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taking a flyer
"Last week, though, the president all but wore a "Kick Me!" sticker on the back of his flight suit when he decided to land on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in the co-pilot's seat of an S-3B Viking jet.
Imagine the derisive merriment in the columns and on the chat shows if former President Bill Clinton revived the skirt-chasing issue by touring a sorority house or if Gore delivered a lecture to the engineers at Netscape Communications Corp. Think of the snickering and the sardonic rehash of history.
But for Bush in flyboy attire, a discreet silence. The only voices I encountered raising this issue were David Corn in the Nation; Newsday columnist Jimmy Breslin, who asked, "Tell me if you ever heard of anybody with as powerful a resistance to shame as Bush..."
infinite largesse
"On a warm, windblown evening in late March, David Foster Wallace showed up at an old-style Mexican place in Pomona called El Ranchero. He was wearing shorts and a Pomona College sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, so that he looked like a faintly menacing guy you might see late one night at a 7-Eleven buying Gatorade.
Wallace, the author of, most famously, the 1996 brick of a novel called "Infinite Jest," is finishing his first year as the Roy Edward Disney Professor of Creative Writing at Pomona. He's a literary star -- MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant winner, compared before he was 35 to Pynchon, to DeLillo -- newly arrived in Southern California."
passive tense
"As a rule, passive tense equals at least some level of manipulation. Any decent writer knows to avoid it, precisely because it's confusing -- but editors often rely on passive tense to keep uncomfortable questions about individual and collective responsibility (including their own) at bay"
do dah day
one year toke free tomorrow so today i celebrated with a membership to crunch. now i need to sweat off those 10-15 pounds i put on as a result. for year three i plan to get some color back in my lily white corpus dilapitus.
plane down, no survivors
this seems more than a little bit perverse for a may day celebration --
"NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2003, as Loyalty Day. I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance. I also call upon government officials to display the flag of the United States on all government buildings on Loyalty Day."
via matt yglesias
flight risk
vacation pot
"OTTAWA - Jean Chrétien drew applause and a few whoops of joy at a fundraising dinner Tuesday night when he said that legislation decriminalizing possession of marijuana in Canada would soon be announced.
"Don't start to smoke yet," he quickly cautioned the celebrants in the audience.
"We're not legalizing it, we're decriminalizing," said Chrétien who points out he has never smoked a joint."
war reader, come out and play
"Our idea for this site is to continue the intellectual journey started with our first book, The Gulf War Reader (Times Books, 1991) and especially to continue the narratives that make up the second book. That is, we want to keep exploring the history of the collision of the West and the Arab and Muslim worlds; keep digging into the real facts of U.S.-Iraqi relations and history; keep pondering the wisdom of the Iraq War and the policies behind it (from all sides) and keep a sharp eye on what this means for Iraq's future and the future of America's role in the world."
via cursor
spree for all
some good shows archived on kcrws Morning Becomes Eclectic including the cultish up with people sound of The Polyphonic Spree and alt folkies like
The Be Good Tanyas and
Lisa Germano. and if youve got one more in you then you can listen to reigning sensitive indieboy Bright Eyes.
classic pickle
professional liars needed. must be able to read government press releases with straight face. previous experience in government a plus. equal opportunity employer.