So, what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?
Sometimes, you know, I wake up and suddenly I’m in a bad movie.
Or a Monty Python sketch.
Or, worse yet, a cliché.
And it does no good to pinch myself, or mutter, “One, two, three, wake up!” No, no. We’re stuck here, you and I.
Fuck.
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Many thanks (I think) to Wm.™ Steven Humphrey, for this … um … yeah.
And as Humpy suggests, if the gay black guy in the cowboy hat can thank Sarah Palin ….
Very well: Thank you, Governor Palin. For many years, a certain kind of crass politics, invested in brutish ignorance, has held inordinate sway among voters. The grotesque caricature you (unwittingly?) offered us upon your debut at the GOP convention all the way through Election Day and beyond provided a kind of mirror for the American soul, into which millions of American voters gazed and finally understood that they did not like the reflection. Thank you for helping to elect Barack Obama. Americans everywhere owe you great thanks, and we would be even more in your debt if you would now, finally, shut the hell up and not bother us again.
Well, there is an upside to this grim report from the Associated Press:
A former New York City corrections officer has been sentenced to life in prison for killing his two children — one of them a toddler who was in her high chair when she was shot.
A jury convicted Everett George of murder and sentenced him Monday. Jurors rejected his claim that he was suffering extreme emotional distress and did not understand his actions were wrong.
Prosecutor Maxine Rosenthal said George killed his 1-year-old daughter and her 12-year-old brother on Nov. 24, 2004, to punish their mother for seeing another man.
At least they weren’t gay. Because then those poor kids would be screwed.
Right?
Les Nessman would be proud. The Associated Press reports:
… North Carolina authorities say a shopper clubbed an alleged carjacker with a frozen turkey as he tried to steal a woman’s car in a grocery store parking lot Sunday.
Police say 30-year-old Fred Louis Ervin of Raleigh stole money from a gas station before running across the street to a Harris Teeter store in a town just south of Raleigh. Garner police say he began beating Irene Moorman Bailey while stealing her car.
Other shoppers came to her rescue, including one who hit Ervin with the turkey. Police did not release the person’s name.
Despite serious head injuries, Ervin got away in Bailey’s car and hit several other cars as he fled. But police arrested him a short time later.
So … there you go. Thanksgiving isn’t a complete waste of a holiday, after all.
(Okay, it never was. But, still, other holidays make sense. Christmas? Even if you throw the Christ part out of it, there’s a holiday in there somewhere. Easter? Same thing. But Thanksgiving falls somewhere between Columbus Day and slapping someone into semi-consciousness and then pissing on them as they lay moaning in the street.)
Gobble, gobble.
“What,” asks the trivia question on a string cheese wrapper, “is the strongest muscle in the body?” Shows how much I know.
Seriously, the first thing to mind was, “The heart?”
Nope. The inside of the string cheese wrapper tells me it’s the tongue.
Okay, fine. I think I see. Maybe. But, just so I’m clear on this point: How does that work, again?
Let us pause for a moment to consider … well, what should we consider? Indeed, amid the high-volume histrionics of Republicans lamenting the end of the world now that Senator Barack Obama has been elected president, complaining such as they do about things Obama has not even had an opportunity to do—pre-emptively defending themselves against any further loss of credibility, or something like that—one could easily forget that there is, in fact, another man currently serving as President of the United States. For his part, though, it is enough to say that even he seems, at times, to have forgotten that he is still president.
Nonetheless, some, including McClatchy’s Warren Strobel seem surprised at attempts by the Bush administration to revise history in order that the outgoing president will be treated more kindly in our memories. Wait a minute, that can’t be it. Who the hell is surprised at that? After all, the administration has been trying to revise history for most of its tenure.
Perhaps, then, it is the shameless severity of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s remarks in an interview with C-SPAN’s Steve Scully on Monday that caught Strobel and his colleagues’ attention:
QUESTION: But as you know, even overseas, some of that sharpness, some of that derision has been aimed at George W. Bush. So despite all of the accomplishments that you just outlined, why is he, in some parts of the world, detested?
SECRETARY RICE: Well, the President had to do some very difficult things. Look, we came out of September 11th having to make a choice about how we were going to defend this country. Were we going to stay with a strategy that essentially considered terrorism a law enforcement problem, or were we going to go to war against them? And in some quarters, it wasn’t popular to talk in the terms and act in the manner in which we – at recognizing that we were at war with these people. And yes, we had to do some very tough things.
