Tag: Sentential Links

Here we go this week. More political ones than most weeks, mainly because I’m annoyed and the best way for me to be all pithy about political stuff is through Sentential Links.

:: Strange how the Republicans keep falling afoul of family values.

:: Protecting 16 year old boys wasn’t his priority. Protecting the Republican majority was. Even if it included a generous pedophile.

:: As it stands right now, it looks like Tom Reynolds has something in common with former Boston Archbishop Bernard Law. (Two links about Tom Reynolds, because he’s a Big Head in the Republican leadership and he’s one of the US Reps from the Buffalo Niagara region. And he is, in my estimation, friggin’ scum. He’s not my Rep, so I don’t get to vote against him. How bad is Reynolds? He’s got me rooting for Jack Davis, a guy whose economic positions don’t appeal to me at all. But then, I get to vote for or against Brian Higgins, a “Democrat” who has stood up to be counted with the Republicans on many a nauseating bill in this, his first term in Congress. I like Higgins’s yeoman work on Buffalo region economic development, but on other stuff, he sucks, too.)

:: At this point, anything that hurts the Republicans helps the Republic: it’s that simple. (A terrible place to be, really, for that level of partisanization is extremely dangerous and in the medium term will corrupt the Democrats too. But it’s true.) So the developing scandal is, to repeat, something that will give a cheer — grim cheer, given the actual lives damaged by these men — to all people of good will.

But I must admit that my other reaction is: for !@#$%’s sake, this, this, this is what we’re upset about?!?

Last week the Congress of the United States passed a bill to legalize torture and end habeas corpus, the most fundamental legal right in our legal system — the Military Dictatorship Act of 2006 — and we’re worried about some !@#$%ing sex scandal?!? (Yup, point taken. I think that whatever changed on 9-11-01 is right back to being as it was; once again we’re easily distracted by the Mark Foleys and Gary Condits of the world.)

:: The people in government are just people. They have human weaknesses like everyone else. Merely wanting to be in a position of power is reason enough to suspect any person’s motives. (Isn’t that the truth. I remember when I was in high school, and how creepy the kids were who really really really wanted to be class president. Well, isn’t wanting to be US President even bigger? But still, I’m a sucker for political personalities too. I saw the camera cut to Bill Clinton sitting in one of the boxes at yesterday’s Bills game, and I cheered. Oh well.

BTW, in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, part of the Martian legislature is filled by citizens of Mars who are literally chosen by lottery, almost like jury duty. I’ve always liked that idea on some intuitive level.)

:: It means that George Bush and Dick Cheney and Karl Rove have lost control of the story. They are no longer driving the narrative.

Unfortunately, they are still driving the country.

:: State of Denial may only be a reflection of Woodward’s sources, but for a discerning reader the zeitgeist of those sources is what the book is all about anyway. Thanks to Woodward, we can now say with confidence that it’s not just liberals who think Bush is a nitwit anymore. Bush’s supporters think he’s a nitwit too.

:: I’m tired of being led by moral cowards. I want better for myself, and for my country.

:: A certain number of our elite pundits — Mallaby high among them — are just constitutionally incapable of being nice to the Democratic Party or to American liberals. As the right’s rule proves itself to be worse and worse, they’ll become increasingly critical of Bush. But that merely forces them to devise ever-more complaints about the opposition. And one of the Democrats’ very worst instincts is a tendecy to care about what these kind of people think.

:: Let him who has ears, hear!

Now for a couple of non-political ones, just to keep my head from exploding:

:: Everyone knows Southern California has its own equinox and solstice, anchored to local seasons: flood, drought, mudslide and earthquake. Most reliable of them all, fire season has now arrived with a vengeance.

:: Heroes is a cool, fun, interesting concept, poorly executed.

:: I have a lot of issues with Heroes but at its most basic level, it’s just not any fun.

(Geez, I kinda liked Heroes, although I too could have done without the “stripper with the heart of gold” subplot. But I’d posit that the stripper’s “power”, a mirror-reflection self that seems capable of independent action, may not make her a hero but the first supervillain the eventual “heroes” face. I enjoyed the show’s slow pacing, too, although this show runs the risk of boring me quickly like Lost did. I’ll watch a few more episodes, anyway. That second link about Heroes, by the way, comes from the blog of TV writer Kay Reindl, who among other projects wrote a number of fine episodes of Millennium.)

