The worst of all possible worlds

Bentonville, Arkansas:

Wal-Mart's folksy, baseball cap-wearing founder, Sam Walton, so despised public displays of wealth that, after his death in 1992, the billionaire's heirs decided to enshrine his prized possession, a battered Ford pickup, behind a simple storefront on the town square here.

But Walton's spirit of restraint is harder to find next door to the museum at Fusion, a new fine-arts gallery that sells $2,500 abstract paintings and $1,200 urns. Or at the nearby Landers Hummer dealership, crowded with $62,000 sport-utility trucks. Or inside Shadow Valley, a gated community where four-bedroom houses fetch $1 million.

The hard-nosed retailing tactics of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. have transformed communities across the country, but none more so than the one in its own back yard. Benton County, once a sedate backwater, is quickly morphing into a swanky oasis in the middle of the Ozarks.

Truly astonishing. It's pretty much everything I hate about America in one small town. "A swanky oasis in the middle of the Ozarks"--can you say "hell on earth"?

Why don't we just give them a loaded gun?

Canadian researchers are exploring a brilliant new idea in drug treatment:

Researchers in Montreal are about to launch one part of a three-city study to determine whether medically prescribed heroin is better than methadone at keeping street addicts in treatment programs.

The North American Opiate Medication Initiative (NAOMI), which also includes sites in Toronto and Vancouver, will target a total of 470 opiate-dependent users who have not benefited from conventional addiction treatment programs.

. . .

Each participant will be randomly assigned to one of two groups: one group will receive injectable, pharmaceutical-grade heroin, while the other will be given oral methadone.

Gee whiz, I wonder how that study will turn out. I'm not much of a science person, but something tells me that those junkies who "have not benefited from conventional addiction treatment" will indeed me more inclined to stay in treatment if they got shot up with dope every day. In fact, let's run with this idea. Maybe if we installed roulette wheels in the GA meetings the gamblers would be more inclined to attend. And we could add pints of Ben and Jerrys to the midnight snack menu for the eating disorder clinics. Sheesh.

(For more info, see the press release.)

A sure sign of progress

Cafepress has a whole page of Downing Street Memo designs. You know you're getting somewhere when your cause is commodified, that's what I say.

It's all about me

Tagged by the Yella for the self-revelatory meme...

1. What were three of the stupidest things you have done in your life?

First let me say that, like Yella, most of the stupid things I've done have ended up to my benefit in the end, if I take the long view. Second, I am taking this at face value--"stupidest," as in "doh!" not necessarily most regretable, which I would hardly blog about. Though admittedly there is overlap in these categories. Let me also say, it's really tough to pick only three. And it's humbling to think about how long this list could be.

a) Attempting to cop drugs in the DC projects as a teenage white girl

b) Hitch-hiking (and here I am feeling just a wee bit of gratitude I didn't end up in garbage bags under a half dozen bridges)

c) Putting off writing my dissertation for so many years

2. At the current moment, who has the most influence in your life?

My best friend, Andrea (when she says, "I wouldn't do that if I were you," I really listen; when most other people say that, I think, "Yeah, but you're not, are you?")

3. If you were given a time machine that functioned, and you were allowed to only pick up to five people to dine with, who would you pick?

a) Anne Hutchinson
b) Stephen Burroughs
c) Deborah Sampson
d) Vincent Van Gogh
e) my dad

Which is to say, my dad and the outlaws. Probably I should add Dorothy Parker, or PT Barnum, or Oscar Wilde or someone who would brighten up the attitude a little, but I'm counting on Stephen Burroughs to keep things lively.

4. If you had three wishes that were not supernatural, what would they be?

a) Free, on-demand health care for everyone

b) A redistribution of wealth (aka economic justice)

c) Peace on earth (well, maybe all of those are supernatural, but oh well)

5. Someone is visiting your hometown/place where you live at the moment. Name two things you regret your city not having, and two things people should avoid.

Two things it's a shame we don't have:

a) air with a decent amount of oxygen
b) sidewalk culture

Two things people should avoid:

a) the 405 during rush hour(s)
b) the 101 during rush hour(s)

6. Name one event that has changed your life.

Okay, this may sound weird, but I'd say HUAC, despite the fact that it happened before I was born. Having a parent who was blacklisted teaches you a lot of things from a young age--like standing up for what you believe in is not necessarily rewarded, your government is not always on your side, and zealotry of all kinds should be regarded with suspicion to name just a few.

