What are you protesting?
Whaddaya got?
Meant to note this one earlier: Kevin points us to a fun little piece by Geoffrey Nunberg on the semantic drift of the word “protest”—since you now hear “pro-war protest” referred to every now and again:
But it sounds a little weird to talk about a protest in support of a war that’s about to be initiated by the Administration in power. Maybe that’s just semantic sloppiness, as if “protesting” nowadays were just a question of getting together to yell slogans—why should the other side have all the fun? Or maybe it’s a strategic blurring of historical memory. It’s hard to keep this stuff straight in an age when the oldies stations are apt to play Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction” back-to-back with Barry Sadler’s “Ballad of the Green Berets,” which was a number one hit a few months later.
Worth a chuckle.
Anyone here from Minnesota? How about Arkansas?
The bill to allow drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one vote shy of passing in the Senate. It looks like Gordon Smith (R-Oregon) is in the “no” camp on this vote (“Not now, but not never”)—though sending him a love-note probably wouldn’t hurt. (Remind him of his environmentally friendly campaigning in 2002.)
The Cheneyites are putting the pressure on Norm Coleman, freshman Republican from Minnesota, and the Arkansan Democratic delegation of Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln. So if you’re one of these fine Congressfolks’ constituents, be so kind as to drop them a line. Their names are email links—swiped from Barry, who also has the phone numbers, if you’re feeling all personal-like.
Fun fact, though: there’s some arcana going on in how to frame the Senate budget item covering the drilling which will either allow a fillibuster, or not. But don’t for God’s sake trust that; we need all three (or four) fence-sitters on board. So send your email, buck ’em up, and shut it down.
River of shit.
Once more, I’m being asked to choke on my vote in the 2000 elections. —Meanwhile, the registered Democrats who voted directly for Bush get a free ride. (Presumably, their choice was in some fashion more moral? more honest? than mine.)
You know what? I just don’t care anymore. I don’t give a good God damn. I’ve had all the fights I can stomach and all the arguments I can stand and I know why I did it and given it to do all over again I’d do what I did, and let me tell you what you already know: the Democrats in power have not acquitted themselves terribly well in the past two years. There’s plenty of Congressfolk with Ds after their names who I myself hope have a hard time swallowing around some of their votes. But you need to piss all over me and mine to make yourself feel better, get it out of your system? Fine. Go right ahead.
Feel better?
Now. Can we each in our own way go do what needs to be done about our current situation? Or is that too much to ask?
And you thought “freedom kissing” was a joke.
One of Daze Reader’s readers sent in this photo of a Nevada brothel menu.
Habeas pueruli.
Oh, we know how to make Khalid Sheikh Mohammed talk, boasted an unnamed American law enforcement official. We have access to his kids.
Kids? said the CIA. Sure, we’ve got the kids. Flew ’em to an undisclosed location in the States. No, not Cheney’s. We’re treating ’em with kid gloves. Legal guardian? Rights? What?
No, wait a minute, said the US. We don’t have the kids. We never had the kids. What are you, high?
Confused? Frustrated? Infuriated? Aw, heck. Don’t be. There’s a simple explanation: we (by which I mean thee and me) don’t even know for sure where Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is. We (by which I mean them what represents us) have yet to habeas the corpus, so what’s a couple of kids compared to Public Enemy No. 22? I mean, 2?
Road to Surfdom (via TalkLeft) gives us a taste of how it’s playing in Paducah (as it were).
All of which makes this—more likely? Less likely? Utterly unfounded? Crazy—like a fox? Good? Bad? Indifferent?
“We have no information to substantiate that claim.” —Fills you with confidence, don’t it?
The only thing I can state with any certainty myself is that I’m highly skeptical of the claim that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s arrest—whenever and wherever it occurred—is itself an advertisement of the efficacy of the USA PATRIOT Act. But I’m a cantankerous and partisan sonofabitch on the subject, so you should maybe take that with a grain of salt, too.
Bush! Klaatu barada nikto—
It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet. But if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple. Join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We will be waiting for your answer.
