Thoughts on culture, politics, music and stuff by Eric Olsen, Marty Thau and Mike Crooker, who are among other things, producers.

 
Cool Tunes
Cool Tunes is on RIGHT NOW!. Go ahead, click on the link - take a chance, hear my voice. You will forever be in my power.
posted by Eric at 10:16 PM

 
Ownership
This may seem a bit odd, but are your bodily fluids and other wastes still "yours" after they leave your body? Do you still "own" the pee once it hits the urinal? I wonder about things like that. I'm serious.
posted by Eric at 10:03 PM

 
Issue
Okay, there is one problem with working out in the basement: the cat litter box. Have to work on that one.
posted by Eric at 9:53 PM

 
Pump, Blog, Pump
Man, other than the obvious, there's nothing much better than this. Bi's and tri's tonight.
posted by Eric at 9:46 PM

 
The Impossible Dream?
Tribe wins again. Is 161-1 within reach??
posted by Eric at 9:33 PM

 
Bush a Reaganite?
In today's NY Times, this article says academics are reevaluating Ronald Reagan, citing that his greatest achievement was to reestablish the concept of a chosen America confronted by "evil" in the world, an evil that had to be confronted and overcome, not accomodated. Does this sound like any current presidents?

This was not all abstract, Mr. Heclo said. Mr. Reagan saw the United States as confronted by evil, "whereby the nation's chosenness stood over against the powers of darkness." Mr. Reagan, he said, "saw Communist states as simply the latest enemy on the offensive against the American idea of freedom, an enemy that needed to be defeated rather than accommodated."

posted by Eric at 9:00 PM

 
I've About Had It With the NY Times and Their Sexual Innuendo
They also think flatulence is funny.
posted by Eric at 8:39 PM

 
Smoking In the Snow
The Indians, behind the 2-hit starting pitching of Danys Baez, dominated the Tigers in the snow yesterday 10-1, to go to 3-1 on the young season. So far, with only 158 games to go, my bold prediction is holding up: the pitching has been great and the offense has averaged 7 runs a game. Division title, here we come.
posted by Eric at 2:13 PM

 
From the Videos of Babes
Our 2 year old was watching one of her favorite videos this morning, "Sesame Street: Kids' Favorite Songs," and a deep cosmic truth was revealed to me. Not just one, or two, but THREE classic children’s songs have the exact same melody: “The Alphabet Song,” “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” (already knew those two did, old news), but also “Baa Baa Black Sheep”! Telly mixed up lyrics from all three songs and sang them in a revelatory medley, exposing the conspiracy of silence.
posted by Eric at 2:00 PM

 
Bjorn Again As an American
I’ve had a very interesting email exchange with my kinsman Bjorn Staerk since his triumphant April Fools parody appeared, filling the cognoscenti with glee and causing the now-infamous Alex Beam to fall into a credibility black hole.

After I told Bjorn I am Norwegian-American, he asked just how Norwegian I am. I replied

Bjorn, Both of my father's parents were born in Norway, my mother is 1/2 Norgy but they've been in the country for generations. I still haven't been over there yet, but plan to do so. How did you get so American, dude? How do you like the "rock-ribbed Middle American" Norwegian characterization? Best, EO

The ”rock-ribbed Middle American” characterization of Staerk came from my review of James Lileks' site; Lileks was also at the center of the Beam affair.

Staerk replied

Two generations sounds about right - short enough for your parents to call you by a Norwegian-sounding name, but long enough to write it with c instead of k. ;)

Culturally, I don't know about being American, not more than other Europeans. We all are, partly, because the US is the center of our culture, not all of it, but the center. The difference is that I admit it, and that I don't mind.

If you mean politically, well that's the web to blame. When people are exposed to a broader range of opinions, they end up in unpredictable places. I don't think there's anything strange about this, it would be stranger if it hadn't affected me at all.

I have no idea what rock-ribbed means, and why Middle American? - Bjørn Stærk

I responded today with (slightly edited)

Dear Bjørn,
>I have no idea what rock-ribbed means, and why Middle American?<

I was very interested to see if you would know the connotations of these phrases. Articles about blogs, and the bloggers themselves always marvel at how conversant you are with American idioms.

Rock-ribbed means "firm, unyielding," even "rigid," which you are not; it was supposed to be a slight exaggeration to show how ignorant Beam was. The term came originally from mountains or elevations literally "ribbed" or "ringed" with rocks, like a freaking fjord.

"Middle American" originates geographically, from the "middle of America" as opposed to the coasts or even the far north or south: the metaphor following that the relatively rural center of the country traditionally has had "centrist" ideas, not too extreme in any direction. The coasts are traditionally more cosmopolitan and urban, lending themselves to more extreme ideas culturally, politically and otherwise. The Upper Midwest is highly industrialized and unionized, as well as fairly urban, leading to a Democratic leaning.

Politically this has led to the famous "red" and "blue" states breakdown, in which "liberal" Democrats do well in the Upper Midwest and on the coasts, while the "conservative" Republicans carry just about everything else. Of course, our rather peculiar Electoral College system, which awards all of the electoral votes of a given state to whichever candidate wins the state popular vote, greatly exaggerates these tendencies, especially graphically. Check out this interesting map, ironically from the Guardian which sizes states according to each’s allotment of electoral votes. A view by county gives a more nuanced picture.

So anyway, your political views are very centrist and pro-American, especially for a European, and even more especially for a European still in Europe, unlike, say, Andrew Sullivan who has lived here for 20 years. Hence, you are a "rock-ribbed Middle American," at least compared to the Trotskyite you became in your April Fools parody. I salute you my fellow Norgy! Best Wishes, Eric Olsen

Here’s a young Norwegian writing like a native in a foreign language in a very idiomatic genre, blogs, and writing well enough to compose a parody that completely snookered an American “man of letters.” I don’t speak another language well enough to get directions to get back to my hotel. It’s pathetic and embarrassing. Viva Bjorn.
posted by Eric at 1:18 PM

 
Painful Division
Everyone seems to agree that the Palestinians deserve their own state - the question is how to get there. Oz says

“end occupation and evacuate the Jewish settlements that were deliberately thrust into the depths of Palestinian lands. Its borders must be drawn, unilaterally if need be, upon the logic of demography and the moral imperative to withdraw from governing a hostile population.”

Podhoretz says

“that to sponsor the establishment of a state run by the thugs and murderers of the PA would be tantamount to putting the Taliban back into power in Afghanistan.

...the PA is another one of the regimes that will have to be toppled if the war against terrorism is to be won, and he will encourage Israel to do this job in our mutual interest.

...only if a space is thereby cleared can decent alternatives to such regimes get a chance to emerge (including among the Palestinians, who might then indeed form a state that would be willing to coexist peacefully with Israel) [itals mine].

So even Podhoretz, a clear hawk, acknowledges that the Palestinians may form a state, as long as it is “willing to coexist peacefully with Israel.” Jerry agrees with Podhoretz on this matter:

I think that Israel will ultimately have to re-occupy the entire West Bank and Gaza and uproot the Palestinian Authority. Eventually, an attempt to make peace can start over again.

Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman sees the "uprooting" of the Palestinian Authority as pointless.

Arafat is less a leader than a follower of his people, and removing him would no more stop the violence than lassoing one steer would stop a stampede.

The main source of friction between Israelis and Palestinians is the Israeli occupation. Sharon's military assault might make sense as a prelude to a withdrawal from nearly all of the West Bank. But it appears to be more a prelude to continued occupation, and the Palestinians have already made clear their response to that.

Chapman’s solution?

The Palestinians keep dispatching suicide bombers in the hope of breaking Israel's resolve, but the effect is merely to alienate even the most dovish Israelis. The Israelis roll tanks into Arab villages to prove the futility of terrorism, a strategy that only spawns more volunteers for bloody martyrdom.

The maddening aspect of the conflict is not that there is no solution, but that the solution is so obvious and yet so unattainable. Both sides want all or much of the same land. So there is only one thing to do: divide it in a way that will satisfy neither. But that's the one thing they aren't prepared to do. The Israelis and Palestinians are like two starving men with one meal between them. If they share it more or less evenly, each will still be hungry. Understandably, each prefers to have it all. But the consequence is that they spend all their time fighting, while the food spoils.

This means the Palestinians giving up the right to return, and the Israelis giving up - no matter the moral probity of the settlers’ right to share land with Palestinians - the settlements as a purely political, practical matter. This would satisfy Chapman’s division “in a way that would satisfy neither,” and is perhaps, the only “final solution.”
posted by Eric at 8:09 PM

 
Jerry Makes Sense Too
Again, my sense of certainty is eroded. Jerry makes some excellent point regarding the Oz-Podhoretz debate.

Eric,
I agree with your sense that it would be great if Israel could end the occupation: I started giving money to Peace Now over 10 years ago (and stopped during this intifada). But let's remember how we got here. Israel *tried* to end the occupation (Barak's Camp David offer in 2000), and the Palestinians started a war. Even if Barak's offer were somehow insufficient, the Palestinians committed themselves at Oslo to negotiate, not to make war. If Israel were to retreat now, it would embolden the Palestinians and bring the machinery of death closer to its population centers.

One can well ask whether Sharon's policy is working. It surely doesn't seem to be. But I think that Israel will ultimately have to re-occupy the entire West Bank and Gaza and uproot the Palestinian Authority. Eventually, an attempt to make peace can start over again.

By the way, I think the Israeli settlers are, by and large, jingoistic and racist. (Others, of course, just went for a good financial deal.) But why do the Palestinians have a human right to a land free of Jews? After all, there are over 1 million Arabs who are citizens of Israel. One can say that the Palestinians are entitled to be free of Jews who are Israeli citizens, but their contention seems to be that the West Bank and Gaza are "Moslem" land that cannot be defiled by Jews of any kind. (Shades of Saudi Arabia.) And the more frank among them include pre-1967 Israel as land that ought to be free of Jews.
Jerry

posted by Eric at 5:54 PM

 
Blood Simple
Dan at Happy Fun Pundit relates the news that it’s time for the annual Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation gopher-killing derby, which is a

way to control the cute - but destructive - varmints. Less gophers means less crop damage for the heavily agricultural province.

Naturally the animal-rights activists are up in arms:

"This could set a precedent for more redneck killing activities on the Canadian Prairies," said activist Sinikka Crosland

which is a damn fine name for an animal-rights activist.

This brings back fond memories for Dan.

Actually, as a kid I sometimes made extra pocket change by shooting gophers and turning in the tails for a nickel a piece. They are cute and all, but they play havoc with crops and machinery, and they are a menace to horses and cows, which can break their legs in gopher holes. They are like tiny rodent terrorists. And as I've always said, you're either with the gophers, or you're with us.

My preferred whacking stick was an old Winchester Model 1897 pump shotgun. The gophers, luckily, were unarmed, although I did chip a tooth once when I hit a gopher hole in the pickup truck and banged my head into the roof of the cab. As I landed back on my seat, I could swear I heard a chittering that sounded like, "Allah Akhbar" in gopherese.

Dan’s reverie jarred loose some repressed memories of my own. When I was a boy in SoCal, our baseball field was in fairly wild terrain adjacent to a cliff dropping precipitously down to the ocean. Foul balls to left field were a big problem for the league, and a bonanza for the daring youth who braved the cliffs to retrieve the horsehide booty.

Gophers were an even bigger problem, because it wasn’t “horses and cows” twisting their ankles tracking down fly balls in the outfield, it was us. When I was about 9, my coach and a couple of others rounded up the lads after practice, handed everyone a bat, put a hose down the mother of all gopher holes, and told us to get whacking. He told us to aim for the heads, and that if we hit them just right, the heads would come off, which would be cool AND do a public service, since who liked tripping over gopher holes? No one, that’s who. He also advised us not to tell our mothers, as their delicate sensibilities might be damaged.

Well, you have rarely seen such a display of prepubescent blood lust. There were gopher parts everywhere, heads flying like a driving range, blood dripping from our cudgels, our eyes widened with atavistic instinct. It must have looked quite a scene from a safe distance, a mob of pygmies crushing rodents with reckless abandon.

