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!

DON'T MEAN ANYTHING, BUT DON'T MEAN NOTHING, EITHER

Ah, polls. I don't usually do any writing about polls, mostly because they involve numbers, and I barely passed 8th grade math (see below).

This one is fun, however:

(CBS) The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush's approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the Iraq war has risen to a new high.

And Cheney?

In a bright spot for the administration, most Americans appeared to have heard enough about Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident.

More then three in four said it was understandable that the accident had occurred and two-thirds said the media had spent too much time covering the story.

Still, the incident appears to have made the public's already negative view of Cheney a [bit] more so. Just 18 percent said they had a favorable view of the vice president, down from 23 percent in January.

You sometimes hear people say that 20% of America will vote for anything. Well, Dick Cheney can't even scare up the yahoos and the cranks these days. I guess a shotgun blast to the face is a universal signifier. At 18%, the only contituency he's got left consists of recently awakened coma patients and the clones of himself that he's created to harvest for replacement organs (more than you'd think!).

Only I am brave enough to ask these questions -- can the VP enter negative territory? At that point, does he leave the world of the politically living and become some kind of powerful undead politician, shambling across the National Mall by night, sustaining himself on the 'strong leader' numbers of the living? Will we hunt him with dogs? Will he at least appear on America's Most Wanted? [blank stare]

Click to enlarge. posted by Carlton at 10:37 PM

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Via University Diaries (at left)

"While you were making your slides, we would be killing you."

(Russian officer […] in a discussion between US and Russian officers serving in Bosnia as to who would have won if we had ever actually fought in Western Europe.) posted by Carlton at 10:05 AM

FLAMES, BURNING THE SIDE OF MY FACE . . .

OK, so he wrote this back in 2004, and this guy is a first-rate pinhead anyway, and I would never have known about it if somebody at This Modern World hadn't compared it to something else more recent, but this quote from Fred Barnes made my teeth grind together:

Should national unity prevail, Iraq's chances of becoming a stable democracy will improve dramatically. I'd like to see one other thing in Iraq, an outbreak of gratitude for the greatest act of benevolence one country has ever done for another. A grateful Iraqi heart would be a sign of a new Iraqi attitude and a signal of sure success.

What really gets me about the quote is that I'm sure that there are a lot of people out there who feel just this way, who are still wondering why our troops weren't pelted with flowers and candy as they marched into Baghdad to privatize the Iraqi oil industry. I mean, it's one (dumb) thing to have thought that would happen before the invasion, but another (dumber) still to expect it after everything has gone to hell. (And I know, things weren't quite as FUBAR when Barnes was writing, but I'm reading it in the now, OK?)

OK Fred, here's three reasons why you're never going to see that grateful Iraqi heart:

1. Nobody likes being invaded, as it turns out, even by us;
2. The Iraqis didn't ask us to invade them (I mean, Chalabi did, but he so doesn't count); and
3. We screwed it up. Bad. Worse than it was before, probably.

But hey, Fred, I can tell that it's killing you that no one has thanked you, personally, for your support of this massive clusterfuck which has killed so many of them, quite a few of us, and cost us an incalculable amount in blood, money and reputation.

Here's today (updated):

Hundreds of unclaimed dead lay at the morgue at midday Monday -- blood-caked men who had been shot, knifed, garroted or apparently suffocated by the plastic bags still over their heads. Many of the bodies were sprawled with their hands still bound -- and many of them had wound up at the morgue after what their families said was their abduction by the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

So thanks, Fred. Thanks a lot. posted by Carlton at 8:50 AM

PEANUT, WHAT IS THE FREQUENCY?

I've been going to a gym for a few weeks now. It's near my work, and cheap, and it happens to be in a hotel. You have to go through the lobby and get on the hotel elevator with the guests, if any happen to be on at that time.

Today, I got on the elevator with a woman, approx age: 38-42, dyed-red curly hair, stylishly (?) dressed mostly in black, of more or less average appearance. She was using her cell phone, which lost its signal as soon as the doors shut. We made eye contact and she shook her head to indicate frustration with the phone.

"How's that working for you?" I said -- or something equally banal.
"You know," she said. "There aren't any peanuts in my room. Wouldn't it be nice if there were some peanuts in my room?"
"Uh, sure," I said, and got off at the floor with the gym.