Which, to be fair, risks being misread, or rather read as a mirror image of my own reading; after all, in some imaginations, it’s Bush standing at the head of the flying saucer’s ramp, having been shot in the back by paranoid, squabbling (former) allies, delivering his cinder speech to Saddam Hussein—whose present course they fancy threatens to extend his violence. (The persistent lack of any option to join us and live in peace in Bush’s various ultimata rather militates against this reading—but the risk, nonetheless, is there.) Still! The first thing I thought when I read this—
Berkeley – After more than a million years of computation by more than 4 million computers worldwide, the SETI@home screensaver that crunches data in search of intelligent signals from space has produced a list of candidate radio sources that deserve a second look.
Three members of the SETI@home team will head to Puerto Rico this month to point the Arecibo radio telescope at up to 150 spots identified as the source of possible signals from intelligent civilizations.
—the first thing I could think to do was run outside and find a really tall hill and start yelling as loud as I could: “Help! Help! You frickin’ Galactic-Federation-formin’ Ashtar-Command-runnin’ Fermi’s-Paradox-duckin’ motherfuckers, get your butts down here and do something!”
All di tings wey dem talk about di rights, wey human beings suppose to get, na im de for this small book.
[...] Article 7
Everi one na im be, di same for law, no mata wetin di person be or di kind person e be. Di law of our kontri must to make sure say notin happen to am. Di law must to make sure say dem treat everibodi di same, so tay all dis tings we de talk about human right, nobodi go against am, or gada people to go against am.
—via Open Brackets: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Nigerian Pidgin English.
Pardessus anglais.
Sneaky bastards. I’d forgotten another French item whose ill-considered boycott the “grownups” have been engineering: French letters.
Pardon my French.
It was kind of pathetically funny when Neal Rowland did it. But actually slapping the moniker “freedom fries” on the US House of Representatives cafeteria menus is—well, it’s upholding a long-standing tradition of moronic House grandstanding, but it’s still pathetic. Disappointing, even. —But no longer funny.
Don’t take the weasel’s way out: don’t try to argue that they’re really Belgian fries, and the only reason we call them “french fries” is because of the technique of frenching, or slicing in long, thin strips (more properly referred to as “julienne”), thereby proving the protest is not only moronic, but misguided; Snopes makes it pretty clear that we call it frenching because that’s what you do to make French fried potatoes, and not vicey-versey. —Just go out, have some lunch, and order french fries, loud and clear, by golly.
Speaking of lunch—
Bring on the wild dogs.
It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that a significant number of America’s worst social problems would be alleviated by summoning the insurance industry’s top managers to an economic summit, and then setting packs of wild dogs on them.
—Patrick Nielsen Hayden, 6 January 2003.
Just two or three claims filed over the course of two years is now enough for many insurance companies to cancel a policy. Some count inquiries, even when no claim is paid. “It’s happening to everybody,” said Tim Schaefer, an independent insurance agent in Germantown. “It really is bad.”
That is why Matthew Rouhanian decided not to file. The snowstorm caused leaks in the roof of his North Potomac house after ice collected in the gutters. Instead, he decided to pay the $1,800 repair cost himself. The reason: He lost his previous insurance policy three years ago because he had filed three claims in two years.
“You pay for 20 years, and they never call you and say thank you,” said Rouhanian, who declined to name his insurance companies. “But if anything happens, they cancel you. Why do you have insurance anyway?”
—“Taking a Risk in Making a Claim,” the Washington Post, 10 March 2003, via MetaFilter.
Yeah, I know. There’s stuff rattling around in my head. Maybe in a bit. Elsewhere for now.
Right back inna jungle. On account of the breakdown of ethics
Which is why, of course, ethics are important.
First, you might want to read this account (via TBogg) of Sunday’s pro-war march on Washington. Specifically, one should make note of this quote from “B-1” Bob Dornan, re: Saddam Hussein:
“We are the good guys,” said Dornan, a former Air Force fighter pilot and longtime conservative firebrand. “Never again will we put up with this kind of person who tortures children in front of their parents.”
Got that? Noted it down? Good. Now, put yourself in mind of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Specifically, ponder the dilemma facing his interrogators (via blueheron, in a roundabout fashion), who have to get him to talk without, you know, violating the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. —Fret not; by our reading of the document, we can still lie to him, scream at him, play on his phobias, strip him, shave him, deprive him of religious items and toiletries, pretend to transfer him to a third country which hasn’t ratified the convention, or even, what the heck, go ahead and so transfer him. (Jordan has been suggested.) And, if all else fails:
US authorities have an additional inducement to make Mr. Mohammed talk, even if he shares the suicidal commitment of the Sept. 11 hijackers: The Americans have access to two of his elementary-school-age children, the top law-enforcement official says. The children were captured in a September raid that netted one of Mr. Mohammed’s top comrades, Ramzi Binalshibh.
