dance. And as infectious as optimism and momentum is, there's a little voice in the back of the world's collective unconcious that's askin all kindsa questions, like:
Will they govern with credibility and authority? or with reactivity and partisanship? Will they be snakes in the grass; Republicans in sheep's clothing? because with some "Democratic" candidates, Lucy's got some 'splainin to do.
They'll change course in Iraq, sure. (Who the hell knows if it will be for the better.) That's the whole reason the've regained some measure of power. But what about healthcare (Aetna should really be pronounced Nyet, as in Russian for "nothing" as in they fucking suck.), poverty, social security (my 401K has gotta mortal wound, is bleeding from its belly), and adjusting national priorities as regards the environment, globalization and international relations, i.e. getting the hell out of countries we don't belong in-- both fiscally and in other ways?
Can they make habeas corpus John Yu -proof or will they emulate Republicans and try to straddle the red and blue divide like spineless dickheads? Will they embrace a truly liberal base or will they look the other way when so-called "conservative Democrats" attack the rights of gays and immigrants and pro-choicers? Will they restore civil liberties or embrace the morality-free military industrial complex in attempt to shed their "weak" reputation? Will they fall prey to war-mongering defense contractors whose money they could surely use in 2008?
What about privacy, the broken immigration and prison systems? And in the international realm, is there the slightest chance they'll rethink our preposterously uncritical alliance with Israel? In other words, will they lead -- lead with moral goddam authority and liberal goddam ideals?
The Green Party represents many of these liberal -- true left -- ideals, but former Naderites for years have been soundly rejected by the liberal intelligentsia. Mainstream media have ignored and marginalized the Greens for so long, it's gotten fashionable in the coffeehouses. After they were blamed -- in what I believe is a shameless and cowardly argument -- for the 2000 election, it became official: it ain't easy being Green. (Didn't that poor little bastard Kermit speak the truth.) But, for the most part, they represent something -- they represent souls that aren't for sale, and this gives me hope.
What I'm saying is, I hope the Democrats follow suit and don't fight their battles on Republican territory as they've done with gay marriage-ban apologists, bigoted immigration concessions, chest-heaving security initiatives. I hope they fight on their terms. It should be a no-brainer: people follow when you stay true to your ideals unapologetically and don't waffle to please everyone. Everybody respects balls.
Now something tells me I may be asking too much, expecting too much. Whatever. All I'm saying is that this is important. I just hope that all this optimism and momentum doesn't wind up in a trail of disappointment, which would turn quickly I expect into disaster.
Because the world can't -- and won't-- wait.

An Accidental Posting, but hey

There is some optimistism being bandied about willy nilly these days.
People are excited, anticipating big changes with the midterm election on Tuesday, four days from today. They hope that the Republicans will be nudged from power, losing the House and possibly the Senate to balance out the grotesquely awesome accomplishments of this murderous administration.
The media says that in greater numbers, especially in the middle of the country, people are fed up with war and [correction] its perpetrators, with our fiscal mess at home, and with their perception of an arrogant, elite, war-mongering and radical -- in the bad way-- executive branch. These people will be voted out eventually, I am certain.
But in the meantime, there remains a huge group of other people who for various reasons are not politically engaged. It's at 75 percent, I hear. I am guessing either they've been rejected or suppressed by our institutions or they choose voluntarily to reject them.
For the latter folks, it's time to rethink things. As much as I understand the sentiment that this country is beyond redemption, and that elections have become choices between evils, I can't agree anymore that non-voting is an answer.
In 2000, many thought it couldn't get worse. Then Sept. 11 happened. And everyone -- even the ubernegative -- shook their heads because it did. And the badness has yet to wane.
Well, maybe this election is a sign -- a small, hopeful sign. Something to be optimistic about. There exist today some great and honorable public servants, who could be future heroes. That's something.
And more and more people are waxing political. Being in D.C. it's hard to tell if that's an inner Beltway thing, or if the whole country really is more engaged than it was six -- or even two -- years ago. Here in my supersecret city around the District, I'm flanked by two crucial senatorial races between horrendous Republican candidates and tolerable Democrats. It's a nasty fight and it's all people are talking about. So my hunch is people are into it, invested, angrier and surlier about the state of affairs. It's affecting their pocketbooks and their sense of stability, sanity and safety. Maybe, in sum, there is a tad less apathy than there was before.
It's not a lot, but it's something.



I think I should have just posted a picture of Madonna draped in the American flag with the words "Rock The Vote" in black lettering. Woulda saved us a few grafs.

Why Porcupine needs a nap

My new mentee, Anum, 9, and I are getting to know each other. We both happen to speak Urdu (ok, i barely speak it, but whatever) and are chatting with each other in that language when a look of recognition passes across her face. She does an exaggerated gasp, the way kids do:
"Are you from Baltimore?" she asks.
"No, why do you ask?"
"You look like you're from Baltimore."
"Really? How do people from Baltimore look?"
"Well," she says, checking out my hair and face, "People from Baltimore look tired. It's an hour away."

Outta the mouths of babes. She's a nice kid, though.

Four years old

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/061030ta_talk_packer

So, the four year-old war is lost. And the words "sectarian violence" -- a poor and overused euphemism for a full-fledged civil war several months old-- can be jettisoned. The rest of the world sees it plainly while we, and our noosed media, are just getting here.

As George Packer says in the latest New Yorker:
"The President’s Iraq war is lost. Plan A—a unified and democratic Iraq that will be a model in the region—is no longer achievable. The civil war for which the Administration will not consider new responses is already at hand. Because no one in power can admit any of this, the United States is in the position of trying to hold still while the ground shifts violently underfoot. The resistance to thinking about Plans B, C, and D means not only that this country remains stuck while Americans and Iraqis die but that its ability to affect events six or twelve months away is rapidly diminishing."

And here, a desperate plea cloaked in detached commentary. It could almost provide a reader hope, if only Packer was running the country.

"Every one of the proposals coming from outside the real Administration starts from the assumption that its policy has failed. Plans B, C, and D are also admissions of defeat. They are an acknowledgment that our highest interests in Iraq no longer involve the welfare of Iraqis. For anyone who had hoped that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would bring a better life to Iraq’s people, these are hard truths to accept. But they also suggest that between the President’s resolve to persist in folly and the public’s instinct to be rid of Iraq there is a range of choices that could prevent the disaster from inflicting permanent damage on American interests. This kind of clear, rational thought is less heartless—even, in the end, less defeatist—than willful blindness."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101000859.html?nav=hcmodule

A touching tribute and an infuriating tale. A woman, a journalist who, at the age of 48, was in her prime, is brutally murdered because she wrote about things a whole lot of other people are too scared to write about. And the Russian government is silent, insultingly cursory in response.
I can only hope that the people seize on the clarity of this moment and that it fuels their rage against Putin's Russia, a gangland he operates with near impunity. The country -- a founding member of the United Nations

In the scary place between sleep and wake

It was early this morning when I heard the news on the radio about what I like to call the Nanny-Nanny-Boo-Boo regime of the DPRK announcing the success of their underground nuclear testing.
In my fragile post-REM state, I hallucinated that I was in the nation's capital during a nuclear holocaust. There was lots of white-grey ash and I was alone. I have been jumpy all day.
So I state for the record to future Porcupettes: I know, I know, I soo know, that it was a miscalculation on the part of your Porcupgrandpa to move to this town.
D.C. pride aside, there's the whole nucleus of evil target sign situation to contend with.

