Web Log Archive, February 19th through March 4th, 2006 

Saturday, March 4th, 2006

' Mr. Kohloff was open about suffering from severe depression, and publicly discussed undergoing electroshock therapy. "What I think it did was to act like a Roto-Rooter on the depression," he told The New York Times in 1993. "It just reamed me clear and the depression was gone." '

"Oh, Capote. I spent half a century trying to avoid him, in life, and now suddenly I’m surrounded by him. He was a pathological liar. He couldn’t tell the truth about anything, and he’d make it up as he went along. He always wore dark glasses, and his eyes would drop behind the dark glasses, and he would seem to be looking down at his nose, and then as he got more and more frenzied—the lies really very frenzied, they were orgasmic—you would start to see the eyes begin to roll up to see if you’d fallen for what he was saying." Gore Vidal 

Friday, March 3rd, 2006

"I am only going to dread one day at a time." Attributed to Charles Schultz, courtesy of my baby sister.
"Inch by inch, life's a cinch. Yard by yard, life is hard!" anonymous

Growing Old, by Matthew Arnold, 1822-1888 (courtesy of KB)

What is it, to grow old?
Is it to lose the glory of the form,
The lustre of the eye?
Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?
Yes, but not for this alone.

Is it to feel our strength— 
Not our bloom only, but our strength—decay?
Is it to feel each limb
Grow stiffer, every function less exact,
Each nerve more weakly strung?

Yes, this, and more! but not,
Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dreamed 'twould be!
'Tis not to have our life
Mellowed and softened as with sunset-glow,
A golden day's decline!

'Tis not to see the world
As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirred;
And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,
The years that are no more!

It is to spend long days
And not once feel that we were ever young.
It is to add, immured
In the hot prison of the present, month
To month with weary pain.

It is to suffer this,
And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel:
Deep in our hidden heart
Festers the dull remembrance of a change,
But no emotion—none.

It is—last stage of all— 
When we are frozen up within, and quite
The phantom of ourselves,
To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
Which blamed the living man.

Note: I read this poem several times before I (came to think I) understood the last stanza.

Thursday, March 2nd, 2006

"One prince of the present time, whom it is not well to name, never preaches anything else but peace and good faith, and to both he is most hostile, and either, if he had kept it, would have deprived him of reputation and kingdom many a time." Niccolo Machiavelli, 1469-1527

Wednesday, March 1st, 2006   Happy Sixtieth to Bobby Weir!

"I Am Focusing On God, Family And Domino's Pizza."  Tom Monaghan, whose latest project is a refuge for the faithful. 

Barry Bonds is a very good-looking woman!

Tuesday, February 28th, 2006

Mr. Stephens: Didn't you say you were leaving...because of the [firing of the Jewish refugee] German girls?
Miss Kenton: I'm not leaving.
Mr. Stephens: Oh?
Miss Kenton: I've nowhere to go. I have no family. I'm a coward.
Mr. Stephens: No, no!
Miss Kenton: Yes! I am a coward! I'm frightened of leaving and that's the truth. All I see out in the world is loneliness...and it frightens me. That's all my high principles are worth, Mr. Stephens. I'm ashamed of myself.

...from The Remains of the Day, a movie so good that even the inclusion, in the cast, of both Christopher Reeve and Hugh Grant failed to ruin it!
Mr. Stephens is played by Anthony Hopkins and Miss Kenton is played by Emma Thompson.

Monday, February 27th, 2006

Word of the day: "hoopty".
To truly understand a word-just-learned, one must use it in a sentence. So...how about, "I'll pick you up next Sunday morning for church in whichever of my hoopties will start (first) without a push (or a jump)."?

Sunday, February 26th, 2006

This morning, an in-law called from Texas to ask if I'd been watching California's governor on 'Meet The Press' with Tim Russert. Why he cared enough to ask? Dunno. But as it turns out, I did catch the interview (later) in one of its re-broadcasts and it caused me to wonder (not for the first time) why this muscle-bound clown left the circus. Does he any longer realize how foolish he seems? 
"When you look at the gyrations in his policies, it appears he's plagued by an absence of core values," said longtime Republican strategist Arnold Steinberg. "He comes across as a caricature, where energy and enthusiasm are confused with core values."
Somewhat less kind is Democratic Strategist Bob Mulholland, who writes, "He was a pit bull last year - and now (after the special election), he's an old French poodle. [Even] Republicans are concluding this man has no solid footing. He says what he needs to say ... and they're asking - does this guy believe in anything?"   

Saturday, February 25th, 2006                 Happy Birthday, Kenny!

' ...the ports deal...[and] Mr. Bush assures us that “people don’t need to worry about security.” But after all those declarations that we’re engaged in a global war on terrorism, after all the terror alerts declared whenever the national political debate seemed to be shifting to questions of cronyism, corruption and incompetence, the administration can’t suddenly change its theme song to “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” '
Paul Krugman

Friday, February 24th, 2006

For me, competitive figure skating is not a spectator sport. Every time one of these Olympic skaters winds up for a (whadoo you call 'em?) 'double axle'(?) ('triple axle')(?), I grind my teeth, watching to see if she's gonna land on her rear end! I don't find this to be particularly entertaining. These poor kids have bet the proverbial farm on this (typically) two-minute performance. There is nothing else in their young lives. They know that whatever happens will be witnessed by millions...and recorded forever.
 

Thursday, February 23rd, 2006

"American soldiers in other wars gauged progress by conquering territory; seizing the next town on the route to victory sustained their morale. In Vietnam, by contrast, GIs captured and recaptured the same ground, and not even the generals could explain the aim of the fighting. The only measure of success was the "body count", the pile of enemy slaughtered---a futile standard that made the war as glorious as an abattoir. So homecoming troops were often denounced for bestiality or berated for the defeat---or simply shunned. John Kerry, later elected lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, recalled his return: 'There I was, a week out of the jungle, flying from San Francisco to New York. I fell asleep and woke up yelling, probably a nightmare. The other passengers moved away from me---a reaction I noticed more and more in the months ahead. The country didn't give a shit about the guys coming back, or what they'd gone through. The feeling toward them was, 'Stay away---don't contaminate us with whatever you've brought back from Vietnam.' ' " Stanley Karnow

Wednesday, February 22, 2006  Mary Nolan Kelly was born 136 years ago.

"In fishing terms, imagine that someone put a bluefish on your hook just before you dropped your line over the side." Tom Engelhardt

Tuesday, February 21st, 2006

"lOOKING FOR A LADY TO LEAVE THE AREA AND GO SOME PALCE AWAY FROM ALL THIS MESS, RTRIRED COP WITH TWO LABS, PLEASE NO NUTS,"  Reply to: pers-135210325@craigslist.org

Monday, February 20th, 2006                  Patty Hearst is 52.

...to the tune of 'I'm All Shook Up'

Sunday, February 19th, 2006

Speaking of birds...

"they have always been abundant in Alaska,

but it's been nothing like it is now."

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