:: I will add, however, that being one of the “best console shooters out there” is not very high praise. This is akin to being the world’s cutest cockroach, or the world’s sexist leper. (For some reason I’m really digging reading stuff about games, even though I play no games at all because the Gods of Time and of Happy Marriages would kick my ass on a tag-team basis were I to start. My last computer game was Riven. I love a fun game, but believe me, it’s best that way.)

:: One thing I’ve pounded home, here and elsewhere, is that the introduction to Shakespeare should be as much like Shakespeare’s intended experience as possible — that is, his plays were meant to be seen and heard, not read. (Ahhh, M-Mv — the perfect antidote to being too politically pissed-off.)

OK, more next week. Maybe I won’t be so annoyed at the state of the world by then; you never know. But hey, imagine what this post would be like if the Bills had lost!

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I did less link-mining than usual this week….

:: I’m impressed by MKG’s ability to dumb down any issue, making it seem as if the solution is as easy as instant pudding, and everyone has just been standing around the kitchen waiting for her to show up and add the milk. (MKG is Buffalo News columnist Mary Kunz Goldman, a favorite target of those of us inhabiting the Buffalo Prefecture of Blogistan.)

:: Other Chicago notes: this is the third or forth time I have been to this city, and I have finally had a Chicago-style hot dog. (Never had a Chicago hot dog before. Their deep-dish pizza, yes, but never a hot dog. Gotta try it.)

:: There is an interesting study to be written about US Attorney Generals, I think. They seem to come in three basic flavors: Crook, Crony, and Parson. (I know, two links to the same blog, a rarity for Sentential Links.)

:: Consequently, for months and months the administration has reacted to the report not by trying to improve its policies, but rather by covering up the NIE. Same sorry old story, but it’s an absolute disaster for the country. Meanwhile, much of our press continues to identify national security “toughness” with stubborn refusal to see what’s lying right before everyone’s eyes: The invasion of Iraq has been a gigantic, years-long rolling catastrophe for American security.

:: It is hard to think of this as a compromise, unless your idea of a compromise is being asked by your child for a million dollars, telling them no, and then agreeing to give them $998,000.

:: I wasn’t done talking to you, dammit. I wouldn’t ever have been done talking. (I never read anything by John M. Ford. Still, this is sad. More here.)

Tune in next week!

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Here we go again! Click and read. Or just click. Or just read. Or just sit there drooling. Hey, it’s your life.

:: A little birdy once told me that the meaning of life is to acheive perfect roundness so we can launch into orbit around the great and bountiful Harvest Lord. (The solution to this problem is: Get rid of cable. That’s how we did it!)

:: Corporate Conspiracy # 3,068: Whatever you do, don’t get your hands dirty! Dirt is dirty! Germy, must sterilize, gross. Here are 5 billion toxic chemical products to clean and sterilize you. (Shades of George Carlin: “What are you gonna do when some supervirus comes along and turns your vital organs into liquid shit? You’re gonna die and you’re gonna deserve it ’cause you’re f***ing weak, and you got a f***ing weak immune system!”)

:: I’ve learned it too many times when I’m hungry and haven’t eaten all day and can’t decide whether to get Taco Bell or Jack in the Box so I get both and figure I’m hungry enough to eat eggrolls, a cheeseburger, soft tacos, and a combo burrito only to be completely stuffed about 60% of the way through, leaving me to not only throw away food for which I paid good money, but also popping Target’s storebrand equivalent of Tums and feeling miserable the rest of the night.

:: So, to end where I began: anyone who wants to make, or is making, comics should read this book. (Scott McCloud has a new book out! I’ll probably read it, even though my only ability at comics creation would be scripting, since my art is freaking laughable.)

:: Marvel’s summer 2007 event will be written by Greg Pak and entitled World War Hulk. (The title alone is cool on about nine different levels.) Apparently, it’s a miniseries (not a crossover), and will basically feature the Hulk vs. the entire Marvel Universe, which in my mind should be the premise of pretty much every single Hulk comic ever, so…sold! (Man, have I got comics on the brain lately. Not good. Comics are too freakin’ expensive.)

