27 Feb 07 the dimpled rind of remorselessness.
Having some long, fun and emotional talks with my stepfather, brother and sister was very cathartic this evening. I'm not one to get into these overly dramatic, minutiae of my life sort of posts, but I'm going to stray and do it anyway. Considering the long streak of fleeting highs and mind-numbing lows I've had lately, talking with the family felt rather wonderful and took me away from all of that for a while.
Still, things are weird.
I'm troubled lately at how sequestered I feel from people these days. I've always been an outsider but recently, even in group settings I feel alien. It sounds juvenile, but I really need something that I am not getting from the people close to me. I need something else, some less verbal and more tactile. No I don't mean sex, there's more to human contact than just sex.
There is a paradox though in that I hate the preliminaries. There are several women close by that I could ask out and get to know, but I am severely reluctant to do so. For some reason I hate all of the “get to know you” shit that goes along with dating and being single. I'm so tired of telling the same stories and seeing the same reactions. Granted, I love learning about people and getting know people, wait, check that. I like knowing people, but I hate the process that gets me there. The first date shit just makes me puke at my age. Which is bad.
I just want to skip past all of that and be engaged with (not to) someone. I want to introduce people to my wife/girlfriend and make them nauseous with how much we melt over each other. I want to be someone's queso. I want to stop eying people in relationships with such a cynical eye. I want to stop being jealous of the people that have what I don't.
I want to be your huckleberry.
I may be thin and less than athletic, but my heart is immense and has no bounds, but you've got to earn it. I want to be what makes you wake up in the morning, I want to see you in the morning. I want to see you in the evening. I don't know where I'm going with this.
Peace to you and yours.
Related Links27 Feb 07 Across the Universe.
( Trailer - QT )
I'm fairly certain someone already mentioned this movie (in fact it was
I wish life had a soundtrack (a real one, not the imaginary one that resonates in my head), it'd be so much better.
Related Links27 Feb 07 Breaking News!
Dick Cheney Targeted by Assassination Attempt in Afghanistan!
What frightens me is this bit from the NY Times:
Mr. Cheney made an unscheduled overnight stay at the Bagram airbase, located north of Kabul, on Monday night after his 18-minute flight to the capital was grounded by heavy snow and he was unable to make a planned meeting with President Hamid Karzai. When Mr. Cheney reached Kabul early this afternoon, the two leaders met for about two hours at the presidential palace.
Could there be a mole, or have I just watched too much Alias and 24? If his stay was unscheduled, how could the Taliban have known? The plot thickens.
Related Links27 Feb 07 Breaking News! Assassination Attempt on Dick Cheney Kills 12 23.
Cheney Targeted in Assassination Attempt
A suicide bomber struck at the main entrance to Bagram air base in Afghanistan today, as Vice President Dick Cheney was visiting.Immediately after the attack, a red alert traveled throughout the base — a red alert that we heard saying that the base was under direct attack.
At least nine people were killed, officials tell ABC News. Associated Press reporters at the scene said that they had seen the bodies of at least 12 people, and that they had been carried in black body bags and wooden coffins from near the base into a market area where hundreds of Afghans had gathered to mourn.
A Taliban spokesperson has claimed responsibility, saying the intended target was in fact Cheney. The bomber never got near Cheney.
| MORE |
I don’t really know how I feel about this, but you know this is going to play up well with the “call for surge” crowd. I don’t like Dick Cheney at all, but I’m glad he wasn’t killed. Martyrdom isn’t reserved merely for the insurgents and terrorists, even involuntary martyrdom. This would have (and is) been very bad for the anti-war effort.
Violence only begets more violence. Additionally this proves one more fact, the Taliban has regained strength in Afghanistan further cementing the fact that that is where we should be focused.
Related LinksTags: Dick Cheney, Iraq
27 Feb 07 Iraq, No Graceful Exit
There is a brilliant essay on the Iraq “Civil War” over at Foreign Policy by James D. Fearon, a Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. Fearon’s main point is that, looking at the history of civil wars, there is no way the U.S. can turn the tide of the one taking place in Iraq. There will no doubt be more bloodshed, but civil wars are conflicts that must solve themselves.
The White House still avoids the label, but by any reasonable historical standard, the Iraqi civil war has begun. The record of past such wars suggests that Washington cannot stop this one — and that Iraqis will be able to reach a power-sharing deal only after much more fighting, if then. The United States can help bring about a settlement eventually by balancing Iraqi factions from afar, but there is little it can do to avert bloodshed now.
