the end of the world is nigh
i try to be honest in class, and i hope that, thereby, i will encourage honesty from my students.
i think i have.
today a student told me that she wouldn't be in class wednesday and then (without prompting) told me that the reason was that she would be attending "wwf live" tuesday night and wasn't sure if she'd be back/fit in time for class.
i said "oh, dear" and she blushed. that was the extent of my elitism.
i think katha pollitt and i would be fine friends, should we ever meet. i usually like what she writes and, but for one caveat, i agree with her take on
Backlash Babies. my caveat? well . . .
why not NOT have children? you'll have to read the article to get why my disagreement is subtle, but suffice to say that pollitt is talking about how it can be made possible/feasible for working women to have children, wheras i'm of the opinion that working women should consider eschewing having children altogether.
if you MUST posess a child, ladies and gentlemen, go adopt one! there are millions of children on this earth who desperately need parents!
read
the lyrics to "nobody's child", which were recorded in 1990 by traveling wilburys (and, no doubt, by someone else at some point), for moral support in your decision to consider adoption over breeding.
the german news magazine,
DER SPIEGEL, is reporting that, on saturday, the NRA's Wayne LaPierre argued that the shooting at the school in Erfurt, Germany, was proof that strict gun laws aren't needed in the US. See (as he rightly pointed out), gun laws in germany are generally stricter than in the US and, despite this, the worst school shooting ever happened on friday in germany.
as is so often the case with the gun lobby in the US, no argument is so wrong-headed or grotesque that they will hesitate to roll it out in support of their cause. likewise, no argument that harms their cause will be listened to no matter how cogent or factually-rooted.
so, gun nuts, let me begin with my traditional "fuck you" and then tell you how you are, once again, wrong . . .
THE GUNS (both of them) USED IN THE ERFURT SHOOTING WERE LEGALLY OWNED BY THE SHOOTER, WHO HAD NO CRIMINAL RECORD AND NO HISTORY OF DOING ANYTHING UNUSUAL (except, of course, being a gun nut).
as deniro's character in goodfella's said (and i may be paraphrasing): "the definition of an asshole is someone who doesn't believe what they see with their own eyes."
TOO RICH!!!! in the press conference from the vatican, regarding the sexual abuse scandal, the spokesman for the group, the cardinal from washington d.c., said that the pope was concerned about this because he is (i shit you not) "turned on by children."
what is the title of this web page, i ask you?
Q: how many priests does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: it depends on how many young boys are in the light bulb.
the catholic church will apparently henceforth have a "zero tolerance" policy regarding sexual abuse by priests. this is, of course, a dramatic shift from their apparent "infinite tolerance" policy of the past 15 or so centuries. i'm no genius about this sort of thing, but how about incrementalism . . . say, 80% tolerance for now, with 50% tolerance in 5 years and an eventual zero tolerance? i mean, you can't ask these priests to go from "anything goes" to "nothing goes" overnight, can you?
before anyone accuses me of anti-catholic sentiments here, by the way, i would point them in the direction of the numerous similar incidents of protestant shenanigans.
gol dang it! i posted something really cool and it didn't show up. harumph.
i showed the movie class "roger and me" (by michael moore) tonight. for those of you who haven't seen it, i have only this message: YOU SHOULD.
i think it is super cool. i've seen it a guhzillion times. i think what i like the most about it (other than moore's groovy gallows humor) is that i get the feeling that it isn't about flint, michigan (moore's home town) at all, but rather it is about MY home town (the birmingham area, in alabama). see. . . .
