They'll Lower A Fish To Celebrate New YearI can't think what to say that could improve upon the greatness of the story as it stands, so I'll just leave it at that. And once again I marvel at the fact that I lived in Wisconsin for 11 years.
Some state residents will be celebrating the New Year in a unique way -- by watching a 20-pound female carp lowered by a 110-foot crane. The annual Droppin' of the Carp was begun by Tom Nelson and his wife, Cathie, who got the idea from a New Year's celebration in Savannah, Ga., where they lowered a giant Styrofoam peach.
"We decided we could have some sort of New Year's celebration here in the Midwest," Nelson said. "Being on the river, it had to be a fish."
The couple organizes the event each year on St. Feriole Island. They expect to draw as many people as last year -- about 1,500.
The first year the Nelsons used a 3-foot carp and named it Lucky after they learned the Chinese believe eating carp on New Year's brings good luck. Each subsequent fish has had the same name. This year, Lucky is a nearly 20-pound female carp caught in the Mississippi River in late November by Mike Valley, who has the fish in a freezer at his store, Valley Fish and Cheese.
Valley plans to shellac Lucky and give her a few touchups, including a crown.
It takes about 2 1/2minutes to lower the carp, Nelson said. Those gathered will then sing "Auld Lang Syne," recite the Pledge of Allegiance and sing "God Bless America." Lucky will then return to the freezer until May, when she will be buried and a maple tree planted over her.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Droppin' of the Carp
One of my coworkers here also lived in Wisconsin for many years. She just visited there over the holidays and brought back this clipping from the Wisconsin State Journal:
Unbelievable
This is kind of interesting. Slate paired up with a market research group to graphically display the believability of Bush's Wednesday night "damn the torpedos" speech. Vidlit produced a video of clips from the speech and a focus group, broken down by political affiliation (Dem, Rep, and Ind) was asked to rate the video as it was ongoing using a mouse and a sliding scale. I mean, personally I don't really care about market research personal opinion stuff since 1.I think most people kind of stupid, and 2.I think most market research is poorly designed, but it's sort of interesting in a meaningless way.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Timeless
Today marks the 230th anniversary of the publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense, Wonkette reminds us. Of course, we love Tom Paine. And while we favor The Crisis, Common Sense does have its particularly salient passages:
Indeed.
In other news, Bush wants to add 21,500 more soldiers in Iraq. AP reports on the announcement which will be made later tonight: "In a now-familiar refrain, Bush was to portray the war in Iraq as "the decisive ideological struggle of our time."Men of passive tempers look somewhat lightly over the offences of Britain, and, still hoping for the best, are apt to call out, "Come, come, we shall be friends again, for all this." But examine the passions and feelings of mankind, Bring the doctrine of reconciliation to the touchstone of nature, and then tell me, whether you can hereafter love, honour, and faithfully serve the power that hath carried fire and sword into your land? If you cannot do all these, then are you only deceiving yourselves, and by your delay bringing ruin upon posterity. Your future connection with Britain, whom you can neither love nor honour, will be forced and unnatural, and being formed only on the plan of present convenience, will in a little time fall into a relapse more wretched than the first. But if you say, you can still pass the violations over, then I ask, Hath your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then are you not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and still can shake hands with the murderers, then you are unworthy of the name of husband, father, friend, or lover, and whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward, and the spirit of a sycophant.
Indeed.
Even my cat is cutting edge
Those who know me, know that my cat is a cat only a mother can love, really. He's obese, asthmatic, and suffers from clinical depression. When we moved to LA he responded to the stress of a nine day road trip and a radical relocation by determining that he was a cat who thinks outside the box, as it were. So he's been on meds for years now. Yes, I am clean and my cat is drugged. So today I see this article in the LA Times, complete with this photo of the day:
As I have often said, it's a good thing I didn't have children.
As I have often said, it's a good thing I didn't have children.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Yahrzeit
Today is my dad's yarzheit. He's been gone twenty years--rather incredible. I was missing him tonight. I lit my memorial candle and said Kaddish, and I thought maybe I would blog something of his to close out the night. So here are some long excerpts from an even longer letter he wrote my sister when she was in college. It's dated November 1967 and is responding in large part to her increasing political activism.
