And that's the way it is.

The CBS retrospective on Walter Cronkite combined the best and the worst. Cronkite as the best, and the worst which is television news today. I wonder if Cronkite cringed as much as the rest of us do when Katie Couric mouths her oily platitudinous reductions.

The best was also the footage, and the worst was the endless narrating of how wonderful he was. Wouldn't a solid hour of nothing but clips be so much more a tribute?

Like all news junkie 50-somethings, I remember Walter Cronkite ... and given that I lived in Canada until the very tail end of his career as anchor to the nation, that's saying something. But I have to admit that the news he covered made more of an impression than he did. That's the way it should be. No Ashley Banfields, no Anderson Coopers, no Keith Olbermanns ... and certainly none of those babbling babboons on Fox ... No. News tells itself; the reporter's genius is in letting it do that.

The man led an amazing life. One of the greats.

This is the time of year when my entire life becomes focused upon the production of the course catalog for the Major Research University where I sharpen red pencils for wages. This year, we are not printing the thing, and the changes we made last year have created a production schedule that is vastly less stressful than every before. But still bloody stressful. So my posts may be a little reserved for another couple of weeks ... notwithstanding that I have a burning desire to answer the uninformed, narrow-minded, historically ignorant and bigoted nonsense of LZ Granderson on CNN. As I watched the Cronkite piece on CBS, I thought of combining the two. If I can get a solid day's work in on the course catalog tomorrow, I may devote a few hours to this pursuit tomorrow evening.

And I want to add, for those of my readers who follow my photography, that I am hanging on my own petard. I upgraded from iPhoto to Aperture in the middle of the busiest work period of my year ... and I can't find anything, my tags don't work, and the photos are like sand in my fingers. Give me a week or two.

Good News

A couple of pieces of heartwarming news in the New York Times. First off, it seems that fewer and fewer 16-year-olds are getting licenses. I've long held that we have the age of consent laws all backwards ... it should be free to have sex at 16, free to drink at 18, free to drive at 21 ... and free to have a cell phone at 30 ... ooops, too cranky. Demographics may be looking after the first three.

And more Americans are giving up golf, the world's most environmentally destructive game. If golf were played more as it was when it was invented ... unmanicured fairways, everybody has to walk and carry their own clubs ... it would not be such a blight, stealing parkland for the few and shedding toxic runoff.

So the planet may be heading for a broiling hell, but in the meanwhile a couple of happy indicators. La de da.

Quick Note

I'm writing another post, but I have a discussion called "Extreme Challenges: The Next Four Years" on CNET with Anderson Cooper, David Gergen, and Fareed Zakaria. For news commentators, that's pretty much as good as it gets. Each of them consistently actually say something. Gergen is very level, and I like his manner. But more to the point, he makes points. And Zakaria is able to give perspective on how others see us in a way that is intelligent but not condescending.

Much better than the usual horde of giggling pretty women and scowling angry men ... the odd scowling woman and the odd giggling man. You know who they are ... and we news junkies are just stuck with them.

Super Dooper

Don't ask me what that photo means ... I just blew around my iPhoto for a while till something struck me.

The Democrats are staging the most fascinating electoral competition that I can remember. It seems like it has to go to the convention ... and the upside of that is that two electorally untested potential nominees will continue to strut their stuff in that long interlude in the ludicrous American Presidential process. Here's what's at issue: the difference between them in total votes yesterday is less the .04%! Something has to give, and nobody knows right now what it will be.

I watched both of their victory speeches. Hillary read her speech as if she had a cab waiting with the meter running. I saw no inflection ... nice writing, but no punches, no crescendos, no lead-ins. Meanwhile, the low-bore Dr. King method of Obama again revealed no content ... no policies, no slogans that pointed to policies. There were a bunch of, pardon me, black church ladies behind him ... mark my words, next time he has national TV coverage, his people will make for a more rainbow-like look.

I admit, like so many liberals, to having been a little longer on the fence that I prefer to admit. I have long felt that Obama would be more of a problem for presumptive 'publican McCain, but I also feel that Clinton in office would be tougher and more real. Last night's Obama performance seemed so canned, so coached, so performed that I was not moved. But coaching and performing are necessary, and it is hard to hold that against him.

A curiosity in California ... so many people sent in mailed ballots that this almost certainly helped Clinton. The move to Obama has occurred very recently, and those early voters gave up their ability to change their minds. On balance, I am against mail ballots ... I think it is a fundamental breach of the secret ballot, and it downplays the importance of campaigning and the march of events. But that ship has sailed ... like so many others in these late days of democracy.

And of course it means that John Edwards got something like 8% of the vote. My good friend LB has wanted me to say something about Edwards, and so what I have to say is hardly original ... Edwards was the policy conscience of the race. He is one who forced the other two to get a policy on health care, he was the one who injected the grave doubts that most Americans have about the "bipartisan" embrace of globalization. It is a shame that Edwards is gone from the campaign irrespective of whether or not he would have won. Imagine if he has the swing 10% of the votes at the convention! That is what politics is actually about ... using your advantages to press advantages beyond what you can command outright. Not the way this system works.

The demographics are very curious. Obama clearly is attracting young voters, and that is obviously a growth zone in which otherwise non-voters can be drawn into activity. He also, curiously, too white male Democrats. Meanwhile, Clinton is drawing Hispanics who have not shown an ability to impact national elections in the past, and she polls well among the old who definitely vote.

Obama is hardly as pure as he like to pretend, of course. My friend JG drew my attention to an old incident in San Francisco that still rankles. Obama attended a fundraiser in San Francisco on the specific proviso that he not be photographed with gay-marriage-mayor Newsom. His campaign denies it, but it is well-established. Of course, in 2004 the reactionaries in Illinois could have buried Obama with a pic of him and thin, neat and single Newsom. But where's the "hope" in that? Is that the new politics he speaks of? Yes, it rankles, but in the end I am not one to damn for one flaw, especially when the enemy makes Attila the Hun look like a compassionate progressive.

It all comes down to who can beat the bastards.

Toss-up. Yes, huzzah for the tossup.

Meanwhile, the 'publicans. It is so obvious that it is all about McCain. But only Toobin on CNN was willing to say that, to round laughter of the other "pundits." (Again this Bolger woman is a complete moron ... listen to her ... she says absolutely nothing. When she starts blathering, I switch back to ESPN and check the latest scores.) So a bunch of troglodytes in the airless reaches of the Southern states back the Byzantine Huckabee ... the man doesn't believe in evolution, for crying out loud. And Romney is a phony ... phony phony phony ... the fact the 20-something percent of the people who still think that dubya is doing a good job decide to vote for him has no more significance than the fact that a dead skunk smells worse than a live one.

