As Promised - a book I didn't really like....

Going after Cacciato - Tim O'Brien
I have a bad habit of wanting to know all of the references both literary and artistic in any piece of music I hear (or TV show I watch... a bit OCD, I know). So when I heard the Jackopierce album Live from the Americas, and specifically the tune where the line "Cacciato came to me in a dream" appears I was inevitably curious as to who Cacciato was.

Sometimes curiosity is good, sometimes it is what kills the cat. The book was not very good, though it does put forth an interesting and drug addled view of Vietnam. The premise is that a soldier, Cacciato, has left his platoon, giving up on war (generally an admirable sentiment) saying that he is going to Paris - - walking to Paris - -from Vietnam. A recon group is sent to go bring him back, whatever the cost, and apparently from whatever LSD induced dimension he happens to be inhabiting at the time.

Most of the story is told through drug-addled flashbacks and hallucinations which can be intensely difficult to follow. The characters were hard for me to identify with, but O'Brien's other well known book, The Things They Carried, was supposedly one of the defining novels of the Vietnam era, although I have not read it and am not likely to anytime soon. It is possible that my difficulty in identifying with the characters is more generational than necessarily a comment on the quality of the book. The largely anti-war message comes through loud-and-clear which may be its sole redeeming factor.
Rating: C-
Related: (other books apparently written while inebriated)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac

News and Commentary

News tidbits:

Fox News ratings have plummeted, down 28 percent (love the t-shirt)since Aug. 2005.

** Well yeah, it's hard to believe the "we're winning the war on terror" spiel anymore isn't it? Oh, and the Bush pandering is probably not as popular anymore either. I'd like to think that America is getting smarter, but I think it's just a case of media malaise. FoxNews is no longer edgy.

In another related story the new Bush line is that people unwilling to "stay the course" (that'd be the "where am I going and what is this handbasket I'm riding in crowd") are in fact defeatists. Or in Rummyworld they are practically Nazi-sympathizers...

The new Census figures show "the gap between the richest and poorest Americans widened last year." "What have been missing," the New York Times explains, are policies "like strong support for public education, a progressive income tax, affordable health care, a higher minimum wage and other labor protections."
** And just where did those social programs go.... that's right Virginia they are now evaporating at a rate of 6 billion oysters a month in Iraq. Of course, what's left over is also decreasing due to the death of the estate tax.....


Former President Jimmy Carter has expressed his willingness to meet with former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami after Iranians indicated their desire for such a meeting. Carter's spokesman said, "He believes that it is much better to be talking to people who you have problems with than not to, and that's the approach he takes now."

* Ah, Carter.... I wonder what it would be like to have a leader who didn't believe in the my way or the highway policy. I mean, why do you need to talk to those who agree with you already, isn't disagreement the foundation of diplomacy?

Women are suddenly scarce among Supreme Court justice clerks, accounting for only 7 of the 37 clerkships for the new term. That is "the first time the number has been in the single digits since 1994, when there were 4,000 fewer women among the country's new law school graduates than there are today."
* This probably has nothing to do with the ultra-conservative swing the court has taken during this administration, probably nothing at all...... sure... let's see of 4 clerks each, Scalia (who has only ever hired 2 women, out of 28 hires), Thomas and Alito have no women working for them, Roberts has 1, Souter who normally has greater than 1/3 female representation among his clerks has none, Ginsberg has 2, Breyer has 2 (and has a 15 of 28, more that 50% female hiring history), Stevens has 1, and Kennedy has 1.
So let's see, that's 6 clerks out of 7 are all clerking for generally more progressive justices.... oh and that 1 clerk for Robert - she was a hold-over from Rehnquist.

