Owing money all over town...

I was watching The Big Lebowski on cable just now, and I checked the title description in the little digital cable menu. I don't know, I like to read the descriptions. It's always interesting to see what some low level studio flack thought would be a good twenty-word summation. Well, as many television coniseurs (I certainly mispelled that word) will know, they rate the movies with stars--out of four.
Which sets up the obvious question: how many did Lebowski get? Listen to this bullshit: two, Lebowski got two goddamn stars. That is crap, utter crap!

UPDATE: Igby Goes Down, also only two. Stripes got three, so that's cool. But F-ing Dragon Lord got three. And while MacArthur got three, I just don't think it deserves them. Whoever's giving out the stars is clearly drunk. And why is Igby on Lifetime? It's about a priviledged Manhattan boy who tries to do it with Claire Danes, not exactly empowering the sisterhood.

UPDATE: The Wedding Singer got three! That was a piece of crap compared to Lebowski. And Hope Floats got two...that is clearly a one-star picture--it's not even so bad it's good, it has Sandra Bullock, I mean, damn! Drunken Star-Man has struck again (this looks like a job for the Dynamic Duo!--sorry.)

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Two great tasting things that taste great together

The law and Shakespeare. More can be found, where else, McSweeney's.

RESTRAINT OF TRADE
Shylock v. Antonio
Plaintiff's First Interrogatories

Interrogatory No. 4: If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

Answer: Defendant objects to Interrogatory No. 4 on the ground that whether pricking, tickling, poisoning, or wronging is the proximate cause of bleeding, laughing, death, or the seeking of revenge, respectively, can only be established through expert testimony. Because Plaintiff has failed to timely disclose expert(s) and submit expert reports covering these subjects pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26, Plaintiff should be barred from presenting evidence on these points, and Defendant has no obligation to respond to this interrogatory. Subject to and without waiving this objection, Defendant denies that he pricked, tickled, poisoned or in any way wronged Plaintiff. Defendant further states that it has not yet determined who, if anyone, it intends to use as expert witnesses, but reserves the right to designate expert(s) in accordance with Rule 26.

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There's a great yellow dragon in the sky! And it burns!

So the sun has returned after a few days of rain, and I will be on the balcony reading and drinking tea...as is my wont. But the man in the box says that the rains shall return as early as tomorrow. I hate the man in the box, and I hate the sky.

This sort of weather is why I am not a partisan of the Mid-West. Indeed, I remain a champion of my native land, the Rocky Mountain West and Southwest of this great nation; which land is superior in all respects to its counterparts to the east. Those who wish to debate the relative merits of the eastern US are encouraged to do so...but you will not prevail.

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I saw Revenge of the Sith...

...meh.

It should be noted that the real downer here is that Darth Vader, née Anakin Skywalker, is a whiney little cuss, just as Luke Skywalker before (after?) him.

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Dead Europeans

Today's Dead European: Gustav Mahler


I hate you...so very, very much Gustav Mahler

I do not like Gustav Mahler. He is very boring. His music is boring, his very gaze is death to fun and adventure. His 3rd symphony is about the longest you are ever likely to hear, and lenght does not become it. This is one boring dead European.

So imagine my suprise when I purchased Das Lied von der Erde at the Best Buy the other day. Suprise because that particular peice of choral work was written by Captain Excitement up there himself. I figured, what the hell, I've never heard this maybe it will be good, perhaps he makes up in opera what he lacks in every other respect. Well, he doesn't. However, the arrangement is old-fashioned so there is some joy in hearing it done like the soundtrack to an Errol Flynn movie, instead of the smooth-as-thunder treatment it would no doubt get today. So there you are: Mahler--when you want music, but nothing you will really get in to or care about at all.

UPDATE: I was looking into him and it turns out he was really into Wagner. That seems about right.

UPDATE: Excuse me, not opera, "song-cycle." Snobby, boring German bastard.

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They want me to pay for this?

So the NY Times wants to charge for access to their op-ed, but not their news. Fine with me, their op-ed page is full of crap and I only read it expecting to find a bunch of the proverbial fish-wrapping.