FLINT: cars
B'HAM: steel
FLINT: closing factories in the 80s
B'HAM: ditto
FLINT: home town of bob eubanks, grand funk railroad
B'HAM: home town of nell carter, emmylou harris
FLINT: crime rate up to national elite status
B'HAM: ditto
FLINT: new jail
B'HAM: ditto
FLINT: turn to tourism, failed with "autoworld"
B'HAM: ditto, failed with "visionland"
FLINT: new industry makes lint rollers
B'HAM: new industry makes, um, um, oh yeah! no, wait, um. i guess a bit of steel . . .
so, i take it personally. when i talk about the economy of the 80s with students, i always point out that my family did ok. you see, when the economy goes to crap, people tend to shoot one another and houses and buildings tend to catch fire. my dad was a firefighter, so we had solid cash flow!
i went to ames (a department store) today and bought two kinds of things. which kind more marks me as a nerd?
kind-of-thing one: merry/pippin/moria orc action figure set; boromir/lurz action figure set.
kind-of-thing two: yes "talk"; billy joel "the nylon curtain; inxs "full moon, dirty hearts"; asia "alpha" (all of these are on cd. i already had billy joel on tape).
i went
rafting today! envy is now being accepted. i was on the lower yough river, and it rained the whole time. it was also cold. fortunately, i rented a wetsuit.
it was very, very fun and the weather was not a problem. come visit!
for those of you, and i know you exist, who wonder
why the u.s. seems to support limitless israeli occupation of the west bank see the link. i recently had occaision to refer birgit's sister to the book of revelations for an explanation, but genesis works, too.
i'm bored, and so, as "third base" once rapped, "here it . . . . comes!"
i've decided to lay it all out. all (well, most) of my cards shall come to the table. i will speak now on events of the day and the general state of the world. don't try to stop me. don't hope to contain me.
-- THE ISRAELI/PALESTINIAN CONFLICT. israel is wholly and fully in the wrong on this. no two ways about it. it seems to me that the first step should be this: a total and complete (and really, really real) israeli retreat to the '67 borders (including closing the settlements). if, after this point, any sort of terrorist attacks against israel occur, the world will be on their side. until then, israel is a bully (and the u.s. is a bully-facilitator).
-- THE WAR ON TERROR. we need a serious ramping down on the rhetoric, here. the cat is out of the bag, dubyah: everyone in the world knows that we aren't out to defeat evil or make the world a better place. the u.s. is opposed to those persons/countries who oppose the u.s., pure and simple. this is old school realpolitik. the sooner we ditch the apocalyptic fate-of-the-world rhetoric, the better.
-- THE WAR ON TERROR (part two). the world also knows that there would be far fewer potential enemies of the u.s. if we would stay out of everyone else's business. shouldn't we at least consider confining our role to that one big, international forum we helped create: the UNITED NATIONS?
-- GLOBALIZATION. one of the reasons why so many people are opposed to the u.s. is the (pretty unabashed) way in which we seek to impose "our way of life" on the rest of the world. of course, by "our way of life" we usually mean "producing cheap products for our consumption" and "no import controls on our products". if we meant "freedom" and "democracy" and the "rule of law" we would quickly win more converts, but, as our relationship with so many countries (china?) indicates, we don't mean the latter.
-- ON BEING SEEN AS AN EMPIRE. don't like it? let's stop acting like one.
-- ON GOD. i don't believe there is one. i want my government (allegedly secular) to stop behaving as if it was following his/her/its instructions.
-- ON CHILDREN. i don't want any. they are annoying. the world could do with fewer. why does every political issue have to be couched in terms of them?
-- ON DOGS. ban them from all human-populated areas. kill any who attack humans.
-- ON PRINCE. stop making fun of his having changed his name. he did it for business reasons. he is mozart-like in his genius and you will be viewed as a fool by future generations for making jokes about him.
-- NO MATTER WHO THE DEMOCRATS PUT UP IN 2004 i will vote for some green / socialist / whatever for president. how many times can we fall for the lie that there is an important difference between the republican and democratic parties? i dare you to name ANYTHING of any consequence that clinton accomplished during his adminstration that a republican wouldn't vote for.
