In the two years I lived in Boston, I don’t actually remember anywhere selling Boston Cream Pie. But “this item on Fafblog”:http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2004_06_06_fafblog_archive.html#108718617404224818 is enough to get me thinking about City Cafe.
A discussion of who we should have on the $10 bill
“I fear I am going to become assimilated into the ranks of Fafblog fandom.”:http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2004_06_06_fafblog_archive.html#108713923245941570
Back to one car for a while
So, we’d just gotten done seeing the new Harry Potter film–there’s something off on the pacing of the screenplay, but I think Alfonso Cuaron’s storytelling abilities are amazing–and were going to the grocery store, when we were in a 4-car accident.
This is not a fun way to spend your afternoon, I don’t recommend it at all. No one was seriously hurt though I have to admit that unless I feel astoundingly better in the next 36 hours, I’m going to the doctor on Monday for that most common of post-accident complaints, neck pain.
Oh, but this is a great use-case for having a camera on your phone.
This is not the way to get typecast
Andy Serkis has played Gollum, now “he’s going to be Kong”:http://scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.html?2004-06%2F11%2F11.00.film.
I guess it could be worse. “Imagine if your whole resume revolved around being the guy in the big rubber suit in Japanese monster films”:http://imdb.com/name/nm0457511/.
Dan Armstrong passes away at 69
Yeah, it’s kind of esoteric, but Dan Armstrong was responsible for some very cool guitars. I will always think of Jeff “Skunk” Baxter with a Dan Armstrong guitar. I always wanted one, and although it’s not like his passing is going to mean the end of their production, it’s kind of sad to see him go.
“!http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp/1998/Dan-Armstrong-Guitars1.jpg!”:http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp/1998/Dan-Armstrong-Guitars1-larg.jpg
So Al Queda has a fucking personnel office?
I’ve heard about wanting to run governments like corporations–which has long seemed stupid to me, based on the corporations into which I’ve had insight–but this almost seems absurd.
An “MSNBC report”:http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5175105/site/newsweek/site/newsweek on the rapidly dissoving case against Jose Padilla–you know that American citizen they’ve been holding as an “enemy combatant”, abrogating Habeas Corpus and, thereby, pissing on the Bill of Rights–includes this graf:
bq. The prospective case against Padilla would rely in part on material seized by the FBI in Afghanistan–principally an Al Qaeda “new applicant form” that, authorities said, the former Chicago gang member filled out in July 2000 to enter a terrorist training camp run by Osama bin Laden’s organization.
A fucking “new applicant form”? Amazing.
I’m reduced to this
Yes, I have begun reading “Gawker”:http://gawker.com in order to escape the daily wretcheness of our situation. I mean, this is desperation for Schadenfreude. Anyway, “this was kind of funny”:http://www.gawker.com/topic/when-playwrights-attack-eve-enslers-vday-015984.php
Unfogged says it all
Ogged “nails the problem”:http://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2004_06_06.html#001957:
bq. Like the mass of people who lived in the Soviet Union, or who are now living in Iran, you’ll go about your business, making accommodations, and trying to get by. In fact, in Iran, you can easily hop in your car, go all across the country, camp where you like, build big fires, leave a mess, and drive like the devil. In many ways, there are far fewer regulations there. But we rightly call it a repressive society because of the way it treats dissenters and the accused, and because there is little accountability and limited democracy.
Sometimes it’s not safe to go on vacation.
No, we’re not talking about sharks, or Osama Bin Laden, we’re talking about “the tendencies of your coworkers”:http://www.serversunderthesun.com/tin/.
A very interesting article considering entitlement programs
Mark Schmitt (aka “The Decembrist”:http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/) has an article in the latest “American Prospect”:http://www.prospect.org/ discussing “entitlement programs and where we might go from here”:http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=7814.
I have had my disagreements with Michael Froomkin in the past
After all, I worked at the University of Miami School of Law as their network administrator during a time of big changes that Michael didn’t see the need for and didn’t want to take part in. Such are the vagaries of institutions.
However, Michael’s “analysis of the Torture Memo”:http://www.discourse.net/archives/2004/06/apologia_pro_tormento_analyzing_the_first_56_pages_of_the_walker_working_group_report_aka_the_torture_memo.html is well worth reading. In fact, I find myself adding his blog to my already overloaded daily reading.