:: Remember what I said before about maybe we’d be better off if the Wonder Woman movie wasn’t made?

Well, fuck that. We need that movie, and we need it now. And we need it to make a bazillion bucks so that a bunch of knockoffs get made the next year. (Preach it! They made a Daredevil movie and an Elektra movie, for God’s sake — where the hell is Wonder Woman!)

:: This is my stuff bag. Sure, I got it free when I joined the Book of the Month club, but it doesn’t really matter what king of freakin’ bag it is. Just that the bag works for you.

:: Yes, you can—right this instant—read about the goings-on of this august body when it was populated with the likes of Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle, with cameos by such luminaries as Anton van Leeuwenhoek, Gottfried Leibniz and Giovanni Domenico Cassini. (I swear, the Internet is getting closer and closer to being the Library Computer from Star Trek.)

All for this week. Good blogging this week, folks! Let’s keep it up! We can win this thing!

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Time, once again, for our weekly jaunt ’round Blogistan….

:: Once and Again: Oh, YAWN! Gorgeous, well-to-do suburbanites with minuscule problems examined in detail once and again and over and over again. I could not care less. (Aieee!)

:: In my undergrad years I was part of an intense small theatre group that has remained in touch and sometimes close for nearly half a century. I had thought a church might be like repertory theatre and that ministers might be like English actors, moving from part to part smoothly. One for all and all for one.

:: September 11, 2001 was Primary Day in New York State, ultimately postponed. As the law stands now, it will be Primary Day (for all races except the Presidency) on average every seven years. Some people think it ought to be changed to a week later, in order to “Honor the dead”. I don’t. September 11 is a GREAT day to exercise one’s freedom.

:: I don’t know about you, but I’m coming to the conclusion that the Pentagon subcontracted this job to the same guys that James Bond’s enemies always hired to design their headquarters — you know, the one with the prominently labelled SELF DESTRUCT button.

:: Plus, a guy carries around a hammer that can end the world – how cool is that? (Gotta start reading this series….)

:: Which brings us to STUDIO 60 ON THE SUNSET STRIP, NBC’s great white hope from Sorkin and director/producer Tommy Schlamme, the SPORTSNIGHT/WEST WING team. (I’ve heard pretty much unanimous opinion that the Studio 60 pilot is brilliant; what concerns me is the show being consistently brilliant.)

:: In what sense does an event that features four Republicans but excludes the two senators who were representing New York at the time of the event, but who happen to be Democrats, leave aside partisan rancor?

:: My biggest disappointment of the past five years — the biggest by a very long way — has been the way that George Bush transformed 9/11 from an opportunity to bring the country together into a cynical and partisan cudgel useful primarily for winning a few more votes in national elections. (Mine too. I wanted to believe in George W. Bush after 9-11. Aside from the odd business of him sitting in that classroom for so long, I never had a problem with his conduct on 9-11, or in the days after; his speech to Congress a week later was as good a Presidential address as I’ve ever heard, and I strongly supported our invasion of Afghanistan. But the man has been one disappointment after another ever since, and “Mission Accomplished” is when he pretty much lost me forever.)

:: So, in just five short months in Rich Lowry World, we went from “The debate over troop levels” is “somewhat beside the point” and “to think that higher troop levels would have been a magic bullet is to indulge a very American faith in the power of mass to overcome anything” to “There is no mystery as to what can make the crucial difference in the battle of Baghdad: American troops” and “The bottom line is this: More U.S. troops in Iraq would improve our chances of winning a decisive battle at a decisive moment.” It’s not just profoundly wrong; it’s worse than that. It’s ludicrous. (I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that Lowry was calling for more troops as the solution to Iraq. It’s just astonishing. Maybe the Army Fairy will stick a few brand new armored divisions under his pillow or something.)

:: As we wrap up another ten songs and move ever so slowly toward our ultimate goal, I’d dare you to denigrate my musical taste, but for two things: you can’t because it’s so awesome, and nobody reads this anyway! I can expound on great songs according to me with impunity! Bwah-ha-ha-ha!