The most laughable part of the 'publican race is the notion that McCain is not a conservative ... good grief ... the man is a reactionary in absolutely any place on the face of the planet except the darker regions of Alabama or Rush Limbaugh's decidedly puny mind. He would be a disaster of a president, lamely pursuing failure on the grounds that "it's my turn" and "I deserve it."

The media slobber on Republicans like a brain-damaged poodle begging mistress for another crumb. Huckabee was all over the place parsing the relative conservativeness of his opponents. Chris Matthews, grinnin like a fool, listened as Huckabee stated that Americans wanted a president who told them the truth ... that Americans can take bad news as long as they are being told the truth. Ummm ... Huckabee's man, now in the White House, is the most mendacious president in history. Why doesn't Matthews quote the recent 935-lies report about Iraq to Huckabee and ask what he thinks about that? No way ... too journalistic. He just grins some more, congratulates him on his hollow victory and wishes him well. Everyone seems to be fantasizing about Huckabee the VP. Makes rational people want to retch.

Both Clinton and Obama at least made some oblique reference to global warming last night. The only warming in McCain is in his carotid artery.

I don't know why, but check this out if you have a taste for the obscure and the bizarre. 'nuff sed.

Photo by Arod of some sort of ad in a salon window ... I cannot remember if they are selling skin product or hair product, but what the hell does it matter, really.

Crack Whores

Does anything more clearly illustrate how American government acts like a bunch of crack addicts than the current bipartisan stimulus package response to the gathering economic doom. Let's see ... we worked ourselves into a crisis by loaning the ineligible too much money so that they could spend it on homes they could not afford. Then we traded the resultant worthless paper from hand to hand until somebody got stuck holding the bag, as it were. Then we decided that government should bail out a few of the borrowers and jury-rig the economy to save the bag holders. And when a relatively minor ripple worked its way through the stock markets, we offered every American a check for $600 so we could spend our way out of the crisis.

We're on crack.

Crack whores (no gender reference implied) know that the key to a successful crack existence is a steady stream of five-dollar bills. No point in wasting time creating a stable economic existence when five bucks every three or four hours will keep the demon spawn in your lungs. So government, following this dubious economic theory, in the face of unsustainable waste and graft and over-consumption answers with a metaphorical pile of fins to the masses. "Don't worry, ma, about the world collapsing. Let's go shopping."

A few nights ago, exhibiting my "male gaze" (and I use the term dripping with sarcasm) through channel surfing behavior, I caught 2.5 seconds of the McCain creature speaking ... he said, "We need less government regulation." He would be such a disastrous president. Less government regulation, but "mickey fin" style crack subsidies for the lower American middle class. (Isn't supplying checks to everyone out of the nation's piggy bank "government intervention" ... is that an example of less government? Give me a break.)

Republican economic theory (and I use the word "theory" lightly in this context) is like the theory that led to the crack epidemic. Crack is just cocaine packaged for the less-well-off. It was a brilliant stroke of commodity manipulation ... a Walmart approach to drug sales. Now everyone could afford cocaine, and the drug of the elite became the bane of the inner city, as well as job security for the prison unions. In the same vein, as it were, Republican economic theory is based on the notion that government is always bad. This makes sense to the billionaires, but for ordinary people bad government means no streets, no services, crappy schools, expensive health care. So how do you package this win-lose economic theory to those who have the most to lose? Give them cheap crack ... Walmart crack, ideological one-liner crack, swaggering populist crack, Fox News ... and every now and then, give them 600 bucks a head. You take the elite drug of choice ... Reagonomics ... and you turn it into crack ... dubya-ism.

And the well is so poisoned that no reasonable Democrat dare oppose this nonsense in an election year because ... because we're all addicted to political crack.

What would happen if we did like FDR ... we took that $150 BILLION they are planning to shovel via you and me into Walmart and Targét, and underwrote the construction of 300 Orange Country style water treatment plants? Or, more reasonably, a combination of water treatment plants and sundry carbon saving power plants. We would give people jobs, jump start the most innovative part of the American economy, save the environment, and let the world know we are looking to go about our business in a more rational way.

No way ... cuz we're a bunch of crack whores who ache for more bling made in China. "I need a new plasma TV, mommy." Sure, sez mommy, just wait till I get my government check.

Crack whores ... going to hell on the fast track.

Photo by Arod, taken today on 18th Street near Castro.

McCain

Again, Frank Rich nails it.

MSNBC is so bloody weak. If Chris Matthews would just embrace his innard liberal, he might have something to say. Instead he tailends whatever stinks at the moment, and dumps on any Democrat who shows signs of life. He even brings Keith Olbermann down to his level.

"Mac is back." Makes me sick. McCain eeks out a narrow victory, less than a third of the votes of one of the most right-wing electorates in America, over a nobody who represents a point of view that would have been reactionary in the 13th century. Big whoop. Meanwhile, Giuliani, the self-proclaimed hero of 911, managed to get 2% of the vote. 2%.

I am listening to McCain's speech. First of all, as a long-time resident Canadian in the belly of the beast, this guy would not win a seat in the Parliament of any country where we speak English. That evident fact will not prevent the "pundits" from proclaiming the speech "presidential" whatever that means in this era of the debased presidency.

But more to the point, McCain appears to have dodged his immigration problems ... to wit that he does not want to string 'em up which is probably the majority opinion among people who still think dubya is a good president. He evidently gained from the joke candidacy of Fred Thompson who suckered enough sub-90 IQ types into thinking that TV and the world are the same place such that he took some steam out of the Huckabee popcorn maker. We can thank the deluded for saving us from nine and a half months of worrying about how horrifying it would be if Huckabee actually managed to beat the Democrats. Now we only have to worry about McCain peddling the old "maverick" myth to enough independents so that he can spend four more years ignoring reality.

McCain does a touching nod to Mother. Touching. We all love our mothers. I'm sure she is a lovely woman. Now, what about the future of the planet? He waxes expansive about being "proud to be an American" and referencing his being a "foot soldier in the Reagan revolution." Yup ... nothing like 'publicans ... there is no stupidity too overblown for their denuded sense of what is at stake in this electoral process.

"... build an even greater country than the one they inherited." Sorry, John, that ship has sailed, and it is your party that has guaranteed that the next generation will be poorer, more desperate, less secure, and living in a world that is more depleted and in danger than ever before in history. Quite a legacy.

" ... the opportunity to serve this country that I love a little longer." The ultimate 'publican electoral appeal. It's my turn, now ... damn the facts.

The speech is finally over ... Olbermann thinks its a goodie ... I think it is froth with a covering of slime. Then Matthews starts sucking up ... he thinks that McCain should call Nancy Reagan, thinks he is a Reagan-like guy. Matthews, stop the blather and start thinking. Matthews signs off by promising us that "we will soon be hearing a lot more from Joe Scarborough." I think I'll go hide under a rock.

