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[21 Dec 2004|04:37pm] |
I've felt like sleeping all day, but it's been cold enough at the circ desk to keep me (mostly) awake.
Finally got the rest of the holiday cards stamped, addressed, etc. I'll drop them off (If I can remember!) after work tonight. The stamps I got at the Safeway last night, the illo is of some crummy bird. I feel bad that I didn't have enough James Baldwin stamps for everybody; but at the last minute, what can you do?
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[20 Dec 2004|04:18pm] |
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Drafty, drafty, drafty in the library. I'm freezing my butt off.
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[12 Dec 2004|08:46pm] |
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I still can't walk all that well without the knee brace (and I'm not exactly Fred Astaire with it) and it is impossible to sit comfortably with it on. And I'm feeling feverish for the usual stress + bright lights in an underground library reasons. Calling in sick really isn't an option; we are understaffed as finals approach, and will be on skeleton crew when the winter vac starts. Still haven't started Christmas shopping.
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[11 Dec 2004|01:07am] |
That is one loud mouse.
Why won't it walk into one of the traps I set out for it? I've also got a poison dispenser, which the mouse has definitely been at (green pellets on the floor nearby), but this mouse has a Rasputin-like constitution, and is still squeaking away.
What's more, in my experience, when mice do drop dead of poison, they do so in some hard-to-get-at corner, and when you find one a month later, you need tweezers to get it all off the carpet.
Snap traps are easier. You just pick up the trap (mouse included), maybe wrap it in some newspaper, and toss it in the trash.
I'm so tired. Noisy mice at home, noisy students at work.
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[06 Dec 2004|06:18pm] |
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That sore knee I wrote about last week is still sore; indeed, it is more sore. So today before work, I dropped in at the emergency room, and waited an hour and a half to get it looked at for a minute and a half. The diagnosis is that I've strained something, so the gave me one of those velcro-on knee immobilizers and told me to take advil four times a day with food. Like I eat that often!
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[04 Dec 2004|07:49pm] |
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At work. Tired. Wanna sleep.
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[01 Dec 2004|10:34pm] |
Hmm, fire alarm's been going off for the last ten minutes. I wonder if there's a fire?
Last time I bothered to leave the building when this happened, it was like one in the morning, and I was the only one out there. But I've heard some doors on my floor opening and closing, so I presume some people are leaving. Oh well, I could do worse than to take the night air.
[Update, 3 1/2 hours later: Walked all the way down to the lobby. Around the second floor, encountered some people walking upward. Found the lobby and the sidewalk crowded with neighbors, with a firetruck parked on the street. Overheard a few remarks to the effect that there was no fire, but the firemen couldn't leave until they figured out how to turn off the alarm. Sounded ok to me. Figured that since I was down here anyway (almost twisting my ankle something bad on the last few steps) I might as well get some carryout chicken. Did so; returned to empty lobby, no alarm clanking, working elevator.]
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| New Foundations |
[30 Nov 2004|08:26pm] |
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For cheering oneself up, I heartily recommend this version of The Internationale, by the Japanese band Soul Flower Mononoke Summit. Critical Montages says it's the most festive rendition ever, and who am I to argue? Though I would have liked to have heard the steel band version that played at C.L.R. James's funeral. And somewhere, someone has done it Western Swing-style. Or at least I'd like to think.
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| Thanks a lot, Thanksgiving! |
[30 Nov 2004|08:01pm] |
Last Wednesday through this Sunday, the library closed at six, and I had to adjust my schedule. This meant getting up before noon on several days; not my favorite thing, but something I do often enough. What really sucked, though, was that the library was only open from noon to six on both Saturday and Sunday, so I had to make up for the truncated shifts I worked those days by working looong shifts yesterday and today. Anyway, I feel like I could sleep a hundred years when I get home tonight, though I'd better not, as I'm scheduled to work tomorrow.
I may call in sick anyway; in addition to the fatigue, I've got a sore knee from too much stomping up and down concrete-and-metal stairs, and I put on my last clean pair of underwear this morning.1 It all depends on whether we're adequately staffed tomorrow, and whether or not anyone else calls in sick. I think it's characteristic of small workplaces that what gets you to show up for work when you really don't want to isn't fear of the sack, or some transcendent sense of duty, but rather the desire not to create a shitload of work for the people who would have to fill in for you.
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1I won't have this excuse when the Target opens in Columbia Heights. Then, I'll be able to buy clean underwear at one in the morning.