That’s what stopped it: wild swinging in close quarters took out first a knee, then an arm, then a solar plexus in rapid succession. Shrieks of pain and boyish tears snapped us out of our feeding frenzy and put a permanent end to this form of pest elimination. Returned to normal, we just stood there and stared at the carnage in disbelief, shaking a little as the steady sea breeze ruffled dead rodent hair. I had nightmares for years of giant, bucktoothed avengers chasing me over endless fields with gopher holes the size of bomb craters. Never did tell my mother.
posted by Eric at 1:38 PM

 
Amos vs. Norman
If we accept as fact that there are two wars being fought right now in the Middle East, then we have to accept the fact that one war, to quote Oz:

waged by fanatical Islam, from Iran to Gaza and from Lebanon to Ramallah, to destroy Israel and drive the Jews out of their land. Any decent person ought to abhor this cause

is identical to our war against the terrorist Islamist fanaticism of al Qaeda, while the other war:

the Palestinian nation's war for its freedom from occupation and for its right to independent statehood. Any decent person ought to support this cause

is not. We must disentangle them if we are to move forward.

That is why I cannot agree with Charles Johnson that this essay by Norman Podhoretz in the Jerusalem Post, though forcefully argued, is “great,” for it fails to recognize that the Palestinians have any valid grievances as opposed to al Qaeda, which truly doesn’t.

One can only hope and pray that Bush's recent confusions will turn out to be a temporary "bad patch" (as Robert L. Bartley of The Wall Street Journal has called it), and that he will set himself firmly back onto the course he so bravely took in the wake of September 11.

If he does, he will recognize that there is no moral difference between the terrorists operating out of the PA and the al-Qaida network.

He will recognize that to sponsor the establishment of a state run by the thugs and murderers of the PA would be tantamount to putting the Taliban back into power in Afghanistan.

He will recognize that the PA is another one of the regimes that will have to be toppled if the war against terrorism is to be won, and he will encourage Israel to do this job in our mutual interest.

He will recognize that only if a space is thereby cleared can decent alternatives to such regimes get a chance to emerge (including among the Palestinians, who might then indeed form a state that would be willing to coexist peacefully with Israel).

I return to Oz:

Israel must step down from the war on the Palestinian territories. It must begin to end occupation and evacuate the Jewish settlements that were deliberately thrust into the depths of Palestinian lands. Its borders must be drawn, unilaterally if need be, upon the logic of demography and the moral imperative to withdraw from governing a hostile population.

...If, despite simplistic visions, the end of occupation will not result in peace, at least we will have one war to fight rather than two. Not a war for our full occupancy of the holy land, but a war for our right to live in a free and sovereign Jewish state in part of that land. A just war, a no-alternative war. A war we will win. Like any people who were ever forced to fight for their very homes and freedom and lives.

Israel owes it to itself to try Oz’s path, for then, if the Palestinians fail to respond in kind, then all honest men will know that Israel is blameless for whatever consequences may occur in its subsequent just war for survival. No anti-Semitic Eurocrat or Islamic nabob will be able to utter a single disparaging word should Israel abandon the war against Palestinian statehood, yet still be forced to enjoin a war for its own survival: a war, which Oz notes, it will win. Should Israel disengage from the war against Palestinian autonomy, it will be up to the Palestinians to insist upon leadership that will not pursue a war against Israel’s existence. Should they fail to do so, they will then deserve everything they will inevitably receive.
posted by Eric at 11:49 AM

 
There Are Two Wars
This is what I was trying to say the other day to the wise Tony Adragna over at Quasipundit, who has been preaching the duality of the problem all along.

I have been trying hard to sort out my confusion regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians: each profoundly right, each profoundly wrong in their own ways. Lately I have been siding with Israel, horrified and disgusted with the cowardly (nothing more cowardly than suicide), purposeful (I was going to say “indiscriminate,” but it’s totally “discriminate”) murder of civilians. Yet Israel has certainly provoked the Palestinians: continuing to build settlements, lording their military (and otherwise, frankly) superiority over them, using indiscriminate force of their own.

Israeli novelist Amos Oz has clarified my position for me.

Two Palestinian-Israeli wars have erupted in this region. One is the Palestinian nation's war for its freedom from occupation and for its right to independent statehood. Any decent person ought to support this cause. The second war is waged by fanatical Islam, from Iran to Gaza and from Lebanon to Ramallah, to destroy Israel and drive the Jews out of their land. Any decent person ought to abhor this cause.

I am, and I am.

Yasir Arafat and his men are running both wars simultaneously, pretending they are one. The suicide killers evidently make no distinction. Much of the worldwide bafflement about the Middle East, much of the confusion among the Israelis themselves, stems from the overlap between these two wars. Decent peace seekers, in Israel and elsewhere, are often drawn into simplistic positions. They either defend Israel's continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by claiming that Israel has been targeted by Muslim holy war ever since its foundation in 1948, or else they vilify Israel on the grounds that nothing but the occupation prevents a just and lasting peace. One simplistic argument allows Palestinians to kill all Israelis on the basis of their natural right to resist occupation. An equally simplistic counterargument allows Israelis to oppress all Palestinians because an all-out Islamic jihad has been launched against them.

The cement-brained pigheadedness of each must end. “Pride” and intransigence are synonymous here. Each must relent, some. If not, it is up to the Israelis to make their own move.

Israel must step down from the war on the Palestinian territories. It must begin to end occupation and evacuate the Jewish settlements that were deliberately thrust into the depths of Palestinian lands. Its borders must be drawn, unilaterally if need be, upon the logic of demography and the moral imperative to withdraw from governing a hostile population.

...If, despite simplistic visions, the end of occupation will not result in peace, at least we will have one war to fight rather than two. Not a war for our full occupancy of the holy land, but a war for our right to live in a free and sovereign Jewish state in part of that land. A just war, a no-alternative war. A war we will win. Like any people who were ever forced to fight for their very homes and freedom and lives.

Couldn’t have put it better myself. I am usually leery of listening to novelists regarding political matters. Consider Barbara Kingsolver, Susan Sontag, Arundhati Roy: brilliant weavers of words all, blithering idiots when it comes to politics and public affairs. But Oz has both clarified the nature of the conflict, and proposed a course of action, all in an economical five paragraphs. This is what I was trying to say, Tony.
posted by Eric at 10:35 AM

 
What Is My Problem? Pt ll
There is no “happily ever after,” or “sadly ever after” for that matter. We can’t live in the future perfect tense. There is no future point in time by when a state of “happiness” will have arrived, unless you’re dead, at which time the point is moot. “Ever after” still comes day by day, as it always has, and you either live a given day “happily” or you don’t.

After my psyche disgorged itself last night, revealing the source of my growing agitation and unease to be the impending departure of my oldest daughter - the loss of a sweet limb - I felt a lot better.

Writing it down turned my - apparently seriously repressed - feelings into things, which made them possible to address. It is much easier to come to terms with an object than its shadow. The sludge from the bottom of the swamp that the dredge hauls up dripping and oozing at least has substance: you can dry it out, look at it through a microscope, kick it, throw it at someone (which I kind of did by writing it down and publishing it), or flush it down the toilet, but at least it’s there.

After reading it over and shedding a final tear - God, I hate that - a wave of fatigue capsized my mental tugboat and I called it a day. Just to make sure, I prepared my usual cocktail of bedtime soporifics:
two chlorpheniramine maleate antihistamine tablets,
four valerian capsules,
a pair of tasty little Skelaxin muscle relaxers,
a couple of generic Walmart acetaminophens,
four melatonin pills (can’t believe I left those off the list last night, been taking them the last few months),
AND, just to make really sure, a lone diphenhydramine HCL tablet.

And I slept like a baby, or at least a sedated baby, since we all know that regular babies wake up at the drop of a hair.

I’m just sleeping away, luxuriating in the absence of thought, riding comfortably in the saddle of slumber minus the bur of agitation, when something grabs me by the neck and drags me to the surface like a soul yanked back from the white light at the end of the tunnel. A rhythmic, unmistakable THUMP, THUMP THUMP that you couldn’t really hear so much as feel in your chest and skull made its presence felt. It flew in under the white noise defense system of the blessed rush of air through the room fan, particles of water through the humidifier, the higher-pitched hum of the air filter, all harmoniously blended to defend against sonic intrusion from the cold, startling outside world.

5:51 in the freaking morning. The thumps felt like a bass drum from five blocks away, percussing through the walls, deep and wide and unavoidable. At least unavoidable to me: neither my wife nor the baby stirred. I wanted to KILL that sound. I buried my head in pillows, I still FELT the vibrations THUMP THUMP THUMPING me wider and wider awake until I knew I was going to have to get up, the sweet drowsiness banished, vanished. I weaved about the house, straining to hear the thumps - nothing. I even went outside into the hint of snow dancing in the dark - nothing.

I never figured it out. Was it from within the room itself? Another universe? My imagination? Am I INSANE?

Regardless, once I got up I was fine: no bags under my eyes, no particular fatigue, even a little spring in my step. And then I wrote this. Life can be really weird.
posted by Eric at 9:44 AM

 
What Is My Problem?
Let’s start with the fact that I haven’t been getting enough sleep - we’ve had a huge upsurge in traffic this week because we have been linked by the cool and famous (thanks very much, you know who you are) so I have been scrambling to keep the “content” flowing. Weird how quickly things change: my new friend Mike over at Cursor mentioned something about “feeding the beast.”

But regardless of the philosophical aspects of balancing art and site meters, I have been very excited and agitated at the same time: overflowing with ideas, popping up in the bed at 4am and scribbling down an idea in the dark, hoping my muscle memory is good enough to make the cuneiforms legible in the morning.

I’ve been loading myself up with every nontoxic sleep-inducing agent I can think of:

my usual pair of chlorpheniramine maleate antihistamine tablets (we just call them “yellow pills” around the house, I’ve got everyone over the age of 2 on a daily regimen),

my four valerian capsules,

for the last month I’ve been able to add a pair of Skelaxin muscle relaxers to the mix,

and a couple of generic Walmart acetaminophens just to make sure the upper abs don’t seize up on me in the night. I mostly don’t drink anymore, but two nights a week I add a lone beer to the mix - those are always the nights I sleep best, but I can’t get back into that habit if you know what I mean.

Enough to sedate a freaking moose and I’m still popping up like a toaster on a timer several times a night, agitating my wife and frightening the baby, whose bed is still in our room (that’s another matter entirely). This nocturnal agitation has been building over the last several months, but has really picked up steam in the last week or so since the blog has hit the blogosphere and you kind people have been stopping by in, if not droves, then at least herds invisibly galloping across the pixels.

So I have been tired and a little on edge, my neck and upper back tightening up as I robotically click from site to site, checking up on news, seeing who has linked us now. I can always tell when a link comes in because the site meter, which I obsessively check every 30 minutes or so when I’m on the computer unless I’m actually writing or something, starts rumbling and the key indicator “last hour” figure starts palpitating and shoots from 13 to 36 to 49 to 157 to - can it be true? - 350-something an hour when we had InstaPundit, Ken Layne, Matt Welch, and Best of the Web Today all rocking at the same time on Monday. And the adrenaline begins to flow, and you want to keep the numbers going: higher, higher, more, more, faster, faster, and I feel like Lou Reed in "Heroin" if you substitute “link” for “spike”:

But I'm gonna try for the kingdom, if I can
'cause it makes me feel like I'm a man
When I put a spike into my vein
And I tell you things aren't quite the same
When I'm rushing on my run
And I feel just like Jesus' son
And I guess that I just don't know
And I guess that I just don't know

I guess some of that carries over into bedtime, especially when I work, to say, 11:45pm like I did last night and try to get to sleep by 12:30 because I have to get up again by 7, and when I do I look in the mirror and see this baggy-eyed MIDDLE-AGED man. There I said it: I’ve never admitted that I am middle-aged before, even to my wife who is 32. I’ve just kept pushing the boundaries of “young man” ever further until now all of a sudden I’m 43 and look like hell in the morning when I haven’t slept very well, which has been most of the time, unless I had a beer the night before.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I’ve been so worked up in general because it predates the blog, which we didn’t start until February, but other than the usual stuff which has never bothered me before - we need more money, I’m not always sure I’m making the right career decisions (am I being selfish to keep doing what I want to do when I could make a lot more money doing something else??), a fight with the wife or kids, you know, the usual - I haven’t been able to think of anything unusual.

