October 2007 archive

Send Mojo, Juju, Prayers and Happy Thoughts!

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3 Strikes=I’m Out!

I’m so frustrated…I’m all set to go to Boston this morning to protest, rain and all…

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Fine, I can deal with rain…I guess.  I think the paint on my “NO MORE WAR” sign is water proof, so it won’t run.
But I just got a call from the baby sitter, she is sick this morning.  Great no baby sitter for the kids.  I quickly call the MIL,
“Mom?  Can you take the kids for me today, please?” 
“Sorry, hun…I can’t.  I have to go visit two friends in the hospital.” 
Cool, she’s being charitable, I can’t compete with that.
“Thanks anyway Mom”
I can’t ask the kids to stand in the rain with me, really.  But….perhaps, it might work, we have good rain gear…
Strike One!

PKK Bush Ralston Lockheed Scandal Breaks Into Wapo!

Don Rumsfeld was charged with war-crimes today. Bushco’s connection to Mid-East terrorism and pork may be the next story to blow.

Wapo

Retired Air Force Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, a former NATO commander Bush appointed last year as his special envoy to work on the issue, left the job recently because of what several sources described as his frustration at the administration’s failure to devote serious attention to the problem. Ralston, vice chairman of an international consulting firm led by former defense secretary William S. Cohen, did not return several calls for comment.

There’s far more at stake…

Pony Party: Torment Edition

Went to the doctor for what is likely a minor problem. If it doesn’t go away I am to have some tests in a month or so.

Here is the kicker…. my small issue is related to caffeine intake and so I must at least HALF my caffeine consumption. He made me list all of my caffeine sources and laughed and squeezed my hand. All I can say is super duper fuckety fuck.

I am already calculating trade offs: I would rather give up sodas than coffee and tea. I already know water is good for me… sigh…

A Day in the Life of our Border Collie, Lucy

A few years ago, my wife and I needed assistance moving our homestead from the world of ideas to the material world. Neither of us grew up on a farm. Both of us had little homestead related hands-on experience. One could say that the first step had been taken years ago when my wife started researching this way of life. We had also gradually begun planning for our homestead, had written a family mission statement which included a homesteading way of life, had had children whose very natures demanded a farm life, and we had at last succeeded in moving to the country. Each of these actions got us moving in the direction of the homestead but we weren’t sure how to take the next concrete step. Shortly after moving to our own place in the country, one particular event put us past the point of no return and that was when our Border Collie, Lucy, came to live with us. She was our first farm animal. With each additional animal we became more and more like homesteaders but it all started with Lucy.

Cross posted at Pockets of the Future and dkos

Docudharma Times Saturday Oct. 27

This is an Open Thread: Speak To Me



USA

‘I Don’t Think This Place Is Worth Another Soldier’s Life’

Oct. 26 Their line of tan Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles creeps through another Baghdad afternoon. At this pace, an excruciating slowness, they strain to see everything, hoping the next manhole cover, the next rusted barrel, does not hide another bomb. A few bullets pass overhead, but they don’t worry much about those.


“I hate this road,” someone says over the radio.

They stop, look around. The streets of Sadiyah are deserted again. To the right, power lines slump down into the dirt. To the left, what was a soccer field is now a pasture of trash, combusting and smoking in the sun. Packs of skinny wild dogs trot past walls painted with slogans of sectarian hate.

Asian News For The Week Of October 22

Cats: Good or Evil?

I’m all doped up on pain meds, so  I am not commenting much. But since I am all doped up on pain meds…..and surfing the toobz….seeing these videos back to back brought up the eternal question in the title.

“I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance — a sharp, vindictive glance.” — James Thurber

“I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.”
– Hippolyte Taine

“A cat is more intelligent than people believe, and can be taught any crime.”
-Mark Twain Notebook, 1895

“I love cats because I love my home and after a while they become its visible soul.”
– Jean Cocteau

“There is, incidentally, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person.”
– Dan Greenberg

Sky News EuroReport: Secret Gore-Sarkozy Negotiations

crossposted at Daily Kos and Truth & Progress

A few minutes ago, I received a phone call from Paris from an old grad school friend of mine who said that Sky News just broadcast a report about secret negotiations between Al Gore and Nicholas Sarkozy over Gore’s political future.

