Web Log Archive, June 10th through June 23rd, 2007

Saturday, June 23rd, 2007

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves;
 we must die to one life before we can enter another.

How noble the law, in its majestic equality, that both the rich and the poor are prohibited from peeing in the streets, sleeping under bridges, and stealing bread!

Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women's clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear.

Anatole France (1844-1924)

Friday, June 22nd, 2007

Today's 'NPR Science Friday', with Ira Flatow, featured a discussion of the 2007 list of the ten worst jobs in science. 

Evidently, the ordering of this list represents a consensus among people who are familiar with each task. So, in reverse order, from 'best' (or 'least worst') to 'most worst', with a brief description, they are:

Number 10: Whale-Feces Researcher (following whales to collect their excrement for analysis)

Number 9: Forensic Entomologist (solving murders by studying maggots)

Number 8: Olympic Drug Tester (collecting urine samples from athletes---not a way to be popular)

Number 7: Gravity Research Subject (to simulate the effects of weightlessness in space missions, the subject must lie still for extended periods of time) 

Number 6: Microsoft Security Grunt (this one's kinda hard to explain: it involves responding to attempts to hack Microsoft computers...but how can this be worse than collecting urine samples and whale excrement?)

Number 5: Coursework Carcass Preparer (killing, preserving and bottling specimens for lab dissection by biology students)

Number 4: Garbologist (dumpster diving)

Number 3: Elephant Vasectomist (ahfergodsake!)

Number 2: Oceanographer (but wouldn't you expect this to be a wonderful job? Nah, it seems that the analyses of the trends are uniformly depressing) 

Number 1: Hazmat Diver (these people literally swim in raw sewage (from humans and animals) to perform critical repairs and maintenance tasks. Not an elegant way to make a living but it is said to pay well!)

Thursday, June 21st, 2007                          Summer Is A Comin' In!

"My brother took a suitcase and he went away to school.
My father said he only learned to be a silly fool."
from "Mañana", Frank Loesser (1948)

Wednesday, June 20th, 2007

Or, in the vernacular of the 80's, "A black person voting for a Republican is like a turkey voting for Thanksgiving!"

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007                   " Juneteenth"

It was on June 19th, 1865, that Union soldiers under General Granger landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the Civil War had ended and that all slaves were free:

"The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer." General Order Number 3

Major General Gordon Granger, 1821-1876

Monday, June 18th, 2007

Sunday, June 17th, 2007               The 35th anniversary of the 'third-rate burglary' at the DNC headquarters in Washington, DC

I envy not in any moods the captive void of noble rage,
 The linnet born within the cage, that never knew the summer woods:
 I envy not the beast that takes his license in the field of time,
 Unfettered by the sense of crime, to whom a conscience never wakes;
 Nor, what may count itself as blest, The heart that never plighted troth
 But stagnates in the weeds of sloth; Nor any want-begotten rest.
 I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most;
 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

"Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1809-1892

Saturday, June 16th, 2007

In this life, not everyone gets to have a sweet last name...and it's already too late to ask Mr. Poos about it.

"It's disgusting that people are still obsessed with Gotti and the Mob. They should be obsessed with that mob in Washington. They have 3,000 deaths on their hands. People should ask Bush and Cheney if they have any relatives on the front lines. Every time I watch the news and I hear of another death, it sickens me. It's disgusting."

Victoria Gotti, widow of crime boss John Gotti...on the fifth anniversary of his death in prison. She was speaking to reporters outside the mausoleum where her infamous husband is entombed. 

"In Washington, hypocrisy is a perennial crime in both parties; if all the city's hypocrites were put in jail, there would be no one left to run the government."
Frank Rich

Friday, June 15th, 2007               Happy Birthday, Jay! Happy Birthday, Alice! Happy Birthday, Doug!

"I think the American people realize the war on drugs is a total failure—a waste of time, a waste of money. What's wrong with marijuana? You can go out a buy a fifth of gin and do more damage to yourself."

 "Please understand that this [Iraq] war was lost on the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis." 

Mike Gravel, U.S. Senator from Alaska, 1969-1981 and now a Democratic candidate for President. Please take about six and a half minutes to watch this YouTube video of Mike Gravel at the first Democratic Presidential debate in South Carolina in April.
He makes too much sense and, therefore, is not taken seriously or...is it that because he is not taken seriously (i.e., has no chance of being elected) that he is, therefore, at liberty to make sense? He's not 'triangulating'...not trying to win people over. He's just calling things as he sees them and I, for one, think he sees them quite clearly.

