Gentle Reader -- You are welcome to peruse my web-based journal. I assure you that my contributions to this medium will be both infrequent and inconsequential. Read on!

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"I think it's great that people have soap," Pepper said in a telephone interview this week. "I'm a big supporter of soap."

Surprising words, from a soap company execuitive.

Other soap-related idiocy (soapistry?) to be found here. posted by Carlton at 9:58 AM

ANOTHER MILLION LITTLE PIECES

Here:

CAMBRIDGE, England (AP) -- A museum visitor shattered three Qing dynasty Chinese vases when he tripped on his shoelace, stumbled down a stairway and brought the vases crashing to the floor, officials said Monday.

So what do you do with shattered Qing vases?

Asked about the porcelain vases, Margaret Greeves, the museum's assistant director, said: "They are in very, very small pieces, but we are determined to put them back together."
The museum declined to say what the vases were worth.

It's hard to talk while you are crying your eyes out. posted by Carlton at 9:51 AM

WHAT'RE WE ROOTIN' FOR?

Endless war! Bottomless debt!
We'll drown it in the bathtub yet!

I do not understand these people at all. posted by Carlton at 9:49 AM

DAMAGE

So we drove down to the Gulf Coast while we were in Mississippi (with parents and brother, naturally), and I took some pictures. They aren't very good, mostly because 1) I took most of them from the car, 2) The devastation is pretty touh to take pictures of, because there's just miles and miles of nothing, and 3) I'm not a particularly good photographer. But here's a couple:

waffles, anyone?

used cars cheap


blow out sale


One bright spot. posted by Carlton at 11:31 AM

WOLF! WOLF!

Just an idle thought, but I have to believe that launching a nasty, personal, balls-out, character-based smear campaign against every single person who criticizes the Bush administration (he's a liar! he didn't deserve those medals! he's having an affair! he's a child molestor! he's a cocaine dealer! he's a serial killer!) serves two distinct purposes: 1) to smear the critic in question, naturally, and 2) to get us all jaded and numb to accusations of real malfeasance on your own side. What's so bad about taking money from Abramoff? You should hear what they were saying about Kerry!

Another idle thought: when is it finally going to stop working? (Maybe when Chris Matthews stops repeating everything he gets by blast-fax?) posted by Carlton at 1:25 PM

NEW LINK

I have just created a new permalink to University Diaries, a blog that I found via Scott's blog. I read it nearly every day, and you should too. posted by Carlton at 1:23 PM

OH JUST GO READ IT

Here:

Q. Can the president eat a baby?
A. If that baby has suspected ties to al Qaeda, then it's the president's duty to eat it - for the sake of national security.
Q. The president doesn't want to eat sweet, delicious babies. He just wants to protect America from the growing threat of a rogue baby insurgency.
A. Exactly. And nobody will have more compassion for that succulent baby barbecue than him.
Q. How many non-terrorist babies would it be acceptible for the president to accidentally eat in the course of enforcing a rigorous terrorist baby-eating program?
A. First of all, the president would never ever eat a baby unless it was reasonably suspected to be affiliated with possible terroresque program activities. Second of all, do we really wanna start tyin the president's hands when he's tryin to protect everybody from jihadist babies? They could be Islamifying our country's drool supply as we speak!
Q. Sir, I demand the immediate establishment of a cabinet-level Department of Baby-Eating!
A. Just til we win the War on Terror, of course!

posted by Carlton at 1:54 PM

I WANT A NEW (OLD) DRUG


If you just can't believe that Fox would cancel a really great show like Arrested Development just because no one but you and your pet frog and all your stuffed animals (and me, I'll admit) watch it, if you just can't come to terms, if AD is your heroin and you need some methadone to let you get on with life . . .

I give you Soap.

Not the same, certainly -- Soap has that late 70's early 80's soundtstage quality that you may know and (may not) love from Barney Miller, WKRP, et al. -- but you may find that the two shows are remarkably similar. Same sense of the ridiculous. Similar family melodrama. Just try it. See if it helps you get by. Flix has it.

