Who Knew?: May 2005 Archives

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May 31, 2005

Don't Blame the Bandleader

by Jeremy

For what it's worth, that budding Al Qaeda terrorist who claims to be a jazz musician evidently is indeed a serious jazz bassist. He, or someone with the same name and spelling, played on this 1987 Abbey Lincoln album.

Whereas you or I would be proud to share an album credit with Abbey Lincoln, I can't imagine an Islamo-fascist would take much pride in having played second fiddle to a liberated American woman. The man is of course innocent until proven guilty, but the mind boggles at the very idea of a Jazz musician being so impoverished of soul.

Prosecutors claim that between 2003 and this month, the two men had multiple meetings and conversations with a confidential source and an undercover FBI agent, who was acting as an al Qaeda recruiter.
During the meetings, Shah agreed to provide martial arts and hand-to-hand combat training to al Qaeda members while Sabir agreed to give medical help to wounded jihad fighters in Saudi Arabia, the complaint said.

UPUDATE: Also FWIW, Shah's mother is standing by him:

Shah's mother, Marlene Jenkins, called the charges against her son "ridiculous."
"He's no terrorist," Jenkins, of Albany, N.Y., told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel for Monday's editions. She described her son as a jazz musician who helped her manage her properties.

I have to admit that I find "he's a jazz musician" to be a somewhat convincing denial, which means I'd have to recuse myself if I were serving jury duty on this case. But it reminds me of a scam some guy tried to pull on me and Cara in Manhattan a few years ago. He had a long story about a rack of Armani suits and needing us to lend him twenty bucks. "Oh, but don't worry" he said, in a badly executed gay man's half-lisp, "I'm not _thsome kind of crook or _thsomething -- I'm gay." And yes, he splayed his fingers out against his chest, and I think he may then have given me a little shove with that same hand. I think he spared us the foppish hiccup.

It wasn't a very good performance or he never would have had to actually say he was gay. For that trick to stand any chance of actually working it would have to remain subliminal. So we told him sorry, that we were not buying it. I wish I had shared the above critique of his performance, but then you're better off not provoking street criminals.

But even he wasn't planning to train Al Qaeda terrorists to kill us. He was probably just a heroin addict or something.

Posted by Jeremy at 07:31 PM | Comments (1)

May 30, 2005

Memorial Day

by Jeremy

In this worlwide civil war between the experiment of liberal democracy and that ruthless old order, whose medieval terror still refuses to let go, there really aren't any words I can think of to replace what Abraham Lincoln said in contemplation of the unthinkable horror that was the battle of Gettysburg...

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Posted by Jeremy at 07:20 AM | Comments (0)

May 28, 2005

Movie Stars

by Jeremy

Why do they make these things so hard to open?

This is my list in no particular order:

Of course you have to leave people out of a list like this and so I did. I erred on the side of role models for a boy growing up in a very confusing world. And I kept it in my pants, as it were, when it came to selecting actresses. Myrna Loy, I guess, is the only woman on this list who could have had a career even if she stank as an actress, and Bette Davis certainly had her moments. But all of these people are on my list because they come alive on screen in a way that I just don't think I see in anyone more contemporary. They all feel like they are my close friends who happen to have been inserted into old movies as if in a dream.

And I guess I'm just not as mesmerized by contemporary film actors.

I think it has something to do with the freshness of the technology back in the first half of the 20th century. People in those days had their chance to project the essence of themselves through this miraculous door that had opened up in the firmament. It was a bit of a miracle, and yet it was simultaneously just another example of the explosion of technology that was transforming the world like never before. And there was all that dialectical tension against the realities of the world wars, and the depression. All of the actors on my list somehow convey the intense mystery of all that in their eyes and in their mannerisms. And they were all, at their best, extremely convincing actors.

These days films are just another art form and there aren't many actors who give me that sense that they are aware of some looming existential moment that they know we are all trying to keep our cool about.

It's as if they're aware that you're not really there to see the movie. There's something else that's going on. It's like black magic. But no one, not even the actors themselves, quite know what it is.

Cary Grant is a good example of that. He often has a knowing look on his face that seems to transcend what's intended for the actual scene he's in. It's like we all know each other back on the farm in Kansas and we're just pretending that they are 'movie stars' and we are 'audience members.' The art form now seems to be geared toward making it all seem as if it's really happening so that we forget it's not real. And I think I like the old way better.

