Monday, August 30, 2004
Lileks Convergence Alert
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
The dog that didn't
bark.
Kerry speaks of his swiftboat pet:
Close enough to catch a collie, close enough to have something to say about what went on that day. Unless, of course, it's an imaginary dog.
It might have been real. After all, Martin Sheen had one in Apocalypse Now.
Kerry speaks of his swiftboat pet:
"One day as our Swift Boat was heading up a river, a mine exploded hard under our boat," he continued. "After picking ourselves up, we discovered VC was MIA (missing in action). Several minutes of frantic search followed, after which we thought we'd lost him. We were relieved when another boat called asking if we were missing a dog."
Said Mr. Kerry: "It turns out VC was catapulted from the deck of our boat and landed, confused but unhurt, on the deck of another boat in our patrol."
Close enough to catch a collie, close enough to have something to say about what went on that day. Unless, of course, it's an imaginary dog.
It might have been real. After all, Martin Sheen had one in Apocalypse Now.
I offer myself a hearty
Congratulations
(blogspot is messing up Html in titles. grrr)
The first and last semi-intelligible thing I had to say about the Swiftboat veterans new book, before my illness went full tilt boogie, was in Allah's comments on the fifth of August, when other folks were blogging about "skepticism" and how or ought maybe to back away or WAS backing away from the Swifties.
I watched the blog-world clouds roll by after that, watching as greater minds than my own began to notice that Kerry was caught dead to rights on this point; observing the Kerry camp stunned by a sudden boat rock, getting dumped like so many chocolate-chip cookie-eating Rassmans into the water. How they flailed! Their normally protective spin gear was pulling them down into the muddy deep.
Then I started to worry. The context surrounding his Cambodian misrepresentation tended to show him unfit to lead, after all, he was showing off, and deflecting criticism from himself, on a matter of US military defense policy with a self-aggrandizing *LIE* about his military service on the floor of the Senate.
But the swiftboat story had devolved into minute and murky discussion of every OTHER details; not that they were irrelevant or unimportant, but this obscured what was plain and simple.
My point... Kerry used lies about his military service to justify his military policy.
If that doesn't mark one as unfit to lead the Nation in a time of war, nothing does.
To be fair, I had already decided I was disgusted with Kerry, before the exposure of the Cambodia lies made it, in my opinion, inarguable that one SHOULD be disgusted with Kerry.
I wrote this during the convention, addressing Dean Esmay's "pledge" request:
I knew the Swiftboat guys were coming, but I remembered how they had been first dispatched away with by the media when their petition was published in newpapers ads.
I suppose I expected their book would be a sort of broad opinion piece, with personal and or emotional observations of kerry's bad character or resentments over his anti-war views. I did not expect a careful and calm expose of thirty odd years of cynical self-aggrandizing, fakery, puffery, and policy affecting lies....and the first online chapter laid it out for all to see.
(blogspot is messing up Html in titles. grrr)
The first and last semi-intelligible thing I had to say about the Swiftboat veterans new book, before my illness went full tilt boogie, was in Allah's comments on the fifth of August, when other folks were blogging about "skepticism" and how or ought maybe to back away or WAS backing away from the Swifties.
Kerry either did say (falsely)he was in Cambodia fighting Nixon's secret war, or he didn't.
Either he did or didn't change his story years down the road.
Both are documented. He did and he did.
That's enough for me, he's a fucking liar about his military service and unfit to be president.
The purple heart/hut burning/goat killing/8mm reenactments/bronze star/torture caused by his false testimony allegations hardly even matter to me now.
Christmas in Cambodia is enough, all by itself.
And that's a done deal.
Posted by SarahW at August 5, 2004 05:32 PM (Spelling and redundant phraseology corrected)
I watched the blog-world clouds roll by after that, watching as greater minds than my own began to notice that Kerry was caught dead to rights on this point; observing the Kerry camp stunned by a sudden boat rock, getting dumped like so many chocolate-chip cookie-eating Rassmans into the water. How they flailed! Their normally protective spin gear was pulling them down into the muddy deep.
Then I started to worry. The context surrounding his Cambodian misrepresentation tended to show him unfit to lead, after all, he was showing off, and deflecting criticism from himself, on a matter of US military defense policy with a self-aggrandizing *LIE* about his military service on the floor of the Senate.
But the swiftboat story had devolved into minute and murky discussion of every OTHER details; not that they were irrelevant or unimportant, but this obscured what was plain and simple.
My point... Kerry used lies about his military service to justify his military policy.
If that doesn't mark one as unfit to lead the Nation in a time of war, nothing does.
To be fair, I had already decided I was disgusted with Kerry, before the exposure of the Cambodia lies made it, in my opinion, inarguable that one SHOULD be disgusted with Kerry.