Czech This Out

The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
It's odd, even pitiful, how soon you can run out of adjectives when you are writing one review a day. Brilliant, wonderful, insightful, masterful, paradigm-shifting, and many other effusive utterings come to mind - but none seems fresh and true to the spirit of the book. Eventually I will have to review a book I did not like so I can delve into the much more extensive vocabulary of dislike.
However, I did like this book. If you've read Hesse's Siddhartha, or the works of Camus and Bowles and some extent east-bloc communist authors like Koestler, Grossman and Solzhenitzyn, this book should strike a nerve. There is the spiritual sense of Hesse's Siddhartha - though it is subtle and far more existential in nature (hence Camus- I know, I know... ignore the contradiction of existentialist spirituality), there is the bleakness inherent in Camus' work and that of Paul Bowles, and tying it together is the rough pall of the Communist regime similar to that of Koestler, Kafka, and Grossman. Yet with all the darkness there is still light in the book, and genuine emotive power - - it makes you feel. I've read other Kundera novels and have found them equally engaging, although I feel that this one is the best.
Rating: A
Related: (only tangentially)
The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
Forever Flowing - Vasily Grossman
The Trial - Franz Kafka
The Fall - Albert Camus
The Joke - Milan Kundera

News Gaffes

News channels have had a series of gaffes in the past couple of weeks, CNN's bathroom conversation during the Bush Press conference, and a Swedish news channel playing porn in the background, but my favorite is the "wrong Guy" interview on the BBC.

News related...... sort of

Something Tara will like (and find funny - click the "God" reference - yes, Jenny Calendar)
Something Terry will like

Silly Trickster

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
2001 was a rough year for authors, we lost a great many wonderfully different minds that year; John Knowles, Eudora Welty, Clifton Hillegass (of Cliff's Notes fame) Douglas Adams, and the original Trickster himself, Ken Kesey. Kesey was a fascinating person, and a wonderful author if a bit unconventional. This book and Sometimes a Great Notion, also by Kesey, both made the Modern Library's top 100 books of the 20th century (reader's list) - - which is not too bad for someone who had been completely stoned for the past 30 odd years. For those of you who aren't aware, there is quite a unique lineage from the beat poets down through the experiential writers of the 60's and the hippies of the late 60's and early 70's. But enough of that, this book provides us with easily identifiable characters (Randall McMurphy, Nurse Ratched), and exposes the wretched existence in the mental hospitals of the 50's. More than that though, it provides a model of a life well lived (or enjoyed anyway), and a in depth exploration of the human condition. There are few books I would recommened more than this - even if you have already seen the movie (w/ Jack Nicholson) - or play (w/ Gary Sinese), it is well worth the read.
Rating: A
Related:
Sometimes a Great Notion - Kesey
The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
Hell's Angels - Hunter S. Thompson

Floyd

Floyd on a Friday night is absolutely amazing. Once Tara downloads some of the pictures one of us will post them - and you can see for yourself.

Imagine a small town (1 cross street, basically) in the middle of the hills of Virginia. Then imagine 500 people showing up every Friday to sit on the sidewalks and play the most amazing bluegrass I've ever heard.

Unbe-freakin'-lievable....

Yeah yeah

Stonewall was an odd man....

Yeah, sure most of him is buried in Lexington, but his arm has it's own gravesite in Chancellorsville.

He liked to have cold towels on his stomach at all times.... (the application of which after his amputation is reputed to have given him pneumonia -from which he died)

He also rode into battle holding his arm up to balance the body..... (he believed one of his arms was bigger than the other so held it up to drain the blood back into his body)

Enjoyed sucking on lemons - all the time.

Didn't eat pepper because he believed it weakend his left leg (why left?)

Slept under wet sheets

Was a narcoleptic (not a malady I'd want to have if I was being shot at on a regular basis) and quite possibly ocd (recorded the number of captured hankerchiefs and neckties)

odd...

Joss Whedon Update

"Whedon told Entertainment Weekly that Wonder Woman will not wear "star-spangled panties" as Lynda Carter did in the TV series."

Well, that's a relief.....

Running Scared

Running with Scissors – Augusten Burroughs
There are messed up childhoods and then there are the raised-by-wolves-who-eat-their-young type messed up childhoods. This book concerns the latter. Burroughs gives what one hopes is a somewhat exaggerated telling of what must be one of the more bizarre childhoods ever experienced. Honestly it makes David Sedaris seem like he lived with the Cleaver family who relocated to Mayberry. This is not the sort of book you give your mother for Christmas (just a warning), well that’s not fair, it’s not the sort I’d give my mother anyway. There are drugs, abuse, alcohol, pedophilia, neglect, more abuse, more drugs, adolescent sex, some more drugs, and a smattering of abuse – and then there’s the second chapter. Seriously though, it is a rough read despite the fact that it is well written, occasionally funny, often sad and frequently very engaging. So, all in all, it is a mixed bag. A well written hard to read story.