7. Tag 5 people.

Conor
Elise
Carrie
CB
Rook

A bridge too far

It should come as no great surprise to NMTE readers that I was a teenage punk. Let me date myself: in April 1981, I was 15 years old and I saw the Dead Kennedys at DC's 9:30 club and it changed my life. The club was less than a year old and Dischord was less than six months old. It was the perfect place and the perfect time to be an angry teenager. Way back then, once upon a time, if you were a teenage girl that got a crew cut and wore mini-kilts and combat boots with homemade band tee-shirts and ripped fishnets, people went so far as to spit on you. True story. So the wrath of my teen years was constantly augmented by the hostile reactions of the general population during those Reagan years.

So what's the point of all of this nostalgic rambling? Nike, that's what. Alex at After School Snack has alerted me to Nike's ad campaign for their 2005 skateboard tour:



On the left: Dischord's third pressing.

On the right: Nike's tour flier.




My advice to Dischord: Just sue 'em. (I did notice that Nike has posted an apology on their website, no doubt in fears of such a thing. Fucking co-opting bastards.)

If email services were boyfriends

I just got this error message from Yahoo mail:

I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses. This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

421 SERVICE NOT AVAILABLE
I'm not going to try again; this message has been in the queue too long.

I'm thinking some tech guy at Yahoo is doing a wee bit of projecting. All it needs is the "It's not you; it's me" sentence and it would be perfect.

Badvertising

In the category "advertising that does the opposite of what it's supposed to" falls Yahoo's plug for their new photo email service:

Now every email is an event.
Easily drag and drop hundreds of photos per email.

You know, if every email was an event I might have to put a bullet in my brain. I don't think I could take it.

Surrender is not a Ranger word

Last month, Seymour Hersh mentioned a series of digital photos that had been forwarded to him:

After I did Abu Ghraib, I got a bunch of digital pictures emailed me, and -- was a lot of work on it, and I decided, well, we can talk about it later. You never know why you do things. You have some general rules, but in this case, a bunch of kids were going along in three vehicles. One of them got blown up. The other two units -- soldiers ran out, saw some people running, opened up fire. It was a bunch of boys playing soccer. And in the digital videos you see everybody standing around, they pull the bodies together. This is last summer. They pull the bodies together. You see the body parts, the legs and boots of the Americans pulling bodies together. Young kids, I don't know how old, 13, 15, I guess. And then you see soldiers dropping R.P.G.'s, which are rocket-launched grenades around them. And then they're called in as an insurgent kill.

Hersh determined not to follow up on the story because it was inconclusive and it could threaten his sources.

Cryptome has the pictures of the dead boys with and without the weapon, courtesy of Mark Kraft.

Baghdad Dweller and Feral Scholar also weigh in.

As an aside: today is something of a watershed moment for me. For the first time, I am not aghast or even surprised by this kind of news. For so long now, I have been astonished by my own ability to continue to be shocked and outraged. Today, it just feels wearying.

(Thanks to S for the link.)

To quote Andrea:

"It's like they just can't be evil enough."

U.S. to resume plutonium 238 production

Why I love the valley

Saturday night B and I went to Vern's Volver Volver for the best tamales in the valley. (Well, B had the potato tacos because she doesn't like tamales.) I admit I was disappointed because they were out of the sweet tamales (with pineapple and raisins) but the lack of sweet tamales was made up for by the Spanish game show on the wide screen TV. I have no idea what the premise of the show was--I do not speak Spanish--but I can tell you there were seals propped up at the game show podiums barking and clapping.

After Vern's we stopped for gas at Arco and a man missing half an arm wanted to wash our windshield. Somewhere below the elbow and above what would have been a wrist his arm tapered off, and duct taped to the taper end was a bottle of windex. (We said no thanks.)

And then we went to the multiplex and saw Romero's Land of the Dead, which fucking rocked. It was the antidote to last week's Batman, made even better seeing it at a multiplex in the Valley. Oh the irony.

Warning, potential spoilers:

Like I said, Land of the Dead was the Batman antiviral. The message of Batman: Things are good as long as the filthy rich are benevolent, "good" men. When things are bad, one man can potentially change the world--though he can't be with a woman while he does. The message of L of the D: Capitalism sucks, no matter who is in charge. Hell yeah the antihero gets the girl, and he only tries to save the world to an extent; then he gets the hell out of there. So yeah, it rocked. I loved it.

He may be for torture, but at least he's pro-tit

Via AMERICABlog comes the heartening news that the Spirit of Justice and the Majesty of Law are, once again, baring their breasts. I for one, look forward to a return to the good old days:

When former Attorney General Edwin Meese released a report on pornography in the 1980s, photographers dived to the floor to capture the image of him raising the report in the air, with the partially nude female statue behind him.

I want to see those reporters hitting the turf during Gonzo's press conferences.

"They're living in the tropics"

Cheney yesterday on Guantanamo:

They're very well treated down there. They're living in the tropics. They're well fed. They've got everything they could possibly want. There isn't any other nation in the world that would treat people who were determined to kill Americans the way we're treating these people.

