Funny Stuff from the Therapy Site - Jainism

The Counseling Resource Site had a post about Jainism today that actually made me laugh. I link and quote it in it's entirety. I'm sad there's no counter-response.

Posted: Tue 30 Aug 2005 9:04 am
Post subject: jainism

I have found jainism is perfect to help control the mind and emotions.
cheers stinky

---

Posted: Mon 12 Sep 2005 5:45 pm
Post subject: To Stinkyuk

I’m curious... How do you justify having and/or using a computer? It’s my understanding that the Aparigraha [Scooter: "non-possesiveness"] principle of Jainism living means non-indulgence in the enjoyment of the amenities and the comforts of life - which are superfluous for the preservation of life. Ie: food, clothes, shelter. Are you allowed to use a computer? - Connect to the world wide web? As long as you don’t ***enjoy*** doing so???

Rose

My Wife Went to a Jim Jarmusch Movie and All I Got Was This Lousy Post

Pooteewheet went to Broken Flowers without me, leaving me to some quality time with Eryn followed by the sense that I don't really have any plans since she went to bed. I notice that most blogs seem to celebrate the fact that they pass 500 posts - I could mention I did that, but it was a week ago. Most also seem to celebrate their one year anniversary, but that was really at the end of July. It also seems bloggy to discuss your "accomplishments" as a blogger - meeting bloggers at Liberally Drinking, misattributing posts in various bloggers' mobblogs and guest postings (MNObserver), getting quoted on Orcinus, getting noted on Jesus' General and making the blog of the day on The Blotter (but really, I mean, I submitted it), finally losing my primo spot at the top of the MNSpeak aggregator, and topping 1000 hits per month on average. But then I notice, after reading The Rake and doing some research that Avatan, "Minnesota's Largest and Most Friendly Nudist Club" (check it out for the illustrations - they look like something out of the Word Perfect image gallery, circa 1992), has a hit counter almost a quarter million hits long and any webby accomplishments don't seem quite as spectacular, particularly as they get most of the Google hits for +bonsai +nudist (watch out, here I come), followed closely by an article discussing how being a Bonsai tree does not make you a good Christian, but that Christians do have nudist camps of their own. I think Eryn would fit right in, as she's been shifting to training pants and spent the day running around peeking in the back and annoucing "There's Eryn's butt!" However, I would like to mention to Tall Brad, who has a chili festival in the works, that Avatan has chili cookoffs now and then, followed by a nude art show and then nude dancing (though no nude Texas Hold 'em as far as I could tell, but that means there's a need). Please disinvite me from the chili cookoff list when it comes to that, it's enough for me that I cook my chili in the nude.

Leftovers - Presidential Wax Museum and the Jebus Horse

This (picture below) has been serving as my bookmark for the last month. While on vacation in South Dakota, I had a habit of picking up tourist information for places I absolutely did not want to go. The National Presidential Wax Museum was one such place. The "Wand Narration System" frightens me, let alone the (unpictured) promise of "George W. to George W." But the accompanying photograph is just wrong. There's the fireman, in jacket and jeans - soiled workclothes - looking up at the Twin Towers as they fall. There's GW staring ahead at the camera, nattily attired in fitted, spotless black dress pants and suede presidential sports jacket. I hope they replace it with that fishing in New Orleans picture or the guitar picture. It would be slightly less embarrassing. As for the "Holy Terror Mini Golf", somehow that just seems appropriate. I expect the "hit the ball in Frist's" mouth at the end is hilarious.

In the better late than never category, this is a final picture from the Minnesota State Fair. Pooteewheet took it because it made her chuckle. You know you're dedicated to your Jebus-fish medal/bumper sticker when you brand it to your horse's ass. You have to wonder if one of the horses in a nearby stall had the fish with legs.

West Virginian Waste

I received a past due notice today from my garbage collection company. Normally a past due notice might bother me, although this was just an issue of a misplaced bill during our trip to South Dakota, but this notice came with an easter egg so delicious it made up for the reprimand. There was a short blurb about how much I owed, an apology if I'd already sent a payment, a bit about how to pay right away if I was worried about the whole thing, a "Sincerely" from the collections department, and then, out of nowhere, the notice:

"Note: WV law requires proper disposal of solid waste."