That is all. posted by Carlton at 10:03 PM

SOME KIND OF TRIPLE-TWIST JU-JUTSU MUMBO JUMBO ACTION

For this one, I'm just going to link to a DailyKos diary, which contains the text of a Washington Times weekend magazine article entitled Impeachment hearings: The White House prepares for the worst . According to that piece, the White House fully expects impeachment to happen, and soon, and they have some plans to stop it, but don't expect them to work.

Huh.

Bear in mind that the Times is a Republican rag, which means that 1) they print what they are told, but also 2) they have a great deal of access inside the administration.

Assuming this is true, and not some kind of rug-pulling exercise, I'm left scratching my head. I mean, they seem pretty blase about the whole thing, which you wouldn't think. To me, that means one of a couple of things:

1) They have a very short-term view regarding holding the White House, and are satisfied with the incredible breaks they have managed to cut for their cronies up and down the line at every turn. In fact, this was the whole point of a Bush Presidency -- not ideology or permanent dominance, just cracking open the Treasury and passing out handfulls of money to your friends.. This fits exactly with GWB's pattern as a CEO and investor, which has been to take control, loot, get out and leave empty husk behind to slowly collapse and ruin shareholders.

It could also mean . . .

2) That they feel like any impeachement proceeding with eventually come up before the Supreme Court -- although it isn't really supposed to under the, you know, Constitution. The SCOTUS will (co-incidentally) be packed with two new pro-Bush "unitary executive" nutjobs at that time. The administration might feel pretty good about their chances with the Court on their side.

OR

3) "Impeach away! we'll just shut down the Congress and declare martial law. Viva la revolucion! Viva el Maximum Presidente Bush!" posted by Carlton at 11:44 AM

OSAMA'S BOOK CLUB

I guess I missed this the first time around, but, in his latest tape, Osama bin Laden throws off a suggestion for some light reading.

What bin Laden said was this, as translated from Arabic by the Associated Press:

"And if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book 'Rogue State,' which states in its introduction: 'If I were president, I would stop the attacks on the United States: First, I would give an apology to all the widows and orphans and those who were tortured. Then I would announce that American interference in the nations of the world has ended once and for all.' "

By last night, "Rogue State" shot up from 205,763 to 26 on Amazon.com's index of the most-ordered books.

The reaction of the author, William Blum?

"I was not turned off by such an endorsement," he informed a New York radio station. "I'm not repulsed, and I'm not going to pretend I am." He patiently reiterated the thesis of his foreign-policy critique -- that American interventions abroad create enemies.

Will they put a blurb on the back of the book? You bet they will. posted by Carlton at 9:29 AM

CARLTON: PROPELLER-HEADED GEEK?

So, I solved a computer problem all by myself! I had downloaded the new iTunes. which I'm usuing for my music even though I do not have an iPod or MP3 player of any type, and it didn't work. I don't use it for anything except the basic functions, so I don't really understand why they keep pumping out new versions, but when I got the message saying download the new I did so, like a mindless zombie slave. And it immediately stopped working. Dead. I clicked the shortcut and nothing happened. Nothing. No error message. Nothing.

I'm sure most of you understand the possible ramifications of this, that all my music could be gone forever (well, the discs are still in the basement, but that would be, like, work). I uninstalled and re-installed, called the help line and hung up after being on hold for many, many minutes.

And then there was Google. I searched for "iTunes won't work" and found somebody else posting somewhere about how he had the same problem and fixed it thusly. Turns out that my antivirus software was blocking the download of certain relevant files (which is really bullshit, when you think about it). Twenty minutes later, ta-daa! I was downloading the episode of Battlestar Galactica that I had missed taping while I was in Mississippi.

