Toxic gnomes

ho ho ho

Yet one more reason to avoid religion

Last week AP reported that Rayfran das Neves Sales killed rainforest defender nun Dorothy Sales in a mistaken act of self-defense:

"She said, 'The weapon I have is this,' and reached into her bag," Sales said. "I didn't know what she was going to pull out of her bag, so I shot her."

Am I the only one thinking "country-western song" here?

The tar pit mammoth gets seasonal

Picture (as with the below) courtesy of Conor, who has more on his site.

What's happening in my respiratory system

My cilia, Rip-Van-Winkle-like, have just woken from a decades-long slumber. "What the fuck???" they are exclaiming, "Who trashed this place while we were sleeping? What the hell is going on here?" I'm sure the level of rotten I feel is just due to the cilia breaking out the Dyson and whatnot. Or maybe they're using a back hoe for something.

Things you think are jokes until you realize they're not

I used to say, when people would cut on me for smoking through a cold, which hel-lo of course I always did--though I did switch to lights when I had pneumonia--I used to say to them, "smoking makes it an inhospitable environment for germs" or something like that. I have a theory, in fact, that the only people to survive the environmental apocalypse will be junk food-eating smokers. So yeah, I would say that but I would be at least half way kidding. Now, I have quit smoking, and I am here to say that's no joke. Never have I been so darned sick. Fer cryin' out loud. Truly I find myself thinking I may have to start smoking again just so that I can feel well.

Cake

Jenny won a cake at the Bazaar Bizarre cake walk yesterday


It was filled with jewels on pink ribbons.

What we're talking about in our town

Tookie Williams, that's what. It should come as no surprise to anyone that I think the death penalty is a bridge too far in any and all cases. I am no libertarian (in fact, I like the idea of government), but giving the state the power to take a citizen's life is giving it too much power.

So we'll see if LA sleeps peacefully tonight or not. The execution is scheduled for midnight.

Not to old to rock

Tonight's entertainment: Indy 103.1's broadcast from The Scene. I love going to a show like TSOL because not only are they still great, but I don't have to feel geriatric when I'm there because there are other folks my age.

Some of you know that I saw TSOL with DI and the Dickies a while back (last year?) at the Gene Autry Western Heritage museum in Griffith Park. The mere fact of this show coupled with the fact that Fugazi played at the Smithsonian Folklife festival a few years before was the beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt evidence that, yes, I am old. When museums are showcasing the rebellious music of your youth as "heritage" or "folklife," you're old. Though I will say that having been into punk when I was a kid softens the aging blow a little bit because talking about the shows of my youth garners a kind of "I was at Woodstock" awe among a certain crowd (who were not even the twinkle in anyone's eye when I saw Minor Threat).

And another thing, can I grouse for just a minute about LA and it's ridiculous lack of authenticity? The Scene is described as a "low down dirty rock bar" (with pool tables and retro video games) on their site. But I mean, c'mon, it's not exactly a roadhouse--you've got the hipster radio station broadcasting and Ameoba Music rating your jukebox. I hate when places like that try to market grit. But I suppose I need to remember, the key to living in LA and the key to loving it is to embrace it for what it is, lack of authenticity and all.

I did not have sex with torture that woman suspect

So the press is reporting today that, in a quasi-battered-spouse sort of way, NATO leaders are satisfied with Rice's explanations of US torture policy. Rice: "Don't leave me. You know I really love you baby." NATO leaders: "She loves us."

Rice did leave us a back door, but even so, NATO big wigs seemed reassured by her flagrant lying:

"Will there be abuses of policy? That's entirely possible," Rice told reporters. "Just because you're a democracy it doesn't mean that you're perfect."

It's not easy being green.

Here's an interesting difference in reporting. The story quoted above emphasizes

European foreign ministers said Thursday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had "cleared the air" by assuring NATO allies that the U.S. does not allow torture of terrorist suspects and respects principles of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war.

The NY Times story, on the other hand, begins this way:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave the Bush administration's most comprehensive accounting yet of U.S. rules on treatment of prisoners in the war on terrorism Wednesday, but her assurances left loopholes for practices that could be akin to torture.