My question for all my many readers -- what was that all about? Is this some code that I'm not familiar with? posted by Carlton at 10:44 PM

GO ME

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Actually, this was kinda challenging, and I guessed on one. posted by Carlton at 1:53 PM

FILE UNDER L FOR 'LIPSTICK ON A PIG'



You know, I never thought about it like that. [stare] posted by Carlton at 9:26 PM

ANNA AKHMATOVA

This woman is a character in Vollmann's Europe Central, referenced below. A poet, she wrote about life under Stalin, was imprisoned, etc. Wikipedia article here. I'm not a poetry guy, usually (though more recently than ever, it seems like), but EC made me curious to read some of her work.

Interesting anecdote: Akhmatova's early work inspired a generation of Russian women to write their own poetry (much of it quite bad, apparently). In response to this, she reportedly said: "I taught our women how to speak but don't know how to make them silent".

The following two excerpts from Akhmatova's poem "Requiem" touched me -- the very first and last bits:

INSTEAD OF A PREFACE

During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I
spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in
Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone 'picked me out'.
On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me,
her lips blue with cold, who, of course, had never in
her life heard my name. Jolted out of the torpor
characteristic of all of us, she said into my ear
(everyone whispered there) - 'Could one ever describe
this?' And I answered - 'I can.' It was then that
something like a smile slid across what had previously
been just a face.
[The 1st of April in the year 1957. Leningrad]

. . .

[From] EPILOGUE
If someone someday in this country
Decides to raise a memorial to me,
I give my consent to this festivity
But only on this condition - do not build it
By the sea where I was born,
I have severed my last ties with the sea;
Nor in the Tsar's Park by the hallowed stump
Where an inconsolable shadow looks for me;
Build it here where I stood for three hundred hours
And no-one slid open the bolt.
Listen, even in blissful death I fear
That I will forget the Black Marias,
Forget how hatefully the door slammed and an old woman
Howled like a wounded beast.
Let the thawing ice flow like tears
From my immovable bronze eyelids
And let the prison dove coo in the distance
While ships sail quietly along the river.
[March 1940. Fontannyi Dom]

posted by Carlton at 11:08 AM

COMMENTS

With a bit of tinkering, I have fixed the comments (I hope). While they weren't broken, per se, the placement of the prompt was confusing. "Sharon" was the latest person to fall victim to the madness. Sorry, Sharon!

In response to my poem commentary, she wrote:

We're thinking about adopting your version as the official city poem of Hattiesburg. You're getting pretty hot on the local email trail. Good job.

To which I reply: What? posted by Carlton at 11:25 PM

JUST A LITTLE ONE BEFORE BED

A while back, I posted about reports that the White House was getting ready for impeachment hearings, and that such hearings were expected, seen as inevitable, could probably take out the Prez. That caused me to wonder -- WTF are these people thinking to be so blase about getting your man impeached?

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.

It might be a little of this:

"Comrades," he said quietly, "do you know who is responsible for this? Do you know the enemy who has come in the night and overthrown our windmill? SNOWBALL!" he suddenly roared in a voice of thunder. "Snowball has done this thing! In sheer malignity, thinking to set back our plans and avenge himself for his ignominious expulsion, this traitor has crept here under cover of night and destroyed our work of nearly a year. Comrades, here and now I pronounce the death sentence upon Snowball. 'Animal Hero, Second Class,' and half a bushel of apples to any animal who brings him to justice. A full bushel to anyone who captures him alive!"

Or maybe a little of this:

SPADE: Yes, I'm trying not to let that worry me. We'll come to the money
later. There's another thing to be taken care of first. We've got to have a
"fall guy." The police have to have a victim. Somebody they can stick for
those three murders.
. . . .
GUTMAN: Come, come, Mr. Spade. You can't expect us to believe at this late
date you are the least afraid of the police. Or that you're not able to
handle--

SPADE: I'm up to my neck, Gutman. I've got to come through with somebody, a
victim, when the time comes. If I don't, I'll be it. Let's give 'em the
gunsel [Wilmer]. He actually did shoot Thursby and the other one, didn't he? Anyway,
he's made to order for the part. Let's turn him over to the cops.
. . .
Good. Well, gentlemen, there's our fall guy. And now, gentlemen, you
agree - or I'll turn the falcon and the whole lot of you in.

Well?

