March 14, 2005
- At times i almost think Brittany's being ironic with us. But then i remember that irony probably requires having an IQ, which is one accessory she's never owned.
For instance, she recently promised:
In the future, I will refrain from discussing my private life in interviews. It will be expressed solely through art.
Art? Art?!She's taken up painting, i guess. Cuz she can't be talking about what she does for a living.
- And remember when Brittany stunk up that airplane? Apparently, she and Kevin have a lot in common:
Federline's ex-girlfriend, Amy Woody, accusing Federline of . . . being hygienically impaired.
Eeeew. The American Skankman!Not only is he not a daily bather, he apparently would go for days without a scrub.
- Brittany had some advice for Michael Jackson:
He needs someone to be like, 'ok, let's buck you up, let's give you a moustache, let's rough you up, let's go to a bar, let's get drunk and be a man.' . . . he needs to get in a fight.
Interesting idea. Although i bet if somebody punched him in the nose, they'd get a nasty splinter. - Last Monday, Brittany and Kevin got kicked out of a Beverly Hills restaurant when she tried to eat there with her little rat, Bit Bit.
But the manager chased after the couple and said they could stay if the pup was tucked inside her bag.
Notice the flip flops. She tries so hard to beBritney and dancer Kevin returned with Bit Bit in her pink holdall, emblazoned with the word BITCHY.
skankycasual, with the ripped up shorts and the stupid trucker hats, like she don't care how she looks. But to the observant eye, Brittany's trendy $17 Havaianas betray the fact that she's just a fad follower. Here's further proof: check out the new extensions.If she's trying to disguise herself, it might help if she left her rat at home. And the dog, too.
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March 13, 2005
My final four picks are as follows:
Illinois (1)
Georgia Tech (5)
UConn (2) Kansas (3)
Duke (1)
UConn will beat cinderella Georgia Tech again for the National Championship by a score of 83 to 71.
Update: Okay okay. People think i'm crazy. i get it. Thankfully, i can change my mind all the way up 'til Thursday.
i still think the Albuquerque bracket is weak enough for Ga Tech to sneak through. They did split the two games against Wake Forest this year.
But on UConn, i just read that their freshman backup point guard got suspended for "an unspecified violation of team rules." He wasn't valuable to the team, with only 3 points and 3 assists off the bench. But these things have a way of fucking with team chemistry, and the competition in the Syracuse bracket looks to be the toughest of the tournament.
So my new scenario has UConn losing to Kansas, who then beats dark horse Florida to advance to the final four. Duke then beats Kansas in a squeaker to avenge their 2003 loss and advance to an all ACC final. Duke then beats Ga Tech by a score of 80 to 65, to win their fourth National Championship.
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March 12, 2005
What's up with that?
As they say on Cops, all parties are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
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March 11, 2005
Mine is the 1,531st signature.
More: Here's the Democracy Project's comprehensive summary of the threat facing us.
And liberal blogger Markos, of Daily Kos, notes that a number of Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have also added their welcome voice to the cause of internet freedom. Where are the Republicans on this?
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Yes, this is an actual recruiting poster, rejected by the DoD.
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Garrison Keillor also reminds us that today is Douglas Adams' birthday.
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March 10, 2005
Well, go say hi to Waheed, Afghanistan's first blogger.
Hat tip to Bruce at AWH, via Chrenkoff.
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Either of them?
Sure i was a little tongue-in-cheek at times, but nothing that Gene Simmons himself wouldn't have appreciated.
So i got this comment today from some dude with sense of humor issues.
Name: IggyOuch. That wit is razor sharp.
Email Address: iggy@kissrocks.comComments:
Kiss Rules-Fuck you and your site!! BIATCH!!!
And you wonder why i drink so much.
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George Lucas . . . says the third and final prequel [in the Star Wars series] will not likely receive the PG rating the previous five films have received.Fans of the original trilogy, like myself, might disagree.'I don't think I would take a five- or a six-year-old to this,' says Lucas, 'It's way too strong.'