Now to try and do something that will pay, for a change.
Laura, is it too late for Michelle to reconsider?
The two people who read this space know that I am often proud of Massachusetts and its record of being a relatively progressive state.
Which is why it disappoints me much to find out that the “MBTA has decided it can do random searches of passenger bags”:http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2004/06/08/t_to_check_packages_bags_at_random?mode=PF
As “jwz said”:http://jwz.livejournal.com/, “Bill of What?”
The infinite resilience of the human being
“Juan Cole”:http://www.juancole.com/ has a bunch of “Why did the chicken cross the road? jokes”:http://www.juancole.com/2004_06_01_juancole_archive.html#108671498109379564, properly repurposed for Iraq.
I have nothing to add
So, of course, I was travelling last week, which means I wasn’t really in a position to post on D-Day, or Reagan or Tenet, or any number of other things. Instead, I was taking advantage of the fact that you can now ship wine to North Carolina–good for people who come to dinner, bad for the American Express balance–and seeing friends in the Bay Area, some of whom I haven’t seen since before I finished college.
And ultimately, I’m just fine with that. I don’t want to write about all this shit. I’m jet-lagged, still somewhat sleep-deprived and just generally cranky right now. You want to hear intelligent people, “Whiskey Bar”:http://billmon.org/ has the goods on just about everything, from “Reagan”:http://billmon.org/archives/001516.html to “abrogating the Constitution”:http://billmon.org/archives/001514.html to “how the right-wing is conducting itself leading up to the election”:http://billmon.org/archives/001513.html, while “Brad DeLong”:http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/ links to a very interesting “a NYT article on honesty”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/magazine/06BAGEL.html?pagewanted=print&position= as well as a bunch of other stuff that I want to read.
Me, I’m going to be working on posting pictures of the blooming lavender fields at Matanzas Creek.
I cost $4000/year
Well, actually, I cost more than that, but that is the amount we pay to have me covered on Anne’s health insurance.
This is, I think, obviously ridiculous. I am healthy–in fact, I am almost certainly in better health now than I have ever been before, and although I do have asthma, through yoga and sensible diet and losing weight, I haven’t had an acute attack in nearly a decade; in fact, over the last several months, I have scaled back my drug usage dramatically–I use Flonase at a very low dosage to keep my allergies in check, since they are really the only trigger for my asthma, and I have albuterol for those times I do experience any sort of reaction.
I suppose we do get some benefits from all that money–my prescriptions are $25 instead of $75 every couple of months. So I guess you could say I only cost $3400/year.
But all the rest of that money we pay is against the possibility that I might get very sick, or be in an accident or otherwise require medical care. But that’s a ridiculous amount for that purpose; in fact, we all know that it’s actually going to pay for the people who are really sick. That is the nature of insurance.
With all this in mind, I was very interested to read Brad DeLong’s “discussion of the Kerry health care proposals”:http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004_archives/000910.html. It looks like it might actually be sensible, and maybe even implementable.
An amusing interview with Christopher Walken
Read it in “the New York Times”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/magazine/30WALKEN.html?pagewanted=all&position=
I’ve built a v3 Category plugin
You should be able to download it through “this link”:/2004/05/27/Categories.pm.
As with the “Archives”:/2004/05/ive-built-a-v3-archive-plugin.html plugin, this is not very elaborate or configurable; feedback is appreciated, preferably to the Blosxom mailing list.
“Media Matters”:http://mediamatters.org/ has a petition to remove Rush Limbaugh from American Forces Radio
They make the point that Donald Rumsfeld has condemned the very actions that Rush (and Ben Stein, and numerous others) have written off as nothing more than schoolboy pranks.
Why, then, is the US Government continuing to broadcast his vile and pussilanimous message to our troops?
“Go!”:http://www.petitiononline.com/mmfa2/petition.html Sign the petition. I’ll still be here when you get back.
Oh, yeah, BTW, have you “heard about the US soldier who was beaten into medical retirement during a training exercise in Gitmo”:http://www.lex18.com/Global/story.asp?S=1891343&nav=EQlpNN9R?