But you know, I think I’ve found over the years, particularly in these most recent years, that much of that rancor is gone. We have outstanding relations with our European allies now. When I go to a NATO meeting, it is about the incredible fact that NATO is fighting together in Afghanistan. Yes, we’d like to see more contribution here. Yes, there are national caveats there that are constraining. But imagine NATO fighting in Afghanistan as its core mission.
When I go to Europe, I no longer see any difference in the view that a stable and secure Iraq is in everybody’s interest, and that an Iraq that is democratic and in which Saddam Hussein, that brutal monster that caused three wars in the region, including dragging us in twice, that used – who used weapons of mass destruction against his own people, that an Iraq that is democratic and friendly to the West is better for the Middle East. I don’t see much disagreement about that.
I see no disagreement that Iran has to be prevented from getting a nuclear weapon. And on the Middle East, I’ve never seen greater harmony behind the Annapolis process as the basis on which a two-state solution will eventually come into being.
And so whatever we went through in the difficult days of 2003, 2004 it would be a mistake to think that we have problematic relations with our allies. We simply don’t. We may not agree on everything, but the transatlantic relationship is in very, very good shape. And you can even say that more so for our core relations in places like Japan and South Korea and India and, indeed, China.
Tell me, please: Do these people ever stop lying?
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For most people who telecommute, or work from home … oh, never mind. On to the numbers. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, responding to reader questions at the New York Times
… Mark Knoller, the CBS News radio correspondent, who has covered the White House since 1976, keeps meticulous records and is a veritable encyclopedia of presidential facts and figures, which he freely shares with colleagues. The Bush administration takes issue with his statistics, because he counts partial days as days away, but here are his latest figures, as of Tuesday, Nov. 11:
Crawford ranch: 76 visits totaling all or part of 483 days
Camp David: 132 visits totaling all or part of 461 days
Kennebunkport: 11 visits totaling all or part of 43 days.By Mark’s calculations, the president has been at one of these three locations for all or part of 987 days, and has been in office for 2920 days. That’s 33.8 percent.
Earlier this year, I posted about ownership culture and sexuality. A related post I wrote for the Southern California Writers’ Conference blog went up a few days before, and includes in the comments some insight from a friend who is a a psychologist. Only today did I notice that post had drawn a link from Jade, writing at Spark of Freedom:
The abstinence movement here in Canada is much weaker, but US organizations such as Focus on the Family have moved north to join with the small amount of right-wing evangelicals in Canada. South of the border however, in order to teach this abstinence education a growing wave of “Purity balls” have been spreading. During a purity ball daughters get dressed in fancy dresses or even wedding dresses and go to the ball with their father. Their fathers give them a ring and they pledge their purity and abstinence until marriage to their father.
Many of these organizations will even lie to say that condoms are unsafe and not effective. Which unless you are putting them on incorrectly or poking holes in them this is entirely untrue. Not to mention the organizations often are homophobic and teach nothing about any type of sex other then heterosexual vanilla sex. Leading to those who do engage in other forms of sexuality as both dangerous position because, they don’t know how to protect themselves not to mention the feeling of guilt for going against the will of your family, community and, religious faith.
Anyway, it’s just something to think about.
Congratulations, Senator Mr. President.
More than change, hope has come to America. This morning we awoke to a new future, a new belief. These United States are a nation defined more aptly by ideas, a hopeful myth constructed to suit our highest aspiration. This election does not actualize or perfect our character as a people, but returns our admiration to those things we have yet to accomplish, the ideals of what we should, as a nation, be. And if we find fulfillment of such lofty notions impossible today, we should not give over to despair. We set our standards high as a matter of deliberation, that we might never become complacent with what we have thus far accomplished. Tomorrow should promise something greater than fear.
This election is by no means an end point. Rather, it is another in a long sequence of American new beginnings. We, the People, must strive to hold our new president accountable not only to the pledges of a campaign hard-fought and won, but also to the promise we put before the world. “Liberty and justice for all” is among the noblest goals of the human endeavor, and to be satisfied simply that tomorrow does not look so much like yesterday would surrender the cause.
It is time for hope, but also vigilance. We cannot let the opportunity put before us slip away. We must not accept a new boss who is remotely the same as the old. A political chapter that opened forty years ago in Miami has turned its last page. What history will write of the next forty years is yet unknown, but in its draft form we must remember that we hold the pen. Let our vigil over these next years be characterized by the very integrity, courage, and wisdom that we would hope of our leaders. Today we might rejoice for President-elect Obama. Tomorrow, we must be prepared to answer the challenges that continue, as such tests do, to present themselves.
We are the United States of America. We must heal ourselves before we can dream of saving the world.
B.D.'s Last Refuge 