Speaking of, was Kim Jong Il ever so eager to dangle-wag his missiles before President Bush's famous axis of evil speech? I am hardly relinquishing the North Korean government of blame, but I just don't recall Korea being much of a situation before then. Then again, I wasn't paying attention.

And in other news, I hope this gets more press. This is tragic and frightening and Vladmir Putin seems like one tidal wave of unaccountability, based on all news reports I've read. And, apparently, all suspicions point in some way back to Moscow, the most likely culprit being the Kremlin backed Chechen government. They were pissed that she was writing stories about mass executions and tortures of Chechen civilians (that's the real torture, not at all like our sanctioned warm and fuzzy kind.). Whomever was behind this contract killing, at least it brings to light what human rights groups have been screaming about for years. The Kremlin is going, or has gone, to the dark side.

Finally, Netflix: An investment to hang your hat on. Excellent movies, documentaries, anime, things I'd never pick up at the video store.
The latest: "The Weather Underground" about America's homegrown terrorists. (Again, keep in mind I scour video stores for romantic comedies, never this shit. This is purely a function of direct mail.)
The Weathermen were educated white kids who had given up on civil disobedience and were impatient to end Vietnam. About 20 or 30 of them decided that all Americans were worthy targets for violence because the populace, in their silence, were culpable in killing and massacres in Southeast Asia -- particularly since they weren't actively and violently resisting the government. The Weathermen were ready to kill lots of innocent people until a bomb accidentally went off in a rowhouse, killing three of their own. This glitch in fate led them to rethink things. They decided not to kill innocent people. Such dumbasses. Apparently they hadn't thought through the emotional ramifications of killing people.
How do you have empathy for people millions of miles away and not for the people whose land you share? How do you have selective humanity? Dickheads.

Anyhow, all in all, I was humbled at how little I knew about the sixties and it begs the question: why is this stuff not taught in school? Or was it just my school?

But one thing: they got me on the culpability thing. I concede that point.

Finally, finally: curse all the sugar traders, profiteers, dealers and deliverers. I am sick of offices with chocolate at the ready. Enough already. That shit is poison.

Good good good night.

"Get Your War On"

This guys was in New York in 2001 and 2002. Now he's got a deal with Rolling stone, his strip is being adapted into a play at Woolly Mammoth and he's trying his stand up. It's funny.

http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war.html

NPR aint half bad. (Geeky journalism and political stuff to follow)

Critics Question Reporter's Airing of Personal
In June, Linda Greenhouse returned to Cambridge, Mass., to be honored at Harvard. Greenhouse, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who covers the Supreme Court for The New York Times, reminisced a bit about the 1960s idealism that defined her college years, and told an audience of 800 she had wept at a Simon and Garfunkel concert when she was struck by the unfulfilled promise of her own generation.

Conversion: Political, Not Religious
by Caroline Langston
Commentator Caroline Langston grew up as a conservative Christian, and while her faith hasn't changed, her political party has.

interesting site

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/

The Onion

So, I haven't been keen on The Onion in a while, but today's issue is top notch:

http://www.theonion.com/content/

This Was Coming Next Anyway...

The Optimism of Uncertainty
By Howard Zinn

In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy?
I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world.
There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.
What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. A revolution to overthrow the czar of Russia, in that most sluggish of semi-feudal empires, not only startled the most advanced imperial powers but took Lenin himself by surprise and sent him rushing by train to Petrograd. Who would have predicted the bizarre shifts of World War II--the Nazi-Soviet pact (those embarrassing photos of von Ribbentrop and Molotov shaking hands), and the German Army rolling through Russia, apparently invincible, causing colossal casualties, being turned back at the gates of Leningrad, on the western edge of Moscow, in the streets of Stalingrad, followed by the defeat of the German army, with Hitler huddled in his Berlin bunker, waiting to die?
And then the postwar world, taking a shape no one could have drawn in advance: The Chinese Communist revolution, the tumultuous and violent Cultural Revolution, and then another turnabout, with post-Mao China renouncing its most fervently held ideas and institutions, making overtures to the West, cuddling up to capitalist enterprise, perplexing everyone.
No one foresaw the disintegration of the old Western empires happening so quickly after the war, or the odd array of societies that would be created in the newly independent nations, from the benign village socialism of Nyerere's Tanzania to the madness of Idi Amin's adjacent Uganda. Spain became an astonishment. I recall a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade telling me that he could not imagine Spanish Fascism being overthrown without another bloody war. But after Franco was gone, a parliamentary democracy came into being, open to Socialists, Communists, anarchists, everyone.
The end of World War II left two superpowers with their respective spheres of influence and control, vying for military and political power. Yet they were unable to control events, even in those parts of the world considered to be their respective spheres of influence. The failure of the Soviet Union to have its way in Afghanistan, its decision to withdraw after almost a decade of ugly intervention, was the most striking evidence that even the possession of thermonuclear weapons does not guarantee domination over a determined population. The United States has faced the same reality. It waged a full-scale war in lndochina, conducting the most brutal bombardment of a tiny peninsula in world history, and yet was forced to withdraw. In the headlines every day we see other instances of the failure of the presumably powerful over the presumably powerless, as in Brazil, where a grassroots movement of workers and the poor elected a new president pledged to fight destructive corporate power.
Looking at this catalogue of huge surprises, it's clear that the struggle for justice should never be abandoned because of the apparent overwhelming power of those who have the guns and the money and who seem invincible in their determination to hold on to it. That apparent power has, again and again, proved vulnerable to human qualities less measurable than bombs and dollars: moral fervor, determination, unity, organization, sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, patience--whether by blacks in Alabama and South Africa, peasants in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Vietnam, or workers and intellectuals in Poland, Hungary and the Soviet Union itself. No cold calculation of the balance of power need deter people who are persuaded that their cause is just.
I have tried hard to match my friends in their pessimism about the world (is it just my friends?), but I keep encountering people who, in spite of all the evidence of terrible things happening everywhere, give me hope. Especially young people, in whom the future rests. Wherever I go, I find such people. And beyond the handful of activists there seem to be hundreds, thousands, more who are open to unorthodox ideas. But they tend not to know of one another's existence, and so, while they persist, they do so with the desperate patience of Sisyphus endlessly pushing that boulder up the mountain. I try to tell each group that it is not alone, and that the very people who are disheartened by the absence of a national movement are themselves proof of the potential for such a movement.
Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don't "win," there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope.
An optimist isn't necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Dispatch from the Old Country

If I could summon even half of the I-don't-give-a-fuck-ness that comes from being a senior citizen, I think I'd be a much more actualized human. So I was at a senior center where people were listening to a lecture on aging and among the comments overheard :

"What the hell is he talking about?"

"huhhhhh??"

"Could you PLEASE talk louder." Sigh.

"Hey!" --said loudly and interrupting. "What's your name?!"

One senior to the another: "I already TOLD you, but I guess I'll REPEAT myself."