Rating A- or D+ depending on your ability to deal with the content
Related: David Sedaris is all that comes to mind

Nobel Schmobel

None to Accompany Me - Nadine Gordimer
The Nobel Prize for literature is a fickle political beast at best (see Gunter Grass), and a sort of exaggerated bully pulpit for the west at worst (see Jean Paul Sartre's refusal...). That is not to say that most of the people who have won this coveted prize do not deserve it (however more than 5 women should be represented in 100+ years), but rather that their choice often reflects the political climate more than the literary merit of the works represented. Solzhenitsyn, Bellow, Camus, Morrison etc. all represent their political and social eras in succinct ways, and perhaps that is truly the idea of the prize. Perhaps the artist should be a reflection of current culture, and strive to bring their characters into that context. Gordimer certainly encompasses her culture (white, English South Africa), her time (50's on) and brings her characters into such realistic context that reading her books feels more like a walk through others eyes than ocular uptake from a worded page. None to Accompany Me, may well be her best book as I can imagine none that could be more engrossing, though I have little to compare it to having only read July's People by the same author. It is a story of a woman, her life - and her need for connections. This seems to be a central striving for much of literature - and life for us all. She tackles the issue in a much more comprehensible way than did Forster in Howard's End, and is certainly approaching Salinger's insight.
Rating: A
Related:
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
July's People - Nadine Gordimer
Waiting for the Barbarians - J.M. Coetzee

Sober Reminder

Yes, yes, Wheaton scored #2 in the country on the Princeton Review's list of most sober schools behind BYU, and #1 in least number of hard liquor users (in the Princeton Review - btw - the #1 university academically was Princeton this year, coincidence... hmm)
Thanks Nick and Terry for so kindly pointing out what kind of utter pointdexters Wheaties are - durn smart though, and don't you forget it.....

Also of note, Wheaton was #3 on best on campus food, so ha (1 ahead of Cornell)! No beer gut, just a regular run-of-the-mill overeating one.... Let's see Wheaton also beat Furman (not to mention lowly, secular and apparently hedonistic EMU) on Students Pray on a regular basis (#2 vs. #14) and on Future DAR/Rotarians (#3 vs. #18) - so just imagine what it took to be a Democrat there..... sadly it was also #4 on Alternative Lifestyles Not an Alternative

I sense that both Terry and Nick are somewhat jealous as their schools did not rank so very high on the Washington Monthly poll, which appeared to be a more interesting set of data points - ergo, what students actually do after graduating..... like get advanced degrees and work in wine shops.....

WWW - Wonder Woman Whedon?

Ok, so in a previous post I waxed taciturn (if one can wax eloquent, how about waxing briefly... all of a sudden I'm sounding like a Nair commercial) about one of two new Joss Whedon movie adaptations, specifically Wonder Woman.

I somehow feel that this will not be the early 80's kitsch, see through jet, and stars and stripes granny panty version of WW. Eep is right, that's just too establishment.

Whedon is known for his strong women characters (he wrote Alien Resurrection, created Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and of course Cordy, Fred, Darla, and Jasmine in Angel, .... and then there's River from Firefly..) and one might even argue a strong feminist perspective. After all, in one of the Buffy commentaries he says that he created the character to counter the trend that the first woman who has sex in a horror movie gets killed.

I expect WW to be a) strongly counter cultural b) strongly independent c) strongly... well... strong.

Sick, Distrubring, and sort of funny

This one is funny for its style, and disturbing for the subject matter.

This one is wildly sick and disturbing for its content, and yet a bit funny for what one hopes is a tongue in cheek approach.... if it isn't tongue in cheek..... well, then it's just sick

And after that horrorshow, here's something that's just funny. (here too)

Firefly Fans

Click here

Colombia's Finest

News of a Kidnapping - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
For want of some inspiration I scrolled down through the list of Nobel Prize winners and picked another with whom I'm familiar. It should be noted that I happen to like Marquez's style (or his translator's style) very much and have read several of his books. As Colombia's sole representative on the list of Nobel Prize winners (for literature at least) his overwhelming popularity and recognition give him a marginally safe existence around his home in Bogota. However, this non-fiction work could certainly have put him in a fair bit of danger as it is filled with a good deal of criticism and coverage of the many kidnappings committed by the legion of revolutionaries, cartels and guerrillas vying for power in Colombia in the last 2 decades. This is probably not a good book to read if you have any plans to visit Colombia in the near future, although I am sure things are much better now.
Rating: B
Related:
Killing Pablo - Mark Bowden
movie: Four Days in September (it's a Brazilian movie, A+)

Skipper's right.