There weren't any warnings for other states. It wasn't being sent from West Virginia. Just this simple message appended to the end as a surety that I wouldn't forget. Now I make fun of West Virginia quite a bit, solely because it's a jab at Christy - but Christy...they have to make it more difficult. If your fellow (at least at one time) West Virginians are going to improperly dispose of solid waste to the extent that they receive a special reprimand on all Waste Managment past due notices, well, this tells me a few things. 1.) West Virginians are either very poor or don't like to pay their bills and 2.) they have a habit of putting solid waste where it should not be, possibly to offset item number one. These facts in no way dispell the myths most people associate with West Virginia. If I get a social security summary with the warning "Note: WV law prohibits marrying your first cousin" you are never going to hear the end of it.

Another Roadside Attraction

Tall Brad gave me Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins almost a year ago, pehaps more than a year ago, with the assurance that I'd enjoy it and that it shared characteristics with books by Christopher Moore. In honor of the book, I shall now ramble... For the record, you can have an English degree and have never read a word of Robbins - but I'm guessing many of you have never read historic utopias from the early Tudor/Stuart period or the collected writings of Queen Elizabeth, so it's tit for tat. I did enjoy Another Roadside Attraction, but is Robbins ever a wordy bastard. When Matt offered on After School Snack today to create a Tom Robbins-style rant, I knew exactly what option not to vote for (and unlike Matt, my boss is celebrating the whole Iowa thing, whereas I'd have a difficult time even being able to tell you which campus was hit by a tornado last week - I feel smug just knowing Iowa was hit by a tornado at all - it's the extent of my regional pride). Robbins' writing is dizzying, almost as much as Elizabeth's, and she liked to write once sentence per page. I'd find myself sliding in and out of the feeling that it was enjoyable to read his writing for writing's sake, and absorbing the joy he obviously takes in crafting a paragraph from the beginning word to the closing sentence, to wishing he'd just get on with it and expound on the story about the killer Catholic monks (though generally I hate stories about Catholic intrigue - that whole Dan Brown thing just irritates the bejebus out of me) and when the damn mummy was going to enter the picture and how it was so important when I was running out of book. In the end I enjoyed it most for how the writing captured the spirit of the main characters - modern "hippies" - and their relaxed, meandering, semi-mystical/spiritual approach to everything in life. It was obvious that much of the meandering (in writing and thought) was really designed to get you into a flow and relaxed so that something semi-profound relating to religion (and by religion I mean traditional religion as well as the general idea that the study of self can produce religious insight) could be lobbed the reader's way, requiring a short reread to understand how the bits fit together to create the point. Amanda always seemed the likeliest character to have these bits of wisdom at hand, though without the other characters as foils they wouldn't have had the impact.

Minister: No, I had no connection with the military forces in Vietnam. I was a civilian missionary. My wife and I ministered to the Bahnar tribsemen. The Bahnar are a primitive people and were not involved politically in the war.
Amanda: How did you enjoy the Bahnar?
Minister: We weren't there to enjoy them. We were there to help them. But they were very friendly to us, if that's what you meant. The Bahnar Vietnamese are basically fine, simple folks. Of course they had some extremely backward ideas.
Amanda: Could you please give me an example?
Minister: Well, for example, your Bahnar believed that good souls go live under the earth when they die and bad souls go live in the sky. You can see what that implies. They though Heaven was down and Hell was up.
Amanda: But you changed all that?
Minister: Oh yes. Of course. That's what we were there for. We taught them it was just the other way around. (p. 194)

In some minor aspects, this book set me in mind of James Morrows' Bible Stories for Adults, which Amazon assures me is liked by people who like Christopher Moore's The Stupidest Angel, but which doesn't have the convoluted writing of Another Roadside Attraction. Morrow is more about (semi-)singular points in that book because it's a collection of short stories, so there's not quite the weaving of story lines and ideas exhibited by Robbins. I preferred Towing Jehovah to Bible Stories for Adults, however, so if you get a choice, you might want to go with the later.

St. Paul Bike Classic 2005

I'm a little slow, but I wanted to watch the Vikings game after the ride, and then we had guests over for dinner and a round of late-afternoon sprinkler jumping. Not to worry, they brought their own springing-penis toy, just like all guests should.