"Can we talk about transporatation, because the driver of the bus would not tell me when I should get off and when I asked him he just made a face" [mimicked face] and on and on and on.

A fit looking elderly man in a jogging suit walks out of the senior center, observes a new cigarette disposal device in the veranda and says "outrageous, absolutely outrageous" and shakes his head for a solid five minutes.

They're honest like children but with the experience and cynicism of adults. I dig it. I dig the grumpy old people, the friendly old people, the clueless old people. They crack me up. I want to be old and not give a fuck.

Journalist Melissa Fay Greene talks about the enormity of the African AIDS crisis and why, as the mother of five, she decided to adopt four Ethiopian orphans.
By Curtis Sittenfeld
The whole world in her home

___________________________________________________________________

Christopher Hitchens Remains An Irrelevant Jack Ass

And yet I continue to write about him.

Here, he trawls the waters of irrelevance by deconsructing Ari Fleischer's anti-Bill Maher comments from nearly five years ago. What a great 9/11 anniversary gift you've given us, Hitch. Being reflective, thoughtful, taking a literary deep breath -- bah! Such things are for the weak. Instead, you've taken to advancing, with scientific diligence, your old man agenda of trashing any hint of the civil libertarians and their terrorist-loving spawn.
You no longer stand for anything, dude. You only stand in opposition to things, borrowing the power and strength of other people's principles to define your own. Boo.

The vehicle emissions guy handed me a slip of paper, explained stoically that my car had failed the test, and pointed me to a nearby administrative office. There, I found a man with long gray hair, an earring and wide, striking blue eyes sitting behind a desk. He welcomed me and proceeded to do what he has done about a zillion times: He smiled sympathetically, gave me paperwork, explained what steps I needed to take to pass the next time. There was little or no small talk, but he was friendly and about as Zen a civil servant as I have ever come across. Then he noticed I had paid a $35 late fee. He asked me, gravely, what had accounted for this. He sounded like my father. I said I was a flake and had waited too long to get the emissions test done. He told me to wait a minute, looked on the Internet, and printed out a form-- a waiver that he said I should fill out immediately to get my $35 back. "The state doesn't need the money," he said, "poor people do." Nice sentiment, except for the fact that I am not poor, I thought. So he waved me off and that was that. He does this with everybody, I know. He interacts with the world two minutes at a time and with a calm, rare generosity. Nothing terribly remarkable, I guess, except for how good it made me feel.

Students and activists in Iran say an attack on Iran will only strenghten the current government and crush dissenters.

http://democracynow.org/

awesome

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/08/29/yes_men/index.html

Frailty, Thy Name Is Fate and Vacations

Judging by the mauling the Carolinas and Environs are getting in the next couple days, my humble three-day vacation in North Carolina looks fucked. No, I'm sorry, fuckt. A derivative, angrier version of fucked, if you will. The drive down was going to be awesome. Now it appears it could be death defying. Unless, however, the weather gods are merciful... And I was really looking forward to exploring the coast a little bit. Now my office manager tells me I'll be one of the lonely headed in that direction.
Whatever. I'll go somewhere again, because frailty, thy name ISN'T Porcupine.

In other news, the tooth situation has, uh, straightened itself out. (seriously, it's too easy.)

So Naguib Mahfouz, who shares a birthday with me, died. Most obits about him have sucked. I mean, suckt. Here's a decent one.

Have you seen this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP5J4W5GQ3w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLUAbkRUvVQ&feature=related

Pachelbel's Ace Guitar

Amazing. Check out Pachelbel's Canon:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5725826

And the well-told backstory:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/29/news/guitar.php

well thought-out posts are soo five refreshes ago

So, huh, what to say? It's August 29th in the year of your lord 2006, and kids are back in school learning that the world is one giant popularity contest, and the losers shall suffer crippling, billowing injustice which only death can relieve, while the winners will ignore it or opine fleetingly on blogs.
oh for chrissake porcupine...
ok, ok, i was just kidding. Here's a cute story. My two nieces have a sleep over at my house a couple days ago. This is a very big deal. My younger niece packed her pink barbie suitcase at 6:30 a.m. that morning and lugged it around with her all day. We have a great time. I'm talking ice cream, Baja Fresh, running around playing soccer, watching Chronicles of Narnia and a general poignant and heartwarming display of familial bliss. The same younger niece, who says things like "I yuv you" and who has astutely observed her aunt's deficient home-making habits, pulls me aside before going to bed.
"Bua ji?" She is earnest. "Do you make breakfast?"
"Yes, my dear, indeed I do." (I am, apparently, British in this memory.)
She starts nodding.
"Good," she says. "Because I get very hungry in the morning."

The poor child thought I wouldn't feed her. Remind me to not put a bun in the oven anytime soon.
In other words: Troops, stay the hell out of my uterus. Or if you visit, just don't stay. Did I really just post this?

Moral language

"Moral language is really the language of victims...we use it more to condemn other people's behavior than we do to motivate our own."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/20/AR2006082000501_2.html

This Is Such Profound Bullshit

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/16/AR2006081601622.html

So, here we go, "combating" terrorism without the least bit of effort going into defining our terms, or understanding a bloody, violent and horrendous global history in which the we have played a grubby and big part. It's like a bandaid on a heart attack.
Not looking for some gratuitous political correctness in this article -- an article that, by the way, buys into a bigoted, false premise that Islam equals terrorism. Check out the headline that says, "New Focus Is On Terrorism, But Training Is Struggling to Keep Up" and the first five grafs talk about "Islam, Arabic culture, and understanding the terrorist mindset"-- all in the same malignant, insidious sentence.

No, I hate the kind of political correctness that stifles peoples abilities to be themselves or communicate honestly.
But I am looking to combat terrorism. And to that end, I'm looking for some intelligence, some fact, some context rather than a writer and a paper that has bought into an assumption that they hate us because, well, they are Muslim or Arab, and, shucks, shrug and sigh, that's what they do for sport. Now let's learn about Mecca. Okey dokey. Yawn. That about sums it up. This is not how you fight and end terrorism, in my not so humble opinion.

So a really funny guy I know was complaining about his recent trip to a Starbucks Coffee. The young girl in front of him requested fair trade coffee. He found this to be an annoying request. So when he got to the counter, he made a request for Unfair trade coffee.
This was funny.
He went on to tell me that it was not only annoying, but pretentious, for this girl to ask for fair trade coffee. Who the hell is she? he protested. What..is she better than everyone else? Fuck her, was his point. I gave him shit about being judgmental, but I understood where he was coming from.

