Flooding in St. Clair County ….. a tornado watch in 15 southeastern Michigan counties till 11.00 ….. over a dozen tornadoes swept through southern and southeastern Nebraska and nearly wiped out the town of Hallam overnight. So far it’s been quiet here except for a few showers and a brief rush of torrential rain earlier this afternoon.

Weather has been much calmer in the past 24 hours. There were a few scattered raindrops when I took the dog out a few minutes ago, but nothing beyond that other than the sight (which I love) of a sky full of gray rainclouds tumbling overhead in a dark night framed by the lonesome-looking telephone poles on the side streets beyond our house. A tornado devastated the small town of Bradgate in north-central Iowa Friday night, and the recent storms were blamed for three deaths in Berrien and St. Joseph Counties. Although there was very little in the way of rain here Saturday, the Free Press says that four tornadoes were reported between Flint and Saginaw. I guess we’ve been fairly lucky here.

… And then there’s a whole discussion thread (same site) about libraries in which someone says she never goes to libraries because the thought of touching books that someone else has handled freaks her out, which is about the strangest reason not to go to a library I’ve ever heard.

She writes, seeming to think she’s got it all figured out: “In the end, I buy my own books and add them to my personal library.”

What, so people don’t handle books in bookstores? Even your nicely-boxed Amazon delivery has been handled by a stock person. Guaranteed.

Someone wrote in to I Love Books asking what it was like to work in a bookstore. Here’s one answer:

You don’t sit around and read and discuss literature all the time when you work in a bookshop. You do tell customers where the latest Mitch Albom book is a million times a day. You learn to identify bestsellers by cover color. People insist they have just seen a certain book in paperback at another shop and your explanation that the book has only been out in hardcover for a month and will likely be in paper within a year is listened to with disbelief and an insulting air indicating you are a moron AND a liar. You listen to people tell you they could get every title in your shop more cheaply at Sam’s Club. You learn the inner significance of the deep philosophy in science fiction and fantasy titles. You get lectures about why a certain author is or is not fantasy or science fiction and how only feeble minded idiots would mis-shelve them as dismally as you and your colleagues have. You sometimes get to handsell a book you believe in to a person who might actually enjoy it. You watch terrific books languish on the shelves and eventually get sent back to the publisher while Nicholas Sparks titles must be reordered bimonthly. You become expert at finding the most popular TV talk and news show sites on the web instantly because customers want “this book they were talking about on the Today Show, it was written by a general? Someone in the military anyway.” You become accustomed to being called a liar when you tell someone a certain book is out of print. “It can’t be out of print, (you are informed.) It was only published 5 years ago!” You learn every single day that (1) Amazon has it cheaper and (2) Amazon doesn’t charge sales tax.

From Tuesday’s Ann Arbor News:

A 34-year-old man admitted he punched a pedestrian in the face in Liberty Plaza Park in downtown Ann Arbor Monday because he didn’t like the look on his face, city police said.

The 53-year-old victim said he was walking through the plaza at 7:40 a.m. when he was suddenly punched by a man who didn’t say a word. A passerby called police, and the victim pointed out the man who struck him, reports said.

The suspect told police that he didn’t like the look on the man’s face and he felt intimidated, so he punched him. The man was arrested on assault charges.

From yesterday’s Ann Arbor News:

A 19-year-old Ypsilanti man told several people waiting for a city bus that he planned to rob them, then ran from police when they tried to question him, Ann Arbor Police said.

The incident occurred at the Blake Transit Center in the 300 block of South Fourth Avenue at about 8:30 p.m. Thursday. An officer stationed there said he was approached by several people who pointed out the suspect and said he was telling people waiting for an AATA bus that he would rob them, reports said.

There’s an article in today’s Ann Arbor News about cafes that you may have seen. I’m happy to say Ambrosia wasn’t mentioned in it once, not because I don’t wish Ambrosia long luck and much prosperity, but because it’s nice to know there’s a cool cafe that somehow manages to slip under the radar of whatever is supposed to be cool and hip in Ann Arbor.

There’s a new Starbucks opening soon on Liberty and Main, which is kind of bewildering. There’s already a Starbucks on Liberty and State (a huge-ass one, by the way; the News informs us that this Starbucks is the sixth largest Starbucks in the country), just seven blocks away. The News says that with the addition of the new store there are five Starbucks in town, but if you count the two at Briarwood Mall and the two within the Maple and Plymouth Road Kroger, that makes eight. (That’s still nowhere near as many as San Francisco, which at last count has a whopping 68 Starbucks, with a new one opening any day now at King and Fourth in China Basin.)

Anyway, I’m all for coffee shops, and I want to try out some of the places mentioned in the News article that I’d not heard of before, but I’ll probably stick with Ambrosia (and occasional visits to Espresso Royale). If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

What gets me is that the town boosters quoted in the article seem to think that that ineffable quality of coolness that Ann Arbor is eternally chasing like the fabled holy grail is synonymous with being “rich with coffee shops,” as though that represented some sort of bragging rights over Ypsilanti or Dexter. It is to laugh.

A quote from his new book, On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) In the Future Tense (quote courtesy New York Times):

In America, it is acceptable to cut off any driver in a vehicle that costs a third more than yours. That’s called democracy.

If that’s democracy, then Michigan has democracy (or, I guess, reverse democracy, since the cutting off usually comes from the vehicles that “cost a third more than yours”) in spades.

But David Brooks never makes any sense, so never mind.

Where to begin?

• The Pixies are back together for a reunion tour, are not apparently tearing each other limb from limb, and are like a breath of fresh air.

• Morrissey has relased a new album (with a sadly ironic cover photograph of himself holding a Tommy gun), You Are the Quarry, of which the Guardian observes acidly, “And who could have guessed that Morrissey’s seventh solo album would open with a hip-hop breakbeat?”

• Prince has a new post-Jehovah’s-Witness-conversion album out called Musicology that is doing well on the charts (for Prince these days, peaking at #3 for 3 weeks is doing amazingly well) and sounds about as weak as instant coffee tastes. The lead single (and title single) is basically Prince rewriting the themes of Stevie Wonder’s 1977 hits “I Wish” and “Sir Duke” and rolling them together into one song, and not doing a very good job of it. (Nobody could touch those songs, though, so I guess you could say that Prince has cojones for trying.)