McCain is a foul reactionary who would freeze America in its present impending failure. He would be more loathed than dubya a year into his presidency. A disaster. A man whose only idea is that he deserves the presidency. A man without a clue of what faces humanity and how America might actually make a difference. Make no mistake ... McCain is an old fashioned reactionary. Nothing "maverick" about that.

That said, I still think we'll beat his ass in November.

ps ... Gloria Bolger, "senior" political analyst on CNN is the weakest chatter on TV. She exudes the desperation of those elevated far above their intellects. What a fraud.

Race to the Bottom, and Other News of the Day

Well, I was plain wrong about McCain in Michigan. I figured the low density of Romney was perfectly obvious, but Michiganers apparently see something where others see nothing. Perhaps it was his bluster about getting everyone to roll up their sleeves and revive the dying American mega-monster industry. Sorry, buds, but that ship has sailed. The opportunity to lead the world was lost. Auto execs are like crack addicts ... they know crack is bad for them, bad for everybody, and that they would do so much better on chicken soup ... but, ooooo, crack is so much better. Let's make as many Hummers as we can and watch the planet shrivel up and drown.

It is hard to remember a bigger phony than Romney considered as a serious presidential candidate. You can't compare him with dubya ... dubya played dumb and he was dumb. You really can't blame him for the fact that a near-majority of voters considered dumb as a qualification for office.

So the race appears to be open. I think Romney would be easy to beat, but I do not exactly grok the mentality of the uncommitted in the crowded spaces between here and there. Gawd noze what Missouri will think. And on that turns the fate of a planet.

BTW, I think that Giuliani has been toast for a month now. Nobody wants to say so out loud, just in case. But the man is obviously corrupt, and his "strategy" was a dishonest charade that allowed him to hide in the vain hope that somehow Florida would come through for him.

I watched the entire KTVU new broadcast tonight ... even missed the season opener for Remo 911 ... because I happened to catch the teaser that Dennis Richmond has a big announcement. It seems like he might retire, and that would be, locally speaking, earth-shaking. He has always had a little edge, like he might one day just be so pissed off that he up and tosses his papers at the camera. But he never did. Rather, a real class act. I rarely watch the local news, but I will be sorry to see him go. 30 years as an anchor 40 years on the air. KTVU may be local par excellence, but it is the best local in this locality, and Dennis Richmond will be tough to replace. And you have to hand it to KTVU, they stick with what works. The notion that any change is good is just churn. No churn at KTVU. Kudos for that.

Spent the day at work mastering Spry Accordion Panels in Dreamweaver. Notwithstanding that I loathe the fate of having to work, I love my job. At least I get to learn and grow and create. I have it good, notwithstanding the annoying occasional feeling sorry for myself.

Twitchin' 'n Grimacin'

Justice Stevens then pressed Mr. Englert to justify the state’s use of the second drug, and Mr. Englert replied that it served to protect the inmate’s dignity. The justice was unpersuaded, remaining “terribly troubled,” he said, by the fact that the drug appeared “almost totally unnecessary” except to spare witnesses the “unpleasantness” of seeing the inmate twitch or grimace. --New York Times, January, 8, 2008

To put this in context, the BBC reported today or yesterday that the Iranians in one of their gawd-forsaken outer provinces lopped off the right hands and left feet of 3 or 4 armed robbers. No doubt they are continuing their monstrous lust at hanging people in public as well.

Beware the company you keep. Americans in their self-righteousness should not allow the gore of the Iranian approach to obscure for one moment that we continue to slaughter people judicially. At a furious pace, with Texas gleefully leading the parade. "76 trombones lead the ..."

I am opposed to capital punishment in all cases. That said, if you want it to be painless, it's gotta be the guillotine. Or a properly conducted hanging. Saddam obviously suffered less than any ole Southern white trash drifter who figgers to rob a liquor store in Texas and fall afoul of the Harris County DA so as to be suffocated alive while paralyzed.

This country seems to know no shame. "There is no painless requirement" in the Constitution, states the professional executionist Scalia. What about yer Catholic Church, Mr. anti-abortionist?

Disgusting.

60 Minutes

Postscript: See the excellent article by Nicholas Schmidle in today's New York Times magazine for analysis of the state of Jihadi politics in Pakistan.

Let's blog 60 Minutes.

"Did you like her?" Good grief. Is that what 60 Minutes has come to? Lara Looloo, whatever her name might be, is a pale shadow of a journalist, softballing Musharraf with questions like that about Bhutto, and then faking toughness about Osama, apparently trying to play to the imagined vast crowd of the ignorant who prefer to know nothing about what it is that makes Pakistan such a hopeless place. It's not Osama ... its much more than that. Pakistan may be a tough country, but the politics is real and subject to analysis that goes beyond "liking" and Osama. This looks like the same sort of method that the "pundits" use to support 'publicans ... phony questions that let a smiling crook look good.

Don't get me wrong ... I confess to having been a little soft on Musharraf who was ... was, past tense ... the best dictator Pakistan ever had. Not a tough competition. He replaced the venal and, frankly, stupid Nawaz Sharif whose claims to legitmacy rest on ignorance ... he didn't know about Kargil, he didn't know that the army actually runs everything, just another innocent caught in the lights. Hmmm. Give me a break. The worst thing about Bhutto's death may be that it gives cover to that creep.

"Misperceptions of American thinking" says Musharraf ... but Lara Looloo misses the moment, no doubt because her knowledge of the background is rather less than any other miscellaneous sorority girl elevated to newsperson, and she lets Musharraf off the hook. Then, she pretends to get get tough about Al Quaeda without evidencing even the slightest background in what the frontier provinces represent. Gawd, this is awful.

But remember, 60 Minutes is actually the best, notwithstanding the temporary sidelining of Jon Stewart.

Story 2 is a mobster executioner with Steve Kroft. Entertaining, not important. 60 Minutes excels at this sort of thing. "Are you still a Catholic?" Steve asks ... and the mob executioner finally squirms a little. Fascinating ... I'd still rather have a proper story on Pakistan. Some touching remembrances of Ed Bradley who curiously played high school football with the future mobster.

And now story 3, the dastardly Roger Clemens. Seems a lots like the Bonds line except that instead of flax seed oil, he got B-12 ... yeah ... I don't believe him any more than I believe Bonds. I don't really care, and I don't doubt that he worked hard. Frankly, Clemens looks nervous, and I think he's lying. What do I know? That said, I also think he played by the de facto rules that management and players AND fans silently agreed to. But I think he dunnit.

"I was eating Vioxx like it was Skittles." That's pretty frightening. But then he criticizes steroids as a quick fix. Hmmm ... which is which?