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| Where He Stands |
[23 Nov 2004|02:14am] |
(Thank you,  one_serious_cat!)
What is your stand on..... | Created by spyndakitrose and taken 16327 times on bzoink! | | Abortion? | For the right to abortion (& the right to get it on Medicare, repeal the Hyde amendment!) For the right to give birth without the fear of penury for your child and yourself. | | Death Penalty? | On balance, against. But boy, are there ever some people for whom four walls are three too many . . . | | Prostitution? | Legalize it. But more important, sex workers need to organize to defend their economic interests and physical survival. | | Alcohol? | Instead of driving classes in high school, shouldn't we have drinking classes, where they teach you how to hold your liquor? | | Marijuana? | Legalize it. | | Other drugs? | In my misspent libertarian youth, I would have said "see above". Now I'm not so sure. I am sure the US should get the hell out of Columbia, though. | | Gay marriage? | Why should only straight people have the right to mess up their lives? | | Illegal immigrants? | In large numbers are a drag on everybody's wages. You can try solving this piecemeal by trying to deport them, or you could just give them papers. | | Smoking? | Bad for you, but as Richard Klein put it, cigarettes are sublime. But maybe I watch too many old movies. | | Drunk driving? | A subset of the category "Bad Driving". | | Cloning? | People are too much like each other already. | | Racism? | Bad on any level, but there needs to be less emphasis on racism as a personal feeling, and more on it as part of the structure of American society. | | Premarital sex? | Yes, please! | | Religion? | I have enough negative capability to accept mysteries, but I sure don't worship them. | | The war in Iraq? | Against the US, against the late Baathist regime, against the theocrats. But it's only the US that I have the slightest influence over, so thwarting it is the task at hand. | | Bush? | I try to cheer myself up by imagining that he will fuck up Iraq so badly, that he will seriously cripple the ability of future presidents to invade other countries. | | Downloading music? | I'll tell you when I figure out how to do it. | | The legal drinking age? | We should be stricter about who drives, not about who drinks. | | Porn? | See "Prostitution" above. In addition, could we have fewer stick-thin blondes with improbably large bosoms? | | Suicide? | Eh, you're gonna die soon enough anyway. No sense in ceasing to be a nuisance before then. | Create a Survey | Search Surveys | Go to bzoink! |
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[13 Nov 2004|11:31pm] |
Watched Z between trips to the laundry room last night. It's one of my favorite movies, and I don't know that a smarter movie has been made about politics. So many scenes have you thinking, "Yes, that's how it's done." (Like one near the beginning, where a fascist gang attacks a peace demo, making it look like a spontaneous fight, hitting dirty when they can get away with it, and withdrawing just in time for the cops to swoop in.) It manages to stay fairly suspenseful throughout, even though it's a whodunit where we know more or less who done it. It also contains one of my favorite exchanges of dialog from any movie:
Reporter (to a General who has just been indicted for murder): Are you a martyr? Like Dreyfus?
General (pained expression in voice): Dreyfus was guilty!
Later I made black eyed peas. I figured it was time I did something with the frozen chunk of bacon that had been in my freezer since . . . well, since the last time I made black eyed peas, which was New Year's Eve. It's just as well that this wasn't a similarly ceremonial occasion, since I ended up burning about a third of it. It's been a while since I really cooked something. I've warmed up store-bought chili, and I've fried fish in a pan, but this is the first time in over a month that I've done anything involving chopping and mixing. That's partly out of my usual indolence, but it's also because right before I left for Boston, I had achieved the rare state of being caught up with washing my dishes, and I was reluctant to spoil anything.
Headed to work today on my usual Saturday morning four hours' sleep. The middle of my commute consisted of walking from one end of Dupont Circle to another, in order to reach a bus stop on time. Partway there, I heard a female voice behind me saying "Excuse me." I don't know why she wanted my attention -- probably so she could ask for directions to something -- but as she wasn't yelling "Fire!" or "Chocolate!" and as I had a bus to catch, I ignored her. Now, there were plenty of other people nearby, but she repeated "Excuse me" twice more, each time with more insistence, and after the third time she, or somebody with her, literally pulled on my sleeve. "Leave me alone!" I blurted, without looking back, and I was left alone.
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| On Being Asked To Write A Poem Against The War In Vietnam |
[11 Nov 2004|01:15am] |
Well I have and in fact
more than one and I'll
tell you this too
I wrote one against
Algeria that nightmare
and another against
Korea and another
against the one
I was in
and I don't remember
how many against
the three
when I was a boy
Abyssinia Spain and
Harlan County
and not one
breath was restored
to one
shattered throat
mans womans or childs
not one not
one
but death went on and on
never looking aside
except now and then
with a furtive half-smile
to make sure I was noticing.