Thursday, June 14th, 2007

Ms Couric's gender has been a central issue since CBS poached her from NBC's Today show a year ago and made her the first woman to solo anchor a network newscast, filling the seat of such legends as Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather. 

While referring to Couric as a "nice person," Dan Rather said "the mistake was to try to bring the 'Today' show ethos to the 'Evening News'; to dumb it down and tart it up in hopes of attracting a younger audience." ^_^  Suffice it to say that, among his old colleagues at CBS News, Dan's remarks went over like a turd in the punchbowl.

Wednesday, June 13th, 2007

And the moral is?

Don't fall asleep just anywhere: 

Dateline St. Louis, Missouri. Police believe that the Jansens, who had recently become homeless, had gone to sleep in a recycling container before the container's contents were emptied into a truck...and compacted. Their bodies were found at paper recycling plants more than 1,000 miles apart.
. 

Tuesday, June 12th, 2007

Barbara is a spinster schoolteacher nearing retirement. Sheba is a new hire in the art department...married to a somewhat older man with whom she has two children: one, a boy with Down Syndrome.
Barbara is a closeted Lesbian with lotsa 'issues'. One day, she discovers that Sheba (played by Cate Blanchett) has been 'carrying on' most inappropriately with a fifteen year-old student. Although she promptly confronts her thirty-something colleague, she does not expose her. Rather, she chooses to use their 'little secret' to manipulate the younger woman.
Sheba, awash in her own sexual obsessions, is oblivious to the obvious: that Barbara has physical 'designs' on her. 
A powerful movie, skillfully acted in a town where everyone drives on the wrong side of the road! 

"People like Sheba think they know what it is to be lonely. But of the drip, drip of the long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. What it's like to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the launderette. Or to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor's hand sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin. Of this, Sheba and her like have no clue." 
Judi Dench's character, Barbara, in Notes On A Scandal

Monday, June 11th, 2007

With the incarceration of Paris Hilton, prison toilets are, once again, back in the headlines.
 No less august a source than CBS News is reporting that Ms. Hilton's single greatest anxiety in the lockup (which, incidentally, is not supposed to be pleasant) has to do with the 'open air', seatless metal toilet in her jail cell. 
Her trepidation is understandable, especially to those of us who have never served in the military or been in prison at a tender age. In American middle class culture, it is more common to hear a man or a woman discourse upon his or her sex life (assuming he or she has one) than upon his or her defecatory proclivities. Despite my never having consorted with people like the Hiltons, I imagine that this (call it a) 'social bias' is even stronger among those in such rarefied social climbs. And so, it should not surprise anyone that Paris was less troubled by the release of 'One Night In Paris' than she would be if someone were to watch (or film) her in the midst of an excretory function.

Sunday, June 10th, 2007

Dunno what I was thinking...but one of the four flicks I rented last week at the video store special was 'Catch and Release', starring Jennifer Garner. The plainest way to characterize the movie is to call it a 'chick flick', which doesn't necessarily mean it's bad entertainment but this flick is pretty lame...although not depressing, and that counts for something, no? I mean, nobody gets shot, no animals are tortured and nobody's mean to kids. There're three or four good-looking young people and plenty of (normal) pretend sex throughout the movie and, although that may not be as riveting as even a bit of  real (abnormal) sex, it is more engrossing than, say, watching a table of middle-aged fat guys play poker.
I happen to like Jennifer Garner (ever since Maggie made me watch '13 Going on 30') but the plod (sic) for Catch and Release is merely a string of clichéd vignettes. There's the only-a-cry-for-help-suicide-attempt by heart-of-gold Sam (played by Kevin Smith...a poor man's Jack Black), the cool, steady oh-what-a-hunk Fritz (played by Tony Olyphant...a poor man's Rob Lowe), the oh so politically incorrect, pre-feminist mentality of she who would've been her mother-in-law (assuring Jennifer that 'no man who's gittin' enough ever looks for satisfaction outside the home') and the New Age (Chakras and Chi) canned dialogue of Juliette Lewis and her (obligatorily cute) four year-old son (played by Joshua Friesen...a poor man's Macaulay Culkin). Yawn.
Serves me right for rentin' this dumb movie! I blame the Chronicle for giving it a good review!

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