-- GAS should be $4.00 per gallon, and the taxes should go to alternative energy development. we can put a man on the moon but we still drive cars that get under fifty miles per gallon . . .
-- THE CIA SHOULD BE ABOLISHED. what's it fer?
-- NATO SHOULD BE ABOLISHED. what's it fer?
-- NO MORE ARMS EXPORTS from the united states. period. peace starts at home, particularly when we are the biggest arms exporting country in the world.
-- WE REALLY, REALLY, REALLY NEED the sort of health care system every other industrialized nation on earth has. if you argue with this you are a shithead, or are a rich, unfeeling asshole. or both.
-- RELIABLE, EFFICIENT, CHEAP, PUBLIC TRANSPORT. see above for what sort of people disagree with me on this.
-- ESSENTIALLY (or, better yet, actually) FREE PUBLIC EDUCATION (including university) should be the core of our nation. it is the core of most other industrialized nations.
-- THE PEOPLE OF MORGANTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA, should be able to watch upn. how are we supposed to get our trek on?
-- THE CUBS should continue to suck. i don't think the brief euphoria of seeing them do well would be good for me, in the long run.
-- THE WHO was the greatest rock band ever. then come the clash, then the police, THEN the stones.
as an underpaid underachiever who may never own anything other than books, i fully endorse this article:
Home-Buying Up Among Lame-O's
here's another sign that the end of the world is nigh: there is a figure skating thing on tnt right now and the guy was just skating, dressed as cartman from southpark, while lip synching to "come sail away". he then stripped to an old woman costume to skate to "dude looks like a lady". KILL ME NOW!!!
birgit's grandfather died thursday.
he was almost 96 and had been painfully ill for some months now, so in a way it is good that he died now rather than lingering in the nether world between life and death. the bad thing, of course, is that he was much loved and will be missed.
there is another reason i'm posting this, though. you see, mr hesse was one of the "good germans." he did not, to my knowledge, save people from the camps or anything like that, but he did do something rather remarkable: he refused to help do something that he knew was wrong. . .
during ww2 he was impressed to serve in the occupation forces in the netherlands. along with a few other guys, however, he snuck off and made his way back home. he then hid for the remainder of the war. if more soldiers, in more wars, had that sort of basic courage we would live in a happier world, i think.
i spoke with him about this (and recorded our conversation) but he didn't want to talk about it much. what he really wanted to talk about was how evil people like the nazis were and what fools people of my generation were if we averted our eyes to their activities.
ludwig hesse was a son, husband, brother, father, grandfather, farmer, lover of karnival, catholic, dirty old man (in a cute way), traitor to a cause served so blindly (and not so blindly) by so many, and a hero.
scott hipped me to this:
Chavez Freed, Returns to Power in Venezuela (washingtonpost.com).
since i don't know a ton about chavez (see my previous post), i'll not come out and say this is necessarily a good thing. we shall see.
when i was an undergrad at southern miss, i took a latin american history survey course taught by dr orazio ciccarelli. at the beginning of the semester, dr ciccarelli told us (jokingly) that, every year, it is reasonable to expect that there would be either an earthquake or a coup / coup attempt in
venezuela. when i took the class, it was an earthquake. this year, it was a coup.
did you notice?
there was a coup in venezuela friday. the guy who was ousted, hugo chavez, was democratically elected. the military-backed new leader of the country is a businessman. guess what the u.s. position on the coup is? can't guess? read the link.
why would the u.s. get involved in a coup in venezuela (assuming, for a moment, that they did)? for one thing, there is a long historical precedence (dating back to the administration of james monroe) of the u.s. taking an active role in the affairs of latin american countries (see the histories of chile, honduras, guatemala, the dominican republic, haiti, cuba, mexico, panama, colombia, paraguay, peru, el salvador, and nicaragua for a few examples of this good neighborliness). for another thing, there is venzuela's principal export (other than pageant-winning young women): OIL.
