Pasticcio from an Eclectic Mind

Hurry up and fret

2011-09-07T19:26:00.000-07:00

Three weeks and change in the future, and nary a nibble on the place. Sigh. I wonder when the blame-game will start with the agent, who was floating the idea of dropping the price after the first week. (A suggestion, I might add, not borne out by the MLS cross-comparison, but it may come to that after this week anyway.)

Unfortunately, working conditions--if not actual work--promised to become unpleasant. The Powers That Be cannot, it seems isolate personnel/performance issues--they merely dilute them at the expense of the solid folks. At least in our area. We're not shy about firing the true losers, mind you--at least there's that mercy. It's all driven by the belief that the good developers/QA people aren't thick on the ground and we have no choice but to make due with anything mediocre or above.

Yet every pep rally speech from The Big Guy (crying wolf for the umpteenth time about how we have to be ready for The Big Break) segues into how we can't do it all ourselves, that we're going to have to re-gear to manage outside (read: offshored) talent. Never mind how many effing miracles I've seen the workhorses pull off over the years. Without, I might add, any productive assistance from said Big Guy, who doesn't understand that his core competence is to 1.) gladhand customers and 2.) Keep the higher-up off our backs. Anything more hands-on than that is negatively productive.

So, yeah, thanks heaps for the vote of confidence, dude. I suppose we should be flattered that he thinks we'll emerge from our technical chrysalises as fully formed project/program managers as naturally as anything six-legged manages to do. But to whine about how we can't find programming talent in the area--two colleges and a tech school notwithstanding--all while reflexively defaulting to offshoring as the solution and not see themselves as part of the problem (at least in the macro-sense)?

What.

The.

Fuck.

Like I needed another reason to move ASAP. Which I suppose is kind of the flip side of working so closely or so long with some folks that they're like family. Sometimes you really need put some distance between you and the office's peculiar brand of insanity, if only to grow into your own skin a little better.

Halcyon evening

2011-08-15T20:17:00.000-07:00

We busted our butts, and I think it was worth it. The real estate agent came by tonight to take photos/footage. (I wasn't home at the time, or I would have snarked, "The house is ready for its close-up, Mr. DeMille!" which would probably have earned me a scowl or blank looks--either one deserved.) Dearest, however, reports that she was pleased, judging by her "You guys have been busy!" comment.

Such ridiculousness, this charade of living in a dollhouse while it's liable to be looked at. But if that's what tips the balance in a buyer's mind, I refuse to feel like a fraud: "Never tell the truth to anyone not worthy of it." Or something like that.

Still so much to do...but right now I'm savoring the milestone...and the illusion that it's all a downhill coast from here--with sun and flower-scented breeze at our backs, no less. Now to bed, and, hopefully a smidgeon of decompression/healing.

Forward momentum

2011-08-06T21:51:00.000-07:00

There's just something inexpressibly sad about packing up books. It's like telling friends that you don't have time for them right now, and honestly don't know when you'll be able to get together with them. Packing the dollhouse I've had since grade school is a bit rough too--that's become a de facto symbol of having roots in the ground.

I'm not sniveling, mind you. Not in the wake of taping up U-Haul boxes a week ago with nothing less than fierce joy. The pace of this week will be nothing short of grueling--with Dearest bearing more of the brunt of it than I. Then again, pound-for-pound, working for me and mine always spices the exhaustion with exhilaration.

Another inch

2011-07-28T15:29:00.000-07:00

Dearest & I signed the contract today to put the house up for sale next month.

Now, were I George W. Bush, I'd put on a flight suit and slap myself on the back under a big ol' "Mission Accomplished" banner. But I'm too busy semi-freaking that we have but couple weeks for a freakin' lot of work to make the place "HGTV-ready" (to quote the broker's semi-sarcastic term.) Once upon a couple incarnations ago, I would have scoffed at pretending that we don't actually live there. But that was before I learned that no one deserves the truth they're not willing to see/hear.

Now, if the Legislative and Executive branches could be considerate enough to not trash the economy and the value of the American dollar in the meantime, I'd be most obliged. I feel like I've already tapped out my lifetime ration of luck with this whole venture, and that the Gods will not be appeased by my offering of sweat and fret.

Another baby step

2011-07-18T13:02:00.001-07:00

The first real estate agent (of two scheduled thus far) is coming to look at the place tonight. Dearest has been doing the heavy lifting--literally and figuratively--on schlepping the extraneous stuff off to storage-exile. So much clutter still left to go--what happens when two pack-rats with weird hobbies park under the same roof for nearly a decade.

But incremental progress is progress nevertheless. Being the ex-Physics major, I can smirk all nerdy-hipster smugly and remind myself that velocity, not acceleration, is a part of the formula.

Two down, three to go

2011-06-14T12:24:00.001-07:00

The boss-man doesn't have a problem w/having another remote office, although I know from past experience, I've edged myself closer to the chopping block for the next downturn. Was planning to do some serious professional networking once we've landed at our next address anyway.

Had brekky with Dad this morning & gave him the heads-up with the proviso that Mom is not to know until a little of the dust in her life has settled. P.'s not due into town until next month...if then. Best Friend will be the hardest...if I don't start losing it during that, it'll be a miracle.

I feel like I'm hectoring Dearest on the home renovation schedule--I hate that feeling. Couldn't shake that feeling all through crashing out the moving "inventory" for landing, and should have known better than to think I could kiss it goodbye until moving time. Gack.

Next up: Carpet/Linoleum shopping. An ideal couple-building exercise, to be sure... [eyeroll]

One from the Dept. of Small Mercies

2011-06-06T19:39:00.001-07:00

Immediate family has been cranking me off a lot lately. Mostly in the sense that I feel like I'm kept outside the loop even when I'm supposed to be in it. Which is enough fodder for crankiness. But this being pushed to the outside of the herd makes it that much more tempting to think that Dad might have actually had a right opinion or two all these years. Fortunately, all I have to do is remember that, even if he did, he did f***-all about it.

But in the grand scheme of things--in this case meaning my life--it does considerably ease the guilt of not sticking around. If the fact that there's no such thing as unlimited, unconditional love from me makes me a bad person...so be it. You might be, in some cases, less obvious about looking at me as the family moneybags. Or--in other cases--bother to live by the "values" into which I was indoctrinated. Or--in all cases--acknowledge that the lessons of the past apply to you.

In one sense, it's liberating to write that. But mostly it's just pathetic. Why? Because it took me so effing long to stop fooling myself that nearly anyone can change, given the right mix of incentives. And that's because the first step is self-awareness--something this branch of the family tree seems to be pretty thin on. Myself included.

Done...and done

2011-05-26T21:19:00.000-07:00

Belated post by nearly a month...but on a blog that's been shamefully neglected for closing on a year and a half, it's proverbial coals to Newcastle.

Long-excuse-short, The Gods do, sometimes, look out for fools. This one in particular. Again. Go figure. We're officially permanent residents, with paperwork and everything. Although we need to...you know...actually relocate now. (In all honesty, though, I can't stop myself from envisioning the scenario where we apply for the PR card and then learn that the nice CIC/border agent--with the gorgeously Gallic nose--missed something during the "landing" process, and, well, too bad for us: Do not pass "Go"; do not collect $200.)

It's still largely a secret. Oddly, my (non-Dearest) best friends don't know. Dropping the bomb on Mom has been postponed b/c she's already lost one of her "babies." I don't think Dad--to whom I had to go for certain familial details for the application really takes it seriously. But we've been a full time zone apart since 1979, so what's another time zone, really?

The Office Illuminati d--n sho' don't know. Normally, I'd let the chips fall where they may--"Short-timer's Syndrome" is already setting in. But information is power. And not much insight has been coming my way lately, so I indulge a certain semi-spiteful payback in kind. It won't last much longer, though: It's just not sustainable.

In the meantime, I'm trying to cultivate an ethic of trying to accomplish one thing toward the goal of moving per day. That's not going so well, but the dust is already settling re: recent "extracurriculars," both planned and not. With each little inch forward, though, I can feel the sense of adventure rising, and that's a feeling I wouldn't mind developing an addiction to.

Shout-out to Kansas

2010-01-29T10:18:00.000-08:00

I understand that the jury took less than an hour to find "pro-life" Scott Raeder guilty of murdering someone in cold blood after years of low-level terrorism. Now, if only that mouth-breathing thug Phil Kline and the mouthpiece of the anti-choice Al Qaeda (a.k.a. Operation Rescue) could be tried and convicted as collaborators, I'd call the justice complete.

I've said it before, but I don't think it can be stressed enough: If these douchebags would give a tenth of the hyperventilating to the children who die of malnourishment, disease, genocide, disaster, abuse, etc., we could have a productive discussion. But to them the abstract of a fetus or a happy middle class white baby on a billboard is all that matters. It might be more productive trying to have a rational discussion with a rabid pit-bull in heat.

Big ups to the prosecutors in this case for the immediate accomplishment and also for demonstrating that the entire state hasn't in fact gone over to the Religious Reich.

Really, PHP, really?!?!?!?!

2010-01-28T09:24:00.000-08:00

If I want to use an HTML <SELECT> drop-down list that allows the user to select multiple items, PHP requires that its name end with a pair of square brackets, []. Otherwise, PHP only recognizes the last selected item. Wow, even Microsoft's much-maligned "classic" ASP can do better than that.

I guess I'm just stunned by the arrogance of a language that required programmers to change standard HTML naming conventions to process REQUEST data. That the naming conventions will mostly likely break any JavaScript references to the <SELECT> list is even more stupefying.

Documents in Montreal

2010-01-07T12:29:00.000-08:00

FedEx came through, and the package representing much collective effort (on my part and Dearest's) was delivered--so far as I know--without incident. I'm annoyed with the paralegal for not replying to Tuesday night's email asking him to skim the list of enclosed documents had any red flags. Will nag tonight. On to finding something else to fret about, be it a screw-up on my/our part or a particularly crabby CIC agent reviewing our app. & documentation or whatever...

Second milestone (hopefully) reached

2010-01-06T11:11:00.001-08:00

Two pounds of paper in a FedEx envelope, sixty-four bucks on my credit card, and a guilty twinge of my conscience over the carbon footprint of overnighting something to Montreal, all before my first cup of coffee. Hopefully, that's all that's needed to convince the CIC folks that they should let us in as productive members of Canadian society.

No red carpet required--nay, nary even a butler to open the door while the valet parks the car. Just pretty-please-with-organic-fair-trade-chocolate-sauce-on-top no more having to take off in the middle of the day to stand in front of desks or counters. No more freakout moments of "Oh, $#!+--we were supposed to have that notarized!" No more digging through boxes to find documents that have no relevance to our day-to-day existence. No more being told that we'll have to pay handsome fees for 6-8 week waits. And for love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, no more gut-dropping moments when we realize that some faceless bureaucracy has dropped the ball.

But most importantly, I just hope that we have, in fact, dotted all "i"s and crossed all "t"s. After the package--His Noodliness willing--lands on the paralegal's desk tomorrow morning, the second round of waiting begins. I'm not particularly good at waiting, but given the choice between waiting and scrambling...yeah.

My subconscious still surprises me at times

2009-12-28T20:39:00.000-08:00

Normally, I think it's boorish to talk about dreams, but I was just surprised to find that my subconscious is so slow on the uptake.

Backstory: There's a recurring theme in my dreams where I am present when my (maternal) grandparents' graves are unearthed--sometimes with purpose, sometimes through freakish accident. Another theme is that I'm venturing into their house (which was control-burned by the Fire Dept. something like 20 years ago). Once, Grandma was somehow alive despite the fact I knew in the dream that she wasn't supposed to be.

I lost an uncle just over a month back, and last night was the first night I returned in my dreams to the house in which he and my aunt (still living, albeit in a nursing home) shared for decades. Almost returned, anyway--I woke up before the fact. Now I wonder how often I'll be returning in sleep to that house, which is on the opposite end of the road on which my grandparents' house stood.

...And yet you will weep, and know why...It is Margaret you mourn for...

Nice call-out

2009-12-25T17:44:00.000-08:00

I can't say I'm a fan of what's become of health care reform, particularly given the anti-choice poison-pills and the big fat, chocolate-dipped giveaway to insurance companies in the form of the coverage mandate. Frankly, I hope the reconciled version dies and the process begins again--with rather less hysteria. What will be remembered of the 2009 putsch, though, is how close it came...and that the GOP lost the round.

That being said, I thought that the smackdown the Associated Press handed the hypocrites in the Grandstanding Old Party was ace: Democrats see GOP Hypocrisy in health care debate.

The bleat that "the economy has changed since the Medicare expansion" just doesn't wash. When you pass an entitlement in perpetuity, do you assume that the coffers will be full and still expect to balance a budget during the lean times? I call bull$#!+ on that line of self-excusing spin. Particularly as the economy was rather precarious even after things settled down post-9/11. I knew it at the time, and I've had six whole credits of Economics. And these so-called leaders couldn't figure that out? Really?

Just goes to show what not having to do your own grocery shopping and balance your own checkbook does to your mindset, I guess. Man, I hope these pinheads are handed their heads in 2010...

D-minus way-too-friggin'-little

2009-12-23T17:21:00.001-08:00

The second to last piece dropped into our laps last night, largely thanks to Dearest's persistence, and the last piece was handed to me early this evening. All should--Flying Spaghetti Monster willing--be safely stashed in the fire safe now. Weather permitting, I should be able to FedEx the whole lot to the paralegal no later than Monday.