I've heard this sentiment before. I worked with a guy who said activists piss him off as a rule. This was during the WTO protests in D.C. He rolled his eyes a lot when he talked about the activists, describing them as hippies, anarchists, free sexers and, well, people you roll your eyes over. (following his logic, the activists were never normal shmos like him because that would puncture his fantasy and his ability to hate them.) I get it. I get why people have that reaction. I've experienced it a lot -- both as an eye roller and as an eye rollee. Me being a vegetarian, for instance, is often a, um, chickenbone of contention (thaz right, i am the punstress). It rarely happens, but some people have said to me, "Well I looove meat," or some such defensive thing, as if my vegetarianism implicates or accuses. That's not the intent, but I get why someone would feel that way. After all, animal rights activists have been known to hurl accusations -- and blood.
It is uniquely off putting to be around someone who is righteous. Like the girl who is preserving her virginity until marriage, sitting in quiet judgement of those who don't. Or the people who foist their ideals of perfection on you -- these are the proper manners, this is proper attire, this is the way to throw a party, a wedding, a life, my way is the right way. It is precisely why political correctness has been such a colossal failure. How dare someone police my language? Never.
But everyone has some degree of obnoxious righteousness in them that they dip into on occasion and fling at other people.
So it's not surprising to want to silently raise a middle finger to Fair Trade Coffee drinkers around the world. Again, I've felt that way myself.

But here's the deal. After some thought, some consideration, a little ego check, I feel -- righteously-- that people need to fucking get over themselves.
It's soo much easier to be a spectator and make fun. To be clever and on the sidelines. To trash the people who take a stand, who have conviction, who are passionate about something, even if it is misplaced, or you disagree with it.
It's much easier to sit and fondle the fence, to sit in judgment (much like the virgin) or let your eyes rolls out of control when you are around people with a point of view. It is, in my estimation, cowardly.
"Who does she think she is," is, in my estimation, a cowardly attitude.
But suppose you, for a minute, take people at face value. Suppose Fair Trade girl genuinely believes she's making the world a better place by buying fair trade coffee. Why not let her be? Why not send good mental vibes toward her? She's just acting in accord with her belief system, right or not. It's one thing if you disagree. But if you don't know whether you agree or not, maybe don't knock it til you try it.
Or at least analyze why you are a hater. Maybe that's the best course of action.

Also, I am SO much better than ALL OF YOU.
HAH!
Ok, I'm a get me some Sanka now. See y'all later.

Something To Keep You Warm At Night

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/08/11/suskind/index.html

Debate Wears On

from The Onion

POINT-COUNTERPOINT

U.S. Out Of My Uterus
By Jessica Linden
It comes down to one thing: It's my body. Not Uncle Sam's, not Trent Lott's, not Pat Robertson's. Mine. Congress can demand a portion of my income, it can tell me how fast to drive, it can kill killers and anyone else it thinks it must to preserve a free and civil society. But my body—the skin, bones and organs that comprise me—is where the line gets drawn.
VS.

We Must Deploy Troops To Jessica Linden's Uterus Immediately
By Gen. William Patterson, U.S. Army
To protect America's interests, it is sometimes necessary to mobilize and deploy a military force. We now stand on the brink of such a time. The tactical importance of Jessica Linden's uterus to
national security is twofold: First, with its rich, fertile walls, this uterus is a vital source of future Americans. Second, the uterus is situated in an extremely strategic location, leaving it vulnerable to a hostile foreign power. This uterus must be given top priority by the Pentagon. Establishing a strong U.S. military presence in Jessica Linden's uterine region is by far the most sensible course of action.

I can't believe he did all this in 317 words

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/10/17/Tampabay/The_man_in_the_mask.shtml

The man in the mask
By BRADY DENNIS
Times Staff Writer

Waiting for the madness: Ashley "Stretch" McClellan, 24, rests before facing the bulls at Osceola Heritage Park in Kissimmee.
Inside the locker room, the drifter drifts to sleep.
He pays no attention to the country music blaring outside, or the bulls pacing restlessly, or the bullriders swaggering in too-tight Wranglers.
They call him Stretch, a wild man, a bullfighter, the American kind, who paints his face clown-like and dresses in red and throws himself willingly into the path of angry beasts who have just bucked cowboys to the ground.
When he was 14, the road called, and Stretch answered. He ran away from home and landed at an Oklahoma rodeo and has lived a hundred lifetimes since.
He's slept at truck stops, on the shoulder of highways, in the dirt beside livestock. He's drunk his share of Jack Daniels. He's been tattooed a half-dozen times in a half-dozen cities, dipped enough Copenhagen to roof a house with the tin cans. He's been arrested for fighting. He found a girlfriend in Utah named Kasey.
He's stared down a thousand bulls in a thousand nowhere towns from Tennessee to Texas, Montana to Mississippi. The bulls have knocked out his front teeth and broken his arms, ribs, ankles, tailbone, collarbone and kneecap. They've given him more concussions and stitches and joy than he can measure.
"I live kind of different," Stretch says, smiling toothlessly.
Back in Kansas, the family never understood. His dad's a lawyer, his sister a dentist. His brothers turned out normal, too.
But Stretch, well, he lives kind of different. He owns two bags of clothes and probably won't ever own much else, except this: "I'll have a lot of good stories."
And maybe that's enough.
Maybe, unlike so many people, he has found the place he belongs, in the ring with the other untamed souls, kicking up dust and mud.
The drifter opens his eyes.
Showtime.

Editor's note: 300 Words presents glimpses of everyday life that often go unnoticed.

Editorial

Glad they published it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/10/AR2006071001108.html

it had to be done.

Christopher Hitchens: Who Cares

http://www.slate.com/id/2144578/

Aside from his ripe, self-satisfied snideness, this man's words and ideas are done, over, obsolete, flaccid, immature and useless ramblings of an intellectual with the heart and soul of a disaffected 12 year old.
He carries some kind of name recognition, built on some kind of legacy that I'm sure is some kind of legitimate. But he needn't be published anymore. Slate shouldn't publish him, because his drunken tirades contribute nothing meaningful to the public discussion, nothing in the way of original ideas or convincing argument. He's a waste of time. All he does is continue the ugly volley of partisan, inside, name-dropping, self-inclusive innuendo, and sure, he does it with gusto, with some fancy turns of phrase, turns that most certainly elicit a snicker or two, because he's THAT GUY, that everyone loves to snicker at, but all in all, you read his stuff and you realize that if you ran into him at a bar, you'd run the fuck away or die of instant melancholy.
Like so many of his copycats, he poisons any real dialogue with all this writerly self importance that is rife with insult, sarcasm, written with not a hint of humility, and certainly not a hint of respect for his readers, and no apparent desire to do his fucking job.
We are in a war. We are making war. And while his partisan haranguing and acerbic shit-flinging is oh-so-clever, it doesn't help me figure out how we can make our situation better. It just depresses me. What a waste of intellect. Land mines? (you want us to say they are bad? ok. thanks for the tip, DICK.) Human shields? Sanctions? What the hell are you talking about? You are bringing up these individual issues to mock and ridicule anti war activists at a time when there's already an Atom Bomb of an issue at hand: That this war is one that much of the world believes WE'VE LOST ALREADY. Things are out of control, people say. Of course, few in the United States appear to believe this, but that's the point: they/we don't know what to think, they are scared and want their government's protection and they don't want anymore troops, civilians, Iraqis or Americans to die anymore. We are divided, and we are lost and we don't want to read about it anymore because we don't know what's true and what's not and we don't know who to trust. We feel helpless. What are you doing to make this situation better? To enlighten, to clarify, to illuminate, to provide context, to INFORM? What are you doing, Christopher? Are you doing your job?
People are dying and you, you journalist, commentator, intellectual prick, one-time hero to many, you're advising "rightous anti-war types" to pick up the slack so as not to be hypocrites, to stay true to their misguided, progressive convictions? Why spend your time on this, when you know it's mockery? Is this really how you want to live out your days? Do you even care about what's happening?
Perhaps you once did. Now, though, it appears your chief concern is to happily shit on your intellectual inferiors (i.e. everyone). Perhaps you once used your powers as a force against fascism, but now it appears to have been channeled into a galactically out of control egomania aimed at anyone who disagrees with you. Your work now only tangentially addresses what we should really be concerned with: getting out of Iraq, addressing terrorism in all its many-fold manifestations and, in your case, maybe, just maybe, illumination of important ideas with that clever brain of yours.
Either write something that helps me -- you know, me, who is perhaps a bit skeptical about our foreign policy and therefore your terribly unworthy reader-- or shut your useless mouth.