we get more of our oil from venezuela than we do from iraq, saudia arabia, and kuwait combined. unsurprisingly, venezuela is a member of opec.
i don't know a ton about hugo chavez. i know he was a former military officer. i know he was involved in a coup attempt against another venezuelan president years ago. i know that, as president, he has made all sorts of radical / populist / socialist noises. i know he has openly befriended castro. i know that he has openly opposed the government of colombia and the u.s. participation in colombia's civil war / war on drugs.
given that, the u.s. certainly has motive enough to support his loss of status. after all, he clearly wasn't "with us." where does that leave him? you guessed it: "with the terrorists" (or, in this case, castro: he wants asylum in cuba and may get it).
so much for the idea that "everything changed" after 11 sept.
thanks to my parking garage story, i'm hit #8 in a google search for
rippon college. eek!
"the daily show" on comedy central is often quite funny. tonight, in his opening monologue, john stewart said: "peace. in hebrew its 'shalom'. in arabic, 'salaam'. but no matter how you say it, your fuckin' dreaming!"
that's funny because it shouldn't be, i reckon.
jeebus! now i don't know what to think! the explanation mike presented convinced me (more or less) that it really was a plane that crashed into the pentagon, but shelley has noted that the video provided by
CNN.com is dated 12 sept! it also appears to have been filmed at 5:37 pm!!! what the fuck?
anyway, i can't see the plane in the video. sigh.
i love most everything i've ever read from alexander cockburn anyway, so i REALLY love it when he writes about
my home region!
mike sent me the following, quite convincing
"Hunt the Boeing" Answers.
i must say, here, that while i know nothing of substance about construction engineering, aircraft of any sort, or the mechanics/physics of the collision between the two, i do know a fair bit about how conspiracy theories work. this one (the "hunt the boeing" one) follows the classic pattern: find an issue you know the authorities are loathe to discuss, find a few bits of ambiguous (especially to the untrained eye) "evidence", and ask questions that can never (truly) be given a definitive answer.
my verdict: rest easy, america! a large, fully-loaded passenger liner did, indeed, crash into the headquarters of your defense establishment! (somehow the conspiracy theory is more reassuring!)
i caught another cheater.
this one ALMOST owned up to it when i gave him the "is there something you want to tell me about your paper?" line. still, he fell short. he will now join all my other cheaters, richard nixon, ulysses s. grant, bill clinton, my little brother, enron executives, arthur anderson executives, and gary hart in that special level of secular hell reserved for people who just don't have the good sense to come clean when it is obvious that they've been caught.
since scott stole my thunder on the terrorism question, i propose that we play
"Hunt the Boeing!". the link is in german, but a summary suffices (and i'm certain english versions lurk on the web).
basically: why, in the photos of the damaged pentagon, do we see no evidence of a wrecked jetliner? was it really a car bomb? why are there so few photos of the crash sight in pennsylvania? was the plane shot down?
there are other questions. i have one: if the thing that damaged the pentagon wasn't a plane, then was the story of barbara olson calling her husband just a gag? if she wasn't on the plane (because there was no plane) then how did she die?
scott and i chatted, some time ago, about what constituted "terrorism" and, by extention, whou could/should be called a terrorist. the good people at FAIR have issued the following regarding this issue (not that they were following our chat, but that they and others are obviously thinking along the same lines). please read:
'Terrorism' Is a Term That Requires Consistency and comment appropriately.
it is a sad commentary on the popularity of one’s blog when the requests of two people represent the demands of a solid majority of one’s regular readership . . .
such is the case with a request from scott and shelley, however. i will now, therefore, relate my (rather embarrassing) parking garage story.
the year was 1993. america was enjoying the first heady days of the clinton administration. for the moment there was no talk of bridges to the twenty-first century, one could still use “floppy” floppy disks, and brittney spears could be believed when she claimed to be a virgin. it was a simpler time: 50 home runs in a season were still impressive, joe camel was still entertaining children with his zany antics, and internet use involved telnetting and gophering and looking at monochrome screens. . .