I won't moon Fate by considering this a done deal: There could be any number of hurdles, delays and other bureaucratic nightmares in store--in fact, I'll be shocked if there are not. But I'm celebrating this milestone nevertheless...and toasting from my usual half-empty cup, hoping that I/we haven't overlooked something. I just wish that I could share the Snoopy-dance with a few more folks.

My most immediate boss took the news pretty well, all in all, and was actively looking to find ways to keep me working for the firm even after the (still hypothetical) move goes down many months hence. Which was quite touching. Still is, actually.

D minus 70

2009-11-09T15:43:00.001-08:00

Finally was able to drop the bomb on the boss as discreetly as possible. It seemed to go well enough, particularly as I held out the possibility of either working as a contractor or with folks already up there. The funny part is that he asked me to write the first draft of my own job documentation letter for the immigration service. Tonight's gonna be full, with the workout and all.

D minus 88

2009-10-23T21:22:00.000-07:00

My second-to-last document came in today. I'm holding off asking for a letter of reference (more like a description of what I do, but oh, well...) for a bit longer, for reasons that should be obvious. Dearest's last school is driving me up a wall--I'm almost ready to grab the wheel on this bus and make life miserable for the superior of the woman who's supposed to be (but patently isn't) figuring out why there's no record of graduation on file.

Grrrrrrr....and I thought I loathed the gatekeepers at my last mega-corporation job... Then again, it's been about a decade since the last time I had to push the "Screaming Unreasonable Bitch" button, so maybe I'm due.

This had better be worth the annoyance and expense. But, on the positive side as of next Monday, it will be illegal to use a cellphone (the usual way) while driving in the province of Ontario. Something that should be a no-brainer, but you could line up American idiots from here to the moon who will scream that insisting that they stop endangering other people's lives is a violation of free speech. Actually, I rather like the prospect of lining them up to the moon, because that means that most of them will have to be in space, which will definitely keep them off the roads...and hopefully chlorinate the gene pool in the process.

So maybe the annoyance isn't quite so annoying nor the expense quite so dear...assuming that the immigration process goes reasonably smoothly, of course.

Keep ranting your way to insolvency, moron

2009-10-09T21:15:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to send a big fat, double-middle-finger-laced razzberry to Rupert Murdoch tonight after reading about his little tantrum that involved verbal Molotov cocktails like "kleptomanic" and "flat-earther." It's a testament to how deeply into the red the needle on my Hypocrite Meter was just buried that I'll actually resort to profanity on this blog, but here goes:

Fuck you, you festering thrice-used douchebag. You overpay and give airtime to enough sociopathic know-nothings that you, sir, have precisely fuck-all to say about either kleptomania or flat-eartherism.

Look, you old goat: If you don't get that the business model is changing, that's your problem--and the only pity is that you won't live long enough to see me laugh at you pissing away your sleaze-mongering empire while trying to boil the ocean. Granted, I didn't spend much more than a year as a member of The Fourth Estate, but it was long enough to learn that subscriptions were a pittance compared to advertising revenues. In fact, I would be surprised to learn that the consumer revenue fully covered printing and distribution costs.

If you're worried about breaking even, perhaps you should stop hiring delusional prima donnas that consider the First Amendment carte blanche to project their "fair and balanced" pornographically paranoid fantasies onto the adults trying to duct tape this f*cked country back together after the thugs and morons you lionized trashed it for eight years. Here's a novel thought: How's about pretending to be a professional rather than a neocon mafia padrone? Because, yeah, you can probably rile up the base for another year...no one's gonna expect the economy or the job market to stop sucking before then. That's a lot of discontent you can milk.

But after that...ooh, you're really rolling the bones there, jack. Because maybe--just maybe--Joe America's gonna get bored with checking under his bed for the re-education camps and death panels and floridated water supplies you've been "warning" him about. Maybe you'll get lucky and there'll be another terrorist strike on U.S. soil. Or, more likely, some teabagging nutcase's pot-shot will get past the Secret Service. Or you can fabricate/augment some juicy financial or sex scandal to keep pushing your litterbox-liner. But if you can't...what then? Doubling down on an already bull$#!+ product might not be such a good idea. I hope for its own sake that history plays out differently from the scenarios that would put more ill-gotten gelt in your bank account. But I'll save a sliver of enjoyment for your discomfiture if it does.

Calling out more faux outrage

2009-09-25T10:29:00.001-07:00

To be a Theocon, one must pair any number of conflicting beliefs that, in a sufficiently developed intellect would be tantamount to mixing matter and anti-matter.

But those screaming about America's "moral" obligation to avoid saddling "our grandchildren" with stimulus debt are largely the same ones who don't give a rat's backside about trashing the world those grandchildren will inhabit.

So, folks: Why so...selective in your high-horse sense of "responsibility?" (And I thought it didn't matter anyway, because you all would be Raptured out of any consequences?) I'm dying to hear the rationalizations: Dazzle me.

Bulldozer tracks

2009-09-12T20:56:00.001-07:00

I once quipped to a friend that the problem with setting out to bulldoze your past is that sometimes it bulldozes you instead. I spent a chunk of this morning pulling old greeting cards and letters (that had just been pulled from storage boxes) from their envelopes and putting them into piles to be stored in a smaller box until after the next move.

Sobering enough to read the writing of those now dead, in some cases almost hearing their voices read the words. And humbling--with the telescoping of twenty years or so--to see how faithfully cards had been sent at birthdays, Christmas, sometimes even Valentine's Day. But, most of all, deeply shaming to realize how little I reciprocated. A futile and utterly childish exercise, crying the way I did--wishing I could have those folks back for even a few minutes to tell them that I really did love them, despite being the selfish and self-absorbed @$$hole that I was...and still largely am.

So I guess if there's any point to this post other than sheer navel-gazing, it's to encourage my gentle reader to visualize reading each greeting card or letter they receive twenty years hence. As much as I've avoided contact with Christmas, though, the experience has changed my thinking on digging out the boxes of cards and reviving the tradition of sending them out.

D minus 130

2009-09-11T21:11:00.000-07:00

Huzzah, three more documents rolled in today. That leaves four apiece for Dearest and me. And the passport photos. But those are an instant gratification kind of thing, so I'm not really counting them.

One little mystery solved

2009-09-11T15:16:00.000-07:00

According to the folks at Kourtaki wineries, 85% of retsina is made from a grape called Savatiano. So now I just need to track down a flavor profile and try to approximate it with the kit wines on the market. Oh, yeah, and find pine resin suitable for food use. But if wine-making isn't an adventure, then you're doing something wrong...

D minus 131

2009-09-10T17:58:00.000-07:00

Frabjous day, three sets of school transcripts arrived in today's mail, leaving only one of those in the "pending" state. Not that I'm feeling complacent--just a bit of gratification.

I couldn't help but notice, though, that the attorney's flunkie wouldn't give me a straight answer to my timeline question. Even more frustrating, the Canadian Immigration website won't release processing time estimates, purportedly because they don't have enough data after jacking around the process to jiggle the queue. (Ummm...I'm expected to do it, and with far more unknowns, folks!)

But even another baby step forward is encouraging at this point. I'm just hoping we make it out before the crazee gets too thick.

Another meal for the monkey

2009-09-09T15:24:00.001-07:00

Oh, awesomeness. Double-dipped-in-dark-chocolate awesomeness. Cheeseburger poisoning at its finest, hot off the intertubes:

A corrupt California legislator is caught accepting favors from a lobby directly under his jurisdiction.
Sexual favors.
Kinky sexual favors.
From two (2) women, one nineteen (19) years his junior.
Because he bragged about about it without realizing that the mic was hot.
He's (of course) Republican and married.
And opposes same-sex marriage.

Short of Duvall living at C-Street and being a DC pol, does it get much better, I ask you? I think I'm going to start rating sex scandals on a scale of one to a hundred, just like wines are rated. Might even develop my own vocabulary, too. This one's solidly in the lower-nineties.

D minus 132

2009-09-09T14:00:00.000-07:00

Yay, something to fret about! Dearest is missing one employment letter of reference and a diploma. So not quite everything is in flight, even after yesterday's jaunt to the post office for certified letter and money order. Oh yeah, and we still need the passport photos. So that's something else to take my mind off the exercise of wondering whether letters/checks were lost in the mail or are being ignored until the last minute by a bureaucrat (public or private).

You've no idea how badly the geek in me wants to plug all this into project-/bug-tracking software like Mantis...

D minus 134

2009-09-07T17:26:00.000-07:00

Well, it seems my reputation for being the ever-so-slightly more organized one. Dearest emerged from the dusty-box spelunking adventure with the high school diploma and college degree; I only found the former. So it will set me back forty clams and 6 - 8 weeks to get a copy of my Bachelor's degree. Still more running around in the morning on behalf of other documentation that will cost only $20...but requires the nuisance of a money order.

Fortunately--in a silver lining sort of way--I already have to stop at the Post Office to send a registered letter to the afore-mentioned previous employer who, I suspect is the proverbial dry husk of its former self. The other real prize of my foraging among old papers and other memorabilia is more documentation for my time with that employer--things like performance reviews, recognitions, etc.--in the event that my gut feeling is correct and they will ignore all requests for documentation.

Hopefully, though, tomorrow will see the last of the requests going out the door. Between the processing fees Canadian Immigration, the extra we're paying the lawyer to help us dot "i"s and cross "t"s and the (partially self-inflicted) nickel-and-dime "incidentals," Permanent Residency is not a trivial expense. Canada had better be the Promised Land, I tell ya... ;-)

After tomorrow comes the hard part--a.k.a. the waiting. Actually, no--scratch that. We still need to have a handful of passport-style photos taken. Maybe I'll procrastinate on that so that it doesn't feel quite as though waiting is the only option. ;-) ;-)

D minus 137

2009-09-04T12:26:00.000-07:00

Kind of mind-blowing, really, how much of the day just a few letters/forms can chew up. I'm sending out requests for school transcripts and getting the info. for Plan B, if things like degrees/diplomas/etc. can't be found in the boxes in the garage.

If I gave bureaucracies any credit for human introspection, I'd suspect that the paper-gathering required for this move is not only an attempt to weed out those lacking will, but also to force people to think about the past from which they are--geographically--distancing themselves. There's a bit of that, but it's the proverbial two-edged sword. Writing to my high school to request transcripts brings back fond memories of the playground it truly was (after the prison that was junior high), but also makes me feel chagrined at the disparity between the then-certainty that I would do something enviably remarkable, and the reality that is the latter-day workaday me.

But, don't they always say at commencement that every end is a new beginning? I can sip a of rejuvenative hope and perhaps even courage from that bowl.

And with that, it is time to send several pieces of paper through the printer and out the door...

D minus 139

2009-09-02T10:55:00.000-07:00

Eek! In the stressing over the extraneous personal check, I totally missed the fact that the visa applications were actually delivered yesterday. That would have been D minus 140 for producing the rest of the documentation. Nothing like an extra shot of adrenaline to go with the coffee-spiked milk I just poured...

Am officially taking Friday off to make all the calls that would be impolitic to do at work, even over lunch locked in the coat room with my cellphone. Still wrestling with the issue of whether or not to trust my current employer to be adult and professional about this, though. Gotta make the mind up soon...

This is your brain on a caffeine deficit...

2009-09-01T11:24:00.000-07:00

As part of the Canadian visa process, Dearest and I have to have documentation from the FBI that shows that neither has a criminal record. We bundled up our fingerprint forms and credit card authorizations and such up into separate envelopes last night, which was all well and good.

But when I was at the FedEx office this morning, I completely spaced the fact that the credit card authorizations were in the packets, had a minor panic, scribbled out a check, and tossed it into the packet. Now I'm fretting-fretting-fretting-fretting-fretting that the folks at the FBI will take one look at the check (which is not a valid form of payment) and use it as an excuse to can our apps without even opening them.

Frack, frack, frack, frack, freakity-fricking-frack.

Don't it always seem to go...

2009-08-31T14:49:00.001-07:00

Just had an email from the immigration attorney's paralegal to the effect that the Permanent Residency applications for Dearest and me have been formally submitted. So the bacon's in the pan, and the scramble to muscle or scrounge supporting documentation resumes in earnest. We're at D-minus-140.

Knowing that the arrow has been loosed has me fighting off a little freakitude, which isn't surprising for someone whose brain waits for the sound of one of life's doors swinging closing behind her to turn around to see what's being lost. Whether what's being lost is actually of consequence is itself inconsequential, but that's not the point. There are any number of people I will miss, and some are guaranteed to drop off my radar purely from inertia as life moves ahead.

Yet one look at the headlines--liberal, conservative, or non-partisan--is enough to tell me that we're doing the right thing. Pathetic that I have to move to another country to find the values that I was raised to believe were the hallmark of democracy. More pathetic still that the target country is, nominally, a monarchy. I read The Toronto Star (week)daily, so I like to think I have some idea of what we're getting into, politically and otherwise. No paradise, certainly, and more certainly not lily-white. But nevertheless politically saner and more fiscally sound than what's below their southern border. And if Putin keeps that crypto-right-winger Harper busy playing Tom Clancy cat-and-mouse games in the arctic, at least that's fewer CPU cycles he has for trying to re-create the rest of Canada in Alberta's image.

But, at any rate, I can officially say it's Game On, after years of ranting and desultorily collecting paperwork. [Deep breath.]

From the B-side

2009-08-29T11:27:00.000-07:00

Giving credit where it's due, it's good to see that a few adults are still knocking around the GOP: GOP blasts Idaho candidate's "Obama tags" comment. I will admit I'm impressed and the swiftness and lack of equivocation in Senator Crapo's and Governor Otter's condemnations.

Figures you'd get that kind of self-centered stupidity from a guy who makes his gelt raising wild animals, just so rich, manhood-challenged wankers can have the kind of "hunt" that leaves powder burns on the critter's hide.