• Teena Marie has released an album (La Dona) that has debuted in the top ten. She has never had an album in the top ten. The last time she had an album anywhere near the top ten (let alone debut there) was 1984, the winter of “Lover Girl” and “Help Youngblood Get to the Freaky Party.” Unfortunately, the powers that be have decided that it would be cool to tart Teena up on the CD cover to look like Lil’ Kim. It doesn’t work.

• The Cure are touring the United States this summer for, what, the 4378th time, coinciding with the release of their 13th studio album.

Ref Grunt has closed its doors. Long live Refgrunt.com, although its posts appear to be dismayingly intermittent.

There are many cool things about Michigan weather, I’ve discovered. One is that it’s so unpredictable (within reason). Another is the months of snow, which I have to say I’ve missed. And another is that when severe weather happens, it reminds you that Mother Nature really is still in charge, not us puny humans.

That aspect is not always as evident in California, where, although weather is obviously a fact of life, in some regions it’s not as much a fact of life as a publicity brochure selling point. You don’t usually move to Los Angeles unless you have family or friends there, adore (or are obsessed with slaving for) the entertainment industry, have a well-paying job somewhere in that or another LA industry, or, a good enough reason for most people, you’re in dire need of constant great weather with no surprises.

Same goes with the Bay Area, with some slight alterations. Like: you don’t move to SF unless you know something about SF weather first. For example: Weather in SF is not like weather in LA. Not even remotely. Nor, actually, is it like weather across the bay in Marin or Alameda Counties. Not even remotely. Nor, actually, is weather on the west side of the city like weather on the east side. Not even remotely. You can be in the Sunset or the Richmond on any given day and be completely socked in with the most glorious, comforting fog (or, depending on your point of view, the most odious, hateful, depressing fog) and take a bus or drive over to the other end of the city—or even just a walk over to the Haight—and have sunlight galore. Or, you can be in one part of Nob Hill or Telegraph Hill, walk a few blocks, and have wind and chill where a few blocks back there had been warmth. That’s one of the great things about SF, but it can drive you crazy if you’re not prepared for it.

What you get in place of dramatic storms and blusters in California are earthquakes and fires. Which, in its own way, is somewhat scarier, because neither of these is subject to prediction. There are days when you live in certain parts of the state that you utter silent prayers before you get out of bed in the morning that a quake doesn’t hit or a fire doesn’t erupt.

Ambrosia, which is staffed by a bunch of avid, amiable fishing enthusiasts who would probably be much, much happier in Berkeley if it weren’t for the lack of walleye and lake trout, was all abuzz this afternoon about the near-tornado. “You could feel the hair raise on your arms and you could smell the copper in the air,” one of them marveled. The buzz was either about the tornado or the CD on the stereo, which made me feel like I was being cast back to a lazy afternoon in some hippie SF cafe (the cafe would not be in the Haight, where the Dead are now disdained as way too obvious and touristy and you’re more likely to hear Detroit techno or world music, but probably some lonely, underpopulated spot in the Outer Sunset, where the owner is struggling to keep the place open because of the high rent and there’s a bunch of anti-Bush and anti-imperialism flyers on the bulletin board and an aloof tabby cat is sunning herself on the bay window facing the sidewalk) listening to KFOG—because the CD was the Grateful Dead, of course, and, of course, one of the regulars came in and pounded on the counter and excitedly asked what the twenty-minute jam was on the CD. “That is some really long jam! Sounds like Europe ‘72, man! Is it ‘Dark Star’?” “No,” the counter guy replied. “It’s actually San Francisco ‘69, and it’s ‘Morning Dew.’” Somebody will probably write to correct me that the Dead never played “Morning Dew” in 1969.

I walked through the connector between the undergraduate and graduate libraries yesterday and today on my way to work. Late yesterday afternoon, an impressive storm was brewing that turned out to be the near-tornado of last night. This afternoon, a similar storm was brewing as I walked through. I stopped to look out the window at it, at the way it rolled and broiled across the sky, the way it made the birds scatter for cover, and got a couple of glares from passing students, as though I were somehow not supposed to stop in the middle of the connector to look out the window, but also got a little conversation out of a passing library worker, or maybe a person visiting from out of town—she was surprised when I told her about the storm last night and expressed the opinion that the one brewing right now looked pretty substantial as well. Five minutes later, I was walking with everyone else in the undergrad library to the basement after an announcement over the PA system that DPS had ordered everyone to take cover until further notice. We all herded down to the windowless basement—everyone in the building, evidently, amounting to about 55 or 60 of us—and waited out the tornado warning.

The students seemed more annoyed and inconvenienced by the enforced confinement than anyone else. The library workers and the visitors stood around and chatted. The students, many wearing shorts and flip-flops, sullenly stomped around the basement, looking aimless and unhappy, as though the weather were some sort of unfair adult imposition. Some of them eventually sat down and started reading or doing work. Others just continued wandering around the perimeter of the basement, as though it were a track.

One of my co-workers recalled a tornado that had hit Ann Arbor 15 or so years ago and downed power in parts of the city for 3 days. One of my SI cohorts came over and said hi and we had a brief and somewhat humorous conversation about the weather, during which it became clear that not only had I never had to “duck and cover” as a kid for any reason, but I still couldn’t keep straight the distinction between a tornado watch and a tornado warning even though Steve has reminded me of the distinction, oh, maybe 50 times. An undergrad wandered over and started chattering about his brother in San Diego and the hellish firestorms they had out there last October. Finally, and anticlimactically, the PA system came back on and the announcer said, with more than a note of tentativeness, “DPS has given the all-clear signal. You can now go back to ….. your various library locations.”

All in all, it was a combination of nervous energy and random conversation that would never have happened without the tornado warning and all of us being forced to spend a half hour in the basement of the library.

Acording to Atlas of Michigan (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1977), which places this paragraph above a path map of an apparently really nasty tornado that hit southeastern Michigan on 12 April 1965:

Tornadoes are usually spawned by an advance of a strong cold front into a mass of warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, the presence of dry air over the frontal zone of middle levels of the atmosphere, and high-speed winds aloft fostered by the jet stream. Such conditions, although they combine relatively infrequently in Michigan, have resulted in some devastating tornadoes in the state.