Pancakes for Dinner and Other Shocking Revelations

Porcupine's Big Central American Tour: Numero Uno.

Xela, June 14-- Pancakes for dinner: An earth-is-round, metal-birds-can-hurtle-through-space, debilitatingly wonderful and obvious phenomenon. Why had I never heard of such a thing? What other wonderful secrets has the world yet to show me?
Just asked the Internet cafe guy, in Spanish, what the cafe's schedule was. Either my Spanish is off, or I am brutally hot or possibly-- likely-- both: "The cafe's schedule," he said with a significant pause, "Or my schedule?" I am, clearly, a love magnet.
As part of organized activity, went salsa dancing with my classmate, a 21-year-old male, 6-foot-5, cheerleader junior at Penn State who resembles the blond-haired guy from Blue Lagoon. We play ping-pong during school breaks. Super nice guy. Unfortunately, feel only maternally for the little tyke.

Anyway, our salsa teacher had massive cleavage, which I found intimidating during our lessons. The cheerleader found it distracting for different reasons. But she was a very nice lady. I am a natural salsa dancer and feel a bit like I am amazing, wonderful and enchanting at everything I do.

Lots of firecrackers going off in celebration of a Catholic holiday. Scaring the pants off of me regularly. Clouds over mountains make my eyes water, they are so pretty. Vertically sloped farms do the same.
But the highlight so far is that I have an awesome, patient and wonderful Spanish teacher named Yessica, who rivals my previous awesome teacher, Carla. In between lessons we have long conversations about our lives all in Spanish. She works three jobs, makes 80 American dollars a week, and lives in a small town outside of Xela. She is absolutely amazing. She told me I was her favorite student. Of course, I prompted the compliment by asking, "Am I your favorite student, ever, Yessica?" She said yes, then went on to list all the reasons why. But she didn´t have to go into such detail, so there, my worth is proved.

Anyway, our conversations are how I'm learning the most, I suspect. Not just about the language but about other stuff, like pancake dinners. It's a big world.

Much love to you all,

Porcupine

Some Good News

I'd like to report that due to Porcupinery's persuasive arguments for self education regarding the Iran/U.S. nuclear proliferation issue, world leaders at large, recognizing our powerful online community's grasp of all the relevant issues (in manner of fake it til you make it), and recognizing that they couldn't slither toward Armageddon on our watch, have managed to forge a preliminary agreement in a somewhat positive direction, although I still don't get why the United States is the arbiter of all things powerful.
The point, my friends, is that we have cornered them into diplomacy. Give yourselves a pat on the back.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/06/AR2006060600685.html

Proposal Would Let Iran Enrich Uranium
Tehran Must Meet U.N. Guidelines
By Karl Vick and Dafna LinzerWashington Post Foreign ServiceWednesday, June 7, 2006; Page A01
TEHRAN, June 6 -- The diplomatic package backed by Washington and formally presented to Iran on Tuesday leaves open the possibility that Tehran will be able to enrich uranium on its own soil, U.S. and European officials said.
That concession, along with a promise of U.S. assistance for an Iranian civilian nuclear energy program, is conditioned on Tehran suspending its current nuclear work until the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency determines with confidence that the program is peaceful. U.S. officials said Iran would also need to satisfy the U.N. Security Council that it is not seeking a nuclear weapon, a benchmark that White House officials believe could take years, if not decades, to achieve.

OonieRay's Big Central American Tour

Isn't it a purty country?

From the German newsmagazine "Der Spiegel"

This article is crazy fascinating. Read on.

And a side note: I'm thinking, and this is just a wild stab at logic, that since this man and this country are currently the object of our government's most belligerent rhetoric, we oughtta read every goddamn thing we can to inform ourselves, arm ourselves, anti-Judith Millercize ourselves, Knight Riddify ourselves in preparation for where the wind is blowing, where the tide is, uh, tiding. No excuses. None of this "well, I'm just not veery political perrrson" bullshit.
Now, this interview talks some about Holocaust denial, but is much much more than that. It reveals the president of Iran's way of thinking and is possibly a window into an entire school of thought, I don't know. But I do know that this interview oughtta be the very tip of the iceberg.

Other side note: I LOVE the way European media engages its interviewees rather than stenographizes.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/05/30/ahmadinejad_interview/

"We don't want to confirm or deny the Holocaust"
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad talks about Israel, his letter to Bush and Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Editor's note: Following is an interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad conducted by German newsmagazine Der Spiegel in Tehran, Iran.
By Stefan Aust, Gerhard Spörl and Dieter Bednarz

May 30, 2006 Spiegel: Mr. President, you are a soccer fan and you like to play soccer. Will you be sitting in the stadium in Nuremberg on June 11, when the Iranian national team plays against Mexico in Germany?
Ahmadinejad: It depends. Naturally, I'll be watching the game in any case. I don't know yet whether I'll be at home in front of the television set or somewhere else. My decision depends upon a number of things.
Spiegel: For example?
Ahmadinejad: How much time I have, how the state of various relationships are going, whether I feel like it and a number of other things.
Spiegel: There was great indignation in Germany when it became known that you might be coming to the soccer world championship. Did that surprise you?

To Continue:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/05/30/ahmadinejad_interview/

One catch, and we all fell

For you non-O's fans out there, know this: October 9, 1996, lives on as the single worst day in my Oriole memory. It's Bruckneresque in its devastation. I've never recovered from the injustice of it. Say what you will, but the seedling of all current Yankees mojo and all current Orioles misfortune lies in the palm of this little motherfucker's hand.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/01/AR2006060101968.html
By Dave Sheinin
"This is a story about fate, a story about a curse -- if you care to believe in such things. It is a story about coming to grips with them, and maybe, just maybe, reversing them. It is a story about a 12-year-old boy in a black T-shirt who is now a polished 22-year-old man with a marketable talent. And it is a story about a beleaguered baseball team that may be preparing to take a wild stab at manipulating fate by confronting it head-on.
Jeffrey Maier, a future Baltimore Oriole? Oh, dear heaven. The blood of Orioles fandom boils at the very thought of the name, let alone the thought of such a traitorous alliance.

My brother comments, adding political context:
"the jeff maier thing confirms how low the orioles have sunk--kinda like the democrats"

Rocky Nuttfield's Debut

http://ridonkulosity.blogspot.com/

I wish I could have made this a link, but I couldn't. So here it is in full.