Channeling FDR

2009-08-29T11:13:00.000-07:00

More completely concocted hysteria from the GOP: Fundraising letter hints GOP health care at risk

While children and adults are dying or having their lives stunted by an insurance oligopoly Every. Goddamn. Day., THIS is the best you can do? Outright lies about death panels and suicide manuals and pulling the plug on Grandma, and now partisan-based health care?

The longer this drags on, the more I keep hearing the echo of FDR: "I ask you to judge me by the enemies I've made." If I and any number of progressives are making enemies willing to lie their faces off--and so preposterously--to keep the unwashed masses from crashing their gated community, I consider it a badge of honor.

Good question

2009-08-28T14:35:00.000-07:00

George Carlin on phone plans:

"When did the phone bill become life's most critical document? In a country where you can buy cinnamon dental floss, cheese in a spray-can, and edible womens' panties, are people really breaking their balls to save nine cents on a fucking phone call?"

- "Back in Town"

Irony overload

2009-08-24T10:36:00.000-07:00

So I'm on my morning commute this morning, and wind up behind a truck (naturally) driven by an old dude (naturally) that bore three bumper-stickers.

The first stated the obvious, that Planned Parenthood was the largest provider of abortions in America. [snark]Really? Whodathunkit?[/snark].
The second proclaimed that you can't be Catholic and "Pro-abortion." No-brainer there. Why? Because absolutely no one is "pro-abortion." There is pro-choice and there is anti-choice. That's it. [snark]Good job: You've "framed" yourself into logical irrelevance.[/snark].
The third was the familiar ribbon shape, reading "Pray for Our Troops." Somehow I suspect the prayers I was being exhorted to offer were intended to wash the blood of an illegal war from their hands. [no-snark]As much as I prize my copy of Mark Twain's "The War Prayer," I would have happily tied it to a brick to put through the window of that truck, just to make sure this clueless hypocrite got the point. [/no-snark]

In other words, the standard "pro-lifer" who doesn't give a rat's backside about the embryo after it's born, and double that if it's not a Christian American, preferably white.

Dumbest headline ever?

2009-07-29T10:16:00.000-07:00

"Organic has no health benefits"

How about dumping poison into the environment to run into waterways and ground water? How about excessive fertilization wreaking havoc to water bodies as well with algae blooms that suck the oxygen--meaning the life--out of those water bodies?How about reflexively pumping livestock full of antibiotics that could be responsible for the next superbug? Don't those count as "unhealthy"?

Wow, talk about completely missing the point. It's all the difference in the world between self-centered short-term thinking and taking responsibility for one's impact on the world at large.

And speaking of Republican hypocrisy...

2009-07-29T08:11:00.001-07:00

Oh, how I've been jonesing for another viciously homophobic, anti-choice, white GOP douchebag to be outed. It's a monkey I can't get off my back, but I refuse to kick the addiction to schadenfreude. In fact, I can even wish that 1.) the intern in question had been male, and 2.) that Stanley (like Vitter, Ensign, and Sanford--who each called for Bill Clinton's resignation in the wake of the Lewinsky scandal) hadn't resigned.

The reason I dropped the d-bomb above is this gem:

"Whatever I stood for and advocated, I still believe to be true," he said during an interview Tuesday with Memphis radio station WREC-AM. "And just because I fell far short of what God's standard was for me and my wife, doesn't mean that that standard is reduced in the least bit."

No, Mr. Stanley. If the "standard" that you try to shove down the throats of law-abiding tax-payers in defiance of reason, data, and basic human dignity is not good enough for you (not to mention of a whole host of your ilk), it isn't good enough for anyone else--including those who doesn't presume to legislate their state and country into theocracy. Figgo to your fantasies about talking to sky-fairies who--quelle surprise--happen to agree with all of your bigoted notions, and give you a free pass for hypocrisy as well as abusing the power you were trusted with.

Republican hypocrisy...umm...shot down

2009-07-22T10:02:00.000-07:00

Kudos to the Senate--which includes some of its GOP alumni--for smacking down, however barely, a bill that would have allowed residents of "concealed carry" to pack hidden heat in states that did not have that (cough) "right."

That the measure gained 58 votes is a travesty in itself, but that's another rant for another day.

Funny, ain't it, how the GOP was all about "states rights" when it was a dog-whistle term for restoring segregation. Funny how they're willing to look the other way when states (and Christian terrorists) whittle away at Roe v. Wade. But if it's about letting states decide that they don't, in fact, want nutballs living out vigilante fantasies inside their borders, of course that's completely different, donchaknow?

The irony of me writing this is that, in about thirty-odd hours, I'll be at an NRA class learning how to safely use a handgun. So anyone who calls my cred. into question can just suck it.

Porn for liberals

2009-07-17T10:02:00.000-07:00

I'm thinkin' "Meghan McCain vs. Liz Cheney catfight." You like? Mind you, I don't exactly hold a special place in my heart for bottle-blonde GOPrincesses, but I'd totally, totally root for Meghan.

Another sign of the times

2009-07-07T19:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's run to the grocery store was more of a supplies run than a quick one-off. So instead of the $5 food pantry or animal shelter donation bag, I grabbed a $10 one. I've been noticing lately that the checkout folks have actually been thanking me for doing that, which they didn't do, say, a year a go. I sort'a wondered why. Yesterday I had my answer: After the cashier thanked me the second time, I covered my twinge of embarrassment by saying, "Well, thank you guys for making it easy to do that." "Not many people do it anymore," he replied with palpable sadness.

I loaded my bags into the trunk for the drive home and climbed into the driver's seat. Which is when I noticed the mini-booklet that someone had slipped into the passenger's side window I'd cracked to keep the interior from overheating. You guessed it: A religious tract. Paraphrasing to the back, I can begin a new life in Christ if I

Read my Bible every day.
Talk to God in prayer.
Tell others about Jesus.
Worship and serve in a Christian church.
"As Christ's representative in a needy world," show my "love and concern" for others.

Dudes, you have the priorities exactly backwards. Here I am, an infidel non-believer in a supposedly Christian nation, among the small minority willing to help fellow creatures when it's friggin' impossible not to notice the means to do so every time I buy groceries.

Do me a favor, peeps: The next time you talk to God, tell him that some manna would come in especially handy just now. Or at least he could send junior with some loaves and fishes. It's not that I mind carrying the ball--I'd do that in any case. That's just how I'm wired. But I do resent that so many on the benches and sidelines won't even get on the playing field--but won't give me credit for the points I score, just because I don't take my orders from their coach.

"Independence" Day

2009-07-04T16:58:00.000-07:00

Judas Priest, but I'm loathing this holiday even more than usual this year. It mostly has to do with the fact that Dearest is under the weather, but can't get any consistent rest. It's not even close to dark out, but the fireworks have been going off (on and off) for hours. The only surprise--and mercy--is that the neighbor's drama queen beagle hasn't been going off as well.

Why-oh-why can't we have sensible holidays that revolve around the tangible rather than the abstract? Why isn't there a Humane Society holiday? Or a Local Food Pantry Day? (The closest I can come to that is Eid Al Fitr, actually, but I'll be d--ned if I sign on to that creed, either...)

One of my college History profs. claimed that the notion of "freedom" in Colonial America was less a matter of freedom from the British empire than it was what he called "freedom from the vices of one's neighbors."

Listen. I have absolutely no yuppie ambitions of tearing up a portion of forest to "live out in the country." But, daaaaang. If I want to listen to music, that's what an iPod is for. If I want to stroke my ego with the constant sense of presence that a dog brings, I'll go to the pound and adopt one. If I want to listen to drunken inanity at midnight, I'll crash yer friggin' party. If I want to hear brat-children scream incessantly, I'll squeeze out a few of my own and skip that fussy little nicety we call parental discipline.

You know: Swinging arms meeting noses and all that. And bah humbug to any "freedom" that doesn't have responsibility as its B-side

Paging Dean Wormer...

2009-06-25T20:30:00.000-07:00

Oh, for pity's sake, next we'll all be on double-secret probation: FBI compounds mystery with secret justification of gag order. Hmmph. Alberto and the gang must've been Omega Theta Pi...

Some musing on the overlap of the conservative and Christian Right

2009-06-22T20:38:00.001-07:00

A recent blog post at Stupid Evil Bastard made me think again that a certain fundamentalist mentality overlaps on the right. People there tend to read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in the way they read the Bible, think in terms of the Founding Fathers in the same terms as prophets or saints, and tend to want to impose their notion of 1776 "fundamentalism" in rather the same manner.

If it didn't make me want to throw up in my mouth, I'd laugh. Under the "America" that the Founding Fathers envisioned, most of these folks wouldn't own enough property (in relative terms) to vote...and that's assuming that they weren't considered chattel in the mock-aristocracy that prevailed in post-Colonial America.

Dearest likes to say that ignorance can be cured; stupidity is forever. I'm not even sure that ignorance is that easy to overcome. I just want to wedgie the next mouth-breather who repeats the lie that liberalism and The Enlightenment are somehow antithetical to the America we've managed to create in spite of--d'ya hear me? IN SPITE OF--class warfare and sexism and racism and genocide and every artificial distinction that oozes from the underbelly of human nature.

Enough hagiography. And enough pretending that the Constitution was written on stone tablets brought down from Mount Vernon by George Washington. (Eek--throw in Charlton Heston and the NRA and you now have the Right in a nutshell. Sorry 'bout the mental image, folks...)

Awesome two liner

2009-06-11T18:23:00.000-07:00

From today's Questionable Content webcomic:

Intern: "Doesn't it bother you to get paid so much for such utter crap?"
Sven: "Meh. My artistic integrity wears a gimp suit and lives in a box."

I think that you can fairly say the same thing about integrity in general in many, many circles.

Playing catch-up...

2009-05-19T18:47:00.000-07:00

...and hoping that I'm not actually chasing my tail.

Huzzahs and handsprings, but the semester's done and the backlog is starting to recede a bit. Or at least it feels as though I can start to swim to shore after treading water for so long.

I had to go heads-down at work today to fill in for QA, and found myself listening to an album that I also had (on cassette, rendered off vinyl for that purpose) a quarter-century ago. And in realizing its age--and in consequence my own, arithmetic being implacable that way--I also thought, "Youth is overrated, but health is not."

So here's to looking ahead at a relatively unencumbered summer, with--almost assuredly--more breathing room for the things I love. Including writing for its own sake.

Oh, yeah

2009-04-23T20:44:00.000-07:00

First off, apologies for the (mostly) uncharacteristic hiatus. A few projects have stacked up, and I'm still behind. But this bijou from Daily Kos was too precious not to pass on: Rape is "Enhanced Dating".

'Nuff said.

Of bumper-marks and puppy-noses

2009-03-18T18:22:00.001-07:00

Earlier today, I felt like the proverbial puppy who caught the car it was chasing--the combination of exhilaration overlaid with "Now what?" The graphic artist who created some marketing images for me wrote to know whether I'd be interested in collaborating on a website that needs back-end code and database work.

Truth be told, I was hoping for exactly that scenario last Fall when I first commissioned the graphics from him. I can't yet afford to drop the day-job and freelance-fund larger projects at the moment. Having someone else pounding the pavement, drubbing up business seemed like a rather efficient way to build a portfolio before hanging out one's own shingle.

Yet--you knew there would be a "yet," didn't you?--while the work started out well enough, I had to prod the artist for its completion. Today, when I requested meeting to discuss the project, there was no response. Only this evening came a not-reply to the effect that he had somehow lost the client's phone number and didn't have an email address.

Not promising omens, any of them. So I did my due diligence and emailed the questions that had come to mind as I looked at the proposed website content and the example. But I fail to see how the gig will progress any further. A large part of me is straining at the metaphorical leash toward building a business of my own, so the disappointment is pretty palpable at the moment. The bounce in my step and glitter in my eye from this morning are gone.

So, if you'll excuse me, I need to go find them.

Republican revisionism well underway

2009-03-03T09:34:00.000-08:00

It didn't take long for RNC head Steele to cave, did it?

The takeaway is this: The GOP--you remember them, the "Party of Moral Values"--is now taking its orders from a double-chinned, thrice-divorced drug addict who can't manage stay out of trouble while on probation.

And yet, overeducated morons like David Brooks can delude themselves that the "polarization" lies solely at the feet of the left. That his ilk, which championed gay-bashing, immigrant-bashing, elective war, torture, tax cuts in the middle of a recession, union-busting, permanent Republican majorities, no bid contracts, private armies, et cetera ad nauseum, are "moderate" and "fiscally responsible."

If I were the believing sort, I would offer whatever libations and supplications were needed to bring down the wrath of the Gods of Politics and the swift execution of the Laws of Karma on the GOP's head. But not being that sort, I can only hope that the finger-pointing and revisionism and hypocrisy come home to roost for the next ten election cycles.

Buh-bye, "conscience rule"

2009-02-27T16:24:00.000-08:00

It seems nearly certain that the Obama Administration will repeal the "conscience rule," and it should come as no surprise to my gentle reader that my reaction was, "Yee-esssssss!" May it be a little balm for troubled ghost of George Orwell, whose spirit must have been restless these past eight years.

I've blogged about this subject previously, so I won't add more flogger stripes to the equine carcass. I can only proffer my fervent prayer to whatever Political Gods may be listening that the example of steady, competent adults in the Executive Branch will begin the process of American De-weinification. I don't expect a complete rollback, but a palpable decrease in the denialist, anti-intellectual, whiny, me-too, finger-pointing, magical-thinking, lazy, paparazzi culture would be a huge, HUGE improvement.

