Rantings of a Rude Yankee
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makkabee's LiveJournal:
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| Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 | | 8:53 am |
So, does the "Three strikes and you're out" rule apply here?
<url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-06/new-gop-racist-headache/>Yet another GOP insider in racist flap</url> You know, this is starting to look like a pattern... Also, check out the comments on that article. One guy actually tries to defend the GOP by saying it's the party of Lincoln and the Democrats are the party of Strom Thurmon [sic]. I'm as interested in history as the next guy, but I don't live in the past even if I sometimes pretend to work there. Thurmond (the d is part of his name, not his party designation) turned against the real Democratic party 60 years ago, running against the party's official candidate in the 1948 presidential election. He started endorsing GOP candidates in the 50s and officially joined the Republicans in 1964. The GOP gave him committee chairmanships, made him President Pro Tempore of the Senate... the GOP embraced Thurmond and his positions. When the Republicans return to the platform of Lincoln (strong central government supporting civil rights, education and internal improvements and paying for it with tax increases) they'll have the right to call themselves the Party of Lincoln again. To use his name while fighting against everything he stood for, as they're doing now, is an insult to his memory. Current Mood:  irritated | | Friday, July 3rd, 2009 | | 9:20 pm |
Sanford Sex Scandal Prompts Palin to Quit
Republican calls for the governor to resign in the wake of Sanford's Argentinian dalliance have prompted Sarah Palin to quit her post and leave Anchorage. In a press conference in Wasilla Palin declared "golly, is my face red!" when told that the Republican officials demanding the governor's resignation were referring specifically to the governor of South Carolina. "Somebody better tell all the other governors before they quit too. Well, maybe not the Democrats," she added with a wink. Okay, that may not be the actual reason, but she really has announced her resignation. You betcha! This is the best Fourth of July present since Vicksburg. edit: I just listened to Palin's resignation speech. I love how she explains that we can all learn from our soldiers' "never give up" spirit, and that's why she's resigning. She also talks about resigning so taxpayer money won't be wasted. I think she wants us to think she's talking about the stimulus package, but her resignation won't affect whether that gets spent or not. So either she's flat-out lying there, or there's a lot of money that will be spent only if she remains governor. Money spent on corruption investigations, impeachment hearings, that sort of thing. So if she's not lying, she's most likely skipping out of office a short step ahead of a major scandal and possibly criminal proceedings. Oh, and she even took a moment to deny climate change! So what happened to all those glaciers in Glacier National Park that aren't there anymore? Were they stolen by illegal immigrants to make ice sculptures for gay weddings? What a loon. Current Mood:  ecstatic | | Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 | | 3:06 pm |
Liberte! Egalite! Sang!
I'm always on the look-out for historically themed webcomics, but sadly they're rather thin on the ground. The ones I have found aren't pure historical fiction, but have some sort of fantastical element to them -- The Dreamer is a wonderful web-comic set in the American Revolution, but the main character is a modern girl who bounces between the two worlds, traveling to 18th century America in... well, in her dreams, obviously. It's still a wonderful webcomic and I highly recommend it, but it's not quite pure historical fiction. Rich's Comix Blog alternates between "Doctor Who"-themed fanfic comics (I hesitate to use the word fanfic, because it often implies low quality and these are very good) and The House of Paulus, a fantasy/alternate history comic set in an imperial Rome where the legions carry muskets and the Olympian gods are an active force in everyday life. Still not exactly what I'm looking for, but very entertaining. The only one I can think of off the top of my head with no sf elements at all to it is the 1938 spinoff to R.K. Milholland's Something Positive, now sadly on hiatus. The spin-off's on hiatus, I mean. S*P's still going strong. And of course several webcomics generally set in the present have done historical or pseudo-historical story-lines: Jamie Robertson's Clan of the Cats family of comics has done bits in medieval Scotland and T Campbell's Fans! did an extended time-travel story line, for instance. Today I've added a new comic to the list of almosts: Bite Me!, a humor comic about vampires during the French Revolution. Early 1790s stuff. I don't know how someone better versed in that historical period than I am would feel about it, but for me it fires on all cylinders. It's given me lots of laugh out loud moments and almost knocked me out of my chair once or twice. I strongly recommend this one. Of course the web's a big place and I'm sure there are plenty of others out there. I'd appreciate any other recommendations. Current Mood: amused | | Friday, June 26th, 2009 | | 2:14 pm |