-- Hayden Carruth
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| I Like It Here |
[10 Nov 2004|01:53am] |
Spent Thursday afternoon through Sunday morning with my brother, in Boston. This was David's birthday present to me, and it was a very thoughtful and generous gift, even considering that I didn't (and don't) want to go anywhere. I planned the visit around the larger and/or more interesting used book stores, figuring that the neighborhoods they were in would likely have other attractions, particularly ones that David (who doesn't share my addiction) would want to check out. I also figured I'd do some walking around at random.
Well, scratch the last bit. By the time we had found a place to eat Thursday night, I had rediscovered the fact that you can't truly walk around at random with other people, unless those people are infants who have not yet learned to talk, stepford wives, or your entourage. In company, you have to have a reason for doing one thing instead of another, and one of the things I like to get out of a vacation is an escape from the purposefulness that work imposes on us, and upon our lives outside of work.
But I managed to score pretty well in the book hunt (see my previous post, the 23/5 meme -- all the sentences are taken from the stack of not yet shelved stuff next to my computer.) I mildly regret not purchasing The Overwrought Urn, a mid-sixties anthology of litcrit parodies. It included the inevitable selection from Frederick Crews' The Pooh Perplex1, as well as a piece by Robert Conquest entitled something like "Christian Symbolism in Lucky Jim" which in retrospect sounds worth the price of the book.
The best moment came when I was browsing Boston Book Annex, near Fenway Park. The store has two cats, and as I was crouching near the sociology shelves, one of them came up to me and began licking my hand. After a few minutes of that, he went back to his basket and began purring.
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1The strict Freudian "A.A. Milne's Honey-Pit-Gun-Balloon Complex", which I think inferior to "Poisoned Paradise: The Dark Underside of Winnie" (bang-on Leslie Fiedler impersonation).
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| 23rd page, 5th sentence. |
[09 Nov 2004|01:06am] |
It follows that children are in some sense unrepressed.
You worked a few weeks and then you had layoffs for a month or two and then you got another job and you worked for a few weeks.
Hundreds of thousands of dunams of land were taken away from the Arab minority -- I am not talking here of the refugees -- through a whole variety of legal devices.
The literature of the day was meant above all to be read or recited aloud to an audience, since the reading public was not large enough to warrant any other form of publication.
There is no reason why he should not keep Christmas as well as the farmer; and when he is mowing, reaping, or is at any other hard work, a quart, or three pints, of really good fat ale a-day is by no means too much.
In the tiny room that served him as an office, I found a short, blond, courteous young fellow with a bitter expression around his mouth and evasive light-blue eyes that waywardly refused to look straight at anything, not because their owner was afraid, but because he was either ashamed or disgusted.
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[03 Nov 2004|11:58am] |
The Skull&Bones fucker conceded. I'm so glad I didn't vote for him. I'm going back to bed.
(And slit, thanks for this.)
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[03 Nov 2004|12:37am] |
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Not drunk yet. But unless nausea intervenes, I'm going there.
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[02 Nov 2004|11:34pm] |
Hardly a line when I voted today, which I attribute to a) the time, 2pm, between the before- and after-work rushes, and b) the fact that precincts are based on the census, which counts everybody, but you can only vote if you're an adult citizen, and my neighborhood has lots of recent immigrants.
I really need to volunteer to work the polls in '06. Most of the workers at my polling place looked around eighty years old, and a few of them weren't all that clear when it came to explaining how to use the enormous, menu-sized ballots (in the old days, we got easy to handle, wine-list-sized ballots). Of course, I can be confusing too, and I don't have age as an excuse. But I have two years to buff up my old retail briskness, and maybe learn Spanish.
I have no idea who's going to win, do you?
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| The Traditional Values Candidate |
[29 Oct 2004|05:14pm] |
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My TV doesn't work, so I haven't seen the latest Bin Laden video. Is it as good as his last one? Anyone gonna write him in on Tuesday?
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[28 Oct 2004|03:48am] |
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Brief follow-up to the previous post:
1) As dobrovolets points out, the Supreme Court says that your driver's license is now a walking license. I consider this to be Henry Ford's final malediction upon the nation that spawned him. Otherwise, though, the guide I linked to seems more or less accurate. You don't have to talk. You don't have to let them in your house. And without seeing a lawyer first, you probably shouldn't (with a few exceptions, such as if you've just witnessed a violent crime).