Memo to American Culture: Just because you believe it doesn't make it true. Just because you wish for it doesn't mean you deserve to have it happen. Just because you've convinced yourself that you're "good" doesn't mean you are. See, there's this flip side to your Mom telling you that you're special. So did everybody else's Mom. And the Moms were all correct. And you need to grok the ramifications of that.

Now put down the Cheezey-Poofs, grab some challenging non-fiction and get that over-indulged @$$ on the StairMaster. You've got eight years to make up for, America.

Awesome send-up

2009-02-19T16:31:00.000-08:00

Gotta find me some more Keith Blanchard after this: Attention K-Mart Shoppers: Could America's Throwaway Holiday Crap Industry Be Next To Fail?

Actually, just did. Mind you, I'll admit that it's tough to square that attitude with Blanchard being a co-founder of Maxim, which just feeds double-bacon cheeseburgers the entitlement mentality of the American male. (A contradiction not unlike someone working at a weight club and a fast food joint.) Sharp, funny writing, though. Today, that's enough for my mood.

Whimper

2009-02-10T08:02:00.000-08:00

New York Times slideshow of the Venetian Carnevale. Somebody get me a bellini.

Can I get a "Ramen!" brothers and sisters?

2009-01-31T20:11:00.000-08:00

(Oh, and pretty-please do me the huge favor of laughing directly and conspicuously in the face of the next free market apologist who utters the word "accountablility." Obliged, as always.)

As if we needed further proof...

2009-01-30T20:05:00.000-08:00

...that the party of Lincoln has become the party of Douglas.

Exhibit A: Mitt Romney. (with all due apologies to Monty Python)

Point One: You pathetically passe, flip-flopping, pandering git.

Point Two: When your peeps--the party of Moola Uber Alles--can't understand the economics of contraception, how do you expect to have the brains to figure out how to pay for all the unwanted zygotes that will flood the social system? Better yet--why don't you volunteer to adopt them ALL? Squelching contraceptive funding has consequences. And you should bear them (and personally, dammit!) more than anyone when you presume to make life-decisions for those far more vulnerable than you, who will never, EVER have to worry about making the rent.

Point Three: You pathetically passe, flip-flopping, pandering git.

Point : Contrary to your puerile Presidential power-fantasies (not unlike Spaceballs' Lord Dark Helmet's action figure role-playing), EX-GOVERNOR, EX-CANDIDATE, EX-RELEVANT Mister Romney, Gitmo's policies are not, in fact, the handiwork of the Executive Branch. You might have glossed over it in your law classes, but there are actually three branches of Government. That's what separates us--albeit barely in this day and age--from dictatorship. In case you didn't notice it during your round of glad-handing, not everyone agrees that the Bush Junta exercised the best judgment in what, exactly constituted "the worst of the worst." And by "best judgment" I also mean not making $#!+ up out of pure childish spite at not getting your way.

Point Five: You pathetically passe, flip-flopping, pandering git.

Point Six: There is NOOOOO!!! Point six.

Point Seven: You pathetically passe, flip-flopping, pandering git.

. . .

Actually, I could go on (and on) about the Mitster's predictions for the "fallout" from the stimulus package, but I think that the hypocrisy is pretty self-evident. Do a simple Google search for "Romney" and "bailout" or "Romney" and "TARP" and all but the Limbaugh-sucking Kool-Aid-snorters will see quite clearly that government spending is only socialist and irresponsible and dangerous when it's not handed to suits who make a [cough] "living" [cough] shoving numbers around on spreadsheets when they're not schmoozing with other, more alpha-suits.

(Not that I'm a fan of much of huge spending, mind you; it's the mind-boggling, sociopathic country club tribalism of the hypocrisy that galls me more than anything. I want to see these fat bastard kleptocrats and their enablers ostracized, pauperized and just plain ground into the filth as only hopeless poverty can grind a spirit.)

But, back in the Reality-based Community, Mittens has to get over himself: Right now he's basically Sarah Palin minus the nylons and pumps. Even the grandstanding Guiliani has more dignity, and he's actually donned nylons and pumps. Not exactly the high ground there, hey, Mitt?

On the bright side, though, I hope that Romney and Limbaugh and O'Reilly and Coulter and Hannity and the whole auto-fellating lot of them keep screeching. Loudly. Ringing in the ears of those who actually work for a living...or would be working if the bankrollers of these louts hadn't swept every last crumb out when they raided America's cookie-jar. America's historic memory once in a great while runs long. Remember 2004? Laissez-faire capitalism and "moral values" don't exactly pay the bills in 2009, now do they? Neither does immigrant-bashing, gay-baiting, stem-cell-coddling or politicizing-everything-that-isn't-red-hot. Bottom line: Even faith-based initiatives are grounded in cold, hard cash. And so I hope that the silver lining of the recession of 2009 and 2010 is that it brands into our race-memory the lesson that obsessing over bedroom shenanigans to the complete exclusion of boardroom criminality has very dire consequences for a society.

As much as I want to see a vibrant multi-party system, I'm still hoping that the GOP still doesn't get it. Understand that don't mean to detract in the least from Michael Steele's resounding achievement being elected as the head of the RNC today. (Take THAT, Strom Thurmond, you hypocritical child-molester) But my gut says that anyone--and I do mean anyone--elected to that post is like the Prime Minister of a coalition government, and doomed accordingly. The racist underpinnings of the GOP (David Duke, anyone?) have become too emboldened by the troglodytes-in-charge for the last fifteen years and more. Steele will be thrown under the bus--assuming that he isn't blatantly ordered to sit at the back of it--and replaced by someone of sufficiently Neanderthal political leanings. Or the party will split after another drubbing in the polls.

Either way, good riddance to them and their @#$%^&-up priorities.

Knocking it out of the park

2009-01-28T13:25:00.000-08:00

For reasons I can never quite put my finger on, I'm normally more of a grudging admirer of Arianna Huffington. But her The Era of Not Getting It: The Marie Antoinettes of the Meltdown is an exception. Laser-precision and not sparing either political party...and well worth a few minutes of your reading time, IMO.

Uh-oh, Part II

2009-01-25T11:32:00.000-08:00

I'm a programmer by trade, so I can't claim to be unbiased when it comes to offshoring. Partly, it's the insult of the double-speak that brasses me off. To wit: I can't get full concentration when I need it because The Powers That Be insist that being stuffed into an eight-cube "pod" makes me more "collaborative." Yet the same suits have no problem putting half the friggin' planet between those who dictate the specifications for software and those who implement them. (To contemplate such contradictions does not lead to Zen-like enlightenment; rather, it is the short road to madness.)

But quite apart from the headline-hogging aspects of offshoring our manufacturing base or our brain trust (and with it any motivation for new generations to opt for useful trades), there is the the question of whether or not America's corporate kleptocrats are digging our graves in more than a purely economic sense.

As if the profits made by Big Pharma weren't obscene enough, let's talk about the "side effects" of offshoring drug manufacturing to squeeze a few more drops of cream from that cash cow:

First, there's the strategic aspect. If medicines, particularly vaccines, are primarily manufactured in China, the question of availability (particularly in times of pandemic) are second only to those of quality, given the litany of tainted and/or deadly products in the headlines. In the event of pandemic, the Chinese government will--quite understandably--attempt to take care of its own. Except for those who can be bribed to turn a blind eye to the black market. Which, naturally, will be positively rife with tainted, counterfeit or under-dosed stock.
Now let's throw into the mix the abysmal environmental track record of these nations, this time turning to India's slice of pharmaceutical manufacturing. The take-away: "Those Indian factories produce drugs for much of the world, including many Americans. The result: Some of India's poor are unwittingly consuming an array of chemicals that may be harmful, and could lead to the proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria." [emphasis mine] Yes, I realize that bacteria and viruses are different things, but viruses mutate too, and randomly messing with peoples' immune systems most certainly doesn't help matters.
Finally, let's connect the last dots by considering the geography of avian influenza. The Spanish Flu pandemic spread world-wide in the considerably slower-paced WWI era. We, on the other hand, live in a world where an iPod is engraved in China Tuesday afternoon and on my desk Thursday morning.

Anyone else hear a ticking sound?

This is what I voted for, peeps

2009-01-22T19:13:00.000-08:00

Copied directly from Daily Kos (with mad props):

On the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we are reminded that this decision not only protects women’s health and reproductive freedom, but stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters. I remain committed to protecting a woman’s right to choose.

While this is a sensitive and often divisive issue, no matter what our views, we are united in our determination to prevent unintended pregnancies, reduce the need for abortion, and support women and families in the choices they make. To accomplish these goals, we must work to find common ground to expand access to affordable contraception, accurate health information, and preventative services.

On this anniversary, we must also recommit ourselves more broadly to ensuring that our daughters have the same rights and opportunities as our sons: the chance to attain a world-class education; to have fulfilling careers in any industry; to be treated fairly and paid equally for their work; and to have no limits on their dreams. That is what I want for women everywhere.

Ramen, brothers and sisters. Ramen.

Why am I reading about this in "The Daily Beast"?

2009-01-22T10:45:00.000-08:00

Just makes you fantasize about putting the the "lynch" in "Merrill Lynch" doesn't it? John Thain's $87,000 rug. Fantasize. With a little extra flourish of blisters on manicured hands--bleeding from the work of digging their own grave.

Mind you, "fantasize" is the operative word. If this day sees the order that ends some measure of the petty, indiscriminate vindictiveness embodied in Guantanamo Bay, surely I can lend my small echo to the return of rule of law.

But my fantasies are my own.

So my question for the Fourth Estate is: Why aren't headlines screaming variations of this story Every Mother-Loving Day until every last corner-suite kleptocratic wanker is exposed, investigated, and brought to court in class-action lawsuit(s) and/or criminal trial? It can't be lack of material, that's for d--n sure.

Update, 01.23.2008: I heard the $1.2 office upgrade discussed on the other side of the cubicle wall, so the word is getting out. These are pretty down-to-earth guys, too. Do I perchance feel the first tremors of the coming revolution???

Hahahahahahahahahaha

2009-01-19T10:25:00.000-08:00

H/t to Daily Kos for linking to: DC's High-level Social Scene Now Mingles Black and White.

Cue Lily von Shtupp: "Is it twue how zey say zat you people are...gifted?"

giggle

...

SNORRRRRT!!!

Seriously, though, my Inner History Nerd can't help but wonder whether the salons of 19th century Washington DC were cultivating dudes in coonskin caps following the elections of Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. Wouldn't surprise me.

In a way, I'm even kinda hoping that at least one of the First Daughters morphs into something sassy enough to give Princess Alice a run for her money.

A good working definition of irony

2009-01-16T22:41:00.000-08:00

(Coincidentally, I just received Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" back from the co-worker who'd borrowed it. She hated it, but she's glad she read it, if that makes any sense...)

Anyhoo...does anyone else find it in the least ironic that those who would ban the book from a Canadian high school would be the ones most likely to salivate over the prospect of living in the Republic of Gilead?

Memo: Homeschool if you can't bear the thought of exposing little Johnny to the real world. But for love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, don't be surprised when neither he nor your grandkids ever visit you in the nursing home. (Grandkids, of course, being predicated on you arranging his marriage for him.)

Now, I realize that a democracy (and a civilized society in general) hinges upon multiple points of view. But the sense of entitlement of these parochial, super-sized toddlers masquerading as parents or upright citizens really (and I do mean really) stretches the limits of my polite tolerance.

Gaaagh. I just wish to Grethor that the U.N. could section off some corner of the planet where these sissypants ninnyhammers could live in their little bubble, hermetically sealed off from any possibility of contamination by capital-R Reality, much less the awe-inducing burden of critical thought. There, @$holes: Have your evolution denial and your global warming denial and your abstinence-only fairy-tales and your big hair and your Hummers and your Wal-Marts and your 57 channels of insipid "family" programming and your slave-manufactured plastic-craptastic "Wait 'til the Joneses see this" gewgaws by the cargo container.

Great. Now just stay the @#$% out of my Universe, you @#$%ing @#$%wits.

Almost wish, anyway. As much good as it would do the rest of the world to be rid of the Talibangelist mentality (no matter the religion), I can't in good conscience wish that on the children they would bring into their bubble. And they'd have 'em by the boatload--make no mistake about that.

But as it never will happen--the Religious Wrong's lion-chow persecution fantasies to the contrary--I can enjoy a bit of wishful thinking...

Drowning in vinegar and water

2009-01-15T09:04:00.000-08:00

A Pundit Kitchen caption from a couple day ago: "There's a fine line between being a badass and a douchebag. You just crossed it." I think that we can safely say that Israel is unequivocally Douchebag Central right now:

"It's a total disaster for us," Ging said, adding that the U.N. had warned the Israeli military that the compound was in peril from shelling that had begun overnight. U.N. officials say they have provided Israel with GPS coordinates of all U.N. installations in Gaza to prevent such attacks. [emphasis mine]

So let me get this straight: The nearly-departed Bush Regime unilaterally invaded Iraq because a bottled-up Saddam Hussein was thumbing his nose at the UN. Yet we not only condone, but coddle a belligerent Israel, which has has been defying the same UN with its delusions of Manifest Destiny for over four decades? We blow the living snot out of nations to "bring democracy" to them, while Israel jerry-rigs its political process to disenfranchise the people it can't bomb. [snark]What, it doesn't make sense?[/snark]. Well, apparently it does to people who should know better.

Feh. So far as I'm concerned, barring children and those now politically powerless, any evil that befalls Israel now is the crop of its own planting. More tragically, we have the dirt of their fields under our fingernails here in America: The Democratic party is so knee-jerk about defending anyone perceived as a "minority," while the Republican party is run by people who cheer-lead butchery as the short road to The Rapture.

