April 11, 2004

Pansies

pansies.jpg

i took this photograph last weekend outside the state capitol building. i thought it might be cool to Van Gogh-ize it with PhotoShop.

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Another Sporadic Huge Comment of the Week®

Hello, i hope y'all had a nice Easter/Passover holiday. This weekend i've been fighting two viruses. (Or is it viri?) The first is some kinda flu that i suspect i caught on the plane last weekend. It's weird. Usually i start with a sore throat and end with a cough. This time i started with a cough and now i have a sore throat. The second virus is a crappy toolbar spyware thingie that attached itself to my Internet Explorer like the monster in Alien. i had to hack it up piece by piece to delete it. i'm still not sure if i got it all.

So that's my excuse for light blogging. But, i have selected a Huge Comment of the Week®, so i haven't been completely idle.

This week's H.C.O.T.W.® laureate is someone by the name of Anonymous, who commented on an old humorous bit i did way back on March 5, 2003, called Match The Idiotic Quote With The Idiotic Celebrity. i was pretty proud of that post, it being so clever and snarky. But this person Anonymous didn't seem too impressed by my humor.

so i bet all of the previous posters have never made mistakes before and find it easier to just put other people down because of their mistakes instead of look inside their own selves. im not saying that i like any of these 'stars' as role models, especially for little kids. i really dont think they are great role models at all for kids. but. as adults, i think its time we stop bashing things down and provoke change. its not productive to participate in giving these people money (however inadvertantly) by paying any attention whatsoever to them. to me, it seems as if all of you have bought into the whole cherade. i mean, britney, christina, allanis, paris, theyve all got you writing and making pages 'worthy' of stooping to their level and even discussing them. it just doesnt seem to make sense to me....... i dont mean to offend anyone here and id be more than happy to clear up my position on things, but im just amazed that this badmouthing can be any more valid than the whole entertainment crap. just dont pay attention if you dont like it. and if you really dont like it, do something about it.
i feel chided, i do. Still, i don't think i can stop making fun of people like Brittany, Kristina, Atlantis and Peris. i don't think i want to. It's too much fun. And if anyone doesn't like it, well, i refer them to this recent post.

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April 09, 2004

Happy Easter Dumb-Ass Quiz

Which "happy bunny" am i?

kiss my ass2
Congratulations. You are the kiss my ass happy
bunny. You don't care about anyone or anything.
You must be so proud.

which happy bunny are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

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Link Advice

Have you been reading LeeAnn, queen of the run-on sentence and a very funny writer? The blog's called The Cheese Stands Alone and it's mu.nu, too.

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Good Friday

Today is Good Friday. There are some among my visitors who are religious, even religious intellectuals. i found a dense article by Romanus Cessario, O.P., which reviews Gibson's The Passion of the Christ in light of St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica.

i must admit, i have not read Summa Theologica and i had difficulty following a lot of the discussion. However, there is a passage in the review that addresses one problem i had with The Passion, which i described in my own review when i wrote:

The scourging scene goes on for an unnecessarily long time. Historically, people died from scourging. It didnÂ’t take a lot of strokes to kill someone, and Jesus was whipped savagely in the movie. Though iÂ’m not an expert on this, i really do think any person would have died from that amount of flogging. There was so much blood on the floor after the scourging scene, it is impossible to believe that Jesus wouldn't have at least passed out, let alone believe that he could carry a heavy cross afterwards. We know that Jesus did not die until he was on the cross for three hours, so i think Gibson overdid the scourging scene.
Fr. Cessario's review addresses my problem thusly:
If one allows that the scenes of punishment exceed the modesty of the Scriptures themselves, or if we follow those who opine that after such beatings and harsh treatment, no man would be able to shoulder the cross or even walk, there is still the explanation that the artist chose this excess for a theological reason.