The atlas is useful for lots of things, though it’s obviously somewhat out of date (its color photograph of a grinning and youthful-looking William Milliken being the most obvious indication). Among its interesting factoids: the Washtenaw County area usually gets its first snowfall of an inch or over between November 22-29 or shortly thereafter, which pretty much jibes with our experience this past autumn.

Before Ann Arbor became Storm Central in the past 48 hours, birds were everywhere. One reader (and someone who knows her avians), Dorothea of the fantastic Caveat Lector, wrote to tell me that the bird I was mystfied about the other day was a yellow-shafted flicker, otherwise known as a Northern flicker, or by its Linnaean designation, Colaptes auratus.

Inevitably, according to North American Bird Folknames and Names (Foster City, CA: Bottlebrush Press, 1996), the flicker has something on the order of 100 other nicknames as well. I’ll just settle on “flicker” and leave it at that.

Some other interesting factoids about the flicker: It’s the only member of the woodpecker order to regularly feed on the ground, perferring ants and beetles (the flicker’s anti-acidic saliva neutralizes the acid defense of the ant). According to Birds of Michigan Field Guide (Cambridge, MN: Adventure Publications, 1999), the flicker “undulates deeply in flight while giving a loud ‘wacka-wacka’ call.” I like that: Wacka wacka! Birds of Washtenaw County, Michigan (University of Michigan Press, 1992), says, in a triumph of understatement, “The Northern flicker is a conspicuous bird.”

The other cool-looking bird I’ve seen recently has got to be a common grackle (Quiscalus quiscula). I say this because it resembles the European starling from a distance, it has an unmistakable glow to its head and neck plumage that sets it apart. The sources differ on the exact color of this glow. The USGS site I linked to above says the plumage is of a “purple and greenish iridescence.” One book said the plumage was blue. Another said black-blue. Who knows? Whatever the color is, it’s incredibly beautiful.

Okay, Yankees, when the sky turns as dark and ugly GREEN as it did at 2:30 this afternoon, that means you’ve got yourself a tornado somewhere VERY. CLOSE. BY. This means get in the cellar, fool, ‘fore you get sucked up like Helen Hunt’s daddy in that Twister movie.

But the sirens didn’t even sound today. Meanwhile, just a block away, the mayhem you see in the pictures above happened; one of the beautiful, tall and stately pine trees toppled over during the swirling green blowby. Fortunately, somebody with sense at the UM libraries herded everybody including Frank into the basement for awhile, so he was okay.

Now, I’m sorry to be such a Nervous Nellie. But my Okie heritage … well, it’s just hardwired in my genes.

I remember the aftermath of the tornado that hit Duncan 22-Feb-75, killing a woman. Some cousins were living in a trailer house temporarily next door to my great-aunt’s house. The twister hit and they barely escaped as the trailer whirled into the air … only to be beaten to a pulp by hail as they hightailed it for my great-aunt’s cellar. We saw them the next day; they looked like they had been beaten with two-by-fours.

Still, Michigan storms seem to be pretty dang benign by Okie standards, so I’m not diving into the hole yet. I’m actually greatly enjoying the show. For the last seven years in San Francisco, the most exciting weather feature was, well, nothing really. This is more like home.

And yes, the Beagle slept through this afternoon’s storm (and the one going on right now too). With the sky so dark and green, I strongly requested that he come downstairs with me, poised to hit the basement. He woke up briefly, gave me an extremely dirty look as if to say, ‘This ain’t no storm. Why, in Texas, it’d just be a lil’ ol’ rain shower, son! Chill out …’

Good advice.

[BTW: USAToday has more on ‘Going Green’]

The title of a paper given by MIT meterology professor and chaos theorist Edward Lorenz at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington DC on 29 December 1979:

Predictability: Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?

From Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” (1900):

The time’s come: there’s a terrific thunderstorm advancing upon us, a mighty storm is coming to freshen us up ….

And, last but certainly not least, the inimitable Dorothy Parker (from “Fair Weather” in Sunset Gun [1928]):

They sicken of the calm, who know the storm.

We had a ‘possible-tornado-producing’ storm last night with blowing sirens and one-inch hail and minor flooding in Ypsi and a house burned after a lightning strike. It was all higgledy-piggledy for awhile around midnight.

The native Californian was in denial about it all for at least a few minutes, lying in bed as the sirens blew before getting up, while the (somewhat) native Okie opened the window to get a better listen and then got into some shoes and grabbed flashlights and prepared to hit the basement.

We Okies don’t mess with tornadoes; when the sirens blow, that usually means bidness and bidness means getting into the cellar and tying the kids down with the rope so they don’t get all sucked out the door.

The frustrating thing about being up here with Yankees who don’t understand tornadoes is the absolute dearth of information. You know, call me weird, but once warning sirens blow I like to have as much information as possible … such as, what’s about to descend from on high, where’s it coming from and when, things like that. There’s a write-up in today’s AA News (Motto: ‘Absolutely Still the World’s Worst Website’), but, ya know, I kinda like to know where the tornado is BEFORE it blows me away, not reading about it 12 hours later.

I slam my ancestral state where I lived for 20 years often about its politics and general cluelessness, but on weather forecasting and information, it has no peer anywhere in the world. Even in that god-awful movie Twister, starring that actress that Frank likens to broken glass being scraped across a chalkboard, the only realistic parts were those starring Oklahoma’s TV weathermen, such as the legendary Gary England of KWTV 9, Oklahoma City.

Gary has been the Storm King of Oklahoma since God was a boy; he’s chased tornadoes and been the target of a few as well, including the May 1999 F-5 monster that ripped up the city. Now THERE’S weather information; channel 9 (and others) have equipment so sophisticated that it can tell you what city block the tornado will be at at what time. Heck, not even United Airlines can tell you when their planes will arrive with as much accuracy.

And so, last night with the sirens blowing and local radio playing the BBC and Dr. Laura as if cricket match scores in Pakistan and Fascist FunDumbMentalist ranting were more important than the wall cloud bearing down on a city of 110,000, I missed, for awhile, Oklahoma, I must admit.