So how proud am I of myself? Very proud. How much do I hate computers, and how complicated they make my life? Very much. posted by Carlton at 11:39 AM

DEEP THOUGHTS

Regarding this war with Iran that certain members of the administration seem intent on starting, I am reminded of something that occurred to me when thinking about the then-impending war with Iraq: If they had the nuclear weapons that we accuse them of trying to get, then we wouldn’t attack them. So we tell them to stop trying to get nuclear weapons. If they don’t stop, we’ll attack them, unless of course they’ve already got them, in which case we won’t. Why won’t we? Well, nobody attacks a country that has nuclear weapons. That’s why we have to stop them from getting them, because then we can’t attack them.

With that principle in mind, of course, we attacked Iraq, the “Axis of Evil” member that had the least chance of having nukes and which was causing the least trouble to its neighbors – as it turned out, they didn’t even have a program. We then shook our fist at Iran, which was further along the nuclear road and which has advanced further still while we’ve been busy getting our asses handed to us. We won’t say boo to North Korea, being a country that actually has nuclear weapons and ruled by a complete maniac and destabilizing its entire region.

So I just don’t understand why these crazy people want nuclear weapons! posted by Carlton at 4:33 PM

OH YES

Though my fond favorite Czech liquor, known informally as Ol' Grampa's Piss (because I don't know the real name -- and not Becherovka), is not on this list, these do sound quite tasty. I'm going back to Hungary in March, and I look forward to drinking some Unicum:

By far Hungary’s most distinctive tipple is Unicum, a love-it-or-hate-it dark, treacly potion, which Hungarians claim is the reason the Austro-Hungarian empire lasted as long as it did (Austrians say that it was a cause of its downfall). Unicum comes in a spherical bottle with a long neck—the sort of thing that a patriotic Hungarian might have filled with petrol and thrown at a Soviet tank during the 1956 uprising.

Mmmm, Unicum. posted by Carlton at 11:12 AM

THE GOLDEN GLOBES, AND WE DON'T MEAN MARIAH CAREY



All right, so I watched a bit of the awards show with the wife last night. I'll go ahead and lay the two highlights out for you, to make your obsessive Tivo re-watching of the ceremony more efficient -- and you know you are going to, don't even try to lie to me.

1. Hugh Laurie's win:

I admire this man for a lot of reasons, the primary one being that hes doing a bang-up job with House, a show that in a lesser actor's hands could have ended up on the mid-season hiatus list after a few episodes. But no, HL is who keeps us all tuning in week in and week out (except for the next three when the show is preempted by American Idol, of all useless things) -- although there's nothing wrong with Jennifer Morrison that a five-dollar milkshake couldn't fix. Another is that this is a man whose career is having a second blossom in drama, after a completely respectable first blossom in the silliest comedies imaginable. A third is that, in an industry that places a premium on stupidity and short-sightedness (or so it seems), HL is not just an actor, but a writer, both of material for the screen and of at least one novel, which I have not read (of whatever quality, it doesn't matter, he is an actor who wrote a book, OK?).

To quote another Hugh admirer, from TWoP, regarding the after-ceremony interviews:

After some interminable minutes, [Elizabeth Vargas] congratulated him on his win, and asked if it (walking up to the podium and giving his acceptance speech) was even more nerve-wracking than he thought it'd be. "It was very, very nerve-wracking. I had this sudden-- I imagined I was going to have this Tourette's episode, and start blurting out peculiar things. But I've asked a few people, and that's apparently not uncommon. They fear suddenly saying something incredibly inflammatory and obnoxious."

Then she asked, "Are you going to relax tonight? Are you gonna hit some of the parties?" He gave a side-glance, and said "I don't know if I'll hit them." He then grinned, slayed her with a naughty look from his baby blues, and added in a seductive tone, "I might stroke them in passing." Which she giggled at and was obviously turned on by (or was that just me?). "I'm gonna ask people that from now on!" she declared, and then did a giddy imitation of his line with evident relish. "'Are you gonna stroke some of the parties?'" she crooned. Her eyes were, I swear to you, aglow.

Nice.