A long theological tradition supports this sort of iconographical modification: The Church asks us to ponder the price that the Savior of the world paid. Without this meditation, one cannot embrace the full dimensions of Catholic piety; instead, we would find ourselves moving rapidly toward those various forms of de-sacramentalized Christianity that focus exclusively on interior psychological states.

i think that's roughly what i meant when i said:
Thematically, itÂ’s clear Gibson wanted to shock the audience with the amount of torture in the scourging. His torture represents the sins of mankind. It looks horrible because Gibson wants to impress us with the magnitude of GodÂ’s gift to us. That was the director's choice. If Gibson had toned it down to a less shocking level, maybe we wouldnÂ’t get the message.

. . .

Nowadays, people seem to think that Jesus came simply to tell us to be nice to each other. ItÂ’s a pleasant message, and it fits into our overly secular world without ruffling too many feathers. But, itÂ’s not why Jesus came here. Remember, we didnÂ’t need Jesus to tell us to 'love our neighbor.' That commandment was already in Leviticus. But in our secular world, people have forgotten the real reason Jesus came to earth, which was to suffer, to die, and to rise again.

Fr. Cessario also points out that Gibson's intent was to show the divine aspect of Jesus, which previous directors chose to downplay in favor of His human aspect, perhaps because our secular world accepts His humanness more readily, and perhaps because it is impossible to represent divinity accurately on film.
Mel Gibson directs Jim Caviezel in a way that, in my view, approaches accomplishing the impossible. There are the Christs of Pasolini, of Zeffirelli, and of Rossellini, but the Christ of Gibson captures what these others were content to accomplish by representing a high expression of human values.

Although I am not an art critic, it seems to me that the very excesses, even the distortions, which some commentators have questioned, in fact aim to show us that this man is more than human. That we have to look elsewhere for the source of his human endurance.

i might disagree somewhat with the last sentence of that quote, because, as i said:
The whole point of JesusÂ’ torture and death was for Him to submit to it as a man. Using His power as God to withstand any torture would have been accepting the DevilÂ’s temptation.
But Fr. Cessario's article also got me thinking: maybe Jesus' endurance seemed impossible in the film because it was supposed to be the extreme limit of human endurance. Perhaps Gibson intended to show that Jesus, while rejecting the temptation to supernatural intervention available to Him, endured the limit of human suffering because He knew the purpose of His mission, where another might have succumbed out of weakness or incomplete knowledge. Just a thought.

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Poem i Found

i'm not too crazy about gimmicky poems that look funky on the page. i guess it's the lingering effects of trying to decipher too much e.e. cummings in school. But here's one i found via Ivy is here, which i really like a lot.

Click here to read Sunday Morning from the blog Watermark.

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April 08, 2004

Phone Call To My Brother

"Hi Mom, is Derrick there?"

"Hold on sweetie, i'll get him."

Long pause, then Mom came on the phone again.

"Annie."

"Yah?"

"Derrick said he's kinda busy right now. He's in the middle of something. He'll call you back later."

"What's he doing?"

"I think he said he was pulling his throttle body."

"Ooo-kay Mom . . . ," i giggled, "i guess he'll need some privacy then."


(Hey, what do i know about cars?)

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If There Is Such A Thing As Reincarnation, Please Let Her Be Exempt!

i just can't stop updating you on Brittany's antics. She's such an easy target, and there's no shortage of material out there, since her every waking moment is chronicled for all to see. (That is, assuming the level of brainwave activity inside her head ever qualifies as a "waking moment.")

Here's a picture i found, showing what the American Skankwoman likes to read while she's laying out by the pool and sucking down Marlboro Lights.

It's a book called Wheels of a Soul: Reincarnation - Your Life Today and Tomorrow, by Kabbalist Rabbi Philip Berg. It was no doubt recommended by her personal Kabbalah tutor, that very classy Madona lady.

i guess Brittany's born again experience didn't take. Between smooches, Madona probably informed her that Christianity wasn't cool these days.

Fictional dialogue goes as follows:

"Baby, you gotta dump that whole Mel Gibson shit if you wanna be like me. Don't you want to be like me?"