As for the beagle, well, he’s a Texas beagle (loathe I am to admit it); he was born in a double-wide trailer house in Kemp, TX, and thunderstorms make him yawn. During the storm, I had to entice him with treats to get him to come downstairs in reasonable proximity to the basement in case things began to look dicey. Thunder, lightning, wind, hail, floods … these things don’t phase Bayley. But try to clip his nails … now, THAT’S scary.

How fun to get something like this in your e-mail box at midnight:

‘On Monday, May 17, the University of Michigan Administrative Information Services determined that a small selection of personal student data elements may have been exposed to some individuals within the University community through the Wolverine Access Web site. The data elements that may have been viewed include UMID, Social Security number or National ID, and home address information. It has been determined that this situation may have existed between February 9 and May 17, 2004.

‘We are notifying you as a precaution because there is a slight possibility that your personal data may have been accessible to someone within the University community who was not authorized to see this information. Because of the obscure nature of the vulnerability, we believe it is highly unlikely there was unauthorized access of student information during this time. However, as a precaution, we encourage you to observe practices like monitoring billing statements for accuracy, checking credit reports, etc. Identity theft has become a growing concern in our country and these are good practices to follow as a matter of course.

‘If you believe your Social Security number has been used fraudulently, file a police report …’

That’s a laugh. Been there, done that; a friend had his i.d. compromised 10 years ago this month. The official police line: ‘It ain’t defrauding you if someone gets your SS# and gets credit cards and runs up debt; they’ve defrauded the companies involved not you, so dry up and blow away.’ So, he was forced to declare bankruptcy. He’ll finally be free of said 10-year bankruptcy next Dec. 24.

And people wonder why I have a cow when some outsourced, offshored corporate lackey in the Philippines or India asks me for my date of birth or ID when I call MCI to correct this month’s phone bill screwup.

Thanks, UM! (Ain’t computers and technology and the internet grand sometimes?)

More stuff on the Seattle Public Library from LISNews:

The New Yorker calls the new central library “the most important new library to be built in a generation, and the most exhilarating.” The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has been trumpeting the new library, with an overview and groovy QuickTime panoramas of various of the library’s floors. The new library will have 65% of its material available in open stacks (the old library had 35%). City Librarian Deborah Jacobs has been working it, clearly; the publicity is unlike anything I’ve ever seen for any library, public or otherwise.

I know that the Internet was not such a huge part of our lives back then, but this makes the “publicity” attending the opening of the San Francisco Public Library’s new main building in 1996 look like the opening of a chicken coop. (The SF could have taken lessons from Jacobs’ leading high school journalists on a tour of the library and joking with them that you could use the fifth floor to look down four floors below to see if your blind date was worth pursuing. The SF has a similar birds’-eye view, but nobody seems much interested in it, or if they are, they immediately draw suspicion fromn security guards afraid that there’s going to be a jumper.)

The best part, for me, though, was this:

And don’t ever expect to hear this new building called the Starbucks Library or Microsoft Library. Unlike other Seattle buildings that bear the name of big donors, this will be the Seattle Public Library.

“We’d never allow the building to be named,” said Jacobs. “This is the people’s library.”

There’s also another appearance by Nancy Pearl, in another Post-Intelligencer article. She teels the story of how she once was accosted by a homeless man holding an iron (he was trying to find an outlet to plug in his iron so he could prepare for a job interview, he said). Not a few people would have flinched or called the cops. Nancy Pearl led the man to her office so he could iron his shirt.

Her point was that the public library should not be a substitute for shelter, or even for a hygiene station where the homeless could spruce themselves up. But she didn’t waggle her finger at the man and say “Tsk tsk.”

Great story.

Today’s LISNews links to a New York Times article about Fundrace.org, an intriguing site that allows you to track campaign contributions by neighborhood. This is information you can go down to any registrar’s office and legally view; nothing unusual except in the presentation and the speed of access to the information. One Ohio woman was interviewed who objected to her privacy being violated in this way, because she’s a Democrat and lives in a predominantly Republican town, yet not only did she allow her name to be used in the article, she posed for a photograph in the middle of what was presumably her street (with a row of houses identifiable behind her) and a big Kerry for President button on her lapel. I’m scratching my head here. If you think the site is an invasion of privacy, you go and perform perhaps the most publicity-seeking display imaginable (short of jumping up and down and screaming “Kerry for President!” in front of a Fox News crew)? In any event, the story’s made Fundrace.org quite popular. I tried to do a search on some San Francisco data just now and the site is overwhelmed.

In a mere 25 minutes or so, the first homo marriages in the United By-God States of Amurrica will take place in Massachusetts.

[sarcasm] We’ll be hiding in the basement so that the Angel of Death and Divine Retribution ‘Gainst the Homos and Homo-Loving will pass us by as this cataclysmic event foisted upon us by Activist Judges occurs and God gets really, really angry. [/sarcasm]

Actually, the ADDRGHHL will probably concentrate his efforts just on Masschusetts tonight, so we’ll be quite safe right here in God-Fearing-and-Respecting Michigan, where they treat us homos like we’re supposed to be treated: Denied medical care if a ‘christian’ doesn’t want to treat us.

‘Si Quaeris Peninsulam Amoenam Circumspice‘ indeed. (And yes, I’m a bit jealous of Massachusetts gay and lesbian couples tonight. Oh well, it could be worse … we could be in [shudder] Oklahoma.)

Haven’t seen this many dandelions in a town ever. Like with the squirrels, AA believes in plenty of something.