I’ve built a v3 Archive plugin
You should be able to download it through “this link”:/2004/05/26/Archives.pm.
Kerry Google-bombed
Wired News “has a story”:http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,63557,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2 about right-wingers google-bombing the word “waffles” to point to Kerry’s site.
I guess around their neck of the woods that counts as reasoned debate.
Yeah, I’m probably just pissed that no one thought to do it to Bush first.
Boy, I hope they don’t choose Alabama
I would hate to have to use a passport to visit family. Thinking about it, I wouldn’t want them to take South Carolina–it’s on the way to Alabama for us–and I think Chet would be disappointed if they took Mississippi.
Why not North Dakota?
Oh, what am I talking about? “These nutjobs”:http://www.christianexodus.org/:
bq. ChristianExodus.org offers the opportunity to try a strategy not yet employed by Bible-believing Christians. Rather than spend resources in continued efforts to redirect the entire nation, we will redeem States one at a time. Millions of Christian conservatives exist, but we are geographically spread out and diluted at the national level. Therefore, we must concentrate our numbers in a geographical region with a sovereign government we can control through the electoral process.
ChristianExodus.org is orchestrating the move of 50,000 or more Christians to one of three States for the express purpose of dissolving that State’s bond with the union. The three States under consideration are Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina. The exact destination will be chosen by vote of our membership. Our move will commence when the federal government forces sodomite marriages on our local communities or once we reach the 50,000-member mark, whichever comes first.
I understand unemployment is high in Japan
I’m guessing that this is why there are people with enough time to do “wild and silly things with Bento”:http://www-personal.umich.edu/~msittig/bento/.
I wish I could read what I presume to be the ingredients used for each of the pieces.
The scary part? Two words: Bento porn.
UNC wanted to have him, William and Mary got him.
Obviously, because William and Mary was willing to go the extra mile and give him a PhD, Jon Stewart spoke at their graduation.
Or maybe it’s because he’s an alumnoid.
Still, “here’s his commencement speech”:http://web.wm.edu/news/index.php?id=3650.
I’m sure Jesse Helms would have approved
The North Carolina Republican Party has decided to “deny the Log Cabin Republicans a table at the state convention”:http://www.365gay.com/newscon04/05/051904ncGOP.htm.
Honestly, I’m always baffled at the way various groups keep going back to the GOP even when, after the election, they don’t even bother to leave $20 on the metaphorical dresser.
BTW, if you’re ever in DC
and looking for free WiFi and good coffee, I feel obligated to recommend “Tryst”:http://www.trystdc.com/, in the Adams-Morgan part of town. The posts from Tuesday were all written there while having a cup before a meeting with some potential clients.
Cambridge City Hall
9 years and 11 months ago, Anne and I got married at Cambridge City Hall. We didn’t tell people we knew for varying periods of time, for lots of reasons.
We’re both intensely proud, though, to see that same location being used to officiate some of the first our-Supreme-Court-said-it-was-ok same-sex marriages in this country.
And to all you miserable bastards in the south who rail against it, get a fucking job–Massachussets pays for your laziness, getting $0.75 on the dollar back for each buck it sends to Washington, while most of you get more back than you put in.
I want a poni
After a moment’s disorientation–what, we’re in Italy now?–we decided that Virginia’s Po river had to be a teletubby reference.
We became suspicious, tough, when we noticed the Ni river a couple of miles later. I mean, could they be that obvious? A ??Holy Grail?? reference?
Then we put it together.
With a name like Mad Hatter
I would hope it would come as a suprise to no one that one of our local bakery/restaurants would have a sense of humor about some of its wares.
I don’t know what more there is to say
“The presidents dog has his own domain name”:http://barney.gov/. Yeah, sure, it’s just a redirector to a spot on the White House website, but still.
There’s also, I feel obliged to mention, the “Presidential Pet Museum”:http://www.presidentialpetmuseum.com/whitehousepets-1.htm.
Quick, which do you pick?
You can distribute Terry Gilliam’s new movie, “The Brothers Grimm”:http://imdb.com/title/tt0355295/, or you can commit to distributing a remake of The Amityville Horror and the latest James Bond film.
“Of course, if you’re an executive at MGM, you pick the latter”:http://scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.html?2004-05%2F14%2F10.15.film.