"Of course I do. You know I do. Please help me be more like you."

"Alrighty then. But first let's see if we can't make you a little more like Janet."

Whispering and giggling ensues. Justin's name is mentioned. Some more whispering and giggling.

"Okay Madona, I'll do it! You're so smart."

Then we have this story.


P.S. By the way, it's just my opinion, but i think reincarnation is complete bullshit.

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April 07, 2004

There's That Mysterious Zipper Pull Again!

What the heck does it mean?

the mysterious zipper pull

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Happy Birthday William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was born on this day in 1770. In honor of his birthday, here's one of my favorites:

      Daffodils

I wander'd lonely as a cloud
   That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
   A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
   And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
   Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
   Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
   In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
   In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
   Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Pretty, isn't it?

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April 06, 2004

Advice For President Bush With References To George S. Patton And The Prince

i'm upset about the recent escalation of casualties and violence in Iraq. You know i supported the war and i still do. But we must win. i'm not ready to jump ship and start agreeing with Teddy Kennedy, but i'm starting to worry.

Kennedy compared Iraq to Vietnam. It was a foolish statement, and i hope to never see the day when Kennedy could be described as prescient. But i know all too well that we lost Vietnam because our politicians tried to fight a limited war against an enemy that used our reticence against us.

To me, there is one commandment of warfare and it is this: Thou must kick ass all the time. Americans like me do not want to see our side get hit like they did today. We're willing to go along with this war, but we don't want our best men losing any fights.

Patton said:

Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.
. . . is hateful. No, we don't like to lose. Vietnam affected our national psyche for decades. That's why Mogadishu, even though we killed a ton of bad guys, sticks in our collective craw. And so will Fallujah, if we don't get some serious payback.

Patton again:

We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the [enemy] that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We're not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we're going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy . . . cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket. War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. . . .

. . . [W]e are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. . . . We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!

This is my point: we can pussyfoot around some more, trying to get these assholes in the Sunni Triangle to like us, or we can start killing them. Yes, i said fucking kill them. Now lest you think i've gone off my rocker, here's what Niccolo Machiavelli had to say on the subject back in the sixteenth century:
When a newly acquired State has been accustomed . . . to live under its own laws and in freedom, there are three methods whereby it may be held. The first is to destroy it; the second, to go and reside there in person; the third, to suffer it to live on under its own laws, subjecting it to a tribute, and entrusting its government to a few of the inhabitants who will keep the rest your friends. . . .

We have examples of all these methods in the histories of the Spartans and the Romans. The Spartans held Athens and Thebes by creating oligarchies in these cities, yet lost them in the end. The Romans, to retain Capua, Carthage, and Numantia, destroyed them and never lost them. On the other hand, when they thought to hold Greece as the Spartans had held it, leaving it its freedom and allowing it to be governed by its own laws, they failed, and had to destroy many cities of that Province before they could secure it. For, in truth, there is no sure way of holding other than by destroying, and whoever becomes master of a City accustomed to live in freedom and does not destroy it, may reckon on being destroyed by it.

i'm not advocating the flattening of Fallujah (although if that were to happen, i'd not lose a wink of sleep over it), or bombing it back into the stone age, as some would say. i simply think we need to be a lot more heavy handed than we have been. In those areas where the yokels are jumping around in the street and taking potshots at our guys, it seems obvious that they haven't developed a healthy fear of the United States. Machiavelli would have advised against trying to make those scumbags our friends.
And here comes in the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both; but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved. For of men it may generally be affirmed, that they are thankless, fickle, false studious to avoid danger, greedy of gain, devoted to you while you are able to confer benefits upon them, and ready, as I said before, while danger is distant, to shed their blood, and sacrifice their property, their lives, and their children for you; but in the hour of need they turn against you. . . .