Opus Bayley took a much-needed dandelion break in the park next to the Jewish Community Center. It’s been a fabulous day …

Looks like « someone wrote a really good letter to the editor of the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal », right there in full red-meated Dubya country. Congratulations and keep your head down; those Texas fascists will be gunning for ya now:

‘Bush Priorities Questioned
‘Where did I go wrong? I’m a registered Republican because I believe in fiscal integrity, fiscal responsibility. Well, we all know what happened to that.
‘So, we wound up with a president who is in office by virtue of one vote in the Supreme Court—and thinks he has a mandate.
‘As governor of Texas, he blew the $2 billion surplus Ann Richards left him, and we’ve had a deficit ever since. As president, he took a $2 trillion surplus and, in two years, turned it into a several trillion dollar deficit. And this “borrow and spend” administration is spending at a record clip. And that’s fiscal integrity.
‘And about the war. Retired Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf recently made a remark with which I heartily agree. “Stormin’ Norman” said he’d noticed that the only people anxious to go to war are, for the most part, those who have never been shot at—like the four musketeers Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove and Bush.
‘Ross Perot said there are three reasons for the first Gulf War: oil, oil and oil. The same reasoning, it seems to me, applies to the current war.
‘I think Mr. Cheney knows where they’re hiding the weapons of mass destruction; he just won’t tell anybody. Hans Blix and David Kay couldn’t find them. So our military is protecting us from what?
‘Dubya has two priorities—pay back the people who financed his “landslide” election and get re-elected. We may survive such short-term thinking, but it’ll take awhile.’
‘RONALD PRESTON/Lubbock’

Now THAT’s guts, folks. Telling the truth in Texas always takes mucho bravery. Thank you, Ronald Preston.

It just doesn’t get any more Fascist FunDumbMentalist than this:

‘The Roman Catholic bishop of Colorado Springs has issued a pastoral letter saying that Catholic Americans should not receive Communion if they vote for politicians who defy church teaching by supporting abortion rights, same-sex marriage, euthanasia or stem-cell research. Several bishops in the United States have warned that they will deny Communion to Catholic politicians who fail to stand with the church, but Bishop Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs is believed to be the first to announce that he would extend the ban to Catholic voters. “Anyone who professes the Catholic faith with his lips while at the same time publicly supporting legislation or candidates that defy God’s law makes a mockery of that faith and belies his identity as a Catholic,” Sheridan wrote. In a telephone interview, Sheridan said: “I’m not making a political statement. I’m making a statement about church teaching.”’

Of course, there’s no word from these pathetic types about rightwing fascist catholic politicians who support the death penalty in defiance of the Vatican. No siree.

Nope, it’s just a jibe at John Kerry and other ‘pro-choicers’ like him, and their supporters, as long as they are on the left side of the aisle.

How stomach-churning.

Three girls coming into the ‘Media Center’ for Career Day presentations on cosmetology today:

‘See, this say media center, but a media center where you go to use computers and stuff. And this ain’t no media center. This a LIBRARY. It full of books.’

Yeah. What she said.

I guess I was grossly mistaken when we moved here; I thought we would be paying much less for gas per gallon than we did in San Francisco.

A week ago, I was waiting for the interminable light at Packard and Stadium to change and the price at one station on the corner was raised from $1.88 to $1.95 while I sat waiting for the green.

Today, going home for lunch, the station on the southeast corner of that intersection advertises its new gas price: $2.08 a gallon. 20 cent a gallon increase in just over a week.

Good golly.

Still, I suppose it could be worse. According to Gas Price Watch.com, the station where I usually filled up in San Francisco is $2.25. Ouch.

Since my good bike is still in San Francisco, my feet may be getting a lot more use in the near future.

Ann Arbor isn’t the liberal bastion I thought it was; while ‘guest teaching’ today at a central AA middle school during a Career Day assembly, I passed a science classroom which was empty except for the teacher.

She had the radio blaring out with full throated and ‘kill all the liberals in the colleges and universities’ passion, none other than the Hillbilly Heroin addict himself, Mr. Rush Limbaugh.

I guess the fascists have at least one loyal listener in ASquared.

It’s an absolutely lovely night outside. Humid, but a perfect temp, with the Big Dipper directly overhead, night sounds all around—it would be a great night to camp out, if my tent wasn’t in Oklahoma.

And yes, I heard more cicada sounds while I was out there with the beagle. The vanguard of Brood X is out there, staring at us from the branches with their glowing, evil red eyes.

It’s all so exciting.

Frank pointed out the cover of Section E ‘Connection’ of tonight’s Ann Arbor News (Motto: ‘Still the World’s Worst Website). Headlined Highs and Lows of Clothes (ain’t that alliterative?), it’s a discussion of how, for today’s teen girl, ‘less is more.’ I think he regrets bringing it home. It provoked a longish rant, which you’re now going to have to suffer through like him.

Having spent yesterday at a southwest AA high school, I can attest that, for the girls anyway, less is indeed the style. One class had female students who made the denizens of the Blue Moon Brothel of Winnemucca, Nevada, look overdressed, and I had the passing thought: ‘Do your mothers know you dress like cheap whores?’

Okay, it may not be nice or PC or appropriate or whatever, but, quite frankly, neither was the way these kids were dressed.

Now, I’m no prude (as Frank will tell you); wear what you want. I’ve always guffawed when principals and superintendents tried to battle miniskirts and anti-Bush t-shirts by saying they ‘disrupt the educational process.’ No, the educational process is disrupted by collections for Ronald McDonald House and please let these students out of class to go on the field trip to Cedar Point and religious fundamentalist fooling with textbooks and No Child Left Behind and so on and so on and so on.

I saw nothing wrong with miniskirts back in my day; being of a different … orientation … they did nothing for me, or to me, even though they drove the parents and administrators of the 60s and 70s nuts. And now, well, as long as I don’t have to see anybody’s … nether regions, I don’t much care.

My angle, then as now, is just that it shows a complete lack of respect for self, as well as a great deal of ignorance about a whole host of things, not least of which is how they’re manipulated by the industry.

In other words, you wanna dress like the two-bit whores I saw near DuPont Circle my first time in Washington, DC, many years ago, well, go ahead, but … well, you’re gonna look like a two-bit DuPont Circle whore, who’s a slave to fashionistas who seem to enjoy the heroin-wasted, anorexic … whore look.

Is that the image you want to project? Particularly when you’re just 16 and still in high school? Better question: Is that the image you want your daughter to project if you’re a parent?

A mother quoted in the News article says:

‘I struggle with that all the time. How do I get her to feel good about herself? Boys are a focus for them at that age … How do I make her understand … that dressing quote unquote ‘hot’ doesn’t always give you what you want?’