Rice said cruel and degrading interrogation methods are off limits for all U.S. personnel at home and abroad. But she gave no examples of banned practices, did not define the meaning of cruelty or degradation, did not say if the rules would apply to private contractors or foreign interrogators and made no mention of whether exceptions would be allowed.

"As a matter of U.S. policy," Rice said during a press conference with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, the United Nations Convention Against Torture "extends to U.S. personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the U.S. or outside the U.S."

How fucking weasely is that? I mean, if you hire a hit man and then go into court and try to use the defense "I didn't kill him," it's just not going to work to keep you out of prison, you know?

The Times also has a story titled "Skepticism Seems to Erode Europeans' Faith in Rice," in which they opine "it would be hard to imagine a more sudden and thorough tarnishing of the Bush administration's credibility than the one taking place here right now."

How can anyone believe these people anymore??? I know I'm a broken record on this one, folks, but I really, truly don't get it. When I was married to a lying cheat, I did let him persuade me to stay and try again (and again...), but I didn't believe him when he said he wasn't catting around. I really think the Dems need to hire someone like Dr. Phil for the next presidential campaign. ("Okay, you believe he loves you. How's that working for you?")

Misery loves company

It's good to know I'm not the only one who's not feeling the holiday spirit all the way.



(Those Floridians are an odd bunch, I tell you.)

Why high school English is important

So I'm reading Bush's short Q & A session after meeting with the WHO Director-General and I'm thinking, "Didn't everyone else read all of those horrifying dystopic novels in public school?" I mean, how can a person have read Brave New World and 1984 and still believe the rhetoric that W regurgitates about Iraq? I really and truly don't get it. I read this for example

The only thing that the enemy has got going for them is the capacity to take innocent life and to get on our TV screens with this devastation that they cause. These people cannot stand free societies. They have no regard for the human condition. They'll kill women and children at the drop of a hat, all aimed at frightening the American people and trying to get us to withdraw.

And to me it reads like a parody of jingoistic proto-fascistic nationalism. They hate freedom. Victory is inevitable. Go team. Why is this not obvious to everyone? It's like those bad horror movies where only a few people in the know understand that everyone is gradually being turned into pod people/ zombies/ aliens. What was that one where putting on the special pair of sunglasses revealed who was an alien? It's like that. Brave New World and books like that are like the sunglasses. As much as I was an unenthusiastic student in my adolescence, I'm glad I always liked to read.

The whole thing, brief though it is, just pissed me off so much. This was the worst passage:

I -- our troops need to know that the American people stand with them, and we have a strategy for victory. And of course there will be debate, and of course there will be some pessimists and some people playing politics with the issue. But by far, the vast majority of people in this country stand squarely with the men and women who wear the nation's uniform.

Of course there will be people who disagree with me, but they will be wrong. At best they're just haters and sad asses; at worst they are putting their own political ambitions in front of what's best for this nation and, driven by spurious motives, are willing to spit in the eye of private Ryan.

The whole thing ends with the bald-faced lie, "We do not render to countries that torture. That has been our policy, and that policy will remain the same." Yeah, and you did not have sex with that woman, and you are not a crook.

Huh?

So W lit the Hannukah menorah tonight. Of course, the holiday isn't actually taking place, but whatever, right? Maybe today was the only time they could get the West Point Jewish Cadet Choir to play (really). I'm just wondering when someone's going to cover National Brotherhood Week but with the crucial "everyone hates the Muslims" revision.

LA weekend pick

Bazaar Bizarre, d.i.y. crafter delight, is this Sunday--details to be found here. I went last year and loved it. I'm not a d.i.y. crafter (by any means) and despite having lived in LA for four years, I'm still pretty impervious to trends, so the preponderance of, for example, those weird misshapen stuffed animals eludes me and starts to be a bit cloying.


Nonetheless, really this is the one Christmas shopping event not to be missed. Pick up prints from Red Ink Like Blood


Earrings from Chewy Crafts


Rosary belts


And where else in the world can you get poontang stained glass I ask you?

Kill your television

In the category of ideas that should never leave the drawing board falls Al in the Family, Al Sharpton's proposed sit-com. Says Al:

I am the center of a family with different social and political views and we crack jokes and confront each other but are a family.

And people wonder why I don't watch much TV.