Moreover, men are less careful how they offend him who makes himself loved than him who makes himself feared. For love is held by the tie of obligation, which, because men are a sorry breed, is broken on every whisper of private interest; but fear is bound by the apprehension of punishment which never relaxes its grasp.

We will never win the love of the people who hate us by anything we do. Nor will we win the support of the pansies in Europe by being gentle with our enemies. We need to instill fear into them, by killing them. And, in my opinion, we need more troops over there until the crazies in the Triangle understand the score. This Rumsfeld idea of doing things on the cheap is not looking too good right about now.

Machiavelli cautioned that fear should be distinct from hate. i don't know what he'd say about a people who already hate the new prince, but haven't learned to fear him yet. But Machiavelli's formula for instilling fear while staying clear of hatred is a do-able one, in Iraq.

[A] Prince should inspire fear in such a fashion that if he do not win love he may escape hate. For a man may very well be feared and yet not hated, and this will be the case so long as he does not meddle with the property or with the women of his citizens and subjects. And if constrained to put any to death, he should do so only when there is manifest cause or reasonable justification. But, above all, he must abstain from the property of others. For men will sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony. Moreover, pretexts for confiscation are never to seek, and he who has once begun to live by rapine always finds reasons for taking what is not his; whereas reasons for shedding blood are fewer, and sooner exhausted.
Don't mess with their property, don't mess with their women. We're not doing either of those things. So far so good. In fact we're fixing their property and soon they should be on their way to creating more of their own property and wealth, thanks to us.

But the final step of my Machiavellian advice to Bush is one that i'm worried about. Bush has shown an incredible amount of strength and leadership getting us this far, and changing the Middle East in such a fundamental way. i hope he's got the guts to start really kicking ass now, when it's necessary. Because unless the regime holdouts and terrorist assholes start fearing massive retaliation, i'm afraid they're not going to stop killing our guys. And if we don't stop them, they win.


Update: Guess i spoke too soon about messing with their property. Oops! LMAO.

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The Dumbest Of All Dumb-Ass Quizzes

The Completely Pointless Personality Quiz
The Completely Pointless Personality Quiz

Thanks, Lemur Girl!

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This Is Funny

Look at this, it's funny.

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April 01, 2004

Today's Bleat

i usually don't link to Lileks, because i assume everybody is reading him anyway. However . . . Today's Bleat is in the top ten percent of the most brilliant things Lileks has ever written, IMHO. Let me add my voice to the multitude of bloggers out there who are saying: "read it."

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Air America

i'm leaving for lunch in a few minutes and i intend to get into my car and see if i can pick up Air America Radio. i haven't been able to tune them in at work because AM reception is sketchy inside our building.

i checked out the website. What a loser line up. Jeannine Garofalo? Al Franklin might be amusing, but Garofalo has always been so inarticulate whenever i've heard her on talk shows. She displays all the rhetorical problems of amateur leftist pundits. Dodge, change the subject, ad hominem, change the subject, say something idiotic, when challenged on it, claim you were joking, change the subject, talk over your opponent, change the subject, claim your opponent won't let you speak then refuse to answer their question, change the subject, etc., etc. . . .

And Chuck D? That's the best they could do? Two comedians and a rapper?

Some say that the liberal network is bound to fail. i disagree. The liberal media have a vested interest in propping it up. They won't let it fail, even if it sucks and no one listens. An analogous example is the WNBA. Even though WNBA games play in empty arenas, and nobody watches it on TV because it's boring basketball, the league just won't die. Nobody wants to pull the plug because it wouldn't be PC. So they keep trying to ram womens pro ball down our throats, long after sports fans have rejected it.


Update: Well, i listened to part of Al Franklin's show and i was so impressed, i can't tell you. The man is brilliant. Even though he focused solely on bashing Bush and the administration along with conservative talk show hosts, and he never mentioned Kerry, Franklin inspired me to change my way of thinking totally. i now plan to vote for John Kerry and i am re-registering as a Democrat. i am now a liberal. Thank you, Al Franklin! more...

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