GUTMAN: I've always felt toward Wilmer like a father. But you can have him.

posted by Carlton at 11:56 PM

DIGBY SEZ

Interesting post here about conservatism as a political religion.

A pony! posted by Carlton at 10:49 PM

EUROPE CENTRAL

I've been reading William Vollmann's Europe Central for a while now (it's quite the hefty tome) and I have to say that I'm engrossed. I don't know whether to call it historical fiction, as most of the characters are real people and most of the plot centers around real events, or whether it should more rightly be called a novelization of real events, or what. Still, if you're at all interested in Germany and Russia before and during World War II, and have some free time for reading, I recommend it.

posted by Carlton at 9:29 PM

ONLY POSITIVE MISSISSIPPI SPOKEN HERE

I felt a little bad for pooping all over the proposed poem for my home state. At the risk of embarassing myself, I dug out a poem I wrote on the subject, back when I did such things. In the interest of being fair, I post it here. I'm no poet, trust me, but it's short:

Mississippi

The world is small; it is named for a river
We live there, and work, and pray for ourselves.
The world is good; God watches us.
He spits and nods his great big head.
“That’s the way, boys,” he says. “You got it all right.”
The world is simple; there is just the one book.
We know how to read it.
The world is small; outside
Is a Gulf of infinite space.
They say you can walk off the edge.
But we wouldn’t, ever. posted by Carlton at 9:24 PM

'FAIR USE,' WE HARDLY KNEW YE

Via Kos and a couple of other blogs, I found this story, about how the RIAA (the recording industry trade association) are floating the idea that consumers shouldn't be able to copy music at all (from CDs to your iPod, from one CD to another, to your computer, etc.)

Story here or here:

In a recent filing, the RIAA had this to say: (all emphasis mine)

Nor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even routinely granted, necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization. In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the MGM v. Grokster case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use.

What was the statement attributed to counsel (from the transcript of oral argument, evidently) in that case before the Supreme Court?

"The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it's been on their website for some time now, that it's perfectly lawful to take a CD that you've purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod."

One more, from the RIAA:

Similarly, creating a back-up copy of a music CD is not a non-infringing use, for reasons similar to those the Register canvassed in detail in her 2003 determination that back-up copying of DVDs cannot be treated as noninfringing. While we recognize that access controls may in some circumstances affect copying, the fact remains that there is no general exception to the reproduction right to allow back-up copying (except the limited exception in § 117 for computer programs) and thus no justification for allowing circumvention of access controls for this purpose

Is this the way we are going? You bought it, but it isn't yours? That appears to be what they want. How do you feel about it? posted by Carlton at 9:03 PM

SONG OF THE SOUTH OF HELL

Scott lets me know that the state of Mississippi is just about to inaugurate a new state poem.

Believe it or not, some people don't want this to be the state poem of Mississippi. I truly don't understand it.

Here it is in its entirety: (with my comments)

I Am Mississippi

I'm the land of the Choctaw
(We killed most of them, now they run casinos.)
The hills of Vicksburg, and a cross-cut saw
(That's not a non sequitur, or anything.)

Dinner on the ground and a muscadine vine
I'm a longleaf pine, and Mississippi's on my mind
(Something had to rhyme with vine, and we don't have any coal mines, thank goodness)

I'm a banjo pickin' and all night sings
(We loves to pick dat banjo all night, yes we does!)
Azaleas a 'bloomin' in Ocean Springs
(And only there.)

I'm a Gospel Singer and the old folks at home
(Oh! Darkies!)
And I'm the eagle on the top of the capitol's dome
(Whatever you say, dude.)

I'm coffee in the morning and an ole smoked ham
(Hope its not too 'ole,' you'll get trichinosis.)
Cathead biscuits
(WTF?)
and blackberry jam
(Blackberries only occur in Mississippi.)

I'm a Mississippi moon, a dusty Delta Dawn,
(We're claiming the Moon, now? And a song about a retarded woman from Texas?)
B. B. King, Magnolias in bloom
(I'll give you those, all right.)

I'm an antebellum home on the Natchez Trace,
(Those slaveowning absentee plantation masters sure knew how to live!)
A rusty plow on the old home place
(Most of the rusting farm equpment I see in Mississippi is adorning the walls of 'buffet style' restaurants.)