:: THWUCK! That’s just plain good writing…although it sounds like someone will be needing a moist towelette later. (This is actually an old post by the Tensor, but I’m linking it because I finished reading Galactic Patrol the other day and I have all this close at mind. I loved the book, I have to admit — I figured I’d enjoy it, but man, it was just a terrifically fun read. I’ll post more about the Lensmen series one day, but for now, I’d note that if anyone out there is looking to read this iconic space opera, start with Galactic Patrol, and not with Triplanetary. Ignore the fact that Triplanetary may be indicated as the first book in the Lensmen series. That may be true in terms of the chronology of the story, but that’s not the order in which E.E. Smith wrote the books, and publishing order is almost always the best reading order. Also, the references in GP to the “ether” struck me as interesting as the book was written several decades after the Michaelson-Morley experiments disproved the existence of the luminiferous aether.)

All for this week. Clear ether!

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It’s that time again….

:: T minus two months or so until we have to name a baby girl, and I can promise you it won’t be “Emmillie” or “Graiyce” or “Wrooth.” (I wonder what Mr. Jennings thinks of the popular new name, “Nevaeh”? Personally, I think that name is about as stupid as anything I can think of. All the amazing names in the Bible, and we’ve got to start spelling shit backwards?)

:: Of course, “Nevaeh” is an order of magnitude sillier even than Remington, simply because it takes an linguistic epiphany that would embarass a stoner (“Hey dude — did you realize that butter spelled backwards is … rettub?” “Duuuude.”) and forces some poor kid to live with it until they die. (Just Googled “Nevaeh” on a whim. Hey, we can go lots of places with this! Like, “Hey, did you hear about the recent mystery novel manuscript found amongst the writings of JRR Tolkien? The killer kept saying Rodrom!”)

:: I think you have to have loved someone to write a song about them. I loved Jessica. To a degree, mellowed by distance, time and life, I still do. (Or to write poetry.)

:: Law of Modern Warfare #001: When you bomb people for their own good, they never, ever get your point in the way you hope.

:: Cats are, after all, very cool.

:: It’s the regular media—the MSM as they appear to like us to call them—who are obsessed with the idea that blogs are all about politics and nothing but politics, and this is not just unfortunate in that they are depriving themselves of some excellent and entertaining reading on movies, books, music, science, and life in general, on the job and in the home and on the farm and out in the woods and in the mind; it’s potentially disasterous for us, the bloggers, and for our readers, and for the still inchoate art form known as blogging.

:: These are books that opened my eyes, or spun me upside down, so that the stars were underfoot and the trees were dangling from a green sky like monstrous feathery stalactites.

:: An artist is an artist only because of his exquisite sense of beauty, a sense which shows him intoxicating pleasures, but which at the same time implies and contains an equally exquisite sense of all deformities and all disproportion. (Not actually written by the linked blogger, but click through anyway to see who did say this.)

All for now. Back next week.

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Some of these deal with the recent decision to strip Pluto of its planetary status (as though the little planet-that-could had been caught doping in an attempt to pack on extra mass so it could maintain its position of planethood). Others deal with other stuff.

:: Just a little refresher: Pluto is smaller than our moon, people!

:: Pluto’s been demoted? That’s crap! (No, dearie: if it’s not Scottish, it’s crap. But I get the sentiment.)

(Oh, and congrats to the new Campbell award winner, who unfortunately decided to model the tiara that is now associated with this award, thus making him look like a really creepy televangelist.)

:: If you’ve been keeping an eye on any of the wire services (or Language Log), you may have noticed that the members of the International Astronomical Union meeting in Prague have been wrangling, Vatican-style, over the definition of the word planet. Judging by the periodic puffs of contradictorily-colored smoke the meeting is emitting, it sounds like they may be getting bogged down in the details. (That’s where the Devil is, you know.) Well, defining words involves language, and language is what linguists study, so that means this is a linguistic problem. Let’s roll up our sleeves and see what all the trouble is.