It ends up being a pretty compelling interview, and I probably like the guy better than when it started. I still don't believe him, and I still don't care. Just as long as they apply the same standards to Bonds as they do to Clemens. And just as long as sooner or later we apply the standards of science to steroids and figure out what part is good and what part is bad.

And finally, Andy Roooney on the primary season, singing the praises of Roosevelt and Jefferson. Seems safe. So he devolves into pointless meandering about names. Cmon Andy. There's more grist for the mill in these bizarre early primaries than that.

Four stories, one compelling, three misses. You can do better than that, folks.

Burma

“As a neighbor, China is extremely concerned about the situation in Myanmar,” the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, said at a news briefing in Beijing. “China hopes that all parties in Myanmar exercise restraint and properly handle the current issue so as to ensure the situation there does not escalate and get complicated.”

From the New York Times which, in a upwelling of common sense that seems so out of touch with our current epoch, has opened almost its entire archives for free viewing.

So, two points here ... ah, the joys of the "Chinese century" ... lest things "get complicated" indeed. The lovely thing about debased totalitarianists is that they blithely operate under the pretense, as if no one could possibly contradict them, that nothing has to make sense because all sense is nothing more than the debased totalitarianism itself. We ex-leftoid neo-liberal/humanist/seculars increasingly have no difficulty in noting that China is truly the most nightmarish place on the face of the planet. Certainly the good ole USA continues to suck down the earthly patrimony with a level of greed unmatched by any civilization ever. But for sheer self-destructive nihilistic depradation, nothing matches China today. There was a piece in the Times today about how the water table in more or less the entire north of China (that covers a lot of territory, folks) is more or less depleted. Their cities are sewers, the country is surrounded by dead oceans, the air that they not only breathe but pass on to the rest of us is more toxic than anything ever experienced in LA. And they court any thug in a presidential palace who has a quart of oil to his name, be that name Kabila or Ahmadinejad or the tinpots of the Burmese junta whose names are completely irrelevant and will not long be remembered once they are trash-binned, to use a little Marxian poetics.

So why, for gawds' sakes, does the Chinese junta give a flying crap about propping up a tiny coterie of desperate tin men in Burma who don't even have the elementary cojones to show their faces in what used to be and still is in fact their own capital, Rangoon. [BTW, I am not much into this crypto-PC changing of the English name of places ... it's Burma, it's Rangoon ... call me cranky, see if I care.] But the habit of committee-crats, the collective form of autocrats if you will, means that their scrawny knees jerk long before any latent brainpower kicks in. See a committee, love a committee, even if it is a bunch of Burmese generals whose passage from the world stage will elicit not one single tear anywhere.

The second point, if I can be an ex-leftoid for a moment, derives from Lenin and Trotsky. The key to a revolution in Burma is to turn the troops. Not the cops, but rather the rank and file troops. The soldiers, as the old Bolsheviks pointed out, are cut from the same cloth as the protesters. They just have to come to consciousness that by switching sides the situation will flip. In this regard, the abbots of the assorted monasteries have played a truly reactionary role ... surprise, surprise, the high mucky-mucks of religion jerk their knees to the current order no matter what that order may be. When the abbots call on the troops to flip, the generals will be cooked.

As in so many affairs in history, it comes down to a couple of religious figures actually following their own rhetoric. Trotsky famously averred something to the effect that the crisis in world history came down to a crisis in the leadership of the proletariat. Can't quite agree with that. But the crisis in Burmese history right now does come down to a crisis in the leadership of the sangha, the monkhood. Once they rise to their duty, the Chinese committee-crats can be damned ... though you can be sure they will adjust quickly and lose nothing they care about in the bargain.

The Chinese century. Beware what you ask for, post-post-colonialist brethren and sistern ... you just might get it.

Photo by Arod of a window on Grant Street, North Beach, San Francisco.

Ahmadinejad and Rumsfeldt

Two controversies about academic freedom, each centering on individuals who are most assuredly enemies of freedom in one way or another. Rumsfeldt's appointment as a fellow at the Hoover Institute has generated a teapot tempest of protest at Stanford, and I am proud of the righteous outrage at Columbia's inviting the disgusting Ahmadinejad to speak today.

That said, I have to go with letting them speak. What do liberals gain by arguing for the censorship of conservatives who are going to be heard anyway. Now we certainly don't have to play a low-bore neo-con as Scott Pelley did last night in his 60 Minute's interview in the tin-pot's garden in Tehran. The questions were hectoring, and had no more content than the current dubya-ite campaign to pin something ... anything ... on Iran as a diversion for the military and political failure in Iraq. Where were the questions about democracy, about personal freedom, about the wave of brutal executions, the repression of minorities? No. Like this question, which Ahmadinejad interrupted: "At the moment, our two countries may very well be walking down the road to war. How do you convince President Bush, how do you convince other nations in the West . . . . " What the hell does "walking down the road to war" mean? This sort of pandering to the Bushies actually hands the high ground to the fascist.

I thought Pelley caved to Bushism when he had an opportunity to expose the depth of Iranian depravity.

Now if I were Columbia University, no way would I invite that tiny tin-pot to speak. But that doesn't mean that they do not have the right to do so. And, sure enough Columbia President Lee Bollinger had the guts to call Ahmadinejad a "cruel dictator" to his face. Maybe that's why they did it ... to show the Scott Pelley's of the world how you confront evil from the vantage point of truth. The appearance gave protesters a focus that undermined the Iranian regime's purposes in sending their stringer to New York. It gave Ahmadinejad an opportunity to lie out loud about homosexuals ... that they do not have them in Iran ... a lie that has been told about us time and again to justify killing or imprisoning us. (I remember a good friend of mine in high school sagely averring that there were no Jewish homosexuals ... that was 1970, and I am sure she does not remember it, so I have thoroughly forgiven her.) If there are none, you slimy bastard, who the hell is that you are hanging from the end of crane in your glorious capital city. Check out the the Iranian Queer Organization for a brutal story or a young gay male couple flogged for holding a private party.

Yes, it is galling to have to look at that creep. But opposing his speaking plays to his conceits.

And it certainly will be galling to know that Rumsfeldt will be padding around an office in the Hoover Tower. That said, let him defend himself ... expose him to the questioners and the protesters. Liberals have no stake in censorship other than to end it. This guy is the proximate author of the worst military disaster in American history. I think it is amazing that he has the khutzpah to show his face in public. Let him show it. We got the facts.

Addendum: I just watched Lee Bollinger, President of Columbia, on Anderson Cooper's 360 ... a quiet, solid defense of free speech. This man is a hero! If you're going to believe in free speech, you can't pick which speech will be more free. You have to answer the free speech of bigots and murderers with the free speech of truth and liberty.

We're going to hell ...