John Tierney writes the most muddled and silly op-ed article the New York Times has published in a while...and this paper has Maureen Dowd.

So, he sets off to write a column about how the new Star Wars movie has an important bi-partisan lesson for us all. That lesson: conservative policies are better. Also, he reduces Adam Smith to a couple of sound bites that endorse completely free markets with no social conditions or regulation at all, but conservative hacks have been doing this for 200 years. Also, he implies that charity and patriotism are opposing political values. Oh, oh, and he says that the Chancellor Palpitine character is on to something when he recognizes the emptiness of altruism, and then Tierney turns around and says that the same character was a bad guy largely through his exhortations to altruism. And, he makes a mash of some sort of anthropological point about the transition from hunter-gatherers to modern society and how this means that our old instincts to be good are out-dated...it's really silly and I wnat a moritorium on people using evolutionary justifications for their contemporary foibles.

Look, Tierney, you don't want to have to be nice to people outside your family. I get it. That's what this is all about, I know. Teasing out all the conflicts in your little column would take to much time, so let's jsut be blunt. You are made uncomfortable by the conflict between an instinct to be nice and charitable, and your conscious abhorrence of anything that smacks of panty-waisted pinko-ism. Why don't you come out and say it? Why go around dirtying up the reputations of perfectly good people like Smith and Tocqueville with your confused mis-reading? It's alright--there, there--it was a good try, including Star Wars as if you've seen the movie instead of just read the write up in National Review.

But you threw in your hat when you went with that Matt Ridley explanation of the evolution of altruism in human nature. You know why...because Ridley is not a social scientist and does not understand basic things about social science...like how we don't organize theses around ideas like "the noble savage", and it isn't polite to insist that private property rights are the sine qua non of successful civilization since modern property rights as we understand them have only existed for a couple of centuries. And he shouldn't have told you that altruism simply isn't practical because that ignores the web of practical altruism (like SS, and government grants for research) that holds our society together well outside the bonds of kin. Bad scholarship makes for bad op-ed. Ask your colleague Davy down in D.C.

(also, way off-topic, but if David Brooks can write for a New York newspaper while living in D.C., then why can't he move to one of his beloved red-states? And not NoVa, I mean for real, like Amarillo, Texas or Boise, Idaho.)

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Seriously...

Fuck this mess. I want out, and I want out now. I give exactly two shits about the realpolitik here, it's gone too far and now we are done. Fuck, shit, piss, goddammit, cocksuker! I'm pissed. And I want out.

At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.

"Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.

Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.

God. Damn. It. All.

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Congratulations Oliver and Kristen 

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Arizona, Weddings, and Everything

This is day four of Arizona odyssey...and I am very happy. There is nothing like 95 degree heat to clear the mind and rejuvinate the soul. And wonderful wedding yesterday was surely the highlight.

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Yes, you descended from apes, live with it.

I'm going to say right of the top that this post can't possibly say everything...there will be holes, I apologize.

So Kansas, which is full of idiots (hey, you like Genesis, I like unfair generalizations), is having hearings about whether or not to teach alternatives to evolution in science class rooms. Of course, we should whole heartedly support such a move.

I say this for three reasons: 1) I like my crazies stupid, so go ahead an make sure that fundamentalists cannot become doctors or scientists; 2) this will open the door to alternatives to algebra in the math class and alternatives to punctuating sentences in language arts class--which of course are both also things that developed after the Bible was written and thus must not be true because otherwise the Bible would have included them and are you calling God a liar?; and 3) I'm kidding, of course we should teach evolution in science class room if only because we already do and it has the added benefit of actually being right.

Of course I am pretty well invested in the theory of evolution since I devoted a considerable amount of time in the past to obtaining a baccalaureate in Anthropology. If by "pretty well invested" you mean expertly educated and fully equiped to fend off any ignorant statement that "it's just a theory". In fact, I will not debate people who say that it's only a theory since that shows an extremely low threshhold of understanding of what science is and how it works. But I digress.