The Iraq War seems to have an identity crisis, at least from the administration’s point-of-view. Their refusal to label this conflict a civil war hinders their ability to not only look at it objectively but to deal with it using relevant strategies.
Different types of wars are fought in different ways. This isn’t a straight genocidal conflict, this isn’t merely a dictator trying to take over a country. This is a country that, once freed from one oppressor is struggling to define itself. Who are we to solve their identity crisis?
How would America have felt if in the middle of the Civil War some third-party came in and told us how we should solve our problem, and then got into conflict with and gave arms and training to both sides? I would think that would makes us resent that third-party quite a bit. The U.S. Civil War, after a long and bloody conflict that killed over a half-million Americans, grudgingly worked itself out.
We must leave this up to the Iraqis. Sure there will be casualties and yes there will be tragedy, but that is the world we’ve built for ourselves. I don’t agree with war at all, but that seems to be the only we humans have figured out to solve our problems. However their fight is not our fight, our fight is in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda is regaining a foothold there because our attention is elsewhere.
If the administration truly wants to fight terrorism and truly wants the American public as well as Congress to mobilize behind them, they need to stop lying to us and to themselves about what this war is and how it needs to be solved. Until then, it will just continue to spiral downward into chaos.
Related Links26 Feb 07 buoyant flotsam in an ocean of hurt.
Jeffrey Scott
| Artist's Website |
I got nothing right now, the brain is totally frazzled. Sometimes I wish I were a cow, that way I'd have four-stomachs and it would easier to digest all of this stuff. Two day intake includes the three (rather bleak) movies already mentioned, several civil rights speeches (X and King of course), a ridiculously dense article on the authoritarian-libertarian value change in advanced industrial democracies, new issue of The Nation (and had to catch up on last week's issue), new issue of Wired and I started reading Sam Harris' The End of Faith.
So far it is really good, I like Harris' style and he doesn't pull any punches. He's the most extreme of the new atheist movement which I've grown increasingly interested in. Wired profiled him along with Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennet back in November. It's a really good article if you are a fellow skeptic, check it and let's discuss.
It's late, Colbert is almost over and I've got a long day tomorrow. Gotta be on my A-game. Later kids.
Related Links25 Feb 07 howdy.
25 Feb 07 D & Diesel
A Sunday Wiki factoid:
Diesel was a player of Dungeons & Dragons and other role playing games, a fact that he proudly states in various interviews.[3] He occasionally makes reference to D&D in his films, such as in xXx where one of the tattoos on Xander Cage (Diesel’s character) reads “Melkor,” the name of one of Diesel’s old player characters. (Melkor was the original name for the fallen angel character of the Tolkien Legendarium.) It has been said that his portrayal of Richard Riddick in the Pitch Black series of movies and games is based somewhat on this favorite character, a Drow “witch-hunter” who was a loner, and that Diesel has the character’s image tattooed on his arm . He has also written the foreword to the commemorative book 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of D&D, a collection of stories and essays which chronicles the history of D&D.
So even though he has been in some pretty big stinkers (by my standards, not the box office’s), that’s pretty fucking cool.
Anyone plan on watching the Oscars?
Related Links25 Feb 07 If Monday is blue, what's Sunday?
Whoo! Let's here it for sleeping in until 9:30, I feel so privileged. Actually that makes me feel like an old man, but we'll leave that alone.
Today is homework and movie day. On deck:
Yeah, I'm pretty much going to feel dirty and mischievous by the end of all of that. I might also do a matinée of either Breach or The Number 23, but maybe not.
Other intake.
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain • Good stuff. Some of it is poorly written and Bourdain repeats the “cooks and restaurant workers are the scumdogs of the universe” description ad nauseam, but it is still enjoyable. It really makes you want to take a peak into the kitchens of your favorite restaurants and see if he is telling the truth, which I guarantee he is. I am still a little disappointed that the television show didn't last longer. It was funny and had that bug-eyed kid from Freaks and Geeks, but then again that got canceled too. A good here and there or shitter read, pick it up.
A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut • Funny, poignant and purely entertaining; it's Vonnegut–duh. Getting away from his usual fiction fare, this tiny little tome reads like a conversation with one of America's greatest novelists. You'll finish it in an hour or so, and you'll wish there was more. Best quote:
“If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
There's a bit of comfort in statements like that.