I'm Walter Payton catchin' a pass, Elvis Presley,
(This is a nice comparison, because Payton and Presley leave nearly the same legacy, and it's all unambiguously positive.)
Coon hounds and bird dogs and tea of Sassafras
(Dogs love tea! Here, Rover, I got you some Tummy Tamer!)

(OK, I'm going to stop noting the horrible juxtapositions. It's too awful.)

I'm Miss Mississippi and all her glory
(Pure glory. She's like a queen! An illiterate, abstinence-only, born-again queen who gives herself a Brazilian every Wednesday night after prayer meeting.)
I'm William Faulkner as he writes a story
(Or as he drank himself to death, insisting to the end that he was a fighter pilot in Canada during the war.)
I'm Jimmie Rodgers, the Singing Brakeman
(Who?)
John C. Stennis, a southern statesman
(This poem is really going to stand the test of time.)

I'm the Mississippi River as it rounds the bend
(Starting in Minnesota and ending up in Louisiana.)
I'm Gone with the Wind,
(Didn't that take place in Georgia?)
y'all come back again
(Y'hear?)

Well, I'm everything good you have ever dreamed about
(You're teenage lesbians discovering forbidden desire?)
Hush yo' mouth, I'm Mississippi
I am the South

I don't understand the controversy. I believe that it represents all that is good and right about our fair state. (blank stare) posted by Carlton at 1:28 AM

ALL YOUR BATTLESTAR ARE BELONG TO US

My show is back, thank the gods. It was gooood tonight.

Space battles, a woman's right to choose, AND a hot new (still nameless) pilot with 30's 'do who got a few lines, so maybe she'll be back.

That is all. posted by Carlton at 11:36 PM

SHRIMP DIANE

We did St. V's day on the 15th this year, thanks to conflicting schedules. Just like last year, I made Shrimp Diane, a wonderful dish and about the only semi-complicated thing I can cook. (Having done it twice, however, it isn't that difficult.)

Recipe here. posted by Carlton at 11:33 PM

A CHICKEN, A WATERMELON AND A RUBBER DUMMY

See them get shot with a 28-gauge shotgun here.

Via Kevin Drum, of course. posted by Carlton at 11:32 PM

BLAM! BLAM! BLAMMITY-BLAM BLAM!

So Cheney shot a guy while hunting. In the face. With a shotgun. At close range. Sounds like a regrettable accident. It really does. I mean, nobody told the press for 24 hours, and they blamed the victim, but that's pretty much Cheney's MO all around. I'm not saying he's a class act, just that he probably didn't do anything terrible on purpose. Nope, probably just negligent, and yeah, reckless. And maybe arrogant. And, who knows, drunk? These things happen.

(I don't even think this would qualify as depraved heart murder -- even if the fellow died, or if Cheney had a heart, bwahaha.)

But I remembered reading something a while back about the kind of hunting Cheney likes: (I found a link to this at firedoglake)

Monday's hunting trip to Pennsylvania by Vice President Dick Cheney in which he reportedly shot more than 70 stocked pheasants and an unknown number of mallard ducks at an exclusive private club places a spotlight on an increasingly popular and deplorable form of hunting, in which birds are pen-reared and released to be shot in large numbers by patrons. The ethics of these hunts are called into question by rank-and-file sportsmen, who hunt animals in their native habitat and do not shoot confined or pen-raised animals that cannot escape.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported today that 500 farm-raised pheasants were released yesterday morning at the Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier Township for the benefit of Cheney's 10-person hunting party. The group killed at least 417 of the birds, illustrating the unsporting nature of canned hunts. The party also shot an unknown number of captive mallards in the afternoon.

"This wasn't a hunting ground. It was an open-air abattoir, and the vice president should be ashamed to have patronized this operation and then slaughtered so many animals," states Wayne Pacelle, a senior vice president of The Humane Society of the United States. "If the Vice President and his friends wanted to sharpen their shooting skills, they could have shot skeet or clay, not resorted to the slaughter of more than 400 creatures planted right in front of them as animated targets."

The above appeared in 2003. Now, this isn't the kind of hunting the VP et al. were doing this weekend, or so I understand. But . . . this account might lead one to infer that Mr. Cheney is not always so, er, discriminating as to where he points his gun. posted by Carlton at 1:38 PM

MAYBE 'ANGELS IN AMERICA'?

Midwest town offended by (expurgated) high school production of Grease, cancels performances of The Crucible.