Posted by Jeremy at 12:08 PM | Comments (9)

May 27, 2005

More Senate Strife

by Jeremy

Quetzalcoatl Nominated by Pres Bush for 9th Circuit Court of Appeals

Democrats are expected to filibuster the nomination of Mesoamerican feathered serpent god, Quetzalcoatl this week, angering Republican leaders.

Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist angered Democrats this week with some bluntly worded remarks regarding attempts to delay this nomination.

"Mr. Coatl has a long standing record of upholding the law and reaping vengeance only where it is due. Perhaps that makes some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle nervous."

Robert Byrd, the fiesty Democratic firebrand from somewhere south of Asbury Park, shot back a fiesty, firebrandy retort:

"That's what you say. I have it on good authority that Mr. Quetzal-whatever is a mouthpiece for the war mongering and greed of the fearsome god Huitzilopotchli, and we can't have that kind of thing going on in the federal courts. Next thing you know we'll have people being sentenced to have their hearts cut out on the top of some pyramid in Tenochtitlán. It's a travesty and a crying shame."

This angered Frist who responded that Quetzalcoatl has never had any connection to the notorious Huitzilopotchli. "That's a cynical piece of Aztec disinformation and what's more I think Senator Byrd knows that. What infuriates me is that we wouldn't have to have this debate if the ancient records of the Toltecs had not been burned by Senator Byrd himself." Frist refers to allegations that Byrd, while a young intern for the conquistador Hernan Cortez, actively participated in burning the only records that could have given irrefutable documentary evidence as to the exact nature of Mr. Quetzalcoatl's early career, thus rendering moot a lawsuit by the ACLU to obtain these records through the Freedom of Information Act.

President Bush, though taking a hands off approach to the Senate turmoil over his nomination, nevertheless made one comment during a press conference Wednesday:

"Heck, I'd be proud to have this capable, experienced, and wise Meso-American serving the American People in the Federal Courts. I think he'll bring a toughness and compassion, not to mention -- heh -- some very colorful clothing."

* * * To see the previous posts in this series click here.

Posted by Jeremy at 12:19 PM | Comments (2)

Transparency Hits Canada

by Jeremy

I got a kick out of this headline in the New York Times earlier this week:

Was Canada Just Too Good to Be True?

[...]

The recent spectacle of scandal and tawdry politics has some Canadians now wondering if all the self-congratulatory virtue is not mixed with some old-fashioned hypocrisy, or what Robert Fulford, a leading literary journalist and columnist characterizes as "a fable" expounded by generations of Liberal leaders. "During recent decades our politicians have told us a sweet bedtime story about Canada being an exceptionally compassionate country, a world leader in multiculturalism and wonderfully generous to the poor countries," Mr. Fulford said. "All of this expresses something called 'Canadian values.' All lies."

Commentary? I've got none. That's what Photoshop is for.

Posted by Jeremy at 12:35 AM | Comments (4)

May 26, 2005

Posting Today

by Jeremy

'He says he's posting but he's not posting. What gives with that meshuganeh coyote blogger?', you ask. Well fair enough.

I expect to post on world affairs later today. But here's what I've been doing lately...

I've been more active in the Gastroparesis online support group sharing my chintzy little tidbits of advice (don't eat popcorn. Stuff like that). It's even occasionally relevant to topics of interest to this blog. There's a guy, for example, who's in the military and whose unit is shipping out to Iraq but he isn't allowed to go because of his severe GP. People tell him he's lucky but he would trade places with any of his comrades, he says. Maybe I'll try to get his permission to post more on this. As bad as GP can be for some people (I'm perfectly fine these days) I would bet this says more about his courage than it says about his illness.

And I've been building our fledgling e-commerce empire. More on that in the weeks ahead. The offset printing bit of it has been online for some time already. That's here.

I'll get back on track with the real world later today.

Posted by Jeremy at 01:51 PM | Comments (1)

May 22, 2005

Noisy Neighbors

by Jeremy

To the Colhua, Tecpanec, Acolhua, the Aztecs, and perhaps the Toltecs, they were known as the 'Coyotl.' When they wake me up in the middle of a Wednesday night they are referred to as the 'fucking yapping sons of bitches' which does not offend them and anyway I mean it affectionately.

They are actually magnificent canine freaks and they visit our property often enough but this is the first time I've managed to get a good recording of them.

So no Waiting Dogs today, but this is just as good.

Click here for a taste of the barbaric-yawp-a-thon that deprived me of my rest the other night.