Pause to reach for the Pepto. Excuse me? How do you get her to feel good about herself? How about by not allowing her to go to school dressed like one of Seymour Butts’ actresses?

And dressing ‘hot’ doesn’t give you what you want?! Sorry, sweetie, but it gives you exactly what you want … and more. And the latter half of that is the problem.

Interesting that this mother’s daughter attends … of course, the very high school I guest taught at yesterday. And mommy, who asks the clueless question above, not only lets her kid go to school dressed in short skirts and sometimes midrif-baring skimpy shirts, also has allowed her to be photographed and splashed big-as-life in the News.

But apparently, she’s the soul of discretion; she doesn’t show her belly every day. And her mother says she terms her dress on the ‘conservative side.’

Of course, the News puts the teenager from Ypsilanti on the inside of the section and in a much smaller photo; that’ll put them Ypsi people in their place. Still, the Ypsi entry is showing more cleavage than the Grand Canyon and wearing hip-hugging jeans that I last saw at my sister’s high school graduation ceremony in 1974, looking just as scruffy and dirty as they did back then.

Let me hasten to be clear here: I’m not calling any of these girls whores or questioning their virtue. Just their judgment and self-respect. Not to mention the cluelessness and lack of judgment of their mothers.

I’ve been saying a lot lately (and I’m sure Frank will get tired of hearing it over the next year of grad school) that I as a teacher will have no problem being held accountable for how my students perform on standardized testing when parents in the American empire start being held accountable for how their students dress, act, treat each other and their teachers and whether or not they come to school well-fed, well-clothed, having been kissed good bye, told they are loved and given every opportunity possible to come to school ready to learn.

When we can institute a system of parental accountability, I’ll be more than happy as a teacher to take personal responsibility for my students.

Until then, at least teach your kids to respect their elders (especially substitute teachers) and don’t dress your daughters like Las Vegas hookers.

If I had a teenage daughter, we would SO be having a fight right now …

My god I didn’t think it was possible, but it’s true; the Boy Emperor is incable of learning from his mistakes and « is beginning the march of war on Syria »:

’[The Boy Emperor] will order economic sanctions against Syria this week for supporting terrorism and not doing enough to prevent militant fighters from entering neighboring Iraq, congressional and administration sources said Monday. The sanctions, which the White House will impose as early as Tuesday, are being ordered because the administration believes Syria has aggravated tensions in the Middle East by supporting militant groups. “We have talked previously about our concerns when it comes to Syria’s continued development of weapons of mass destruction, when it comes to their support for terrorism and when it comes to their failure to adequately police its border with Iraq,” [Imperial Minister of Agit-Prop] Scott McClellan said.’
—SFGate.com

We’ll leave aside, for the moment, the laugh- and vomit-inducing arrogant and clueless accusation that Syria is aggravating tensions in the Middle East. I think Abu Ghraib and the West Bank have more to do with that than Damascus.

But if this hollowed-out and moral derelict man is re-coronated next January, look for the wingnuts to be screaming about WMDs in the spring, followed by cheering bloodlustily as the Big Red One enters Damascus triumphantly.

We have just one opportunity in November to attempt to restore sanity to the government. After that, well, it’s not gonna be pretty around here.

« Delta Air Lines says pay cuts or bankruptcy »; in other words, pilots should screw themselves out of a third of their paychecks or we’ll take our marbles and go home:

‘Delta Air Lines said Monday that it may have to file for bankruptcy if its pilots union doesn’t agree to significant wage cuts, the first time the struggling carrier has publicly linked the two issues in a regulatory filing. The nation’s third-largest airline has been cautious about discussing the possibility of bankruptcy. But Delta said Monday in a quarterly report with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it might pursue Chapter 11 unless it achieves a “competitive cost structure” for pilot wages. A spokesman for Delta acknowledged that it’s the first time such language has been used in a public filing. “It’s an option,” the spokesman, Anthony Black, said of bankruptcy. “It’s not anything we see in the foreseeable future, but it’s out there.”’
—SFGate.com

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution article reports the airline had over $2 billion in liquid cash at the end of the first quarter, but it’s bond rating is ‘deep in the junk range,’ it’s borrowed to the hilt and facing a billion in debt payments in the next year, and so on.

But the real meat of the matter is, as The Chronicle noted, USAirways and United used Chapter 11 to secure deep pay cuts from employees, and American used the threat of Chapter 11 to the same effect.

And that’s what it’s really about … while the executives badly mismanage their airlines, they take home millions and millions of dollars in cash and bonuses and stock. That mismanagement and greed puts the airline into an unwinnable financial situation and the same executives then blame it on the workers salaries and threaten to send the company into Chapter 11 or ground the planes forever if the workers don’t pony up. It’s not that difficult to figure it all out.

I noticed that no one in any of these Chapter 11 articles questioned these executives about the financially stupid venture that is Delta’s ‘low-fare airline within an airline,’ ‘Song,’ or United’s equally stupid ‘Ted,’ or compared their management with that of perenially profitable Southwest. And when the comparison is made, they focus exclusively on worker salaries. Typical crappy and clueless journalism.

Just woke up from another spectacularly weird dream … this one was a first, since it was just like watching a TV show and I wasn’t in it.

In fact, it was a TV show … Dallas, of all things. I don’t recall ever watching a single episode of Dallas ever. Not even the ‘Who Shot J.R.’ series. But it was in my dreams this morning.

Bobby (who I think was supposed to be J.R., but was called Bobby in my dream) was played by Jack Nicholson. His wife, Susannah, was played by Angie Dickinson. And yes, I know that Bobby’s wife was Pam and that there was know Susannah, but a Sue Ellen. Hey, it was a dream.

Anyway, Susannah went out to the oilfield in her Cadillac convertible to see Bobby. They talked for awhile and then he stabbed her. She was surprised. He walked away and while he was gone, she took out a pen and wrote, ‘Bobby Ewing did this to me,’ and signed it ‘Susannah Ewing,’ which is how I know how to spell her name.

She managed to put up the roof of the convertible while he was gone. When he came back, she took a gun from under the seat and shot at him and then put the car in gear and chased him around the pasture, finally cornering him and forcing him to fall backwards into a sunken concrete box, where he sat with only his head showing.