The thing is that religious values really have no place in the public classroom, except where they overlap with civic values, which is actually pretty often. But the whole point is to educate and indoctrinate into the civic religion of American-ness, and that involves science and math and social studies and language arts and a little bit of gym and art so they stay creative and not fatties because the world needs movie stars too. If you want to say, "I don't believe that evolution is true and I prefer the story in the first book of the Bible," well my friend, you go right on and hold your head high. But you got to teach your kids that on your own time. It is emphatically not the provence of the public schools to teach your kids anythig of the sort...that's what parenting is for.

And to the woman in the article who says that America was founded on Chrisitianity and not science: Look, Christianity was big, it's actually even bigger now, but the entire promise of the Enlightenment was to inject scientific rationality into every aspect of society. So really, America was founded on science as much as religion. This is, in fact the subject of innumerable books, read one. Many more of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constituion were men of science than clergy.

So angry...

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Dead Frenchmen...The Saga Continues

Don't you judge me, Georges Braque...you have no right!

Today's Dead Frenchman goes by the name of Georges Braque. M. Braque was one of the founders of cubism and was of course vastly overshadowed by Picasso, who was a real dick about it. Me, I like Braque more than Picasso, who's work is less rewarding after long study, and it's a real shame that Braque's work has been largely overlooked by the general public. Also, Braque had the good sense to avoid appearing in public in tight t-shirts and a neckercheif...neither was he portrayed by Anthony Hopkins, (whose appearance as Pablo Picasso on film acheived the dreaded synthesis of Spaniard and Welshman...widely acknowledged as the deadliest combination known ever since Llewellyn Obregon-Sanchez stormed the gates of heaven itself with a muzzle-loader hell bent on assassinating God.)

Braque on the other hand would become so well respected that the Louvre did an exhibition of his work in 1961...the first ever exhibition of a living artist at that museum.

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When The President Talks to God

Sweet Jebus...check this out. Post haste. Go. Now.

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The New Frontier

The following is a speech excerpted in the last issue of the DC: The New Frontier comic book series:

But I think the American people expect more from us than cries of indignation and attack. The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high — to permit the customary passions of political debate. We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future.

Today our concern must be with that future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do...

Abroad, the balance of power is shifting. There are new and more terrible weapons — new and uncertain nations-new pressures of population and deprivation. One-third of the world, it has been said, may be free-but one-third is the victim of cruel repression-and the other one-third is rocked by the pangs of poverty, hunger and envy. More energy is released by the awakening of these new nations than by the fission of the atom itself...

The world has been close to war before — but now man, who has survived all previous threats to his existence, has taken into his mortal hands the power to exterminate the entire species some seven times over...

An urban population revolution has overcrowded our schools, cluttered up our suburbs, and increased the squalor of our slums.

A peaceful revolution for human rights demanding an end to racial discrimination in all parts of our community life has strained at the leashes imposed by timid Executive leadership.

A medical revolution has extended the life of our elder citizens without providing the dignity and security those later years deserve. And a revolution of automation finds mines and mills of America, or their training or their need to pay the family doctorm, grocer and landlord.

There has also been a change — a slippage — in our intellectual and moral strength Seven lean years of drouth and famine have withered the field of ideas. Blight has descended on our regulatory agencies-and a dry rot, beginning in Washington, is seeping into every corner of America — in the payola mentality, the expense account way of life, the confusion between what is legal and what is right. Too many Americans have lost their way, their will and their sense of historic purpose...

For I stand tonight facing west on what was once the last frontier. From the lands that stretch 3,000 miles behind me, the pioneers of old gave up their safety, their comfort and sometimes their lives to build a new worid here in the West.

They were not the captives of their own doubts, the prisoners of their own price tags. Their motto was not "every man for himself" — but "all for the common cause." They were determined to make that new world strong and free, to over,come its hazards and its hardships, to conquer the enemies that threatened from without and within.

Today some would say that those struggles are all overthat all the horizons have been explored-that all the battles have been won — that there is no longer an American frontier...

But the New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises, it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, butwhat I intend to ask of them. It appeals to their pride, not their pocketbook — it holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security.

But I tell you the New Frontier is here, whether we seek it or not. Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus...

I am asking each of you to be new pioneers on that New Frontier. My call is to the young in heart, regardless of age-to the stout in spirit, regardless of party-to all who respond to the scriptural call:

"Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed."