So, I’m driving back to the office after taping the radio show today, feeling a little tired and spacey, but fine, and I’m listening to the CD recording of the show, which always gives me a great sense of satisfaction, and I’m on the Ohio Turnpike for one quick little jaunt between exits, ALL OF A NOFUCKINGWAYCANTHISBEHAPPENING SUDDEN, I am just bawling my eyes out.

I can barely see the road. I look in the rearview mirror of the truck and I look like some glow-in-the-dark red-eyed horror creature. I can’t stop crying. This is so bizarre and painful and it hurts my upper abs which are supposed to be healed but clearly aren’t completely. And then, while I’m weeping like a little girl and trying to stay on the road at 70mph, it falls on me like a house: I’m going to miss my little girl!

My daughter, who is almost 18 and a senior in high school, is going to graduate in two months and she’s always been there, or just barely out of reach, since I was 25 years old and a stupid drunken idiot. And now she is going away, really going away, and it will never be the same again. No matter what. She will go away to Americorps and wipe homeless people’s butts for a year (and I will barely see her), then go to college for at least four years (and it won’t be just down the street, I can assure you) - then even if she moves back home and lives under my bed, it will never be the same again because she will be all grown up and never be my sweet-smiled little cherub ever again. It just breaks my heart RIGHT NOW.

I don’t want to hold her back: she’s beautiful and talented and intelligent, and mature in many ways without being precocious, and she’s ready to take on the world as a free agent, as her own person. I wouldn’t want her sulking around anyway: she’s stubborn as hell and wouldn’t stand for being constrained. It isn’t that. It’s just that I’ll miss her and won’t be able to see her when I want to, and I love her so much...............

I’m okay now. I’ll adjust, and I’ve still got the almost-15 year old around for a while longer, and I’ve got the 2 year old around FOR A GOOD LONG TIME. But that doesn’t mean I’ll miss my first baby any less.
posted by Eric at 9:38 PM

 
Limbo Rock
For the very daring with nautical inclinations, there is a high stakes new game called "tugboat limbo." You need a river, a bridge, and a tugboat. I tried it in the bathtub, but it wasn’t nearly as dramatic. Give the pictures time to load - it’s worth it.
posted by Eric at 7:34 PM

 
THE...TRUTH...REVEALED
It’s a whole new world now on the site with people coming and going all the livelong day, so I can’t just disappear for several hours like I used to on Thursdays without explanation. Some of the following ran a while ago but hardly anyone saw it. See you (so to speak) in a few hours.

Although Cool Tunes airs Saturday nights, it is - NO, I CAN’T TAKE THE TRUTH - in fact recorded late Thursday afternoons. That’s radio in the 21 century. Much of what you think is live, is, in reality, recorded.

Since I only do a show once a week, the main reason mine is recorded is that no one wants to hang around the station on a Saturday night. If I had a choice - which I don’t - I would come in and do it live because I really miss interacting with the audience. I used to love taking calls from listeners who wanted to make requests or just blab. In fact, that’s how I met my wife.

Although for people like me who do a show once a week, the main reason for recording is convenience, the reason full-time people record is purely economic: it’s much cheaper to pay someone to tape a week’s worth of shows in 4 or 5 hours, than to pay them to come in every day. How is it possible to record, say, 20 hours worth of radio in, say, 4 hours? By cutting out all the music time and just recording the spoken breaks. What made this possible? Computers.

Most radio stations are now run by computers. Software like this one for noncommercial radio, or this, or this, allows you to treat individual units of programming - songs, announcements, promos, news and weather, satellite links - like computer files, which the software allows you to organize in advance. All you have to do is record the individual files into the computer (you only have to input reusables, like songs, once), tell the computer what order you want them to be played in, and let her rip.

We used to put on really long songs, like “Maggot Brain” or something, to get a break and go to the bathroom or jog around the building, or whatever. I remember hearing Larry King tell a story about his early radio days, when he put on an album side (about 20 minutes) in order to visit a nearby female listener. One thing led to another and he didn’t make it back in time. Listeners were treated to the hypnotic sounds of the needle bouncing against the record label - “thunk-thunk, thunk-thunk, thunk-thunk” - for something like a half hour before he made it back to the station, sweaty and disheveled.

Well now you can take a week and visit a battalion of your female listeners before you have to go back to the station, except that now there is no way for you to meet your female - or any other kind - listeners because you’re not really there when they call.
posted by Eric at 2:29 PM

 
The Opposite of Callous
The response to Marty's struggle with Heineken has been both deeply heartening and extremely helpful. This post by esteemed InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds last week has already directly led to key legal advice and national awareness of this affront to common decency. The muckraking Hollywood Investigator also stiffened with indignation and printed the saga.

Now, the fight has been eagerly joined by two more crusaders for justice. The erudite and polymath Craig Jensen of BookNotes has not only published the details of Marty’s plight, but has issued a ringing call FOR A BOYCOTT OF HEINEKEN until the situation is rectified. This man does not mess around and we are grateful for it.

Equally impressive is superior meta-news site Cursor's commitment. They have taken up the cause in the form of a graphic display of Heineken’s “Bully Brand” beer, and a link to the sad tale. Their response, and those of dozens of others from whom we have heard, is the opposite of callous and reminds us that people do still care about the problems of others. We are fortified and cheered. Thank you very much - we will fight on. Help us spread the word.
posted by Eric at 10:12 AM

 
Great Foodie Moments in History

My wife went to the grocery store this afternoon (Kriegers, a small local market with great produce) and picked up some Fiddlehead Ferns for dinner. You know it's going to be interesting when even the produce staff asked her what she was going to do with these.

Thanks to Jim Peterson's great "Vegetable" book, we at least had a plan. We first rinsed them off thoroughly as they have some fern-y bits that needed to be cleaned off -- and then trimmed the brown ends of stems slightly. The ferns were then sauteed in a little olive oil with garlic and parsley. They had an asparagus-like texture with a slight bitter component that matched well along with our Capellini Pomodoro and Sauteed Baby Artichokes with Portobello Mushrooms

We live for these moments of mystery produce, whether it's "Hand of Buddha" (gnarled finger-like citrus fruit from Asia), Chamoy (tropical pulpy fruit that has mango like perfume) and the ever curious Durian (horrible baby diaper smell when cut, but wonderful tasting lobes of fruit inside)


posted by tofu at 1:42 AM

 
Duck Chuck!

Indians left hander Chuck Finley was charged with the loss as he was tagged for a couple of hits and a spiked shoe through the foot, courtesy of wife Tawny Kitaen, who hasn't shown this much limberness since starring in those Whitesnake videos with ex-husband David "I really do sound like Robert Plant, don't I?" Coverversion, er Coverdale.


posted by tofu at 1:40 AM

 
Tour O the Blogs - James Lileks
This is a fortuitous, even apposite time for the Tour O the Blogs to wend its way past James Lileks' virtual street. Perhaps the finest pure writer of the prominent bloggers, an essayist in the orotund tradition of E.B. White, James Thurber, James Baldwin, and Tom Wolfe, Lileks’ productions are so finely hewn that two have been recently tapped for inclusion amongst the august annals of Arts and Letters Daily.

Besides simply blogging like a MoFo on a daily basis, Lileks was at the very center of the Great Alex Beam Blog Column maelstrom, and emerged on the other end, smiling, even beaming. Lileks foreshadowed the coming tempest late Monday night/Tuesday morning as thunder grumbled ominously in the gunmetal sky.

I don’t know if there are any aspiring journalists in the audience; if so, two words of advice....[we skip #1 and the beginning of #2]...when contacting someone to get info for a column, use the power of persuasion. Do not write an email like this, which came yesterday from Alex Beam of the Boston Globe:

James, weren't you once a talented humor writer? Why are you churning out this web dreck? I can't tell if these bleats about Rod Serling or the Palestinians are diluting your humor work, because I can't claim to know it well enough, but I certainly have my suspicions.

Feel free to respond: I am writing a column (deadline: Monday 11 am) on bloggers who might benefit from a less arduous writing schedule. Alex Beam, Boston Globe
The piece might appear today, Tuesday. I’ll be curious to see if I’m in it. If I am, I’ll reprint the letter I sent him, and you can compare the two.

....For a print columnist who writes, oh, say, twice a week to sniff at those who pump out ten tons of spirited commentary for free reminds me of some baggy-pants third-rate vaudevillian rolling his eyes at the people streaming into a nickelodeon. Oh, sure, they have moving pictures of a train robbery, but nothing beats a pie in the face.

....In any case, the number of “amateurs” who warrant repeat business is amazing. Just found, via InstantMan, an Israeli blog. It’s on my list of daily visits. Took one click to put him in the bookmarks. For a newspaper to do this, several things would have to happen:

* The space would have to come out of the limited news hole for international news, because unlike the web, print space is finite.
* If the feature ran five times a week, it would have to go on the same page - which would draw instant complaints from the layout folk, who are constantly dealing with the shifting array of ads that redefine each page on a daily basis.
* Someone in graphics would have to put together a small logo, and the feature would have to be shortened to permit an editor’s note that explained what this feature was; that note would run every day for a month, perhaps permanently.
* A Palestinian blog would have to run on the same day, or every other day.

Lileks continues for some time about newspapers, including his own, the Minneapolis-St. Paul Tribune, then nails the axiom that will survive the brouhaha:

The newspaper is a lecture. The web is a conversation.

Beam's column appeared the next day, under the adumbrating title “In the World of Web Logs, Talk Is Cheap,” and Lileks was certainly in it (though Andrew Sullivan got slagged first):

Welcome to Blogistan, the Internet-based journalistic medium where no thought goes unpublished, no long-out-of-print book goes unhawked, and no fellow ''blogger,'' no matter how outre, goes unpraised.

Crosscutting in fast paced cinematic style, we skip to today’s Bleat (the blog section of Lileks’ site) for Lileks’ reply to the Beam pre-column inquiry before we see what Beam made of it in his infamous column:

Oh, no. You're not going to write one of those clueless old-media "blogging phenomenon" stories, are you?

My Bleats are just end-of-the-day remarks. That's all. It's a more conversational format than newspapers provide. People visit the site, explore the various pop-culture & urban archeology sites I've put up on the web. Sometimes they buy my book, which is tasty gravy. They write letters about my dog photos. They tell me about a date they had in a cafe located in one of the buildings in my New York postcard section. And so on. It's all very neighborly and informal, and there's a connection with the readership I've never found in daily journalism.

As for the dilution of my "talent" - I write a thrice-weekly humor column for the StarTrib, and a weekly nationally syndicated political humor column for Newhouse. The website also has some purportedly humorous aspects outside of the bleat - there's "The Screed," a dissection of other notable opinions; it gets about 100,00 hits per installment. There's "The Institute of Official Cheer," a humorous site that spawned a book: "The Gallery of Regrettable Food," published last year by Random/Crown (now it its fourth printing, huzzah). Crown will also publish in '03 another book based on the site called "Interior Desecrators." And that's just 1/8th of the entire site.

None of this is any mystery to anyone who's visited the site and looked around.

You did visit more than six or seven pages, didn't you?

I don't have an "arduous" writing schedule; I just write what I want when I want, which is the great joy of the web - a bottomless news hole and an audience that can weave a bond with an author through the accumulation of daily details, odd tangents, personal gripes. (Granted, I'm not writing about deathless issues such as the movie rights for the story of a Providence mayor, but now and then a few notes on the war just slip in for the few dozen readers interested in the subject.) [Note: this was a reference to one of Beam’s column.]

Sometimes the bleat is meant to amuse. Sometimes not. The standards are low and loose, which just makes for a different tone. (I would not, for example, expect paying customers to cough up two bits for my meandering thoughts on the Twilight Zone, anymore than I would expect my newspaper column readers to pay for a column that *began* with two grafs of quotes * someone else* wrote about David Letterman.) [Another reference to a column of Beam’s.] If you're going to judge the entire project on a few days' entries, well, go ahead, I guess, but you're a little late to the party.