A perfect storm, in other words.

Lunchbox heroines

2009-01-14T08:08:00.000-08:00

I had planned a snarky "In other news, water is still wet" kind of post. But it was trumped by a far more important theme. Namely the near-heartbreaking tenacity of the human spirit. Most especially in these young women.

(P.S. to the Taliban: Suck it, bitches.)

Geeky shout-out

2009-01-07T09:05:00.000-08:00

Yes, I realize that SVG is going by the wayside in favor of (twitch, twitch) Flash, but these folks saved my bacon this morning, and I think that they deserve a hat-tip: https://www.ecrion.com/Support/Resources/XFRenderingServerHelp/index.html?pie_chart.htm

Tell me they didn't receive grant money for this...

2009-01-05T12:14:00.000-08:00

Personally, I was a little incensed that somebody's deliberately coking up honeybees, particularly when the "research" basically confirms what's already known about behavioral reactions to the drug. How it's supposed to dislodge the spoon from a socialite's nose or the needle from a crack-addict's veins I fail to understand, unless a blocker drug is concocted. For cocaine anyway. But then there's the whole smorgasbord of (ahem) pharmaceutical--contraband or not--alternatives. Not to mention that blocker drugs do bupkis for the whole context of addiction. Feh. I guess what bothers me is that this seems like another silver bullet "solution" that may just end up contributing to the problem in the long run.

Or maybe I'm just cynical.

Part 1603 of "You know you're a costume geek when..."

2009-01-04T20:36:00.001-08:00

...your go-to catalog is discontinuing its corset-making supplies and you're figuring out how many yards of stuff you can rationalize at 15% off.

All religion is politics

2008-12-30T11:24:00.000-08:00

Understand that I make a fundamental, line in the sand distinction between faith and religion. "Faith," which is personal, and I usually admire it when it does not trample either reason or reasonability.

Sigh. And then there is religion, wherein discourse inevitably boils down to "My god's dick can beat up your god's dick so neenerneenerneener." (The fact that folks are quite often arguing over the same god makes it just that much more puerile.)

Two cases in point:

1.) Arkansas barring unmarried couples from adopting children...even when they're their own friggin' relatives, and

2.) Israel, period, and most recently this.

When is making other people suffer for your dogma a testament to "faith"? Faith, last I checked, was about keeping one's convictions in the face of opposition. Not forcing the world to conform to your notions to, ultimately, eliminate the need for faith.

True, the God of the Old Testament doesn't have Problem One with killing children by the truckload to spite their parents/tribes. But we're not child-minded superstitious Bronze Age goat herders, are we? Thus we have every d--ned right expect better of these so-called leaders and the voters who enable them. When religion informs politics to the point of reductio ad absurdam, where innocents (particularly children) suffer, that's not faith. It's politics.

It's time for the so-called "values voters" to stop pretending that the blood is not on their hands. Or that it can be washed away by whatever they've deluded themselves into thinking were their pure intentions.

How much evidence is enough, Part II

2008-12-29T15:46:00.001-08:00

The fact that the hothouse wankers on the right incite their posse to keep blaming the equal lending opportunity laws for the finance meltdown should have them up on charges of treason. There are people in Gitmo who are less of a threat to America. When selling more books or keeping your ratings gets in the way of fixing the problem, you have forfeited your right to free speech. Honestly, Streicher was hung for less vitriol than some of these beady-eyed cheeseburger-snorting gits have spewed.

The premeditated thievery of The Suits who pumped air into an obvious bubble is the cause of the meltdown. Homebuyers with shaky credit most emphatically did not spray Lysol on their loans before bundling them as "secure" investments. Homebuyers with still worse credit absolutely did not force anyone to cook the books and lie all the way up the so-called accountability chain. This was a culture of greed, pure and simple. I mean, come on, already: This is a industry that's thumbed its nose at that meddling government for years--one whose stooges trumpted the virtues of "self-correcting" capitalism. Does anyone with two brain cells to rub together honestly believe that any suit anywhere gave a flying @#$% at a rolling doughnut whether someone was being discriminated against?

So, for the dittoheads and willing bitches of the hot-air vents on AM and Faux News: Saying Yes, WaMu Built an Empire on Shaky Loans. Oh, and while you're at it: Bite the ankles of those who shoved their way above you on mobility ladder rather than kicking the heads of those climbing behind you. For a freakin' change, already. Guess who actually deserves it?

But I suppose that I might be deluding myself there, expecting mere fact to tempt anyone from the fun of playground bullying--which is what this is. Mom said that some people never grow up, and she's becoming more correct the longer I live and see things like bailout bonuses, Vice Presidents sneering "So?"s, and knowing that these criminals will not gasp their last in prison. Pathetically, it's much easier to turn your dissatisfaction at your own lot on those less powerful than even you than it is to risk something by holding the real perpertrators to account. Especially when they're obviously sociopaths. Just like the hate-peddlers who single out the powerless.

How much evidence is enough?

2008-12-29T08:35:00.001-08:00

The usual sensational headline from Yahoo! News: "Many teens don't keep virginity pledges". In other news, night is dark, water is wet, and human stupidity still defies all measurement.

But, here's the most telling part:

Teens who take virginity pledges are just as likely to have sex as teens who don't make such promises -- and they're less likely to practice safe sex to prevent disease or pregnancy, a new study finds.

At the bottom, this isn't about raging adolescent hormones. Nor is it a question about "self control" or any degree of "morality." Not in the least. The problem here is magical thinking, which is why all the wholesale repression of information that goes on in the name of "education" will ultimately cause more misery than (gasp!) actually treating sex as a subject for mature, rational, scientifically- and statistically-informed discussion.

Bottom line: Pledges of this kind are a cop-out, most especially for the parents who don't want the responsibility of raising sexually healthy young adults. Then too, they put another layer of immaturity between the teen and her/his responsibility to her/himself and her/his partner. And that, peeps, is most emphatically NOT the point of growing up. Apart from the human and social impacts of too-early parenthood, what particularly pisses me off about this magical thinking is that it's promulgated by the self-same tribe that continually bangs on about accountability and personal responsibility.

Gaaagh. The older I become, the less desire I have to replace the irony and hypocrisy meters blown out by the last decade or so...

Merry Mayhem!

2008-12-20T20:56:00.000-08:00

This won't come as a shock to anyone who knows me, but I mostly loathe Christmas. Or, more aptly, I loathe the hyper-politicized, spiritually bankrupt consumerist orgy that eats its way further backwards in the calendar every friggin' year. (Silver lining: I actually look forward to New Years' now, a holiday that I found pointless as a kid.)

That being said, here's one of the handful of indulgences I do look forward to this time of year: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/snowglobe Keep your eye on the snowman--that's all I'm sayin'.

The other stuff:

1.) The Ref
2.) John Denver and the Muppets
3.) Elf Bowling v.1
4.) George C. Scott as Ebeneezer Scrooge

A grateful shout-out to Les Jenkins at Stupid Evil Bastard for finding that needle in the internet's haystack--"the Google" and I came up skunked the other day when we went trolling for it.

A farewell (sort of) and thanks

2008-12-11T15:15:00.000-08:00

One of the regular stops on my morning news-cruise is the blog "Managing Globalization," which is mostly the handiwork of Daniel Altman. Yesterday was its last day, as Mr. Altman will focus on other ventures, including another book, which I very much hope will hit the shelves no later than 2010.

In a world where economics is much less science than religion--with nearly as many schisms, jihads, and Kool-Aid-swilling cultishness than the real thing--Dr. Altman's clear-eyed, evenhanded approach combined with his humane outlook elevate him to statesman status in my opinion.

So I didn't want to let the week run out without a hat-tip and a thanks for his insights. I will be looking forward to Dr. Altman's future work, and wish him all success in those ventures.

Revolution behind schedule?

2008-12-07T16:57:00.000-08:00

It's about friggin' time... "Chicago workers sit-in becomes rallying point"

I don't care if the Soviets and Chinese and various Third World thugocracies gave Marxism a bad name. Labor is NOT a commodity, and employees ARE stakeholders, d--it. Far more so than overpaid gits pushing imaginary money back and forth between spreadsheet columns at an investment banking firm. Or the significantly more overpaid gits who set up the giant Monopoly game.

So viva la revolución. Granted, the firing squad's gonna run short of bullets eventually, but it'll at least thin the ranks of the cheeseburger-binging b@$+@rds--I'm looking at you, Mr. "Contract with America"--who put us in this mess. It certainly won't do much tangible short-term good, but if a few pike-mounted heads convince today's business/finance majors to go into useful occupations, I think the world will be a better place for it.

Stupid Friday humor

2008-12-05T19:48:00.001-08:00

From from The Onion archives to you: Zombie Nutritionist Recommends All-Brain Diet. Better stale than compost: Bon appetit, mes amis.

Guerilla capitalism

2008-12-02T16:04:00.000-08:00

So if the Orwellian "conscience clause" almost certain to be enacted by our Baptist Taliban is disproportionally detrimental to women, shouldn't I be getting a discount on my next medical bill? After all, if I'm getting WalMart service, I shouldn't have to pay Tiffany's prices.

Crikey. At this rate, will anyone be surprised if Bush and Cheney set fire to the White House on their way out?

New lunchbox hero?

2008-12-01T18:06:00.000-08:00

The web comic "Do You Work Here?" laces my Mondays and Thursdays with a lovely note of cynicism, and today there was a bonus: A link to this comic, in the wake of Friday's WalMart trampling death. (Disclaimer: I did do some shopping Friday, but it was purely a grocery run. Mama may have raised a fool, but not that kind of fool...)

Uh-oh

2008-12-01T10:12:00.000-08:00

Malware specifically targeted at U.S. Military computers, reported by the LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cyberattack28-2008nov28,0,6441140.story

[snark] Yep, let's keep off-shoring those "knowledge worker" jobs to the lowest bidder. I, for one, can soooo not wait for the spectacle of a U.S. soldier waiting (on hold) for a Filipino call center worker to read the troubleshooting scripts for Indian software on Chinese hardware while the red buttons flash and the blue screens stare back. [/snark]

Adobe: Fail. Again.

2008-11-30T14:02:00.000-08:00

GAAAAAGGGHH!!! I am so ungodly sick of Flash freaking out on Ubuntu Firefox lately. Like I don't get enough grief at work from Adobe via that garbled, fragmented, Rube Goldberg, incomplete, woefully under-documented, discombobulated excuse for an API otherwise known as Flex.

Sorry. Just had to rant. I was nearly half-way through an hour-long video. when the video decided to crash, which has been par for the course lately. But, what can you expect from a company arrogant and pretentious enough to charges hundreds of dollars for an Eclipse fork?

Bonus karma?

2008-11-29T09:17:00.000-08:00

I've been pretty buried through the last couple weeks, and have been lax about keeping up with the news of my to-be-adopted country. Stephane Dion's lack of charisma and innate leadership ability is, to me, the prime reason that the Harper government was returned to minority power. (Sort of an echo of the "WTF??!?!" anyone with two brain cells to rub together should have been thinking in Nov. 2004.) But maybe, just maybe, the "Bush Lite" league has overreached itself.

Using fiscal conservatism as an excuse to eliminate equal pay guarantees for women?!?! That reeks of Shock Doctrine, Northern Style. Flaherty should be keelhauled and what remains of him should be sacked. If the Canadians don't wake up to the reactionary Tory agenda after this, then they deserve no less than what we've had for the last eight years.

Let's get it straight this time:

"Compassionate Conservatism" is an Orwellian lie--compassion requires empathy in its pantheon of values. Deregulation does not protect the Have-nots, only the Haves.
Zygotes are not babies.
Blowing the $#!+ out of a nation does not normalize its political system.
Freedom of religion is less than pointless without freedom from it.
Companies are never too big to fail--most especially when their bad behaviour is so handsomely rewarded.
If consenting adults are involved, there is no "moral" dimension to sex--let's just call the "social conservatives" out for the voyeuristic perverts they truly are. (Geeze people, just get creative with that shower massage and loosen the heck up!)
Neither Wal-Mart nor Wall Street would be considered "capitalism" by Adam Smith any more than Vietnam would be considered "communist" by Marx. & Engels.
Oh, and telling you to shut up and stop running me off the road is not an abridgment of your freedom of speech.

But anyway, I'm very much hoping that the rebellion succeeds, if nothing else, in rattling the minority government for the rest of its term. I don't think that Harper's run out of tactics just yet. I doubt that he's working from an abridged version of the Karl Rove playbook, after all. So I'm not holding my breath for a successful coup. Hopefully, though, it signals the beginning of the end for Canada's reactionary relapse. And, by the grace of His Noodliness, hopefully the Liberals will finally scrounge up something better than a relative figurehead like Dion.

An upside to the downturn

2008-11-18T16:02:00.000-08:00

H/t to DailyKos for the news that God's Posse doesn't take care of its own any better than Mammon's: Focus on the Family is laying off staff.

Now, when I read that James Dobson is dumpster-diving for meals, I'll believe that there's not only a God, but that He is just. In the meantime, though, I'll just savor some non-denominational karma.

Cheers, all!

Really good Seth Godin blog post

2008-11-17T09:30:00.000-08:00

Whether you're a consumer or a marketer, "Hungry" is definitely a meal for the brain--well worth the few minutes you'll spend nibbling it.

Black Monday at the office

2008-11-10T16:26:00.000-08:00

We lost over a fifth of the staff at the office this morning, wiping out roughly a year's job growth. Ironically, the same day the pinheads at AIG got their bailout--presumably so that they can flush it down the same toilets that sucked up the private sector money. Sewers aren't known for for being picky that way.

