Web Log Archive, March
19th through April 1st, 2006
Saturday, April 1st, 2006
Although it certainly has been widely reported, it is not, evidently,
widely known that, as Laura Welch in Midland, Texas on November 6, 1963 (two days
past her seventeenth birthday...yes, she's a Scorpio), our First Lady ran a stop
sign and caused a motor
vehicle accident that resulted in the death of a classmate and friend, one
seventeen year-old Michael Douglas.
No, this is not an April Fool's joke.
Yes, it is true!
''When you're making a video and having to
recite certain things with three men with machine guns standing over you, you're
probably going to say exactly what you're told to say.'' Richard
Bergenheim, Editor, Christian Science Monitor
Friday, March 31st, 2006
Now...if only I could find a study to suggest that people who use a remote control to honk the horn (every time they lock or unlock their car doors)...go blind.
Thursday, March 30th, 2006
"Love for any one thing is barbaric, for it is exercised at the expense of everything else. This includes the love for God." Fred
"In the largest study of its kind, researchers found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. In fact, patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of complications. Researchers emphasized that their work can't address whether God exists or answers prayers made on another's behalf."
Wednesday, March 29th, 2006
"It's hard to figure out what unmet need this change is supposed to fill. There's been a lot of talk about how exhausted the original Bush team is. But Mr. Bolten [formerly the President's Budget Director] ought to be as pooped as everybody else. It takes just as much energy to put together an out-of-whack, fiscally ruinous budget as it does to mess up an invasion or ignore a cataclysmic hurricane." NYT Editorial
Tuesday, March 28th, 2006 Happy Birthday, Betty, on the Big Scary One!
I have been working to perfect my Lounge Lizard chops.
“She’s just got a patent resume, of
somebody that’s got such serious skill. She loves football, she’s
African-American, which would kind of be a big coon, a big coon – oh my God, I
am totally, totally, totally, totally, totally sorry for that, OK? I didn’t
mean that. That was just a slip of the tongue.”
Dave
Lenihan
Although the ACLU tried to spoil it with a pungent (poignant?) punch line...courtesy of my brother, here's The Future of Pizza Delivery.
...who tells us that KC is, at least
in part, a 'Maine
Coon' Cat.
"A man
who lies us into war will not hesitate to lie us out of one."
Charley Reese
Sunday, March 26th, 2006
"I can be on a flight to Rome and if I'm asked where I live, there is an immediate understanding from my response. A subtle smile. An acquiescent (sic) nod of the head. If I say where I live, it's assumed that Veronica, the concierge, has a limo waiting for me whenever I go to the airport. And she knows I like my shirts, 'No starch. On hangers.' Where I live, life is lived in the details. I live at the Four Seasons, Miami." Ad in last week's Wall Street Journal.
Saturday, March 25th, 2006
Slow
But Ahead of You
"According to records in the zoo, the age of the giant tortoise, Addwaita, who died on Wednesday, would be 250 years approximately," said zoo director Subir Chowdhury. That would have made him much older than the world's oldest documented living animal: Harriet, a 176-year-old Galapagos tortoise who lives at the Australia Zoo north of Brisbane, according to the zoo's Web site. She was taken from the island of Isla Santa Cruz by Charles Darwin in the 19th century.
'The turtle lives 'neath plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.'
Ogden Nash
Friday, March 24th, 2006
"While the president and his corporate backers wield
enormous media power, they pose as intrepid and besieged underdogs.
The myth of the liberal media is an umbrella canard that shelters the corollary
myth of anti-war media. But even a lapdog press corps is apt to start growling
when it has been leashed to lies too many times."
Norman
Solomon
Thursday, March 23rd, 2006
"Pure good soon grows insipid, wants variety and spirit.
Pain is a bittersweet, wants variety and spirit. Love turns, with a little
indulgence, to indifference or disgust: hatred alone is immortal. A whole
town runs to be present at a fire, and the spectator by no means exults to see
it extinguished."
These (and other) upbeat sentiments/observations are contained in an
essay forwarded to me by my genius son (interning for
the Spring semester at a 'think
tank' in our Nation's Capital). The (fwoabw)
'manifesto' was written and first published c.1826 by William
Hazlitt.
