Web Log Archive July 10th through July 23rd, 2005

Saturday, July 23rd, 2005

[A] registered Republican...said he wished a GOP lawmaker would have the courage to stand up and "call the ugly dog the ugly dog."
It is Noam Chomsky, I believe, who likes to say that some things are SO apparent (read: 'obvious') that, once in a while, someone remarks on them.

Friday, July 22nd, 2005

Ill Wind Indeed Department:

Who benefited most from the 9/11/2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? Upon whose overturned and rotting carcass were the media fire ants feeding on 9/10/2001? If your answer is Mariah Carey (for her movie "Glitter"), then you're only close. What veteran 'he just couldn't help himself' lawmaker from Modesto, CA  had already been suspected, arrested, charged, tried, convicted, sentenced and (was about-to-be) hung for the murder of his thirty-years-or-so-his-junior nubile summer assistant...when he was saved by the opening bell of WW III? 
And...who benefited most from the 7/7/2005 attacks on the London transportation system? If your answer is Karl Rove (for his big fat mouse), then you're only close. What veteran anencephalic actor, on 7/6/2005, was in the stocks for having, at last, 'opened his mouth and removed all doubt'?

Thursday, July 21st, 2005

"Objections, non-sequiturs, cheerful distrust, joyous mockery---all are signs of health. Everything absolute belongs in the realms of pathology." Fred

We, all of us, want to believe that life makes sense. We (each of us) need(s) to believe that there is a pattern, if only it can be discerned, which may be fruitfully applied within the next circumstance we encounter. "We're...not gonna make that mistake again!"
Alas! Not even two consecutive seconds are the same and so...one will 'apply' a 'discernible pattern' only at the risk of blinding oneself to the peculiarities of the next circumstance.

Today's lengthy NYT piece on Judge John Roberts leaves me lost for a reaction. The first two sections (of the six) simply make a case for his beatification. There is nary an unflattering phrase. The middle two stress his devotion to the Law...as a craft. He has clerked for some well-known jurists (including William Rehnquist) and is cast (by the Times reporters) in the (independent) mold of a Justice Brandeis. The final two sections 'spin the wheel', as it were. Roberts is portrayed as an ambitious, pragmatic and wealthy legal genius...one who has set aside rather little time for dreaming and no time for the company of women until, at age forty, he married Jane Sullivan...a corporate lawyer just his age who shares his Catholic background. John & Jane have no children (biologically) of their own---they have adopted one boy and one girl.

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." Justice Louis D. Brandeis

Wednesday, July 20th, 2005

I don't know Thing One about this John Roberts dude except that...
if Alfred wants him on the Supreme Court, then there's got to be something horribly wrong with him!

 This graphic is from today's Times and (indirectly) purports to illustrate that our military is disproportionately staffed by people from rural areas. Huh?
NOW...may be I be dumb, but why did these highbrow statisticians choose to label the horizontal axis descending from left-to-right? Note that the vertical axis is (ascending bottom-to-top and) linearly marked off in "Iraqi war death rates [per] 100,000 people ages 18 to 54 by the size of their county's population". Are they trying to demonstrate that a dead soldier is more likely to be from Biloxi than from Boston? Well no, not exactly...but 'sort of'.
OK. This graph is math-abusive in that the population range abscissas  for the bar-height calculations are arbitrary! Calculations grouping counties ranging in population from 25 to 50 thousand are visually compared with those ranging from 500 thousand to1,000 thousand (a million)! Huh? That's an order of magnitude difference: a factor of 20 (500/25)! Why? Surely, with today's slick software, these guys did perform calculations on same-size-range groupings! So why, then, did they publish a graph that is not only lacey, but unpersuasive...both to the grade-school dropout and to the bookish?
NOW...if the authors merely want to show that poor, uneducated people are more likely than wealthy college graduates to die in this misadventure, then I ask: isn't that already obvious?

Tuesday, July 19th, 2005

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
      Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
      Pipe to the spirit dities of no tone.
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
      Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
            Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal---yet, do not grieve;
      She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss
            Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Second Stanza, Ode On a Grecian Urn, by John Keats (1795-1821)

Monday, July 18th, 2005

Newpeep (who has rightly assured me that it is NOT plagiarism...'cuz I give her credit) writes (on June 19th) of a certain breed who "...wouldn't respect someone with an artistic temperament unless that person is already successful and making millions of dollars." This characteristically (for Newpeep) astute observation yields insight into the special nature of a Blog.

Sunday, July 17th, 2005

" Joseph Wilson...is, in Alfred Hitchcock's parlance, a MacGuffin, which, to quote the Oxford English Dictionary, is "a particular event, object, factor, etc., initially presented as being of great significance to the story, but often having little actual importance for the plot as it develops." His mission to Niger [has] as much to do with the real story here as Janet Leigh's theft of office cash has to do with the mayhem that ensues at the Bates Motel."   Frank Rich

Not unrelated to the above: I predict that, sometime in the next four or five days, it will be announced that Vice President Cheney will leave office, for health reasons, before his term expires.

In the old days, when it was OK to be a macho pig, there was a joke that went...
Q: "How is your wife like your TV?"
A: "She's home and she's free."
What? You don't get it? Well...as Maggie used to say, "there's nothing to get!" Once upon a cultural time, it mighta broughta smile...but now? Well, fer one thing, most people now have cable TV and, whatever else that might be, it sher ain't free! But the underlying point of the 'joke' is that: whatcha don't pay for, ya don't value. Check out this piece, for example.