He writes:
Some people feel one is not worth his salt unless he is a radical at 20 and a conservative at 40. This is a vile canard propagated by the pusillanimous. One need not become a fat cat at forty. See, e.g., Norman Thomas whose big many voice, turning again to childish treble, pipes and whistles in his sounds, to quote the Bard, but who preaches the same revolt against oppression that he sounded with stentorian speeches at the turn of the century. See also Bertrand Russell, William Douglas, and Jake Podofsky. (Jake runs the delicatessen at 14th and Irving Sts.)
I do not hold with those who attack all our institutions. I am not blind to the virtues of other ways of life but I personally feel that what we have in this country is the best way of life thus far evolved by man as a functioning society. I am 100% American. But I am not like those Southerners who loved the Confederacy so much they would not even wear a Union suit. I want my country to present a favorable image, to maintain a posture that I find admirable, and will not yield my right to criticize it when I think it is wrong. I want America always to be the land of the three "P's" -- Peace, Prosperity, and Pfreedom, for myself and my pfosterity. I want America to stay healthy because I know that when the United States sneezes much of the rest of the world catches pneumonia.
Finally, let me only remind you that you ought not get yourself so involved that you jeopardize yourself in your studies. It is essential that you get decent grades, continue your education, and work assiduously toward your career. Sorenson in the Saturday Review last week did not say anything much different from what many other pacifists have said in the past few weeks bu this article was read by millions because he achieved such eminence in his field that his voice was effective. At the big peace march we listened intently to what Dr. Spock said largely because more than half the people there had taken castor oil when Spock told their mothers to administer it. On the other hand, I'll bet you didn't hear one word Tillie Gockenheimer said, did you? And Tillie has been marching in protest demonstrations since Kemal Pasha besieged the poor Armenians in 1916 or whenever the hell it was. But that is because Tillie Gockenheimer dropped out of high school in Pottstown, Pa. when she was 16 and has been working in a brassiere factory in High Point, N. Car. ever since.
There's more, but those are the best parts. Except there is one place where there's a line something like this "7 883347xc (Travis' interjections)" because I must have been sitting in his lap while he was typing the letter. I was two at the time.
That my dad, who was blacklisted during the McCarthy era, could write such a letter, is real patriotism. I'm not much of a nationalist really, but I was, once upon a time a Constitutional scholar and I too love America from Ben Franklin to X. And at the same time, I'm proud as hell to have a dad who was a blacklisted labor lawyer.
It's all so complicated isn't it--our feelings for family and country.
Anyway, it's past my bedtime, maybe I will try to resurrect my blogging spirit for the new year. I can't promise anything though. I've made enough of those that didn't come to fruition in terms of my poor neglected blog.
He writes:
Some people feel one is not worth his salt unless he is a radical at 20 and a conservative at 40. This is a vile canard propagated by the pusillanimous. One need not become a fat cat at forty. See, e.g., Norman Thomas whose big many voice, turning again to childish treble, pipes and whistles in his sounds, to quote the Bard, but who preaches the same revolt against oppression that he sounded with stentorian speeches at the turn of the century. See also Bertrand Russell, William Douglas, and Jake Podofsky. (Jake runs the delicatessen at 14th and Irving Sts.)
I do not hold with those who attack all our institutions. I am not blind to the virtues of other ways of life but I personally feel that what we have in this country is the best way of life thus far evolved by man as a functioning society. I am 100% American. But I am not like those Southerners who loved the Confederacy so much they would not even wear a Union suit. I want my country to present a favorable image, to maintain a posture that I find admirable, and will not yield my right to criticize it when I think it is wrong. I want America always to be the land of the three "P's" -- Peace, Prosperity, and Pfreedom, for myself and my pfosterity. I want America to stay healthy because I know that when the United States sneezes much of the rest of the world catches pneumonia.