For courage-not complacence is our need today — leadership — not salesmanship. And the only valid test of leadership is the ability to lead, and lead vigorously....

Can a nation organized and governed such as ours endure? That is the real question. Have we the nerve and the will? Can we carry through in an age where we will witness not only new breakthroughs in weapons of destruction-but also a race for mastery of the sky and the rain, the ocean and the tides, the far side of space and the inside of men's minds?

Are we up to the task? Are we equal to the challenge? Are we, willing to match the Russian sacrifice of the present for the future? Or must we sacrifice our future in order to enjoy the present?

That is the question of the New Frontier. That is the choice our nation must make-a choice that lies not merely between two men or two parties, but between the public interest and private comfort-between national greatness and national decline-between the fresh air of progress and the stale, dank atmosphere of "normalcy" — between determined dedication and creeping mediocrity.

All mankind waits upon our decision. A whole world looks to see what we will do. We cannot fail their trust; we cannot fail to try.

ACCEPTANCE ADDRESS

By JOHN F. KENNEDY, Senator from Massachusetts

Delivered to the Democratic National Convention, Los Angeles, California, July 15, 1960

Why, oh why, don't leaders speak like this anymore?

I have begun to think that when I think that I don't know the answer to a question the fact is that I do know the answer, but I just don't like it so I ignore it. Maybe I know the answer, and so do you, to the above question I posed, semi-rhetorically. Maybe, the answer is that leaders do talk like that, it's just that we don't have any for-reals anymore. I hope that I just don't the answer though.

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We all knew

But now there's proof. Apparently the admin was going to invade long before they thought up a justification. Incidentally, watching CNN, nothing about this.
But we got wall to wall about that runaway bride in Georgia. How not new and not exciting is that story? There was actually a movie called Runaway Bride starring an actress from Georgia about ten years ago.

And now I weep.

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President Bush is a good man with a kind heart.

Yes, you read the title correctly. I furmly believe this to be true. Which is, obviously, why he must be stopped.

So, having seen both the President's press conference Thursday and the First Lady's comic turn at the press dinner last night I've come to a conclusion. I do not hate the Bushes, but I fear them. And thing of it is, that's because I think that they are genuinely nice people. The problem, of course, with genuinely nice people, is that they are the purest force for destruction on this little blue planet of ours. As we whizz about the sun at breakneck speed, they plot and plan to make our lives better and like meddling aunts there intentions are pure while their path of destruction is red with fresh meat and the general produce of slaughter. Hurry, go read a Graham Greene book and you'll see what I mean. His pages are littered with the corpese of men who wanted only to do something true and good, and their victims. But I want a serious son-of-a-bitch in the Oval Office, not an evil bastard like Nixon, but someone who can get things done at the expense of ideology, not get ideological at the expense of accomplishment. Because some serious stuff needs a doin' these days.

The President's pronouncements on Social Security are BS, but the thing is, watching him, I think he buys it. And not in a self-deluded cult leader drinks his own kool-aid kind of way. But I think that he believes that he's honestly helping the poor and middle-class, not slashing their benefits and destroying their financial security in old age. It's Cheney and Rumsfeld and their ilk that know that they're feeding us poison, but don't care because they want our inheretance. Bush thinks it's an elixir of life.

And while he fumbles along, content--as he appears to have been his entire life--not to ask too many questions about the world, thousands die because the President really stil believes that Saddam had weapons. His advisers had him switch rthetoric and play down the weapons justification, but it's like he's in on the big-boy thinking so he likes it. "George," they said, "Of course Saddam had weapons, but the damned media just won't believe us despite our truth telling hearts so we're going to switch rhetoric as say it was about spreading freedom all along, but you understand that we have to do this, so we can help more people." The President is not some cynical manipulator, he really thinks he's doing the best that any President has ever done, but his endearing, puppy-esque desire to do please and do well is dangerous in the mot powerful man on the planet...out fragile little blue planet.