That's the kind answer. The short answer, based on your first two sentences, is an Elvis Costello quote: I wish you luck with a capital F. Perhaps I misread your tone; maybe it's that famous Boston charm. But when you contact me re: writers who should write less, I can only assume the worst. I realize that the tendentious & humorless tone of this letter proves your "web dreck" and "diluted humor talent" angle, but something tells me I'd be ill-served if I cracked wise, too.

If you were just being breezy, well, no offense taken, but I'd work on the query-letter tone. You really can get more flies with honey than a thumb in the eye.
Regards, Lileks

Yo mama, too, in triplicate. Conveniently enough for this reviewer, Lileks also described his own site rather well in his reply to the benighted Beam. What did Beam use of this forceful reply?

At his site called the Daily Bleat (www.lileks.com), humor writer James Lileks spews forth about his lovely child, the leaking fridge, and late-night television (Rod Serling is ''overrated''), and even began a recent meditation on events in the Mideast with the words ''I don't know what to say today. I really don't.'' My point precisely.

Bestirred by my uncharitable inquiry, Lileks demonstrates that he does have something to say. ''Oh, no. You're not going to write one of those clueless old-media `blogging phenomenon' stories, are you? My Bleats are just end-of-the-day remarks. That's all. Granted, I'm not writing about deathless issues such as the movie rights for the story of a Providence mayor'' - ouch! - ''but now and then a few notes on the war just slip in for the few dozen readers interested in the subject.'' Lileks also writes for the soon-to-be-extinct newspaper medium and signs off on his message with this comradely quote from Elvis Costello: ''I wish you luck with a capital F.'' Double ouch!

Arch, dismissive with the use of colloquialisms (“ouch!” “double ouch!”), deceptive quotation. Of course, the punch line to this massive joke is that Beam, in his desire to disabuse bloggers of the notion that anyone other than they themselves gives a flying “luck with a capital F” about what they have to say, forgot to look at the calendar, which read April 1 on deadline morning. And, being that he was unfamiliar with the personalities of his swarming ant targets, he swallowed this one hook, line, sinker, rod, reel, and fishing boat:

Over the weekend, for instance, Postrel posted a link to Norwegian revolutionary (!) Bjorn Staerk's bizarre recommitment to left-wing raving: ''This new blog is dedicated to the coming revolution, and the age of peace and equality it heralds.'' (More Staerk: ''Noam Chomsky is a brave man, and how he escapes imprisonment in that horrible police state he lives in is beyond me.'') It goes without saying that Staerk includes a link to Postrel's site, www.dynamist.com/htmldocs, in blogland's infinite echo chamber of self-regard.

Anyone who has read Bjorn more than twice knows that he is the most rock-ribbed Middle American of Norwegians, and his flipping to the side of Eugene Debbs, on April 1(!), was as likely as Norman Rockwell getting in the pants of Ethel Rosenberg.

Needless to say, Beam went down in blogland - hard. Having won, Dorothy having kicked this twister’s ass, Lileks waxed sanguine:

”In any case, I thank everyone who wrote notes of support, or cc’d a letter they sent to the paper, and I continue to thank everyone who visit this page expecting no more than the patented parade of mundanities, domestic homilies, and spurts of hot foaming bile. I’m having fun; it sounds like you’re having fun. Whatever compelled this fellow to stomp up and down the block kicking over lemonade stands is anyone’s guess. But we’re all the better for it!

Beam, whose monumental gaffe juxtapositioned investigative shallowness (a light weekend of reading, a few emails to key players) with naiveté AND hubris, may go down in history chained to the victims of Piltdown Man, and may never show his byline again. Lileks - not killed thus made stronger by the ordeal - with his tremendously attractive site redesign, and books, columns and Bleats to flog, will write on from atop blog mountain, breathing the sweet air of vindication.
posted by Eric at 11:06 PM

 
Just Girls
I was just watching the retooled Sesame Street with the sprout - she’s in it for the Elmo. Amidst the usual semi-subtle PC of “let’s celebrate our differences and make friends with other species,” the array of multi-culti kids representing every possible race, creed, color, ethnicity, disability, and degenerative condition, a rare moment of undirected humanity magically escaped the editors.

A lovely little girl of 4 or 5 was demonstrating how to use the computer to make a birthday card for her daddy, and was choosing from the prepared software figures of doggies, kitties, rainbows, ribbons, butterflies and the like to adorn her card. Then she selected a girl from among the figures: a girl with long bright-yellow hair, to represent herself, because they were both girls, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And it was, even though the little girl was black. Maybe there is hope for a race-neutral world, or at least America.
posted by Eric at 8:06 PM

 
Koleen Gets Kanned
Across the land, breath was held in anticipation of the recall vote against Georgetown, Colorado mayor Koleen Brooks, a former stripper.

Zoning changes are the stated reason for the recall but people are also angry about Brooks' actions -- allegedly baring her breasts in a bar and telling reporters she smoked pot. She also faces criminal charges for allegedly making up a story about being assaulted and has been investigated for ordering a hit on a police officer. No charges were filed.

I don’t know about the rack flash and the blunts, but unauthorized reduction of the the constabulary is not something most citizens will stand for.

Brooks was handily recalled yesterday and vowed a comeback. It was unclear if she meant to return to politics, stripping, bonging, or law enforcement reduction. (Thanks to brother Arne for this one, who also mentions that this was the plot of a Barbara Eden movie in the '80s - again, life imitates art.)
posted by Eric at 4:59 PM

 
Schitt Genealogy
Ever since the Mormons opened Ancestry.com, people have been flocking to the site to look for kings and pirates in their ancestry from among the 1 billion names registered. Until now, though, one family has been neglected. It is time for the Schitts to shine.
posted by Eric at 4:54 PM

 
Response to “Enemy”
Dawn writes in response to Enemy of My Enemy's Enemy:

I certainly agree that the Israeli's fight against terrorist activity is justified but it is important to note that there is a significant difference between the Palestinian's motives for "terrorism" and the faceless, nameless and countryless terrorists that attacked the US on September 11. Palestine is using whatever means are at their disposal, unfortunately that is despondent, angry, suicide bombers, despicable but almost justifiable against an organized well equipped technically superior army. Palestinians are also fighting for something very specific: freedom from Israeli occupation and oppression.

Your arguments, though valid, are undeniably one-sided. There are some very distinct differences between defending oneself against a known and identified enemy and striking at a non-military, unsuspecting target with absolutely no declaration of war. There is not one citizen of Israel who is unaware of the dangers they face or who their enemy is and most importantly, why their enemy hates them. Wrong or right, there is a BIG difference.

posted by Eric at 4:52 PM

 
America.com
When we aren’t blogging - okay, even when we are blogging - Marty and I are working on a book called America.com: On September 11, which uses computer communication like chats, emails, web sites, blogs, etc., as a prism through which to view the events of 9/11 and its aftermath. Marty collects and edits the chats, then I blah blah blah about them. By way of example, here is a chat from February 21. It’s kind of like group blogging, except chatters tend to be less reasonable, more dogmatic, and don’t spell as well (this is edited). It’s one version of America, though.

Tiger: Bush has made this country stronger and safer since 9/11.

Lonny: Get real. We are in no way "safer" than pre-9/11, just a lot more under the gun ... and more of our freedoms have vanished along the way.

THEFAB5: GOP ... Gestapo On Parade.

Tiger: Bush has taken out the Taliban and the terrorists in Afghanistan and is now breathing down the necks of every country that is trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction to be used against us. Americans are too comfortable and can't see the danger this country faces.

Lonny: Other than the Taliban, most of that is rhetoric ... and I don't agree with most of his foreign agenda.

Ziegheil: Bush hasn't received a penny from Congress to help the economy. The only money Congress paid out was to bail out the airlines. The Congressional allocations bailed out the airlines and increased security. Oh, yes, and a package for the victims of 9/11. Not a small thing.

Tiger: Bush has restored this country's testicular fortitude not seen since World War II.

Moldy: Haven't heard Dubya use the term "Axis of Evil" on this trip. Hmm ...wonder why?

THEFAB5: Billion dollar airline bailouts are great but extended unemployment benefits and health care is stinkin' socialism.

Moldy: There's lots of room for hope for the USA. Daddy Bush had 90% approval after Desert Storm and lost to Clinton a year later.

THEFAB5: I have the cure for conservatism -- college.

Ziegheil: Sure, with 97% liberal professors ...

THEFAB5: GOP is anti - education and need an ignorant population to thrive.

Seven: Liberals are thinking, educated, articulate and passionate. The exact opposite of asshole Goph'ers.

Moldy: After 8 years of right wing Clinton bashing wingers should be able to handle a tad of Bush bashing. Quit whining.

Sincere: "Liberals are smart" is Democratic propaganda.

REMGUY: CLINTON RAN FROM SOMALIANS IN PICK UP TRUCKS.

Tiger: I am not a right winger, or left winger. I see things with an open mind. The terrorists are learning a bitter lesson: Bush ain't Clinton ... thank God!

GEORGE: GOP anti education? The Democrats forever have been keeping students in bad schools.

Moldy: For what it's worth -- maybe nothing -- most people with Doctorates are Democrats.

MASSDSTRCTN: LIBERALISM IS NOTHING MORE THAN REGURGITATED SOCIALISM.

Lonny: Liberalism is basically evil.

Board: Conservatism is nothing but yearning for the past with a generous mixture of class warfare.

CANCER: The Democrats rely upon social programs to enslave the poor and banish them into ghettos.

REMGUY: Conservatism is capitalism ... and that's who we are. Liberalism means let's tax people who work hard and give it to lazy asses.

Tiger: I didn't vote for Bush but at least I have enough respect for the government to accept him as my leader.

Moldy: Under Clinton welfare rolls cut in half -- unemployment lowest in 40 years. Under Dubya unemployment is increasing. Seems GOPH'ers put people on the dole.

MaoPoon: There is some merit to the argument that those in academia are idealists. No doubt, but idealists and realists need one another.

GEORGE: Goph'ers have strong backs and weak minds.

REMGUY: Democrats have weak backs and weak minds.

Creature: Strong backs carry a nation.

Moldy: Let's not be unfair to Bush. For starters, he increased the tax on the rich, cut rate of gov't growth, hired Rubin and rehired Greenspan.

REMGUY: Al Gore tried to join al-Qaeda, but bin Laden told him his beard sucked.

GEORGE: If under Clinton we had such a great economy, how come we're now just getting over a Clinton recession?

Board: Almost 1 million jobs in the textile industry have left the country in the last 5 years. Thanks NAFTA.

Moldy: Clinton was ONLY president in US history to have economic growth ALL 8 YEARS.

Flakx: Look at the economic indicators under Clinton.

REMGUY: Look up the word "lie" in the dictionary.

Board: Bush is re-inventing the term "waffle."

Sirgio: Spending $100,000+ for your kid's education no longer guarantees a good job for them. $100,000+ to wait on tables?

Tiger: I'm glad Bush is acting so down to earth and actually preserving and protecting the constitution.

Board: Constitution?? Like separation of church and state? Vouchers are a scam, too.

REMGUY: Anyone who makes fun, or criticizes our president, should be suspected of supporting terrorism. America .. love it, or leave it! Go to Cuba, go to Afghanistan, go to Iraq, go to Iran, go to Somalia. Just go.

TheNuns: Things really TANKED when Bush came into office. Using Clinton as a scapegoat doesn't fly with me.

Moldy: Under Clinton the Federal payroll was cut by 300,000 -- about 250,000 military. Smallest gov't since JFK.

Ziegheil: Yeah, and now we have insufficient forces to deal with any world crisis.

GEORGE: Tank with Bush? I've been watching the market and it looks like the Clinton recession is over.

Sirgio: Bush & the GOP trying to convince the middle class that making the rich richer is good for the economy is a joke.

Moldy: Dubya is doing pretty well with the military that Clinton supposedly ruined.

MASSDSTRCTN: DEMS TRY TO CONVINCE THE MIDDLE CLASS THAT INCREASING TAXES HELPS THEM.

Sirgio: There's a good possibility that Bush will be removed from office for his role in the Enron debacle.

Sincere: Dems don't like helping corporations create jobs because a non-working citizen tends to vote Democratic.