Saturday, July 16th, 2005    JFK Jr. has been dead for six years.

Hey Zhu! I understand...but just try to land one on top of my bald head. I don't wanna die slow, ya dig?

More on the nature of the Blog later. But, for now, listen to this mix from last night.

Friday, July 15th, 2005

OK. To be continued. But don't say you weren't warned! This is deep!

Jesus! And I thought I needed a life! This, today, from the Associated Press: "Desperate fans around the world waiting to read the latest adventures of schoolboy wizard Harry Potter will get a chance at the stroke of midnight, when 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,' will finally go on sale." "Desperate"?

Twice in five minutes? Guess it just wasn't his day.

Thursday, July 14th, 2005       Bastille Day!         Happy Birthday Alexander!

"He was devoted to...sleeping, the only time in the day, he said, when he felt alive." From Frances Langford's obituary.

"My wife's name is Wilson, it is Mrs. Joseph Wilson, it is Valerie Wilson. He named her, he identified her. That argument I don't believe passes the smell test."

Just posted a simple remix of CUA. Shortened the fade, a bit, for now. Still working on a background chorus and [over the objections of one...:-)] a revised second guitar part. Still crazy about these MXL microphones! Still cheap at twice the price, as they say!

Wednesday, July 13th, 2005        Happy Birthday, Big O! Twenty-one. Seven times three. How can it be?

Maggie has a driver's license! The importance of this 'event'...'fact'...'milestone'...can not be exaggerated. It would be both trite and tired for me to wax wordy about what this 'event'...'fact'...'milestone'...means in the life of a Young Person.
I'd prefer to remember a story told, I think, by the great Jerry Mander...or was it by the late Marshall Cluhan? Whatever:

In the early '60's, tree huggers  from the Peace Corps helped to fund and organize a fresh water delivery system for an African village. Improved sanitation was (is) paramount among the many attractions of running water. After all, these villagers, upon the arrival of the do-gooders, had been making do (as they had for generations) with collecting and carrying water in clay jugs from a nearby stream. As the project got underway, none among the villagers voiced a single objection. But as completion neared and as there was less and less reason to collect and carry water from the stream, first melancholy...then sedition spread among the inhabitants. Finally, the village leaders went sheepishly to the PC'ers to ask that the new fresh water system be removed! It had simply destroyed the social life of the village. Now that there were so many nearby and convenient sources of fresh, running water, there was no longer any need for village people to meet...and talk, down by the stream.

I posted the first quick mix of my new project last night. 

From the It Was Bound To Happen Department: My Big Brother has offered to help jazz up my Web site (with pirated software). See...he's a tennis terrorist and...well, I'm just a lecherous old fool. [Maria's a bit long-in-the-tooth herself for me, though. I mean...just what would we talk about? I don't know a word of Russian!]

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Eddie Rabbit had the hit, I guess, of the pop truck drivers' song, "Drivin' My Life Away" ['Ooh I'm drivin' my life away, looking for a better way...for me. Ooh I'm driving my life away, looking for a sunny day...ooh eee'].
Back when I was in the lockup, the grease monkeys used to play it over and over and LOUD in the shop.
I liked Eddie. He made some great records, my favorite of which is his duet with Crystal Gayle of "Just You and I'". Gorgeous!
Anyway. Too many of Eddie's hits (like "I Love a Rainy Night") contained choruses that were repeated ad nauseum. Such repetition begs for parody and Pinkard & Bowden (they of  "Help Me Make It Through the Yard" and "Let's Put the 'X' Back in Christmas") always seem able to come up with a good one. The lyrics became "Drivin' My Wife Away" ['Ooh, I'm drivin' my wife away. She can't take another day...with me. Ooh, I'm drivin' my wife away. Didn't want her anyway...ooh eee'].

I have long been unfit for human consumption. I know that. But when in the company of others of my species, I realize I must make like I've been toilet-trained! Yesterday I took Maggie to get her Senior yearbook pictures taken. While waiting for her in the car and reading a newspaper, I guess I got a little too relaxed, and so I hocked a lugee out the open window. Right away, I knew I was busted! I just felt it, ya know? This old bird got out of her car with her husband (He was ninety-five if he was fifteen minutes. She was eighty-five if she was three hours.) and said, "You shouldn't spit on the pavement!". Now, anyone who's spent forty-five seconds with me knows that I'm a non-confrontational sort and so...did I say, "Ah shut up, you old bag!"? Nope. I said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see you there."  But such a gracious, throat-baring gesture wasn't enough for the old battle ax! Un-mollified, she came right back with, "It doesn't matter. You shouldn't do it anyway!" "You're right. I'm sorry." I said (now properly chastened). With a snort, she walked away with the old trout in tow. He looked all-the-way-to relieved that I didn't end their long, happy marriage with a chain saw! I suppose he's well-accustomed to his wife's...uh...outspokenness. 

Monday, July 11th, 2005   OMH! It's Seven-Eleven!

We Pinko-Commie-Leftists are drooling this morning over yesterday's revelation that reporter Matt Cooper's notes (voluntarily turned over to a Special Prosecutor last week by his employer, Time Magazine) appear to identify none-other-than Karl Rove, himself, as the source of the leak which identified a covert CIA operative...and he did so exactly two years ago today.  It is a crime, though one rarely prosecuted, to 'knowingly identify' such an operative. Whether or not Bush's Brain goes to jail for it, he's certainly got, as Ricky used to say, 'some 'splainin' to do!'

Well...who else does he look like? Julius Caesar?

Sunday, July 10th, 2005