Time for Late Edition.
Related Links24 Feb 07 76/100: The Home Stretch
I managed to go the whole day without touching a broom. I'm sure my curling game will wane accordingly. No good carcasses today, nothing poetic or nauseatingly tragic. Oddly though I found a large number of small, dead birds along Lake Mary Blvd. They were finches I think. It seemed like they might have killed themselves, throwing their tiny bodies into the paths of oncoming cars. You know the world has turned to shit when even the life of a finch has become too much. I mean really, how hard is it to be a little woodland bird? You eat berries and insects and chase around other finches to fuck all day.
I blame global warming.
People who drink Big Gulps, Budweiser and Pepsi like to throw their refuse on the sides of the road. There's a sociology or psychology masters thesis entangled in that observation in case anyone needs one. It's worth looking into. I also picked up enough plastic bags to make that pasty-faced kid from American Beauty change his tune about how “beautiful” they can be.
The end of my ordeal with the man is nigh. Three more days picking trash and one little, $35.00 victim awareness class. $5000+ later and I'll be in the clear. There's a lesson to be learned here I think but I can't quite put my finger on it. Just kidding.
Don't drink and drive kids*. It sucks.
*Or at least don't get caught**
**Just kidding
Related Links24 Feb 07 shirts and skins.
Now I know that finding that awesome vintage t-shirt at a thrift store is like finding a buried treasure and that those Urban Outfitters-esque store bought, manufactured vintage sort of misses the point, these selections from Busted Tees.com are pretty fucking great. Great enough to where I think I might even buy one of them.
Oh, and Adam, I'm buying you this whether you like it or not because it's awesome:
Back in the cruise ship working days a co-worker used the phrase “getting t-shirts” as a euphemism for sex. Quite possibly the greatest euphemism ever, but I'll let you sort out the logistics of it.
It's late and I have to pick up trash in the morning for the man, laters.
Related Links23 Feb 07 What does Marsellus Wallace look like?
via Boing Boing (of course)
23 Feb 07 Vilsack Who?
So Ex-Gov Tom Vilsack has withdrawn from the presidential race only 15-weeks after announcing his bid. He claimed that he just couldn’t contend with the amount of money the celebri-candidates are able to raise and it’s simply become a money game, not an issues and policy game.
On the one hand he is right, on the other that is simply how the game is played. I don’t exactly agree with it either, but it’s the best we’ve got right now. Right now it is the invisible primary stage, all you can really do is hoot and holler and raise money. He just didn’t holler enough, then again maybe that would have been bad too (*cough* Howard Dean).
I think the Democratic nomination is going to become a three-horse race between Obama, Clinton and Edwards rather quickly. Bill Richardson has been able to raise a lot of money, but he just doesn’t have the showmanship, and that goes a long way. Joe Biden might be able to hang on if his foot-in-mouth disease doesn’t act up again. Mike Gravel (who?) and Chris Dodd (who!?) won’t might make it to New Hampshire, but will definitely be out by the Iowa caucus. Kucinich will return to the shire before the end of the year.
That’s how I’m calling it. I wonder what the odds in Vegas are right now?
Related LinksTags: 2008 Election, democratic candidates
23 Feb 07 News of the Hilarious.
Three CD players hidden under a cathedral's pews blared sexually explicit language in the middle of an Ash Wednesday Mass, leading a bomb squad to detonate two of the devices.Authorities determined the music players were not dangerous and kept the third one to check it for clues, said police Capt. Gary Johnson.
The CD players, duct-taped to the bottoms of the pews, were set to turn on in the middle of noon Mass on Wednesday at the Roman Catholic Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi.
The recordings, made on store-bought blank discs, featured people using foul language and “pornographic messages,” Johnson said. He would not elaborate because of the ongoing investigation.
Church staff members took the CD players to the basement and called police, who sent the bomb squad, Johnson said.
The bomb squad blew up two players outside and kept the third one to test for fingerprints or DNA and trace its components, he said.
Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, which marks a 40-day period of fasting and penitence before Easter.
I love the fact that they had to call the bomb squad in to detonate some CD players. I wish someone had a video or audio of this.
Related Links22 Feb 07 Anna, this is for you.
Via Warren Ellis:
Santasm.net aka What the Crap!?
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