The title links to a Slate review of Spike Lee's (who is a huge soccer fan) new movie When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.

The movie is apparently a solid retelling of the undeniably awful events following Hurricane Katrina. (I haven't seen it, so perhaps you could visit Nick's site.... and perhaps he could update it for a first hand impression) Katrina highlighted for many the remaining racism and classism built into the system, having heard many stories from there I would have to agree. One particular frustrating example was on the radio show This American Life in which a story (After the Flood, 9/9/05, Episode 296 listen or read) was told of a group of people (predominantly African Americans) fleeing on foot who were prevented from leaving over a bridge to a predominantly white upperclass neighborhood. I was utterly outraged, and remain so.

My dad is going down in September to help rebuild - a year later - and as a volunteer, I don't think I could be more proud.


AP Review of the movie.

ah neighbors

This weekend we were invited to the neighbor girl's 12th birthday party, and it was really quite a good time, despite what one might call entirely too much info delivered from the grandfather. But that's another story, and one I'm not sharing.

Also in the news of the neighborhood this little story made me very hungry.

A Word of Warning

Do not under any circumstances stand up suddenly after sitting for 15 minutes on the edge of a stool idly websurfing.

FYI
a) - it is possible to pinch the femoral artery and cut off blood supply to your feet, thus making them temporarily numb.
b) - in this numbed condition standing suddenly becomes much more of an active sport, especially as that feeling of pins and needles comes back you soon find yourself hopping around yelping.
c) - do not do this new form of aerobic exercise in front of customers - as amusing as it may seem later, it only makes them think you a moron and possibly deranged.

On the road again.... mentally at least...

Chasing Che – Patrick Symmes (list)
(Non-fiction)
This is perhaps the best travel journal I have every read with the possible exception of The Sahara Unveiled (Langewiesche), and may be near the top of the list for non-fiction book recommendations. This book has all the qualities that I was expecting to find in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Pirsig) but did not. This book qualifies as both highly readable and somewhat informative. The basis of the book is the author’s retracing of a 1954-motorcycle trip around South America by a young Argentine doctor, Ernesto “Che” Guevara; a man who later came to believe that no positive ‘Cultural Revolution’ could take place without the violent overthrow of the government. But his motorcycle and the diary that he kept (Notas de Viaje – Guevara) were rough-worn examples of the pre-revolutionary Guevara, and as such give a meaningful look inside the mind of the 25 year old in search of what it means to be free and alive. I feel Symmes aptly represented Che, without either lionizing him or reducing him to a one-dimensional demi-god of Castro’s Cuban proportions.

Other good travel novels:
The Sahara Unveiled – William Langewiesche
On the Road – Jack Kerouac
Jupiters Travels - Ted Simon
~ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – Pirsig (hesitantly)

A-

Sole Survivor....

Book Review: Survivor Chuck Palahniuk

To say that Mr. Palahniuk's works are strange and dystopian is to admit that the Kalahari is a bit dry in summer. In other words, it is a drastic understatement. As with his other books, Survivor provides an interesting, and extremely disturbing protagonist. In this case the object of our occasional affection and frequent revulsion is one Tender Branson, former cult member, televangelist, speaker and currently the narrator of the book; undertaking that task alone from 30,000 feet in a jet set to crash in the Australian Outback.
If that's not strange enough, the fact that he is the last, and least observant, of his suicide cult provide an interesting commentary on the nature of belief. The book also provides a dark, if not necessarily inaccurate portrayal of popular religion in America, and for that, it is well worth the read.

A-

ex libris

Look ma... a new store!

I will continue posting book reviews here though

Ultimate "Fighting"

So Terry and I were exposed to our first viewing of a Ultimate Fighting match - and quite frankly although it was excedingly violent it most resembled something quite other than battle...

There is currently an article on Slate that makes a very similar comment about Brazilian juijitsu - though it appears their page is now down, so you may have some problems accessing it.