On to the St. Paul Bike Classic. In past years it's been so cold in the morning that your hands actually ache just trying to get to the starting line. This year I stepped into my garage and thought, damn, it's hot in here! It was absolutely the warmest Bike Classic I've ever been on - it supposedly got into the upper 80s today - I think I'm still shedding a bit of heat eight hours later. I got my bike and gear together before 6 a.m. and pushed it over to Steve's house where Christy was going to give me a ride. I was a bit early so I just strapped my bike to her rack and then sat in Steve's front yard in the not-yet-daylight reading a book, much to the amusement of the Strib girl making her Sunday morning rounds. Around 6:30 we packed up and then drove over to get Sandy and head north to St. Thomas to start the ride. I saw Steve (different Steve, blogger Steve, not neighbor Steve) at St. Thomas, much to my surprise - it generally amazes me that you can find anyone in a crowd of several thousand people. The ride itself was generally uneventful - no squirrel mashing, no dead giant snakes, no accidents/deaths - and a little more difficult than in years past as few of us had been biking lately, so 30 miles was a haul. So, on to the pictures (by the way, I'm very sorry I didn't get a picture of the rock'em sock'em George W. Bush punching doll - I knew I wasn't relaxing enough when I didn't feel like coming to an immediate stop).

This is everyone at the Indian Mound rest stop looking appropriately tired after a very large hill, followed by a turn, and then another large hill. This year we had Phil and his wife and his wife's friend as additions, or perhaps as substitutions for Mean Mr. Mustard, after all it would take three youngsters to equal his age. He did join us for the traditional St. Clair Broiler breakfast, as did Lisa, said restaurant living up to its name by having intermittent air conditioning problems.


Christy and Sandy wouldn't give me a moon shot this year, so I had to settle for them coming out of the porta poties at the Indian Mound rest stop. Christy said a bad word so she has to eat soap.


Christy being silly. I think this is how they ride bikes in West Virginia. I have a similar picture of Sandy and Christy, but it's a little fuzzy.


Who's ever run over a squirrel during this ride? Come on, raise your hand if you have. Ok, now who dates the registration babe? Raise your hand. Worn tight biking shorts just to impress the ladies? Hand up! I thought so.


Action shot. Ming, Erik, and Phil - a peloton.


I don't know who this is - but it shows that the Como rest stop is very nice and there are a lot of bikes, so it's sort of proof we didn't just go on a made up ride and claim it was an organized event.


Erik doing his Elvis impersonation. I'm pretty sure Aqua City Motel, Erik's band, just does Elvis covers. I'll let you know next week after "the gig".


Phil and crew pulling into the Como rest stop - that's his wife Rochelle waving for the camera.


Sometimes just getting thirty miles of exercise is not enough - you have to dress up to do it. I kept trying to get a picture of this guy in the process of pedaling, but he was really hauling ass, so I had to settle for catching him with a mouthful of food.

"Us and Them", from "Dark Side of the Moon"

Tild is right, this is worth clicking over to see - Driftglass from Chicago made a montage of pictures interspersed with the words to "Us and Them" by Pink Floyd. Primarily an emotional outlet for Driftwood, but also a good idea for spurring discussion, as is evident in the dozens of comments.

If it weren't for bad luck, he'd have no luck at all...

I recently switched projects at work, but I spent ten months on my last one getting to know a whole new group of people and a few come-and-go contractors. New people always mean new stories, and this is my favorite from the last ten months. One of the individuals in my group is a hunter and really wants to make his own duck hunting boat. Toward that end, he bought a huge pile of aluminum and set out to weld his own duck hunting boat as a "fun project".

Item one: welding aluminum requires lots of equipment and electricity. Just buying the aluminum is not enough, you must lay the wires to the work area and buy the expensive welding equipment.

Item two: welding alumnium is not easy. If you try to do it without any experience, you get warped aluminum.

Item three: not warping the aluminum requires a semester of welding class at the community college. This requires more money.

Item four: if you're working with the acid wipe, don't get it on your arms, it removes all your pigment.

Item five: just because you've been taking a welding class for a few weeks doesn't mean you're completely ready, if you're in a hurry you'll still warp more expensive aluminum.

Item six: don't weld your arm, it hurts and can leave a quarter inch deep, four by four inch hole, that requires repeated applications of nuskin.

Item seven: a boat without a truck capable of pulling it is pointless. Buy a big truck.

