Fables of the reconstruction

Perfectly Circular

People who believe they are doomed have a way of making it come true.

All in All That's All We Are

If I get a terminal illness, instead of wasting away in a bed while my loved ones pace around the house, I would very much prefer to have a nice round of farewells, followed by everyone leaving the room so I can take some compound that will end it.  If that is not doable, I am buying a fucking gun.

This sucks.

Practice, Practice

It wasn't abundantly clear from that last post, but no, I am not dying; someone else is.  I am in a chain hotel in a little New England town, hoping to see my friend at least one more time in the morning but staying dressed in case I get the call to rush to their house in the middle of the night.  But at some point, for the second time in less than 2 years, I get to sit next to the bed of someone I care about a lot and watch their bodies twitch and shake like an old windup toy that no one knows how to fix, until the spring gives out.  Why?  Doesn't anybody know how to die suddenly anymore? 

Worse, this time, it's someone my own age.

Better, this time, because I learned at least two things from when my dad died:

1. Hope is stressful, so stop it.   If you keep thinking there is a possibility that the person could make it if, say, one more thing were tried, or another doctor were consulted, or your favorite good luck charm stroked, then you're just going to run yourself ragged trying to beat the odds. Plus, it annoys the people around you who know better.  Forget it.  When they send the patient home with hospice and a big bottle of morphine, the odds are zero.  Relax and try not to think too much. 

2. No one is going to hand you a medal for trying to stay sober through the experience.  I recommend rum and vodka because you can almost always find something to mix them with.  A little tot of the morphine is a nice way to take the edge off, too.  Just don't guzzle the shit, Hunter Thompson.

He Kindly Stopped For Me

I think I figured it out.

(Has this been said before?)

Death isn't a specter wrapped in a black cowl. 

Death is an annoying guy at a party, who only knows one joke, and keeps trying to tell it to you.

And he sucks at it.

"And then this one guy, uh, wait, let me start over. These two guys walk in and ... wait." 

And you are trying to get away from him all night and talk to your friends and you have your eye on that one cute person ...

(Stop me if you have heard this one before.)

then he gets you in a corner and bawls the punchline in your face.  He cracks himself up.

And then the party is over.

there, there

We'll leave behind us iron scrap
and the hollow, mocking laugh of generations

-Tadeusz Borowski, "A Song", Wherever the Earth, 1942

in pitch dark i go walking in your landscape.
broken branches trip me as i speak.
just 'cause you feel it doesn't mean it's there.
just 'cause you feel it doesn't mean it's there.

there's always a siren singing you to shipwreck.
(don't reach out, don't reach out)
steer away from these rocks we'd be a walking disaster.
(don't reach out, don't reach out)

just 'cause you feel it doesn't mean it's there.
(someone on your shoulder)
just 'cause you feel it doesn't mean it's there.
(someone on your shoulder)

there there

why so green
and lonely?
lonely.
lonely.
heaven sent you
to me.
to me.
to me.

we are accidents
waiting waiting
to happen.

we are accidents
waiting waiting
to happen.

- Radiohead, "there, there", Hail to the Thief, 2003

Someone Needs a Blog

The "Impeach Bush" Van.

ACLU and CFR Sue to Stop Illegal Wiretaps

NYTimes:

Two leading civil rights groups plan to file lawsuits Tuesday against the Bush administration over its domestic spying program ....

...

[The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights] are seeking to have the courts order an immediate end to the program, which the groups say is illegal and unconstitutional.

...

The lawsuits seek to answer one of the major questions surrounding the eavesdropping program: has it been used solely to single out the international phone calls and e-mail messages of people with known links to Al Qaeda, as President Bush and his most senior advisers have maintained, or has it been abused in ways that civil rights advocates say could hark back to the political spying abuses of the 1960's and 70's?

...

One of the A.C.L.U. plaintiffs [is] Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute . . . .

Also named as plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit are the journalist Christopher Hitchens, who has written in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; Barnett R. Rubin, a scholar at New York University who works in international relations; Tara McKelvey, a senior editor at The American Prospect; the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers; Greenpeace, the environmental advocacy group; and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country's largest Islamic advocacy group.

Emphasis supplied.  A nice list of plaintiffs, from across the spectrum. 

If you have not done so already, go donate to the ACLU and the CCR right now.  No, really.  RIGHT NOW. 

A City Scene/I Can't Explain

Geeking Out

Legends in Their Own Minds

A bunch of guys of Middle Eastern descent (not Latino mistaken for Arab, as usual) walk into a Walmart and buy dozens of prepaid cell phones.  What do you assume is happening?  Michelle Malkin assumes they're terrorists who are buying up detonators for bombs a la Madrid or communication tools for a mass attack.  Me?  I assume they are owners of convenience stores who can get inventory cheaper at Walmart than from their own suppliers sometimes, and who send in lots of people to get around the per-person sale limits.  Also watch for Asian people buying large numbers of six-packs of Coke in bottles when they go on sale at the local grocery store; they break them up and sell the bottles individually for $1 or $1.25.  Why do you think stuff often says "Not labeled for individual resale" a lot in poor-neighborhood convenience stores?