Given its stellar record, Sky is indeed the gold standard in news reporting — particularly in Europe.  Its ability to understand American politics and popular culture is unparalleled.  I am fully aware that many of you are diehard fans of Sky News and are convinced that it represents the best there is in television journalism.  I am in awe of your political acumen and I salute you for knowing what’s important and what’s fluff on the airwaves.  Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket 

As for me, though I’m always skeptical of any Murdoch-owned news outfit, news of these negotiations intrigued me.

Funkalicious Friday: Quicksilver Messenger Service

It was Valente who organized the group.I can remember everything Dino said. We were all going to have wireless guitars. We were going to have leather jackets made with hooks that we could hook these wireless instruments right into. And we were gonna have these chicks, backup rhythm sections that were gonna dress like American Indians with real short little dresses on and they were gonna have tambourines and the clappers in the tambourines were going to be silver coins. And I’m sitting there going, “This guy is gonna happen and we’re gonna set the world on its ear.”

Friday Night at Eight: Jewish Humor, The Wisdom of Chelm, and Bloggers

There’s a book I’ve read over and over since I was a child, so many times that I’ve memorized most of its stories.  My father and brothers also knew these stories and we’d often use them to illustrate whatever conversation we were having.

The book is entitled A Treasury of Jewish Folklore, edited by Nathan Ausubel.  It was published in 1948.

The stories are great, but Ausubel’s introduction to each section is wonderful, I think.

So I’m thinking about some of the more absurd arguments all of us get into every now and then — no, not flamewars, just minutiae unto absurdity at times, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin kind of stuff.  And I thought about the town of Chelm and the stories about the folks there.

Before I get to the stories, I’d like to share part of Ausubel’s introduction to the section of the book entitled “The Human Comedy:”

The overtones of satire, irony and quip we hear even in the Old Testament.  For example, there is the gay mockery of the Prophet Elijah as he listens to the idol-worshipping soothsayers of Baal, invoking their god morning, noon and night:  “O Baal, hear us!”  To this, the rational-minded Elijah remarks tauntingly: “Cry ye louder, for he is a god; he is perhaps talking or walking, or he is on a journey or peradventure he sleepeth and must be awaked.”

We also find satire and irony in the Prophets, especially in the writings of Amos and Isaiah.  With matchless skill they lay bare the weaknesses and the follies of their contemporaries.  They satirize the hypocrite, the miser, the skinflint, the profligate, the coquette, the self-satisfied and the self-righteous.  It is from this acid portraiture that much of Jewish folklore found its inspiration and themes.  The fables, parables, anecdotes and sayings in the Talmud and Midrash, as the reader of this book will find out for himself, were rich in those very characteristics with which we associate Jewish humor today.

The liveliness and the many-sidedness of Jewish humor make it possible for everyone to find in it that which will suit his taste.  It is a treasury in which lies stored up three thousand years of a people’s laughter.  Its variety recalls the words of Bar-Hebraeus, the Thirteenth Century Syrian-Jewish folklorist, in his introduction to his Laughable Stories: “And let this book be a devoted friend to the reader, whether he be Muslim, Jew, or Aramean, or a man belonging to a foreign country or nation.  And let the man who is learned, I mean to say the man who hath a bright understanding, and the man that babbleth conceitedly even though he drives everyone mad, and also every other man, choose what is best for himself.  And let each pluck the flowers that please him.  In this way the book will succeed in bringing together the things which are alike, each to the other.”

So onward … to the town of Chelm, and why these particular stories remind me of the kinds of knots we can tie ourselves into when it comes to arguing the finer points of any issue.

Bears for Kucinich!

Even bears know that Dennis is the right man for the job!  What you don’t believe me?  Well…just watch this!

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