A joiint production of Makkabee's warped subconscious and the Children's Television Workshop
So I’m in this institutional looking building – kind of an office building turned into a refugee center, by the feel of it – talking to the head of the Iranian dissident movement. Not Moussavi. The guy actually looks more like Rafsanjani, though it’s not him either – too young, for one thing. Maybe the guy I’m with is a bigwig in the Iranian exile community. At any rate he’s a VIP and it’s a big honor for me to be there talking to him. He talks for a while about his hopes and fears for Iran’s future, and eventually I stammer that I’m a big admirer of Persian culture. He asks what I admire about it and I mumble some high-school level factoid about the Persian legal system influencing the Arab world. He leans closer and turns his ear to me, asking me to repeat that. It looks like he’s wearing a hearing aid, but I’m not sure if the problem is he’s too deaf to hear what I’ve said or he just can’t believe anyone would say anything that lame to him. Once I’ve finally repeated myself loudly enough for him to register what I’ve said he seems oddly moved. He turns to me and asks “do you like porn?” Oh dear God, how do I deal with this? If I say the wrong thing I create an international incident. This is creepy, but I can’t afford to offend this man. Finally I just nod. He smiles and turns on a screen to display… the worst porn ever. I don’t mean the most disgusting outré fetish stuff, or the worst-acted, or the worst production values. I mean there’s no actual sex in this “porn.” It’s mostly unveiled women walking around in public and doing a little PDA snuggling. I mean, Jesus, I know the guy’s from an oppressive theocracy, but living down to the stereotype much here? One bit was even obvious CGI. Who’d CGI a couple walking through the park holding hands and talking about the possibility of maybe doing something more? I excused myself to go look for a pair of socks (apparently the dissident leader and I both like blue Thorloughs, though that seems like an odd reason for me to be assigned to him – assuming there’s any reason at all I’m there. At any rate I find my socks, unroll them, and out pops the biggest land arthropod I’ve ever seen. I think it’s a spider but I’m too busy scrambling away from the thing and looking for a shoe to count the legs and be sure. The thing’s gotta be six inches long, at least. After a couple of tries I find a good sturdy shoe and whallop the thing a couple of times, finally cracking its carapace and cutting the thing in half. “Is it dead?” a woman asks. “Unless cutting it in half just means there’ll be two of them running around now it is,” I reply and go to the bathroom to wash up. When I get back the spider-thing is gone. “Did you guys clean that up?” I ask. They assure my they have and I laugh nervously. “Good. For a second I was afraid it really had crawled away.” Visions of this thing never dying, always coming back in greater numbers like the hydra or the dust bunny from Beyond Zork briefly filled my head. Fortunately at that moment 3-2-1 Contact (a children's science show from the 80s) came on television. It wasn’t the show I remember from my childhood, apparently PBS was doing a relaunch. Barely suppressing a fanboyish squeal of delight I threw myself on a bed and watched, a huge grin on my face. The others looked at me skeptically. They were all younger than I was and didn’t really understand. “This is part of my childhood come back to life!” I told them. “Watch a few minutes and see if you still feel that way,” one of them responded. Maybe the problem wasn’t that they were too young to understand. Maybe they’d already seen it and knew that 3-2-1 Contact had been ruined the way so many properties have been ruined by a relaunch and re-envisioning by people who really didn’t understand the original’s appeal. They drove me home after that. As we pulled up to my place I told them about my dream about meeting the Iranian dissident leader and they agreed that that was rather odd. I started to tell them about my dream about the spider-thing but they reminded me that they were there, that that part had really happened. That was pretty much it. I’m awake now, and memories of the semipedalian spider, the pervy Persian and the rest are already fading. I’m left with just one question: was the 3-2-1 Contact relaunch any good or not? (Support for this dream comes from Iranian petrodollars, Larry Flint, Archer Daniels Midland, and viewers like you) | | Thursday, June 25th, 2009 | | 4:56 pm |
| | Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 | | 8:00 pm |
Crisis in South Carolina (NOT an American Civil War post)
Late last week Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina mysteriously vanished. As the Los Angeles Times reported: "Last Thursday, after the legislative session ended, Sanford left the governor's mansion, driving off in a black Suburban SUV. He did not take his security detail. He did not tell his lieutenant governor where he was going. He told his aides only that he needed to recharge his batteries. Don't call me, he told the staff, explaining that he planned to turn off his cellphone, I'll call you." Today our worst fears have been confirmed. He came back. Current Mood:  mischievous | | 4:03 am |
The Great American Passtime (no, not self-pity -- the other one)
My local minor league team was having "flashback night" -- hot dogs and soft drinks were 25 cents each, so my father and I went to a game. Is it a bad sign when the retro "flashback" uniforms look perfectly normal to you and the current models seem odd? Anyway, we had a great time -- it was a very exciting game, no one ever led by more than two runs, or more than one run after the third inning. There were several lead changes. And I got to see that rarest and most wondrous of events in baseball, a triple play. Funny thing about that. The triple play certainly happened -- everyone agrees on that. But how it happened... The home team had their two best runners on first and second with nobody out. They tried a hit and run to break up the possibility of a double play, but the batter hit a line drive out. I saw (or at least I remember seeing) the hitter line out to the short stop who tagged second base before the lead runner could even try to get back, then threw to first base to get the trailing runner the same way. A guy I talked to on the ferry ride home insisted that the fielder caught the ball, tagged second base and tagged the trailing runner as he slid into second for an unassisted triple play. The guy sitting behind me at the game said the batter lined out to the pitcher, who threw to second base to get the lead runner. I never found out whether he thought the fielder covering second threw to first or tagged out the trailing runner. It always amazes me when I get caught in the middle of a Roshomon effect like that. We'd all seen the same fairly basic sequence of events, but within a couple of hours disagreed about all but the vaguest details. Anyway, the home team came within one strike of winning before giving up the tying run, then got their own potential winning run to third with one out in the bottom of the ninth only to blow the opportunity. In the tenth the home team's pitcher struck out the side, except for that one pesky go-ahead home run he allowed. In the bottom of the tenth with two outs and a man on first the man at the plate struck out -- game over. Except it wasn't. The catcher couldn't handle the ball, and the batter who struck out reached first on the error while the baserunner moved all the way up to third. An improbable second chance. You should have heard the shouting, the cursing, and the trash talk coming from the row behind me -- and that was just from one 10-year old (or thereabouts) blonde girl. Her invective had such a wonderful element of prissiness to it, too. "Let me make one thing perfectly clear -- you suck!" She was like this cross between a schoolmarm and a football hooligan. At one point I very nearly saluted. So anyway, like I said the home team has this near-miraculous second chance. The next batter strikes out looking after a disputed call. Really came down to the wire, it did (if you don't mind me mixing sports metaphors). Great game. I really ought to go to these things more often. addendum: turns out we were all wrong about that triple play. I came closest, but it was the second baseman, not the shortstop who caught the line drive, tagged second and threw to first. | | Sunday, June 21st, 2009 | | 2:03 pm |
Harry Potter movie
I'm going to host another one of my opening weekend movie parties, this Time for Harry Potter 6: The Artist Formerly Known as Half-Blood Prince. The usual place. Anyone interested in attending, let me know. | | Friday, June 19th, 2009 | | 9:37 pm |
Festival, FESTIVAL!!!
