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!

DOOMSDAY

The last Doctor Who was quite good, by the way.

After my recent email kerfluffle with Jacob, the guy who writes the recaps on TwoP, I find that site to be less and less essential to my viewing experience. Jacob was cool about the whole thing, really, but the exchange left a bad taste in my figurative mouth regarding the whole TwoP experience.

Aside from anything that Jacob might do or not do, though, our chat started a chain of thought ending in the idea that my internet time is really a way of distracting myself from other, more productive things in life. Like working, for example. And my own writing. Blogging, even. posted by Carlton at 11:20 PM

GOING GENTLE

So we finally killed Saddam -- or they finally killed Saddam, depending on your perspective on how distinct they are from us. At any rate, it is reported that he is dead. I'm opposed to the death penalty in general, mostly on grounds that we can't seem to make certain that the people we execute are the ones who commit the crimes. I'm not sad that Saddam is dead, however.

I do think, however, that killing him was a mistake. Until now, the Bush people have had at least one thin straw to clutch at regarding the colossal blunder that we made by invading Iraq: at least we got Saddam. He was the new Hitler, you may recall. He was a madman. He used chemical weapons on his own people. George Bush, a man who sees himself as completely good, and anyone who opposes him as irredeemably evil, and is motivated almost exclusively by the desire to Destroy his Enemies, had a personal grievance. To him, Saddam was, "the guy who tried to kill my dad." So, George Jr. put Saddam Hussein at the top of the very shortest list of evildoers who must be destroyed, at any cost. Literally, any cost.

Now he's dead, though. Not just merely dead, but really most sincerely dead. I believe that Saddam's execution, far from being a triumph for the Bush Administration, is going to highlight in the most glaring way possible how irrelevant Saddam was to the current mess we've made. Saddam was not the Devil, and his death is not, as the final component of some magic spell, going to make the parties in Iraq lay down their arms and make peace. He has been out of power for three and a half years now, and every single person in Iraq, even the Ba'athist "dead-enders", came to terms with his never coming back long ago.

One by one, the cooked-up rationales for the invasion of Iraq have peeled away: there were no WMD, no democracy has blossomed, no human rights protected. Iraq has not served as an example of American might to awe the region into submission. One thing that we did do, however, was get Saddam. Now he's dead, and every person in the world can look at the state of things and decide for himself whether it was worth it. posted by Carlton at 10:00 PM

STARTING OVER AT ZERO

The government cashed my check a couple of days ago, and so Molly and I now owe, combined, a grand total of $19.47 in student loans. We don't have a whole lot of money left, of course, but after a couple of pay periods and the cleanup of some modest credit card balances, we will be entirely debt-free.

I have a great deal of internal debate about these matters. You have a little extra money left over -- spend it, invest it or pay off some debt? Spending is fun, and investing is it's own kind of fun, if you're into that. Paying off debt seems like a big downer, especially the student loan variety. There are moments when I think I've really screwed up by paying off the loans as aggressively as I have (I finished school in 2001). If I've made a mistake, however -- and that's not clear -- I think it's one of not making the best choice rather than making a bad one. posted by Carlton at 9:52 PM

UTILIZING FUNCTIONALITIES

The eternal question -- why can't they leave me the !#$% alone? Suddenly, I have to have a Google account, and new passwords, and everything looks different . . . Dear Google people: please focus your attention on making the basic program work, all the time, before you start "improving" it.

Like I need this, on top of the fifty-six passwords I have for work. posted by Carlton at 9:49 PM

ALL BLOGS GO TO HEAVEN

It appears that excellent blogger Billmon ("Whiskey Bar" link at left, but don’t bother) has turned out the lights on his site, at least for a while. That’s a real shame -- he always had some interesting commentary, and he was someone I looked to as a model for how a smart, opinionated standalone blogger should operate -- as opposed to the community-building sites, the media empire sites, or the fifty-posts-a-day sites like Atrios. He was just one guy, telling you what he thought. And I was fortunate enough to pay attention, every so often.

It is possible he will be back, of course. Let's hope so. posted by Carlton at 9:46 PM

EXILE

I have been sent to Charlottesville, VA for a week for a tax seminar. More than that, I have to call the Philippines every evening to get the Internet to work. So, I'm probably out of touch for the next few. posted by Carlton at 5:18 PM

ME AND JACOB; JACOB AND ME

Earlier in the week, TwoP recapper Jacob responded to one of my posts slagging him off, which was a surprise to me, naturally since . . . what, I have readers? Anyway, we had a really interesting email exchange for a couple of days regarding what he's doing with my shows there on the Without Pity. I'm not going to reprint any of our correspondance because I don't think that's a great practice and, frankly, it's probably boring to outsiders. In fact, this whole matter is probably boring to outsiders -- luckily we're all family here.