But subsidize my (erstwhile) co-workers' rent/heat/groceries/health care/etc.? That would be a handout. You know: Socialism. And we dassn't have any of that in this country...

Thank you, America

2008-11-04T20:41:00.000-08:00

Yes, I realize that the last vote has not yet been counted. But, hey, I'm in Stats this semester, so I have diplomatic immunity, okay? ;-)

But seriously. This moment is the American exceptionalism I was taught to love--and have found nothing in the thirty-odd years since to make me fall out of love. This is most emphatically not the "We have the monopoly on the right answers and the bright ideas" perversion that was made of this exceptionalism--even before we as a nation went into denial about having the stone age bomb us right back in Vietnam.

No, I'm talking about unbridled promise and the responsibility to embrace it with passion and brains and discipline. You know, the whole "Free to be You and Me" thing: "Every boy in this land/grows to be his own man. In this land every girl/grows to be her own woman." And if that woman or that man turns out to be the President of the United States of America...well, that's just the whole freakin' point, now ain't it?

That being said, I realize that these are baby steps. President-elect Barack Hussein Obama is not a knight in shining armor by any stretch. And it is a dangerous thing to hold people's dreams as well as shield them from their fears--far, far more weighty than Prince Hal's laments about the uneasy fit of the crown.

But as Archimedes said so long ago, "Give me a lever long enough, and I shall move the world." Today and tonight, the fulcrum has been moved in the direction where it can do more good for the most people of this earth. If I can wake to the news that Californians transcended yet another form of bigotry at the polls, it will be an even better world than I could have hoped for four years ago.

And so, again: Thank you, America. No matter how you voted. As a History graduate, it is humbling to see history unfold in its myriad dimensions.

Paging Spiderman

2008-10-13T19:49:00.000-07:00

Prohibiting teachers (kindergarten through college) from displaying bumper stickers on their car is going overboard. And certainly the First Amendment isn't terribly specific about whether teachers wearing campaign buttons or other campaign swag falls within its penumbra (much less umbra).

But the one thing that's missing from the whole debate is the concept of responsibility. I could rail for reams against the all-noblesse-and-no-obilige (h/t Gary Trudeau) pack of boorish louts this nation has become. But that's somewhat orthogonal to the point. And the point is that teachers instill either strong emotions or none. You're rarely ambivalent about a teacher, whatever your grade. Heck, I had teachers--even student teachers--I all-but-worshiped. Some teachers--thankfully few--I despise to the marrow of my being. But everyone else, I do well enough to remember their names.

So. You have the polarizing influence of politics and the polarized attitude students have toward their instructors. Combining them can't be a good thing. I don't care how you slice it--there's just no good outcome. You might as well just start playing favorites at that point and have done with it. No teacher worth her/his dry-erase vapor should be doing that.

Moreover, it's flouting the responsibility that goes with the job. This isn't like teaching sex education or evolution where you actually have data and facts with which to brow-beat hysteria and superstition. Politics, like religion, is All About opinion. Adding to the herd mentality already stampeding rampant through society does no good whatsoever.

More to the point, teaching--like it or not--requires a certain amount of gravitas. On any given day, teaching more about mob control than it will ever, EVER be about the proverbial Three Rs. Introducing politics--particularly when it's not even age-appropriate--is counter-productive. And that only when it's not just flat-out stupid. Stupid to the point where I'm have to admit that I'm gob-smacked that morons--educated and non---are actually arguing over this.

Look: I don't have any sort of leadership position. If I had a real business card for work, I'd list my title as "Alpha-Peon." But for all that, I certainly wouldn't presume to politically proselytize on the job. It's just tacky. We already have one person on staff to cover tacky. Sadly, we haven't figured out how to outsource tacky. And it's merely one of the reasons that this person is the office pariah. Bottom line: Don't be that person.

Giving honor its due

2008-10-11T19:10:00.000-07:00

I would disappoint my inner Hufflepuff if I neglected to give John McCain credit for trying to stuff the proverbial genie back into the bottle. Being booed by the people who came to cheer you has to be d--ned unnerving, even with a Secret Service posse at your back. I heartily commend the courage that it takes to incur that--make no mistake. There's a reason I slipped out of pep rallies and into the library, trust me.

Unfortunately, the sorcery that turns mobs 180 degrees from their initial course is all too rare. Worse, Miss Wingnut USA is just too goshdarned white trash dingdangitalready for any prayer of gravitas.

But I digress.

Again, my sincere kudos to the senior Senator from Arizona. Sadly, though, with such discombobulated campaign machinery running beneath him, I'd put McCain's chances of holding back the dark side of conservativism at slim to none. I just hope to Hades that the hatefulness is confined to the rallies.

Conservative party-crasher

2008-10-10T10:13:00.000-07:00

On the surface, David Brooks' "The Class War Before Palin" op-ed makes me want to cheer. But barely scratch the highlighting powder of Mr. Brooks' self-conscious makeover--one eye to the mirror and the other to a photo of George F. Will--and he bleeds nervousness. Someone's little bubble has been burst, methinks, and mewonders also how long it will be before that someone presumes to outrage on the same grounds.

Tell me, Mr. Brooks: How does it feel to sit in the decidedly un-Enlightened salon of Madame Guillotine? Did you perchance think that the lady in the front was knitting you a sweater? You and your ilk for too long provided the pseudo-intellectual rationalizations for the political mob-mentality of the last decade and more. How can you claim surprise when the self-same mob howls for the missing "one" promised to them when the Red Team proclaimed that two plus two equals five (and FSM help anyone who insisted that the answer was actually four--why do they hate numbers?)? When housing prices climb as all other indicators plunge, it's not the American Dream--it's a real estate bubble. The Iraq War is not paying for itself in oil revenue. National Security measures at airports are pure voodoo--you can board a plane packing (inert) grenades, but not nipple jewlery. The NSA doesn't have time to eavesdrop on Osama's pizza-delivery calls because they're too busy jacking off to other peoples' phone sex.

In short, the Emperor is butt-naked, somebody's got some 'splainin' to do, and you're one of those somebodies, jack.

Why? Because we find ourselves three-quarters through 2008, beggared of several Constitutional birthrights, our children steadily dumbed down by NCLB and left to pipe-dreams of winning the lottery as rap artists or ball-players or supermodels rather than spending their adulthood usefully or meaningfully. It's lucky for you that math is so fatally uncool to U.S.-born students. Otherwise they might be able to count high enough to appreciate how bankrupted they've been made by your ideologies. For anyone who adds any value to the economy, however, two plus two does after all equal four.

But, ever so regretably, awakening to sober reality does not undo the damage of fantasy. When you disparage education and rational thinking, you damage far more than the educational system itself. You also undermine the social compact that we should be making with those who are raised in this country: Pay attention in class, work smart, live smart, and you won't have to sell your soul to be financially safe. Even if you don't want to work for The Man, you have to be well-rounded enough to be The Man.

The baiting of the educated "elite" didn't start in the past week, Mr. Brooks, and it is, at best, disingenuous to admit it on the cusp of a potential Palin Vice-Presidency. The time for that was 2000, if not before. Nor are the educated the sole targets of the GOP's putrid us-vs-them tactics. The definition of "them" (sometimes) excepted, the Republican brand of populism is indistinguishable from a Klan rally. The "them"s are the rainbow that intrudes on your tribe's black-and-white(-bread) weltanschauung: Gays. Liberals. Immigrants. Muslims. Atheists/Agnostics. Wiccans/Pagans. Judges whose rulings they dislike. People who tell them to stay the @#$% out of their reproductive choices. Wealthy, connected Jews (But in the latter case only sotto vocce, because they wouldn't want to sound, you know, racist.)

And, too, the "educated." For the statistics speak, and in full throated chorus: U.S. social mobility is ossifying into a caste system. Thus, a devil's-bargain (a.k.a. "debt for degree") must be made by middle- and lower-income undergraduates to an extent not seen during my undergraduate epoch a mere two decades ago. Then, after incurring thousands of dollars of debt and jumping through hoops for four more years--wondering all the while how offshore-proof their career will actually be--these folks step off the commencement stage to be vilified for their wager of effort and expense. That's just gotta make it all worthwhile, dunnit?

Feh. I'd say "Welcome to my world, Mr. Brooks," except you're emphatically not. Not without significantly more self-reflection and a penitent appreciation of your own complicity. You were in no way obliged to attach yourself to the preening cheerleaders and jocks to the exclusion of the dweebs who do their own homework. On test day, your team chose a Champagne Brigade flyboy over someone who was actually used for target practice by dudes in black 'jammies. And, in case it escaped your notice, your team is now backing the privileged son and grandson of Navy brass who graduated fifth from the bottom of his class. Against a guy who beat the odds of being dark-skinned and raised in a single-parent family to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard.

Is it any wonder that the GOP acts as high-handedly as it has these past several years? To them, getting ahead is couched in terms of playground pecking-order, and not in any way a meritocracy. The last eight years have been the political equivalent of "Lord of the Flies." And now the whole island is ablaze, thank you very little. Puppeteering and power-grabbing only carry so far, even in politics. Reality has a nasty way of defying dogma of any kind. The next few years will take political smarts, but more still of the academic kind, if there is any hope for pulling this country back from the banana republic brink.

While that's underway, I would appreciate it if you would do us a big favor, Mr. Brooks, and take your own words to heart. Pretty-please stay the hell out from underfoot while the "educated" folks try to put America back together. And I'd be doubly obliged if you would actually help the effort by nudging your party--and hopefully the nation at large--back to some sort of intellectual respectability.

Elayne Boosler nails it in one

2008-10-09T14:03:00.000-07:00

Brought to you via The Huffington Post: Elayne Boosler hands Harry Reid his head. Alas, not in person. But it does prove, yet again, that you never, ever want to piss off anyone who's funnier than you.

The truth is rarely so delicious and bitter at the same time. Enjoy.

The twelve o'clock flashers strike again

2008-10-07T15:45:00.000-07:00

Quelle surprise: The line between science and wishful thinking is crossed yet again. And I'm not even talking about creationism, global-warming denial or abstinence-only "education" this time: Scientists question terrorist-hunting techniques.

Y'know, I consider myself a professional dilettante--it comes with the territory of working with multiple languages and technologies for a living. But for love of the FSM, I at least have the humility and wit to flout the wisdom of my alpha geeks only after triple-checking my facts.

Sigh...if our so-called "leaders"--in the private as well as public sector--could grok that they've merely been promoted to the level of their incompetence and act with the appropriate friggin' humility, it would easily halve the world's problems.

What color is the sky in W's world?

2008-10-06T14:45:00.000-07:00

Daaaang. I didn't think that hypocrisy could come in this density without imploding into a black hole. Cheeseburgers alone can't mess up your thinking this badly, can they? I gotta think that Dubya's been brain damaged by all the white-out he's used on hundreds of signing statements--not to mention the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Convention, Salt II, and reality in general. (Fortunately, it flakes off reality sooner or later. The others? Don't hold your breath...)

But the amount of hypocrisy and/or self-deception required for Dubya to pontificate about "apply[ing] the laws as written" just knocks the wind out of you. I don't think you realize this, Mr. President, but Keith Olberman was being polite when he told you to "shut the Hell up." That's certainly not the four-letter word I would have used.

Channelling Robinson Jeffers

2008-10-04T08:16:00.000-07:00

Not surprisingly, I've become a poll-junkie lately. Between the passionate hope of seeing an end to the hemorrhaging of everything I was taught to respect about the U.S., and a scholarly interest in statistics--4 credits this semester--that's pretty much inevitable.

In the milieu of bailouts ("Would you like some pork fries to go with that pork-burger?" "Super-size it!") and ballyhoo on the political circuit, an echo calls from the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression, to remind us that we have been this way before:

Shine, Perishing Republic

While this America settles in the mold of its vulgarity,
heavily thickening to Empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and
sighs out, and the mass hardens,

I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make
fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.
Out of the mother, and through the spring exultances,
ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.

You, making haste, haste on decay; not blameworthy; life
is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: Meteors are not needed less than
mountains: Shine, perishing Republic.

But for my children, I would have them keep their
distance from the thickening center; corruption
Is never compulsory, when the cities lie at the
monster's feet there are left the mountains.

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man,
a clever servant, insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught--
they say--God, when he walked on earth.

Corruption is never compulsory. But refusing to be corrupted--if only to a threshold percentage--carries a price tag. I'm not especially convinced that all recognize that. Maybe only the folks who have been corrupted, or those who spent childhood/adolescence on the proverbial outside looking in truly do. And that, ultimately, may be what's truly wrong with Joe and Jane Sixpack.

Again, the ghost speaks:

Ave Caesar

No bitterness; our ancestors did it,
They were only ignorant and hopeful, they wanted freedom but wealth, too.
Their children will learn to hope for a Caesar.
Or, rather--for we are not aquiline Romans but soft mixed colonists--
Some kindly Sicilian tyrant who'll keep
Poverty and Carthage off until the Romans arrive.
We are easy to manage, a gregarious people,
Full of sentiment, clever at mechanics, and we love our luxuries.

The Danegeld that Washington just pledged to the Wall Street jarls is no different from shooting an adrenaline-morphine cocktail into the vein of a terminally ill person. Even without card-houses tumbling and the spike in unemployment, the fundamentals of our economy are most emphatically not strong. We're borrowing money to pay for the things we should be making ourselves. It's Company Store Capitalism--period, full stop. Anyone who claims that this is healthy has no business being President.

