Alternate Entries

2009-06-19T15:42:00.000-07:00

Translation of voiceover:

Tomorrow is Saturday. Tomorrow is a day of destiny.

Tonight, the cries of Allah-o Akbar are heard louder and louder than the nights before.

Where is this place? Where is this place where every door is closed? Where is this place where people are simply calling God? Where is this place where the sound of Allah-o Akbar gets louder and louder?

I wait every night to see if the sounds will get louder and whether the number increases. It shakes me. I wonder if God is shaken.

Where is this place that where so many innocent people are entrapped? Where is this place where no one comes to our aid? Where is this place that only with our silence we are sending our voices to the world? Where is this place that the young shed blood and then people go and pray -- standing on that same blood and pray. Where is this place where the citizens are called vagrants?

Where is this place? You want me to tell you? This place is Iran. The homeland of you and me.
This place is Iran.

From Nico Pitney at HuffPost

2009-03-16T20:40:00.000-07:00

For reasons best known to the Brits themselves, the big dog show there is known as Crufts. So the London Times had an Anti-Crufts contest, and among the winners was

Echo, clearly a rare dog/manatee mix. As it so happens, Echo is a regular at my little local dog park. And now she's an international dog star! Way to go, Echo!

2009-02-11T13:34:00.000-08:00

Blossom Dearie, RIP:

2009-01-20T18:52:00.000-08:00

"A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin.""

We begin.

2009-01-14T14:44:00.000-08:00

Somewhere around my birthday in November of 2004, I had what turned out to be the last substantive conversation I would ever have with my father - we argued, about whether I should help him fund the con woman who was busy taking him for all he had. When I refused to send him the $30,000 she was apparently asking for, he was quietly sullen for a bit. Then, after a moment, he asked, with a slight lilt in his voice, "So how'd you like the election?"

The nasty triumphalism of that question, and the irrational anger that fed it, became for me a symbol of everything that had gone somehow haywire, in my country and in my life. My mother's death a month later, and my father's soon after, cemented a sense of despair that was so pervasive, so encompassing that it was no longer even noticeable: it was simply the way life was. And the state of the world around me repeatedly confirmed that conclusion.

I'm writing this because of late I've begun to feel the miasma lifting, if ever so slightly, to find myself believing that while the world is a very complicated and difficult place, despair is perhaps not the only and inevitable response.

No one could be more surprised about this than I am. Yes, Mr. Obama, apparently we can.

2008-12-29T12:55:00.000-08:00

For all you WOW players out there.

For everybody else, trust me, this is pretty funny.
Courtesy of Wow Insider.

2008-12-12T21:37:00.001-08:00

Maddow is on fire:

I made car parts in a terrible factory when I was in college. Hot and dirty and mind-numbing and dangerous. And the Republicans think the people who do it their whole lives, well, they're just fat cats who need to re-adjust their expectations. Morons.

2008-11-23T14:19:00.001-08:00

"It's going to be fucking amazing."

2008-11-05T10:50:00.000-08:00

A friend tweets:

Obama joy has been worn off, replaced with Prop 8 dread. A popular vote about you is depressing.

What he said.

2008-11-05T10:40:00.000-08:00

Paul Krugman:

Last night wasn’t just a victory for tolerance; it wasn’t just a mandate for progressive change; it was also, I hope, the end of the monster years.

What I mean by that is that for the past 14 years America’s political life has been largely dominated by, well, monsters. Monsters like Tom DeLay, who suggested that the shootings at Columbine happened because schools teach students the theory of evolution. Monsters like Karl Rove, who declared that liberals wanted to offer “therapy and understanding” to terrorists. Monsters like Dick Cheney, who saw 9/11 as an opportunity to start torturing people.

And in our national discourse, we pretended that these monsters were reasonable, respectable people. To point out that the monsters were, in fact, monsters, was “shrill.”

Four years ago it seemed as if the monsters would dominate American politics for a long time to come. But for now, at least, they’ve been banished to the wilderness.

For now.

2008-11-04T20:31:00.000-08:00

Yes We Can

2008-11-03T13:57:00.000-08:00

From the LA Times:

Religions and their believers are free to define marriage as they please; they are free to consider homosexuality a sin. But they are not free to impose their definitions of morality on the state. Proposition 8 proponents know this, which is why they have misdirected the debate with highly colored illusions about homosexuals trying to take away the rights of religious Californians. Since May, when the state Supreme Court overturned a proposed ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional, more than 16,000 devoted gay and lesbian couples have celebrated the creation of stable, loving households, of equal legal stature with other households. Their happiness in no way diminishes the rights or happiness of others.

Read the whole thing. Really.

2008-10-31T14:03:00.000-07:00

We're not domestic terrorists!

2008-10-26T21:06:00.000-07:00

A little background: some primary school kids went on a field trip to see their teacher, who is a lesbian, get married. The field trip required permission slips, not everyone chose to let their kids go. Anyway, the story got into the news, and now Yes on 8 (It's for the *children*) is using footage of these kids in videos designed to raise money for their cause. Except that no one asked the parents of the kids. Here's what they say:

2008-10-13T13:30:00.000-07:00

FiveThirtyEight.com has, among other things, a lot of really useful graphics. This one, on McCain's campaign, uh, strategy, is just fun.

