12:29 PM Did you know that a Runcible Spoon is a spork? Quibble if you like, that's how I like to think of it. The Spoon hasn't much interested me, as I had an impression of it from college as a snooty coffee bar with an okay breakfast menu and not much else to grab my attention. Things have changed. Check out their website now (Phil's handiwork - not Phil's handiwork, but still a nice site!). The library is using them for catering at our upcoming "In Service Day" and the food sounds like it will be pretty swank. I hadn't realized their menu had matured so extensively. One more restaurant to add to my lunch rotation.

(Current restaurants on my lunch rotation: Shanti, Esan Thai, India House, Siam House, El Norteno, and the Falafal place in Dunkirk Square)

I live at the library nowadays. And my back hurts. Someone come over and rub my feet. Okay, that's enough griping. I'm bummed that I missed Clint's party last night, but I was too burned out to have been good company. This morning I'm feeling recharged, having gotten something fixed at work and feeling like we're about 95% there in terms of having a time/print management system in place for our public PCs. I'm sitting in a nearly empty computer lab at this point, so I think it's time to call it a week. I now know for sure that I am not a workaholic. My costume idea, by the way, was Seabiscuit, but I never figured out how I was going to pull off a horse costume.

I'm not one to give Eminem much benefit of the doubt, but I like his new video. And I can hardly wait to vote next week. I don't think the world will suddenly change for the better with Bush back out of a job, but it certainly can't hurt.

12:21 PM Republicans Urge Minorities To Get Out And Vote On Nov. 3

Also from TheOnion, Study: 100 Percent Of Americans Lead Secret Lives:

The Berkeley study, based on exhaustive surveillance of thousands of individuals, as well as information gleaned from personal diaries and nosy neighbors, undoes any perception that people living in quiet obscurity are without bizarre tendencies. According to Greene, every single study participant had a history of abnormal behavior.

"While hotel heiress Paris Hilton's infamous sex tape was breaking, Cleveland piano teacher Jon Knowles was sitting at his kitchen table eating a bowl of cat food," Greene said. "And, while the Monica Lewinsky scandal was threatening to unseat a president, Clay Pulvermacher of Wauwatosa, WI was busy mailing birthday cards to himself."

Though there is a special circle in hell reserved for software companies and consultants who promise the world only to claim ignorance on installation day, the main library is up and running with our time/print management stuff. Now to get into election mode.... Well, soon anyway.

I have an idea for a Halloween costume, but I'm not sure if I can pull it off.

8:14 AM How very cool: a new blog from an old buddy.

9:44 AM Baby Gorilla Wash

8:01 AM The Daily Howler thinks it's not prgamatic to speak the word "lesbian" in a national debate.

Readers, you may think it’s no big deal to be gay or lesbian. Here at THE HOWLER, we agree with that; in the year 2015, almost everyone will agree. But this election won’t be held in 2015; it’s being held two weeks from next Tuesday! And many voters share the general outlook of Fox’s Jeff Birnbaum, who opined about this matter on last night’s Special Report:

BIRNBAUM (10/15/04): I thought it was probably a mistake for Kerry to have raised it and I was shocked to hear the word “lesbian” used in the debate. I agree with Charles [Krauthammer], it’s not—I mean, why do that about someone’s child?

Yes, we think that outlook is benighted, too. But many undecided voters share those general feelings; for that reason, many of them will think that Kerry “went over the line” in what he said. You may think that’s utterly silly. But your views don’t matter here. Unless you don’t care who wins the election, it’s the views of those voters that count.

In today's world, as there is so much other stuff to be sorry about, I rate the depressing nature of this sentiment (that even though there's nothing wrong with talking about lesbians, it's wrong to talk about lesbians) as "mildly frustrating." GWB and his ilk propose to ammend the constitution over sexual orientation, but it's impolitic to point out their cynicism?

(hurm ... mulling this)

Did Heartburn rock?
spab • 16/10/04 18:32

I'm not sure what the (small) crowd thought (they were enthusiastic and supportive, but sometimes you wonder how much of that is because, well, they're your buddies), but it was certainly fun. I like to think we put together some nice moments, even if our set was all too brief. The other band's drummer generously offered to let me use his kit and let me tell you it was quite slick. Jimmy and I got a kick out of watching him meticulously unpack and assemble his gear (from padded cases): pristine condition, fine-tuned double heads on each of his four toms, crisp unblemished hi-hats plus five more cymbals to choose from, and a double-bass drum pedal had I felt the urge to pitter-patter. Not that I can play any double-bass drum licks, but it's nice to know it's an option.

Josh is a good song-writer, and Mike (the other guitarist) accentuates the tunes nicely. Several songs give both Mike and Jimmy space to fill out. I'd never make it as a music critic, though, so I don't know who to compare us to. I wish we'd recorded the show.