We are the good guys. So we can do whatever we want. Because we’re the good guys. —As moral clarity goes, it’s pretty goddamn clear, isn’t it?
Happy Easter.
I think I’m just going to take a pass on this one.
Retailers went on the defensive. “There was no intention on our part to offer up a violent Easter basket. We’re very conscious of what will and what will not offend our customers. It was meant to be a lighthearted and fun gift,” says Kmart spokesperson Abigail Jacobs. “It’s in my opinion a harmless toy included in an Easter basket.”
The reaction to a Voice query at Walgreens contrasted sharply, with company representatives retreating instead of digging in. “Going forward next year, we don’t plan to have Easter baskets with toy soldiers or a military theme. The thinking on these Easter baskets was more toy-related and we didn’t really think about it otherwise,” says Walgreens spokesperson Carol Hively. “We apologize to anybody who is offended or felt that this was inappropriate.”
Anyone else want a crack at it?
However could I have forgotten the Generating Stabilizing Electro Carbon Condensating Atmospheric Pro-Cyclonic Compact Dynamic Magnet Box?
There’s been some recent traffic at an old post, one I wrote back in December on kid detectives (and inventors, and magicians) and magic and slandering Encyclopedia Brown (and just as a side note: sitting across the table from Kristen Brennan at Bucca di Beppo’s is a delightful exercise in fragmentary multichannel signal-as-noise watch-me-for-the-changes-and-try-to-keep-up brinksmanship): Mike Tatreau came through, finding the book long since forgotten but rather tenuously described as having “this haunting nighttime flight home over moonlit countryside on a bicycle, and a midnight picnic of sandwiches in a field in the middle of nowhere.” Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Jan Wahl’s The Furious Flycycle! —Except, of course, for the fact that the flight is away from home during (mostly) the daylight, and it’s a noontime picnic (with iceberg watermelon pickles), and there is some haunting moonlight, but it comes later, and anyway, Wahl slanders wolves. But. There it is.
—Now we just need to find that Dutch? German? French? book in English translation with the Purloined Waldo cartoons for each bite-sized chapter-mystery. Anyone? Anyone?
WYPSIDYOPINEPOL USA
Catchy, isn’t it? Just trips off the tongue. It’s a non-binding resolution I’d like to see passed: the Would You Please Stop Insulting the Dignity of Your Office and the Public’s Intelligence by Naming Every Piece Of Legislation with an Unbelievably Stupid Acronym Act.
The RAVE Act (Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy, HR 718) is back. It amends the federal crack house law to make it easier to fine and imprison business owners that fail to stop drug offenses from occurring on their property—even if they do take steps to stop drug use. (It’s the age of responsibility, after all. Intent doesn’t matter. We only care about results.) —It was shut down by an aggressive campaign of protests, fax blasts and open ridicule last year, but all that is needed for evil to triumph and constant vigilance and yadda yadda. RAVE is spreading like some kind of virus; its basic provisions are in HR 718, the RAVE Act, but over in the Senate they’re S 226, the Illicit Drugs Anti-Proliferation Act (IDAP?) and they’re still buried in the guts of Daschle’s S 22 domestic security bill.
The CLEAN-UP Act (Clean, Learn, Educate, Abolish, Neutralize, and Undermine Production of Methamphetamines, HR 834) has—beyond a semantically null acronym—a doozy of a provision tucked inside. Turn with me to Section 305, which would add Section 416A to the Controlled Substances Act:
Whoever, for a commercial purpose, knowingly promotes any rave, dance, music, or other entertainment event, that takes place under circumstances where the promoter knows or reasonably ought to know that a controlled substance will be used or distributed in violation of Federal law or the law of the place where the event is held, shall be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned for not more than 9 years, or both.
We don’t even need for a crime to have been committed. Or even alleged. If you promote an entertainment event where you reasonably ought to know that drugs could be used or distributed, you’re busted.
The fine folks at the Drug Policy Alliance have put together a fax for your representative. Go kick his or her ass, would you?