Lucas is referring to violent scenes in the film and also to Anakin Skywalker's journey to the dark side in the climax of the 30-year-old series. 'We're going to watch him make a pact with the devil,' Lucas tells the program.
He says Skywalker will be descending into Lucas' frightening vision of Hell, a mythical planet composed entirely of erupting volcanos. 'Yes...the lava at the end...it ends in hell.'
The series went to hell when Lucas released that train wreck called Episode One.
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Could the American spy community improve its intelligence activities through blogging? A captain in the U.S. Army Reserve thinks so and says as much in the March issue of Wired magazine.Ain't it enough that we got rid of Rather and Jordan?Capt. Kris Alexander, a millitary intelligence officer, argues in an essay that blogs should be incorporated into the intelligence community's classified computer network , Intelink, and that the community should cultivate bloggers outside itself to gain additional insights and analysis.
. . .
'Why not tap the brainpower of the blogosphere as well?' he asks. 'The intelligence community does a terrible job of looking outside itself for information. From journalists to academics and even educated amateurs -- there are thousands of people who would be interested and willing to help.'
'It seems to me,' he said, 'that the government is faced with some stark choices. They can 'get with the program' -- realize they have lost control and try to capitalize on that -- or they can pretend they still control the flow of information and enact all sorts of Draconian regulations that aren't going to work anyway.'Picture it. The blogosphere, ready and willing to save the world once again.Stephenson admitted that working with bloggers can be challenging. 'It's a headache,' he confessed.
'You get a lot of these obsteperous guys who don't defer to hierarchy, but smart executives all over the place now are trying to figure out ways to capitalize on people like me and others,' he continued. 'It's just dumb to filter out that potential information just because the people who are offering it are not like you.'
[cross posted at A Western Heart]
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Many poppy seeds on a bagel have a slight flavor.
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March 09, 2005
Come and check out annika's Blogversary Poker Party on Yahoo! Poker. Everyone is invited. Sit down and play a few hands, or just stop by to say hi. No money is involved, just bragging rights.
You have to have a Yahoo! id first. Then log on to Yahoo!, go to the Games page and click on Hold 'Em Poker in the Card Games menu. Then look for me in the room called "Angel." Sorry, i fucked up. i'll be in the room called "Social Lounge 2," at table 26, and i'll be using the Yahoo! id annikagyrl.
Hope to see you there!
Update: It's pretty busy in there. Social Lounge 2 is full. We're going to Beginner Lounge 2 now.
Update 2: Okay, it's full now too. Use this backdoor site, if you haven't given up yet. Click on Beginner Lounge 2.
Update 3: Well, that was pretty much a bust. Only Casca and Lawguy were able to get into the room before it closed. i got booted a few times, and even the backdoor was screwy. i never seen Yahoo! Games be so difficult. Oh well, sorry to everyone who tried but were unable to log on. Maybe next year.
Oh, i broke even, too.
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You should come some real poker with me online. Let me know and I will give you all the 411.Okay, to the web. Raymond Carver is described thusly at Writer's Calendar:
American short-story writer and poet, a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s. Carver's reputation continued to grow after his death at the age of fifty.Carver, who died in 1988, studied at Cal State Chico and Cal State Humboldt, where he got his BA. (Both are infamous party schools today.) Chico honors him with a festival every year. Carver also taught English at Syracuse, and Jay McInerney (author of the eighties classic, Bright Lights, Big City) is a former student.. . .
Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, a mill town on the Columbia River in Oregon. His father, a sawmill worker, was an alcoholic. At home he used to tell him stories about his own hunting and fishing exploits, and about his grandfather, who had fought in the Civil War, for both sides.
Carver published his . . . first poem, 'The Brass Ring,' in Targets, which also had a poem by Charles Bukowski. During these years of working in different jobs, rising kids, and trying to write, Carver started to drink. 'Alcohol became a problem. I more or less gave up, threw in the towel, and took to full-time drinking as a serious pursuit.'Today's poem is a drunk poem, but a good one.