I wrote this during the convention, addressing Dean Esmay's "pledge" request:
If Kerry were ACTUALLY the Kerry he pretended to be in the not-too-distant past, I should not have lost much sleep over his election. (Though such feeling would be moot, as he would not have been nominated, nor have any chance in hell of winning, if he had not been willing to backstab the Nation for victory.) Similarly, I would not have cried myself to sleep the night of Joe Liebermans election.
Quite frankly I think John Kerry is unfit to lead. He's a liar, a poser, an opportunist lacking in nearly every moral and intellectual quality I value. . . .
Contemplating the election of such a man is painful to me, I want him exposed and defeated...prior to office.
I knew the Swiftboat guys were coming, but I remembered how they had been first dispatched away with by the media when their petition was published in newpapers ads.
I suppose I expected their book would be a sort of broad opinion piece, with personal and or emotional observations of kerry's bad character or resentments over his anti-war views. I did not expect a careful and calm expose of thirty odd years of cynical self-aggrandizing, fakery, puffery, and policy affecting lies....and the first online chapter laid it out for all to see.
Monday, August 23, 2004
Blog Convergence.
EVER since my sister gave me a copy of the "Gallery of Regrettable Food" a couple of years back, which led me to the website, which led me to the "institute of Official Cheer" goldmines , which when exhausted left me hungry enough to start reading the Bleat (blogs were heretofore an uninspiring oddity to me) and I became hooked, we've had a little joke around the house called the "Lileks Convergence Alert."
I suppose it's not so astounding that Lileks wouldeat brains
write about things my husband and I can relate to. After all, his age is roughly equidistant between that of Monsieur Merle and myself; with similar forces and concerns having shaped our sensibilities, it's natural that he would have familiar experiences and observations similar to our own. (Lilek's chief charm to me is his superior ability to articulate, in a just and amusing way, just what I would have wanted to say if I'd have thought to say it.)
Yet at times it seems as though there is an Jungian Zombie prescience afoot in his writing. Today, for example, I find a hornets nest in the playboat, narrowly missing stings because I have learned to pay attention to the Oracle.
That's just today. Synchronous obscure cultural references and/or mundane domestic events pop with some frequency into the Bleat ... it used to make me jump a little, now it's just a "Lileks convergence alert."
And with time the phrase has aquired a more general use in my house, now applied to all strange blog coincidences. I think Wired did an article on the phenom...I'll be looking for the link.
Yes the blogworld colludes. BLogs are always talking about the same things. I'm not talking about that.
I'm not talking phrases that make the rounds, or photoshop contests...
Michele has seen it happen. But then she has her own litte jungian muse. I screamed when I saw 42 coming, too, but when Michele illustrated the point, with a small graphic,
on Friday, the famous original was ripped from the walls of its museum home by Sunday
To borrow a catch phrase of an old friend of mine, "How do it know?"
It would be lame to trot out a half-hundred little odd coincidences,and also a lot of writing. I have to do laundry. But it might be fun to begin, a regular feature of
Lileks Convergance Alerts, reminding of the relationship between time and fime.
I suppose it's not so astounding that Lileks would
write about things my husband and I can relate to. After all, his age is roughly equidistant between that of Monsieur Merle and myself; with similar forces and concerns having shaped our sensibilities, it's natural that he would have familiar experiences and observations similar to our own. (Lilek's chief charm to me is his superior ability to articulate, in a just and amusing way, just what I would have wanted to say if I'd have thought to say it.)
Yet at times it seems as though there is an Jungian Zombie prescience afoot in his writing. Today, for example, I find a hornets nest in the playboat, narrowly missing stings because I have learned to pay attention to the Oracle.
That's just today. Synchronous obscure cultural references and/or mundane domestic events pop with some frequency into the Bleat ... it used to make me jump a little, now it's just a "Lileks convergence alert."
And with time the phrase has aquired a more general use in my house, now applied to all strange blog coincidences. I think Wired did an article on the phenom...I'll be looking for the link.
Yes the blogworld colludes. BLogs are always talking about the same things. I'm not talking about that.
I'm not talking phrases that make the rounds, or photoshop contests...
Michele has seen it happen. But then she has her own litte jungian muse. I screamed when I saw 42 coming, too, but when Michele illustrated the point, with a small graphic,
on Friday, the famous original was ripped from the walls of its museum home by Sunday
To borrow a catch phrase of an old friend of mine, "How do it know?"
It would be lame to trot out a half-hundred little odd coincidences,and also a lot of writing. I have to do laundry. But it might be fun to begin, a regular feature of
Lileks Convergance Alerts, reminding of the relationship between time and fime.