2) And that's the main reason I made that post. Not because I think it's a tremendous outrage that the Secret Service paid a visit to someone who joked about killing Bush (or about praying for someone to kill Bush, or whatever). If the Secret Service is going to do this sort of thing at all, it's hard to see how they could do it without looking into every case that come across their desks. It's a simple matter of covering your ass.
3) However, I don't believe the Secret Service should be doing this sort of thing. kynn says that "'don't joke about killing the President' is like 'don't joke about bombs in the airport'", and that's true, but why should it be? Joke about killing any other public figure, and your speech is more or less protected. Making an exception for the President is like having a law against lese majeste, and neither suits the republic we sometimes like to think we have.
4) And while we're talking about getting rid of the President, how about getting rid of the Presidency? The separation of powers is vastly overrated. If I could make one change to the Constitution, it would be to have the head of the executive branch elected every four years by a simple majority in the House of Representatives (and removable -- at any time, for any reason -- by the vote of 2/3 of the same body.) Yeah, screw the Senate. States with more cows than people have had far too much power for far too long.
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[27 Oct 2004|04:45pm] |
A number of you have linked to anniesj's account of her close encounter with the Secret Service. Upon reading it, I thought it might be good to remind everyone that,
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO TALK TO THE POLICE, FBI, INS, OR ANY OTHER LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENT OR INVESTIGATOR. You can't lawfully be arrested for refusing to identify yourself on the street, although this may make the police suspicious, and police and other agents do not always follow the law. If you are driving a vehicle, you must show your license and registration. Otherwise, you do not have to talk to anyone: on the street, at your home or office, if you've been arrested, or even if you're in jail. Only a judge has the legal authority to order you to answer questions.
For more, go http://www.nlg.org/resources/kyr/kyr_english.htm.
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[20 Oct 2004|03:12pm] |
While many Americans search in vain for flu shots, members and employees of Congress are able to obtain them quickly and at no charge from the Capitol's attending physician, who has urged all 535 lawmakers to get the vaccines even if they are young and healthy.
The physician's office has dispensed nearly 2,000 flu shots this fall, and doses remained available yesterday. That is a steep drop from last year's 9,000 shots, a spokesman for attending physician John F. Eisold said, because many congressional employees have voluntarily abided by federal guidelines that call for this season's limited supply to go mainly to the elderly, the very young, pregnant women, long-term-care patients and people with chronic illnesses.
. . . .
Eisold "is a big believer that members of Congress are at high risk, because they shake hands with a lot of people" and then visit veterans centers and other concentrations of susceptible people, his spokesman said. Because lawmakers can be both victims and spreaders of flu, he said, Eisold urged all 535 to get the shots.
. . . .
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), 62, said in an interview yesterday: "I haven't done it yet, but I want to. We're not in the priority category" set by the CDC. "But I think the [Capitol's] doctor makes a good case. We can pick it up and spread it" through interactions with constituents.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46325-2004Oct19.html.
Oh, good grief. Someone working in high volume retail probably comes within coughing distance of more people in a day than a congressman will in a week. Lieberman's remarks make me wonder if my 88 year old great aunt, who lives in Connecticut, was able to get a shot this year.
I'm pretty sure that what I have isn't the flu. I was running a temperature Monday night, and coughing a lot; now I'm coughing less, but my stomach is upset. (I was going to go to work today, until I tried to eat something.) I don't have that sore-all-over feeling that usually comes with the flu. Still, it's tedious to get up and refill my water glass. Clearly, I need more sinks.
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| Sick |
[19 Oct 2004|12:54am] |
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Sick, sick, sick. I'm sure that through my constant sniffling, I grossed out everyone who was trying to study. Think I'll call in sick tomorrow. Must not feel guilty about it.
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[18 Oct 2004|03:48pm] |
I've resisted the poetry meme (post a poem, ask everyone else to post a poem -- kinda like a pyramid scheme, eh?) for a day or two, since I post a goodly amount of poetry without prompting from you guys.
But for some reason, this has been knocking around my memory. It's by Delmore Schwartz:
The heavy bear who goes with me,
A manifold honey to smear his face,
Clumsy and lumbering here and there,
The central ton of every place,
The hungry beating brutish one
In love with candy, anger, and sleep,
Crazy factotum, dishevelling all,
Climbs the building, kicks the football,
Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city.
Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,
That heavy bear who sleeps with me,
Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,
A sweetness intimate as the water's clasp,
Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope
Trembles and shows the darkness beneath.
--The strutting show-off is terrified,
Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,
Trembles to think that his quivering meat
Must finally wince to nothing at all.
That inescapable animal walks with me,
Has followed me since the black womb held,
Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,
A caricature, a swollen shadow,
A stupid clown of the spirit's motive,
Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,
The secret life of belly and bone,
Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown,
Stretches to embrace the very dear
With whom I would walk without him near,
Touches her grossly, although a word
Would bare my heart and make me clear,
Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed
Dragging me with him in his mouthing care,
Amid the hundred million of his kind,
the scrimmage of appetite everywhere.
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| I shit on you Nazi bastards! |
[18 Oct 2004|02:07am] |
Feverish and stuffy at work today. I still am as I write this, though not nearly as much. Something about the library magnifies any sickness I bring to it. I think the lights have something to do with it, and also having to be somewhere rather than choosing to be somewhere. In any case, I began to feel better the moment I stepped out the door; and I walked home, which had its usual head-clearing effect.
But I began to feel much better between leaving the library and walking outside, when I was in the men's room of the surrounding building. I found, tucked into a TP dispenser, a business card from these assholes. Normally it's depressing to be reminded that they exist, but this time I was in the perfect, uh, position to express my opinion in the most utterly appropriate manner.
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| More-obscure-than-thou! |
[15 Oct 2004|02:35am] |
Name a CD you own that no-one else on your friends list does:
I'm not really a music person, but do any of you have the anthology God Less America ("A heartrending set of country & western tales of misery and confusion")? Ok, how about Peter Laughner's posthumous album Take the Guitar Player for a Ride?
Name a book you own that no-one else on your friends list does:
The Ancient Lowly by C. Osborne Ward.
Name a movie you own that no-one else on your friends list does:
What's Up, Tiger Lily?
Name a place that you have visited that no-one else on your friends list has:
Col. Zadok Magruder High School, in Rockville, MD. Visited it most days from 1981-1985. Not exactly the butthole of the universe, but close. Ok, how about the employee's rest room at Second Story Books in Bethesda. The old location, on Bethesda Avenue, not the new one on Woodmont.
If I've overestimated my uniqueness, please correct me.
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| Livejournalling makes nothing happen, but neither does anything else I do. |
[13 Oct 2004|11:36pm] |
Oh all right, I couldn't really stay away. My laundry isn't done, either.
Stayed up til four last night finishing China Mieville's Perdido Street Station. It's the first of his novels I've read, and I liked it a lot. So much, in fact, that I added "china mieville" to my interests. Of course, I'll have to remove it if it turns out that his other stuff is about cute fuzzy elves searching for a magical sword; but judging by the covers I've seen, that's probably not the case.
Woke up this afternoon feeling sadder than I thought I should be. After thinking on it for a bit, I realized that I was still a bit down over the grievous fate of one of the main characters in Perdido Street. It's rare that fiction does that to me any more. That's partly because I don't read as much fiction as I used to; but also because much of the fiction I read is comedy, which tends to produce some degree of detachment in the reader, since even the sympathetic characters are playthings for his amusement.
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[02 Oct 2004|12:17pm] |
I'm going to take a bit of a break from this. It's not so much that I think the writing is crap -- that's a constant, and I'll always feel it to be so, much like some women always feel like they weigh to much. It's more that these entries are the closest I get to intelligent communication. I don't write letters to people, I don't talk to anyone at work except for practical reasons, and I have no social life (and no political life -- I don't count voting -- I'm truly an idiot in the original, Greek city-state, sense of the term.)
Anyway, however valuable LJ has been as a refuge, it's become overfamiliar and stinky (kind of like my apartment -- I really need to get caught up on my laundry.) So I'm going away. I'll be back within a month -- the need to give My Correct Views On Everything will become irresistable by election day, I'm sure.
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[30 Sep 2004|03:19am] |
Took a cab to work this afternoon. Then walked home this evening. Which is a good argument against buying a weekly bus pass, but really I should cut out the cabs and just get up earlier. On the ride to work, the driver went past a rather beautiful cemetery on R street, so coming home, I walked by it. Couldn't see all that much, but there were crypts, angels, and obelisks taller than me. It put me in a good mood, which was only broken when I was crossing the Q street bridge and a guy on a bike pushed past me. He said, "Hello, how are you." I was stonily silent, though later I realized I should have said, "There's a reason they call it a sideWALK. It's cause you WALK on it!" Whatever. I had dinner at a place on 18th street called The Diner, which isn't really a diner, but is nonetheless pretty cheap for 18th street. I had half a chicken and green beans and mashed potatos and two Yinglings and a Delirium Tremins. Walking home, I serenaded the empty storefronts of 14th street with Chesterton's "The Rolling English Road" (typing from memory, so I may get some of it wrong):
Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road that rambled round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton, and the squire.