Don't get me wrong -- I really do think they're wonderful.

Posted by Jeremy at 08:56 PM | Comments (1)

Sorry for the downtime

by Jeremy

I have had some hosting and domain issues, hence no blog, no email. If you're seeing this then...well...you're seeing this and that's good.

Thanks for checking back!

Posted by Jeremy at 04:17 AM | Comments (0)

May 20, 2005

Why I Don't Quit Blogging

by Jeremy

The short answer is that I have absolutely no idea. I'm not breaking any traffic records, as you'll notice. And in the week or so since I've decided to return to active blogging, I've been called the following:

douche
scum
stupid
a bad writer
droll (that one hurt my feelings)
a 'fuckin disgrace to society piece a shit'

I think I may be missing one or two. And this blog is only getting a few dozen visitors a day. I do take that sort of stuff more or less in stride, but it's hardly a recipe for setting aside all my other interests so I can bring on more of that crap.

But something is giving me strength to come back (other than prescription pharmaceuticals). And I think it has something to do with needing to know that there are at least a few people out there who have not completely lost their minds. I think that readers of this blog have been disproportionately sane and good people. Thank you for that.

One thing I'd more or less given up on, though, is my search for people on the Left whom I can disagree with and trust at the same time. But I'm currently thinking that Marc Cooper might be such a person:

Here is what he says about the Leftist notion that the U.S. should pull out of Iraq immediately:

I find it extremely difficult to imagine that being a persuasive counter (at least for those who give a rat?s ass about the Iraqi people themselves) to the status quo.
Indeed, it?s a moral forfeit that cedes undue and dangerous credence to the Bush admin?s disastrous stay-the-course strategy.

We need a third position that moves toward an end of the U.S. occupation but does not, in the process, abandon the Iraqi people to car-bomber fascists.

It will be of little consequence to those blown apart by suicide-bound fanatics to stand over their corpses and say: ?It?s all Bush?s fault. There was nothing we could do.?

And here's Cooper on the filibuster:

The best way to get better judicial nominees is not to defend to the death the most anti-democratic of parliamentary maneuvers, but rather to start figuring out how to win electoral majorities.

If the Democratic Party and/or the Left is going to have any relevance it's going to be necessary for people to hold their noses and plunge back into the cesspit of reality along with the rest of us. I'm much more likely to have my opinions influenced by Marc Cooper's honesty than by some angry person's abusive tantrum.

Are people like Edward Kennedy, Robert Byrd, Howard Dean, and Al Gore farther Left than Marc Cooper? Or do they simply thrive on the sound of their own snarling and snapping and on the poisonous energy they're able to draw from an angry crowd?

I'm not just blogging to lash out at the Left. What I want is for the Left to wake up and start making sense again. I don't have to agree with you but, for the love of God, stop bullshitting yourself (I don't mean you, of course. But I do mean you over there).

Posted by Jeremy at 10:14 AM | Comments (7)

May 19, 2005

People in Glass Houses

by Jeremy

As you're probably aware, Bill Moyers is accusing the new chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Ken Tomlinson, of engaging in a campaign on behalf of the Bush administration to silence dissent on PBS. I don't pretend to know anything about Tomlinson or what he's trying to accomplish. But this made me remember something I'd heard some years ago about Moyers.

Here's what Moyers said recently about Tomlinson. As you'll soon see, the first paragraph is an uncanny description of himself back in the 1960's (an accusation he might not deny, but one worth backing up with facts, as I intend to do here). First, Moyers on Tomlinson:

"We?re seeing unfold a contemporary example of the age old ambition of power and ideology to squelch and punish journalists who tell the stories that make princes and priests uncomfortable.
[...]

I would like to have given Mr. Tomlinson the benefit of the doubt. But this is the man who was running The Voice of America back in 1984 when a partisan named Charlie Wick was politicizing the United States Information Agency of which Voice of America was a part. It turned out there was a blacklist of people who had been removed from the list of prominent Americans sent abroad to lecture on behalf of America and the USIA. What?s more, it was discovered that evidence as to how those people were chosen to be on the blacklist -- more than 700 documents -- had been shredded. Among those on the lists of journalists, writers, scholars and politicians were dangerous left wing subversives like Walter Cronkite, James Baldwin, Gary Hart, Ralph Nader, Ben Bradley, Coretta Scott King and David Brinkley.