But it was also a pretty slow night at Vertigo (which has changed it's name - 9th street bar I think). Angus Heartburn would make a great opening act some night when bigger draws are playing, I think. But I also can conceive of our expansion into a full set of songs, so who knows what the future holds. Apparently we were listed as "Agnes Heartburn" somewhere, which led to the idea that we should come up with a set of female covers (I think Josh could do a mean Fiona if he worked on it). Anyhoo, it was fun. I get too nervous about these things ahead of time, when it usually ends up being a fun time.

I ordered a copy of Chungking Express and watched it recently. It's certainly fun to watch and I liked the characters and the bustling city environment was a kick.... And it was certainly different than In the Mood for Love, the other Wong Kar-Wai flick I checked out recently from the library. Initially I think I liked Love more than express; it's a much more meloncholy film, very lush, expressing the trapped lives of its characters in an almost too-pretty presentation (the picturesque framing of several scenes might have called too much attention to itself, but I'm a sucker for that sort of cinematography). Anyhoo, Express was much more jarring and frenetic. Plus I was thrown off balance a bit before I understood the structure of the film; I felt one of the first characters to be introduced, the English-speaking blond, was removed somewhat abruptly from the plot. Oh well. With two such different films from the same director, I'm quite curious to see how his new one plays out.

Also...

I'd heard this mentioned on the radio on Friday, I think, but I couldn't find anything online to follow up on the story until just now when I came across this Juan Cole post:

The refusal of 19 reservists of the 43rd Quartermaster Company in Tallil to take fuel up to Taji north of Baghdad sheds significant light on issues that have come up in the presidential debates. As Eric Brunner-Williams notes, "It appears that they disobayed an illegal order, to conduct routine logistics ops [by] delivering fuel known to be water contaminated to combat units (sabotage) and doing so without combat support and draw casualties (standing orders on force protection)."

This seems like a bigger story than the lack of attention it's getting would suggest.

7:22 PM Angus Hearburn plays at Vertigo tomorrow night. Color me nervous. We have a pretty short set, but I think we'll do okay.

Shari posted a cutey picture of her niece.

I'm mostly stressed out these days because of a project at work which will change the way we give patrons access to computers. I'm hoping most folks will just adapt, but I'm anticipating resistance and complaints, and the vendor hasn't set up as much of it in advance as I'd prefer (since we're training staff on it next week), but in for a penny, in for a pound, I guess. Anyway, if I seem jittery and distracted when you see me in person, this is why (mostly).

If you've had enough of being annoyed with bush, try being annoyed with Hitch by watching him on DemocracyNow with Tariq Ali:

"Well, I must say I have never listened to Bush before. I've only sort of watched him, as it were. And there's something even more excruciating in a way about just hearing him. But it was a clear knockout, I thought, from his side. The people I feel sorry for, pitiful that Bush is, are those who are genuinely anti-war, such as yourself and Tariq, who find themselves having to hope, I presume, for the election of a Kerry-Edwards team that's committed to carrying on the war, except without the sense of conviction that, for example, I feel, that it's a just war and has to be won." [transcript]

Hmm.

Cathulu waits outside of time to devour us all.

9:23 PM "Then again, having some monkey elected president...." I saw this tacked up on the wall above the urinal at Crazy Horse last night.

This is the background story, mentioned by Jimmah a while back.

I had to step away from tonight's debate for a moment; Bush is excruciating to listen to. And the fact that the entire audience there is made up of "undecided voters" makes me think they're all morons, so I'm a little less than biased tonight.

Off to 2nd Story later to catch the Gentleman Caller show.

9:26 AM Missed the debate, went insane in the Gobi desert instead, failing to stop the downfall of civilization as we know it (and sorta wishing we'd just let that tear in the fabric of reality happen just to see what came out...).

Playing with GIMP...

7:36 AM Watched "This Week" yesterday for the first time in several months. Cokie Roberts is still a clown, but George Will seems to have passed the GOP lap-dog role to David Brooks somewhat. Brooks couldn't make it through a phrase, much less a sentence, without somehow taking a pot-shot at Kerry. Such transparent partisanship was usually Will's job, but he actually seems to be taking his role as seasoned political observer seriously enough to point out our current president's flaws occassionally. Good on ya, Will; I've always wanted to agree with you more, if only because of your vocabulary. (I'm not saying he's no longer a GOP shill, just that he's willing to accept that GWB isn't a master statesman).

