sj's Longest Now [v.1]

Howard Dean’s Million-Penpal Jan. and Feb.

Continued Dean, “Just a flesh wound! I’m invincible!”
Kerry brushed off Dean’s remarks: “What is he going to do, bleed on me?”

I love the Superbowl!  If not the fsckers who added the “you can’t rebroadcast, summarize, or talk about this event unless licensed by us” this year.  

“The chances of Jackson’s breast reprising its appearance at the Grammys are slim, however. Jackson is only slated to be a presenter at the Grammys. Timberlake will perform solo, presumably out of reach of any women.”   —E!

The guy was lining up to take the kick. He just looked totally confused,” Roberts said from his hotel room in Houston.  “I was there, naked, apart from a plastic American football over my nether regions held on with Sellotape, doing a Riverdance in the middle of the Super Bowl, and nobody was coming after me… so I started to Moonwalk.”  —New Scotsman  [ah, what you miss, watching on TV!]

Lovely.  Intense labours of love for their own sake are next to cleanliness.

So some snooping and ‘breaking in’ has been going on for a long time… to cement the re-election of our popular president, among other things.  I don’t know what to say to that, except… I know some people on both sides of the fence who have mused publicly that they would love to do just this.  There’s something deeply wrong with our set of acceptable morals that makes everyone think

1. They’re right about complex national issues, and the others are wrong, and


2. Realizing their pure vision / defeating the others justifies almost any means.

When my brightest and sweetest friends start wandering into this territory, I worry.

Right on, Mr. Thompson!  I particularly like his articulate dissection of the lossy and arbitrary separation of music into official genres, in which artists, industry, and critics all share a part.  And his note of how much he can tell about someone by their walk and state of mind, in contrast to the more standard modern stereotypes. 

In order to well and truly scathe somone, one must lead off with a compliment, and be polite, unemotional, and incisive in language.  Consider this masterful article on Clark, which at first glance merely describes key events in his past, with quotes from Clark and his colleagues thrown in for added color.  The best example of a scathing I’ve seen this season.

In contrast, the emotional content on, say, KickingAss, about GWB, bounces right off the old shell without much lasting effect.

Oh, it’s just too good.  First, his name is Bartman.  I didn’t realize any real person had that name.  Second, he’s a total Cubs fan — went to spring training — and he teaches baseball for a living.  And there’s a good chance he will spend his entire life wondering whether he single-handedly kept the Cubs from winning the World Series.  Aeschylus couldn’t have worked up a better skeleton plot.  Now all we need is an emotional family twist, the possibility of an anguished suicide, and a little editorializing by the gods who arranged all of this.

Third, the reactions in Florida are delightful [emphasis mine]:

       In Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush said an offer of asylum to Bartman might be a good idea…
      …an oceanfront retreat in Pompano Beach offered him a free three-month stay if he needed to get out of Chicago.
                                      [quoted from an article today on MSNBC.com]

Value judgement is ther name of a fantastic thought-channel, currently only in limited blog-format, but excellently constructed on a fetal level.  And while I’m mentioning cute new channels, the DNC’s Kicking Ass blog is a cute gimmick that’s actually useful — there’s no other good source for images from official conferences and up-to-the-hour reflections of the stories and spins being passed about the Committee.

For  Uncle Jerry and simple beauty.   Sample program: 6-line IDE driver.