From the SF Chronicle today:

Their troubles began in April 2006 when they refinanced the remaining $207,000 on a 30-year fixed loan to a two-year adjustable rate mortgage so they could pay down hefty obligations on their SUV and pickup truck.

You can read the whole article on Mortgage Mess Hurts Main Street, Beyond which describes the nightmare of thieving and lieing in the mortgage industry, but that little quote is an eloquent metonymy for the cultural hell into which we are descending. They had a secure fixed loan mortgage on "their three-acre property in the middle of horse country, with its swimming pool and fish pond." But they needed monster cars galore to match the excess, so they bankrupted themselves ... and along with all their "steroidal" counterparts, they aim to bankrupt the country. These people, by the way, have two teenagers, and the wife works in an elementary school and the husband lost his job in a mobile home factory. Why are people like this in debt so vastly beyond their means that they have no prayer of ever getting even. Have they even thought about college for the teenagers?

We are all on steroids, an economy of junkies who cannot say no to any excess. How much happier would those folks have been in a home they could afford with two compact cars? How much better off would our economy be if they spent the excess money they would have on local products and services?

I suppose one might accuse me of being idealistic. I reject that. The idealism (i.e., a philosophy that arises from positing pure forms or ideals) is in viewing the economy from the perspective of high finance. Perhaps we need a dose of materialism (i.e., a philosophy that arises from the study of material relations) in which we build an economy based upon material security and happiness, and focus the economy on the vast middle rather than upon the airless upper strata. Call me an ex post Marxist, whatever.

We're going to hell ... in an about-to-be-repossessed Hummer-SUV-monster-truck.

Meanwhile, I am going to spend the rest of the day installing my brand spanking new iMac ;-}

We are all Barry Bonds

[As noted repeatedly, suddenly I am free of my huge project. The 744-page course catalog has gone to press. I sign off on bluelines tomorrow or the next day. I'll have a bunch of ACs ... author's corrections ... but the madness of all the decisions and editing and processing and emails and all that ... well ... it is over, and my life can finally slowly decompress back to a quotidien reality of exchange and involvement. Every year, these days after the fact are a little weird, unreal, hard to fathom. But I know what it means, and I am, under the fatigue, happy and relieved.]

Meanwhile, Barry Bonds is at the plate ... now 0-2 after a long foul ball that Belliard could not field. Now 1-2, outside and low. And outside and low again ... they always get squirrelly when they go 0-2 on him. And outside and low again. And on a fastball low and down the middle, he screams a double to triples alley. Kuip says, "For guys over forty, doubles alley."

We're on the Bonds watch, of course. He is tied with Hank Aaron for most home runs ever ... 755. And we are waiting on 756 while America watches and kvetches about whether or not ... mostly whether ... he did steroids. And whether or not ... mostly whether ... his having done steroids invalidates the record.

I love how they say, "Bonds will make history." History to the sports fan, not to mention the casual consumer of news entertainment, means a record. It is not the totality of how we got here, it is not the interplay of competing forces, it is not the third principle of historical observation that anything given long enough turns into its opposite. No, it is the simple record itself. As if the instant transforms to history and can be clipped and stowed and we can move ... back to consuming and stuffing our faces and purchasing our way to oblivion.

Ouch!

Yes, ouch ineed. This is the problem with all the kvetching about Bonds' record. Why have we chosen Bonds as the whipping boy for the steroids era? Why is he the villain? Is he the only one? ... why no. Is he singular in his excess? ... no again. We live in a society which worships excess. We live in a society in the grips of the most cataclysmic paroxysm of greed in the history of our species. Nothing is too big or too obscene. No standards of decency apply (except, of course, to the freedom to have sex how you please ... that little contradiction I will try to address on some other occasion).

Anyone who drives an SUV is on steroids. Anyone who lives in some monster home where they are heating or air conditioning empty space while no one is present ... you are on steroids. Anyone who munches down Big Gulps of high-fructose-corn-syrup laden soft drinks is on steroids ... bottled water is steroids, energy-sucking high-def TVs are steroids. I walked past the Randall Museum for little children up the hill today, and hundreds of discarded boxed meals were piling out of the garbage pails all over the parking lot that was itself strewn with monster trucks. Steroids. Cheap this at WalMart, cheap that at Target ... all steroids, folks ... all excess, unnecessary, unsatisfying, just plain suckin' down whatever you can get yours paws on. Steroids. We are all on steroids.

Why is Bonds the guilty one when we consume like there is no tomorrow?

Bonds is the king of his era. He played by the rules that others played by. It is not ironic, but rather emblematic, that the pitcher who served up the ball for home run number 755 had himself been suspended for steroids when he was in the minor leagues ... the guy is 5'11", 190, hardly a muscle-bound android.

We are Barry Bonds, and when we hate him, we hate ourselves. Maybe we should learn something from that, and clean up our act. But it is nauseating to hear all the sanctimonious holier-than-thou crap from a bunch of monster-truck-driving, bottled-water-drowning, over-stuffing-yer-face, proud, never-say-no-to-more steroidals.

Physician, heal thyself.

...

An hour or so later ... he did it. He hit 435 feet of home run to the deepest part of the deepest yard in baseball. A sublime home run. And then, more sublime especially for those of us who worship words above all things, an eloquent congratulations from Hank Aaron whose sweet Southern turn of phrase leant more class to the event than the normally crass Mr. Bonds could reocgnize or expect or subsequently deliver.

So happy are we all that it is over at last. I look forward to unencumbered Giants baseball next year. In the meanwhile, though, I think he deserves it. History is what it is, not what we wish it were. Bonds did what he did in the terms of the era in which he did it. That is what history is. The rehashing and the kvetching are nothing. The arc of the ball, towering, that is what is it is about.

dot dot jot

12 days remaining before I go to press with my massive course catalog. The pressure is like nothing else I experience ... my skin tingles as I try to sleep. Last night I dreamt about following a small animal up the scree of a steep mountain as I tossed out course descriptions along the way. I was vaguely awake, as I am sure anyone would understand. Not actually awake. But aware that this is a dream even if I have no way out of it without actually waking up.

Three curious pieces of writing in the last little while:

1. Barry Bonds' now defunct mistress has announced that she will spill the beans in Playboy in a piece that will be illuminated by pix of her nude body. Her name is Kimberly Bell.

Now I'm not a prude. If moderately attractive people want to pose nude, go for it. A lot more nudity would make more than a tiny difference in this world of prudes and murderous moralists. But, of course, trading her modesty for some filthy lucre will no doubt eliminate any credibility in the federales' attack on Bonds. That, too, is fine by me.

But what struck me about the article was its puddling around with that most bizarre of au-current ideas, self-esteem.

Ms. Bell asserts that her posing nude "was one of the most liberating experiences of my life." Meanwhile, "If I had more self-esteem when I was younger," she said, "I wouldn't have been caught up with such a rotten man."