Camus, Cam-who?

Perhaps the strangest news report of the day.... among many others...

Book Review - a classic - sort of....

It’s been said that you can read any chapter in this book in any order as long as the last chapter remains the end, and it will still make as much sense. I firmly believe this to be true, not because the book is hard to understand or rambling. It is very focused and remains one of the greater anti-war novels of our time (Slaughterhouse Five being another great one of the same genre). It is the story of a slightly wacky fighter squadron on the fictional Mediterranean island of Pianosa during WWII. The book's humor focuses around a captain that wants nothing more than to escape the hellish war around him, and to strive to understand the group of utter misfits that make up his regiment. As a reference point for those of you interested in the book, there are many times where the storyline will later be replayed in several episodes of MASH. It has a good quality of off the wall humor and a moral to boot.

Similar books:
Slaughterhouse Five: Vonnegut (Curerntly featured at my store)
Mother Night: Vonnegut
Going After Cacciato: O’Brien
Red Sky at Morning: Richard Bradford

Grade: A+

Book Review - Ah... Russian Writers....

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn
As with the majority of Solzhenitsyn's other work this story centers around Soviet Prison camp survival. Beautifully set in the stark plains of Siberia the landscape often mirrors the cold forced determination of the prisoners. The entirety of the book covers just one day (hence the title) yet not is it in any way pedantic, or necessarily long winded at least among other Russian authors. The everyday tale of survival and the compromises and decisions made can grip the reader with all the intensity of the bitter winds circling the pages.
Rating: A
Related:
The First Circle - A. Solzhenitsyn
Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler
Forever Flowing - Vasily Grossman

My Spelling

Certain members of the household (and the phantzis) happen to be better spellers than I......

yes... I'm embarrassed.

Thanks folks....

Movie Review

On a Clear Day
I hesitated to call a movie uplifting mostly in an effort to retain some remainder of my guyness, however, it's hard to avoid on this one. So, what is an uplifting movie for a guy? Well, in the tradition of Rudy, and dare I say it, The Full Monty the main character must be gruff - or work in a job that (stereo)typifies manhood (such as the steel industry - sorry Rosy the Riveter, Football, etc.) so that all of us cubicle jockies, academicians or wine shop junkies can identify with them (can you feel the sarcasm?). In this case the main character, Frank, is downsized from a shipyard at a time when he should be thinking about retirement.

There's plenty of gruffness, unspoken angst and other classic "guy" qualities, i.e. emotional deadness. To fight off the "on-the-dole" blues Frank decides to secretly train to swim the channel (while his wife secretly drives the bus). There's plenty of father-son non-communication going on too, which tends to be somewhat formulaic for sappy movies (see Big Fish). All of the issues are slowly worked through, for better or worse, during the course of the movie.

I won't ruin the ending, but it is "uplifting."

3/4 stars

College Rankings

Washington Monthly just released liberal arts college rankings - as a point of pride I must say that I went to #11 and #147.... and despite their religious leanings they apparently provide very good (or at least decent) educations (respectively).

Their rankings used a different set of criteria than the U.S. News rankings:
"And so, to put The Washington Monthly College Rankings together, we started with a different assumption about what constitutes the "best" schools. We asked ourselves: What are reasonable indicators of how much a school is benefiting the country? We came up with three: how well it performs as an engine of social mobility (ideally helping the poor to get rich rather than the very rich to get very, very rich), how well it does in fostering scientific and humanistic research, and how well it promotes an ethic of service to country. We then devised a way to measure and quantify these criteria (See "A Note on Methodology"). "

Liberal Arts colleges that Wheaton ranked higher than:
12 Carleton College MN (Sorry Erin)
13 Oberlin College OH
14 Grinnell College IA
16 Smith College MA
17 Harvey Mudd College CA
19 Bowdoin College ME
20 Middlebury College VT (Sorry Howie)
22 Spelman College GA
25 Colorado College CO (Sorry Andrew)
26 Bates College ME
28 Macalester College MN
31 Barnard College NY
32 Bucknell University PA
35 Hobart and William Smith Colleges NY
37 Furman University SC (Sorry Nick)
46 Colby College ME (Sorry Frank)
67 Colgate University NY (Sorry Becky)
77 Morehouse College GA (Sorry Howard)
101 Houghton College NY (Sorry Tim)
126 Goshen College IN (Just had to throw that in...)
142 Gordon College MA (Sorry Joss's)

And EMU beat out:
150 Bard College NY
155 Wheaton College MA
156 Gettysburg College PA
157 Susquehanna University PA
184 Bridgewater College VA

What a choice...