Item eight: when painting, don't leave one of the cans of puke-colored spray paint in the sun next to your brand new, less than a month old, truck that you bought for pulling the boat (see number seven). It will explode and it will bake into the paint, giving you a permanent "I've been driving in mud" look. This is not as cool as it sounds.

Item nine: don't drop hot metal on your eyes - it'll hurt, cost you a copayment, and a lecture from the doctor about how lucky you were not to hit the cornea, causing starburst glare and the possibility of eye surgery.

Item ten: certainly don't do all of this where your wife can see it - even if you wear the pants, you're basically proving you don't know how to zip them.

Organic HTML

Information Aesthetics has a link to a site/flash application called Organic HTML. There are no real rules to Organic HTML other than that it takes a website and based on colors, size, links and who knows what else creates a sort of alien-looking flower of varying complexity, brilliance and infestation. While rather perplexing without any rules, it is vaguely addicting, particularly when you know that it is possible to generate flies, leading to numerous tries until you find final satisfaction in creating a few bugs.

On to many, many sites, though if I seem to have forgotten you, don't take it personally - it says nothing about your importance to me or the importance of your blog to me or even the order of your blog in my aggregator. First, my site, http://nodtonothing.blogspot.com. Really weedy looking and some dark mushrooms. I can only assume all those little appendages are wikipedia links. The black mushrooms must be links to Mean Mr. Mustard, he's the closest person I know to mushroomdom. I'd show Pooteewheet's site, but it looks incredibly similar - which is sort of romantic.


My home page - not changed in many years. Sparse, pruned, lacking in flair, but sort of bonsai-ish.


Speaking of Mean Mr. Mustard, his flower is much more attractive than mine - some light blues and reds, fading into purple. Soothing and relaxed, and so unlike him. However, that big stick growing out the side that you could use to beat someone annoying with - that's sort of like him.


Yet another friend, Klund. Tall. There's probably something sarcastic hiding behind that main stalk.


And Mr. Mustard's favorite site, Worth 1000. Now we've got something interesting - big, bright, all over the place, but undoubtedly photoshopped just to show off and part of a project entitled "What would Worth 1000 look like if it were a plant" - rate it 2.01.


The Wege's site, Norwegianity. Also bonsai-ish, although it looks like there's an albino mermaid hiding in some seaweed in the center - probably a guest poster.


After School Snack (Elise, Matt, Chris and Alex). Elegant and at least four colors, which is appropriate, though don't ask me to guess which color is which person, because that always gets me in trouble on my site.


The Powerliberal. Maybe Robin's just too worried about the Drinking Liberally drink kitty to worry about whether her plant looks good on Organic. That's just good prioritization.


MNSpeak. Fresh, vibrant, new - the deathly colors of a morning that left twenty below behind several hours ago and has ventured in new territories so cold you can't even find them on your thermometer, just like Minnesotans like.


New Patriot - seemingly very patriotic.


Some of the big timers.

Eschaton


AmericaBLOG - there's a heart of gold tucked away in there.


Dave Neiwert at Orcinus - professional looking, yet spirited.


Jesus' General - looks like a flag pole in the middle.


World o' Crap - so long that you have to click to see how it's different from the rest. I picture two very long arms reaching out to grab crap from where ever they can find it.


The American Street


Crooks and Liars - jump through the circle of truth, fools, because if you don't, we've got it on camera!


Wonkette -this seems entirely appropriate.


The Revealer - inclusive looking, just like them.


Boing Boing. So not what I expected.


Planet Dan - perhaps this refers to the idea that examining the silliest aspects of our society always leads full circle - or maybe it's just the shape of a kickball. More likely, it's a hoop that the world's ugliest dog can jump through.


Finally, I managed to find some flies. It was a tough search. Believe it or not, I didn't look for hours and hours. These two happened to be two out of only four sites I tried once I started a fly search, which included The White House, Minnesota's unfortunate blog of the year, and these two sites. I circled the flies with red circles in the first one so you know what to look for in the second.

This one is RNC.org.


And this one is FEMA.

Coprophilia

My wife caught the family dog in her pen today eating a freshly dumped load of recycled Science Diet. I figured this was like when animals eat grass or rocks, or like when rabbits eat their own pellets (rabbits drop two kinds of leavings - one they can re-eat, the other they can't, for reference, see Rabbits: The Mystery of Poop), and that there must be a medical reason. Unfortunately, this is entirely wrong. Our dog is just gross.