The Washington Post
March 23, 1997, Sunday,
Final Edition
SECTION: STYLE
Ebonics? It's Just Talk.
By Lonnae O'Neal Parker
Washington Post Staff Writer


The Oakland School Board caused a firestorm recently when some thought it proposed teaching "Ebonics" in schools. I agree, there is a real danger in that. Teachers might get it wrong. Ebonics needs to be taught in the home.
Oh, I wish I had a witness. Stay wit' me now. (a)
I am an educated woman, and I speak Ebonics fluently. With subtlety and nuance, accent and inflection, and much, much attitude.
Fo' real tho', yo' girl can go. (b)
At work, I can toggle between software applications in a keystroke. I am constantly reading, researching and importing text between applications with different rules, different aesthetics, different sets of assumptions.
It kind of reminds me of what black people in this country do all the time.
I spend my days alt-tabbing through competing realities. I doublethink.
Y'all don't know nut'n 'bout that George Orwell. Baby was all that. That 1984 was da bomb, yo. (c)
Ebonics is more than slang and fractured verse and fodder for political pontification. It is, for me, subtext, context and pretext. It is the filter through which all of my ideas flow. It is my first language, the one I think in. The rest is just translation.Tha's real. (d)Sometimes I'll have an "Ebonics moment" in front of the water cooler or standing at the mirror checking my lipstick. It is a word, a turn of phrase, a gesture or a meaningful look. It is a way of understanding the world and of understanding yourself, seldom seen by people in the office.Lessin' they black folks.It is the reason why black people downtown, who may be unknown to one another, almost always speak when passing. It is a tacit acknowledgment:We out here, ain't we? (e)For a creative writing assignment, I once wrote a letter in Ebonics and had a professor -- tryin' to school yo, girl (f) -- tell me, "Educated black people would not talk like that."I was like, yo, P, "Ain't I a Woman," yo? (g)To say he didn't get it would be an understatement. Maybe I need to 'splain myself. Check it:I grew up steeped in the classics. I was a journalism major in college and I am fond of citing the philosophical underpinnings of a free press as an argument for diversity. I can talk Dante, and Bronte.But you know, I gots to brang a li'l Ha'ay Belafonte. And y'all be straight sleep on that Roxanne Shante, see. (h)Ebonics is the spoken rhythm of my home. It is kickin' it with the sisters while washing dishes and watching "Star Trek."Girl check out Number One, baby is fine. (i)And it punctuates the sweet, intimate moments spent at play with my little girl.Dat mommy be nibblin' on dem baby toes. (j)Ebonics is not unknown, it is not misunderstood, even by those blacks who would have you believe in its aberrance. For a generation, it may be a shameful little secret. A way to distinguish one kind of black from another. Negroes from African Americans. But it is the tradition we all come from.It is one not unfamiliar to Colin Powell, a tradition that gave rise to Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas.MCs act like they don't know, but you know Clarence get to them family reunions and be talkin' up some stuff. He from Georgia too. Please. (k)I've seen white people claim not to get it. But oh, they want to. These are the same folks at the office Christmas party singing:Whachoo want?/ Baby I got it./ Whachoo need?/ You know I got it.(They axin' fo' respect, chile.) (l)When it comes to Aretha Franklin, or the Temptations or B.B. King, white folks "get it," all day long, because they understand there is a range of emotion that simply cannot be expressed in standard English. It's got to be infused, embellished.You feelin' me? (m)It is the reason black people gave the world jazz and rap. It is why we sing the blues.It is creative, resilient; fluid. And for me, it is my ticket to ride: uptown and downtown. It reminds me that if I get too far from where I started, I'm lost.An' you know, forget where you come from an' you might get to thinkin nobody'll eve'try'n sen' you back. (n)So my husband and I might cold break into Ebonics at the Smithsonian with my daughter.No shame to our game. (o)Because dance is a pas de deux and the Bankhead Bounce. Because French is the Champs-Elysees and the French Quarter. Because Spanish is Madrid and a rose in Spanish Harlem. And because the world is so much bigger than subject-verb agreement when I sing to her,You are a chocolate star/ Though you may not be a bass guitar, baby bubba,It's all good. (p)My daughter giggles. She doesn't think I'm ignorant, and she never questions my elocution.She be lookin' all like, oo-ooo, represent, represent. 'Cause my baby know. That mommy ol' school. She jus' be keepin' it real.Peace Out. (q)Ebonics to Standard English translation by letter:a. Although the comment is meant flippantly, author is "testifying," and checking the audience for like-minded sentiments. Author makes an entreaty to closely follow her line of reasoning. Stems from the call-and-response tradition of the black church.b. Honestly, the author speaks it well.c. To self-conscious effect, author is calling attention to use of George Orwell "doublethink" (the simultaneous acceptance of two opposing propositions). As an aside, author thinks highly of the novelist and novel.d. The author is not joking.e. Reference to kinship and being outnumbered.f. Equivalent to "as if." Disbelieving. Author takes umbrage at and feels patronized by professor's instruction on this matter.g. Truncated expression meaning, "Hello . . . hello? Aren't I the exact thing this person is talking about?" Derived from famous quote by former slave and women's rights activist Sojourner Truth refuting pronouncements of women's gentility and feebleness by pointing out how hard she had been made to work and how often she had been beaten.h. Deliberate use of rhyme. (1) Reference is to black activism and Caribbean consciousness. (2) Tongue-in-cheek reference to mid-1980s "old school" female New York rapper. In toto, appreciative reference is made to street slang and sexual bravado.i. SS Enterprise first mate Cmdr. Will Riker is a handsome fellow.j.k. Despite their protestations to the contrary, author suspects that masters of ceremony -- Establishment black people such as Clarence Thomas -- occasionally slip into black vernacular, particularly when surrounded by family. Author contends, implying some intimate knowledge, that Georgia has large Ebonics-speaking contingent.l. This is Aretha. Aretha needs no translation.m. Do you get it?n. A reference to slavery, and the ensuing political and economic subjugation of black people.o. Author is unabashed.p. (1) Bootsy Collins lyric, widely familiar and harking back to late-'70s and early-'80s "P-Funk" musical sound. (2) The sentiments thus expressed are self-evident, easily accepted, and celebrated.q.
Author takes literary license to leave unexplained. Strongly urges use of context clues.

Happiness Was

The 1983 World Series champion Baltimore Orioles.

Repercussions

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/10/AR2006051000929.html

"Appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig, a leading conservative jurist and a short-list Bush administration candidate for the Supreme Court, announced today that he is resigning from the bench to serve as senior vice president and general counsel of the Boeing Co."

My boy J. is resigning because he has two kids approaching college age and needs money, the article implies. And judges must avoid lucrative whoring.

"Federal appeals court judges earn $171,800 per year and generally must avoid any lucrative outside activity. Vice presidents and general counsels for huge corporations may earn anywhere from a quarter million dollars to several million, including various non-salary forms of compensation."

IN MY OPINION, Luttig got scared because of recent exposes in Salon and at the Center for Investigative Journalism that caught a coupla judges with their robes down, ew gross, documented judges who unethically presided on cases involving parties they are invested in. Luttig knows he can't get away with it, because the guardians of the disinherited, yes -- journalists, will be on his ass in 2.4 seconds. And don't even give this knucklehead credit for his impotent questioning of President Bush's wartime authority. He took us 500 steps back, and half a pretend hokey pokey step forward. Dick.