But my thoughts (and links) are all over the board this morning, so I'll apologize in advance for the flighty nature of this post. (There's a movie review - sortof - at the end of this post if you'd rather just skip the political blather)

President Bush (in the debates):

"Let me first tell you that the best way for Iraq to be safe and secure is for Iraqi citizens to be trained to do the job. And that's what we're doing. We've got 100,000 trained now, 125,000 by the end of this year, 200,000 by the end of next year." [transcript]

Meanwhile on planet Earth:

They estimated that 22,700 Iraqi personnel have received enough basic training to make them "minimally effective at their tasks," in contrast to the 100,000 figure cited by Bush. [Reuters link]

President Bush:

Ten million citizens have registered to vote [in Afghanistan]. It's a phenomenal statistic. They're given a chance to be free, and they will show up at the polls. Forty-one percent of those 10 million are women.

Meanwhile on the Material Plane:

These days, Mr. Bush and other administration officials often talk about the 10.5 million Afghans who have registered to vote in this month's election, citing the figure as proof that democracy is making strides after all. They count on the public not to know, and on reporters not to mention, that the number of people registered considerably exceeds all estimates of the eligible population. What they call evidence of democracy on the march is actually evidence of large-scale electoral fraud. [Krugman link]

On the other hand, I did read some interesting stuff this weekend regarding Kerry's comments about the "outsourcing" of the Afghan war which rang true (i.e., that using local forces was the most effective way to get something done quickly in Northern Afghanistan, and that there wasn't time to put US forces in place.) Of course, now I can't find the link, and I don't feel much like slogging through the morass of right-wing/pro-military blogs I went through to reach it; I'll have to look again with a fresh perspective another time.

Until then, here's a link to an article I found interesting describing the sort of tasks our troops are performing in Afghanistan right now:

The convoy reached Parle (pronounced par-lay) and made camp in a bowl of hills. The trucks formed a rectangle about the size of a football field, with the Psychological Operations Humvee smack in the middle. Instead of the usual .50-caliber machine gun mounted on its roof, the PsyOps truck carried a bank of loudspeakers.

"Those speakers are our primary weapon system," said Staff Sgt. Bill Clark, 34, the PsyOps team leader.

Clark took a few scouts and an Afghan "terp" - his interpreter - and they explored the largely abandoned village. They gave a couple of hand-cranked radios to some women they came across, hoping they'd tune in the Pushto-language broadcasts from the BBC or Radio Liberty.

"They're scared. They don't want us here," said Clark. "They say the Taliban will come back when we leave. It's a shame. They should finally be able to get some peace after 30 years of fighting. They're tired." [Realcities link]

Here's a couple of stories describing how beheading videos (on DVD) are more popular in Iraq than porn:

So why is it that the snuff movies, which are being deliberately distributed by the killers, are being snapped up in their thousands on DVDs across Iraq? A year ago Iraqis liked nothing better than buying illicit pornography or video footage of Saddam Hussein's henchmen torturing and killing their victims. It was assumed that this lurid fascination would wear off now that, after 40 years of state television, Iraqis have access to 24-hour satellite television. [War and Peace blog]

``Soon after the regime fell, porno discs were all the rage,'' said Attallah Zeidan, a co-owner of a second hand bookshop in Baghdad's Old City. ``Now it's beheadings.'' [Star Tribune]

And I meant to link to this earlier (though you've probably already seen it - maybe peptide already linked it?):

"There's no clear definition of why we came here," says Army Spc. Nathan Swink, of Quincy, Ill. "First they said they have WMD and nuclear weapons, then it was to get Saddam Hussein out of office, and then to rebuild Iraq. I want to fight for my nation and for my family, to protect the United States against enemies foreign and domestic, not to protect Iraqi civilians or deal with Sadr's militia," he said. [CSMonitor, "A strident minority"]

Male GI's can get viagra, right? What are the odds military medical covers Male Birth Control Pills? I wonder how much money could be raised if we made The Boobiethon the default homepage on all military laptops. But I'm stereotyping; I'll stop now.

Forget about the war(s) for a moment.

Why are these kids so happy? It's because they understand the ending of Suicide Club. I picked this up after work on Friday (after stopping in to say hi to Alison, who works across the hall from Classic Pyx), and I figured it would be gory, dark, strange and entertaining, which it was. I didn't count on it being indecipherable.

It's a mystery story of sorts; kids are committing suicide en mass, and police are stumped as to why. Clues are dropped, characters introduced, gratuitous gore splashes about, cryptic messages from various sources, including a pre-teen pop group called "Desert":

And then the movie ends and I'm left scratching my head. If anyone out there has seen this movie and has any thoughts on what was going on, let me know. I suspect it was weird and cryptic for the sake of being weird and cryptic, but it's possible that I'm losing something in the translation from Japanese, too.

Jim and Dani's new house rocks. Congrats you guys!