Mr. Hazlitt (1778-1830) credits his contemporary, Edmund
Burke (1729-1797), with the observation that "Men assemble in
crowds, with eager enthusiasm, to witness a Tragedy: but if there were an
execution going forward in the next street, the theater would be left empty."
Let's not forget that March 19th through March 25th is National Inhalants and Poisons Awareness Week.
And this...stolen from my brother's
newsletter and credited to "Pogo":
"We are
confronted with insurmountable opportunities."
Wednesday, March 22nd,
2006
The Vernal Equinox
Johann Sebastian Bach, whose "family had somewhat monotonous naming habits", was born 321 years ago. Both of his parents died within a year of each other...before Johann was yet ten years old.
No Sense of Humor Department: "She said the chair was a source of embarrassment, especially at parent-teacher evenings."
"When I post without stating the fact I'm blind, I do receive some response. As soon as I tell the woman I'm blind, some of them won't reply to my email. When I post stating the fact I'm blind, I receive no response. When I reply to posts on Craigslist, telling the woman I'm blind, some of them won't reply. Why?”
Tuesday, March 21st, 2006
"There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction,
the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps
of kings.
It is better not to be different from one's fellows.
The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world.
If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of
defeat."
Oscar Wilde
(1854-1900)
Monday, March 20th,
2006 Happy
Birthday, Chrissy!
"You can't win this with rhetoric. What the Republican chairman [says] has no impact on me or anybody else as far as I’m concerned. This should not be political. When I go by the graveyard over there at Arlington, it doesn't say Democrat or Republican, it says American." Representative John Murtha (my hero!) on yesterday's Meet The Press
"Our most important, and sometimes most severe, judges are our subordinates. That is a fact I discovered early in my military career. It is, unfortunately, a lesson Donald Rumsfeld seems incapable of learning." Retired Army Major General Paul Eaton
"No drug known to man becomes less dangerous to the user or
society when its production and distribution are left to criminals and cartels."
Kris
Krane
Sunday, March 19th, 2006
Update:
" In past centuries,
the saint-making procedure was often long and expensive,
but modern
communications have made it faster."
The night before last, Maggie and I rented
The Aristocrats.
Now...I don't get out much and the last time I saw a movie in a theater
was back when Fahrenheit 911
was current...and when was that?
The only reason I rented Aristocrats
was 'cuz a the many gushing reviews it got! "You'll laugh till it
hurts", runs the hype. Oh yeah and, I mean, "[up tight] people
were seen leaving the theater during the opening credits because they were so
grossed out!" What fun, me thought! I mean, I'm on board! I've
always been hip and don't we all enjoy good, wholesome scatological humor!
But folks...if this is 'humor', then I don't get it! I mean, even if I
CAN laugh about scat fetishes and bestiality, I will still
need someone to point out to me what there is that's funny about rape and incest.
The whole movie's (supposed to be) about one
joke that (supposedly) has been around since the Cambrian and has
(supposedly) been shared (along with knowing winks) among in-crowd comedians. Only the opening and the closing
lines of the 'joke' are rote...and
the rest is 'ad-libbed'.
The opening line is "So this guy goes into a talent agent's office and
says, 'Hey, have I got an act for you!' And the talent agent says, 'Oh yeah?
Tell me about it!' "
After the guy tells him about it, the agent says, 'Great! What's this act
called?' And the guy answers, 'The Aristocrats!'
The Aristocrats!'
"
Yup! You just
heard the punch line. During the middle (the ad-libbed part), the 'comedian'
must conjure
all manner of obscene, disgusting and politically incorrect events occurring live on-stage.
To say that
The Aristocrats is 'self-conscious' would be generous.
It's
all-the-way-to contrived!
I didn't laugh.
:-))
I didn't (even)
smile.
:-)
And every time I thought about the $4 I paid
to rent this buzzard...I wanted to cry!
;-((
The friendliest adjective I can summon
for this movie is 'pathetic'! After ten revolting minutes, Maggie and I pulled
the plug and watched "Singing
In The Rain" (which she bought for $4 at Rasputin's) instead. Too
bad I don't get off on Gene Kelly.