and so, having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me in hattiesburg, i thought i would fly about a little and see the german part of the world. it was a way i had of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. i signed on to be an exchange student at rheinische-friedrich-wilhelms universitaet,
bonn.
there was a large group of us: from u. of southern miss; u. of wisc.; u. of fla; u. of tenn.; rippon college; lake forest college; kalamazoo college; and others. [aside: while looking to cop a bit more melville i stumbled upon this: “grand contested election for the presidency of the united states -- whaling voyage by one ishmael -- bloody battle in affghanistan”. creepy, eh?]
i blame the university. we arrived on a tuesday and, on friday, the department responsible for us all threw us a kegger (this was in a university-owned building above the mcdonald’s on “friedensplatz”, if you know bonn). we drank and drank and drank free german beer (many of us for the very first time). that was the START of the evening. i went off with several of the other exchange students to a disco of some sort and did more drinking (it was in the “kaiserpassage”) and then to a late night place (cafe goettlich) for still more drinking. my memory cuts out after that.
my memory picks back up with me in a grassy area. it was raining (i had on my rain coat. scott: do you remember my old yellow rain slicker?). it occurred to me that i was alone and that i did not know where i was. i sought escape. this led me into a parking garage of some sort (not a very large one), the gate to which was closed. i found a door. when i opened it, an alarm went off. i rushed up a short flight of stairs, out another door, and onto the street. i listened and heard a train. i used this to (incorrectly) orient myself (remember: i had only been in the town a few days). i found streetcar tracks and followed them to an esso station on what i later discovered to be reuterstrasse. at the night window i asked, in broken german, the way to the street on which i lived (rheinallee). the guy at the window laughed and said, in flawless german, that that street was in bad godesburg (my neighborhood) and that i was in the wrong part of town. he then pointed me in the direction of the subway which could lead me home. i crossed the reuterbruecke and went to the “museum koenig” subway stop. by this time it was late enough in the morning for service to have recommenced (i.e. i had been out all night).
along the way i found a twenty mark note in my jacket pocket. i wondered what it could be doing there and thought it best that i put it in my wallet. it was at this point that i discovered that i no longer had a wallet. i frantically, desperately hoped that at some point over the course of my blackout i had gone home, taken off my wallet (more on that in a moment) and then gone back out. “it will be in my room”, i told myself. it wasn’t.
after a brief, fitful sleep, i called a few people who had been out with me. no one had any ideas. i checked the bars i’d been to. they had no knowledge of my wallet. so i gave up and went to the embassy to report. it was closed (it was saturday). i called home and had my credit cards canceled. i had an unpleasant weekend. on monday morning i went to the university to ask for help from the guy who handled exchange students (and had organized the kegger). he called the city lost and found bureau. someone had turned it in!
i went to the lost and found bureau, in the stadthaus, paid a ten mark handling fee, and got my wallet with all contents intact (passport, university i.d., two credit cards, subway pass, and over 100 marks). amazing! the woman at the office told me that someone living on weberstrasse had turned it in. i went to the address, looked at the house, and stirred a very vague memory of having been there the night before. i still don’t know why.
here’s the thing: the place where my wallet was found was about two miles from the cafe i last remember visiting and about 5 miles from the place i lived. i had no reason for being there that i can imagine. another funky thing is that i “wore” my wallet on a nylon strap UNDER my jacket and UNDER my shirt. since the strap was not damaged (i still have it) and my body was undamaged, i must have taken it off myself. but why? meanwhile, the great shroud of the rhein rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago . . .
any song can be made cool if tom waits sings it (or you sing it in a tom waits voice). try it! try it with "every rose has its thorn" by poison . . .