Moldy: With Clinton's tax increase, primarily on the rich and without a single GOP vote, we did have the greatest economic boom in history.

MASSDSTRCTN: I STILL WANT TO KNOW HOW INCREASING TAXES (ON ANYBODY) HELPS THE ENTIRE ECONOMY.

Moldy: Blame Dubya for the recession. Since 1948, 2 Dem recessions, 8 GOP recessions. Dubya is following normal GOP economics.

Tiger: You people insist on talking about Enron, the economy, past presidential administration and anything to distract you from the truth of today's new war.

Moldy: Dubya says it is a "war", which apparently makes it a war in your view -- like the war on drugs, the war on poverty, etc.

REMGUY: Go save a whale, or something, you pot smoking hippie leftover crap. And, furthermore, the Grateful Dead sucked.

posted by Eric at 4:06 PM

 
Enemy of My Enemy's Enemy
Tony Adragna made some excellent points yesterday regarding the differences between our fight against al Qaeda and Islamist terrorists, and Israel’s against Palestinian terrorists.

While there are parallels between the Israel – Palestine conflict and the “War on Terrorism” – the most important being that our foes are terrorists – there are some very important distinctions being conveniently overlooked in the rush to subsume the former into the latter. That Palestinian terrorists are state supported – support coming from the Palestinian Authority and foreign powers – is undeniable. On that fact alone Israel’s action against not just terrorists, but against the PA as well, is perfectly justified. However, unlike our action in Afghanistan, the purpose of which was to bring down a “state” so that we could go after the terrorists it supported, Israeli action in the West Bank doesn’t have such a limited goal.

Many U.S. writers, and certainly the Israelis, have been making the point that “this is the same fight.”

While Adragna makes plenty of sense, I interpret the common “same fight” argument to mean that the Israelis are fighting the same anti-democratic, autocratic, romantically suicidal, eliminationist elements within the Muslim world as we are. Add to that the fact that

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that Iran, Iraq and Syria are "inspiring and financing a culture of political murder and suicide bombing"

then we really do have the same enemies.
posted by Eric at 2:22 PM

 
“Mohammed’s Parents Were Not Muslims” - “You’re Under Arrest”
I have been remiss in not noting the brave and perspicacious Adil Farooq, aka Muslimpundit: exactly the thoughtful, balanced, independent-thinking practicing Muslim for whom everyone has been clamoring. Check out his latest on this retardation from our Pakistani friends:

Dr. Younis Sheikh, a medical lecturer, has been waiting in a Pakistani prison for two years for a death sentence against him to be carried out. For what?

Apparently, he stated in front of his class that the parents of the Prophet could not have been Muslim since they died before Islam was revealed.

The blasphemy squad has been at it again. Adil gives them whatfor.
posted by Eric at 2:00 PM

 
Curiouser, Pt. Whatever
We are getting some very interesting responses to the Zubaydah/Cole media mystery. Nell writes back:

I'm not usually much of a conspiracy theorist myself, and really the idea in yesterday's e-mail was very off the top of my head. But U.S. govt officials have been known to ask major media to ”delay” publication of information because of operations or negotiations in process. [Whether this amounts to suppression depends on lots of things: the length of the delay, one's point of view on government-media cooperation, the urgency and thoroughness with which the gov't request is made, etc. The AP reporter and his/her editor may have decided in this case not to honor the request.]

New off the top of my head theory: Information has been passed to NY Times and WaPo reporters that casts doubt on the original connection-to-Cole story, so they're refraining from making that connection in the recent coverage until the issue gets sorted....

Good point.

The clandestine Media Minder checks in:

I can't speak as to whether the government gets the media to suppress information. If those decisions are made, they are made at a pay scale far, far above mine. However, I wouldn't doubt it, especially in situations of national security.

MM remains anonymous because he is an actual MEDIA FIGURE.

Carey writes:

In WWII, the government made numerous requests to the media to hold stories. And got a lot of cooperation. No bets on whether the same is happening today or whether the cooperation would be similar.

What say you???
posted by Eric at 1:38 PM

 
Drop the Chalupa, Ma'am
Maternal instincts ever sharp, eagle-eye ever vigilant, Dawn spotted this report. I think the "mother" in question is making a mistake, though: puppies are more effort than babies - at least babies wear diapers. Though outraged, Dawn does note the possibilities of trading up:

What the hell kind of screwy people live in this world? Maybe we could trade Bush for Tony Blair. Better yet, let's trade Canada for Austraila - they are much cooler!

posted by Eric at 1:15 PM

 
Report From the Front Row
My brother Arne, who lives in SoCal, directly reports the grim tidings that the Indians fumbled away their game last night to the Angels 7-5 on a dropped pop up by Robbie Alomar-replacement Ricky Gutierrez. Robbie probably wouldn’t have blown the catch, nor would have my youngest daughter, who is 2.

Arne has received many years of seat-improvement training (as have we all) from our father, a kindly retired corporate executive who once took the front row seat of a blind man at an Indians game after telling the man he was in the wrong stadium. So Arne ended up in the front row last night at Edison Field just behind the Indians dugout, and right in front of C.C. Sabathia’s mother, from whom, he reports, C.C. got his size. He reports she is also blessed with clangorous and profuse verbal skills.

From his presidential vantage point, Arne also reports that Omar Vizquel and Travis Fryman show their years manifestly, and that Russell Branyan is a swell guy, responding with thanks and a smile when Arne congratulated him on his 9th inning home run. Ah well, there goes the undefeated season.
posted by Eric at 12:41 PM

 
Curiouser Update
Drudge finally links for the first time to a NY Post story about the capture of Zubaydah:

Zubaydah, 30, whose real name is Zain al-Abidin Mohammed Husain, was the critical link between bin Laden and his sleeper cells around the globe.

He frequently traveled outside Afghanistan disguised as a honey salesman, putting bin Laden's diabolical plots into motion.

He played key roles in the Sept. 11 attacks, the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, and the aborted millennium plot against Los Angeles Airport and tourist cites in Jordan.

Ah, so the Cole reappears. This would seem to rule out some kind of government pressure to play down that aspect of the story. The question then reverts to why have the NY Times and Washington Post so conspicuously left off Zubaydah’s most heinous “credentials” from their coverage: the murder of 17 Americans and the near-destruction of one of its ships? The mystery remains.
posted by Eric at 12:08 PM

 
Jewish History: More of the Same
Many people believe Jews murdered Jesus, are only interested in making money and controlling people, and falsely claim they're God's chosen people. No matter how much the Pope says otherwise, these Jew-haters will go to their graves believing this. Most non-Jews around the world simply just don't know what to make of Jews.

Jews believe there is one God, that Jesus was one of many religious leaders and should not be recognized as the embodiment of God on earth. This, and the continuing hatred Muslims have for Jews, remain the biggest problems for Jews today.

Anti-Semitism came to a head in the 19th century, but anti-Jewish sentiment can be traced to ancient civilizations. Jews were pressured to convert when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 312AD, but when Jews refused the Roman authorities began to promote the idea that Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Christ.

Restrictions were placed on Jews in the Middle Ages, and the Crusades were a turning point in the history of anti-Jewish sentiment setting off waves of riots that forced many Jews to flee from Western to Eastern Europe. Myths and superstitions grew out of ignorance and Jews became the victims of hideous rumors and scapegoats for disasters that couldn't be explained.

Jews were even accused of starting the Black Plague of the 14th century, and were caricatured as money grubbers, although they provided much of the capital necessary to build cathedrals, promote trade and furnish armies. It's ironic that these very same money lenders were resented by the very people they helped. In many European countries Jews were forced to live apart from Christians in
ghettos.

In the 19th century a new form of anti-Semitism grew based on race. Many Eastern countries launched government sponsored violence against Jews called pogroms that resulted in death and emigration.

The Germans blamed the Jews for their WW 1 defeat and their post-war problems - despite the fact that thousands of Jews fought bravely for Germany in WW 1 - and it resulted in Hitler launching his “final solution” policies that resulted in the murder of more than 70% of European Jewry.

Today it's openly alleged in the Islamic world that the Holocaust never happened. The worst kind of anti-Semitism is commonplace in the Arab/islamic press. Here are some excerpts from articles in the Egyptian press of recent years:

Egyptian weekly Roz Al-Yusef, August 24, 1998
"A reliable source at the Arab league warned member states of imported blood units contaminated with the AIDS virus, hepatitis and bilharzia that were manufactured by an Austrian company that Israel then treated before they were sent to Arab and Third World nations. The question is: Is Israel waging chemical and biological warfare against Arab states and the Islam nation?"

Egyptian daily Al-Akhbar, July 14, 1998
"The Zionist movement is a racist political movement. Zionism has elevated the Holocaust to a sacred level for the purposes of blackmail ... and that even if the ovens at Buchenwald and Auschwitz were working day and night, it would have taken dozens of years to kill six million people, and not just the three years which the Nazis had."

Egyptian daily Al-Ahram, May 13, 1998
"There is a great Jewish plot to gain control of the world."
Source: Israeli government

Israel's back is up against the wall and its very existence is at stake. Anti-Semitism is virulent in the Islamic/Arab world and on the rise again in Europe. This is what Jews are up against today. Same as it ever was.
Marty Thau
posted by Eric at 11:39 AM

 
Curiouser and Curiouser
I typically run away screaming from dead horses, but this one refuses to stay down. As I have been noting for the past couple of days, it is very odd that, other than buried in the 12th paragraph of an AP release, the print media has not taken note of the “fact” that captured senior al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah is considered by the U.S. government to be the mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 Americans.

Although this aspect of the story got a fair amount of attention yesterday (Glenn Reynolds - twice, Andrew Sullivan, James Taranto’s Best of the Web Today: all big outlets), the Washington Post’s story on Zubaydah today still makes no mention of the Cole, even though they were the ones who broke the original story about the Zubaydah/Cole connection on January 14. (WaPo reports more excellent news by the way:

Telephone numbers and names found in the raids at more than a dozen homes are being sent around the world for investigation, one official said. The residences served as "safe houses" for at least 20 al Qaeda members from outside Pakistan, along with 40 Pakistanis who may have been part of the Taliban or al Qaeda...."This is one of the bigger fish," said a senior intelligence official, who called Abu Zubaida [WaPo spelling] "one of the hardest of the hard core." Even if Abu Zubaida never talks, the official said, the materials found in the raids will help in the ongoing worldwide investigation of the bin Laden network -- and in the goal of capturing bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman Zawahiri.)

In today’s Post story, he is described as such:

Abu Zubaida allegedly served in the 1990s as a recruiter and coordinator for Muslims who came from around the world to train at bin Laden's terrorist camps in Afghanistan. He was one of several gatekeepers, interviewing new arrivals when they appeared in Pakistan at an al Qaeda safe house and then determining which of the several training camps they would be sent to. Later he allegedly arranged for the trained terrorists to return to their home countries or take up residence elsewhere and await orders. Court testimony described him as involved in a thwarted plan to bomb hotels in Jordan during millennial celebrations and plans to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo, Bosnia.

Still no Cole. The NY Times story today notes that Zubaydah was planning new attacks on American targets, indicates that he will be tried before one of the new military tribunals, and that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is tickled to have him in custody.

“a very senior Al Qaeda official who has been intimately involved in the range of activities for the Al Qaeda....There is no question but that having an opportunity to visit with him is helpful. Sometimes I understate for emphasis."

But nowhere do they mention the Cole. The Times also links to its own story on Zubaydah from Feb. 14 that goes into some detail on his importance and alleged crimes, but no mention is made there of the Cole either. What happened between January 14 and February 14?

I am constitutionally inclined against conspiracy theories, but reader Nell Lancaster makes these interesting points:

Two theories: 1) Something is afoot with Yemen and the search for Al-Q types there, so that the big papers have been asked to de-emphasize that piece of Zubaida's past, or 2) WaPo assumes readers don't remember past last September. I'm betting on 1) for now.

Do such things happen? Does the government ask major media outlets to suppress information? Why didn’t AP get the message? I seek your input and guidance.
posted by Eric at 10:50 AM

 
Footnotes Are Better Than No Notes At All

I received "Rock 'n' Roll and the Cleveland Connection" by Deanna R. Adams (Kent State University Press, 2002), as a gift from my nephew because his grandfather (and my father-in-law) is mentioned in the book a few times (he owned the legendary JB's in Kent). But the shocker came as I was browsing through it later -- Much to my surprise, I'm in the book twice.