Okay, so I watched an interview on PBS's The News Hour (even during the fund drive) last night with Ned Lamont .....and well, there wasn't much substance there to say the least. Ned appears to have all the political savvy of tree lichen, then again Joe qualifies as one stereotypically hoity-toity Senator with all the cuddliness of a hand grenade.

Ned's rant about people wanting to change direction domestically, get universal health care, and get out of Iraq - while admirable, is not the reserved consensus building that really needs to take place to actually get these ideas made into law.

So Connecticut had a bad choice... and now they have a worse one in November.

Language question of the day..

So why, when referring to holiday decorations do we say "we hung them up" or more famously in the words of Clement Clarke Moore, "the stockings were hung by the chimney with care", whereas when referring to someone who has been executed on the gallows the correct past tense would be "we hanged them"?

Ok, that may have been a bit random and morose....

New Feature.... Books.....

So, having been reinspired to put pen to paper (or finger to key, as it were) by Tara's cousin and world traveller Nick, I now bring you the somewhat daily and somewhat literary rantings from the world of Aaron.... Oh, and I will post a link to Amazon as well, so that if you are interested in the books.... well... buy it.

Let us begin at the beginning. Children's books.

Ok, that is a bit weird, I know. I don't usually read selections from the children's or young adult section, but alas having finished all of Pratchett's Discworld novels (which I loved), I was forced (really had to twist my own arm here) to check out some of his work for younger artists. So today's brief book review is on The Bromeliad Triology: Truckers, Diggers and Wings.

These books are some of the best and most engaging reading I've experienced for this level of development. It seems to me (and this may be because I've forgotten some of Rowlings work) that Pratchett's work explores more of what it means to be both human (in the form of the nome) and what belief and science are. Furthermore these novellettes appear to have far more adult centered puns (and a funny Discworld-esque explanation of what a pun is), and political references (including a subtle yet poignant dig at Dan Quayle in Wings). Because of this I think that they would make wonderful night-time reading, for both reader - and receiver.

The stories are pretty straight-forward, and therefore easy to understand in brief pre-bedtime snippets. Nomes, 4-inch high humanoids, live more-or-less peaceful life in a Store (which they consider the extent of the world) until Outsiders come in on a lorry with stories of sky without ceilings, and vast openness (and foxes). To throw a bit of chaos in the mix, the store is closing down, and an escape must be planned - much to the chagrin of many Insiders.

Diggers and Wings occur simultaneously after Truckers, and tell of further escapes and adventures. More importantly though they explain what it means to empathize, the value of education, the meaning of science and the difficulty of belief. All-in-all quite good reads, I wish these were around when I was a child.

Interesting...or not (a small peek into the author's childhood)

Usually evangelists give me a severe case of the willies (and usually a minor fit as well) - however I have some strangely fond childhood memories of sitting on the livingroom floor watching Billy Graham crusades on the console sized 15 channel tv (yes it was a color tv) - I think my mother or aunt sang at one of the crusades in Chicago when they were in college, so we often watched out of some sense of nostalgia..... and of course my parents were and remain devoutly evangelical.

I know, I know, I'm a whole host of contradictions.

However, I spent some time reading a recent Newsweek interview with Mr. Graham and found it to be shockingly (to me at least) tolerant, accepting, balanced and (gosh) ecumenical. Perhaps that Wheaton degree in anthropology had some impact....

BOCCE!!!

I think we should build a bocce court in the back yard..... hmm

yup

I could waste days reading things here.

Of course, some people like to fill out those survey things that tell you that the facial product you most resemble is pearl gloss lip-stick....

Fun Game

Click on the title....