A merry road, a mazey road, and such as we did tread,
The night we went from Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.
His sins they were forgiven him, or why do flower run
Behind him and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from left to right, but knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when the found him in the ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us, we did not see so clear,
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.
I know no harm of Bonaparte, but plenty from the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchmen I did not much desire.
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road and English drunkard made.
Where you and I wnet down the lane with ale mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.
My friends, we will not go again; or ape an ancietnt rage,
Or stretch the folly of ou7r youth to be the shame of age.
But walk with clearer eyes and ears the path that wandereth,
And see undimned in evening light the decent inn of death.
For there is good news yet to hear, aned fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensel Green!
I'm nursing my second Mare d'Sous as I type this. I'm fat, I'm durnk, and I'm . . . happy? I won't go that far, but I'm certainly in a good mood. Ladies, rub my hairy belly, it will bring you good luck.
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[29 Sep 2004|07:45pm] |
I was reminded by douglain's post on Videodrome of the old game where you ask everyone in the room who would portray them in a movie. My answer has generally been James Woods.
He's got that lean and nasty look I used to have. (Nowadays, I look jowly and nasty).
So. Livejournal: The Movie. Who plays you?
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| What a splendid idea. |
[27 Sep 2004|03:13am] |
sabotabby writes:
Tonight's participatory activity is "Fuck  fuck_arabs!" LJ Abuse doesn't consider this hate speech. There's only one member, and he seems to be a pathetic little arse.
My suggestion to all of you, would be to join this community and take its title completely literally. If you are an Arab, you can post about what a good lay you are. If you are not an Arab, post about how much you like shagging them. I don't think this will accomplish anything in the long term, but it'll force him to abandon his stupid community, and it'll be pretty funny, too.
My own modest contribution is here, if it hasn't been deleted.
(Addendum: Also here and here.)
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[26 Sep 2004|07:51pm] |
Walked home from work last night. I should do this more often; all the time, really, except when I'm exhausted or the weather is lousy. And most of the time I think I'm exhausted, I'm really just half-wigged out from being under florescent lights and in front of computer monitors for eight hours. An hour in the night air cures that, mostly.
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With the election five weeks away, my favorite campaign poster is for a school board candidate with the unfortunate name of Jeff Smith. "Children Before Politics", it says. Yep.
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| This could actually be interesting. |
[22 Sep 2004|04:46pm] |
Think of a word you would use to describe me.
Go to Google Image Search and search for that word.
Select the picture you see as most fitting whatever picture strikes your fancy, and post it as a reply.
Post this meme in your journal.
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| September 21 |
[21 Sep 2004|05:58am] |
On September 11 (yes) 1973, General Augusto Pinochet led a coup d'etat against the civilian, democratically elected government of Chile. The President, Salvador Allende, was killed defending the Presidential Palace; his defense minister, Orlando Letelier, was arrested that morning upon arriving at work, the ministry already being in the hands of the coup plotters. Letelier spent a year in prison in the remote south of the country, before being exiled, first to Venezuela, then to the US. He settled in Washington, DC, where several years before he had been his country's ambassador. He worked as an economist at the Institute for Policy Studies; and less formally, applied his diplomatic skills toward improving relations between various groups of anti-Pinochet exiles.
On September 21, 1976, Letelier was driving into work with Michael and Ronnie Moffitt, colleagues of his at IPS. When he reached Sheridan Circle, a bomb that had been planted in his car exploded, fatally injuring both himself and Ronnie Moffitt.
The bombing had been carried out by a group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles, who had embraced Pinochet's cause as their own. They were directed by Michael Townley, an American who had lived for many years in Chile, and who was an agent of the DINA, the Chilean secret police. By 1978, Townley's role had been uncovered, and the Chilean government agreed to expel him. Once in the US, Townley turned state's evidence, naming both his Cuban subordinates and his bosses in DINA. Chile refused a request to extradite the latter, though it did try and convict some of them years later, after the restoration of civilian rule.