2. Harrison Ford, presenter, was hammered. He carried his drink onto the stage. He tried to hide it behind his back but, when required to open the envelope, was forced to hand his whatever and tonic with a twist off too his co-presenter, the lovely and bosomy Virginia Madsen.

This site has more.

Oh and what did the best show on TV win? Nothing. (I mean Battlestar Galactica, of course -- you may have thought I was referring to some other show.) posted by Carlton at 3:29 PM

I'M ONE OF NICK'S BOYS

I've just returned from four days visiting my family in Hattiesburg, henceforth known as Crazytown. This visit has inspired a number of questions, questions with answers too terrifying to contemplate:

1. What was wrong with the corn flakes?

2. Did I fail to show appropriate "respect" to the Five Families, resulting in our receiving a "little visit" to show us the error of our ways?

3. Does Hattiesburg actually make me sick? Is this the 'Burg Flu we've heard so much about?

4. Is my mother trying to set me up with a much older man?

5. How many types of chicken casseroles are there? Really? That many? posted by Carlton at 7:49 PM

TALES FROM NEWSPRINT

Tom Tomorrow has an interesting post about hi s recent dealings with the New York Times editorial page. Not an artist myself, I've become very interested in this kind of thing as Molly starts to do more and more illustration work.

Give 'em hell, Tom. posted by Carlton at 2:38 PM

FILE UNDER S FOR WE'RE SCREWED

Hey remember the Chinese? Those people who are buying all of our Treasury notes, basically funding all the deficit spending that our government does and keeping our interest rates nice and low? Remember how the Bush administration has been running up the deficit, content in the belief that the Chinese will keep loaning us money forever and ever because they have been doing so for a while now and they wouldn't ever stop doing so because that would be really bad for us? Remember that?

Well, the Chinese have decided that the US isn't such a good investment any more:

China has resolved to shift some of its foreign exchange reserves -- now in excess of $800 billion -- away from the U.S. dollar and into other world currencies in a move likely to push down the value of the greenback, a high-level state economist who advises the nation's economic policymakers said in an interview Monday.

As China's manufacturing industries flood the world with cheap goods, the Chinese central bank has invested roughly three-fourths of its growing foreign currency reserves in U.S. Treasury bills and other dollar-denominated assets. The new policy reflects China's fears that too much of its savings is tied up in the dollar, a currency widely expected to drop in value as the U.S. trade and fiscal deficits climb.

I'm no economist, so I can't tell whether this might just be inconvenient for us or whether it is a total ball-buster. It's at least inconvenient, because we have to find other customer for the bonds/bills we have to sell to pay for the war, the Katrina/Rita cleanup, and for the income and cap gains tax cuts that we've been passing every year. To make them more attractive, the US has to raise the interest rates it pays out on them. What's the result?

Some economists have long warned that if foreigners lose their appetite for American debt, the dollar would fall, interest rates would rise and the housing boom could burst, sending real estate prices lower.

Hope you got that fixed-rate mortgage (and bought gold).

Seriously, I've heard all kind of predictions regarding what effects this would produce -- from people who figured, reasonably enough, that it would happen someday. Those people do not seem to be Bush republicans. As the article points out, the Chinese own an awful lot of dollars as it is, and you wouldn't think they would want to drive their value down too far. Still, our government is borrowing as fast as it possibly can and essentially burning the proceeds in Iraq and elsewhere, so even a tremble in the debt markets could cause us trouble.

Good thing I don't have any money, or I'd be worried.

