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Insert a Trite Metaphor for a Corral

Posted on May 7, 2004 in Roundup

      One may speak as no prophet at all,

      as a traveler taking it slow

      over a mug of java with ham on rye,

as a citizen troubled over storm warnings,

over black roses, heavy roses in the sky,

and heavy heavy heavy hangs over thy head.

    – Carl Sandburg

square245.gifThe principal rage among bloggers pertained to the revelation that American troops had tortured Iraqi prisoners. Among those who commented eloquently were Jack, Natalie, Brian, Andrew, Rob, Jeremy, Allison, Kathryn, Bob, Andrea, Yule, and Mike. “This page will not be fouled with the dirty pictures of American military personnel abusing Iraqi prisoners,” said Natalie, aptly pointing out that torture is a kind of pornography.

Amid all the outrage, there was plenty of room for bizarre punditry. Put something soft beneath your jaw before you read this.

Politics

  • Mileah says “never, never trust a grown man who goes by the nickname ‘Scooter.'”
  • Randy stands up for AI:

    One thing that I would like to see more than anything else, would be for those who falsely accused Amnesty International of focusing solely on the US to the detriment of other vital issues acknowledge that they were wrong; wrong on their presumption that AI was ignoring other issues and wrong on the implication that there was no need to concentrate on allegations of human rights abuses against detainees. I’m not holding my breath.

  • Andrew published his own performance evaluation of the Bush White House, concluding:

    These negative hires would inspire confidence even in those who previously never considered “buying” anything from this company. Their replacements can and should be allowed to reorganize their departments as they see fit.

  • Victoria weighed out the importance of the past in evaluating the present character of the occupant of the White House:

    We all made mistakes in the past. But most people own up to their mistakes, and if Bush’s opponent has similar problems in their past, there’s no way the Republicans would let that go without high priced investigations and smear campaigns.

  • Ratch came back and talked about Iraq.
  • Susan screamed about “extremist liberals”. Like me, I suppose.

Religion

  • Deborah learned that Bush is preventing Methodists from entering the United States.
  • Stephen presented this unusual metaphor for contemplative prayer:

    The only way to fight fire ants is by stealth. You don’t disturb the mound, you quietly poison it. The culture of death is that fire-ant mound, it needs to be quietly poisoned. To do this, each Christian needs to show the alternative. I need to show the joy of the Christian life. Too often Christians are seen as angry, agitated, nearly irrational, in their approach to other people.

  • Andrea described a shameful way to run a funeral. The minister ought to be defrocked.

Culture

  • Jeremy felt a millernarian shiver going down his backbone:

    There are only a few conclusions one can make about what happens to civilization next. Either we have some kind of major shift in consciousness and do a complete 180, abandoning free market capitalism, consumption, pollution, war and most vehicular traffic, which MUST occur within ten years or so, or civilization either slowly and painfully burns out, or everything goes “bang!” (I’m certainly open to salvation via miraculous intervention or extra-dimensional beings, but let’s not go there for the moment.)

  • Hilde thinks about how technology is marketed to women.
  • MacDiva exposes an interesting lawsuit between Ahnold and a fellow who is taking advantage of his new status as a public figure.
  • Daniel writes

    I do want to make this observation — this desire, particularly American poets, to make a connection with a subject matter at least as equal to this vision of poetry as immortal, as if by piggybacking on the mythical or a domesticated animal or the Met’s permanent collection, the poem will last longer than the sentiments and, God forbid, the self of the poem or the feeling of the poem show through, through a self the poem creates.

  • Jody yucks it up at Boys Beware.
  • Stu sang the praises of the Original Rageboy.
  • Kris’s reading group didn’t like Ursula LeGuin’s The Telling:

    In her books, the ability of the individual to connect–with the Other, with a different way of thinking and being, with what it means to be human–is always at the heart of the matter. Her distrust of any system that seeks to homogenize and flatten experience burns brightly in every book. She trusts only a kind of fluidity of thought and being, a way of seeing that recognizes complexity, difference, multivocality, shades of meaning, layers and layers of history, thought, interaction….I have to admit that for me, plot is very much secondary.

