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Insert a Trite Metaphor About a Corral

Posted on August 13, 2004 in Roundup

I have believed for a long time that Stalin wanted to write but had no talent. It would account for his obsession with literature. He personally oversaw everything published in the Soviet Union. He instructed songwriters how to write patriotic songs. Perhaps that famous little black book, such an enigma, really had in it synopses of plots, rhymes for an epic poem, for each stanza would have to end with some rousing thought: destroyed, killing, death sentence, obliterate, confess, assassinate….

  — Doris Lessing

square255.gifCulture issues trumped politics for blogger interest during this interlude between the conventions. Bloggers looked at trends — sometimes disturbing — in our attitudes and the science funded by big business which affect our futures. They reflected on themselves and the society in which they live, one that has put the emphasis on protecting the rights of the hateful over those of the kind.

I sense the first swells of a rebellion, perhaps, against those world views which command our silence in the face of boorishness and authoritarianism, a rejection of the Randenoid definition of civil liberties and freedom which allows them to say and do whatever they want without correction or rejoinder from the rest of us.

Here’s hoping!

This roundup covers the period from 6 August to 12 August 2004.

Zeraf wrote to me and asked me to highlight how he was taken by a phisherperson:

My online E-mail accounts are always putting things in the junk e-mail folder that don’t really belong there. Like movie cowboys, they put stuff there first and ask questions later. I dutifully logged in with my screen-name and password and began filling out their form. Until I realized that they were not supposed to be asking me for my debit card and pin number. Too late, I looked in the corner of my screen and saw that the lock was in the open position. I had fallen for it.

He recommends antiphishing.com as an antidote.

Culture


  • Jeremy was appalled that scientists had researched ways to turn laboratory monkeys into workaholics by depriving them of dopamine:

    How sick is that? Most people never stop to consider how detrimental the work ethic can be to society and culture, but mainly to the overwrought and insane individual, over-medicated and over-stimulated during “off” time to try to forget the fact that labor is required in the first place.

  • maria sparked a discussion with an article about the links between rampant consumerism, indebtedness, and the rise in reports of personality disorder.
  • Lauren was justly upset when a comedian cracked rape jokes:

    To me the difference in this kind of comedic material is the difference between identity politics and shit that ruins people’s lives. Race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and culture are tried and true sources for comedic value, but I’ve never seen a joke about rape get tons of laughs, never in mixed company.

  • Aurora assailed the double standard in reactions to the film Brown Bunny:

    Why is it a woman can be buck naked on film, showing breasts, ass, and more (pardon me, I’m trying not to get porn related search engine hits.. but I think that’s going to be a lost cause anyway…), and that’s okay. It’s acceptable, even. Hell, some people call it ART depending on the context. Yet, show one full frontal MALE nude and it’s pornographic.

  • Treesong has been feeling the effects of too long a sacrifice and wants to “go home”:

    I wanna go home — home, to a place that doesn’t exist yet, and may never exist at all. Home, to a place where I feel safe, secure, accepted, and loved. Home, to a place where I can live in harmony with the Earth rather than having my very survival be dependent on various degrees of ecocide and homicide. Home, to a place where the contents of my mind and heart make me a beloved member of the community like any other rather than that odd person who has all of those crazy revolutionary ideas….

  • Stacy took down people who park in the spaces reserved for the handicapped:

    bill calls the police while barrista dude and i start to trash idiots who park in handicapped spaces. b-d’s 15-year old cousin has m.s. you KNOW the car belongs to latte man. he’s not sayin’ a word, just looking around nervously. he gets his coffee, RUNS out to the car, bill goes to the door, YELLS, “GET SOME BALLS, DUMBASS!” i mean EVERYBODY within a mile of this place heard him. b-d and i are laughing our asses off, while everybody else is shuffling their feet, looking at the floor.

  • Medley defended the right to anonymity:

    Pseudonyms and anonymity have a fine and distinguished tradition. I don’t think it’s appropriate to suggest that people who use nyms, even in a commercially-focused venture like the Amazon review system, are somehow less honorable.

  • Seraph went to a churrascaria, a Brazilian-style Atkins Dieter’s dream:

    the premise of the restaurant is a go/no-go system. You set the green block out and people bring giant meat on sticks and carve it up for you. You set the red block out and they don’t. I’m not really meat-driven, so I think the experience was somewhat wasted on me, although they also had a lovely and diverse salad/fruit/vegetable selection. And really good, really dark, super dark, coffee.