CheersVodka chased with coffee. Each morning
I hang the sign on the door:OUT TO LUNCH
But no one pays attention; my friends
look at the sign and
sometimes leave little notes,
or else they call - Come out and play,
Ray - mond.Once my son, that bastard,
slipped in and left me a colored egg
and a walking stick.
I think he drank some of my vodka.
And last week my wife dropped by
with a can of beef soup
and a carton of tears.
She drank some of my vodka, too, I think,
then left hurriedly in a strange car
with a man I'd never seen before.
They don't understand; I'm fine,
just fine where I am, for any day now
I shall be, I shall be, I shall be . . .I intend to take all the time in this world,
consider everything, even miracles,
yet remain on guard, ever
more careful, more watchful,
against those who would sin against me,
against those who would steal vodka,
against those who would do me harm.
The end of Carver's bio is both redemptive and tragic.
On June 2, 1977 Carver stopped drinking with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous. After this 'line of demarcation' his stories became increasingly more expansive. In 1982 Carver divorced Maryann. From 1979 Carver had lived with the poet Tess Gallagher (b.1943), they had met at a writers' conference in Dallas. They married in 1988. The wedding took place in Reno. Two months later, on August 2, 1988, the author died of lung cancer. . . . After writing [the] story, 'Errand,' about Chekhov's death, Carver learned that he had cancer.The Writer's Calendar bio compares Carver's poetry and prose to Chekov, Bukowski, William Carlos Williams, Kafka, Pinter, and Richard Ford. (i'm a fan of all of those writers, with the possible exception of Ford. So, thanks for the suggestion, Paul, i'll have to check out more of Carver's stuff.)
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Our peach tree is in bloom. It's beautiful. i thought it was dead. Shows how much i know about trees.
Today is the two year blogversary of annika's journal. A Yahoo! Poker party celebration will be held tonight at 7:00 p.m. California time. Stop by if you can. Just say hi, or sit down and play a few hands. i will post the name of the room just before it starts. BYOB.
Today is also poetry day. Who's your favorite poet? i haven't picked a poem yet, so why not suggest someone?
Have you pushed Elton John for UN Sec Gen to your friends and co-workers yet? People are talking.
And there are still two more spots open in MLBloggers, my fantasy baseball league. Email me if you're interested.
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Now check out a new milblogger, Danjel, who's in Iraq right now. The site is appropriately named 365 and a Wakeup, which is a phrase that i believe dates back to the Vietnam War. (But you already knew that.)
i thought this bit from a February post called "The Ride North" was interesting:
Southern Iraq completely surprised me if for no other reason then the people. All along our route of march children would come running up to the vehicles waving and laughing. They were poorly dressed, and several of them alternated between waving and pointing to their mouth to ask for food. As heartwrenching as it was to ignore their request we were under strict orders not to throw food out so we responded with smiles and waves of our own. I questioned the order later and found that several children had been run over because they would run in front of a vehicle to get food. It was a far cry from what we had been briefed we would see and I resolved to do my level best to not break the trust our nation had made with the people of Iraq. I wish I could have taken a film crew with me on that leg of the trip, it would go a long way towards dispelling the skewed viewpoints that America sees on the news.And don't miss Danjel's description of a VBIED going off, and his explanation of why checkpoints have become necessary in the first place:
There are mornings where the steady throb of traffic pulses through the streets like a metal river and others where the hum of people and commerce is torn apart by the earsplitting roar of a VBIED. These wheeled bombs exist for the sole purpose of rending equipment and shredding flesh with impunity. In their wake they leave physical scars on the survivors and mental scars on the community.That's an excellent way to put the incident in perspective.Rather then let the insurgents continue to inflict casualties whenever and wherever they want there are checkpoints scattered across BaghdadÂ’s highways to intercept VBIEDs. In most cases these checkpoints are actually two distinct checkpoints, the first manned by the Iraqi Army and the second manned by US soldiers. The Iraqis have shown their mettle in the last few weeks and they have absorbed the bulk of the casualties when VBIEDs attempt to hit a checkpoint. But they arenÂ’t perfect, and so the US troops manning the second checkpoint are always at the ready.