LIE
Husband and son are back, and so is the morning routine, which is both a relief and a misery. I don't really ENJOY keeping all hours , yet I still resent having to reign in the hypothalamus and give up "timeless" mode.
I find as soon as my usual zeitgebers -external time cues and constraints- are removed, I quickly derange into a chaotic infradian regimen, staying awake without reference to the rest of the world - reading into the dawn, sleeping for one or two hours, or six, or twelve. I miss meals, and when I eat them to refuel they are at odd hours with no predicable content. It's exhilarating but probably also deadly if kept up for more than a week or so. If I'm ever bacheloretted by fate, I think its an early grave for me.
I was doing a clean sweep of my son's room, which is in transition between "little kid" and "teen" years, and contains all the books, amusements, and other paraphanalia of both.
Oi. My son is still fond of plastic tranforming fiddley-bit action figures, but he is as undisciplined at managing their parts as I am about my hours when I am left to my own devices. I spent, therefore, a good deal of time shoveling them into plastic baggies for the teen to sort upon his return...but that's the easy part. The hard part is putting away his childhood.
I cleared the shelves of all traces of childhood , pop-ups and dinosaur books, the Suess and Captain underpants collections hogging shelf space all finally cleared out.
I packed away the stuffed pokemon toys, the wooden railway set, choked on accretions of dust from behind containers of long neglected puzzles and toys put away in earlier sweeps.... I was probably choked up on the dust...
In the closet, a Snuggli baby sling box. A breast pump. Just what your average teen-aged boy wants to find in the back of the closet!!!
I thought I might have another, you know. Another baby. Never did, and now if I do it will have three heads.
I've recently turned 42, and that's really sort of the iron curtain of reproduction for most women. A generation ago I would possibly already be sporting with my grandchildren. And now I guess, that's what I've got to look forward to. That and a few imminent root canals.
So anyway, I'm back to watching the morning news with my husband. DNC sent out an OH SO SINCERE operative to F&F this am.
With big blue eyes and a straight face, she told a flat lie. She said all of Kerry's medical records were on the Kerry website, that Kerry has kept his promise, because the Kerry campaign has released "everything available."
First, all the medical records are not on the site, and second, the Washington Post can get "everything available" to it, too. Just not everything. Because Kerry won't authorize the release of his records.
The Kerry campaign has made so many "mistakes", misattributing the military and non-military service of others ( Peck, Bob Kerrey)to John Kerry, that I am unlikely to trust them as a source of complete and unredacted records without a complete audit.
I find as soon as my usual zeitgebers -external time cues and constraints- are removed, I quickly derange into a chaotic infradian regimen, staying awake without reference to the rest of the world - reading into the dawn, sleeping for one or two hours, or six, or twelve. I miss meals, and when I eat them to refuel they are at odd hours with no predicable content. It's exhilarating but probably also deadly if kept up for more than a week or so. If I'm ever bacheloretted by fate, I think its an early grave for me.
I was doing a clean sweep of my son's room, which is in transition between "little kid" and "teen" years, and contains all the books, amusements, and other paraphanalia of both.
Oi. My son is still fond of plastic tranforming fiddley-bit action figures, but he is as undisciplined at managing their parts as I am about my hours when I am left to my own devices. I spent, therefore, a good deal of time shoveling them into plastic baggies for the teen to sort upon his return...but that's the easy part. The hard part is putting away his childhood.
I cleared the shelves of all traces of childhood , pop-ups and dinosaur books, the Suess and Captain underpants collections hogging shelf space all finally cleared out.
I packed away the stuffed pokemon toys, the wooden railway set, choked on accretions of dust from behind containers of long neglected puzzles and toys put away in earlier sweeps.... I was probably choked up on the dust...
In the closet, a Snuggli baby sling box. A breast pump. Just what your average teen-aged boy wants to find in the back of the closet!!!
I thought I might have another, you know. Another baby. Never did, and now if I do it will have three heads.
I've recently turned 42, and that's really sort of the iron curtain of reproduction for most women. A generation ago I would possibly already be sporting with my grandchildren. And now I guess, that's what I've got to look forward to. That and a few imminent root canals.
So anyway, I'm back to watching the morning news with my husband. DNC sent out an OH SO SINCERE operative to F&F this am.
With big blue eyes and a straight face, she told a flat lie. She said all of Kerry's medical records were on the Kerry website, that Kerry has kept his promise, because the Kerry campaign has released "everything available."
First, all the medical records are not on the site, and second, the Washington Post can get "everything available" to it, too. Just not everything. Because Kerry won't authorize the release of his records.
The Kerry campaign has made so many "mistakes", misattributing the military and non-military service of others ( Peck, Bob Kerrey)to John Kerry, that I am unlikely to trust them as a source of complete and unredacted records without a complete audit.