Bhopal

Today is the 21st anniversary of the Bhopal disaster. In commemoration I note the EPA's proposed weakening of emissions reporting requirements. Don't worry though:

Kim Nelson, an assistant administrator at the EPA, said the companies that would benefit from the proposal are "tiny, tiny businesses, mom-and-pop shops operating on Main Street, that, in an aggregate, amount to less than 1% of the emissions in this country."

Those wee little mom-and-pop businesses that dump two tons of toxic chemicals into the environment. It's only them. If you're such a hater that that bothers you, the link above explains how to submit a comment (public commenting is permitted until Jan 13).

Why I would hate being a journalist

Because they don't like it when you use the word "fuck-knob." And they want you to use phrases like "credibility questions" instead of "lying sack of shit."

Once upon a time...

...a thousand years ago, when I was in college, I had a friend, Maugorn, who was one of those chainmail-sporting medieval militia guys (really). [Let me digress for a moment and say I was never well adjusted, but by the time I got to the university, I had learned that the best defense is a good offense. Thus the firecone orange hair and the collection of allies that were like "What if Cronenberg wrote Friends."] So Maugie had a collection of one-liners that all sounded like (but weren't) the end of a long story. If you were, say, riding an elevator with him and someone got on at the fourth floor, Maugorn might come out with a line like "Well, the priest was okay, but they had to saw the legs off the goat...."

Good fun.

Anyway, I thought of him today when someone sent me this.

To hell with war, let's shop

Once again, the season of excessive spending is upon us. I do consider it part of my public blogging service to provide the occasional gift idea (remember last year's stuffed microbes--like that cute little flesh eating bacteria doll--and the crazy cat lady action figure?). So here is the first of our seasonal gift suggestions.

The Monty Python Black Knight plush doll with removable velcro limbs.



Who wouldn't love one of these? Such a potent metaphor for oh-so-many things.

The return of the repressed

Okay, I think I'm back. I know I've been a pretty half hearted blogger lately. The double whammy of quitting smoking and trying to survive the holiday season have hit me hard this year. It's been taking all of my energy not to drive into oncoming traffic and whatnot. Frankly I don't know how I lived through all of those Novembers in Wisconsin without defenestrating. But yesterday I bought plane tickets to go to Florida and Albuquerque, and that has me a bit cheered. So I guess I'm digging myself out of the depression hole.

Blogging started to seem to me to be like those pieces of classical music where they take one simple refrain and reformulate it in all sorts of different ways. Or really the news itself started to seem that way to me. 1.We're in an unwinnable war that people keep lying about. 2.The administration is trying to take away the few rights we have left. 3.Human rights are, like, so last year. 4.Global warming has taken on scary proportions, but our national strategy continues to be denial. 5.Everyone hates us--with good justification--and we increasingly dislike our own leaders.

And so on. It just gets tiresome. It feels like you could blog this administration with some sort of automated program that read key words (torture, Roe, WMD, etc.) and responded accordingly or at the very least, I could type up some amount of numbered posts and just refer people to them as they apply. But hey, be that as it may, I'm back to fight another round.

Unbelievable

That's the subject line Annette used when she forwarded today's NYT op-ed piece "A Man's Right to Choose," and I can't think of a better one. Really you should just go read it. It flabbergasted me enough to rouse me from my recent blog-abstinence. This was about the spot where my head actually exploded:

Pro-choice advocates argue that the debate is really about a woman's control over her body. Hence my lack of rights to have any say in whether my seed comes to fruition.

WTF is up at the Times that they are publishing pieces that speak of seed coming to fruition? How very Old Testament of them.

And then there's this paragraph (which is pretty much the gist of the piece as a whole):

NOBODY is arguing that we should let my friend who impregnated his girlfriend off the hook. If you play, you must pay. But if you pay, you should get some say. If a father is willing to legally commit to supporting and raising the child himself, why should a woman be able to end a pregnancy that she knew was a possibility of consensual sex? Why couldn't I make the same claim--that I am going to keep the baby regardless of whether she wants it or not?

Why couldn't you make the same claim? Um, because the fetus is lodged in the woman's body and to file an injunction to prohibit an abortion is, essentially, turning her into a big incubator. Jesus. Really. Everyone has to go read Margaret Atwood for homework.