4:59 AM The debate? Yeah, okay, Clint came over and we watched it. I was stunned by Bush's ability to use a mere handful of simple talking points, repeated with the mindless precision of a foreign policy machine, to decimate Kerry's weak-kneed love-letters to the frogs. I mean come one, JK actually referred to DeGaulle in one of his historical anecdotes! Bush tore that little story apart with the surgical precision of a 20th century Jack the Ripper of statesmanship: "Let me -- I'm not exactly sure what you mean, 'passes the global test'" -- hooboy, I know Kerry was sweating after that zinger.

I only wish I had seen the C-span version rather than the NPR; our state-funded apparatus apparently didn't want us to see the way the Leader of the Free World ™ as he reacted real-time to Kerry's bald-faced lies (see faces of frustration -- Al Gore, eat your heart out! That's the way you wave a towel, shmuck!

Another example of Bush's presidential superiority? Well, there's so many to choose from, it's hard to pick just one.... Let's see, there was his entirely believeable and heart-felt description of his taking the time to pray and commiserate with the wife of a fallen solider. Some folks seem to think this wasn't a tear-jerking, personal moment, retold by a war-time president, generously shared with the nation. (And in a disatorous alternate reality, where Al Gore had stolen the presidency instead of vice-versa, I can almost hear our great nation crying out as Sonny did in the Godfather:"Well it's war! We might not be in this shape if we had a real war-time Consiglere!"). And there was the way Bush kept pointing out that to criticize the standing president, even if you're running against him in an election year, is tantamount to telling each and every US soldier in the field that they're sissy nancy-boys who deserve to die. Bush: "I don't see how you can lead this country to succeed in Iraq if you say wrong war, wrong time, wrong place. What message does that send our troops? What message does that send to our allies? What message does that send the Iraqis?" Indeed. It sends the message that we live in a democracy, which, I think everyone will agree, is exactly the wrong message to send to a part of the world we're trying to instill with democracy.

For a real-world example of this thinking in action, let's turn to one of our own:

I got upset when I would see one loser with a little board that said "Beat Bush." Usually when I see this on TV it doesn't bother me to see protestors, but to see it REAL and in my face, it really pissed me off. The funny thing is, he was passing around papers. I was wearing my Army shirt, and he skipped giving little paper filled with propaganda about how Bush lied while soldiers died, blah blah blah and whatever those ignorant fools like to print and show the world. He is still in my Chain of Command, and I still must respect him as such, because I am a professional and well trained soldier. Whether I agree or dont agree with his policies, and views, he is still my commander and I must respect that.
(from Boots on the Ground's 9/9/04 post)

Soldier first, citizen never, I always say.

No, my choice for best example of Bush's obvious superiority came towards the end. The topic was North Korea, Kerry had once more advocated bilateral talks (Jeeze, could this guy go 2 seconds without repeating a talking point?), pointing to the unfortunate coincidence that NK had acquired nukes under GWB's watch, and when given his time to rebut, our President, our Commander in Chief, the Leader of the Free World ™, had this to say: "You know my opinion on North Korea. I can't say it any more plainly." And then he just sat there, more than willing to let his allotted 30 seconds tick away. Now, some of your so-called progressives, the Blame-America-First-ers, might have felt that Jim Lehrer jumped in to save Bush from looking like a moronic frat-boy who couldn't come up with 30 seconds of foreign policy philosophy to save his life, a dangerously under-qualified monkey who's been pampered and so pumped up with cash from his father's business contacts as to allow him to stumble drunkenly through life until his late middle-age until his puppet-masters decide it's time for him to dry out, open up the hole in his back, and let Cheney and the other neocon Vulcans steer this half-witted, smug, D- ass of a baboon like the Howdy-Doody doll that he is; yeah, that's just what the libral media would have you believe, wouldn't it?

No, the point is, the president shouldn't have to spell out his opinion again and again and again. I mean, come on; yet another 30 seconds he's supposed to fill up with meaningful words? He'd already said his peace, thank you very much. Just because it's a debate doesn't mean that he's got to defend his point of view, does it?

Let the freedom-hating pinkos call our Commander in Chief a boob, a moron, a mindless, coke-headed frat-ass who couldn't run a business successfully even with a mountain of forgiven loans and oil contracts from daddy's friends, a walking, talking affront to the English language that makes Dan Quale sound like Tony Blair; let them say he's an offensive, dangerous neocon who wants to spend trillions conquering the middle east for control of their oil rather than billions creating jobs in the US by developing alternative energy sources; let them say he's a thoughtless, smug, robotic tool of the amoralists who in the past brought us Hank Kissinger and John Negroponte (and who today give us Paul Wolfowitz and, well, John Negroponte); let them say they wouldn't cross the street to piss in his face. You and I, my gentle, patriotic readers, we know the real story.

God bless America; kill the rest and let God sort them out.