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Insert a Trite Metaphor about a Corral

Posted on July 12, 2004 in Roundup

You cannot harm me

      You cannot harm

            one who has dreamed a dream like mine.


  -Dakota Chant

square233.gif To tell the truth, I haven’t rushed out to see Fahrenheit 9/11. It’s like the capture of Saddam Hussein, a big so-what. Many others have loved it. Predictably, the Right excoriates the film and the Left — the Left is more ambivalent than one might realize. It’s the middle who will be most impressed, I think by this film, and they will likely do nothing if Bush cancels the elections in the fall.

This roundup covers the period from 2 July through 8 July, 2004.

Politics

  • Stacey stood up and proclaimed

    i love this country. if you dare question that loyalty and appreciation, you’d be wrong. i don’t believe that i’m a bad american because i disagree vehemently with what george bush, cheney, rumsfeld, wolfowitz, et al have done to this country. i don’t believe this country is one man or even the majority of men. i believe in the principles upon which this country was founded. principles that have been eroded, slowly, without most even noticing. our principles and values have been replaced by warm fuzzies.

  • Mileah raised her hand in salute to the Fourth, but not to the Commander in Chief:

    Since George Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” on May 2nd, 2003, our soldiers have suffered 722 killed in action and 4,593 wounded in action in Iraq.

    Of these casualties the number of times President George W. Bush has attended a military funeral is zero.

  • Michael reminded people what American freedom means.
  • Stu reviewed other Declarations of Independence from Bush by Americans.
  • LQ reveals that the toppling of Hussein’s statue was performed not by Iraqis but by Psyops. Which explains why the crowd was so small.
  • Giblets found fault with John Kerry’s running mate, John Edwards:

    As a trial lawyer Edwards repeatedly stole money from poor corporations to give to greedy children crippled by their products! Do we really need a vice president who is a lackey of Big Children? Giblets thinks not!

  • Jack took aim at William Safire’s complaint that liberals kept silent while Bush cracked down on civil liberties:

    Liberals and a good number of brave libertarians were perhaps the only people speaking out against what the Administration was doing. Everyone else was running for cover, and conservative pundits were denouncing anyone who suggested that the Administration was going too far as soft on terror and hating America. Give me a break, Bill.

  • MacDiva reviewed the success of Fahrenheit 9/11
  • Natalie blasted critics of Fahrenheit 9/11:

    Those who criticize the film call it propaganda. Of course it’s propaganda. It doesn’t pretend to be an art film or a thriller or a comedy – though it’s got moments of all those elements.
    It is intended, and succeeds, as an exposé of the jaw-dropping Machiavellian machinations, greed, inefficiency and deceit of Bush & Co. and the harm they have caused to their own citizens and to innocent citizens of countries not their own.

  • Mike wasn’t as impressed:

    What is making normally sober-minded people so desperate to cast this film as a serious piece of journalism? It’s not journalism. It’s a mockumentary. Journalism needs tight editing to ensure accuracy. Filmmaking uses tight editing for effect and Moore makes no bones about it. This movie—based on fact—is all about effect. And its effect is timed to coincide with the July 4 weekend. It will prove as fleeting as any media moment we’ve endured these past three years and will be forgotten long before November.

  • Allison celebrated the election year sacrifice of Bush donor and Schwartzenegger friend Kenneth Lay.
  • Jeanne voiced her concerns about mercenaries in Iraq.
  • Chari mocked the new attack Edwards ads launched by the Bush Administration:

    They’ll have to do some major make-up work on Cheney to keep him from looking pasty and death-like. Edwards is a hotty and exudes vitality. I can get used to that. And no, being a living, breathing hotty is obviously not a reason to pick someone for Veep. Although, being alive and breathing is a plus next to Cheney.

  • Andrew called Bush the “perfect n*gger”:

    As Chris Rock lays it out, George W. Bush is the perfect nigger.
    Bush is proud of NOT knowing shit. I don’t read newspapers.”
    Bush expects praise for shit he’s SUPPOSED to do. “I want freedom.”
    Bush is ruining it for the rest of us. “I’d be easier if I was a dictator.”
    Who can forget?

  • Medley wants Elizabeth Bumiller’s job.
  • Caterina mulled over the threat of bioterrorist attacks:

    The Bay Area is actually a pretty good place to live in the event of a bioterrorist attack. The variety is good, San Francisco isn’t an island, California’s agriculture is more varied, and it isn’t as hard to get to as the middle of the country. Because of Earthquake preparedness, a lot of people have several days supply of food and water in their basements. Probably even some left over from the Y2K paranoia.

Culture


  • maria asked

    Here, what is missing, instead of acting as a pointer to the possibility of art’s small perfections, is, instead, a clear statement about the state of the world: its messy brokenness across many realms. In the case of the sacred paintings, what is missing from the faces of the gods – an eye here, a smile there – is an unbearable fact about the imperfection of the gods themselves. What becomes of a people whose gods are blemished?

  • Seraph considered whether a critic had to also be a good writer.
  • Randy is looking forward to the centenary of Pablo Neruda’s birth.
  • Kimber saluted Working Mothers:

    I can unequivocally say that I would not survive if I had to do it forever knowing no one was eventually coming in and taking some of it off me. I would either die or go insane.