Maybe it's just my mood today, but Jeffers almost seems too optimistic. Are there actually mountain refuges in this day of illegal surveillance? And how can any tyrant--kindly or not--save us from our own excesses when they will not curb their own? FDR was considered a dictator by some, and there's no question that he crossed Constitutional boundaries by packing the Supreme Court. But he had brains and a sense of noblesse oblige and a tenacious, two-handed grip on capital-R reality. (And, of course, he had Eleanor to lean on.) Things that our latter-day Caesar lacks in superabundance. And, unlike the maverick-y reformer pretensions of a certain Republican candidate, FDR went toe-to-toe against Tammany Hall and won--Eleanor carrying the banner and helping to deliver the coup de grace a few decades later.

But such Caesars are far, far too rare to be relied upon. While the Boss Tweeds are not--and they are back in spades. (Funny how Karl Rove is fat, too.) Percentage-spreads and interactive maps on the internet are all well and good, but there are October Surprises and Diebold and good, old-fashioned voter suppression to reckon with. When the GOP's concern-trolling stoops to obsessing over tee-shirts and singing hats (I am NOT making this up), worry. Cornered people are dangerous. People at risk of facing their own guilt are far more so. Today' GOP is both.

Take a little time next week--over your lunch break or what-have-you--to call your registrar and make sure that you're on the rolls. If you're not, dot the 'i's and cross the 't's to get that way. This month. If possible, vote absentee (with your political tee-shirt on, just to stick it to the fascist fashionistas). Me, I'm packing my utility bill, my driver's license, and my friggin' passport for good measure on November 4th. The cheeseburger-poisoned b@@rds who run this show have already robbed you of your birthright of habeus corpus. Pilfering your vote is completely in character.

Update, 11:50 p.m.
By sheer coincidence, Dearest forwarded this Andrew Bacevich op-ed to me: He told us to go shopping. Now the bill is due.

Shine, perishing republic.

My lunchbox hero today

2008-09-29T08:40:00.000-07:00

Seth Godin's blog--the sethgodin.typepad.com edition, anyway--is one that I don't miss, despite the fact that I don't (yet) own a company. Other than his concept of permission-based marketing, nothing in particular tends to stick with me day to day. It's the kind of writing that gently infiltrates the mind like a gentle rain. (Rather like Marcus Aurelius' Meditations)

This post from over the weekend, however, is an exception. Godin, in his writing, comes off as a truly gentle soul, but you sense the righteous anger of someone who sees his values violated every time he has to fly.

I have to second--"second" as in waving a cigarette lighter in the air and hollering "Woooo! Preach it, brother!"-- that, given that not only do I voluntarily subsidize lowest common denominator thinking whenever I purchase a ticket, but that I am involuntarily complicit by dint of having taxable income.

So, go read Random Travel Thoughts. Well worth your time in the coin of thought-fodder.

Hats off to Margaret Cho

2008-09-26T09:21:00.000-07:00

As Sarah Palin's shenanigans have been trickling into the public press, I've been unable to shake the notion that she's basically every office alpha-hen you've ever had to suffer with/under. Only on steroids.

But Margaret Cho, quoted by FireDogLake, absolutely nails it, IMO:

...she is the ultimate misogynist. She is a woman hater in the extreme. To force women to have children against their will, to deny abortion rights EVEN in cases of incest and rape is abominable. She is an insult to feminism, a sickening example what a woman will do to other women in order to please men and further her own career. Women do s**t like that to other women to keep them down – to make their achievement seem more extraordinary – to keep women out of their way, so they can enjoy all the power and the men themselves, and that stuff makes them worse than sexist men. It is worse to be a traitor than a perpetrator.

Just like Palin's Uncle Tom comrades (e.g. Phyllis Schlafly and Ann Coulter). Even Mareshal Petain would be embarassed by such disgusting pandering to a thugocracy.

Same $#!+, different country, Part II

2008-09-22T15:21:00.000-07:00

As if 40+ of those polled supporting McCain in the U.S. isn't enough cognitive dissonance to make your head explode, it's the fact that Harper and his goons are within striking distance of a majority government in Canada.

After eight textbook case years of the scapegoating done by one of the most corrupt and morally, intellectually bankrupt political philosophies since modern Communism, you'd think that a few people would be able to spot another "us vs. them" demonizing attempt at distraction. Like this one: PM vows to name youth criminals. Just like the neocons/theocons in our country have demonized immigrants (illegal and non-), homosexuals, Muslims, and liberals.

The thing is, I consider Canada's penal system far too soft, and shamefully lax on consideration for the victims. But I could agree 100% with Harpers proposal's, but oppose them nonetheless. Why? Because the Tories are still the spiritual descendents of the "White Man's Burden" colonials. Playing the tribes off against each other, spreading guns and fire-water and smallpox-infected blankets around indiscriminately. More to the point, Harper waited until the middle of an election to trot out a divisive proposal, a proposal that has squat to do with actually curbing crime. In short, every once in a while, the messenger does matter. The Tories have proved--with forcing a re-vote on same-sex marriage, with immigration so-called "reform"--that they have photocopied whole chapters from the Karl Rove playbook.

And so, I just shake my head, wondering how so many Canadians can be as blind as their counterparts to the the damning verdict on the reactionary dogma that has made undermined the military, foreign policy, political discourse, and economic standing of the most powerful nation on earth. I realize that Stephane Dion is about as exciting as cold, canned cream of mushroom soup, but still... Is that any justification for letting a grasping thug like Harper drag a country down a road that has already been scorched and devastated by the neocons south of the border?

Another spin on the kowtow to the Religious Right?

2008-09-19T21:37:00.000-07:00

From I Kings, 1:14:

King David was old and advanced in years; and although they covered him with clothes, he could not get warm. So his servants said to him, "Let a young virgin be sought for my lord the king, and let her wait on the king, and be his attendant; let her lie in your bosom, so that the lord my king may be warm." So they searched for a beautiful girl throughout all the territory of Israel, and found Abishag the Shunammite, and brought her to the king. The girl was very beautiful. She became the king's attendant and served him, but the king did not know her sexually.

Sarah Palin in a political nutshell? As long as the GOP is so shamelessly sacrificing several centuries of progress to re-animate a Bronze Age world-view, I figure the metaphors might as well cut both ways. Pity that one won't perk up the ears of those who listen for Palin's Dominionist dog-whistles.

Then again, these are the same marks who actually believe that David and Abishag's relationship was actually platonic. Just like they believe that two gang-raped (erstwhile) virgins would think to seduce the father who handed them over to the gang in the first place. Or that the polygamy-rife Bible defines marriage as between one man and one woman. Or that handing your female servant over to your husband to bear the children you cannot isn't adultery or immoral.

On second thought, never mind. Lost cause. @#$%&*-up sexual mores are @#$%*&-up sexual mores. Forget I mentioned it.

A thought on the McCain/Palin (Palin/McCain?) campaign

2008-09-14T16:25:00.000-07:00

From IMDB's (http://www.imdb.com) quotes section of "A Fish Called Wanda":

Otto: Don't call me stupid.
Wanda: Oh, right! To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people! I've known sheep that could outwit you. I've worn dresses with higher IQs. But you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape?
Otto: Apes don't read philosophy.
Wanda: Yes they do, Otto. They just don't understand it. Now let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not "Every man for himself." And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.

This, peeps, is precisely how I feel when I have to deal with McCain--or, more aptly, (Sarah) Palin--groupies.

I am just so effin' sick of the blatant lies. And sicker yet of a populace that enables them. And from sheer intellectual couch-potato flabbiness, allows itself to be numbed and dumbed-down even further.

So here's a little channeling of Wanda Gershwitz:

"Reformers" do NOT support a "Bridge to Nowhere" before turning against it (much less spend the earmarked funds elsewhere).
Campaign finance reformers, in particular, do NOT appoint lobbyists to the top positions of their campaigns.
"Beltway outsiders" do NOT pay lobbyists for $27 million in earmarks for a town of 9000 people. Nor do they appoint (ahem!) "uncredentialed" friends (whose qualifications for Ag. Administration include a childhood "love of cows") to lucrative government positions.
"Historic women" do NOT appoint police chiefs who charge rape victims for the medical exams used as evidence against the perps. They also do NOT attempt to roll back a century's worth of progress by being blatantly anti-choice and opposing sex education that includes information on contraception. Why? Because a woman is more than a uterus with legs, regardless of demographic.
Talking smack about other governments--particularly those which have The Bomb--is NOT an acceptable substitute for foreign policy. It is a demonstrable evidence of a lack of foreign policy (or understanding thereof). Particularly at a time when most of our fighting forces are pinned down in a sandy quagmire of our own misguided making.
Conversely: Talking smack about governments who don't have The Bomb is NOT an incentive to make them stop wanting one. Especially when you talk about bombing them first.
Linking the late Saddam Hussein with 9/11 does NOT enhance your qualifications for leading the War! On!! Terror!!! Why? Because connecting Dot 1 and Dot 427 does not make a good picture. Twit.
Gas prices are high as the result of speculation, NOT a lack of offshore--much less ANWAR--drilling. If drilling were the the silver bullet, maybe oil companies would already being doing that on 40 million godd--n acres. Got that? 40 million acres of public land they can already drill. But don't.
A flyboy who sat out 5 1/2 years of Vietnam does NOT "know how to win wars." In case you missed it, Senator, the North Vietnamese and the VC won. Despite our superior technology and firepower. And 58K+ dead. And if you can't recognize that that simple fact of history, you have absolutely no @#$%ing business being CoC for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Where the Humvee vs. IED battle isn't doing so well. Why? Because we're making the mistakes of your generation over and over again. Dumb@$$.
God is NOT running for President of the United States. Stop acting like He is. If He were running, he would have filed with the FEC, like a good Deity. If God wanted George W. Bush to go to war with Iraq, mightn't He at least have pointed out the location of the WMDs? Except that there weren't any. Similarly, if God wanted an Alaskan pipeline, He would be more than capable of putting one wherever He d--ned well felt like putting it.
People who have been in Congress for over 30 years are NOT agents of "change." Stop it. Just stop. You're getting moron cooties all over the rest of us.

Grrrrrr. I could go on (and on). Except that I hear the callings of this "elitist" thing called education. Namely a stats class, plus studying toward a work-related certification. But even in this anti-science, anti-intellectual age--wherein anyone who can spell their name without referring to their belt buckle is an effete "elitist"--that's just how I roll.

---

Addendum. Let's add this to my "To Do" list once I'm El Supremo Presidente Dictator for Life: International curriculum for any school child will include a minimum of three years of logic, two of rhetoric, the equivalent of three semesters of statistics, four years of another language, and lots and lots of math and science. No driver's license nor diploma will granted until those requirements are met. Period. The criterion of "who you'd rather have a beer with" is will no longer be a valid qualification for public office, from the county dog-catcher on up. Enough is enough. We're not electing the Homecoming Queen, for @#$%^'s sake. This is the real world, with real people whose real lives are affected in real dollar terms. If your thinking is still in terms of the high school pecking-order, you don't deserve to vote. End of discussion.

And if, ultimately, my (benevolent) dictatorship is overthrown, I at least want the comfort that the coup will be executed by people who are adequately educated (and hopefully rational human beings). Seriously, I'll face a firing squad with a smile with that knowledge.

How much money is enough?

2008-08-03T19:55:00.000-07:00

This is the second online mention of Texas energy billionaire T. Boone Pickens--seriously, I am soooo not making that name up--I've encountered in roughly two months. The first was his wind farm scheme. And now he's meddling in California politics.

On the philosophical level, you have to ask a few questions, such as:

"How much money does one person need to have?"
"At what point does simple human acquisitiveness become a 'control issues' kind of mental disease?"
"And when are we going to stop lionizing the diseased?"

On the political level, however, the question becomes "How many welfare billionaires do our state and federal governments have to make before people stop buying the notion that we're a 'capitalist' society?"

Societally, we look on comic-book mavens as somehow immature. But as farcical as spandex-clad heroes battling luridly-looking villains seems--particularly given that most of these characters don't have any visible means of support--perhaps the mavens have better instincts after all. A simple skimming of the tabloid headlines reveals a set of priorities that are pretty messed up.

The head of the fish stinks first, part II

2008-07-28T19:22:00.000-07:00

Interesting that the WaPo would come this close to calling attention to a scandal that doesn't involve sex: Internal Justice Dept. Report Cites Illegal Hiring Practices. (Props to writer Carrie Johnson for calling a spade a spade with the phrase "Christian lifestyle choices," btw. It's well past time that phrase came into cant use.)

From the limited testimony I saw, Monica Goodling came off like a twit in the congressional hearings. But the fact of the matter is, she couldn't have that much power without the tacit approval of someone important. Plausible deniability doesn't stretch to such endemic malfeasance by a single person. Nuh-uh. I've worked with too many conniving office hens to know that. When politics trumps experience even in counter-terrorism--the so-called strong suit of this sad-sack Administration--it's criminal behavior. Regardless of whether it was gross negligence or actually an evil hand guided by an evil mind.

If you want a good sample of the Bush Junta's legacy, this is an excellent choice. You have people who are willing to kill thousands upon thousands in an illegal war, torture, roll back the definition of American citizenship to the days of the Union Jack, etc., etc. All in the sacred name of the War! On!! Terror!!!. Yet, ask them to make the "sacrifice" of (horrors!) sharing office space with a liberal who happens to be competent in counter-terrorism? Too much for their hothouse flower sensibilities: Break out the smelling salts!