Jacob told me that he does have an actual plan for what he is doing with Doctor Who, which is nice to know -- because I had assumed he was just going ballistic into the ego-sphere each week, which drove me crazy. That doesn't make me like what he's doing any more than I did before, however, nor does it make the project any more comprehensible to me. As time goes by and I skip more and more of what he has written, the pieces of his project that I have read become ever smaller and more fragmentary, and eventually I get nothing. So, there you go, that's it. I will probably stop reading his work on that site, and he will almost certainly continue on as before -- and he should. He's given himself a project, which isn't finished, and for all I know, it could be great. (Ellipsis)

One fact he did refresh for me, which I had forgotten, is that we are looking at the show from opposite ends. Jacob watched the entire season before starting this set of recaps, and I'm watching them (or not, in the case of the last two weeks), as they are shown on cable. Jacob mentioned that he was not able to do that for the first season (which recaps I actually liked all right, up until the Gnosticism forced its way in) -- he referred to that as "flying blind" (otherwise known as "how Carlton watches"). Without getting too deep into it, I think that this opposite approach may be a large part of what irritates me so much about what he is doing.

Anyway, that happened. I think it's over now. It was pleasant and interesting. I appreciate his response, and we were both civil and relatively cogent.

[Fixed some typos.] posted by Carlton at 12:08 PM

ANOTHER TALE OF MINIMAL INTEREST

Our office has two branches, one in DC, where I work, and another in Detroit. I had a folder that had to go back to the other office. I left it for our admin with a note that read "SEND TO DETROIT."

The next day he stopped me. "Who in Detroit did you want me to send that to?" he said.

I named the person whose name I knew who is in that office.

"Oh," he said. "You mean send it to our Detroit office?"

All I have to say is that I'm glad he asked the question. If he'd sent it off in an envelope marked simply "Detroit", there's no telling where it might have ended up. posted by Carlton at 11:13 PM

IN A STATION OF THE METRO

. . . this afternoon, I saw a fortyish man carying a bag with the "University of Southern Mississippi" logo on it. I was about to walk by him, but at the last moment turned to ask him what his connection was with the university.

Me: I went there as an undergrad.
Him: I was there until Thames started bringing everything down.

I didn't ask him how he was there -- I assume faculty, but that might not have been the case.

A not entirely interesting anecdote! posted by Carlton at 11:08 PM

REVISITED

A while back, when Bush's approval ratings first went into the basement, I posted the following:

I had a couple of theories at the time, and here's a new one: the real power-brokers on the Right are ready to let Bush be destroyed. He was never anything but a straw-man anyway, and he is clearly nearing the end of his usefulness. So, let him go down and deflect the blame for the myriad failures of the government during his term onto him and him alone. If so, you'll be shocked at how quickly the hero-worship of the rank and file turns into derision and demands for retribution.

Just thought I'd put that back up the flagpole to blow in the wind. posted by Carlton at 5:17 PM

THE WASHINTON POST INDICATES

Here:

Historians are loath to predict the future. It is impossible to say with certainty how Bush will be ranked in, say, 2050. But somehow, in his first six years in office he has managed to combine the lapses of leadership, misguided policies and abuse of power of his failed predecessors. I think there is no alternative but to rank him as the worst president in U.S. history.

My response: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

(I'm feeling very Atrios-like these days.) posted by Carlton at 5:06 PM

JOSH MARSHALL REMARKS

Here.

But what excuse does President Bush have exactly? His party has controlled the Congress with lockstep majorities for his entire presidency. The one exception came in the Senate from 2001 to 2002. And that was before the war even started. If I'm not mistaken we've been treated to half a dozen years of commentary and news about how the Democrats were defeated, impotent, divided and generally just lame. Since he was so early and outspoken in his criticism, I assume this means Howard Dean prevented President Bush from winning the Iraq war.

But really, how can the president blame anything on a powerless minority in Congress and not indict himself as the weakest and most pitiful chief executive the republic has ever had?

My response: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

That is all. posted by Carlton at 6:28 PM