Anyways, is it just me, or is it frightening how easy his jump from potential Supreme Courter to a Boeing executive appears? I think everyone agrees that the corporations set our country's agenda and dictate in large measure the interpration of our laws, but does he have to make it so obvious? Dick.

My Spanish Teacher is Awesome

Ever have those moments where you are happy? Those moments come to me in my Spanish class at 7 a.m. Mondays and Wednesdays. With the Croation guy who sits next to me and greets me with "namaste" and other words he learns from yoga, and the French guy who is a model student, or the Korean guy, the Czech girl, we make a motley but enthusiastic set. And it's all because of Carla, our Spanish teacher. My Spanish teacher does her job so well, she makes you remember how work is supposed to be: a job you love, that you do well, and that gives to others. Anyhow, point is I love my Spanish teacher and want to marry her.

I love me some Bruce

Two things I love: New Orleans Jazz Fest and Bruce Springsteen.

From the Washington Post:

"Out-of-town performers also paid homage to the city. In one of the weekend's most exuberant performances, Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band played a slew of songs that resonated with New Orleanians. Using a full horn section, fiddlers, a banjo player and an accordionist, he delivered a two-hour set Sunday evening that opened with "Mary, Don't You Weep" and included his rewritten version of the folk song "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?"
Before a crowd of thousands he sang the new lyrics:
There's bodies floatin' on Canal and the levees gone to hell
Martha get me my 16 gauge and some dry shells
Them's who's got got out of town
And them who ain't got left to drown
Tell me, how can a poor man stand such times and live?
Before the song, Springsteen also delivered a scathing assessment of President's Bush response to Hurricane Katrina, saying that having surveyed the city on Saturday, "The criminal ineptitude makes you furious. This is what happens when political cronyism guts the very agencies that are supposed to serve American citizens in times of trial and hardship."
But the most emotional song of the set came when Springsteen performed "My City of Ruins," as the crowd joined in the refrain, "Come on rise up, come on rise up."
Other times, the crowd drew its own interpretations from lines musicians had penned long ago. Ani DiFranco -- who moved to New Orleans a year ago and has decided to stay -- drew a roar from her audience, including women sporting dragonfly and mermaid tattoos, when she belted out feminist lyrics. "I live for the fight/Every tool is a weapon if you use it right," she sang.

From the NY Times:

"Mr. Springsteen led his large but never unwieldy Seeger Sessions Band — with horns, fiddles, banjo and more — in a set featuring folk songs from Pete Seeger's repertory, with arrangements that gleefully veered toward south Louisiana Cajun music and New Orleans traditional jazz. Mr. Springsteen wrote new verses about New Orleans for Blind Alfred Reed's "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live," and he dedicated it to "President Bystander." Introducing it, he said, "This is what happens when people play political games with other people's lives."

Why did I learn to talk?

Every now and then my true social ineptitude shines. My mouth advances before my brain and I remember why I should never say words.

So, here's the deal: I have very few talents in life: one of them is that I am masterful at parking my car in tight spaces. So, whenever I'm behind any car in the office parking garage -- which has only tight spaces -- I know it's going be an ETERNITY before they inch themselves into the space.
So I was pleasantly surprised today when I followed a black BMW 525i into my parking garage and, in one handsome turning swoop, it glided into a tight space next to a pillar. I was impressed. The sun was shining, there were other good parkers in the world, and I became Chatty McChatwell.
The fellow who parked his car got into the elevator with me.
"Were you the one who parked next to the pillar just now?" I asked.
"Yes, I was."
"Great job, that was very well done, you did it in one turn."
"Why thank you," he said appreciatively.
We both chuckle.
"I just appreciate good park."

Pause.

Pause.

What in the holy mother of god fuck did I just say?

I appreciate good park??????

I might as well have said, "You give good park." Or "Wanna park sometime, big fella?". Or "Here, touch my boob."

Thankfully he swam right past it and said
"My car has a very good turning radius."
He then proceeded to flirt. Of course, comporting myself like two-bit hooker didn't have anything to do with it, i'm sure.

On Blogging

A full-bodied discussion on blogging, below, courtesy of Howard Kurtz.

Some things I hadn't thought of:
1. The overabundance of media criticism in blogs rather than analysis of the issues at hand: "Show me a New York Times story on war in Sudan, and I'll show you 20 bloggers who think the real story is how the Times fails in its coverage of war in Sudan." says a Weekly Standard dude. I take your point, yo.
2. The ranty, pontificatory nature of many blogs (ooh, but I do it soo well)
3. The lack of truth squadding, the need to employ journalism basics. "Would blogs be more of a factor in public debate if more of their practitioners did a little research -- say, including the very old-fashioned notion of calling people up -- instead of merely pontificating?" Again, good point, Kurtzalicious.

Now the girl from Slate irritates me. She fancies herself a novelist, and she pulled the plug on her blog because she didn't become Wonkette or Opinionista with their neato book deals. Fine, but that's not what many of us are in it for. We don't, or I don't, give a crap about a book deal. This seems to me a backhanded way of saying that blogs aren't the high art she expected them to evolve into. Or maybe she's talking about her own persnickety artistic process stunted by the blog form. Well, DUH. Blogs are not novel run-ups, by and large. They are an alternative way of expressing life in the 21st century with a little indulgence mixed in. So put on your beret, write your goddam novel and leave blogs and journalism to us peasants, ok?

Ok, that was a little harsh, ranty and critical of the media without all the facts, a slap in the face of 1, 2, and 3 above. Bad porcupine.

Blogging: Good or Evil
Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100587.html

Gas Prices

The way news editors are covering the rise in gas prices would lead one to think that we are in the midst of the Great Depression, things are so bad. And the way newspapers are framing it -- pointing out the suffering of individuals or delicate businesses -- is the weakest attempt at a consumer sob story ever.
First, we pay ridonkulously less per gallon than virtually any other country in the world, and that's taking into account a slew of other factors, cost of living, taxes, etc. In fact, the only thing it doesn't take into account is our anemic investment in alternative transit.
We are only one of the few to have no gas tax I heard today; we consume, what is it now -- 25 percent? -- of the world's oil supply?
All this for a bargain retail rate of $3, maybe $4 a gallon.
I'm not saying some people whose lives depend on the use of vehicles aren't suffering, they are.
But are they a majority? No.
We are leading charmed lives. And those of us born into those lives -- the ones who got a Toyota at 16, take public transit optionally, fill our tanks at Exxon weekly -- we are just awakening to our individual dependence. And that dependence has empowered large companies, whose greasy existence is entirely due to our crack-like dependence on these luxuries.

Meanwhile, the idea of giving up what has always been ours -- a car, gadgets, convenience --, well, let's just say scoring a $100 check and drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge, two of the hundreds of colossally granchildren-screwing moves currently under consideration-- is much easier to swallow.

So we continue hearing about discussions with OPEC; we in no way comprehend the oil distribution system, we are devoted to the idea that we cannot change our national psyche when it comes to growth, urban planning, and automobile use, and we convince ourselves that greed will always win out. How unimaginitive, boring and lazy.