Article here.

Dr. Enderle said he did not base his decision to cancel "The Crucible," which was first reported by The Fulton Sun, a daily, just on the three complaints and the video. He also asked 10 people he knew whether the play crossed a line. All but one, he recalled, said yes.

"To me, it's entirely a preventative maintenance issue," Dr. Enderle explained. "I can't do anything about what's already happened, but do I want to spend the spring saying, 'Yeah, we crossed the line again'?"

. . .

Mr. Miller wrote "The Crucible" in the 1950's, in response to the witch hunt of his own day, when Congress held hearings to purge Hollywood of suspected Communists, pressuring witnesses to expose others to prove their innocence. The affair is not acted out in the play, which focuses on how hysteria and fear devoured Salem, despite the lack of evidence.

Note that Mr. Enderle had approved the script for Grease in advance. How could he know that it would later prove to be ideologically suspect and culturally treasonous?

There is only one solution for this problem: fire the drama teacher.

"How am I supposed to know what's appropriate when I don't have any written guidelines, and it seems that what was appropriate yesterday isn't appropriate today?" Ms. DeVore asked. The teacher said she had been warned that because of the controversy, the school board might not renew her contract for next year.

If you have to ask, Comrade DeVore, you do not have the best interests of the community at heart.

posted by Carlton at 10:13 PM

WHEN SCREENWRITERS ATTACK

John Rogers has a bit to say about a conservative film critic's effort to show Hollywood's liberal leanings by analyzing Oscar nominees:

Okay. Okay. Deep breaths. He's got to pull it out somehow. For chrissake, the man's got a PhD from Stanford and a philosophy degree from Yale. It cannot get worse. Sure, Jason Apuzzo has shown he is ignorant of how Hollywood business works; completely clueless on recent film and Oscar history; either an idiot or a hypocrite when it comes to the purpose of the very foundation he has set up; and revealed with, I must admit, breathtaking efficiency, he has no critical film analysis skills whatsoever. There is no way this can get any uglier.

Oh, but it can.

I wish I knew something about movies. (blank stare) posted by Carlton at 2:08 PM

POSTMYSTERY

I don't know what this is, but it's interesting . . . posted by Carlton at 10:14 PM

SOTU Q (AND A?)

I caught just the merest smidgen of the Speech the other night, and even that I could have done without. One thing that did occur to me -- why do all those Democrats even GO to the speech? It's not mandated anywhere that the Prez has to give the speech in front of every member of Congress (plus Supreme Court justices and other worthies). It doesn't even have to be a speech at all. I'd have to think that the members have as much or more distaste as I do for the man -- why not boycott? Why not leave half the chamber empty -- except maybe for Lieberman? THAT would be some effective political theater.

I know no one will answer this, because I am talking to myself here. But I wondered. posted by Carlton at 3:21 PM

SCIENCE MYSTERY FRIDAY

Here's a puzzle (or a puddle, heh) for all you science geeks out there: When I was still living in Boston, I got it in my head that I needed to prepare an "emergency kit" of supplies in case, well, whatever. This was shortly before the Democratic National Convention in 2004 -- just to give some context.

Anyway, I bought two gallon jugs of distilled water at the supermarket, along with a bunch of cans of this or that vegetable -- enough to get through a few days without leaving the house, say. I put them in a closet which we didn't use for much else, and for got about it. The energency never happened, and we never drank the water.

In August of 2005, we sold the condo and moved out. I went to clear out the disaster kit (I made a nice veggie salad with all the canned goods), and discovered the mystery: The water was gone. Gone. The two plastic jugs were still there, but were split open, and empty, or mostly (moistly! Ha!) empty. I think one was empty and one had an inch or so of the water still in it.

So what happened to the water?

It could have frozen, I guess, and burst the jugs, and then just run out when it thawed. I don't THINK this was the case because 1) I don't think it ever got below freezing in my apartment (though it was a chilly apartment in a cold climate), and 2) I believe that my downstairs neighbors would have noticed if two gallons of water came running through the ceiling. And if they noticed, they would have said something -- trust me.

Maybe it was animals -- mice, rats, squirrels? I don't like to think that it would be that, but I guess it could have been. I didn't see any other indicia of vermin in the apartment, however.

Any thoughts? Maybe the postcard bandit snuck in and drank it all? posted by Carlton at 9:59 AM