If you're interested in such distinctions, the fact that Moffit died in the '76 bombing makes it the last time that an American citizen was killed on American soil by agents of a foreign power. (The Taliban sheltered Al Quaida, but they didn't direct it.)
And in 1998, Manuel Contreras, head of DINA in 1976, and already serving time for Letelier's murder (he would get out in 2001, but his legal troubles are far from over. They are still digging up bodies in Chile), wrote for the first time of the role of his old boss:
I always complied with and conformed to the orders that the president of the Republic gave me. Only he as superior authority of the DINA had the power to order the missions that were executed and always in my capacity as delegate of the President, I carried out strictly what was ordered.
Pinochet has yet to stand trial for anything. Last month, for the second time in four years, the Chilean Supreme Court rescinded his immunity from prosecution. But he is old and frail, and more likely to occupy a coffin than a defendant's box.
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At Sheridan Circle, on the sidewalk outside the Romanian embassy, there is a small plaque commemerating Letelier and Moffitt. I walk by it fairly often.
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| What would a natural disaster be without . . . |
[19 Sep 2004|09:57pm] |
. . . Mike Davis, here with (almost) all his usual verve. ("Uncharismatic attitude"? What's that?)
The evacuation of New Orleans in the face of Hurricane Ivan looked like Strom Thurmond's version of the Rapture. Affluent white people fled the Big Easy in their SUVs, while the old and car-less -- mainly Black -- were left behind in their below-sea-level shotgun shacks and aging tenements to face the watery wrath.
New Orleans has spent decades preparing for inevitable submersion by the storm surge of a class-five hurricane. Civil defense officials conceded they had ten thousand body bags on hand to deal with the worst-case scenario. But no one seemed to have bothered to devise a plan to evacuate the city’s poorest or most infirm residents.
The day before the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast, New Orlean's daily, the Times Picayune, ran an alarming story about the "large group . . . mostly concentrated in poorer neighborhoods" who wanted to evacuate but couldn't.
Only at the last moment, with winds churning Lake Pontchartrain, did Mayor Ray Nagin reluctantly open the Louisiana Superdome and a few schools to desperate residents. He was reportedly worried that lower-class refugees might damage or graffiti the Superdome.
( Read more...Collapse )
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[15 Sep 2004|07:00pm] |
Unlike some of you, I don't think voting is completely useless. But the uselessness attached to voting in a capitalist democracy gets multiplied if you're a DC voter, since we have no constitutional right to our own political institutions. If congress wanted to require all manhole covers to be painted red, white and blue, or to make Jerry Falwell superintendent of schools, they could do it, by a simple majority vote. I wouldn't mind this so much if only the rest of the country were subject to it -- maybe if South Succotash, KS had its affairs managed by Republican congressmen, then it would stop voting for them.
The uselessness is multiplied further in my situation because I'm registered with the Statehood Green Party, which had no contested primaries in yesterday's elections. In these circumstances, showing up at the polls would have been a meaningless ritual. But show up I did, since I like meaningless rituals, having been deprived of them as a child because my parents didn't give me a religious upbringing. So I duly connected the arrows for this year's sacrificial lamb for City Council (At-Large) and Shadow Representative. (The latter office is a rather obscure, unpaid position that our guy has been pursuing with great energy for the past two election cycles. He might actually win one of these days.)
Nobody was running for a chance to oppose Eleanor Holmes Norton in the race for Nonvoting Delegate, but there was a space where you could write in a name, and like 183 fellow SGers, I did. I wrote in City Desk's Sam Smith, though it later occured to me that Ralph Nader is a) a DC resident, and b) in need of useful work.
In the slightly more meaningful elections (i.e., the Democratic primaries), the results were excellent. Out of five incumbant council members, three were kicked out, one of the kickers being former mayor Marion Barry. I have a feeling that politics around here are going to get a mite more interesting . . .
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[11 Sep 2004|12:15am] |
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Congratulations to gnostalgia and slit who get married today. From now on, it is your happiness that (for me) this date will chiefly evoke.
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| Forbidden Peanut Butter |
[05 Sep 2004|01:12am] |
Occasionally, I go grocery shopping at the downtown location of a certain national chain store that sells really pricey food to yuppies and treats its employees like crap. In my defense 1) It's the only convenient place that sells free-range beef, which is less likely than the factory-farmed variety to be a garden of evil prions, and 2) I don't go there that often. Which is not to say that I won't draw the line against some things, and some of those things are the goods and services on the AFL-CIO's Don't Buy List.