Hmmm, self-esteem is posing nude for money, but screwing around with a big-time athlete who slips you $80K for a down payment is anti-self-esteem.

I need a calculator, because this doesn't seem to add up.

The concept of self-esteem is one of those zero-dividers ... when you include a zero-divider, an equation can end up anywhere, and so it is with nonsense like the idea of self-esteem. We are given to assume that it is a good thing, but how do we explain the current generation of whining mommy-addicted youth who have an excuse for everything because they, inexplicably, feel good about themselves regardless of evidence... oops, perhaps that is a little too cranky. More pointedly, how would we explain a phenomenon like the self-hating genius as against the sickening reality of the self-admiring drug dealer, with "self-esteem" as a guide ... you see self-esteem never adds up.

But it can always be used as a cheap writing trick, and no reader dares to think twice lest s/he be accused of not being sympathetic, or whatever the current self-flagellation.

So, dear Kimberley, strip down if you wish, but it is of a piece with your money-grubbing with Bonds back when you suckered him for $80K. I have no problem with that ... to each his own ... but you need to call things by their real names. Self-esteem, whatever that may be at a given moment, has nothing to do with it.

2. Let us now praise editors is a little piece that appeared in Salon.com today. I can endorse that.

Editors are craftsmen, ghosts, psychiatrists, bullies, sparring partners, experts, enablers, ignoramuses, translators, writers, goalies, friends, foremen, wimps, ditch diggers, mind readers, coaches, bomb throwers, muses and spittoons -- sometimes all while working on the same piece. Early in my editing career I was startled when, after we had finished an edit, a crusty, hard-bitten culture writer, a woman at least twice my age, told me, "That was great -- better than sex!"

I like to say that editors are like dentists ... they may be painful but the cosmetic result is well worth the short hours of discomfiture.

I've always been an editor, but only professionally for the last six years, seven bulletins, as we call MRU's course catalog. The last six years has been a deep, gut-wrenching learning experience. It has improved every part of my wordsmithing.

But editing is gut-wrenching in another way. I become attached not to my own prose, but to my take on the prose of others. It is always hard to let go of prose, but it is equally hard to let go of what I do to someone else's prose. Now, what I do professionally is technical writing in the sense that I reduce hundreds upon hundreds of pages of prose to a single, flat, authoritative style. But each little chunk comes from a different angle, and bears with it a different personality. None of that can shake my resolve to be loyal to my book and its single-minded vision.

Ah ... all of this in the greater scheme is a tempest in a teapot. I yearn to edit beyond the comfy confines of my Bulletin. But in the meanwhile, I enjoy what Gary Kamiya writes:

In an odd way, the exchange between writer and editor encapsulates the process of growing up. The act of writing is godlike, omnipotent, infantile. Your piece is a statement delivered from on high, a pronouncement ex cathedra, as egotistical and unchecked as the wail of a baby. Then it goes out into the world, to an editor, and the reality principle rears its ugly head. You are forced as a writer to come to terms with the gap between your idea and your execution -- and still more deflating, between your idea and what your idea should have been.

3. New-Look Bonaparte. This piece will be gone into the impenetrable New York Times archive shortly, but it is worth a read.How much more dramatic must French life be with active public intellectuals who make arguments as cranky and contradictory and erudite and just plain maddening as this:

I am only saying that there is in Sarkozy a relationship to memory that troubles and worries me. Men usually have a memory. It can be complex, contradictory, paradoxical, confused. But it is their own. It has a great deal to do with the basis of who they are and the identities they choose for themselves. Sarkozy is an identity pirate, a mercenary of others’ memories. He claims all memories, meaning that in the end he just might not have any. He is our first president without a memory. He is the first of our presidents willing to listen to all ideas, because for him they are literally indistinguishable. If there is a man in France today who embodies (or claims to embody) the famous end of all ideologies, which I cannot quite bring myself to believe in, it is indeed Mr. Sarkozy, the sixth president of the Fifth Republic.

There is an odd feeling in having a president about whom so much (his foreign policy, his generosity, his style) draws you together and so much else (his vision of France, his memory-greed, his cynicism) profoundly separates you. Such will be my lot for the next five or 10 years. Then again, why not? It’s fine.

Bernard-Henri Lévy wrote this. I think that we have no public intellectuals who could write something like this. And we are the more poor for it.

Again, I have to fall back on my utter exhaustion from the current mad dash to publication to slide by a deeper analysis. But read this article while you can. And wonder where we can find such dense, contradictory writing in our pages.

BTW, I actually tend to think that Sarkozy is the right guy. I tend to think, notwithstanding a lifetime's credentials as a youthful socialist cum aging liberal, that Royale would have been a captive to the least dynamic forces in French life. We shall see.

Metablog

I managed to work myself into a bit of a tizzy about the brutal stoning of Jaffar Kiani. I think that nothing since the Nazis, or the Catholic Inquisition, matches the Iranian state for savagery and barbarism, if not efficiency. They are disgusting.

But the post I have been trying to construct will not quite come together. It has far too much anger ... state murder enrages me more than I can explain ... and my editorial endeavors at MRU are at a fever pitch right now. There is not enough time to write myself through the problems.

The attempt did lead to a long ramble through the pages of Jean Genet who, more than any writer, grasps the sublimed erotic character of state murder. I read Genet when I was 19, 20. I read a good chunk of Funeral Rites on an island in the middle of a lake on the shores of which my father had a summer job as a chef one summer as he transitioned from headhunter to nightclub manager. I had borrowed a boat and rowed out to this lonely place to consume this eerily erotic book that was certainly deeper than I could fully grok at that point ... but there would never be a point in my life where I could feel it as deeply as I did then.

It is in Miracle of the Rose that Genet is in raptures about the condemned Harcamone, not to mention sundry other doomed thugs and lovers. Perhaps I need to find a metaphorical island, silent and uninhabited, to re-encounter the raw innocent eroticism that is Genet, and to extract from it the horrors from which he recoils and which yet he simultaneously embraces.

So I have to give up on this first attempt to blog the nightmare of capital punishment ... but I thank blogging for giving me two nights of wandering through an old friend, Jean Genet. There will be more executions ... perhaps none as brutal as the Iranian stoning ... and I can take up this subject again. Because I did the research ... there is a stark and horrifying picture here of some workmen burying a young woman before her stoning, and the entire law is here, insane and chilling in its detail and matter-of-factness and savagery.

Meanwhile, still working 11 hours a day, 6 days a week on my course catalog ... two weeks and six days to go till I go to press.

Click here for other posts I have written about Jaffar Kiani.

Phrase of the Day

Technogenic sources of ore.