Finally, let me only remind you that you ought not get yourself so involved that you jeopardize yourself in your studies. It is essential that you get decent grades, continue your education, and work assiduously toward your career. Sorenson in the Saturday Review last week did not say anything much different from what many other pacifists have said in the past few weeks bu this article was read by millions because he achieved such eminence in his field that his voice was effective. At the big peace march we listened intently to what Dr. Spock said largely because more than half the people there had taken castor oil when Spock told their mothers to administer it. On the other hand, I'll bet you didn't hear one word Tillie Gockenheimer said, did you? And Tillie has been marching in protest demonstrations since Kemal Pasha besieged the poor Armenians in 1916 or whenever the hell it was. But that is because Tillie Gockenheimer dropped out of high school in Pottstown, Pa. when she was 16 and has been working in a brassiere factory in High Point, N. Car. ever since.
There's more, but those are the best parts. Except there is one place where there's a line something like this "7 883347xc (Travis' interjections)" because I must have been sitting in his lap while he was typing the letter. I was two at the time.
That my dad, who was blacklisted during the McCarthy era, could write such a letter, is real patriotism. I'm not much of a nationalist really, but I was, once upon a time a Constitutional scholar and I too love America from Ben Franklin to X. And at the same time, I'm proud as hell to have a dad who was a blacklisted labor lawyer.
It's all so complicated isn't it--our feelings for family and country.
Anyway, it's past my bedtime, maybe I will try to resurrect my blogging spirit for the new year. I can't promise anything though. I've made enough of those that didn't come to fruition in terms of my poor neglected blog.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Labor begets labor
I just got back yesterday from a trip to upstate New York where I was connection-less. So now I'm catching up.
I was staying at my sister's cabin in the woods, a place so remote that when you search for the nearest Starbuck's, you find there isn't one within a fifty mile radius. (By contrast, there are twenty-four within five miles of my zipcode.) It is, in fact, so remote that when we left (at 4am) to drive to the airport, we didn't pass another car for forty-five minutes.
So I'm glad to be back to the traffic, the smog, and the fake boobs. Gosh I love LA.
But I didn't post just to talk about my trip. Really I just wanted to let out a superior chuckle about this, the report produced by Missouri's Special Committee on Immigration Reform that argues abortion is one of the root causes of illegal immigration. It seems we are aborting our labor force and so we must look south for more workers:
I was staying at my sister's cabin in the woods, a place so remote that when you search for the nearest Starbuck's, you find there isn't one within a fifty mile radius. (By contrast, there are twenty-four within five miles of my zipcode.) It is, in fact, so remote that when we left (at 4am) to drive to the airport, we didn't pass another car for forty-five minutes. So I'm glad to be back to the traffic, the smog, and the fake boobs. Gosh I love LA.
But I didn't post just to talk about my trip. Really I just wanted to let out a superior chuckle about this, the report produced by Missouri's Special Committee on Immigration Reform that argues abortion is one of the root causes of illegal immigration. It seems we are aborting our labor force and so we must look south for more workers:
There's a lot of editorial comment there that I couldn't really stomach," Rep. Trent Skaggs said Monday. "To be honest, I think it's a little delusional."These anti-choice folks really do have an "if the only tool you have is a hammer" way of thinking about anything that's going on in the country. It's pretty astounding.
All 10 Republican committee members signed the report, though one of them, Rep. Billy Pat Wright, said Monday he didn't recall it connecting abortion and illegal immigration.
Emery, who equates abortion to murder, defended the assertions.
"We hear a lot of arguments today that the reason that we can't get serious about our borders is that we are desperate for all these workers," Emery said. "You don't have to think too long. If you kill 44 million of your potential workers, it's not too surprising we would be desperate for workers."
Monday, November 13, 2006
Some things should be regarded as "givens"
Shakespeare's Sister calls our attention to this gem from shrub's Saturday radio address: "[A]ll Americans can take pride in the example our democracy sets for the world by holding elections even in a time of war."
Just how low can we set the national pride bar, do you think? Gee, I'm so proud that we don't suspend Constitutional democracy and institute martial law. And you know what else? I'm really proud we let women vote here (and drive cars!). We rock!