I quote from the article Pooteewheet found:

Some dogs can't resist a tasty morsel of feces. These dogs will eat their own excrement or that of another dog. Some prefer horse feces, others cat feces. Frozen feces are popular in the winter time...

Dogs are historically scavengers, and this is believed to be a scavenger behavior...

Owners find this habit in their pet disgusting -- particularly when the consumed feces are thrown up all over the new carpet.

At least with your dog you can be relatively assured it's not a sexual fetish. But if you linked here as a newbie to the scat scene, might I recommend a brief journey over to the Coprophilia entry at Wikipedia where you'll find such useful information as:

Other slang terms describing this practice include Meatloafing, FedEx'ng from Browntown and Karling. There are different levels of the Karling. They include:

• Cold Karling - involving a process similar to the Cleveland Steamer.
  
• Warm Karling - involving a process similar to the Glass-Bottom Boat.
  
• Hot Karling - The same thing as a Warm Karl except without the plastic wrap.

Iraq Coalition Casualty Count

I know I'm a little slow up on the uptake now and then, which is probably why I'd never seen this site before today (I'm not entirely sure where I saw the link, but probably at Norwegianity). Plenty of other similar sites, just not this one - The Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, complete with links to press releases. So, just in case you weren't paying attention because it seemed like death in New Orleans is overshadowing everything:

• 11 Americans and 2 UK soldiers already dead this month (as of yesterday)
• 1895 Americans dead in the 904 days of the war
• 95 UK soldiers dead
• 101 dead from other coalition countries
• 2091 total dead
• 7549 Wounded and returned to duty w/in 72 hours
• 6813 wounded and not returned to duty within 72 hours
• PTSD...?

For Klund - Wikimania

This is for Klund, because I know how much he likes my Wikipedia obsession. By the way K, did you know you can Wikipedia Wikipedia? And Kevin.

News junkies find Wikipedia more than encyclopedia Reuters - Tue Sep 6, 8:11 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The Wikipedia, which has surged this year to become the most popular reference site on the Web, is fast overtaking several major news sites as the place where people swarm for context on breaking events.

Princesses - A Sound Investment

My little girl is not yet between the ages of four and twelve, but I have been assured that at some point she will be, and when she is, she will embrace Princess Culture, regardless of my opinion on the subject. This disturbs me greatly, and I have been practicing my tolerance by remarking how nice her "three Disney princesses" nightshirt (which she inherited from a coworker [of mine, not hers]) is when she wears it to bed. Princesses are apparently so popular that they made the Yahoo mover list and were deserving of an explanation all of their own, The Princess Phenomenon. What's most disturbing about that fact is that it primarily means that if you were to picture legions of four year olds surfing the web for the latest news about Jasmine, Belle, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Pocahontas, Ariel and Cinderella - your imagination probably couldn't live up to the reality. And while these most popular Yahoo princess searches may not do my daughter any good at the moment (though she has already learned to efficiently use a mouse because it means she can play games at Sesame Street online), they may aid some of you, and no doubt will aid my sister LissyJo in her obsession with The Little Mermaid. By the way, Allison, the real story is not nearly as happy as the Disneyesque version. And for Klund's little girl, a story of an Aztec princess, Ixtaccihuatl (like Snow White). For all I know the Aztecs were the mortal enemies of her ancestors, but it was the best I could do.