Both references are to my band Indian Rope Burn (1987-1997), and aren't much more than a passing reference, but hey, it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. ;)

I'm sure our singer Clay Vause would have shrugged and said, "well... at least they spelled it right"

While still short of playing CBGB's twice in my life, this is still pretty cool... Note to self: must compile top ten things that happened during the IRB years now that the statute of limitations has run out

Full disclosure: Eric is also mentioned in the footnote section a couple of times for his books "Networking In The Music Industry" and "The Encyclopedia of Record Producers"

The book itself is a fun read, especially if you know a little bit about the area and it's rock history, though it stretches to include Marilyn Manson and Macy Gray...
posted by tofu at 12:48 AM

 
Rep, Blog, Rep
All right, this is pretty cool. I’ve got a rudimentary weight room now in the basement, and in between farting around on the computer, I mean blogging, I am doing sets of bent over rows, and lying leg lifts. This is the greatest of reliefs because for the first time in 20 years, I have been waylaid for the last two months with a upper abdominal spasm. I tried to self-medicate with rest for the first month, but all I did was drive myself crazy and start to turn to jello.

So I went to the doctor and he said with a smile, "Skelaxin." After three weeks on Skelaxin my muscles were relaxin’ and now I can resume - in moderation - a workout routine and process some of this hostility. Right now, I’m dripping sweat on the keyboard and feeling damn happy about it. Have to go do another couple of sets now. See you later, in a manner of speaking.

I’m....back....(pant pant), now doing dumbbell pullovers to get outer pecs and lats and all those weird little muscles down the sides. Still doing the lying leg lifts because I have to keep the emphasis on lower abs for now. Have to finish up and go watch 24. Have a good one.
posted by Eric at 8:45 PM

 
At Last, A Solution
Finally, someone THINKING OUTSIDE THE LOX, I MEAN BOX regarding the Israelis and Palestinians. Isn’t the London Bridge in Arizona? Haven’t Mexicans and Jews both been oppressed by the Spaniards? As I recall, didn’t some of the Lost Tribes end up down there somewhere? Ken Layne again rules with an iron fist.

This poor anguished soul, however, isn’t nearly as creative; though it is rather difficult to anguish simultaneously in two different directions without hitting oneself in the head (Thanks to Jerry, who similarly rules, for the eagle eyes).
posted by Eric at 5:14 PM

 
The Death of Webcasting?
This story lays out all you need to know to Webcast (i.e. Internet radio) legally. These two stories explain why Webcasters are up in arms over proposed royalty changes. Congress is still mulling over a final decision. Go here to voice your concerns. I think I’ll keep working under a radio station's license until this whole thing shakes out.
posted by Eric at 4:34 PM

 
Quiet! I Think I Hear Science Ending
Francis Fukuyama is a very smart, influential guy. His The End of History and the Last Man caused a sensation upon publication in 1991 that had barely abated when 9/11 struck and revived its currency. In December, the Washington Post compared the worldviews of Fukuyama and his post-Cold War theoretical rival Samuel Huntington. Fukuyama

called his thesis "The End of History," and although that sounded apocalyptic, he was attempting to deliver good news. Fukuyama argued that the historical process that had seen the rise of feudalism, monarchism, communism, fascism and various other isms had come to its conclusion. Democracy and free markets - the core values of Western civilization - had proved victorious over all competing systems. There was no better way to organize human affairs. Game over. But there was this other idea. It was darker. Indeed it sounded like a medieval nightmare. The theorist was a Harvard professor named Samuel P. Huntington - Fukuyama's former teacher, as it happens. Huntington summed up his theory in a dramatic phrase: "The Clash of Civilizations."

The Huntington thesis mocked the feel-good notions of the Fukuyama camp. Huntington saw a world of tribes. Tribalism was increasing. Ancient hatreds were rising to the surface. In Huntington's world there was little danger that everyone would join hands around a campfire and sing "Kumbaya."

The reason is culture. Culture, said Huntington, is the preeminent force of conflict in the modern world. Politics, economics, ideology and national interests remain important, but culture trumps everything. Culture is bone deep, essential to a person's identity, and transcends national boundaries. Cultural conflict, Huntington said, was erupting along civilizational fault lines.

The two theories may suffer from nearly lethal cases of overstatement and oversimplification. For political scientists, however, these are the two touchstones of any debate about the direction of the world.

Though 9/11 and its aftermath would appear to favor Huntington’s theory, Fukuyama wouldn’t go down without a fight. He said of Huntington’s theory:

"It had a mischievous impact on the way people around the world thought about these things," Fukuyama says. "I think it's not just wrong, it's also not helpful to world politics. It gives aid and comfort to people who want to reject Western values."

..."If you get these Islamic terrorists who claim to hate Western civilization and they attack New York City, clearly you have a clash of cultures," Fukuyama says. But he quickly adds that the September 11 attack is merely a "rearguard action," and won't stop "this great freight train of globalization."

That is undoubtedly true, but do the “rearguard actions” ever stop? And if they don’t, can history be said to have ended? What do you do when history - whether alive or suffering post-mortem spasms - kicks you in the jimmies? You change the subject, as Fukuyama has done with his new book, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution, which is the subject of a feature in the NY Times science section today.

If the human mind and body are shaped by a bunch of genes, as the decoding of the human genome seems to underscore, then biotechnologists will one day be able to change both and perhaps, in seeking to refine the imperfect human clay, will alter human nature.

That prospect should be worrying a lot more people, in the view of the political theorist Francis Fukuyama, because history's central question — that of what kind of society best suits human needs — has been settled only if human nature remains as it is, warts and all.

Talk about Brockian reversal, this new theory seems as dystopian and pessimistic as his “End of History” theory was utopian and optimistic. Does he see “human nature” as immutable? I wonder if our distant cave-dwelling relatives spoke of “Neanderthal nature.” Fukuyama has found a clever caveat to the “End of History” that functions as a link between the books: “The only objection [to EOH] he acknowledges as serious is the argument that history cannot end without an end to science, or at least to science that alters human nature.”

So history should have ended, would have ended, and perhaps will now be allowed to end if we put a stop to all of that silly scientific tinkering. Ah, that’s why half a billion people hate us even more than the communists did, and their more adventuresome representatives tried to blow up our two most important cities, because we didn’t stop science ten years ago.

His case against leaving science up to those rascally scientists is basically this:

Genetic engineering of the human germline — making permanent changes to the genes in the egg or sperm — would pose the most direct threat to human nature but other techniques bear watching, in his view. Mood changing drugs could change society if taken widely enough, and Dr. Fukuyama says he wonders whether Caesar or Napoleon would have felt the need to conquer Europe if either had been able to pop a Prozac tablet occasionally.

Major increases in human longevity could also be disruptive, he fears, because "life extension will wreak havoc with most existing age-graded hierarchies," postponing social change in countries with aging dictators and thwarting innovation in others.

Well, I guess we should all just be happy with the way things are, then. Would mankind have been worse off had Caesar or Napoleon been able to take a pill and lie down? Maybe, maybe not: we’ll never know, but it is pointless to assume change is inherently bad.

This kind of thinking is not only wrong, it is anti-democratic and smacks of the kind of top-down collectivism I railed against regarding the Palestinians yesterday. Individuals will make their own choices whether they want to live longer, and over time, in the main, they will choose to do so, so work will continue in that direction. How, and even why, would you want to stop this?

Yes, we must keep an eye on what is happening to our species in the aggregate; but the species, like a democratic country, is a collection of individuals. The individual is the irreducible unit, not the state, not the species. Even the grand mover of meta-biology, evolution, only moves through individuals. Mother nature doesn’t wave her hand over species and push them in a certain direction: random (or even “designed,” it doesn’t matter) mutations occur in individuals that give them a slight advantage in passing on their genes; these advantages accumulate and the species changes over time. Scientists are just as much individuals as citizens in a democracy, and no more subject to top-down control than evolution.

You can make rules: no cloning of human beings for reproductive purposes, no building new people from old body parts, no creation of untreatable viruses. The rules may even be followed by most scientists in most places; but over time, like in evolution, “advantages,” real or perceived, will accrue. If people want to live longer, science - excuse me - individual scientists will find ways to help them do so.

Even Fukuyama’s best argument is nonsense:

But the most serious threat to the stability of human societies is genetic engineering that may alter, by design or inadvertence, the special balance of contrarieties of human nature.

Human nature, Dr. Fukuyama argues, "is fundamental to our notions of justice, morality and the good life."

So nothing can be changed about humanity, none of the “contraries” can be altered without destroying some grand biological system of “checks and balances”? Why draw the line now? Isn’t this a bit arbitrary? Every cohort fears for future generations: we want them to be like us, but is humankind rid of rabies, or AIDS, or malaria, or fatal birth defects any less human? Every change brings new problems. Look at globalization: pretty darn good overall, and pretty great for those with plenty of capital, but pretty awful for many individuals who are displaced from their livelihoods and lifestyles with no hope of latching on to a new living in their lifetimes. They’re just screwed. Do we stop? No.

There will be similar winners and losers with continued, inevitable-so-get-over-it, scientific advancement: good overall, bad for some individuals. Every new drug finds people who are allergic to it and kills them. No new drugs? Sure, Francis. There is something to his “checks and balances” concept: there is some kind of equilibrium within a species at any given time, BUT THAT EQUILIBRIUM CHANGES all the time, and with every change comes a new equilibrium. It was ever so and will be ever thus.

The Times piece ends with this, perhaps mocking conclusion:

History may have ended, but it seems that special measures are needed to keep it in a state of finality.

History never ends. Science never ends. Now is no more a stopping point than “happily ever after,” and the notion that it is so is no more realistic than a fairy tale.

For a debate between Fukuyama and Gregory Stock (Redesigning Humans) on these matters, go here.
posted by Eric at 3:29 PM

 
TV Does Not = Real Life
April is here once again so it’s time to prepare for a week away from the Tube. I strongly encourage all citizens young and old to participate in TV Turnoff Week, April 22-28. The more wrenching and preposterous this notion seems, the more important that you and your family take the bracing tonic of an electronic fast.

The statistics are familiar but still startling: television is on almost eight hours a day in the average American home. Television viewing is the #1 elective activity of Americans in time spent, and third out of all activities, after only working and sleeping. For most, the question is, “What shall we watch?,” while the truly important question is, “Should we watch anything?”

I am not a rabid anti-TV activist: I watch several hours a week and usually don’t regret it, much. Typically there is something reasonably interesting, informative, and/or entertaining on at any given time, especially if you have cable: sports; movies; cultural events; selected educational, news, and entertainment shows all have something to offer.

I love the daring and compelling 24 Tuesdays (tonight’s the night, gotta be home by 9) on Fox (check out review here), and we watch Fox on Sunday night where Futurama (I catch once in a while) runs into King of the Hill (sometimes) into The Simpsons (almost always) into Malcolm In the Middle (always - the wrenching twists between dysfunction and hard-won emotion are bizarre, unique, and hilarious) into The X Files (now rarely, we were devoted until last year when the steam leaked out with David Duchovny, although he’s coming back for the two-hour series wrap-up).

I also love Dexter's Laboratory on the Cartoon Network (couldn’t agree more with Steven Den Beste's assessment:

Genndy Tartakovsky is in my opinion our generation's answer to Chuck Jones, and higher praise I cannot bestow on a cartoonist. He was born in Russia about 1970 and his parents defected and came to the US when he was a kid. He fell in love with cartoons and decided he wanted to be an animator. He finally got his chance when he was given the opportunity by Hanna Barbera to helm a series he created, Dexter's Laboratory. I fell in love with the series as soon as I saw one episode on the Cartoon Network; it is absolute brilliance. Tartakovsky never lets little things like logic or continuity stand in the way of telling a good story or making a good joke, and all through the series he is playing with the medium.

Today he discusses Tartakovsky’s new Samurai Jack, which I haven’t seen yet.)