Kelly J. Cooper knows the score.
I’ve been meaning to link to Comixpedia for a while now (and add them to the ever-burgeoning linchinography to the right there); the folks thereabouts are rapidly building a solid rep as the go-to gals and guys when it comes to writing about webcomics. (Is it a one-word neologism at this point? We do seem to have cast aside the usual coy engagement period of hyphenation, leaping alacritously from two words seen together [and gossiped about] with ever-increasing frequency straight to the cohabitation of portmanteaudom—still technically illegal in four Bible Belt states, or so I am given to understand.) —But recent events have forced my hand: they’ve gone and published a review of Dicebox which nets a three-pointer when it’s fourth and ten, a beautiful hanging birdie from just outside the paint. —Um. I should probably point out that a) I am married to Jenn, so objectivity flies right out the window on this one (but we’ve long since laid that myth to rest, surely), and b) I often affect to know nothing at all of sports, or the metaphors thereof.
(Psst. Kelly: “Peh” is a gender–non-specific pronoun [as opposed to gender-neutral], used when you do not wish to assume the gender of the person you’re addressing. The media in Dicebox use it as a regular formality, says Jenn [hear, hear, says I]; it’s also common to use it when addressing someone in authority [again with the hear, hear]. —Not there’s any way for you to have known this from context [yet], which is fine, which is perhaps part of the point; immersion and all, and I’m reminded of a post about reading The Hobbit at a young age and missing most of the big made-up words but loving it anyway, which cited information theory, but I’m not going to link to it because it already looks like I have a massive crush on the languagehat, so. —But! Three cheers for kicking the puzzle around. It’s what it’s there for. Right?)
—Um. Lemme just get out of the way. Go, read the review; read the comic; if you haven’t started it yet, I’ll even shove you straight into Chapter 1, Scene 1.
I’ll just leave you to it then, shall I?
I will live at home unbulled—
—beautifully dressed and wearing a saffron-coloured gown.
That’s from the oath Lysistrata gets her women friends to swear over a spilled jug of unwatered wine, to withhold sex from the men of Sparta and Athens until the insane war between the two city-states is ended and peace is declared. Which is not what I’d suggest, literally, in this day and age; no. We are most of us more enlightened these days as to one’s sex, one’s gender, and the roles they play in determining one’s destiny and fitness for combat, and anyway, it would open us up to charges of not supporting the troops, and we can’t have that, now, can we?
Instead, the ever–with-it James “The Goods” Capozzola points us to the Lysistrata Project, who are organizing readings of Aristophanes’s rollicking, ribald Lysistrata around the world tomorrow, Monday, 3 March 2003. (As well as a National Moratorium on 5 March.)
Portland area readings include:
- Bridgeport United Church of Christ, 7.00 pm;
- PSU (either Smith Memorial Amphitheater or Lincoln Hall Studio Theater), 1.00 pm;
- the First Congregational Church, 7.30 pm;
- and a reading at Lincoln High School (contact Erin Jones), the details of which are not as yet listed.
Attend a reading, here, or wherever it is you are if it isn’t here; read it yourself to your friends or your affinity group or your spouse or your dog (like our Rittenhouse Reviewer will); find snippets you like and quote them where you can and spread the word. —Live at home unbulled, because (Rabelaisian as it may be) that’s the key and the heart of it all, right there.
That we might all live at home, unbulled.
(Color of gown is, of course, optional.)
Oulipo, oubapo,
OuLiPo, OuBaPo,
Let’s call the whole thing off.
Actually, let’s not. Languagehat is priming the pump to run oulipo up the Daypop word burst chart (and here, by the way, is a site that presents you with one of Raymond Queneau’s Cent mille milliards de poèmes, in English, every 60 seconds); I just thought I’d slip in a mention of comics’ version: oubapo. Ouvroir de la Bande Dessinée Potentielle, or Workshop for Potential Comics, was founded in 1992 by Thierry Groensteen and various members of the Parisian publishing collective L’Association, which included the always-divine Lewis Trondheim. The Oubapo-America site is a wee bit out-of-date (there’s still some traffic at the message board), but is nonetheless a nice little collection of links to some formal considerations of comics and experimentations with form—such as Matt Madden’s takes on the basic idea behind Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style.