The article that goes with it, on the possible "rebooting" of McCain's campaign, is worth a look.

2008-10-08T21:53:00.001-07:00

All right, I'm just on the viral bandwagon. I don't care: it's funny. In a scary kind of way.

2008-10-08T15:20:00.000-07:00

"This isn't the time for fear or for panic."

Obama in Indiana:

2008-09-28T16:13:00.000-07:00

Fey looks like her and sounds like her. And the dialog could be hers:

2008-09-24T22:02:00.000-07:00

Hilarious. Really.

2008-09-22T16:06:00.000-07:00

There are a bunch of No on 8 ads out there, and they all have their strong points. But this is a perspective I hadn't really thought of.

2008-09-21T17:33:00.000-07:00

I couldn't resist:

Stolen from Soho The Dog

2008-09-10T12:57:00.000-07:00

Apparently, it's not just the West any more:

Palin's position on the bridge that would have linked Ketchikan to Gravina Island is one example of a candidate staying on message even when that message has been publicly discredited. Palin has continued to say she opposed a project she once campaigned for -- then killed later, only after support for it had collapsed in Congress.

As the presidential campaign moves into a final, heated stretch, untrue accusations and rumors have started to swirl at a pace so quick that they become regarded as fact before they can be disproved. A number of fabrications about Palin's policies and personal life, for instance, have circulated on the Internet since she joined the Republican ticket.

Palin and John McCain, the GOP presidential nominee, have been more aggressive in recent days in repeating what their opponents say are outright lies. Almost every day, for instance, McCain says rival Barack Obama would raise everyone's taxes, even though the Democrat's tax plan exempts families that earn less than $250,000.

Fed up, the Obama campaign broke a taboo on Monday and used the "L-word" of politics to say that the McCain campaign was lying about the Bridge to Nowhere.

[]

John Feehery, a Republican strategist, said the campaign is entering a stage in which skirmishes over the facts are less important than the dominant themes that are forming voters' opinions of the candidates.

"The more the New York Times and The Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there's a bigger truth out there and the bigger truths are she's new, she's popular in Alaska and she is an insurgent," Feehery said. "As long as those are out there, these little facts don't really matter."

Please tell me we can't be this stupid. Please.

From the Washington Post.

2008-08-22T11:06:00.000-07:00

The Guardian does LOLCAT:

2008-07-14T22:52:00.001-07:00

I got a new iPhone. I admit it, I like those shiny new things, maybe too much. But here's the rub: I stood in line Friday for a total of 9 hours and didn't get a phone. First we were told that the servers had been down earlier, but they were up now, and things would be fine. Then we were told that the activation process, which was supposed to take 10 minutes, was taking, on average, 30 minutes, per customer, and sometimes took as much as 2 hours, but that they would stay open until everyone in line got a phone. Then they announced that maybe not everybody, because the store would have to close at 11, so the people at the very end of the line should probably go home. And then, until the people *not* from the very end of the line who were still left standing just outside the store at 11 PM, when the doors closed, until those people threatened to start a small riot, the best that the store manager could suggest was that we all just come back the next day and stand in line again. In the end, most of us got vouchers to jump the line on Saturday. I did, and I got the phone.

Then yesterday I got an email from Apple - "We want to hear from you. We would appreciate feedback on your experience at the Apple Store so we can make your next visit even better." So I went to the survey website, and I let them hear from me. Given that my ratings were, uh, a little on the low side, the survey asked me whether I would allow someone to call me and follow up. I wasn't thrilled, but I said yes, and told them that they could reach at home after 6. At 3 this afternoon, Roberto from the store called and left a message - I read what you wrote and clearly we dropped the ball. I would really, really appreciate it if you would call me back so that we can talk further.

Okay. So around 6:30, after I got home from work, I called him. Another clerk answered the phone: Roberto was "finishing up with a customer," could he call me back afterwards? Sure. And you can probably guess what follows: I make dinner, I play on the computer, I watch some TV. And no call back. And the problem is *now* I'm not just irritated, I'm mad. It's one thing to think that corporate screw-ups of almost unimaginable proportions have stressed badly prepared twenty-something retail clerks so much that they behave less well than one would hope. But to ask someone for their input, and then to respond at a time when that someone has said that they would not be available, and then to ask them for *more* of their time, and then to blow them off, well, that's just mind-boggling. Fix customer service issues by showing yet more contempt for the customer? Interesting approach.

2008-07-09T10:48:00.000-07:00

Heart of Gold just came on my Pandora stream, a song I always associate with my friend M, when she was going to school in New York. I stayed with her there in her dorm room when I was on the way to Paris, and she played the song over and over, picking up the needle and dropping it back on the worn piece of vinyl turning on the stereo. An analog world, universes away. We were both impossibly young.

This morning I got an email from her; her mother died last week. There's no way to describe the place her mother had in my life: she was a force of nature, loud and open and opinionated where everyone in my family was tamped down and bottled up. She'd been living in San Francisco recently, but I hadn't been able to see her: M and some of her siblings have had a falling out of almost Balzacian dimensions, and those siblings had taken control of the mother's life as her health failed. And now she's dead. And I am, like Neil Young himself, growing old.