Friday, August 20, 2004
Busy clearing clutter today
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
High on Ringers lactate
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Tiger Beat
Donny? please
Bobby? fat
David? Delicate
What set my tweeny-bopper heart on fire?
Rawr.
Tell me where it hurts, babe'.
Here's why I hate my mother: I never got to hear Chad Everett sing.
My sister and I snuck downstairs to the family room to watch special guest star Chad Everett sing on the Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.
Of all the times for my mother to be on one of her unpredictable, rare and short-lived efforts to introduce some bedtime structure into her children's lives. 355 days out of the rest of that year, she didn't give a rats patootie. This one, single greatest, special irreplaceable night of Chad Everett talent, bed at 9:00.
We hid behind the Ethan Allen armchair, but we got busted.
Ain't no sunshine when Chad is Gone.
I was sure I was going to grow up and be both Josephine Gannon, M.D.,
AND Mrs. Chad F. Everett.
UPDATE: Hmmmm.
While I sighed at every snap of Joe Gannon's latex gloves, across town, my teen-aged, liscensed-to-drive Future lurked in the Wells family manse unaware of my designs
Pretty Darn Close, if you ask me. Only the profile is better.
Bobby? fat
David? Delicate
What set my tweeny-bopper heart on fire?
Rawr.
Tell me where it hurts, babe'.
Here's why I hate my mother: I never got to hear Chad Everett sing.
My sister and I snuck downstairs to the family room to watch special guest star Chad Everett sing on the Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.
Of all the times for my mother to be on one of her unpredictable, rare and short-lived efforts to introduce some bedtime structure into her children's lives. 355 days out of the rest of that year, she didn't give a rats patootie. This one, single greatest, special irreplaceable night of Chad Everett talent, bed at 9:00.
We hid behind the Ethan Allen armchair, but we got busted.
Ain't no sunshine when Chad is Gone.
I was sure I was going to grow up and be both Josephine Gannon, M.D.,
AND Mrs. Chad F. Everett.
UPDATE: Hmmmm.
While I sighed at every snap of Joe Gannon's latex gloves, across town, my teen-aged, liscensed-to-drive Future lurked in the Wells family manse unaware of my designs
Pretty Darn Close, if you ask me. Only the profile is better.
A Crummy Commercial?
Saturday, August 14, 2004
surgilation
Well, I'm starting to get some strength back, though I sent husband and son off to the beach without me. They left yesterday, a day early, to miss heavy weather HERE... it had looked as though nagshead would be relatively spared.
They don't pick up the keys to the place until the winds are expected to hit 80+; in a hotel (with wifi!) for now...
Isabel taught us to properly fear hurricane weather last fall, and I expect my husband to be sensible of danger, but I am wishing now they had decided to go down a day late..
I have lots of work to do around the house, but intend to start attempting to get back in the saddle here...
They don't pick up the keys to the place until the winds are expected to hit 80+; in a hotel (with wifi!) for now...
Isabel taught us to properly fear hurricane weather last fall, and I expect my husband to be sensible of danger, but I am wishing now they had decided to go down a day late..
I have lots of work to do around the house, but intend to start attempting to get back in the saddle here...
Friday, August 06, 2004
Sullivan whinge blogging
I rallied briefly but seem to be ill in a get-to-the-doctor way.
I'm weak and I'm shaking and in a bit of a fog, to understate the situation. I have an idea what's going on, but who the hell knows, I need bloodwork.
Not that my posts aren't light and fluffy most of the time anyway, but extra-Light posting will continue for a bit.
I'm weak and I'm shaking and in a bit of a fog, to understate the situation. I have an idea what's going on, but who the hell knows, I need bloodwork.
Not that my posts aren't light and fluffy most of the time anyway, but extra-Light posting will continue for a bit.
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
Imperious matron displays familiarity with vegetable preparation
That sinking feeling
An Heiress who sailed the Nantucket
has civility filling a bucket
When asked to explain
"antiaméricaines"
She politely tells one to fuck shuck it.
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
Too holodna for shkoladna
Monday, August 02, 2004
We will destroy you
Paint the Russkie
I ran across a black and white photograph of this general,
The CCCP now is no more, and The fluffy blue collie you have seen on these pages, ate (most of) the hat. Yet the Commissar can still aim his monacle at me, and I will do his bidding... Rawr!
PLease take him and paint him. Use the picture to make fun of other Russkies or just to play with...
Here is one attempt to colorize him..
The CCCP now is no more, and The fluffy blue collie you have seen on these pages, ate (most of) the hat. Yet the Commissar can still aim his monacle at me, and I will do his bidding... Rawr!
PLease take him and paint him. Use the picture to make fun of other Russkies or just to play with...
Here is one attempt to colorize him..
Sunday, August 01, 2004
Milli vanilli