:: I submit that scientists own the science, but laypeople own the narrative. And the narrative of the nine planets of the Solar System is rich in mythology (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), serendipity (the discovery of Uranus), mathematical prediction (the discovery of Neptune), and Herculean effort (the discovery of Pluto). It has been enriched that much further by the stunning imagery of every planet except Pluto returned to us by the Mariner, Pioneer, Viking, Magellan, Galileo, and Cassini probes. (Written before the ultimate decision, but still some worthwhile points.)

:: They wanted to base it on measurable scientific factors rather than a human-created, arbitrary dividing line. Unfortunately, what they came up with was a messy slight-of-hand pushed by the anti-Pluto radicals that opens the door to far more problems than it can ever hope to solve. (Read this post for a short synopsis on the new planetary definition’s shortcomings.

My own position on this is, well, what is the big deal with considering Pluto a planet? Why does this matter? How will planetary astronomy be set back or advanced by this? I don’t get it. And besides, this whole business reminds me that the real physical world is a messy place that can’t always be mapped nicely onto a language where the act of creating definitions assumes binary states that may not exist. Anyway, back to the links.

:: If global warming is going on, every day must be warmer than the same day the previous year, every summer must be hotter, every winter must be less cold. There are no statistical effects, and definitely no random component to the weather. “Weather” is also a single unitary phenomenon which can be evaluated by one instrument, a thermometer.

:: When I was a kid, my parents used to play the I Ching once a year.

:: We now rent just about anything. We rent houses and cars. We rent tractors. We rent (to own) computers, TV’s and furniture. We rent tillers and banquet halls. We rent like crazy these days. Why not rent a casket?

:: I’m so excited, I think I just Fergied in my pants! (Uhhhh…OK….but congrats on the 100,000th hit, guys!)

More next week. Tune in. Drop out. And stuff.

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I know these are appearing fairly late in the day, but it’s awful nice outside. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it. Anyhow, here are this week’s links:

:: Here we are near the end of August without a single hurricane to date because, as we’re told, the surface waters of the Atlantic have cooled. What do you want to bet that someone will soon blame those cool waters on those melting glaciers. (Well, they could try to say that, but they’d be crazy because Greenland is too far north for its melting glaciers to significantly cool the waters of the tropical Atlantic. What’s alarming about the melting of Greenland’s glaciers isn’t so much the amount of cold water entering the Atlantic but rather the simple amount of water entering the ocean anywhere, raising sea levels, and additionally, that much fresh water entering the Atlantic at that point. A serious shift in the salinity of the North Atlantic could disrupt major ocean currents like the Gulf Stream, and that would be disastrous for Europe. What Craig’s referring to in his post is a new Danish study that suggests that Greenland’s glaciers have been melting for a very long time, over a century in fact, which would somehow negate the idea that it’s all due to global warming. Maybe so, but everything I’ve read — here’s an example from just the other day — suggests that the problem isn’t that Greenland’s glaciers are melting at all, but that they’re melting significantly faster than ever before. Which, in fact, is something the Danish scientists even come out and say at the end of the news article I link above, so how does this news article justify suggesting that maybe Greenland’s icemelt has nothing to do with global warming? Here’s part of the danger of having an increasingly scientifically illiterate society: some of these scientifically illiterate folks become reporters.)

:: In the real world, one of the jobs responsible people assume is that of fixing (as best they can) the screw-ups they cause in spite of their best efforts to avoid them. You never, ever see a Rand hero in that position. (Do you? Somebody tell me if I’m wrong.) It is that unreality that, more than anything else, bugs me about Rand’s fiction. (That fits in with my recent post on why I’m neither Libertarian nor Objectivist. I’ve always been mystified at the near-worship Ayn Rand’s writings inspire, because, like Fred, I don’t see that she’s anything other than a terrible observer of the human condition.)

:: I’ve spent nearly twenty years trying to make the point that fantasy can be as important as any other form of literature. (That’s from an interview with Guy Gavriel Kay.)

:: My husband made me cry. (OK, that’s the post’s title and not a sentence from the post. Who cares. And making a woman cry? What a jerk!)

:: Why do I eat fried hotdog sandwiches, but I don’t eat Spam?