ETA: Thety aren't dumping what they already have, I assume (which would cause an immediate worldwide crisis), just diversifying their future spending. So, we should have some time to react. What we'll do, I don't now. posted by Carlton at 10:55 AM

EVERY THUG NEEDS A GOOD CUSTOMER REVIEW

Scott directed me to the reviews of the Book That I Am Not Likely to Read. Some excerpts (to spare you the trouble):

The story line was in-taced correctly and I enjoyed this one better than the first. But the same questions as the other readers: Where did Snake come from when he was poisoned in the first book and beat down? Who and Why did "someone" shot Trea? I mean come on....you left your readers hanging at the end, you have to come correct on this thing....let us know if you plan on having a sequel or series so we as the readers will know what to expect.

and

If you haven't read it and do not want the ending spoiled for you DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER. I tell you she was not as bad as far as being raw and uncut with her scenes as some authors I have read. You just have to be adult about it when you read it. The whole thing was great that we got to see Roz's story out of the foursome. i loved it and I will read more of her. The ending threw me for a loop. I thought all was well but I guess not. Please tell me you have a part three. No way it can just end like that with Snake returning and showing up at the wedding, Trae getting shot in the elevator at the wedding, Roz being pregnant again and Angel being pregnant now and we not know what happened. Please tell me there is another.

My thoughts:

1. I suppose if the choice is between reading this book and no book, ever, then it's a worthwhile read. I have the feeling that this may be a real set of alternatives for these people.

2. I am now having a reflexive attack of elitist guilt. Maybe the book has some merit, after all, and I'm not seeing it. As a white male, I'm so used to having all of "quality" print media aimed at me that I instinctively denigrate any literature aimed at another audience. (And sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I'll never know, because I'll never eat the filthy motherfucker. /Jules)

3. What happened to Snake after the beat down? posted by Carlton at 11:19 PM

NOT LIKELY

This book, which I saw a woman reading on the subway recently, appears somewhere on the List of Books Carlton is Not Likely to Read. It appears somewhere between, say, John Gibson's War on Christmas book and any book about teaching virtue to teenage girls. Books about depriving teenage girls of virtue are much more likely to be read by Carlton.

That is all. posted by Carlton at 3:47 PM

A NOT-SO LOST CAUSE

Congratulations to my brother at the announcement of his engagement to be married. I am pleased, and surprised. posted by Carlton at 2:15 PM

SOMETIMES YOU FIND YOUR NICHE -- AND IT'S FULL OF CRAP.

I read two posts today taking up the topic of niche literature, and how bad it is:

First, Jewish literature or perhaps "Jewish literature" -- or even "Jewish" "literature"):

Three more plot summaries, from the New York Times book review:

In 1978, Tova Reich's novel Mara depicted an Orthodox rabbi who doubles as a shady nursing-home owner, married to an overweight dietitian so obsessed with food that she gorges herself with five-course meals, even on the fast day of Yom Kippur. The Hasidic hero of her 1988 novel, Master of the Return (praised by Publishers Weekly for its "devastating accuracy") abandons his semi-paralyzed pregnant wife in her wheelchair in order to spit on immodestly clad female strangers; at home, he helps his 2-year-old son get "high on the One Above" by giving him marijuana. Reich's 1995 novel, The Jewish War, told of a band of zealots whose leader takes three wives and encourages his followers to kill themselves.

Next, African American literature (same quotation confusion applies):
Quoth Debra Dickerson:

One of the reasons I quit reviewing books (aside from the miserable pay) is my disgust with how often I was asked to review these monstrosities. Most were so awful, I refused and dissuaded the editors from insulting their readers with such offerings. Often enough to sap my will, though, editors — always white liberals — either rejected my withering critiques of the ones passably worthy of review or edited them into meaningless. I can't tell you how often some white boy from Yale, who chuckled over my maulings of a white author's work, chastised me for my "insensitivity." They were honestly shocked that anyone would rip apart a black person's work. How dare I subject blacks to the same level of analysis as whites?

I'm sure similar examples could be found for Christian fiction, gay fiction, Maori fiction, etc. Why is it that, when writing for a subgroup, the standards are lowered so dramatically?

Low standards for publication = low quality publications. It's like a law of nature. posted by Carlton at 2:00 PM

CONFERENCE ROOMS OF THE DAMNED

A writer at that commie rag the WSJ takes a look and discovers that, surprise surprise, up to 37% of big-firm associates leave by the end of the third year.