I’m also not particularly concerned with the commercial aspects of television. This is a commercial world, why should TV be any different? Children learn from an early age that commercials are to be taken with a grain of salt, and only the most gullible adult is duped by a commercial into buying something he or she doesn’t really want. Individually commercials are often annoying and there are too many of them, but commercials in general may be a way to experience the thrill of consumerism without having to actually buy anything.

I have also dwelled within the beast and enjoyed it: I have appeared on TV regularly (quit this one last year) as a music critic, hosted a music video show, and worked on a magazine show back in the '80s in L.A. I much prefer appearing on TV, which requires active physical participation and involves reaching outside yourself to engage with your audience; to watching it, which is passive and only gives the illusion of engaging with the world, and this is the real issue.

TV is NOT life, it isn’t real, despite pervasive metaphors such as “reality TV,” or the relatively unfiltered sights and sounds of CSPAN and the like. Clearly, there are real events shown on TV in real time including sports, breaking news, etc. The drama is real for the participants, but no matter how lifesize and clear the picture, no matter how “surround” the sound, viewers participate in the drama only through the filter of the camera, which strips reality of its third dimension and reduces it to a sanitized flat plane. This is “reality” vicariously observed, not experienced directly; reality that is 100% mediated and therefore 100% unreal for the viewer.

Movies and movie-like series on cable such as the brilliant Sopranos are least deceptive because they don’t pretend to be real. They are self-contained entertainments with beginnings and endings that at their best are works of art. They are clearly apart from life, though they may bear insights into life. Excellent dramatic or comedic series on broadcast television share many of the same virtues, though they are rigidly structured by commercials.

Taped “reality TV” is the most deceptive: the situations on The Real World, Survivor Part 9: Lesbos Island, Temptation Island: Return to Atlantis, and the rest are all staged. The participants are all preselected to meet certain criteria. Even if given behavior isn’t explicitly coerced, the participants know what is expected of them and direct their own behavior accordingly. Then this staged, manipulated behavior is edited for presentation, further diluting its “reality,” leaving Temptation Island only slightly more real than Gilligan’s Island.

“You-are-there” shows like Cops, When Animals Eat Your Children - Part 9, etc., are beneath contempt: these shows tell us it is entertaining to watch our fellow human beings suffer every manner of pain and humiliation, exploiting both those involved and the worst instincts of the viewer.

But bad TV isn’t really the point. TV programming is good enough to leave the set on most of the time and still avoid the horrors of all soap operas, all “reality” shows, most talk shows, most local news, most commercials, and most network programming. The real problem with television is that it is an easy, habit-forming distraction from doing better things with your time. There are only so many hours in the day and your time would almost always be better spent doing something other than watching TV. Turn the tube off April 22-28 and have a conversation, play a game, help your kids with their homework, read, make something, listen to music, sit and think, become a blogger. It isn’t boring, it’s your life.
posted by Eric at 10:02 AM

 
Still No Cole
Most excellent that Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan (scroll to top) have picked up on the Zubaydah/USS Cole connection. I still find it quite puzzling that the story hasn’t found it’s way into the mainstream media. The NY Times has NOTHING WHATSOEVER on the story today, and the Washington Post goes into great detail about Zubaydah's capture and background, but makes no mention of the Cole. This is all the more odd, because WaPo itself ran the story of the connection back on January 14:

One man of urgent concern to intelligence officials in the United States is Abu Zubaydah, a 30-year-old Palestinian who is believed to have served as field commander for the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole [emphasis mine] and to have been responsible for screening recruits to the training camps in Afghanistan. Many U.S. and Pakistani authorities believe Zubaydah may have taken the place of bin Laden deputy Muhammad Atef, who is believed to have been a key organizer of the Sept. 11 attacks and who was killed by U.S. warplanes in November. "No one else will have the charisma of bin Laden, but Abu Zubaydah does have considerable organizational experience," said Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief who has followed the movement closely. "If Abu Zubaydah survives, he will have the contacts to resurrect the network. He was the gatekeeper."

Are the Post’s own writers unaware, or for some reason, now unsure of this connection? The USS Cole attack cost 17 American lives and is hardly ancient history - it was 2000! Well, at least the Times and Post have run the story of Zubaydah’s capture. As of this moment, “bleeding-edge” linkster Matt Drudge still has no mention of the capture at all.

The only mention of the Cole connection I have found at all in the mainstream media is this from AP, in the 12th paragraph!

Zubaydah,
a 31-year-old Palestinian who was born in Saudi Arabia, was also tied to thwarted plots to blow up the U.S. embassies in Paris and Sarajevo after Sept. 11. U.S. officials say they are investigating his links to the attacks on the USS Cole and the East Africa embassy bombings.

Can anyone explain to me why the news of the capture of the man directly responsible for the death of 17 Americans just a year and a half ago is of so little general concern, or why the Cole-connection is virtually invisible other than to bloggers?

And this on a day when the Boston Globe contemptuously dismisses blogging as "tedious"... read by "a few dozen readers" [!]... and "The Web loggers' main shortcoming is their compunction to 'say' something several times a day."

Well, yes, that's how people stay on top of things independently (and ahead, sometimes, way ahead) of the traditional mass media like this buttplug at the Globe who didn't even catch on to the fact that Bjorn Staerk's "bizarre recommitment to left-wing raving" was a freaking brilliant April Fools joke. What a pud.
posted by Eric at 8:48 AM

 
Best News Since the Fall of the Taliban
The capture of Abu Zubaydah, 31, a Palestinian who had risen to the #2 or #3 position within al Qaeda” is ENORMOUS news. I realize Israel and the Palestinians are at war, but the fact that the Pakistanis have captured and handed over “the Mailman” to United States authorities is of HEADLINE significance. It was only on page 8 of the NY Times today, and as of this moment isn’t even listed on Drudge. What gives?

Zubaydah was the “field commander” of the bombing of the USS Cole in October of 2000, as it was refueling in the harbor at Aden, Yemen. The attack killed 17 crew members, and the ship cost over $240 million to repair.

Zubaydah was shot in the stomach, groin and thigh while trying to evade capture last Thursday and is now undergoing treatment. He is expected to survive. Per the Times story,

Mr. Zubaydah is the chief of operations for al Qaeda, Mr. bin Laden's terrorist network, and has extensive knowledge about the group. He would be the highest-ranking commander in al Qaeda to be seized since the United States began its military campaign in Afghanistan in October. His capture would represent a major accomplishment in the American campaign against terrorism, especially since he is believed to have taken control of the effort to rebuild the Qaeda network.

This not only takes out the most active current cog in the al Qaeda machine, but should scare the shit out of bin Laden.
posted by Eric at 6:49 PM

 
Blown Times
Baseball seems to be in my pants at the moment, sorry. The NY Times is so far and away my favorite paper that it isn't even worth mentioning the Washington Post, let alone my dreaded Plain Dealer, except for the Sports secton. Since the Times is geared toward the twin home teams of the Mets (ick) and the Yankees (ick to the power of 10), I can barely even look at their theoretically "national" Sports section without becoming unnerved and itchy. And since the Times aspires to a "national" perspective, their obsession with the Mets and Yankees is all the more irritating and parochial.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer, on the other hand, generally sucks hosewater, other than a reasonable Entertainment section, and an excellent Sports section. They cover national stories well, but really shine at the local level, from our major league teams down to the high school level.

Leave it to the Times to turn a potentially interesting story about blown saves into a weepfest for the poor Yankees, who were deprived of their preordained throne by the treacherous usurpers from Arizona, on of all things, a blown save. There is a great picture, though, of the glorious moment when the Dodgers' Kirk Gibson limped out of the dugout to hand Oakland's Dennis Eckersley a blown save in the '88 World Series. I still have dreams about that one.
posted by Eric at 3:30 PM

 
Opening Day
Couldn't agree more with Matt Welch that the statute of limitations is up on "God Bless America" in place of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" at the seventh-inning stretch. There is something unseemly about dragging something spontaneous and of the moment - seven months ago - into a fresh new season.

He and I are coming from opposite ends of the fan spectrum (I watched with pride on TV in Ohio as Colon shut down the Angels in the presence of Matt and his dad), but love of the game transcends such petty differences as team loyalty (right Marty?).

In fact, being originally from SoCal, I was an Angels fan myself in my youth, though I always preferred the chromatic and doctrinal purity of Dodger Blue to whatever purchased talent was occupying whatever colors the Old Cowboy's team was in in any given year. My grandfather - having played somewhere in the lower recesses of the Yankees organization until he pitched, like, 12 innings in a game and left his arm on the mound - always preferred the American League (though he was ambivalent about the DH). He respected my young preferences, though, and respected the incredible pitching of my beloved Dodgers of Koufax (still my favorite athlete of all time, maybe that's why I'm such a Judai-ophile), Drysdale, Osteen, Singer, and Sutton. In a magnanimous compromise, he shuttled me back and forth between Dodger Stadium and the Big A, just down the street from Disneyland. I used to think the Disney magic would inevitably rub off on the Angels someday. Still waiting.

Anyway, I was always sympathetic towards the Angles, at least until I moved back to Ohio in '90 and became a hard-core Indians fan. Matt thinks there is something different in the air now than there was when he went to an April Angels game 11 years ago, right after the Gulf War had expired. He thinks we are a better, more nuanced people now. He may well be right. Deep thinker and baseball fan - my kind of guy.
posted by Eric at 2:45 PM

 
Arafat to Morocco?
The World Tribune claims that

U.S. officials said the Bush administration has obtained approval from Morocco to provide asylum to Arafat. The officials said that over the past few days U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell contacted Arab and Islamic countries in an effort to end the Israeli takeover of Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah.

"We have found a place for Arafat," a U.S. official said. "The problem is that Arafat doesn't want to leave just yet."

Yes, power over the life and death of others is a difficult thing to give up.
posted by Eric at 1:47 PM

 
Brockitis?
Either Bjorn Staerk - a (formerly?) sane voice from my ancestral home of Norway - has gone David Brock with extreme prejudice, or it's April 1. You decide.
posted by Eric at 12:49 PM

 
Twists of Death
The bizarre pretzel logic continues to twist around itself, further choking off air to the brain. Thomas Friedman noted yesterday:

As Ismail Haniya, a Hamas leader, said in The Washington Post, Palestinians have Israelis on the run now because they have found their weak spot. Jews, he said, "love life more than any other people, and they prefer not to die." So Palestinian suicide bombers are ideal for dealing with them.

This strikes me as profoundly important, both in its utterance and in its meaning. Could an enemy have paid a deeper compliment to a people than to have “accused” them of loving life “more than any other people”? What does this mean, exactly? That the Jews feel life is more worth living than do the Palestinians? That the Jews value individual life more than Palestinians? That they value their collective life more than the Palestinians? That they value their loved ones more? The answer to all of these questions is apparently “yes,” which is the clearest explanation of all why we in America, who hold the same values that Haniya ascribes to the Jews, instinctively support Israel, where every loss of life is mourned, not perversely celebrated in some kind of grotesque inversion of all we hold dear.

Please don’t mistake our own or the Israeli’s “love of life” as a sign of weakness. Our love of life reflects that fact that we place equal and irreducible value on each individual life, that our culture and government are assembled from the ground up, to best serve our needs as individuals rather than from the top down, with individuals expected to serve the needs of the collective. We will sacrifice our lives to preserve the freedom to remain cherished individuals, but each life lost will be mourned as a grievous loss and collectively act as a brake against unnecessary military action. It is a supreme irony that Americans and Israelis, once aroused, fight in highly-disciplined, efficient, collective units, and the Palestinians - in common with Islamist terrorists like al Qaeda - send out lone “martyrs” who think they have (what could be more selfish?) found an easy path to paradise.

The sick, cynical manipulation of human fodder by the recruiters and coaches of suicide terrorists makes even Ariel Sharon sound eminently reasonable:

"Only a mean and cruel leader can educate children to commit suicide with stories of going to paradise. As we teach our Jewish children to love peace, he teaches Palestinian children to eliminate Jews."