Ohhhhhh.  It's because most Republicans would shit their pants if they were in a poor neighborhood, and wouldn't go into a run-down no-name convenience store run by foreigners if their lives depended on it.  They'd rather assume the worst about the swarthy people and fantasize that they will be the ones who will shout "Aha!" while in line at Target and head off the next 9/11.  Everyone dreams of being a hero, but only some of us wake up.

Sometimes I think we could make a dramatic improvement in this country if we gave random conservatives paid six-month internships to reality.

Lifehacker: The Single Most Useful Blog Out There

If you are the kind of person who benefits from hints and tips on how to get things done or get them done more efficiently, lifehacker is an absolute wealth of information you can use.

That is all.

Some Happy TV

I love this clip.  I have it on a loop while I am working. 

Wolf Blitzer:         Should Democrats who took money from Jack Abramoff, who's now pleaded guilty to, uh, bribery charges among other charges, a Republican lobbyist in Washington, should the Democrats who took money from him give that money to charity or give it back.

Howard Dean:      There are no Democrats who took money from Jack Abramoff, not one, not one single Democrat.  Every person named in this scandal is a Republican, every person under investigation is a Republican, every person indicted is a Republican.  This is a Republican finance camp ... scandal.  There is no evidence that Jack Abramoff ever gave any Democrat any money, and we've looked through all those FEC reports to make sure that's true.

"We've looked through all those FEC reports to make sure that's true."  What have you been doing there at CNN, Wolf?

Blitzer:        [Almost 3 seconds of dead air.]  But there ... there ... but through various Abramoff-related organizations and outfits, a bunch of Democrats did take money that, uh, presumably originated with Jack Abramoff.

Dean:        That's not true either. There's no evidence for that either.   There is no evidence ---

Blitzer:        What about Senator ... what about ... what about Senator Byron Dorgan?

Dean:         Senator Byron Dorgan and some others took money from Indian tribes. They're not agents of Jack Abramoff. There's no evidence that I've seen that Jack Abramoff directed any contributions to Democrats. I know the Republican National Committee would like to get the Democrats involved in this. They're scared. They should be scared. They haven't told the truth. They have misled the American people. And now it appears they're stealing from Indian tribes. The Democrats are not involved in this.

Blitzer:          [Almost 3 seconds of dead air, then a sigh.] Unfortunately Mr. Chairman, we got to leave it right there.  Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic Party, always speaking out bluntly, candidly.

Iraq is a Microcosm of the Rightwing "War on Terror"

Washingtonpost.com:

The Army is full of soldiers showing qualities such as patriotism, duty, passion and talent, writes [British Brig. Nigel] Aylwin-Foster [this week in the U.S. Army magazine Military Review], whose rank is equivalent to a U.S. one-star general. "Yet," he continues, "it seemed weighed down by bureaucracy, a stiflingly hierarchical outlook, a predisposition to offensive operations, and a sense that duty required all issues to be confronted head-on."

Those traits reflect the Army's traditional focus on conventional state-on-state wars and are seen by some experts as less appropriate for counterinsurgency, which they say requires patience, cultural understanding and a willingness to use innovative and counterintuitive approaches, such as employing only the minimal amount of force necessary. In counterinsurgency campaigns, Aylwin-Foster argues, "the quick solution is often the wrong one."

He said he found that an intense pressure to conform and overcentralized decision making slowed the Army's operations in Iraq, giving the enemy time to understand and respond to U.S. moves. And the Army's can-do spirit, he wrote, encouraged a "damaging optimism" that interfered with realistic assessments of the situation in Iraq.

"Such an ethos is unhelpful if it discourages junior commanders from reporting unwelcome news up the chain of command," Aylwin-Foster says. A pervasive sense of righteousness or moral outrage, he adds, further distorted military judgments, especially in the handling of fighting in Fallujah.

Similarly, the Bush administration has mishandled the entire "Global War on Terror" (even down to the name).   Bush responded as if 9/11 were Pearl Harbor.  The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was a military attack on a military target with a military objective, to knock the American Navy out of the Pacific for a year while the Japanese consolidated their hold on the territory they had taken.  (The attack failed to achieve its objective, by the way.)  Just trying to frame 9/11 in those terms shows how ridiculous it is.  So what was the purpose of the 9/11 attack?

The conflict we are in is political, not military.  Similarly, Iraq counter-insurgency has a strong political element.  But neither the Bush administration nor, apparently, the U.S. Army has the intelligence or training to understand a war in which the task is not to kill as many enemy soldiers as possible every day.  Because of that, they are playing right into the enemy's hands.  The 9/11 attack was a surprise raid in a political struggle, the objective of which was to topple the government of Saudi Arabia.  So far, that hasn't happened.   But the Bush administration has ceded far too much ground to our adversaries pursuing an unimaginative, closeminded strategy and, worse, doesn't even realize how badly things are going.

Altmouse

Ha hahahahahahaha. *snrt*

But where's the fancy car????

Clueless and Callous

I subscribe to a few right-wing blog feeds.  Here's a representative recent post from one:

Man, Dick Clark sounds awful. What happened to him?

Nope, not joking.

The Delight of Parapraxis.

Amy's Orgasmic Salsa.

Everyone Loves Devo. Everyone.

So sayeth Cyn.