So for almost two years, I've been forgoing Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. I'm not a huge fan of peanut butter (for several years in the early nineties, a peanut butter sandwich was my standard lunch, and that does tend to disenchant one); but chocolate makes it rather more palatable, and peanut butter lends chocolate a certain legitimacy as real food. For a while, I got by on the generic peanut butter cups you can get in Safeway or CVS, but after reading the fine print, I saw that they were covered by the boycott as well. So I've been cold turkey since then.
But tonight at the Yuppie Chain Grocery, I saw that Newman's Own had come out with a line of peanut butter cups. The following dialog ensued between my brain and my stomach:
Stomach: Wow, Newman's Own Peanut Butter Cups. They're not on the Don't Buy List! Let's get some.
Brain: Yeah, but it's a new product. It's not as though I've looked at the Don't Buy list lately; and in any case, it's not a web page that looks like it gets updated all that often.
Stomach: But Paul Newman's a big time Hollywood liberal! He wouldn't buy peanut butter from a sleazy union-busting firm.
Brain: Liberal, schmiberal. The whole selling point of Newman's Own is that all profits go to charity. So there's a built-in self-righteous excuse to maximize profits by whatever unsavory means.
Stomach: Well, you don't know that this is made with forbidden peanut butter. When you get home you can google around a bit and see if you can find anything, but for now, you're free.
Brain: Shut up stomach. Let's go over to the beer aisle, and get some of that get's-you-drunk-quick Belgian ale.
This is what passes for an ethical dilemma in my life right now. Yes, I know, I can barely contain the excitement, either.
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| This upsets me more than hostage-taking, Republicans, hurricanes, etc. |
[03 Sep 2004|03:46pm] |
Thousands of irreplaceable books are believed to have been damaged or destroyed in a fire at a library in the town of Weimar, Germany, officials say.
The blaze in the 16th Century palace housing the Duchess Anna Amalia library raged for two hours on Thursday night.
Workers forming a human chain managed to retrieve some 6,000 valuable works -- including a 1534 Bible owned by Reformation-era monk Martin Luther.
Officials are worried about water and smoke damage to many remaining books.
The area worst affected by the blaze housed some 12,000 to 13,000 volumes, the library's director, Michael Knoche said.
The cause of the fire is not yet known.
Germany's culture minister visited the site of the fire on Friday morning and said, "A piece of the world's cultural heritage has been lost forever."
The library was established in 1691 and holds several rare works spanning the 16th to the 18th centuries -- a period when Weimar was home to German literary legends Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller.
Its total collection -- scattered around several sites in Weimar -- numbers some one million volumes, the majority of which were in the building affected by the fire.
Many of the books were impossible to replace and therefore had not been insured, Mr Knoche said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3625042.stm.
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[02 Sep 2004|03:19am] |
The scene takes place at 1:30 tonight, on Columbia Road. I am heading north, on one side of the street. A man and a woman are heading south, on the other side of the street. They are arguing. Or rather, the man thinks he is arguing. Even at my closest approach, I can't make out their words; but he's making arguing noises, doesn't get very far with any of them before she drowns them with hectoring noises, which are shortly replaced with crying noises. Soon, I am out of range.
And I am momentarily1 pleased to be single. I can feel something of that moment as I type this, in my underwear and surrounded by books. I could stretch it some if I were drunk, but I've been out of beer for two weeks. It's not as though I'm broke, either, I've just been . . . dispirited? No, that would be if I were out of vodka. It's more like I just can't get hopping.
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1Don't you hate it when people use "momentarily" to mean "soon"?
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| Grinning Until It Cramps |
[01 Sep 2004|07:38pm] |
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Today's first interlibrary loan request: "Normal and Pathological Nostalgia".
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| I always suspected it! |
[27 Aug 2004|11:41pm] |
Is your boss a charming, well-educated and polished leader intent on climbing the career ladder? If so, he could be a psychopath, psychologists gathered in Stockholm said.
Recent research has shown that not all psychopaths are violent killers -- many of them hold normal jobs, with some rising to the highest levels of executive management.
But their charisma and ambition are often mistaken for leadership traits rather than psychopathic ones, industrial-organisation psychologist Paul Babiak of the United States told the EuroScience Open Forum in Stockholm.
"Psychopaths tend to be charming, have a grandiose sense of self, and they like money, power and sex. They have strong verbal skills and can manipulate by telling a good story. Because they can talk big, you think they have vision and can lead an organisation, but a psychopath will mislead," Babiak said.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1508&e=10&u=/afp/science_psychology.
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