• Disney princess


• Disney princess pictures


• Disney princess coloring pages


• Fairy princess costumes


• Princess toys


• Princess coloring pages


• Princess party


• Princess games

Almost Stuck and My Wife the Cupcake

I work with computers for a living and, thus, have a natural aversion to the things when I'm at anyone else's house - I fear the days people ask me to take a look at their machine because it's not working. I always take a look because I know that I'm at least moderately more literate than your average human being and I feel it's my duty to save the people I know a trip to someone more expensive if at all possible, particularly as it's often just a virus or a port or memory issues. My friend Dan'l works with furnaces. He has no such concerns about the tools of his trade and approaches it with an enthusiasm that in me would be equivalent to bursting in the front door, running to someone's computer room without even shaking their hand, and picking apart their hardware and software setup. So, the other day, I took him and his wife (my other friend), Katie, to check out my neighbor Steve's house. I took them because Steve has a cool house, particularly for my neighborhood (though he's doing his best to destroy various parts of it by dropping them 20-30 feet onto the pool table), but Dan'l was entranced by the fact that Steve has two furnaces and at least one was premeasured before it was even put in place...sweeeeeet! But hey, a picture of Dan'l in action is worth a thousand words. I'm a bit disappointed I didn't catch him fully wedged into that space behind the water heater and furnace - he was back there, pretty much just his face sticking out, picking Steve's furnace apart, showing him humidifier bits that needed replacing, and complaining about the munchkin who installed everything so close to the wall. I was struck by how creepy it would be to walk into your furnace room and see him there, peering out at you, just like in the Shining..."Here's Dan'l!"

On an entirely different note, I signed my wife up to receive mailings about Nestle' baking chips because I thought it might lead to some coupons for chocolate or swirled chips (she bought them, she gets enrolled, it has nothing to do with women doing baking - I actually made the last batch of cookies). Doing so involved this whole process of enrolling her in an online baking club with reward points. Part of the site also involved taking a quick survey. I figured this was the best way to ensure coupons, and filled it out as I felt it applied to Pooteewheet. The end result was like one of those blog/web surveys that pigeonholes you as a particular president, country or type of food - but this one was just funny. Presenting my wife, the cupcake...

Very Best Baker Personality Survey

What's your cookie personality? You're a...Frosted Cupcake

You're something of a showoff, aren’t you? (But in a deliciously good way!) For you, good taste is only part of the story. Your fresh-baked creations look like they were torn from the pages of a magazine, reflecting your winning sense of style. No wonder your treats get so many "oohs and ahhhs."

AmericaBlog on General Myers

This is a brilliant post (though AmericaBlog credits Wonkette for the idea). I'm always impressed when someone can graphically illustrate their point in such a way that disperate information provides a gestalt beyond the individual pieces and communicates something more strongly than pages of explanation. It's why I have Information Aesthetics on my daily list of blogs.

Anyway, go check out the headline montage at AmericaBlog - even outside its political context, it's eye opening.

Someone Won Ben Stein's Brain

The latest urban myth to be examined on Snopes (per their syndicated feed) is:

Claim: E-mail reproduces Ben Stein's defense of President Bush's actions in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Status: True.

in which Ben goes on to explain in rather patronizing tones (appropriately pepped up with words like "scandalously " and "slander") that President George W. Bush isn't responsible for natural disasters, because liberals all seem to believe that GW could actually control the weather, and we're wrong - and those liberals who believe in global warming are also wrong, but if they're right, it doesn't have anything at all to do with Kyoto. Somehow I doubt anyone in New Orleans was really focusing on Kyoto as the source of their problems over the last week - at least not during the time they were without food and water. But Ben's right about GW creating/influencing weather; if we believed that, we'd be wrong. No one believes that actually praying for good weather (or any sort of weather at all) is effective and can change the natural world. Nobody. Except for people at the Luis Palau Twin Cities Festival this summer. Actually, if you just follow the Google query +pray +"good weather" +minneapolis, you'll seen Minnesotans praying for good weather all over the place and assuring themselves that it worked. I'm not even going to search for other cities - I'm sure the ones who voted more strongly for GW pray even harder for good weather. Maybe no one was praying hard enough.

We're also treated to this wonderfully callous statement, particularly given that poverty is increasing under GW and he is responsible for working to alleviate that problem:

"It is not his fault that many persons in New Orleans were too confused to realize how dangerous the hurricane would be. They were certainly warned. It's not George Bush's fault that there were sick people and old people and people without cars in New Orleans. His job description does not include making sure every adult in America has a car, is in good health, has good sense, and is mobile."

But I'm more impressed with Ben's tirade against health care, local officials and Hillary Clinton all in the same bullet, with a sort of reverse spin to point out that you should be thankful GW and his administration are currently in charge of your health care. You always want to finish on Hillary - maybe someone will think she caused the hurricane or that everywhere would look like New Orleans if she were in charge of anything. After all, dissing Hillary should be the anchor for any compassionate, non-politicizing treatise on New Orleans.

12.) The entire episode is a dramatic lesson in the breathtaking callousness of government officials at the ground level. Imagine if Hillary Clinton had gotten her way and they were in charge of your health care.