Well, nothing that exciting. It's not the Red Hour or anything. Anyway, I was listening to the radio today and they mentioned some sort of public gathering -- a carnival, a festival, something along those lines featuring "the cornhole game." The DJ didn't say just what that is, but made it out to be a major attraction of this event. The event is sponsored by Miller Lite, the Virginia Lottery, and... wait for it... wait for it... ...Calvary Baptist Church. So apparently there are Baptists around here who publicly support drinking alcohol, gambling, and cornholing. Funny, that's not the sort of Baptist I usually read about in the news. P.S. After I told this story to dmlaenker he informed me that the cornhole game actually literally involves throwing pieces of corn down a hole. "Quick, throw that food away before anyone underprivileged can get to it!" Oy. Current Mood: amused | | Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 | | 8:42 pm |
| | Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 | | 10:25 am |
Netenyahu recognizes Palestinian state (sort of)
I'm glad that Bibi's finally admitting that there's going to be an independent Palestine, but his preconditions for negotiation are ridiculous. He's demanding that they give into Israel on every point of contention BEFORE negotiations start? No wonder they're telling him to fuck off. The only precondition he has that's reasonable is the recognition of Israel's right to exist. Not much point in negotiating with anyone who won't acknowledge that. The rest... I think Israel should win some of those points, but they'll need to offer something to the Palestinians in exchange to create a fair peace. I oppose Palestinian return to Israel (a large scale influx of people who've been publicly committed to your destruction for over 60 years? No thanks) but Israel's going to have to help get those refugees get proper homes outside Israel's final boundaries or they'll continue to serve as a political football and fertile extremist recruiting ground. Now mind you, I blame the Arab world for the refugees' condition -- in the late 40s there was a population exchange as hundreds of thousands of Jews fled or were forced from their homes throughout the Middle East while hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled or were forced from their homes in Israel -- most because they didn't want to get caught in the middle of the genocide the Arabs were promising against Israel (an Egyptian spokesman said that the Jewish survivors would be allowed to leave Palestine but he didn't expect there to be any survivors) but a substantial minority in reaction to Jewish paramilitary attacks on Arab civilians -- not that Arab paramilitaries weren't doing the same thing to Jews whenever they could get the upper hand, and had been since the 1930s. Israel quickly found homes for its ~500,000 Middle Eastern Jewish refugees. The entire Arab world left its ~650,000 Palestinian refugees in camps instead of trying to resettle them in the property seized from Jews. No effort to help them build new lives, instead leave them in stinking camps with the dream of destroying Israel and taking back their old homes (or by now their grandparents' homes) by force their only hope for the future. Nevertheless Israel's going to need to help them get proper homes within Palestine -- it's part of the cost of peace, and its something that will only happen if the refugee situation is on the negotiating table. Demilitarization? What kind of sovereignty will the Palestinians have then? The Settlements? Israel's going to have to give at least some of them up, possibly most of them, maybe even all -- whatever Israel does end up keeping they'll need to compensate the Palestinians for, either with Israeli land on other parts of the border or financially. Again, the matter has to be on the table so compensation can be discussed. Jerusalem? I support Israel's claim to Jerusalem. Under the original partition plan it wouldn't have been part of Palestine anyway, but internationalized. The Arabs rejected the UN plan and launched a war of aggression in violation of international agreement -- and lost. You don't get rewarded with extra territory for doing that. But refusing to talk about it is just childish. Again, Israel needs to offer compensation, and also guarantees about Muslim holy sites. A joint Israeli-Palestinian commission to administer the Temple Mount would be a reasonable concession as well. | | Sunday, June 14th, 2009 | | 9:29 pm |