From the New York Times story on Siberian pollution. It refers to 3-5 feet of accumulated sludge from the bottom of ponds near nickel smelting plants. The sludge is rich in particles of nickel, copper, and cobalt that were emitted by the smelter and which have settled into the pond through runoff, and contractors have been brought in to harvest the stuff.

Yeah ... those Soviets ... er, Russians ... always quick with a business idea, even as the country sinks into an unliveable environmental hell.

One more problem:

In another problem for a town that has many, pollutants are lowering the freezing point of groundwater, much the way salt scattered on a roadway prevents the formation of ice, said Ali G. Kerimov, a member of the Norilsk City Council.

That is particularly unfortunate here, because the city is built on permafrost, and as foundations once anchored in solid ice shift and crack, buildings become uninhabitable. Mr. Kerimov said 70 out of 1,000 buildings in Norilsk had been forcibly abandoned.

We're on our way to hell.

Stoned

Curious the way the Internet works. I periodically look at some stats of visits to this blog. They are always kind of spotty, but you learn funny things ... especally the Google search terms that might lead to my blog. So someone searched Jaffar Kiani, the poor sod who got his head bashed in with rocks by the peacock-proud strutting mullahs who terrorize the Persians these days. I clicked on the search link, and my blog is the top reference. The fifth reference was to an Indonesian site, kabarindonesia.com, and they, quoting Deutsche Welle, had some more lugubrious details of the slaughter. It turns out I read Indonesian, and so I translate:

Jaffar Kiani and Mokkarameh were sentenced to death by the judge at trial, and the condemned had their hands tied behind the back and were buried in the ground up to the waist for the man, and the neck for the woman. Then the witnesses pelted the condemned with rocks until they were dead.

Jaffar Kiani dan Mokkarameh dijatuhi hukum rajam oleh pengadilan. dalam aturannya, terpidana diikat tangannya ke belakang dan dikubur dalam tanah hingga pinggang untuk lelaki, dan hingga leher bagi perempuan. Lalu penonton melempari si terpidana dengan batu hingga mati.

These details did not make the English language press that I read, and I could not locate a reference on either the English or German language Deutsche Welle. Capital punishment is about the details, because just counting up the cadavers obscures the horror. The New York Times article implied that the woman had been spared, but the Indonesian implies that she too got to meet god's mercy a little earlier than perhaps she had planned. There is some vagueness there, and I might alter my translation when I manage to go to a dictionary.

Note that the witnesses throw the rocks. Witnessing is big in Islam ... as in the profession of faith: "I bear witness that there is no god but god ... " The Indonesian in the reference above uses the word penonton which is an Indonesian rather than Arabic root, and might as easily be translated audience or onlookers. The Arabic root word in Indonesian would be syahid. One wonders how a "witness" got so lucky as to be selected to huck large rocks into the immobilized head of a living sentient human being. More to the point, one wonders what kind of bloodthirsty upbringing would prevent such a witness from vomitting in horror, or passing out in fear, or running in disgust and disgrace. Shame on them.

The witnessing thing points out a difference between christianity and islam that is obscured by the feel good multiculturalism of "we are all people of faith" nonsense. Christianity is about faith ... becoming a christian means surrendering your rationality in favor of that famous foolish fairy tale that is evidently fictional and bears the clear marks of oral formulaic storytelling. Islam is not about faith ... it is about surrender and submission. The fairy tale is less important than the submission. In actual practice, of course, notwithstanding all the angry words and lectern banging and parched throats that pass for muslim discourse these days, the fairy tales are important for keeping the unwashed in line. But they too are required to bear witness by professing the religion and publicly submitting to it. Remember our poor Palestinian and his sac of flour.

I think that the closest thing to the word "faith" in Arabic is dîn, but I may be wrong on that. You can see this word in names like Nûr ud'dîn (light of religion). I don't think it matters much.

Muslims like to say that "it is written" (maktûb), and in this sense god, notwithstanding his ineffability, is knowable. The Quran is described as uncreated in the sense that it is the eternal unchanging statement of everything. Christians these day like to stomp around holding the bible above the shoulder and aslant from the head at a 60 degree angle, clutched at the lower right side between the thumb and the crooked forefinger, and thunder knowingly, snidely, menacingly, "This is the literal word of god." "Literal" ... i.e., that which is written. Now these persistent but archaic religious traditions arose in societies where literacy was the possession of a caste, if I may, of professionals, sometimes honored, sometimes enslaved. Literacy skills were something that you had to purchase from someone. So written words were a mystery to most, and when the charismatic possessed them, and wielded them, they had a power rather greater than we can feel at this point in time when the written word is our daily companion. The foregrounding of the literate god is a hangover, but one that has its resonances, yessirree bob.

So stomping around saying that god can read and write doesn't make a lot of sense. But in the climate of fear that religion creates ... whether by crushing heads with stones or by the sanctimonious tut-tutting and sturdy finger wagging which is what the Enlightenment reduced our christian bigots to ... this god with a pencil seeks to overwhelm all the writing that ignores or supersedes him. The muslims are open about it ... as with pretty much everything, they want to slaughter anybody who writes against them. The christians can only perform their slaughters in the remote parts of their world, but they can always fantasize. But they love to fulminate against texts that do not do their work. I like to remember this gem ... I used to watch late night religious TV back in the early 80s, before the Bakkers brought the whole scam to such low repute. There was this fabulous moment with the sweating, prancing Jimmy Swaggart ... what a performer ... holding that bible characteristically twixt his thumb and crooked forefinger at that precise heaven-pointing angle ... talking about movies and the temptation to watch them and bellowing to the swaying faithful gathered as if at his feet ... "Just walk on by." Just walk on by, yes, brothers and sisters, just walk on by.

Of course, in due course, Swaggart got caught in his own web of adultery. His preferred sexual peccadillo was to have naked prostitutes in fur coats walk around his car and flash him as he, presumably, pleasured himself in a most ungodly way. Now I applaud the creativity of his preferred perversion ... and I firmly believe that perversions are the stuff of literature and life and a rollicking good time ... but isn't it odd that his professional madness about "just walk on by" was also his private madness about adultery and horniness.

And so it is with words ... if god is the reading and writing god, if what he has written (since he cannot write, in the present, because that would make him temporal and not eternal) is all that you need to know, why can't he make his intentions known? Why is there so much doubt and so much ambiguity? Why do his texts make so little sense? Why is god just as relentlessly local as a Swaggart in a car with a naked prostitute doing cartwheels in a back alley?

And why do his stalwarts ignore his words and pick up stones instead and cast them bodily at the immobilized heads of those who do not fit? Why? Why does the proof of god require a smashed skull on the body of a man buried to his waist in a cemetery with a bunch of zealots applauding and drooling and patting each other on the back?

Why? ... because he is not there, and the cynics and bastards and preachers and mullahs who make themselves proud and powerful in his name are liars and muggers and bloodthirty murderers.