But do they get doritos, that's what I want to know. Or is that just for the masterminds?

Ministry for Public Enlightenment

Still too busy to blog, but to say the whole CPB/public broadcasting news chills me to the bone. Am I excessively paranoid to see Patricia Harrison's election to CPB's CEO as the latest sign of creeping Fascism? (Harrison being the former co-chair of the Republican Party and the assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs)

I fear to think what Sesame Street will be forced to do with their "one of these things is not like the other" sketches.

Great ideas from the writing group

So tonight the writing group met again after an extended hiatus. What beats poetry and tuna melts at a bad North Hollywood diner, I ask you? Unfortunately, as D, D, and K had to vie with the too-highly-pitched laughter of the teased blonde duo in the booth to my back, and I had to strain to hear the conversation at our own booth, my misanthropy began to grow. Remember that line from Repo Man: "Ordinary fucking people--I hate 'em"? It was like that. Finally, I had to cut off the verse talk with the summary statement that we jointly agreed should be the title of a TV series hosted by your's truly: I Hate My Species.

Can't you see it? I think it would be so great--and what better place than LA? One week at Disneyland, the next week at Malibu, the following week at Northridge Mall's Hot Topics store... the possibilities are endless. And here's the scary confession: I really want to do this. A lot.

Why are we still even talking about it?

Once again, we are confronted with the potential Flag Burning amendment. The House today passed HJ Res 10: "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States." AP tells us that there is a greater chance than ever before of the amendment passing the Senate as well:

. . .the measure has always died in the Senate, falling short of the 67 votes needed. The last time the Senate took up the amendment was in 2000, when it failed 63-37.

But last year's elections gave Republicans a four-seat pickup in the Senate, and now proponents and critics alike say the amendment stands within a vote or two of reaching the two-thirds requirement in that chamber.

Of course, if the Senate passes it then it will go on to the states for ratification. Can you hear my deep and heavy sighing over here?

This has been a too, too busy week for me, which accounts for the paucity of posts, and so I haven't had time to do what I would normally do, which is read the Congressional Record. (Only the most geeky among us can admit, "Yes, I was up too late because I was reading the Congressional Record until 2am.") But I couldn't resist skimming it a little nonetheless.

Here are a couple of choice moments:
Florida's Alcee Hastings:

Throughout this debate, Mr. Speaker, I am sure that some of our colleagues are going to try to paint some of us Democrats as unpatriotic. They will tell the American people that because we support the protection of our civil liberties and the constitutional right for an American to burn her flag, we are therefore not loyal citizens. . . .

To those who intend to levy such artificial claims, I say shame on you. You see, Mr. Speaker, this Congress and the Bush administration loves draping itself in the flag when talking about troops and terrorism. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, if they so choose to do that.

Yet . . . more than 1,700 Americans have died in Iraq, and some substantial number in Afghanistan, and, yet, when they come home to Dover, Delaware, with flag-draped coffins, this administration who is so proud of the flag and all of you who would support its being made a part of a Constitution, refuses to let the public see the pictures of those persons with those flag-draped coffins, and I might add, punishes the media for trying to access them.

The hypocrisy is so thick, that you can choke on it.

New York's Gary Ackerman:

The Constitution this week is being nibbled to death by small men with press secretaries. If the flag burners offend us, do not beat a cowardly retreat by rushing to ban them. Meet their ideas with bigger ideas, for an even better America to protect the flag by protecting democracy, not by retreating from it.

The choice today is substance or symbolism. We cannot kill a flag. It is a symbol; and, yes, patriots have died, but they have died for liberty. They have died for democracy. They have died for the right of the protestors. They died for values.

The flag is a symbol of those values. Saying that people died for the flag is symbolic language. What they really died for are American principles. The Constitution gives us our rights. The Constitution guarantees our liberties. The Constitution embodies our freedoms. It is our substance. The flag is the symbol for which it stands.

True patriots choose substance over symbolism.

Great stuff.

So in honor of today's Constitutional Desecration, here is today's trivia question:
Q: When did the first recorded incident of flag desecration take place in America?

Insert Jeopardy music here....

....

Give up? A: 1634. John Endicott cut the cross out of the Red Ensign, which British colonies were required to fly, because he felt it was sacrilegious to conflate divine and kingly rule in the symbol of the cross on the flag--"popery," to put it in the Puritans' terms.

Can you tell I wrote a chapter on the history of the flag? Ask me another one...

Anyway, the point being, after three hundred seventy years, I see no reason to revise the Constitution now.

Headline of the day

Brain Areas Shut Off During Female Orgasm

Um...duh.

AP reports:

New research indicates parts of the brain that govern fear and anxiety are switched off when a woman is having an orgasm but remain active if she is faking.