The person who took the fall for the black list was another right-winger. He resigned. Shortly thereafter, so did Kenneth Tomlinson, who had been one of the people in the agency with the authority to see the lists of potential speakers and allowed to strike people?s names.

Let me be clear about this: there is no record, apparently, of what Ken Tomlinson did. We don?t know whether he supported or protested the blacklisting of so many American liberals. Or what he thinks of it now."

According to Morley Safer, in a Vietnam memoir published in the early 1990's, Moyers is no stranger to using federal intimidation to silence dissent.

The incident came in the wake of Morley Safer's famous "Zippo" report in which he broadcast a story about American soldiers with whom he was traveling in Vietnam torching a "complex of villages" called Cam Ne. This is what Safer wrote about the reaction to his report [emphasis mine]:

That evening I shipped the film report and narration of the Cam Ne story to New York and telexed the story in written form. The reaction to it was incendiary. The Defense Department laid siege to Fred Friendly, then president of CBS News, demanding that I be recalled from Vietnam. The marines felt they'd been stabbed in the back.
[...]

The most outraged reaction to Cam Ne came from the White House The morning after the broadcast the president of the United States, Lyndon Johnson, telephoned his good friend and member of the president's Advisory Commission on the United States Information Agency, Frank Stanton, who was also the president of CBS.

"Hello, Frank, this is your president."

"Yes, Mr. President."

"Frank, you trying to fuck me?"

The president then went on to give Stanton, one of the coolest, most aloof men I have ever known, a dreadful tongue lashing. He described graphically how CBS and I, and by inference Stanton himself, had publicly desecrated the flag. A few days later he summoned Stanton to the White House and in a small office off the Oval Office, with Bill Moyers, then his press secretary, continued the harangue. The meeting then took a much darker turn. Johnson threatened that, unless CBS got rid of me and "cleaned up its act," the White House would "go public" with information about Safer's "Communist ties."

Johnson claimed that he and Moyers "had the goods" on me as a result of an investigation launched by the FBI, the CIA, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. [Safer is Canadian]

[...]

I was oblivious to the impact of the Cam Ne story until months later, when I returned to New York for a rest and was stunned that people were still talking about it.

Bill Moyers's role in the affair has since made me feel slightly uneasy in his presence. On two occasions I asked him about it, and each time he laughed it off as just a fit of temper by the president and that he, Moyers, was the good guy trying to play peacemaker. Not quite true. After the Cam Ne story, Murray Fromson, then a CBS News correspondent, was asked by New York to drop in on Moyers in Washington and to try to smooth the troubled relationship between CBS News and the White House. Fromson had become friendly with Moyers during the 1960 election campaign. The meeting had hardly begun when Moyers snapped at Fromson: "Why do you have to use foreigners to cover that war? A Canadian and a Vietnamese?"

[...]

I find it hard to believe that Bill Moyers would engage in character assassination over one brief evening news broadcast-even given the political imperatives of the moment. But I confess, I find it harder not to believe it. His part in Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover's bugging of Martin Luther King's private life, the leaks to the press and diplomatic corps, the surveillance of civil rights groups at the 1964 Democratic convention, and his request for damaging information from Hoover on members of the Goldwater campaign suggest that he was not only a good soldier but a gleeful retainer feeding the appetites of Lyndon Johnson.

It's all too confusing. Bill Moyers, the sometimes overly pious public defender of liberal virtue, the First Amendment, and the rights of minorities, playing the role of Iago.

You can draw your own conclusions about whether to listen to Moyers when he's out trying to rescue the world (and comparing the resilience of his career to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's in the paragraph that starts "Let me assure you...").

This puts a rather interesting spin on the intensity with which Moyers expresses his moral outrage, wouldn't you say? There is, as I often say, something psychological going on (not to mention something hypocritical).

Update: here's something else Safer had said about the reaction to the Cam Ne incident. I think this is apt:

The Cam Ne story was broadcast over and over again in the United States and overseas. It was seized upon by Hanoi as a propaganda tool and by scoundrels of the left and right, in the Pentagon and on campuses. To the peace movement it was The Revealed Truth of the administration's spiraling fall to fascism. To the war movement it was blatant evidence of the perfidy of journalism.

Neither the Left nor the Right have a monopoly on the truth. It's that simple.