Cactus Flower
Last night I saw Cactus Flower, a charming if somewhat dated* comedy from the late 60s. Walter Matthau played a funloving bachelor dentist who'd told his girlfriend (Goldie Hawn) that he was married with three kids so she wouldn't get too clingy, and Ingrid Bergman played his nurse/receptionist, who got recruited to maintain the deception. I kept half expecting Matthau to ask "of all the gingivitis joints in all the world, why did she have to walk into mine?" but it wasn't that sort of farce -- Hollywood was much less self-referential back then. Anyway, it was a fun film well worth the price of a rental. * How dated? They had multiple instrumental covers of Monkeys songs playing in the background. Current Mood: amused | | Thursday, June 11th, 2009 | | 10:26 pm |
Mind Benders from Minder-Binder
The other day on The Daily Show they played a clip from maybe a year or two ago of an economist on FOX news predicting that the real estate bubble would burst and we'd plunge into a recession. The FOX guys were literally laughing at him. Ben Stein just stared at him with that almost facial expression of his and said "you're wrong." I guess Ben Stein knows as much about economics as he does about biology. In other news from the Kool-Aide Party (well, the Republicans did want to rebrand themselves...) Jon Voight's apparently getting more and more attention. You may recall that he's the actor who told people they shouldn't listen to what actors have to say about politics. Then there was the Charles Krauthammer column this weekend that condemned Obama as a liar for his big middle eastern speech. The article then failed to actually point out any actual lies in Obama's speech, just policy differences. Golly, Chuck, if you accuse someone of lying and can't point out a single lie, some of us might come to the conclusion that you're lying yourself, libelling the presidents character with malicious acusations you know are false. After all, if there was something in there you really thought was a lie you'd have mentioned it in your article, yes? Of course I don't know for a fact that Krauthammer is guilty of libel. He might just be crazy. Or stupid. Or both. Maybe he, Michelle Malkin and Anne Coulter have a pool going on who can tell the most ridiculous lie without getting called on it by right-wing bloviators like Pat Buchanan and George Will. There was also that barbie-doll newscaster FOX has who tried to condemn Obama for being popular in the Middle East and realizing in mid-tirade that she didn't know how to spin that to sound like a bad thing. The best she could manage was a sarcastic "well I guess that sounds good on the face of it..." Come on, FOX. Seriously? In more important news, Stephen Colbert is in Iraq. Yes, we've reached the point where Comedy Central news coverage and political commentary is more significant than what the allegedly serious guys are doing. More people are realizing it, too. Colbert's gotten two former presidents, Senator McCain and his running mate, Joe Biden and President Obama to get involved in this project. He's done an interview with the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq. With FOX only good for a laugh and Comedy Central putting world leaders on their broadcasts it's like the world has gone crazy. Or maybe it's more accurate to say the world was already crazy and this is a sign we're coming back to reality. Current Mood: amused | | Friday, June 5th, 2009 | | 4:43 am |
Baseball
So Randy Johnson finally got his 300th win, but I'm not sure it should count since it was against the Nationals -- winning a game against the Nationals is kind of like beating Mahatma Gandhi in a hot dog eating contest. | | Sunday, May 17th, 2009 | | 3:18 am |
| | Saturday, May 16th, 2009 | | 3:47 pm |
| | Friday, May 15th, 2009 | | 3:44 am |
| | Monday, May 11th, 2009 | | 3:20 pm |
Excercise
I walked 12.5 miles yesterday. My feet were a bit sore at the end of it, but otherwise I held up pretty well. Current Mood: accomplished | | Sunday, May 10th, 2009 | | 10:01 pm |
| | Thursday, May 7th, 2009 | | 5:24 pm |
I have found my muse
... and her name is "Last Minute Panic" (sorry, Clio). In the end my writer's block cracked and I got my term paper turned in on the due date. 23 pages to say "the Confederacy was racist and southerners have been lying to cover it up ever since." Ah, academia, how I love thee. |
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