The things we do to prop up flimsy, fucked and ultimately doomed systems.

But we don't have to. Really, we don't.

Fidel Castro

So Fidel Castro is on a plane headed for New York to address the United Nations as a member of the nonaligned nations or some such, and some journalist traveling with him on this historic journey asks him if it's true that he always wears a bullet proof vest.
Castro smiles, rests his cigar in his mouth, and starts unbuttoning layers until we see chest hair.
"Morality is my vest," he says.

Journalists and their romantic rumors.

So I am doing a presentation on the Cuban revolution tomorrow for Spanish class and just finished watching Adriana Bosch's "Fidel Castro" video, which was totally fascinating and confusing at the same time. Bosch's family is part of the exile community, which she admits to in the Bonus Materials part of the DVD, and the portrayal of Castro bears this out. I suppose the depiction is fair -- in a he-said, she-said kind of way, but we are left to draw our own conclusions about everything without being given sure footing about anything.
Here's a man who at the age of 30 led just over a hundred men in an attack on fortified Army barracks belonging to the repressive dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, in what he surely knew was a suicide mission. He is captured, jailed and his life spared only by the pleas of a Catholic archbishop.
He comes back, overthrows Batista, but instead of having democratic elections, he retains sole posession of all things Cuba, including its leadership. He nationalizes every damn thing including his mother's farm, a move she never forgives him for, but a move that further fortifies his street cred. He is a populist always hugging everybody and appearing to relate really well.
Then we are told he is rabid-dog, upside-down-igloo crazy. He was ready to launch nukes at the U.S. and was willing to sacrifice Cuba, he told the Soviets, for the sake of communism nee socialism. For real?
Then we are told everybody gets food, healthcare, education. It becomes the highest-skill, lowest-wage country in the world -- an economist's wet dream. Tourist dollars, dollarization and remittances fatten the economy.
Then we are told they are impoverished. Huh? So confused.
He defies the U.S. by helping Angolan communists, but refuses to denounce the clearly fucked up Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
I can't believe that no journalist has gotten Castro to sit and answer to all this, though Barbara Walters appeared to have almost done it -- and while wearing a bonnet, no less. I mean, all he wants to talk his socialist Cuban fantasy and committment to revolucion around the world. And by the way, can we make a distinction between socialist and communist? Is he or isn't he or what is he?

Something doesn't ring true. I want to know the truth, not some muddled attempt at history throught the pretense of balance. Or is that all we, journalists, can do? No, it's not, I just decided.

Anyhow, she could have done better. Not that I'm friggin Ken Burns or anything, but the documentary would've been better served by someone else, I think.
Was the "bloodbath" of political executions following the revolution just? Is his repression any different than the repression of various "free expression" and capitalist countries? So many questions Adriana Bosch, I fear you Bosched this one royally.
I also felt weird about finding Castro extraordinarily attractive, particularly during the 600-mile victory roll into Havana. And the Che Guevara in Bolivia thing-- what the hell was THAT about?They made it seem like he betrayed Che? Say it aint so Castro.

It's just that, the moment on the plane sort of exemplifies my feelings about the whole documentary. I wonder if it is one journalist's romantic rumor.

Oh -- and by the way -- FUCK the CIA. (Jack Bauer notwithstanding.)

I am SO on the list now. Please tell my parents I love them.

Apocalypse-averting motivation

When a friend asks another friend for the motivation to eschew calendar listings, start on cover letters and begin work on quality stories in her spare time, and that friend responds with this speech, referencing "24," the top-rated television show featuring ruggedly handsome Kiefer Sutherland as CIA operative Jack Bauer, let me tell you that a weapons of mass destruction-like motivation sets in, yes indeed.

"OK, here's your main problem: You’re clearly missing the obvious question. When faced with this kind of situation, you need to look in the mirror and ask yourself…

…what would Jack Bauer do?

If CTU command stuck Jack Bauer in a desk and said, “Here, Jack, go ahead and write up this calendar listing for Beth Shalom’s bake sale,” do you think he would do it? HELLS no.

I’ll TELL you what Jack Bauer would do. Jack Bauer is a FIELD OPERATIVE. He’d wait ‘til his boss wasn’t looking, throw his hoodie over his head and move straight for the door all casual-like, and maybe do some ninja shit to the assistant editor if she tries to stop him on the way out the fuckin’ door. When Jack Bauer’s boss finally got wind of what he’d done and called him on his cell phone asking him WHAT exactly he thought he was doing, Jack Bauer would say, “I don’t have time to discuss this with you, THERE ARE MILLIONS OF LIVES AT STAKE,” punctuating the end of the conversation with the CLAP of his cell phone shutting.

What would Jack Bauer do? He’d take matters into his own hands and make that shit happen. He’d report on a kick-ass story AND write a damn cover letter before the “beep-shoomp-beep-shoomp-beep-shoomp-beep-shoomp” signaling the end of the first commercial break. You can do this. Harness your inner Jack Bauer.


Boo-yah."

A couple of thoughts before I head into that pretty little piece of night sky called Dreamland:

a) Cosi is the food-retail embodiment of a war criminal. At $7.69, $8.50-something with tax, their signature salad is a fiscal outrage. It ought to rot in a holding cell at The Hague.

Lettuce petition it to go to trial. I'm going to do that tomato or the day after tomato. It would grape if it could be put away for life. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. I am so funny. You know, accompanying myself through life is not half bad. I kill me.

b) I have no other thoughts. Sorry. Until tomorrow then, goodnight.

From "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"

Buffy: "You need someone to lead you."

[Regular Shmo]: "And it's automatically you. You really do think you're better than we are. "

Buffy: "No, I -- "

[Regular Shmo]: "But we don't know. We don't know if you're actually better. I mean, you came into the world with certain advantages, sure, I mean that's the legacy. But you didn't earn it. You didn't work for it. You've never had anybody come up to you and say that you deserve these things more than anyone else. They were just handed to you. So that doesn't make you better than us. It makes you luckier than us."

To Start

Something to make you laugh:

Conan O'Brien's Speech to the Harvard Class of 2000

Or something to make you cry:

A Void In The Universe

Why We Fight

I just saw Eugene Jarecki's brilliant movie about the military industrial complex. It did for me what Michael Moore's movie didn't -- it told a story, a compelling story, about the rise of the military industrial complex, how it dominates every aspect of our lives.
It had a strong point of view and didn't apologize for it: War is a product of corporate interests. Yes, this we know. But there is a complex and logical architecture behind it, players and methods. It's no conspiracy. We have heaped the pressure of billions of defense dollars on ourselves, it's a wonder we haven't been in more wars. War is no self-fulfilling prophecy borne of apocalyptic television shows and the clash of civilizations. The reason we fight is because if we didn't, we would suffer the most giant fiscal blue balls. Ever.

What's most shocking and shameful is that we -- the regular fuckers walking around complaining about it -- we profit from it, too. We are all complicit. Time's gonna come when historians have a field day with us who decry injustice with words not action. It is our biggest failure. They will document our clueless leaps toward the precipice, shaking their heads.

Not to be negative or anything.