  • Teresa talked about Supergurlz.

Religion

  • terje told the story of Marguerite of Hainault, called la Porète:

    she was burned. The books were confiscated everywhere they could find it, with all the other books they were spooked by – but they multiplied, translated into several other languages, including Latin. The book in fact, became many a noble and many a cleric`s “guilty secret”. Soon it was forgotten who had written it and why it was forbidden, because she had not signed her name to it, it was only known she had written it. Eventually only the book renaimed, its author left anonymous and faceless, like the author of the Cloud of Unknowing.

  • Kimber blamed Fundamentalist Christianity for the harsh treatment accorded an unmarried state employee in North Carolina. Seems that I broke the law back in the early eighties when I lived in North Carolina.
  • Irene almost skipped a meeting of her church cell

    Messy Christian says she can’t understand this “should go to cell group” mentality. She told me she doesn’t see why I should feel guilty if I were to miss skip cell group or church service for a week.

Personal


  • Francis took a trip to Karpo Island:

    you will be charmed by the old manor house in which the reception takes place – pink on the outside and rough and elegant on the inside, the room in which you eat dinner sporting a column with a visible bullet hole from a long-past civil war, and at one time having been the scene of Jean Sibelius playing the piano. There will be no electric lights, only candles, giving the scene an impossibly romantic and painterly and antique air, though it gets no darker than early dusk at the darkest point of the evening, everyone’s eyes glittering and cheeks flushed and outlines cast in deep shadow.

  • Brian is on the mend:

    My strength and ability are returning quite quickly. I am under doctor’s prohibition from lifting anything heavier than 10 pounds, from driving, and from any significant reptetitive motion, but these are all merely safety precautions while my sternum heals. I am not supposed to engage in any heavy exertion, but otherwise am free to do what I like to the extent I am able to do it. While this has gotten me out of doing a fair number of my usual household chores, it has stopped me from doing little else.

  • Susan pondered the mystery of children’s eating habits.

    Is it by color or by size they learn to sort what is presented? As I watch it seems as if there is a pattern well established at the start. Is taste acquired by watching mom and dad who surreptitiously avoid, but never fling their food?

  • Robert had a near deer experience:

    He was lying there casually in the sunshine, safe in the tall grass, only his antlers visible, the antlers turning this way and that as his attention was called to a sound or a scent or an itch on his body, but the effect of it was quite stately, regally casual as he lay there in invisible majesty.

  • Katherine recounted a dream:

    I had obligations elsewhere at a group yoga presentation involving the use of live ferrets who had just been unfrozen as part of a cryogenic experiment and needed to be dressed in baby clothes. It was very difficult to dress them without getting bitten and that was my major role in the presentation: dressing groggy, grumpy ferrets without sustaining puncture wounds.

  • Kate celebrated “interdependence day”.
  • Tracy effused over her Fourth of July weekend.
  • Pam wasn’t very impressed with the local fireworks.
  • Jill listed those who responded to her personal ad.
  • Rob got a taste of his new home.
  • Jenny enjoyed fireworks on the Fourth:

    Reds, whites, blues, purples, and even some yellow. Spheres, starbursts, other non-symmetric shapes, long stringy ones, curly twisty ones…

  • Bittersweet received a reality check.

    When I got home on Friday night, instead of dwelling, I got a cuddle from my girl and then we went out for dinner. Her sister has just had an operation to remove a cancerous lump from her breast and the lymph nodes from under her arm. J is understandably worried about her, as am I. It rather puts things in perspective.

  • M. Luminous discovered what happens when you visit your parents:

    I’m back at my parent’s house, and within 24 hours of arrival, I got put to work. My Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin recently moved. (They do that a lot. They switch houses about as frequently as some people switch undergarments.) I got the honor of sweeping away all the sawdust that the remodelers dumped on the back porch, because they had to not only get a new house, but start modifying it immediately. There was a lot of sawdust.

  • Aurora explored Bodie:

    Some structures still have furniture and appliances and it looks as though the people who previously lived in them just up and left, leaving everything behind. Once a bustling town of over 10,000 people and 65 saloons, the mining ran out and two fires took their share. The last one was in 1932 and was caused by a young lad playing with matches. Now, Bodie is populated only by ghosts and memories… and year round park rangers.

  • John fought off a Trojan:

    There I was late in the evening, doing a last email check, when my computer started telling me it wasn’t happy. Norton Anti-virus was flashing messages at me, telling me it was detecting and deleting the ‘Download.Trojan’. Whoops.

  • Manda caught up with two months worth of back links.
  • Treesong performed a tarot reading.
  • Zhaf cleaned house.
  • Yule struggles to understand referrer stats. Why so many hits from porn sites? Hint to Yule: You put nudes on your webpages.

Photos

Poetry

Recent Reading

Missing Bloggers

Web Links

Failure is the foundation of success, and the means by which it is achieved. Success is the lurking place of failure; but who can tell when the turning point will come?

  –Lao Tzu

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