  • Teresa gushed out her love for The Smiths:

    They’re one of those defining bands for me in the sense that they’re powerfully connected to a time period that I think of as a turning point in my life. The music, the lyrics, the band’s image–all those things are important, but more so the way they intersected my life at a certain stage.

  • Stu shared some (possibly apocryphal) strange state and local laws.
  • Madge kvetched about the excessively high number of road deaths in Portugal:

    Let’s face it, the vast majority of road deaths in this country (as everywhere I expect) are caused by young men. The only thing that gets through young mens’ testosterone thickened skulls is HUMILIATION (the BLOOD is for the silly people who don’t realise that accidents DESTROY the human body).


Politics


  • Mike lashed out at those who criticized as “unprofessional” the minority journalists at the Unity Conference who refused to applaud for George W. Bush:

    The right, using every opening to perpetuate racism in the newsroom, used circular argument, vacuous definitions of professionalism, and hollow but vindictive rhetoric to slam delegates for ‘unprofessional conduct’. This has inflamed debate around non-issues, strengthening the hold on editorial offices of those who shout, “See, there’s good reason we don’t allow spics, latinos, niggers, Koreans and Muslimoids in here.”

    If that’s professional journalism, give me un-professional journalism every time.

  • Jeanne discovered that the biggest reason why the American media was so slow on reporting what happened at Abu Ghraib was that they just couldn’t believe our military would ever do anything bad.
  • Deborah shows a photo of George W. Bush that proves once a cheater always a cheater.
  • Randy doesn’t like the choices in the upcoming Venezuelan elections.
  • Mileah counted another way in which George W. Bush has played politics at the expense of national security.
  • Michael affirmed something he liked in the Republican’s website.
  • Jody wasn’t exactly supportive of New Jersey governor James McGreenvy coming out of the closet.
  • Andrea defended her friendship with Glenn Reynolds:

    Glenn has never been anything but really polite, friendly, and nice to me in every instance when I’ve sent him an e-mail. I may not agree with him on many of his political positions, especially the ones to do with US foreign policy, but I like him as much as any person I’ve talked to over the Internet. The fact that Right-Wing Lad is the only other person I know in real life who even knows who Glenn Reynolds is kind of proves my point that Glenn is only ‘powerful’ with people who are interested in weblogs and (in?) politics.

  • LQ got the lowdown on Jerome Corsi, one of the authors of the Swift Boat calumny. For example, Corsi wrote:

    “Boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn’t reported by the liberal press”

  • Kris caught the Republican Party serving as a vehicle for white supremacy zealot James Hart.
  • Kynn lambasted the Murrieta School District for allowing themselves to be swayed against an anti-bullying regulation after a swing vote was convinced that it would “interfere with freedom of speech”.
  • Andrew discovered that the United States is against free trade when it comes to buying drugs more cheaply from Canada.

Religion


  • Al-Muhajabah enjoined her fellow Muslims to support a Palestinian nonviolence movement and noted two themes in such calls*:

    One argues that non-violence is the most moral or ethical course of action from a religious perspective. I first addressed that in Islamic non-violence. The other theme is that non-violence is the most practical course; i.e., that violent struggle has failed to gain anything for the Palestinians and in fact is only making their situation worse.

  • Rachel Ann expressed her disgust with the frequent use of genetic testing in Israel for the purpose of weeding out children with physical defects and questioned whether the practice went against Jewish principles of respect for life.
  • FrumDad reflected on the essential paradox of being human:

    we are, each of us, the most important person in the world and insignificant, simultaneously. We need to behave — and believe — that our next act, our next moral decision, our next word, be it cruel or kind, will tip this otherwise balanced world over to the good or the bad. We need to understand, at the same time, that Hashem’s in charge of the world, that He creates it moment by moment in an affirmative act of will, and that His directions and intentions are, at the end of the day, the only ones that will matter.

  • Joe shared the insights into Luke 1:46-55 as it pertains to being American:

    , as a group we easily could be lumped in with those labeled “proud”, “strong”, and “rich” for, after all, each of us had lived and continued to live a relatively privileged existence compared to the world’s “humble”, “poor”, and “vulnerable”

  • JCecil offered some intriguing thoughts about the true roots of the sexual revolution:

    . The pill did not cause the sexual revolution, nor did it cause the legalization of abortion. The root cause of the sexual revolution and the expansion of feminist consciousness was the education of women, and women were educated in Christian society because it was presumed that teaching them to read the Bible would be beneficial to their souls.