Likewise with the First Lady, Laura Bush. She seems to be an honestly good hearted and intelligent woman. And she was funny last night, really. But the subtext of the jokes was chilling, George appears to be a distant, self-absorbed (no absorbed with the duties of the office), rat of a husband. And he is apparantly not really much of a cowboy, kind of an ignoramous, and favors simplistic and destructive courses of action which is why he gets along with Rumsfeld and Cheney. Ha, ha, ha, stop, your killing me!

No seriously, please stop, you are killing me.


UPDATE: It seems that some are confused. Sadly, much like the Bush administration itself, my contentious commenter doesn't seem to appreciate nuance or language skills. (Oooo...a contentious comment, it's like I'm a real blogger. Heeeeee!) First off, the kind heart thing was supposed to be just a bit snarky, I honestly don't believe that anyone really has a "kind heart" like that, at least nobody in politics--also, I snarked immediately after the opening contention. Second. Dude, he's so much worse that a cynical manipulator, he's a goddamn true believer and that sucks because those people are nuts. I didn't fall for anything...of course Laura's bit was a ploy to distract from the Tom DeLay/Iraqi insurgency nightmare that Bush has brought down upon our heads. I thought my overall very low opinion of the performance was communicated nicely when I implied her complicity in murder in the very last line. And I think that everyone knows that these two are real asshats, but they just aren't crazy-ass Dr. Mengele style evil. They just aren't...but Rummy, that man's soul is blacker than the inky deeps of the great wide waters themselves.

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Cafe Felix

...is my new favorite place. The coffee is the best so far in Ann Arbor and I enjoy a nice crepe and nicoise as much as the next guy.

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The Red Headed Stranger can't mosey outside Austin no more

Again, I don't want to get too politicky with the blog, I like the politics but it would be silly to compete with the giants of the blog world. I would merely be repeating the much better commentary of others. But once again some dub-ass state legislature is messing with the culture and I will have nones of it!
The damn Texas State Legislature (the "lege" they call it down there) wants to shut down a proposed bill to name a stretch of highway outside of Austin after the man, the myth, the legend, Mr. Willie Nelson.



Why? Why would Texans want to thwart the recognition of Willie Nelson? Well, silly goose, because Willie Nelson is not a Republican, and he drinks. I shit you not.

You see, naming shit after Ronald Reagan is okay because he is not a partisan figure, but what reasonable person can think of Willie Nelson without a deep political debate opening up. After all, it's not like Mr. Nelson is a famous local figure who is extremely popular in Austin...oh, wait.
And the two guys opposing the bill are from San Antonio...the guy proposing he bill is from Austin, so it's not even a local outcry against Nelson. It's one of my problems with the crazies...everything is political to them. Phillip Roth writes a book about an alternate history anti-semitic America where FDR isn't elected and we don't stop Hitler, fine that's political. And yet they go try to judge the politics on the art saying, in a backhanded way, that it just isn't a very good book. It's Phillip Roth, his bad books are better than most people's good books. Republican Clint Eastwood makes a movie that is an attempt to come to grips with ideas about family, loyalty and honor and the crazies go bat-shit insane about it because something happens (euthanasia) that they don't like. They competely ignore context, art, discourse, because everything must be 100% crazy-ass approved. It's the opposite of the Phillip Roth situation, they criticize the politics ignoring the art. in both situations though, the goal is clear: saying things in art that are not conservative is wrong. Well, that's just not true. And anyone who thinks that political balance or conservative voices are necessary for thriving vital art is a douchebag. There are no political requirements you Soviet-style asshats.

Serious people with some modicum of taste and sense do not do this. Not with arts and humanities anyway. Langston Hughes supported Stalin there for a couple years in the '30s, but I don't much care because he was a really, really good writer. Igor Stravisnky was very nearly a fascist, but I don't care because we all know how damn good Rite of Spring is. Now, I would not support Igor Stravinsky for office--were he not dead--because I make it a practice not to vote for fascists. Do we inquire into these things to see what moves the artist, how the writer or the sculptor sees the world? Of course we do, but we don't get all pissy when Willie get's a stretch of highway named after him outside his home town.

Anyway, Willie Nelson is cool, that song "Mommas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys" is one of my favorites. And he wrote "Crazy" which is one of the best songs ever. So let him have a highway and chill out Texas Repubs, the Stranger's tryin' to sing some.

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