Just how low can we set the national pride bar, do you think? Gee, I'm so proud that we don't suspend Constitutional democracy and institute martial law. And you know what else? I'm really proud we let women vote here (and drive cars!). We rock!
Friday, November 10, 2006
Everything old is new again
In yet another demonstration of the US's astounding ability to back the wrong horse, Daniel Ortega was elected president of Nicaragua this week. The Independent's coverage of the campaign reads like a near-parody:
And if the Independent's coverage reads like a postmodern novel, the BBC's is like the political equivalent of the musical reunion tour:
His campaign flag and theme tune, he insists, said it all. The old red-and-black flag and silk scarves of the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN) were still on show, but alongside them were flags and banners in Ortega's new favoured colour--shocking pink--chosen by his wife and meant to symbolise the new Ortega's softer, gentler side.Something about fuschia-clad Sandanistas singing Lennon songs really seems like a moment right out of Delillo to me.
The old FSLN anthem, which included the words "let us fight the yanqui, enemy of humanity", could still be heard during his campaign, but it played second fiddle to Ortega's latest theme tune--a Spanish version of John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance", which calls for reconciliation and whose refrain is "We all want to live in peace". It also gave a Washington Post headline writer the chance to come up with "Daniel Ortega, from Lenin to Lennon".
And if the Independent's coverage reads like a postmodern novel, the BBC's is like the political equivalent of the musical reunion tour:
So who has become the principle agitator-in-chief for those opposed to Mr Ortega?Wow. The eighties revival is clearly far, far more pervasive than I had imagined.
None other than Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North, the public face of the Iran-Contra scandal in the days of Ronald Reagan's presidency.
"If Ortega wins," he said on a two-day visit here. "He will have key regional allies... who together could create problems aplenty for the US and its democratic Latin American allies."
"Today, Nicaragua looks like a case of back to the future," Mr North added.
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Read of the day
Garrison Keillor's piece for the Chicago Tribune yesterday.
This paragraph almost made me cry:
This paragraph almost made me cry:
People still care deeply about our government, despite every invitation to disillusionment. This is the astonishment. For my generation, the first big blow was the failure of Washington to get to the truth about the assassination of John F. Kennedy and then its inability to change a disastrous course in Vietnam. You stand at the majestic polished wall with the 57,000 names on it, and you look across the river to Arlington, and here, within one mile, are two enormous aching sorrows, and a mile behind you is the U.S. Supreme Court, which threw the election of 2000. Some people killed our president and got away with it; men were shipped off to die in a lousy war promulgated by Democrats afraid to be called weak on communism; and an election was stolen, no protest. And yet we still stroll down to the church and cast our ballots. We live on hope.
Schadenfreude
The Dems have the Senate. It's official. Allen conceded.
My favorite part of the article is this bit:
My favorite part of the article is this bit:
Allen was comfortably ahead in polls until August, when he mockingly referred to a Webb campaign volunteer of Indian descent as "Macaca," regarded by some as a racial slur. The incident, caught on videotape, became international news. Some former football teammates from the University of Virginia also charged that Allen had commonly used a slur for blacks--something he denied.I guess we're talking about the word "nigger" here, a term that is apparently so sensitive the paper cannot print it even when printing it to make reference to its use as a word (what the Chicago Manual refers to as "words and phrases used as words" (7.62). What I wonder about is how exactly he was accused or able to deny the accusation when the word itself can't actually be used. "No, I never used that word, which I cannot use here to deny that I used it."
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out
From SL comes this collection of Rummy classics. Ah the passing of an era:
"As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns - that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.”
"I'm not into this detail stuff. I'm more concepty." In an interview with the Washington Post
"It is unknowable how long [the war in Iraq] will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months." To U.S. troops in Aviano, Italy
"Needless to say, the President is correct. Whatever it was he said."
"We do know of certain knowledge that [Osama bin Laden] is either in Afghanistan, or in some other country, or dead. And we know of certain knowledge that we don't know which of those happens to be the case."