  • Natalie talked to God again and found that He isn’t so upset when people don’t think He exists.

Personal


  • Metamanda wanted the world to know that she is not the Amanda Williams who is marrying George Prescott Bush.
  • Tracy lost her grandmother. She speaks well when she says:

    People say that it’s awful to see family under such circumstances. I’ve heard that. “It’s a shame we had to meet again like this…” I don’t think it is. The numbers are important. I hope everyone in the entire family is there. And when they speak of this, I want them to say, “It was a huge turn-out…even Tracy was there.”

  • John celebrated what he thinks will be his last quiet birthday:

    It was a funny old birthday. For my main present, despite my protestations that a new digital camera was all the birthday present any reasonable man could want, I received a new DAB digital radio. Which didn’t work. I was delighted with the gift and opened it with all the excitement that ought to attend a wished for but unexpected gift. Plugged it in, turned it on, and waited for it to run through the tuning sequence. Then it gave a loud and distressing squawk and subsided into a sullen silence.

    “Oh, bugger,” said Graham, with feeling.

  • Leigh confessed to a transmogrification which has taken place in her life due to her reliance on the U.S. Mail:

    During the hour in which mail is typically delivered, one finds oneself starting to hover a bit . . . all normal household duties coming to a bit of a standstill so that one can hover all the more effectively. Not only that, one finds oneself turning into Creepy Wingnut Lady With Multiple Cats–peering out from behind the curtains every couple of minutes to monitor the progress of the [breathily mythic and resonant intonation] Mail Carrier [/breathily mythic and resonant intonation] coming down the block.

  • Bill does not recommend the Cafe Istanbul in Columbus, Ohio:

    This fucking felafel was, without any doubt at all, the absolute worst thing I have ever eaten in my entire life. I mean, I accidentally ate a worm covered with dirt once … well, you know how sometimes you get tricked into eating something that is so doggone fucking awful that you gag … well, I fucking paid for this felafel. I would not give this stuff to my worst enemy …

  • Brian is scarred by the poor job done on his arm:

    The incision on my arm was sewn up by a physician’s assistant, and apparently someone not accustomed to sewing. There are puckers of skin all up and down the length of the scar, so that it looks like a perforation from a magazine insert. The skin on my arm extending out from the scar about a quarter of an inch on either side is permanently taut and numb. I am almost constantly aware of the scar, especially the end on my wrist, which gets irritated by using a mouse and keyboard all day.

  • chari is bracing herself for Hurricane Charley:

    Everyone at work has their plastic bags for their PCs. Can you believe I have to actually remind them to shut the damn things off before covering them…?

  • Steven thought he was in heaven when he visited Austin:

    Last night I watched as a colony estimated at more than 1,000,000 bats swirled out from under the bridge in Downtown Austin and skimmed along the shores of the river. Turning around I was able to see the magnificent edifice of the pink granite Texas State Capitol. And it put me in mind of another way that Texas is blessed among states–their legislature meets only about once every two years or so.

  • Bittersweet (or whatever her name is) fell prey to jealousy:

    Now, I’m not generally a jealous girlfriend, I know Jackie is a flirt and I also know she would never, *ever* do anything more than flirt. And she would never hurt me intentionally. But seeing him touch her last night sent a white hot flame of jealousy through me.

  • Pam delivered her “State of the Pam” address.
  • Roberta mentioned how scientists can now trick tomatoes using color.
  • Susan feels she has undergone a sea change in her writing style.
  • Jenny’s “long weekend in Ithaca last weekend included several very Ithacan activities.”
  • Irene was worried about whether she wrote too much about being single.
  • Rae resorted to homeopathic remedies for her allergy to dogs.
  • Francis was puzzled by the black and orange shirts he saw people wearing.
  • Kathryn’s gas grill foofed in her face.

Visual Art


Poetry and Fine Prose


  • Nancy: Memories of the Old Madras Club
  • Elkit: Whatever Happened to Fay Wray
  • Greg: According to the Weatherman
  • Victoria: One Hundred Eighty Seconds

  • Stan: Beautiful Objects emerge from a hole
  • Robert: Why Frogs Don’t Need Pockets

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*For the record, I stand against both the revolutionary and state terrorism now occuring in Israel and the Occupied Territories. There are no good guys in those governments or liberation fronts, only many civilian victims.

The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the nation’s greatness. But the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that power is disinterested.

  — John F. Kennedy

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