Some Friends Doing What They Can

Media Release
August 2, 2006
Contact: Mubarak Awad 202 413 6062 Edy Kauffman, 301 728 6886Mohammed Abu-Nimer 703 839 5259
LET US TALK FAST
STOP THE KILLINGS AND START NEGOTIATING
Washington DC. At 2pm today, Edy Kaufman, Mubarak Awad, and Karim Crow handed out Band-aids on their first day of a hunger strike at the US State Department. the Band-aids were attached to an August 1, Washington Post Op-Ed piece published by Jimmy Carter calling for an end to Band-aid treatment by the US administration. The message of the hunger strikers who are Christians, Muslim, and Jewish is: Stop the killing and start negotiations with all the fighting parties.
Mubarak Awad, says “as Lebanese, Israelis, and Palestinians, now living in Washington DC, we call upon Americans of all faiths to show compassion for the victims and ethical concern for the current violence by fasting for peace and justice. The right to life is the most valuable of all.”
Edy Kaufman says “We call on the United States government and all the conflicting parties to talk officially or unofficially to each other instead of trying to kill and injure each other. Talk to Syria, talk to Hezbollah, talk to Hamas, talk to Israel, and talk to Iran. Talk, don't kill. All parties have legitimate grievances and concerns. Deal with them.”
Karim Crow says “We are undertaking a fast despite a heat index of 112 degrees, knowing well that Middle East conflicts will not be resolved by this action alone. Join us in a hunger strike to share in the suffering of hundreds of innocent civilians killed, the wounded, the displaced, those whose livelihoods were destroyed, and those countless children who will grow up with deep traumas.”
For more information: www.nonviolenceinternational.net

How I feel some days

HA!

Funny story:

Lincoln Memorial steps.

Two tourists (men) are walking up the steps. One starts running up the stairs singing the Rocky theme song. He finally gets to the top and starts spinning around, waving arms up in the air and still singing. His friend finally arrives and shakes his head at him.

Tourist 1: "Dude, wrong steps. Wrong city."

And one more about Bush policy in the Mid-East

"Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're
called revolutions. People die, and nothing changes."
-- (Terry Pratchett, Night Watch)


- I also read a very interesting and subtle slam on the administrations "Democracy Promotion" strategy by Jose Manuel Barroso,
"We are under no illusion that a global community of freedom, security and prosperity will be built solely by revolutionary transformations – however colourful – nor even by one-off electoral events. "

Another Pratchet Quote that sums up my life in New England last summer

A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

Say what?

The Wonkette reported a fairly funny, but also quite offensive comment about the state of Connecticut today.... go read it..

In other thoughts, do those ads against smoking (paid for by the Cigarette industry) work? How about the anti-piracy ads before movies?

Oh, I doubt it.

Let's take the example of the smoking dog in one of the ads. What on earth is cooler than a dog smoking? Targeting an audience that is used to talking animals (Dr. Doolittle, Garfield, Get Fuzzy, those funny cows from California) as icons of irony and detatchment - which is of course the language of teenaged malaise - seems somewhat stupid. Or more likely, and this pegged my conspiracy meter on the way to work today, the cigarette industry made an anti-ad. (in the manner of the anti-hero, not exactly an hero by choice, but by circumstance, think Hell Boy, Punisher, Wolverine, etc. Ergo this is an ad for cigarettes, not by way of saying you should smoke, but by saying this dog does - and isn't that cool, don't you want to be cool...?)

As Terry Pratchett noted "Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying "End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH," the paint wouldn't even have time to dry."

Rory Stewart

I recently read a book by Rory Stewart, former British Diplomat, who walked across Afghanistan shortly after the fall of the Taliban. The book was amazing, not only for its scope and the context of war torn Afghanistan, but for an engaging style of prose that can be hard to come by in 1st person travel narratives. I found his writing similar to that of Bruce Chatwin, who I also enjoy for the same reasons. Stewart actually gets involved in the lives of the people he meets, which seems a rarity in journalistic writing.


What further sets Mr. Stewart apart is his apparent bravery. After his sojourn in a noticably touchy Afghanistan he took a taxi from Jordan to Baghdad, where there is another "little" conflict, and asked for a job, which lead to his next book, which I can't wait to read.

HA! - Anarchy in the UK

And finally: Global warming leads to more severe heat waves, and the skyrocketing temperatures have led to more shirtless men in the UK. British lawmakers are considering banning "public nudity of the middle-aged shirtless man variety." Said one official, "But one of the things that is depressing for anyone going shopping is the numbers of shaven-headed men, mainly in their 30s and 40s, who seem to think people want to see their torsos."

Source: CAP