:: This relatively northerly position would normally weight against the location of a spaceport in Cape Breton, since the farther a rocket is from the equator the more fuel it takes to overcome the Earth’s pull and reach orbit with a given mass: The Kennedy Space Center in Florida or the French/European Centre Spatial Guyanais in French Guiana have decided advantages. (OK, I need someone to explain this to me. Isn’t Earth’s gravitational pull equal in all directions? Why would it take more rocket fuel to launch from a more northern location? I’m genuinely baffled here.)

:: [If you’re German, you might want to bail out now before I make fun of your language.] (Oh, fun with the German language! Cool!)

:: L is the first and twenty-sixth letter in this sentence.

Enough for now. More next week.

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Here we go:

:: So much faith in the Lebanese government I do not understand. A puppet of Syria, who is a puppet of Iran. Iran is Barzini here. You see the Godfather? Okay? So a question about it. Who props up that government? I mean if the Israeli, if the IDF, which is, although when I was in Israel, I gotta tell you, a bunch of baby-faced kids. I know they’re always portrayed in the media with Darth Vader helmets and the Israeli war machine. I’m telling you, the cutest kids ever. But if they couldn’t contain, and I think there’s an element of that that no one really wants to talk about. I wonder how much the US government was surprised that Israel didn’t go in, bing-bang-boom, and knock these suckers out. Forget about Israel for a second, even though it’s difficult for me, right and wrong, good and evil, and all that. Let’s discuss real politics, shall we? It’s in America’s best interest that Hezbollah be eliminated. I mean this is not just Israel’s problem. You know who Hezbollah is. You know where they are. So I think there was an element of surprise. Do I think it’s Olmert’s weakness? I do. Did I campaign wildly for Bibi? I did. Do I have a vote? I don’t. So I think Israel also, you know it’s interesting, when I was in Israel, you could see the country was in short of like a shock, like a 9/11 shock. Here they had banked so much on land for peace and peace, even this sh–, even a bad peace, sorry about that, John, is better than a good war, so to speak, although I don’t subscribe to that. I understand that the current, modern civilization does, to which they’re going to pay dearly, but that’s besides the point. Such stock we’re putting in the Lebanese government, who is totally kowtowing to Hezbollah. You put every remark by the crying Siniora, I mean, another Godfather moment. You remember Godfather, Frank Sinatra, it was supposed to be Frank Sinatra, he’s crying, you’re godfather. Same thing happens, somebody slap him. So how could you have so much faith in the Lebanon government? I mean, I want to believe, John. I believe in you. I want to believe. (Oh, my God in Heaven. That’s an actual question posed to the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, by…a blogger. And not just any blogger, but one who is as close to certifiably insane as any I’ve ever encountered. Someone at the White House decided that having Bolton sit for this interview was a good idea. And we still have two-and-a-half years of this crowd running things. We are so screwed. Link via TBogg.)

:: Don’t these people realize that we’re in a war and that weakening the Commander-in-Chief with such criticisms and declaring American defeat endangers all of us?

:: Taking some of these people seriously about Iraq is like listening to Joe Hazlewood on celestial navigation. (Google Hazlewood if you don’t get the joke.)

:: But what’s true for America in Iraq is true for Israel in Lebanon as well — just because you have an army on hand and a nice idea of what you’d like to see happen doesn’t mean that there’s an actual way to use your army to make it happen.

:: I am absolutely buffaloed by the people who insist I man up and take it in the teeth for the great Clash of Civilizations — “Come ON, people, this is the EPIC LAST WAR!! You just don’t have the stones to face that fact head-on!” — who at the whiff of an actual terror plot will, with no apparent sense of irony, transform and run around shrieking, eyes rolling and Hello Kitty panties flashing like Japanese schoolgirls who have just realized that the call is coming from inside the house!

:: A stark reminder that this isn’t a “war” at all — you don’t foil a plot like this with armored personnel carriers and JDAMs. We’re also not going to capture the capital city of “Islamic fascism” — not Kabul, not Baghdad, not even Teheran and Damascus — and force our adversaries to surrender.

:: There’s something to fairy tales, of course. We should keep our sense of wonder. We do need to dream.

All for now. For some reason, most of what I read this week was fairly political. Go figure.