I'm not the gambling sort, so I won't wager with myself over whether Mukasey will have the cajones to investigate, much less with any alacrity. He's bench-warming for a lame-duck President, after all. So I will not be at all surprised if the next Administration will be handed yet another mess to sort out. For all that, it won't do to let the interest flag in such things. Not just for the obvious reasons of giving a d--n that our so-called "leaders" live up to all that stuff we had to memorize in the 8th Grade. No, I think that the behavior of these high-ranking flunkies in the next few months will serve as a reliable bellwether for the GOP insider view on John McCain's prospects in November.

Update, 29 July 2008, 15:58 GMT:
Seems that the NYT's coverage went further up the political food chain. Quelle surprise, the White House's commissars had their sticky little fingers in the pot.

According to the report, officials at the White House first developed a method of searching the Internet to glean the political leanings of a candidate and introduced it at a White House seminar called The Thorough Process of Investigation. Justice Department officials then began using the technique to search for key phrases or words in an applicant’s background, like “abortion,” “homosexual,” “Florida recount,” or “guns.”

That, folks, is the set of priorities these jack-booted thought-police worked with. Abortion. Homosexuality. Florida recount. Guns. All of which have sweet F.A. to do with law enforcement or counter-terrorism. Even the "guns" emphasis was meant to screen out people who believe that there should be fewer guns out there, instead of more.

Makes you feel sooooo much safer, dun'nit? Personally, all I can think of the Spanish Armada. As in the micro-managing King Philip tapping poor old Medina-Sidonia and loading down the ships with hundreds of priests. And we all know how well that worked out...

Because you're never too old for silliness

2008-07-26T18:39:00.000-07:00

Or the Muppets. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpcUxwpOQ_A

Anecdotal good news

2008-07-19T21:08:00.000-07:00

Dearest and I have returned from our last round of "babysitting bees" at the county fair for the year. This year's crowd of visitors to the local beekeeper's booth seemed head-and-shoulders more informed about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) than, say, that of two years ago. Naturally, a couple kids mentioned "The Bee Movie," which didn't surprise me. What did surprise me, however, was the young man who credit the movie with giving him the answers to three of our posted trivia questions.

So it seems as though word is getting out--huzzahs and handsprings. If there's any silver lining to the spike in food prices, it's probably the fact that people are paying more attention to their next meal.

Nature's Bijoux, Part I

2008-07-17T20:11:00.001-07:00

The window at the kitchen sink overlooks the backyard, and Dearest's karma-reward for doing dishes tonight was noticing the fireflies in and around the garden. Such delicate fireworks in the thick summer dusk. The only way to bottle such an experience (for the colder, bleaker months ahead) is to banish all else from the moment and just be. And I rejoice that there is no other way to do so.

Theocracy showing a few cracks?

2008-07-04T20:38:00.000-07:00

What the Bush Regime failed (albeit not for lack of trying) to do, drunk wankers with fireworks managed to accomplish. I now officially hate this holiday. Never mind that I'm supposedly a descendant of the guy who penned the document with this famous date. I have to think that his slumber is not easy of late.

But anyhoo...

Crooks and Liars had an entry about the Religious Right (finally) warming to McCain. My head says that many, many of the pew-warmers will swallow the sophistry and obediently vote Republican as prescribed. But my gut says that you're going to see a greater percentage than expected sit 2008 out.

Why? It's not so much a matter of holding their noses as it that their heads would just plain explode from sheer cognitive dissonance.

Could it be the divorce (after much philandering) from his first wife who was severely injured in an automobile accident?

Why, no.

Could it be that his second wife was a drug addict who committed prescription fraud, stole painkillers from her own medical charity, and got off with a mere fine and community service (confirmed by Snopes)?

Why, no.

Could it be the Keating Five baggage or the never-ending latter-day lobbyist associations?

Why, no.

Could it be the public financing shenanigans from the erstwhile co-champion of campaign finance reform?

Why, no.

Could it be the fact that his lifestyle is decidely un-Christ-like, with eight homes, bankrolled by his heiress second wife?

Why, no.

Forget actual questions of character and values. (And Heaven forfend that we actually expect anyone to walk the talk if it means that--gasp!--a black guy could actually park his @$ in an office formerly occupied by slave-owners.) Nope. It all boils down to asking pew-warmers to part with a wee bit of self-identity.

Y'see, these are people who loooooove their tin foil hats. They never outgrew the persecution complex (with all the narcissism it entails) that we maladjusted adolescents shed at about--what?--sixteen or seventeen years of age. They're not happy unless they're forwarding emails or writing Letters to the Editor warning that the world is about to be taken over by A.) Muslims, B.) Homosexuals (who are always, ALWAYS pedophiles, donchaknow), C.) The United Nations, D.) Atheists (who are indistinguishable from Communists and Nazis, donchaknow), E.) Non-white people, period.

Seriously, these folk were born fifty years too late. If it weren't for the fact that they know they'd be laughed out of town for lining their basement with tar paper and tinfoil, eating Dinty Moore from the can, and counting their shotgun slugs, they'd be doing it right now. (Never mind they'd do well to keep an eye on Russia at the moment, but, apparently, one bogeyman at a time is all that can fit on the radar screen...)

So you take a mentality like that, this paranoia that's been carefully--yea, even lovingly--cultivated from inside and out, and you ask it to vote for McCain? Senator "Agents of Intolerance"? Wellllll...that could be just a little...problematic.

This is most emphatically not a question of forgiveness, you understand. McCain's (pre-courtship) sound byte was no dime-store trinket to the self-anointed "real Christians." It was nothing less than a validation of their "persecuted" status. (Doubtless, any number could even hear the lions roaring in the Roman arena.) And thus they will not part lightly with it. But, at the same time, McCain won't part with enough of his dignity for a revival-meeting "conversion." (For tasters, his beer-baroness (second) wife would have to divest her holdings to appease the Baptist mullahs. And we all know that ain't gonna happen.)

So, even knowing that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, will vote according to their pastors' orders, I will not be surprised at a low turnout among the soi-dissant "values voters" who rubber-stamped the Bush Gang's Great Giveaway of Iraqi oil and American birthrights.

Of course, if McCain's fool enough to tap Huckabee as Veep, then my head will be more correct than my gut. Then again, that scenario raises the question of whether the (long-overdue) exodus (i.e. stampede) of moderate Republicans will more than cancel out the "born again" McCain voters. Part of me wants to see that scenario, just for the relief of coup-de-grace. I suppose that I daren't hope for a viable third party in this decade. Sigh...

On second thought, seeing the legal thuggery to which Prime Minister Harper is willing to resort, a third party isn't all the panacea it's cracked up to be. Gaaagh. The sooner the Canadian voters come to their senses and put that catamite of the Bush Junta out on the curb, the better off that country will be.

An unflattering contrast

2008-07-02T19:59:00.000-07:00

A pair of ominous anecdotes are ammo. for my boss' conviction that America has lost its position as the "thought leader" of the world.

In Waterloo, Ontario, a seventeen year old boy wins a science competition by finding a way to compost plastic bags in a matter of months (rather than decades). Catch that, folks? Seventeen years old.

Meanwhile, here in America, the findings of twenty years of evolutionary research are cavalierly dismissed by that intellectual vanguard (not), Conservapedia. Without Andy Schlafly bothering to read the precis, mind you. I think that we can officially consider the phrase "conservative values" an oxymoron, thank you very much.

I truly marvel at the H1-B "shortage". For the life of me, I cannot understand why someone who could make it through college--intellectually and financially--in another country would want to come to America to be a white-collar coolie in a nation of xenophobic, anti-intellectual nutbags. As long as politicians on both sides of the aisle--I'm glaring at you, Senator Obama--give these flat-earthers the time of day, they'll immolate still more resources than we can afford in their auto-da-fes.

But, bringing the discussion back around to the clever Mr. Burd, it's good to see the brighter minds turned to working with the resources we've already ripped from this planet, rather than continuing to exploit them as if their supply were limitless. Now, if only someone could find a way to convert human stupidity into electricity, we'd be set... You could plug a fleet of electric cars into Conservapedia every night. Then, at least, these morons would stop being a drain on society.

Update, 07.03.2008, 16:14 GMT:

From CNet's U.N. report: Clean energy booming globally:

Public investment in wind topped $11 billion globally last year, but none of that came from the United States, the report said. [emphasis added]

Considering how the Plains States are leaking --sometimes hemorrhaging--people as rural communities go under, there's no excuse for not replacing the ag. farms with wind farms. And that without the NIMBY namby-pambiness that so often accompanies their installation. (e.g., the landscape can bristle with cellphone towers and billboards, but for crissakes, spare us the wind towers!)

Keeping things in perspective, there's no lack of stupidity or cupidity everywhere you go. But the example that's being set by our soi-dissant leaders, in both the public and private sectors, is considerably less than edifying. Civilizations can decay in any number of ways, not all of them calamitously. There's a difference between a compost pile and a cesspool, and the stench of the latter is becoming more palpable each year.

Seven words, two versions

2008-06-23T11:30:00.000-07:00

From 1977 and 1974. (Other stuff there's fun, too.) The War on Fatuousness has lost its foremost soldier.

[Update]

A deeply grateful hat tip to the Crooks and Liars commenter "knuckledragger" who supplied this eerily current blast from the past. I repost it in the spirit of honoring Carlin's prescience, rather than plagiarizing his work:

I really haven’t seen this many people in one place since they took the group photographs of all the criminals and law-breakers in the Ronald Reagan administration. [laughter] Yeah! Yeah! 225 of ‘em so far! 225 different people in the Ronald Reagan administration have either quit, been fired, been arrested, indicted, or convicted of either breaking the law or violating the Ethics Code! 225 of ‘em! And Edwin Meese alone… [laughter] Edwin Meese alone has been investigated by three separate Special Prosecutors and there’s a fourth one waiting for him in Washington right now. Three separate Special Prosecutors have had to look into the activities of the Attorney General, and the Attorney General is the nation’s leading law enforcement officer! [laughter]

See that’s what you’ve got to remember, this is the Ronald Reagan administration we’re talking about. These are the Law and Order people! These are the people who are against street crime! They want to put street criminals in jail to make life safer for the business criminals! [laughter, cheers] Yeah! They’re against street crime, provided that street isn’t Wall Street. [laughter]

And the Supreme Court decided about a year ago that it’s all right to put people in jail now if we just think they’re going to commit a crime. It’s called preventive detention. All you’ve got to do now is just think they’re going to commit a crime. Well if we’d known this seven or eight years ago we could have put a bunch of these Republican motherfuckers directly into prison [laughter, cheers] Yeah! put ‘em in the joint where they belong and we could have saved the expense of putting these pin-headed assholes on trial. [laughter] Another thing you gotta remember is these are the people elected with the help of the Moral Majority. Elected with the help of the Moral Majority and — the Teamster’s Union. That’s a good combination. Organized Religion and Organized Crime working together to help build a better America. [laughter, cheers]

They were going to get government off our backs. Yeah, but when it comes to abortion they don’t mind government being in a woman’s uterus, do they? [laughter] Yeah, backs are no good, but uterus is ok by them. These people call themselves Right to Lifers. Don’t you love that phrase, and don’t you love the way these kind of people pervert the English language? Right to Lifers? Don’t you realize that most of the Right to Lifers are in favor of the death penalty, and they support the South American death squads, and they’re against gun control, and they’re against nuclear weapons control. When they say Right to Life they’re talking about their right to decide which people should live or die. [cheers]

So these right-wingers, you know, so these Reagan people, these right-wingers in general, these crypto-Fascists, they’re against homosexuality, they’re against pornography, they’re against sex education, they’re against abortion, yeah they’re going to get government off your back but they’re going to tell you how to live your sex life. And let me ask you this, how would they know anything about it? [laughter] Have you ever taken a look at those people? [laughter] No wonder they’re afraid of their bodies, take a look at ‘em! [laughter] Doesn’t it strike as mildly ironic that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn’t want to fuck in the first place? [laughter, cheers]

Hey, I’m the first one to say it’s a great country, but it’s a stra-a-ange culture. We got a strange culture. … This is a country where tobacco kills 400,000 people a year — so they ban artifical sweeteners! [laughter] Because a rat died! [laughter, cheers] Know what I mean? This is a place where gun store owners are given a list of stolen credit cards, but not a list of criminals and maniacs! [laughter] And now they’re thinking about banning toys guns, and they’re going to keep the fucking real ones!! [laughter, cheers] This is a place where alcohol ruins more lives than cancer, and everybody gets upset when some athlete gets hooked on cocaine. You know Time Magazine and Newsweek put cocaine on the cover, but they put the liquor advertisements inside the magazine.

It’s the old American double standard, you know say one thing and do something different. And of course the country is founded on the double standard, that’s our history, we were founded on a very basic double standard. This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free. [laughter, applause] Am I right? A group of slave owners who wanted to be free. So they killed a lot of white English people, in order to continue owning their black African people, so they could wipe out the rest of the red Indian people, and move west and steal the rest of the land from the brown Mexican people, giving them a place to take off and drop their nuclear weapons on the yellow Japanese people. [laughter] You know what the motto of this country ought to be? You give us a color, we’ll wipe it out! [laughter]

Thanks to several others in the crew who posted shorter blurbs. I had to stifle so much laughter from the pod-mates that I still have tears in my eyes. Thanks, guyzos!

Domestic vignette 1

2008-06-22T19:21:00.000-07:00

It takes three squirts of conditioner to bring my hair under nominal control, squirts that come out as squiggles. So I've been working on my technique: Swiping my hand quickly under the nozzle for a short, straight stripe, then wrapping it with squiggly strokes left and right. Pinch the pointy ends together and...voila! A trilobite!

Today's effort was passable enough that I called Dearest in from the next room to show off my new skill. Dearest laughed: "You're weird," and returned to the adjacent office.

Hmph. I'm not the one who finds trilobites funny...