We both lie silently still
in the dead of the night
Although we both lie close together
We feel miles apart inside
Was it something I said or something I did
Did the words not come out right
Though I tried not to hurt you
Though I tried
But I guess that's why they say
Chorus:
Every rose has its thorn
Just like every night has its dawn
Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song
Every rose has its thorn
Yeah it does
I listen to our favorite song
playing on the radio
Hear the DJ say loves a game
of easy come and easy go
But I wonder does he know
Has he ever felt like this
And I know that you'd be here somehow
If I could have let you know somehow
I guess
Chorus
Though it's been a while now
I can still feel so much pain
Like a knife that cuts you the wound heals
but the scar, that scar remains
I know I could have saved a love that night
If I'd known what to say
Instead of makin' love
We both made our separate ways
But now I hear you found somebody new
and that I never meant that much to you
To hear that tears me up inside
And to see you cuts me like a knife
I guess
Chorus
i just saw something on tv that reminded of something i wanted to blog about a while back . . .
i remember visiting the following malls (assume the word "mall" follows each title): parkway center (pittsburgh); century three (pittsburgh); morgantown (morgantown, wv); mountaineer (morgantown); the one in clarksburg, wv; san jacinto (baytown, tx); the galleria (houston); pasadena's mall (pasadena, tx); the one in metarie, la; the one in slidell, la; riverwalk (new orleans); the superdome (new orleans); the one in gulfport, ms; two right next to each other (!) in mobile, al; the one next to the interstate in pensacola, fl; one in panama city, fl; turtle creek (hattiesburg, ms); cloverleaf (hattiesburg, ms); the one in tupelo, ms; three in tulsa, ok; the old one in meridian, ms; university (tuscaloosa, al); mcfarland (tuscaloosa); two in montgomery, al; lenox square (atlanta); west lake (bessemer, al); the galleria (hoover, al); brookwood (homewood, al); western hills (midfield, al); century plaza (birmingham, al); eastwood (birmingham, al); hoover square (hoover) . . .
WHY ARE THERE SO MANY MALLS? WHY DO I GO TO THEM? more importantly, why do old, dying malls make me feel so sad? why do i anthropomorphize them (like the old toy nobody plays with anymore)?
tonight the movie class watched "platoon". this is the second time i've seen it and it confirmed something i have suspected since the first time (not long after it came out): i don't much care for it.
don't get me wrong: i like it more than "the green berets" (the last film we watched). i just don't like it much. i far prefer "full metal jacket" and "apocalypse now". and, although they have less to do with the fighting of vietnam, i prefer "dead presidents" and oliver stone's other vietnam movie, "born on the fourth of july".
"platoon" was just too . . . simple? i don't know. i know much of it is a reflection of stone's own experience, so i don't really doubt it. it just doesn't do much for me.
incidentally, willem dafoe has (imagine the voice of the comic book guy from "the simpsons") the "worst death scene EVER." sigh.
while working / putzing around, i have taken to having my computer (using itunes) shuffle through collections of songs on my harddrive randomly. i have (among others) a playlist of songs with political connotations. if only i had my own radio station . . .
here's what's come up (notice the occaisional coincidence in themes) so far:
billie holiday "god bless the child"
lou reed "dirty blvd"
tin machine "under the god"
the who "baba o'riley"
sex pistols "anarchy in the uk"
the police "one world (not three)"
big country "what are you working for?"
talking heads "life during wartime"
public enemy "what side you on?"
midnight oil "blue sky mining"
finally: a u.s. foreign policy measure i support!
U.S. Drops Cats Into Belgium
the monday "headlines" on
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart reminded me of "why they hate us" (tm).
the story was on the easter egg roll at the white house. the white house chef explained how many thousands of eggs he would be preparing and stewart cut in to say (something like): to which thousands of afgani children remarked "to be part of a wonderful feast i assume . . ." cut back to the chef, who explained that they would be dyed and rolled across the lawn of the white house. sigh.
all of scott's comments appear twice. all of scott's comments appear twice.