Never forget poor Jaffar Kiani, friends. He is what religion means. His crushed skull if what it portends for you.

Photo by Arod, of a mural on the side of a bar on 16th Street above Valencia.

Two Cases of Adultery

Ah the moral pecadilloes of our holier-than-thou crowd. The tawdry, puffed up moralizing beast of a 'publican congressman who turns up in not one but two prostitute black books ... David Vitter, the latest in a long line of religious political hypocrites. It makes slurping one's coffee in front of the virtual newspaper in the morning oh so satisfying. Liar, liar, pants on fire.

There is another adultery in the news as well. One Jaffar Kiani, 47, did not seek the limelight, but the religious thugs of Iran's version of the 'publican party dragged him to a cemetery and stoned him to death notwithstanding an order to the contrary from the "chief of the judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahroudi”. I guess stoning the old bastard in a cemetery saved on cadaver transportation costs. Iran plans on a bunch of executions for "moral" reasons, and you can bet yer bottom dollah that a bunch of homos will swing in that special Iranian way.

First of all, I'm in favor of the unfettered right to adultery. Sure it has made a lot of lives miserable, but ... and this might be a shock ... people have sex. Yes, they do. Despite centuries ... millennia ... of efforts by sanctimonious preachers and schoolmarms, people continue to rut like ... well, rut like people. The right to adultery, like the right to believe whatever nonsense you want to believe, is simply a big unfenced boundary. It is not an encouragement or a discouragement. It is simply that people have the right to associate and the right to do what they want to do. And, without adultery, just how much less rich would literature or opera be? Name me a solid old epic that does not have adultery at its core?

So the problem with the hypocrite and christian 'publican Senator Vitter is not that he is horny but that he is a liar. And the problem with poor Mr. Kiani is not that he had wandering eyes but that the facist regime under which he lived has been having some political problems and tends to solve them by slaughtering people in public.

Both Mr. Vitter and Mr. Kiani illustrate the dangers of religion when we allow it out of its cage as optional private moral bellwether to public political discourse.

There is this fellow with whom I associate in my public life who wears a Promise Keepers hat from time to time. He is a warm and friendly person, affable to a fault. Perhaps his Christianity has been a positive force for him. He once urged me to prayer during a chance meeting at the urinals, but my stony silence has evidently led him to leave that one alone. Maybe he has learned something from Promise Keepers; that's up to him. But he is obviously oblivious to the indubitable fact that those people are a direct imminent threat to my personal safety. If they were in power, they would act like a bunch of Iranian mullahs; they would kill me. I can't prove that, but I certainly do not plan to participate in any kind of social experiment to find out.

But the Promise Keepers and Falwells of the world can only fantasize about the hangings and beheadings of resurgent Islamist power, and that is where the attitude of liberals to the Vitters of the world has to be shaped. Let people lead their lives, and when a liar like Vitter is exposed, we have to focus not on his wandering genitals but on his hypocrisy. For every condemnation in that holy book of sex, there are dozens of condemnations of hypocrisy. It is his hypocrisy that make him ineligible to be a Senator, not his libido.

Liberals need to remember that appeals to faith are zero-sum dividers. We need to appeal to reason. People have the right to screw around, but hypocrites have no place in the Senate.

And neither mullahs nor preachers have any place in judgement of anyone. They should guard their own sallacious souls and leave the rest of us alone. A pox on medieval revanchism of any kind.

Compulsory morality is the opposite of freedom.

But, then again, the relationship between compulsory morality and actual behavior is the source of epic and farce and poetry and opera. So we get the good with the bad, and the bad with the good.

Gotta leave it at that ... perhaps in a rather less fatigued mood I can attack this subject with a little more subtlety some day.

Click here for all the posts I have written about Jaffar Kiani.

[A reminder that I am absolutely fried from the every-day, all-day travails of putting out MRU's course catalog. It is a special pleasure and agony. I am really good at it, and I love doing it, bothering every comma and type style and university rule. But, man, I can barely wait till the thing has gone to bed, and I am free to mutter and roam and confabulate again. In the meanwhile, posts will be a little more rare, and photos will just have to follow when I get a moment.]

God and a Bag of Flour

Inadvertently expressive piece about the association of god and misery today in the Chroncle in an article about the takeover of Gaza by Hamas:

A resident of a Hamas-dominated neighborhood, identifying himself only as Yousef for fear of reprisal by his neighbors, said Gazans would always back the winner, regardless of ideology.

"Today everybody is with Hamas because Hamas won the battle. If Fatah had won the battle they'd be with Fatah. We are a hungry people, we are with whoever gives us a bag of flour and a food coupon," said Yousef, 30. "Me, I'm with God and a bag of flour."

I think it is the bag of flour that counts, but invoking some god serves both as a talisman in the magical sense of religion and a prosaic, distinctly secular, but hopeful plea that Yusuf might be spared by his neighbors should they find out about his blunt statement by reason of his belief ... in the sense that "I'm one of you, I believe, don't kill me." Good luck, Yusuf. We know it is rough corner of the world.

dot ... dot ... jot

We're goin to Hell I ... I'm watchin the Giants/Diamondbacks game (Johnson against Cain, 2-2 in the 5th), and Kruk and Kuip (that Kroook and Kipe) focus in on this big dude in a blue shirt who is eating a caramel apple covered in M&Ms. It's a little hard to see in the pic, but that is exactly what it is. Kuip notes that the guy is chewing so hard you'd think he was going to the electric chair. An M&M covered caramel apple. Have we no shame?

We're goin to Hell II ... we ordered a box of ordinary bandaid strips at work. They arrived via special delivery in enough packaging to bury a small village. This happens all the time. Why couldn't they just slap a label on the bandaid box and pop it in the mail? The packaging is worth more than the product. Are we all asleep at the switch? Is no one paying attention? Why do we continue to operate this way as if nothing has changed? I watched a fellow worker today clean his teeth in the restroom ... and he let the water run continuously. We're in an incipient drought here. (I'll address the idiocy of bottled water on another occasion.)

We're goin to Hell III ... MoveOn.org blew it big time with their foolish, tail-ending campaign to reduce gasoline prices with a lot of verbiage about big oil mega profits. Gasoline prices must go UP ... they need to double, triple. The correct progressive demand is that oil companies spend 80% of their profits on R&D for carbon-neutral energy ... and if they don't want to do that, their profits should be taxed at a rate of 80% and the government should spend that money on carbon neutral energy. But, just like the Congressional Dems, MoveOn fell for the rank populist notion that cheap gas is part of the patrimony, some sort of working class right. No, it is not. Cheap gas is the problem.

Top photo by Arod, from my TV. Middle photo by Arod. Bottom photo: MoveOn.Org