The most important thing to understand about US checkpoints is that soldiers manning them have specific ramp up procedures when they feel threatened. Soldiers donÂ’t just blithely take aim at traffic and fill the air with lead. The procedure drilled into every soldierÂ’s head is to meet the threat with an increasingly forceful response. As the threat escalates so too does the response.
Which brings us back to the threat of VBIEDs. The only warning of a VBIED is a vehicle attempting to rapidly close with the checkpoint – which is exactly what Giuliana Sgrena’s vehicle did. Put yourself in the boots of the soldier manning that checkpoint. You see a vehicle approaching that seems to be gaining speed as it nears. You signal the driver to stop but the car plummets on. You fire a warning shot, and then another into the engine block but the car doesn’t slow. What would you do? Don’t just give a cursory response – think about it for a moment. If you are at work imagine having your life, and the fate of all your coworkers tied to your decision. Would you gamble all those lives by giving the vehicle the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you would, but I’d be willing to bet after seeing the bloody wake of a VBIED you would have pulled the trigger too.
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One might get the impression that bloggers are all frustrated journalists. In fact, many bloggers probably think of themselves that way. Speaking only for myself however, i am most definitely not a frustrated journalist.* To me, the very word "journalist" would be an insult if i ever heard it applied to me.
Don't get me started on journalists. A journalism degree is nothing more than a four year general education degree plus a couple of courses on how to meet a deadline. The vast majority of journalists are complete idiots. Trouble is, they don't realize it.
Bloggers are modern pamphleteers. One of the bloggers in the Nightline report expressed a hope that the blogosphere might mature as time goes on. Nonsense. That's not only an impossibility, it's antithetical to the nature of the medium.
We're supposed to rant. We're supposed to shoot from the hip. The blogosphere is the essence of free speech. That Virginia politician who got upset because some liberal blogger didn't follow journalistic standards by contacting him before publication needs to get his head out of his ass. The politician wrote a stupid bill, and that particular blogger called him on it. Good for her. The politician didn't like the strong language in the emails he got, but guess what? He pulled the bill, didn't he? Welcome to Dan Rather's world.
No we're not journalists, we are activists. Unpredictable, uncontrollable anarchists. May we always be.
_______________
* Frustrated comedienne, maybe.
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March 08, 2005
So today, i was pleased to hear the President's remarks to the National Defense University at Fort McNair. The speech covered subjects that the President has emphasized often, and unfortunately it's not getting the attention it deserves. It was a historic speech, and deserves to be considered among this presidentÂ’s finest. i think the president explained our foreign policy today with more clarity and less defensiveness than he has ever done until now.
The theory here is straightforward: terrorists are less likely to endanger our security if they are worried about their own security. When terrorists spend their days struggling to avoid death or capture, they are less capable of arming and training to commit new attacks. We will keep the terrorists on the run, until they have nowhere left to hide.ThatÂ’s the short term strategy, and its efficacy should be obvious by now.
During the presidential campaign season, i often tried to point out that Bush had the only long term strategy for keeping America safe. Kerry wanted to hunt down Osama, but it was clear to me that eliminating one man was not going to prevent future attacks. Only changing the Middle East could do that. Bush made that point beautifully today.