In the first study to map brain function during orgasm, scientists from the Netherlands also found that as a woman climaxes, an area of the brain governing emotional control is largely deactivated.

"The fact that there is no deactivation in faked orgasms means a basic part of a real orgasm is letting go. Women can imitate orgasm quite well, as we know, but there is nothing really happening in the brain," said neuroscientist Gert Holstege, presenting his findings Monday to the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.

. . .

"During orgasm, there was strong, enormous deactivation in the brain. During fake orgasm, there was no deactivation of the brain at all. None," Holstege said.

Shutting down the brain during orgasm may ensure that obstacles such as fear and stress did not get in the way, Holstege proposed. "Deactivation of these very important parts of the brain might be the most important necessity for having an orgasm," he said.

And here we are thinking several things. First, we suspect Gert Holstege may have some personal issues he could fruitfully share with a therapist of some kind. His "as we know" and "None," seem a bit forceful to us and we wonder if his research is motivated by some sort of last-laugh impulse.

Gert aside, NMTE offers this as the latest in our biology/romance series--the "why we do the things we do" strain of personal blogging. And so my fellow blog grrrlz, if any of you have found yourselves redecorating the relationship house while it was burning down around you, be solaced with the knowledge that your biology was your destiny. It's not your fault--the sex gave you brain damage.

Quote of the day

"There's no level of cynicism deep enough to account for humanity. In order to be cynical enough not to be continually surprised, you would have to be hospitalizable."

Andrea in our phone conversation tonight

Curiouser and curiouser

Is it just me, or does it seem to anyone else that the US's role in world politics is getting more and more bizarre? Disgusting, yes, venal, of course, but also just plain weird.

In that vein, AP has a story on Saddam's relationship with his prison guards. First let me say his remarks about Bush bear an eerie resemblance to those from Clinton remarked on earlier in the month:

GQ magazine's July issue says Saddam greatly admired President Reagan and thought President Clinton was "OK," but had harsh words for both President Bushes, each of whom went to war against him.

"The Bush father, son, no good," one of the soldiers, Cpl. Jonathan "Paco" Reese, 22, of Millville, Pa., quotes Saddam as saying. But his fellow GI, Specialist Sean O'Shea, then 19, says Saddam later softened that view.

"Towards the end he was saying that he doesn't hold any hard feelings and he just wanted to talk to Bush, to make friends with him," O'Shea, of Minooka, Pa., told the magazine.

I'm envisioning the golf game, you know?

And then there's this extract:

Saddam learned the names of the GIs guarding him, was interested in the details of their lives, which they were not supposed to discuss, and sometimes offered fatherly advice. They conversed in English.

O'Shea said when he told him he was not married, Saddam "started telling me what to do." "He was like, `you gotta find a good woman. Not too smart, not too dumb. Not too old, not too young. One that can cook and clean.'"

Then he smiled, made what O'Shea interpreted as a "spanking" gesture, laughed and went back to washing his clothes in the sink.

The soldiers say Saddam was preoccupied with cleanliness, washing up after shaking hands and using diaper wipes to clean his meal trays, his utensils and the table before eating. "He had germophobia or whatever you call it" said Dawson, 25, of Berwick, Pa.

The article quotes the GIs on Saddam's eating preferences ? Raisin Bran Crunch was his breakfast favorite. "No Froot Loops," he told O'Shea. He ate fish and chicken but refused beef at dinner.

For a time his favorite food was Cheetos, and when those ran out, Saddam would "get grumpy," the story says. One day the guards substituted Doritos corn chips, and Saddam forgot about Cheetos. "He'd eat a family size bag of Doritos in 10 minutes," Dawson says.

And what I'm thinking right now is that capitalism and sexism seem to be forces strong enough to allow men to forge bonds regardless of their differences. Sure, you may be head of the evil empire, and I'm part of the forces fighting against the darkness, but we can all agree that snack food is yummy and a good woman knows how to cook, right?

Good god. It's Kafka meets David Foster Wallace, I tell you. This era... Heaven help us.

Places I've been

create your own visited country map

Via the world-traveling Conor comes the link to create maps of where you've been. My worldwide map is paltry next to his, but I'll bet he can't match my US map.




create your own personalized map of the USA

Why I'm glad I have air conditioning

When I lived in DC I didn't have air conditioning. Anyone who has ever been to DC in the summer months understands that this is highly problematic. It leads one to linger in the grocery store frozen food section, restraining the urge to lie down in the freezer cases; work long hours at one's air conditioned job; and yes, go to summer movies as often as possible.

Happily, I now have air conditioning and only rarely do I make the mistake of gambling on a summer blockbuster. Tonight was the occasion for one of those rare mistakes: Batman.

Yeah.

It was painful. Really awful. To the point of being almost embarrassing.

Becky's one-line review: At least there was no Robin.