Tuesday Afternoon Abridgment

So much is happening that's just worth noting, let alone commenting upon.

Barbara Bush can be mean. Al Franken intimated as much in his book (see the comments in this post - "I'm done with you" - but he's a liberal, so it's not suprising some of you thought it was a lie). Need some details? Go look at Mean Mr. Mustard by way of Atrios and Barbara's take on New Orleans: "This is working very well for them." If you need more proof that mom and son are birds of a feather, Wonkette offers some insite into Barbara's drinking habits:

• Page Six: Barbara Bush --the white-haired one-- was spotted "guzzling numerous
vodka sodas at East Side Company Bar with a gal pal." [NYP]

And The Wege weighs in with even more Barbara Bush news:

Add to that Barbara Bush’s little-old-lady-hate-screed:

“Almost everyone I have talked to says, `We’re going to move to Houston,’” she said in remarks to National Public Radio’s “Marketplace.” “What I’m hearing is they all want to stay in Texas,” she said. “Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them.”

No, the truth is they let the rot of racism destroy their communities long before Katrina hit, and now Houston and Baton Rouge and other cities are about to experience massive demographic shifts. They can embrace the newcomers, or they can embrace a huge uprise in crime and violence. The Cities absorbed over 60,000 Hmong refugess over the last dozen years, and it changed our culture permanently. Houston and Baton Rouge need to accept that changes will happen whether they like it or not so just accept it and go with the flow from Big Easy.

And in case Barbara's word isn't good enough for you that all the living folk from New Orleans are doing ok, you can take the word of our local Blogger of the Year (link to City Pages, not to him):

"The City of New Orleans and its residents owe the President a profound debt of gratitude." -- Powerline blogger John Hinderaker

Interestingly - that same summary from the City Pages Blotter has a link to a fun program that tells you exactly where you'll end up if you dig a hole through the earth from where you live (or any other place for that matter). I'd be within swimming distance (if I were the Incredible Hulk) of Australia - so maybe I'll use that knowledge to avoid airfare for my sister's 20th anniversary.
Generic Heretic has a post about the most obvious use of irony in a long time - Walmart complaining about being the small fish.

Mean Mr. Mustard relinks to a piece by Keith Olbermann posted at Dependable Renegade. My favorite quotes are below - the later in particular because one of my commentors recently pointed out that I shouldn't credit GW with a "let them eat cake" attitude.

It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.

For him, it is a shame — in all senses of the word. A few changes of pronouns in there, and he might not have looked so much like a 21st Century Marie Antoinette. All that was needed was just a quick "I'm not satisfied with my government's response." Instead of hiding behind phrases like "no one could have foreseen," had he only remembered Winston Churchill's quote from the 1930's. "The responsibility," of government, Churchill told the British Parliament "for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence."

Finally, the whole Steve Ballmer vs. Google tirade is, in my opinion, funny (via Fimoculous). Not the ravings of a company bent on world domination scary, this is what comes of corporate internationalism frightening...just funny. It reminds me precisely of the scene in The Aviator where Howard Hughes asks the senator (Ralph Owen Brewster as played by Alan Alda) if he really wants to go to war with him.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer vowed to "kill" Google in an expletitive-laced, chair-throwing tirade when a senior engineer told him he was leaving the company to go work for Google, the engineer claimed in court documents made public on Friday.

Blame the Victims

As always, go read Dave Neiwert over at Orcinus, then read Into the Mind of a Povert, then a comment in my blog: it was because of hippies and sinners, it was because of homosexuals, it was because they were black, they deserved it. No they didn't. No, it wasn't. It was because they were poor. It was because they were subjected to administrative incompetence.

Touching Memories of Rambo

Rehnquist dead. Two openings on the Supreme Court. Clean up likely to start in New Orleans. South Koreans inventing a silicon chip replacement (don't think Mott insulators are interesting - if they generate less heat and you work for or use services by a large company, you're affected). Rather than focus on nationally and globally altering issues, I'm going to discuss the fact that I had to dig through my old wooden chest in the bedroom yesterday looking for my wife's grandfather's WWII field notes. I didn't find the field notes, but the box contains every single piece of crap that anyone ever felt I should have that wasn't a Christmas- or birthday-type present: notes from old girlfriends, pictures, awards, writing, et al. Two of the things near the top made me laugh, so I'm posting pictures and explanations.