"Well, you know, something's neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so, I suppose, as Shakespeare said."
"That's all you guys do is read these books. You ought to get a life." To reporters during a press briefing
"I have never painted a rosy picture. I have been very measured in my words, and you'll have a dickens of a time trying to find instances where I have been excessively optimistic. I understand this is tough stuff." At Senate hearings, in an exchange with Sen. Hillary Clinton
"I don't do quagmires."
"I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started."
"As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns - that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.”
"I'm not into this detail stuff. I'm more concepty." In an interview with the Washington Post
"It is unknowable how long [the war in Iraq] will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months." To U.S. troops in Aviano, Italy
"Needless to say, the President is correct. Whatever it was he said."
"We do know of certain knowledge that [Osama bin Laden] is either in Afghanistan, or in some other country, or dead. And we know of certain knowledge that we don't know which of those happens to be the case."
"Well, you know, something's neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so, I suppose, as Shakespeare said."
"That's all you guys do is read these books. You ought to get a life." To reporters during a press briefing
"I have never painted a rosy picture. I have been very measured in my words, and you'll have a dickens of a time trying to find instances where I have been excessively optimistic. I understand this is tough stuff." At Senate hearings, in an exchange with Sen. Hillary Clinton
"I don't do quagmires."
"I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started."
And while we're on the subject of gays
I'm really thinking someone needs to rerecord National Brotherhood Week with an "everyone hates the queers" slant. The dems won the House. It looks like they may win the Senate. The anti-choice people lost their battle in South Dakota. We won minimum wage battles in six states. But we'll be damned if we let them homos get married. This much we can at least agree on. (To my Arizonan friends, congratulations on somehow avoiding this stripe of insanity.)
For god's sake, people.
For god's sake, people.
Why my optimism is tempered
The Onion put it best back in February:
"We are entirely capable of bungling this opportunity to regain control of the House and Senate and the trust of the American people," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said to scattered applause. "It will take some doing, but we're in this for the long and pointless haul."I know I blogged the story before but I was reminded of it again today. If the dems win the executive in two years, they just better fucking do something with it. I mean, let's not start out with guns blazing about gays in the military, for example. Could we agree to that?
"We can lose this," Reid added. "All it takes is a little lack of backbone."
Observations upon listening to the preznit's press conference
Has anyone else noticed that Bush pronounces "I-DE-Ology" the same way some people pronounce "eye-talian"?
And let me say another thing: If we never have another president again ever that is capable of uttering the sentence "This isn't my first rodeo," that will really, really be okay with me.
And let me say another thing: If we never have another president again ever that is capable of uttering the sentence "This isn't my first rodeo," that will really, really be okay with me.
It couldn't happen to a nicer guy
Rumsfeld is resigning. If I still drank you better believe I'd be pouring out a glass of champagne right about now. The only better news would be if he got hit by a bus.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Voting
Okay, I'm back. I thought for a while there about posting a "Blog Dark" notice like they do in theaters when there's nothing playing. I don't know why the cat had my tongue for so long except for a couple of obvious factors:
1. I got to the point where the news became so depressing that I just took an ostrich approach for a while.
And
2. There was that series of catastrophes--K's accident and hospitalization(s), my accident and hospitalization, his bone graft, my crushing work deadline...and so on. Since I last blogged, he ended up in the hospital one more time for an infection in his arm. He got sent home with a picc line and at-home antibiotics. That's all cleared up now. I made my huge work deadline (without wanting to talk about my work in detail, I'll say that September marked one of the most significant professional accomplishments in my life). It has now been more than six weeks since anyone has been hospitalized, had a surgery, had a biopsy, or any other similar calamity. Work is also settling down to its usual level of stress.
And then there's the whole "balancing work, romance, and writing" equation that is just ridiculous and will not be elaborated on at present.
But here it is, Election Day, and what better time to re-enter the blog-o-sphere? I had to re-acquaint myself with the political public sphere for at least one day so maybe if I weigh in quickly while I'm above-sand it will stick.