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Crackle crackle crackle crackle BZZZZZZT!

The following links take place between 11:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m.

:: You know what sucks? (So how long are you going to stay at that job, Aaron?)

:: So, why do I care? Because dammit, he’s my little brother and I feel like I should go beat them up. (Someone should go beat them up regardless of whether he’s their little brother. Man, what a wuss thing to lose one’s job over. But hey, maybe he can come back up here — Ed Kilgore bugs me.)

:: When hammers are swinging and saws are cutting, it smells like progress. Smells good, doesn’t it?

:: I fully recommend getting married with otters. (Uh…OK.)

:: I often imagine this is what the nectar of the Gods must have tasted like. (Nah! Everybody knows that the nectar of the Gods tastes like Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum. That’s my theory, anyway, of why things are so messed up: because the gods are constantly crocked.)

:: His body language suggests he’s describing the size of the bag of Cheetos he wants to eat right now. (Shit, now I want a big-ass bag of Cheetos….)

:: I am a true connoisseur of late blooming female beauty. I love the bodies of older women and I have the pictures to prove it. I’d post them but the wife and professional woman who lives inside the particular forty-something body I love would kill me. (Weenie.)

:: [T]eaching the Classics to many high school students is a waste of time, and further, it is detrimental to literacy efforts. (I found this journal by searching for anyone else who had written about the Sterling Renaissance Festival, which she did here, but I found this post a lot more provocative.)

:: So naturally, we went skinny dipping and T made me pose. (Jayne may yell at me for this, but it’s such a lovely picture. Both are, actually.)

:: So — in Mogadishu and Iraq and Afghanistan and Lebanon — the soldiers themselves are caught in the maze of war. Even with guidance from above the convoy of Humvees loaded with wounded can’t turn the corner without facing the Minotaur.

:: Traveling at the speed of dumb, I assume. (Clearly Tom’s pseudo-outing hasn’t affected his powers of snark. In fact, you might say that struck down, he has become more powerful than Paterico could possibly imagine….)

All for now. Come back next week.

beep…beep…beep….

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It’s that time again. I’m doing something new this time out: none of the blogs linked below have ever been linked by me before. In fact, few of them have ever been seen by me before. I’m just doing some Googling and linking, in an effort to shake things up a little. Some of this will be exceedingly weird; some of it will be perfectly normal. And you won’t know until you click which are the weird ones! Ha!

:: THE PLANES USED IN THE ATTACKS ON THE TWIN TOWERS WERE PILOTED BY REMOTE CONTROL. (Well, you can probably tell whether this one’s weird or not without clicking through. But it’s pretty trippy, anyway.)

:: Second week of my wild foods class…learning about all the edible weeds growing around is like meeting new friends.

:: I should say something pithy: hmmm. Maybe do a “what I learned” rant or something. Well, what I learned: some people in the field of UFO studies are idiots.

:: We listened as speakers at Penn State were shouting their opposition to a war in Iraq, but what they failed to understand is that this is the most important area of the world right now. The Controllers – architects for the New World Order – have pinpointed the Middle East and Eurasia as the most valuable real estate on the globe because of its oil and raw materials. If the United States doesn’t take this land – or, should we say the “Controllers” – somebody else IS going to. It won’t sit there forever unclaimed. (There’s probably niftier stuff in there, but this blog’s color scheme is very hard on the eyes.)

:: And when I drive back into San Francisco from the airport, it will no longer be the city I share with Trousers. It’ll be a different place, minus one absolutely unique, amazing, precious person and a little bloody chunk of my heart. (Not safe for work.)

:: That’s what I love about David Gemmell; you’ll never see a hero like Aragorn, only Boromir. You’ll never read of King Peter, only Edmund. And that’s exactly what real life is: deeply flawed people sometimes rising to the heroic. (David Gemmell died the other day. I’ve never read him. I will make a point of doing so.)

:: I know those who hail from the Northern Hemisphere are melting in a heatwave, but down South, things are rather cool and grey. Very dull.

All for this week. Remember, I’ve never read a one of these before, and I didn’t “vet” them by digging into their archives either, so your mileage may vary!

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