Item one: a broken baseball bat handle with the rest of the bat burnt off. This is the handle of my favorite bat as a kid, the one I always used when playing ball in my yard and perhaps the one that once impacted with my brother's face while he was standing behind me, resulting in a black eye so bad that it actually impacted vision in his other eye while the swelling was underway - an impact so loud my mother came running out of the house to see about the noise. It may have also been the bat I used to hit fly balls to my brother in the evening, resulting in his smashed nose when the ball hit him in the face instead of the glove. At one point, it developed a serious fracture along one side (as well as the chipped handle), the sort where a two foot+ long sliver of wood sort of cuts loose from the side, but you really only see the damage when you hit a ball hard enough, and then it snaps out and back and the bat vibrates like you're hitting cement with a metal bar. I loved the bat, so I continued to use it despite its wounds. My father, perhaps feeling that having a son with a large wooden sliver in his chest lying in the front ten wouldn't go down well with his wife or neighbors, relegated it to the burning pit in the back yard when I wasn't looking. I was distraught, but managed to claim a chunk of it to remind myself of our sweet times together.



I'm pretty sure this rubber Rambo figure is from Kyle - though it could be from my friend Ben - perhaps one of them remembers, they often had the same taste in stpuid gifts, as did I - just one of the things that binds friends together no doubt. He's wonderfully tacky. I do remember sticking a pencil end in one of the two pencil eraser-shaped holes in his back (though there's no obvious reason for them - they look like perhaps they're there so he can be stuck to other toys with plastic protrubances) and making him do little dances in class, like the potato scene in Benny and Joon, but not quite so lame, and much more irritating for my teachers.

Odds and Ends

• Sorry I had to turn off anonymous blogging - the spammers found me. It was either go non-anonymous, or turn on that annoying little "can you read this and retype it?" safeguard. I hate that, so I went for option one. I could have just flopped over to Haloscan, but I'm just not there yet.
• In case you think looting is the low point of the New Orleans/Katrina disaster, you might want to think again - you could always offer shelter to refugees in exchange for sex.
• Klund's right, the Ankh-Morpork City Guard themed books are the best in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. The whole business involving three guards trying to guarantee that the odds they're faced with are a million to one, because those are usually the odds that win - genius. The philosophy of library physics, downright Jorge Luis Borges.
• I finally started reading the Tom Robbins book TallBrad gave me almost a year ago, "Another Roadside Attraction". I'm enjoying it quite a bit, although I question whether all the commentary about the smell of women's bits and pieces after various days of unwash is absolutely necessary. Good technique and just an amusing sense of wordplay, he reminds me slightly of David Foster Wallace. My favorite line so far, "Consider the peaceful repose of the sausage compared with the aggressiveness and violence of bacon."
• Much as Klund suspects, if I could get Wikipedia to partner with Blogger and provide a "wiki me" link in the editing box, I'd be ecstatic. But the elephant man link to Wikipedia was unnecessary, I've already seen the Discovery Channel special.
• Snopes has already published an article about the picture of the gas prices cresting $6 (includes picture) after Katrina and come down on the side of "true", with the caveat that the perps better not be caught by the governor after today.
• I started a new project today at work that's actually my old project, prior to the one I was one until today, which is now my old project. The spinning gyre doesn't take 2000 years, just 10 months.
• A story about my daughter that my wife doesn't think should necessarily be shared: Pooteewheet took Eryn to the liquor store to find some Tequila to use in a Texas Chili recipe. As they were going down the aisle, they encountered a Summit (oh yeah, Kevin, you can Wiki "Summit Brewing Company" - that's why I love 'em) beer display at which point Eryn abruptly stopped and announced loudly, "Hey! That's Dad's beer!" Then she started to gyrate to the 80's music on the store speaker, all the while singing, "Dad drinks a lot of stuff. Dad drinks a lot of stuff." Much to the amusement of the stockboy. During the same trip they stopped at Target to buy supplies, including some super glue to fix the toy motorcycle I viciously crushed with my bare foot. Eryn pointed at it and demanded, "Want to sniff that!" She doesn't want to sniff anything else other than the entire contents of the spice drawer, but this was apparently an exception and she repeated her demand loudly several times, "Want to sniff that!" I hope the stockboy from the liquor store wasn't there to draw any correlations.