Our strategy to keep the peace in the longer term is to help change the conditions that give rise to extremism and terror, especially in the broader Middle East. Parts of that region have been caught for generations in a cycle of tyranny and despair and radicalism. When a dictatorship controls the political life of a country, responsible opposition cannot develop, and dissent is driven underground and toward the extreme. And to draw attention away from their social and economic failures, dictators place blame on other countries and other races, and stir the hatred that leads to violence. This status quo of despotism and anger cannot be ignored or appeased, kept in a box or bought off, because we have witnessed how the violence in that region can reach easily across borders and oceans. The entire world has an urgent interest in the progress, and hope, and freedom in the broader Middle East.During my interview, i also tried to explain an often overlooked aspect of Bush’s foreign policy. i said: “For years, the US was criticized for propping up dictators to further our own national interest, especially in Central and South America. And these dictators were bad men, but they were our bad men. . . . Now the US is not propping up friendly dictators [anymore]; instead we try to bring friendly democracies to the places we need them. i think that's a step in the right direction. As long as we're messing in other people's business, it's better that we're no longer putting in dictators”. . . By now it should be clear that authoritarian rule is not the wave of the future; it is the last gasp of a discredited past. It should be clear that free nations escape stagnation, and grow stronger with time, because they encourage the creativity and enterprise of their people. It should be clear that economic progress requires political modernization, including honest representative government and the rule of law.
. . .
Across the Middle East, a critical mass of events is taking that region in a hopeful new direction. Historic changes have many causes, yet these changes have one factor in common. A businessman in Beirut recently said, ‘We have removed the mask of fear. We're not afraid anymore.’ Pervasive fear is the foundation of every dictatorial regime -- the prop that holds up all power not based on consent. And when the regime of fear is broken, and the people find their courage and find their voice, democracy is their goal, and tyrants, themselves, have reason to fear.
HereÂ’s how President Bush acknowledged that very important, and welcome, shift in our foreign policy:
The advance of hope in the Middle East also requires new thinking in the capitals of great democracies -- including Washington, D.C. By now it should be clear that decades of excusing and accommodating tyranny, in the pursuit of stability, have only led to injustice and instability and tragedy. It should be clear that the advance of democracy leads to peace, because governments that respect the rights of their people also respect the rights of their neighbors. It should be clear that the best antidote to radicalism and terror is the tolerance and hope kindled in free societies. And our duty is now clear: For the sake of our long-term security, all free nations must stand with the forces of democracy and justice that have begun to transform the Middle East.The Bush administrationÂ’s abandonment of Cold War style foreign affairs -- where any sonofabitch was okay as long as he was our sonofabitch -- is something that should have endeared the left to President Bush, if not for their own blind hatred of anything Republican. But no matter. Our president is committed to the spread of friendly democracies rather than simply installing friendly dictatorships (which were historically easier to create) because it is the right thing to do, not because it will win him any popularity contests. Here, the president reminded his audience that staying on this difficult and urgent task will not always be easy.
Encouraging democracy in that region is a generational commitment. It's also a difficult commitment, demanding patience and resolve -- when the headlines are good and when the headlines aren't so good. Freedom has determined enemies, who show no mercy for the innocent, and no respect for the rules of warfare. Many societies in the region struggle with poverty and illiteracy, many rulers in the region have longstanding habits of control; many people in the region have deeply ingrained habits of fear.He might have added that the enemies of freedom are not limited to certain “rulers in the region.” i can think of quite a few naysayers in Europe and right here at home who suffer from “deeply ingrained habits of fear,” which prevent them from seeing the truly revolutionary nature of President Bush’s foreign policy.
We know that freedom, by definition, must be chosen, and that the democratic institutions of other nations will not look like our own. Yet we also know that our security increasingly depends on the hope and progress of other nations now simmering in despair and resentment. And that hope and progress is found only in the advance of freedom.Lofty words, but i think the perspective of history will see them backed up by concrete results.This advance is a consistent theme of American strategy -- from the Fourteen Points, to the Four Freedoms, to the Marshall Plan, to the Reagan Doctrine. Yet the success of this approach does not depend on grand strategy alone. We are confident that the desire for freedom, even when repressed for generations, is present in every human heart. And that desire can emerge with sudden power to change the course of history.
. . . Those who place their hope in freedom may be attacked and challenged, but they will not ultimately be disappointed, because freedom is the design of humanity and freedom is the direction of history.
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