That “love of life” can be held up as a weakness (remember, Osama bin Laden said the same about us), and self-destruction (individual and collective) with the aim of randomly destroying as many other lives as possible be held up as “heroic,” defines the stark conflict of values before us. May the lovers of life win.


posted by Eric at 12:08 PM

 
Jerry Responds to "Logic and the Onion"

It's a hell of an awful situation. I don't see any good coming out of it so long as Arafat has a job, but Israel can't afford to off him -- and, if it did, that wouldn't stop the suicide bombers. Palestinian society has tipped into madness, and I don't know that anyone has a solution for tipping it back.

posted by Eric at 11:01 AM

 
Logic and the Onion
Explain this one to me: suicide bombers have been terrorizing Israel with increasing frequency and ferocity over the last 18 months. Israel has responded with proportionately intense action of its own, warning Arafat that he would be held responsible for the actions of his fellow Palestinians.

While causing/allowing the terror to escalate against Israel, Arafat and the Palestinian authority then plead for the rest of the world to intervene to stop the violence. “I can’t help myself - stop me before I kill again.” We wish; it’s more like “stop them from responding while we kill again and again. It’s not fair: coming after us with their big American weapons, and educated, disciplined soldiers, while all we can do is send in poor, stupid, deluded, brainwashed automatons to blow themselves up amidst women, children, randon civilians, and our fellow Arabs (to make an omelet...).”

Then, pursuing this “logic” further, Arafat and his apologists blame "US policy" for Israel’s response to the daily unthinkable. As if any carbon-based organism doesn’t respond to stimuli. You prod an amoeba and it seeks to preclude the prodding. The Israelis need our prodding to decide they would rather not be blown up in family gatherings, shopping at the mall, or dining in public - on a daily basis?

Bush has done all he can, in fact, to reasonably restrain the Israelis, not for purely honorable reasons:

Under the logic of the Bush doctrine, that would compel Mr. Bush to treat the Palestinian leader the way he has treated Al Qaeda and the Taliban, a point the Israelis are making daily. But in this case, as some of Mr. Bush's advisers acknowledge, that logic has run headlong into other priorities.

To build Arab support for his impending confrontation with Iraq, Mr. Bush knows he cannot afford to alienate other Arab nations, whose anti-Israel declarations have grown in vehemence and urgency, along with their demands that Mr. Bush restrain the Sharon government.

And so every few days the White House has been tinkering with the tone and balance of Mr. Bush's statements, twisting the dials, but never quite happy with the fidelity of the sound that emerges.

...Only two and a half weeks ago, on March 13, Mr. Bush publicly rebuked Mr. Sharon for Israel's military action in the West Bank, calling it "not helpful" in the effort to piece together a cease-fire and resume a peace process that is at its lowest point in nine years. There have been a lot of bombs and death and blood since, but it was notable that on Saturday, Mr. Bush reversed course, describing Mr. Sharon as a democratically elected leader who was legitimately "responding to the will of the people" for more security.

Better late than never George; but assuming that the administration’s deepest sympathies have always been with Israel, this vacillation proves that Bush has done everything possible to give the Palestinians the benefit of the doubt.

It is also clear that we can no more restrain the Israelis in their legitimate, biological response to preclude further “prodding” in the form of their citizens being blown up daily by “martyrs,” than Arafat can apparently “control” the bombers themselves. In logic you can’t have it both ways.

By the way, “martyrs,” you have been misled by those who would exploit your naiveté and desperation. There will be no milk, honey, virgins, or grapes. There will be what every major religion declares for suicides and murderers: eternal damnation (Christianity, Judaism, and, oh yes, ISLAM); or, should our Hindu and Buddhist friends turn out to hold the metaphysical key, REALLY freaking bad karma. You “martyrs” will be returning as sea slugs and intestinal parasites. Since most Palestinians are being indoctrinated into a perverse form of literally suicidal Islam, this piece should be required reading to balance the books a bit. VOA - get a clue.
posted by Eric at 10:14 AM

 
First, the Good News
For the superstitious in baseball - and who isn’t - it may not have appeared a good omen to open the season on Easter against a team called the “Angels.” But with Bartolo Colon starring in the dual roles of overstuffed sausage and leading Cy Young Award candidate, the Indians shut down the Angels 6-0 last night.

Barty looked unhittable, actually pitching rather than just throwing, and after setting up right-handed hitters inside, then painting the outside corner with a fastball tailing away at 95mph, it’s remarkable that the Angels got even the five scattered hits they did. Colon may have finally matured - appropriate for someone who aged two years in the offseason.

A record of 1-0 looks good, but it’s the way they did it - smothering pitching, timely hitting (Fryman appears back, spanking a single and homering the opposite way) - that bodes well for the season. Not a single prognosticator I have stumbled across picked the Tribe to win their division, including a big 0-for-6 from the scribes at the Plain Dealer, but I have a funny feeling.
posted by Eric at 9:06 AM

 
Britney Says, “David Who?”
David Crosby said Britney Spears’ music is “about as deep as a birdbath.” Nice metaphor and doubtless true, but the last time I cared what David Crosby had to say, he had hair to almost cut and was backing up Roger McGuinn.

Has anyone in the history of rock ‘n’ roll got more mileage out of his associations than David Crosby? Has any fat-ass harmony singer ever had more time in the limelight? In decending order of talent: Stills, Nash, and Crosby have been living off the quality of about two albums for over 30 years, when they aren’t sucking from the great musical teat that is Neil Young. You could squeeze every drop of ability out of Stills, Nash and Crosby, whip it up in a blender with anabolic steriods, and a single Neil Young butt-hair would still have more talent.

Though Britney can’t sing much better than Leonard Nimoy, I vastly prefer her as an entertainer to David Crosby (who sings fairly well, it must be told) because she works hard, has a good attitude, doesn’t take herself all that seriously, and, most importantly, knows whereof her appeal derives, and it isn’t her voice.
posted by Eric at 6:21 PM

 
Skanks Tank
Oh yeah! Jerry has returned to the house after a few days off for Passover, and he’s back slinging intellectual property like a short order cook on crystal meth. We both hate the Yankees, and seeing as it is Opening Day (when all teams have the same record), what better dream could we have than this one from Hugo Lindgren at Slate? Stranger things have happened, too, though I can't think of one right now.

The 2002 baseball season belongs to the New York Yankees. They purchased it over the winter. Not just by signing Jason Giambi, although that is a big part of it. They are simply better in every single department than even their record-smashing 1998 club, which carried dead weight like Chad Curtis, a .243-hitting starting left fielder, and good-field, no-hit catcher Joe Girardi. In addition to established stars Giambi, Derek Jeter, and Bernie Williams, the 2002 team has at least two players, second baseman Alfonso Soriano and catcher Jorge Posada, primed for breakout years, as well as a front-runner for rookie of the year, designated hitter Nick Johnson. Their pitching staff, which carried them last year, was shored up with the acquisition of excellent setup man Steve Karsay. If either David Wells or El Duque still has a live arm (and it looks like they both might), their starting pitching is better through and through than even the Oakland A's extraordinary young staff.

The situation is not scary so much as it is boring. What can stop this juggernaut? The biggest threat is the Yankees themselves. After decades of turmoil, the Yankees have enjoyed five years of peace. Could this be the year it all comes unglued? Could the stunning collapse in Arizona last fall possibly have karmic carryover? Herewith, a plausible, if not entirely likely, schedule for the greatest choke of all time....

posted by Eric at 5:28 PM

 
Let Them Eat Blogs
Been blogging for a couple of months now and it’s become ingrained into my being already. There is some weird fuzziness in the area between “real life,” and “real life as a story.” When things happen now, among my first reactions are, “Wow, that would make a good story.”

An example of this is the whole mess between Marty and Heineken. Marty is a good friend and he is being screwed by a major corporation that is trying to brush him aside like a gnat. My main focus is on the actual problem and trying to help him get it solved fairly. But a voice, small yet insistent, keeps whispering,

“What a great story this is! People love a good David vs. Goliath match. This will help put us on the map. People like to help the little guy, and this confirms all their worst suspicions about the cold commercial imperative. It’s a human-scale Enron. Yeah!”

We’re serious about this blog thing. We think we have some interesting things to offer, some unusual perspectives; and of course, it’s a great corral for all of our disparate activities. We want to get the word out, and nothing works better than a great story.

I feel myself becoming, as my new pal Mike from over at Cursor says, “someone caught up in the 24/7 news cycle,” although I can’t imagine we will ever attempt to be anything close to a full-coverage type of site. I sure don’t want to miss anything, though, and that’s the kind of pressure he’s talking about.

Overall, the positives of being actively engaged with the world of events and ideas, and interacting with those similarly inclined, far outweighs the tugging at the cat-door in the back of my brain when I have been away from my computer for any extended length of time; and even the tendency to see life, partially, in terms of stories to tell. But it will be time to rethink the whole thing if I ever value the stories over the people they are about.
posted by Eric at 5:13 PM

 
Happy Easter
We wish you all a peaceful and meaningful Easter. Easter, like Christmas, has become a secular as well as Christian holiday, pregnant with pre-Christian symbols of renewal and spring (bunnies, chickies, eggs) which dovetail nicely with the Christian message of resurrection and victory over death. Apparently a bit out of sorts from lack of sleep, my friend Tony Pierce has responded rather strongly to the Easter dichotomy of secular chocolate bunnies and the profound holiness of (for Christians of course) Christ’s triumph over death. I hope you feel better Tony, but thanks for reminding us (rather forcefully) what this is supposed to be about.

This site gives fascinating insight into the history of Easter. For example, the name “Easter” derives from “Eostre,” the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe, whose name was in turn derived from the ancient Saxon word for spring, “eastre.” Virtually all cultures celebrated the return of spring around the time of the vernal equinox (the time when the sun crosses the equator, making night and day of equal length in all parts of the earth, approximately March 21). The Christian celebration of Easter combines pagan spring rituals, Jewish Passover observance (recall that Jesus was Jewish), with the resurrection of Christ.

Beliefnet also has a large Easter section, looking at both the sacred and the profane. Above all the rituals, conventions, and hype, remember this: Easter is the day Christianity was born.

posted by Eric at 4:28 PM

 
WITH CALLOUS DISREGARD (Part 2)
We have received tremendous response regarding Marty’s plight as reported just two days ago here in "With Callous Disregard." Thank you very much. In essence, Heineken and Epic stole Marty’s Red Star name without consultation, compensation, or consideration. The below was the “final exchange” between Heineken’s attorney and Marty. The tone and attitude are self-evident. The damage has already been done, yet Heineken will take no responsibility for it; nor will they change their label name sufficiently to preclude further confusion and damage. Marty is dismissed. This cannot stand.
==============================================================
Subj: RED STAR RECORDS / HEINEKEN USA, INC.
Date: 02/28/02 12:17PM

Mr. Anderson:

My proposal of January 2nd stated that HEINEKEN'S MUSIC INITIATIVE label should call itself HEINEKEN'S RED STAR SOUNDS in order to distinguish it from my RED STAR RECORDS.

I've already received numerous inquiries about my involvement in the RED STAR SOUNDS: SOUL SEARCHING CD and would anticipate many more from my distributors as further releases hit the marketplace. Confusion will be a factor unless it is clear that HEINEKEN'S RED STAR SOUNDS label is a non-profit venture to benefit urban musicians and education and is not to be confused with my RED STAR RECORDS label, as they are separate entities.

I've stated my position and intentions. The solutions are as follows:
1) HEINEKEN'S RED STAR SOUNDS as HEINEKEN'S label name
2) A financial settlement of this matter
3) A legal confrontation.

==============================================================
Subj: RED STAR RECORDS / HEINEKEN USA, INC.
Date: Friday, 1 March, 2002 9:53:03 AM

Mr. Thau:

My client has instructed that it cannot and will not use HEINEKEN'S RED STAR SOUNDS and will continue to use RED STAR SOUNDS.

There will be no further use made of RED STAR RECORDS on future recordings and all other promotional uses such as on the web site at concerts etc. will cease effective immediately.

As to your ultimatum, you can be assured there will be no financial payment to you. Whether you wish to institute legal action is entirely up to you. Be assured however, any such action will be vigorously defended in view of your laches and willful contribution/causation [your press releases] of any anecdotal confusion alluded to in your email of February 28, 2002.

We now consider these negotiations concluded.
posted by Eric at 3:15 PM