But suddenly somehow, the tables were turned and she ended up in the box. I woke up as he was dragging a hose from a gasoline pump over to the box so he could fill it up and set her on fire.

Yeesh. Pretty much the weirdest one I’ve had in a very long time.

Thomas Jefferson wasn’t perfect, but he was on to a good thing when he wrote that separation of church and state was a good and desirable thing.

Case in point is Colorado, an increasingly Fascist FunDumbMentalist state where « a judge and lawmakers are being threatened and harassed by nuts from the Springs »:

‘Colorado lawmakers who voted against impeaching a judge who made a gay-positive ruling in a child custody case are being swamped with demands from the conservative lobby group Focus on the Family to turn over all of their files, letters, documents, emails, phone records and notes. FOC, one of the most vocal opponents of gay issues, had sought the removal of Denver District Judge John Coughlin after he ruled last November that a woman could not subject her child to homophobic teachings at her church. … Judge Coughlin in awarding custody ordered [the woman] to prevent the child from receiving any homophobic religious teachings.’

That one really stirred up the FFs:

’”This is a judge who has put the word ‘homophobia’ into a court decision,” said Tom Minnery, Focus on the Family’s vice president for public policy. “That is very alarming to us. We want to know everything we can about this case and the reason why our elected officials did nothing to look into this matter.”’

But even the Fascist-leaning Colorado legislature refused to play ball:

‘When the impeachment measure reached the House Judiciary Committee a majority of members, including some conservative Republicans, found that Coughlin had done nothing to warrant impeachment. Even Gov. Bill Owens, who opposes same-sex marriage, advised against impeaching Coughlin. Now, FOC is using Freedom of Information Laws to see if lawmakers were “unduly influenced”. Some members of the committee call the action political blackmail and other accuse the FOC of harassment. One member, Rep. Anne McGihon (D-Denver) who refused to vote for impeachment, and who calls FOC’s actions harassment, said she would comply.’

Yup, she’ll comply. And FOC will continue to grow in power and influence in the state. Having lived there for a year, I can attest to its character and the curious paradox that, in spite of being so hyper-religious and praise-Jeebus, it’s one of the most unfriendly and aggressive and violent places I’ve ever visited (and that includes Oakland and Detroit). I’ve said many times that the Columbine HS massacre was no surprise.

And stuff like this just continues to bolster my impression. And to make me think that Thomas Jefferson knew what he was talking about.

The Torture Roundup for tonight:

« A pregnant Lynddie England gets hung out to dry ». She’s been turned into the face of American torture by the media and the military, her family is angry at the military, angry at Bush and in denial and she herself is back home and pregnant. The New York Times goes into exhaustive detail here about her personal life; detail which I haven’t seen on any of the male participants. Coming at the same time as Ann-thrax Coulter and other Fascist pundits’ blaming the torture and abuse of Iraqis on women in the military specifically and feminism generally, it’s an interesting phenomenon.

« A different view of Private England » and the place where she hailed from:

‘Lynndie England, 21, a rail worker’s daughter, comes from a trailer park in Fort Ashby, West Virginia, which locals proudly call “a backwoods world”. She faces a court martial, but at home she is toasted as a hero. At the dingy Corner Club Saloon they think she has done nothing wrong. “A lot of people here think they ought to just blow up the whole of Iraq,” Colleen Kesner said. “To the country boys here, if you’re a different nationality, a different race, you’re sub-human. That’s the way girls like Lynndie are raised. “Tormenting Iraqis, in her mind, would be no different from shooting a turkey. Every season here you’re hunting something. Over there, they’re hunting Iraqis.” In Fort Ashby, in the isolated Appalachian mountains 260km west of Washington, the poor, barely-educated and almost all-white population talk openly about an active Ku Klux Klan presence.’
—The Daily Telegraph

Which brings up a rather interesting and disturbing point; in George W. Bush’s Amurrican Empire, despite his protestations to contrary, it is not at all unAmerican to support torture and eye-for-an-eye. The entire rightwing Fascist chorus doesn’t think this is a big deal at all; their attitude was summed up thusly:

‘A colleague of Lynndie’s father said people in Fort Ashby were sick of the whingeing. “We just had an 18-year-old from round here killed by the Iraqis,” he said. “We went there to help the jackasses and they started blowing us up. Lynndie didn’t kill ‘em, she didn’t cut ‘em up. She should have shot some of the suckers.”’

That’s a pretty succinct summation. And of course, torture and prisoner abuse is not only not unAmerican, it’s long been very much the American Way all over the world and in the heart of the Empire itself, in places like Parchman and Angola and San Quentin and McAlester and Huntsville, etc. While the Boy Emperor was the provincial governor of the Republic of Texas, the prison system spent most of his time in office under judicial consent decrees, a situation replicated in 39 other state prison systems. A judge wrote about the Texas system:

‘Many inmates credibly testified to the existence of violence, rape and extortion in the prison system and about their own suffering from such abysmal conditions.’

The judge imposed the decree after learning that Texas prison guards were allowing inmate gangs to buy and sell other inmates as sex slaves.

It’s simply a fact that this kind of thing is a very American as The New York Times article (from which the quote above comes) noted:

‘Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates. In Pennsylvania and some other states, inmates are routinely stripped in front of other inmates before being moved to a new prison or a new unit within their prison. In Arizona, male inmates at the Maricopa County jail in Phoenix are made to wear women’s pink underwear as a form of humiliation. At Virginia’s Wallens Ridge maximum security prison, new inmates have reported being forced to wear black hoods, in theory to keep them from spitting on guards, and said they were often beaten and cursed at by guards and made to crawl.’

In fact, America’s penal system can be directly connected to Abu Ghraib:

‘The experts also point out that the man who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year and trained the guards there resigned under pressure as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time. The Utah official, Lane McCotter, later became an executive of a private prison company, one of whose jails was under investigation by the Justice Department when he was sent to Iraq as part of a team of prison officials, judges, prosecutors and police chiefs picked by Attorney General John Ashcroft to rebuild the country’s criminal justice system. Mr. McCotter, 63, is director of business development for Management & Training Corporation, a Utah-based firm that says it is the third-largest private prison company, operating 13 prisons. In 2003, the company’s operation of the Santa Fe jail was criticized by the Justice Department and the New Mexico Department of Corrections for unsafe conditions and lack of medical care for inmates. No further action was taken.’