Poetry

  • Maria posted two poems from 1996.
  • Steven posted a piece dedicated to James McCrary:

    To begin,

    Withdrawal curtails immersion into

    other sources of confinement, as such

    asserting desertion from all

    entrails known formerly as you–

    places, people, things,

    remembered, making time.

  • Theodore: “Lean-to by a landslide”

    I live a jury-rigged life secured with thrice-tied twine

    From tumbling over the side

    Into the steep chasm strewn with the rubble of fallen castles.

  • Bouts Rāmes

Personal

  • Jill celebrated her birthday on Tuesday! Happy birthday!
  • Brian was ready on his 40th birthday but

    I was all prepared for some sort of identity crisis, got all geared to to blog about it and everything, and then nothing materialized. Except it did, just not conveniently tied to the calendar. It waited until the long, dark, cold winter, when there is plenty of time to think and stew and bubble and squeak your way into the dark, ugly corners of your mind and play with the dustballs you find there.

  • Jenny enumerated her keys.
  • Denise covers what they didn’t teach you in Lamaze.
  • Bittersweet suffered from arachnophobia:

    sometime in the middle of the night, I looked up and saw a spider about half the size of my hand skittering across Jackie’s lampshade. I sat bolt upright, practically hyperventilating and literally, from memory, dragged Jackie into a sitting position away from the lampshade. When she asked me what the hell was going on, my brain wouldn’t even work enough to form the words.

  • Raven was surprised to learn that California has a “fire season”:

    . I grew up in a part of the country where we had “tornado season” but I don’t think I saw more than one with my own eyes my entire life. And, since I was young and half asleep (it arrived at night), I’m not even sure I saw THAT. It was just really really windy outside, and it was in the middle of the night, but it looked like daylight. I had to have been dreaming.

  • Tracy discovered the magic of a seventeenth summer:

    “THE CICADAS ARE COMING!” This is all I hear anymore. They talk about it at work. They discuss it on the radio. You overhear the conversations in the bank, at the movies, in the line for the bathroom at a baseball game.



    I didn’t know what the fuck it was until recently.

  • Elkit finished her story of being stranded in Napa Valley.
  • Kimber dreads sending her autistic son to a new school

    I got a look at the program outline today and it SUCKS!!! It is 90% pull out. Kids are with the regular classroom at the beginning and end of the day and the rest of the time they are in therapy or life skills rooms. THIS IS MY WORST NIGHTMARE COME TRUE!!!!!!!!!!

  • Michael had a root canal and worse.
  • Irene faces family:

    Dad looked and me and said, “You have a lot of weight to lose.” Mom said I have a triple chin. I know, my family are sooooo supportive, aren’t they?

  • Metamanda is in Berlin.
  • Kate commented on the fourth volcano to erupt in Alaska.
  • Coup de Vent: Spooky.
  • doug considered his future as a Methodist minister.
  • Stacey didn’t want to write a menopause journal, but she did anyways.
  • Pam went for a walk in the woods as she coped with the news that one of her classes might be cancelled for want of enrollees.
  • MM continued her sojourn in Korea:

    all i know is that i got kimchi pouring out of my ears and the thought of yellow golden arches is starting to sound really good to me.

  • Robert went to a “local festival that I vaguely understood to be of great antiquity, involving sushi of some length.”
  • Andrea outed Neil as a snorer.
  • Ellen was burglarized.
  • Chari concludes you had to be there.
  • Michael dreamed that he found Al Franken broadcasting from the White House.

  • Zhaf dreamed he was in Chicago.
  • Sally swoons over graduation season.
  • Mike offers the wise advice:

    Never blog about friends and George W. Bush in the same entry. It’s a killer. The one cancels out the other. Don’t get me wrong; George W. Bush is far easier to write about, but friends are far easier to lose.

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   The earth may yet seem covered with losers.

Nevertheless before the last platoon of losers is shot,

Before the last corpse gets a storm-trooper kick in the face

There will be fresh foreshadowings on the air.

      For the winners never win in this game

      and keep their winnings: it is so written.

      Corpses can be flung in a hole:

                        Shadows march on.
  – Carl Sandburg

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