Posted by Jeremy at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)

May 16, 2005

Fact or Fiction? You decide.

by Jeremy

Before the advent of film, radio and television, a writer of fanciful literature could make a decent living reducing readers to fits of laughter, shock, even tears. When Shakespeare penned works that are now generally considered to be literary masterpieces, he did so with the goal -- and it was richly rewarded -- of inducing deafeningly raucous reactions from unbathed audiences at the Globe theater.

Dickens was like a rock star of his day.

There aren't a lot of writers who can get that kind of reaction anymore.

Part of the reason, I think, is that we today have an addiction to what we consider to be 'reality.' We're far too literal minded. Scarcely does a story begin before we are asking, 'yes, but is it true?'

Of course, that's the wrong question, isn't it. In the realm of fiction it is proper to ask not 'is it true?' but 'could it be true?'

Not only has this story caused the kind of riots among the common folk that would make Shakespeare writhe in envy, like any good work of speculative fiction, it could even be true. Who know. Does it matter?

While the US magazine Newsweek has said it was wrong to report that a copy of the Koran was flushed down a toilet at Guantanamo Bay by US military interrogators, sources in Kabul maintain that the demonstrations that spread all across Afghanistan last week in reaction to the Newsweek report, have the potential to turn into a mass movement against the foreign presence in the country. The sources maintain that various factors have melded to fuel the anti-US riots in Afghanistan which left at least 15 people dead.

If Shakespeare were alive today he'd be writing for Newsweek.

Posted by Jeremy at 06:24 PM | Comments (5)

May 15, 2005

An Iraqi Film at Cannes

by Cara

How does Iraqi film maker Hiner Saleem feel about the war in Iraq and Iraqi prospects for the future?

"I am extremely pleased."

He also says:

"I am against war of any kind," Saleem said. "But we didn't have the luxury to say, 'For the time being, we will be exterminated'.

More Guest Dogs

by Jeremy

Patrick Lasswell.

Here's what Patrick tells us about these two:

"Two cute dogs waiting in the back of a pickup truck at the Forest Service / BLM offices in John Day, Oregon. These kids were waiting in the truck when we arrived, but when we were leaving the building, they had gone out in search of their pal. When they heard the door of the building open, they loped back to the truck as if they had been there the whole time. Once they realized we weren't there to enforce the rules, they went back to looking around. Clearly these dogs were used to taking care of themselves on the farm."

* * * To see the previous posts in this series, click here.

Posted by Jeremy at 12:32 PM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2005

Dangerfield, Will Robinson

by Jeremy

Don't puzzle too long over the title -- it's six in the morning and I haven't slept enough.

What I mean to do here is to tell you that the guy behind this is an evil genius, though for the record I think Instapundit is a much better blog than this site would imply. But it's always exciting to see the results of some other PHP coder's perverse ambitions and sleepless nights.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Jeremy at 05:59 AM | Comments (1)

May 12, 2005

Where My Head is at

by Jeremy

In the comments to my previous post someone asked whether my failing to post about Iraq lately means that I have decided that I was wrong. My lengthy reply shunted all the blog voltage out of my brain, so I'm posting it here as well...

* * *

Well I stopped writing about anything at all for a while.

I have felt it important to advocate for intervention in Iraq specifically because it has been something that most people find too painful to think objectively about, but it's nevertheless something that is part of a larger urgency for the world's super power to take some sort of stand against fascism instead of continuing to profit from it.

But it isn't a pleasant thing to think about for me either, especially as I'm being accused of supporting genocide, or whatever it is people think I'm doing.

So to answer your question, No. I in no way think that I was wrong to support this war.

Nor am I wrong in continuing to think that there was a moral necessity to free the slaves here at home, though the horror of the Civil War is something that is very nearly unthinkable. How can you read about the battle of Gettysbury -- in which there were more than 40,000 casualities in 3 days -- and still support emancipation? Some people go about this problem by denying that the Civil War had anything to do with slavery. I think that's a little too convenient.

My point is that being an abolitionist could not have felt very pleasant or morally clean back then, just as supporting intervention against the rise of Islamism and fascism in the Middle East doesn't feel very pleasant or morally clean now.

I heard an anti-war person say recently, in a heavily sarcastic voice, "gee whiz, I really feel good about the world now." And my unuttered response was "who the fuck cares how we feel about the world?" Is he saying he felt good about the world when Saddam's police force were bulldozing freshly slaughtered women and children into mass graves? Possibly, but only because he didn't have to think about the fact that things like that were happening in order to maintain a 'stable' Middle East so as to bring us cheaper gas than anyone else in the world has ever had. That was blood for oil, by the way.