But a whopping 37 percent of associates at big law firms, defined by the study as those employing more than 500 lawyers, quit their firms by the end of their third years of practice.

---

But it's the law firms themselves, not aggressive headhunters nor commitmentphobic associates, that deserve the lion's share of the blame for creating the Dilemma of the Third Years. According to David Maister, an author of several books on management at professional services firms, law firm partnership used to be something young lawyers aspired to. Not anymore. "Partners hate their lives," says Mr. Maister. "They're overworked and stressed out and slaves to the billable hour. Lots of associates see this first hand and can't run away from it fast enough."

---

"I don't want to be a partner," says [Ropes associate Julia] Hesse, "and I don't know a single associate [at Ropes] who wants to make partner." Ms. Hesse says that Ropes's deep health-care practice, which promised good experience and introductions to a healthy roster of outside contacts, enticed her to Ropes. Bradford Malt, Ropes's chairman, agrees that partnership is tough to make at the firm, but boasts that "the experience and training a young attorney gets at Ropes is among the best in the country."

Then the article asks the burning question: Can the system be reformed from the top? Ah the naivete . . .

1. The partners have no incentive to reform the system. The fact that everyone in the system (including the partners) is miserable and hates his life is not an incentive. (I have long felt that the people who really succeed in the law firm life are people who would be miserable no matter what they were doing.) Also, the replacement expense for associates is seen as the cost of doing business (and also the cost of hiring lazy no-good associates who don't want to work and have no sense of loyalty! Harrumph!), and is split among the partners anyway.

2. Even if there were incentive, lawyers are terrible businesspeople. The law is inherently conservative, and lawyers tend to respond to changing circumstances by . . . not changing, or doing what they have always done even more forcefully. And yelling!

For the record, I made it into my fourth year as a private attorney with big(-ish) firms. I made it that far only by changing jobs for the last year -- hoo boy, I hated it. posted by Carlton at 4:10 PM

OH SHNAP, NOT ANOTHER ONE

So, here's the latest anti-gay crusader discovered to have contracted a touch of The Gay himself:

OKLAHOMA CITY -- An executive committee member of the Southern Baptist Convention was arrested on a lewdness charge for propositioning a plainclothes policeman outside a hotel, police said.

Lonnie Latham, senior pastor at South Tulsa Baptist Church, was booked into Oklahoma County Jail Tuesday night on a misdemeanor charge of offering to engage in an act of lewdness, police Capt. Jeffrey Becker said. Latham was released on $500 bail Wednesday afternoon.

Latham, who has spoken out against homosexuality, asked the officer to join him in his hotel room for oral sex. Latham was arrested and his 2005 Mercedes automobile was impounded, Becker said.

Calls to Latham at his church were not immediately returned Wednesday.

He had a good explanation, however:

When he left jail, he said:

"I was set up. I was in the area pastoring to police."

The jokes, they write themselves. But seriously, folks. This happens so often that we should coin a word for it: gaypocrisy? It's pretty clear (to me, anyway) that the only ones who really get lathered up -- so to speak -- about The Gay and how it must be suppressed at at all costs are the ones who are most desperately trying to suppress it in themselves. Duh. The two go hand in hand (so to speak). That anti-gay evangelist spokesman on CNN? Wishes that microphone in his face was a hot hard throbbing . . . well you know, it's a family site we have here.

But he wishes it was.

ETA: Look on the face of the sinner himself, here. posted by Carlton at 12:44 PM

RESOLVE

Yeah, now is the time when one looks back at the wreckage of his wasted life, and makes resolutions for the upcoming year, to somehow do so much good for oneself as to drag one up into the net positive. Riiiiiight.

I resolve to blog more, I guess. I could hardly blog any less . . .

I'm sure everyone has seen this already, but it's pretty funny (video, requiring sound). I'm not exactly sure what it is supposed to be parodying, but . . . yeah.
"You could call us Aaron Burr with the way we're droppin' Hamiltons . . . "

Courtesy Amy L. posted by Carlton at 8:03 PM