Though here's the truth, as I said, I've been assiduously avoiding anything that smacks of the news or current events, and given the mammoth size of the ballot here in LA, I've had to do a lot of homework. Just trying to figure out how to vote on the judges alone is quite an endeavor. And what I've realized is I really am a knee-jerk leftist. If, for instance, a ballot measure is supported by any organization that has "taxpayers" in its name, I'm against it. I don't need to read further.
And here, let me digress and say I am pro-taxes. In fact, I am pro-taxes and pro-big government. I'm a fan of good roads, clean water, public education, health care on demand, care for the elderly, and even public art. I'm all for paying for such things publicly and hiring lots of people and structuring offices to execute those services. Let's hear it for taxes and government.
Which brings me to the issue of voting itself. I used to really like voting. True enough, my first election was Reagan's second term, which was a really, really depressing election for any left-leaning first-time voter. So yes, that one was pretty depressing. But in general, voting itself has always felt really good to me. I'm a sucker for all of that ritualistic citizen stuff anyway (pretty funny for someone with such an allergy to patriotism). Shit, I wrote a whole dissertation on nation-making and representation.
This year though, it just feels pretty depressing to me. It feels like going to a viewing. "Doesn't he look so lifelike?" Or as Andrea said, a birthday party disguised as a viewing [I stand corrected, Andrea actually said a viewing disguised as a birthday party, which makes much more sense. See comment below.] I just can't shake the feeling that our great social experiment is dead and we're just making funeral arrangements at this point. Maybe I'll feel less that way as I re-enter the polis and leave my ostrich ways behind.
1. I got to the point where the news became so depressing that I just took an ostrich approach for a while.
And
2. There was that series of catastrophes--K's accident and hospitalization(s), my accident and hospitalization, his bone graft, my crushing work deadline...and so on. Since I last blogged, he ended up in the hospital one more time for an infection in his arm. He got sent home with a picc line and at-home antibiotics. That's all cleared up now. I made my huge work deadline (without wanting to talk about my work in detail, I'll say that September marked one of the most significant professional accomplishments in my life). It has now been more than six weeks since anyone has been hospitalized, had a surgery, had a biopsy, or any other similar calamity. Work is also settling down to its usual level of stress.
And then there's the whole "balancing work, romance, and writing" equation that is just ridiculous and will not be elaborated on at present.
But here it is, Election Day, and what better time to re-enter the blog-o-sphere? I had to re-acquaint myself with the political public sphere for at least one day so maybe if I weigh in quickly while I'm above-sand it will stick.
Though here's the truth, as I said, I've been assiduously avoiding anything that smacks of the news or current events, and given the mammoth size of the ballot here in LA, I've had to do a lot of homework. Just trying to figure out how to vote on the judges alone is quite an endeavor. And what I've realized is I really am a knee-jerk leftist. If, for instance, a ballot measure is supported by any organization that has "taxpayers" in its name, I'm against it. I don't need to read further.
And here, let me digress and say I am pro-taxes. In fact, I am pro-taxes and pro-big government. I'm a fan of good roads, clean water, public education, health care on demand, care for the elderly, and even public art. I'm all for paying for such things publicly and hiring lots of people and structuring offices to execute those services. Let's hear it for taxes and government.
Which brings me to the issue of voting itself. I used to really like voting. True enough, my first election was Reagan's second term, which was a really, really depressing election for any left-leaning first-time voter. So yes, that one was pretty depressing. But in general, voting itself has always felt really good to me. I'm a sucker for all of that ritualistic citizen stuff anyway (pretty funny for someone with such an allergy to patriotism). Shit, I wrote a whole dissertation on nation-making and representation.
This year though, it just feels pretty depressing to me. It feels like going to a viewing. "Doesn't he look so lifelike?" Or as Andrea said, a birthday party disguised as a viewing [I stand corrected, Andrea actually said a viewing disguised as a birthday party, which makes much more sense. See comment below.] I just can't shake the feeling that our great social experiment is dead and we're just making funeral arrangements at this point. Maybe I'll feel less that way as I re-enter the polis and leave my ostrich ways behind.
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