We can probably agree that the occupation was mismanaged. We can agree that freeing the American slaves resulted in a century and a half of African Americans living in poor and violent slums because the emancipation was handled poorly. I'm not sure how to feel good about any of this.

One thing I'm sure of, however, is that pretending to have the one morally pristine opinion is more about self-soothing than about the truth. My approach to self-soothing has been to take a sabbatical and then to blog about Che Guevara and to take a bold stand against serial killers. The thematic thread that runs through these topics, though, is that I think there is something regarding the causes of extremely bad human behavior that we as a society have been failing to understand.

To wit: bad behavior is part of human nature, so there have to be checks against bad behavior before it gets so extreme that it's impossible to ignore. It's hard to know how to apply this principle to North Korea, of course, but it would be a helpful principle to bring to the table when confronting dictators who put political dissidents into concentration camps.

Posted by Jeremy at 12:40 PM | Comments (2)

May 11, 2005

What Makes This Possible?

by Jeremy

In his statement, Hobbs said that after an argument ensued, he punched his daughter and her friend, then stabbed them, Pavletic said.
Laura was stabbed 20 times, including once in each eye, and Krystal was stabbed 11 times, he said.

[...]

On Wednesday morning, Waller told CNN the killings were among the worst he has ever seen.

"I think what you had is a person who is unlike the rest of us, and he can't control his rage and something set him off, and it was resulting in one of the most brutal, vicious attacks on two little girls that I've ever seen," he said.

"It's so horrendous and fortunately so outside the realm of normal human activity."

Can anyone really be expected to forsee a monstrous act of this sort? He did, after all, have an argument with his wife once:

"He started chasing people around with a chainsaw that was running," he said. "Somebody hit him with a shovel, knocked him down. Those people held him until the police arrived."

So what's needed? Should he have had a three day commitment in a psychiatric hospital? Would he have fared better under a more progressive socio-economic infrastructure in which he had a share in the means of production? Would he be happier in a world where every culture is respected and shares equally in global resources?

I guess I don't think so.

Is it his parents' fault? (if so, then who's fault was that?)

Posted by Jeremy at 02:13 PM | Comments (2)

May 10, 2005

Constructive Criticism

by Jeremy

"Bad writing is droll, Jeremy, and you're a bad writer."

This was written to me in the comments here. If you take a moment and work some elementary Pythagorean logic on that statement, what you'll come up with is that I am droll. That's the stinger.

I was going to put this up in my testimonials, but I don't think I really need to have more than one insult there. It's possible to carry the Yankee Doodle thing too far. And there's something much more pure about the one that's there now. "You're a total loss." I like that because it's unspecific and it's biblically all-encompassing. Of course one is tempted to say that the second phrase, "don't give up your day job" undermines the suppleness of the first; it's gratingly concrete and prosaic where the first is ethereal, sublime. But that's in large part why it works. It's the duality of pure vs. base, Geilgud vs. DeNiro, if you would, that makes it work for me. On the one hand it would probably have been better had I not been conceived. On the other: a career change would be ill advised at present. That's poetry.

I was going to post for real today, but I got wrapped up in a food fight (red herrings were involved, balls were licked).

I'll post something for real tomorrow.

Posted by Jeremy at 10:01 PM | Comments (0)

May 05, 2005

Viva el Something-or-Other

by Jeremy

If you're like me you see the beatified Che Guevara as a mirage in the desert that is the fashionable Left's conception of human nature.

I've been thinking about this a lot because there are two Che posters hanging on the walls where I work every day. What I've realized is that the person my coworkers have built a shrine to is not the same person I see when I look at those graven images. Is that good enough? No. But it helps.

And here's a bit of technical innovation inspired by the above realization: I've created a way for you to beatify anyone. Anyone you want. You can do it on impulse, at will, whenever you feel the urge, using my new...

Che-lectro™ Plasma Generator

Here's an example:

If you come up with entertaining transformations of your own please email them to me (whoknew@pixeltrip.com), or email me your permalink if you post them.

Note the instructions on how to save your image by right-clicking and selecting "Copy image" because your usual methods will not work, though they may initially appear to (you'll end up with gibberish files). [PHP programming footnote: The problem should be fixable, but there is still something about manipulating page headers when transforming images on the fly that I'm evidently not grasping].

I've found that this works well with Kenny Rogers too. But go try it for yourself.

Posted by Jeremy at 07:20 AM | Comments (3)