He claims to have left Iraq after Abu Ghraib was reopened and has washed his hands of more recent events. But it really doesn’t matter. Instead of exporting freedom, liberty, democracy and our traditions of civil rights, Constitutional due process of law, respect for justice and so on, we’ve exported our arrogance, our violence and our prison system.

But that’s okay. The Cabal is circling the wagons. Fascist pundits are on the case, and « now a soldier has been trotted out to say ‘it ain’t that bigga deal »:

‘Arevalo said he was angered by the reports of prisoner abuse because he felt that soldiers at his compound were doing a good job. Arevalo said he even made a point of being friendly and talking to the prisoners, including one Iranian prisoner who used to tell soldiers off in English and Arabic. “We prided ourselves on keeping prisoners in control, and after that came out, I was somewhat disappointed,” he said. “It’s not the whole army’s fault. It’s two people who were bored or something. Just a few bad apples.”’

Yeah, he’s one of the good Germans, er, I mean Americans. Maybe some Iraqis will send him some rose petals …

Publicly, the NeoCons want us to think everything is a-okay and hunky-dory. Privately, « as the Washington Post reports », military officials are unhappy with the Dr. Strangerummy/Wolf-of-Dimwitz lunacy:

‘Deep divisions are emerging at the top of the U.S. military over the course of the occupation of Iraq, with some senior officers beginning to say that the United States faces the prospect of casualties for years without achieving its goal of establishing a free and democratic Iraq. Their major worry is that the United States is prevailing militarily but failing to win the support of the Iraqi people. That view is far from universal, but it is spreading, and being voiced publicly for the first time. Army Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, who spent much of the year in western Iraq, said he believes that at the tactical level at which fighting occurs, the U.S. military is still winning. But when asked whether he believes the United States is losing, he said, “I think strategically, we are.”

Army Col. Paul Hughes, who last year was the first director of strategic planning for the U.S. occupation authority in Baghdad, said he agrees with that view and noted that a pattern of winning battles while losing a war characterized the U.S. failure in Vietnam. “Unless we ensure that we have coherency in our policy, we will lose strategically,” he said in an interview Friday. “I lost my brother in Vietnam,” added Hughes, a veteran Army strategist who is involved in formulating Iraq policy. “I promised myself, when I came on active duty, that I would do everything in my power to prevent that [sort of strategic loss] from happening again. Here I am, 30 years later, thinking we will win every fight and lose the war, because we don’t understand the war we’re in.”’
—The Washington Post

Wolfie, of course, disagrees with all this and has his head planted firmly in his arse:

‘Wolfowitz, the Pentagon’s No. 2 official, said that he does not think the United States is losing in Iraq, and said no senior officer has expressed that thought to him, either. “I am sure that there are some out there” who think that, he said in an interview yesterday afternoon. “There’s no question that we’re facing some difficulties,” Wolfowitz said. “I don’t mean to sound Pollyannaish—we all know that we’re facing a tough problem.” But, he said, “I think the course we’ve set is the right one, which is moving as rapidly as possible to Iraqi self-government and Iraqi self-defense.”’

But the Army has Wolfie’s number:

‘A senior general at the Pentagon said he believes the United States is already on the road to defeat. “It is doubtful we can go on much longer like this,” he said. “The American people may not stand for it—and they should not.” Asked who was to blame, this general pointed directly at Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. “I do not believe we had a clearly defined war strategy, end state and exit strategy before we commenced our invasion,” he said. “Had someone like Colin Powell been the chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff], he would not have agreed to send troops without a clear exit strategy. The current OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] refused to listen or adhere to military advice.”’

Of course they didn’t. ‘Cause the Cabal is always right, the Cabal is always omniscient, praise the Cabal.

The article quotes senior military officials as saying we’re going to be in Iraq for at least five years (for the rest of the Boy Emperor’s ‘term’ wink wink?) and we will be taking casualities throughout that period. Interesting.

Why does it take the publicized photos of humiliated and abused and tortured Iraqi prisoners (which has arguably further ruined our tattered image and made the nation even more vulnerable to terrorist attack) to get the Boy Emperor to, as the BBC put it, ‘make an unprecedented public apology’?

After all, he won’t apologize for the five arrests, the cocaine use, the alcoholism, the DWIs, the casual attitude toward military service to his country during time of war, and the rape of workers, the environment, gays and lesbians, the elderly, retirees, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum …

You know, I’m sorry, but I’m on an our-culture-is-crappy kick tonight.

While at that notorious southeast AA middle school, I served a couple of hours in the ‘media center.’ It was fine, I always enjoy that.

But am I a complete old crotchety s.o.b. because I think it should still be called the library, damnit!?

And further crotchetiness ensued when I was shelving returned books for the 900s and came up to the biography section. I had to shelve just-read and returned bios on Steven Spielberg and [gag] Britney Spears between bios of Bessie Smith and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, which hadn’t been checked out in a very long time.

Now, I’m sorry again, but I admit to having a bit of hard time lately living in a society/culture which has plunged from the heights of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Bessie Smith to the likes of Mr. E.T. and that trashy blond singer/slut thing in a mere 100 years.

Just call me Grandpa and be thankful I don’t get a t.v. reception.

While subbing today at the city’s notorious southeast-side middle school, I noticed one thing during a geography class viewing of a movie about South Africa and apartheid during the 1980s: The kids were talking and laughing and not paying the slightest attention during the parts where the characters were laughing and having fun. But when conflict came on the screen (a loud argument between two girls), the room suddenly got very quiet and everyone watched in rapt attention. Shortly thereafter, when one girl was crying and being consoled by another character, they laughed at her and called her a crybaby and then resumed their chatter.

Like it or not, our society is in enthrall to violence and conflict. Kinder and gentler is an unattainable myth. It’s all downhill from here. Especially since these kids will be added to the ranks of Ann Arbor’s homicidal drivers in just two years.

I just woke up from two very weird dreams.

In the first, Frank died and I started dating Julia Roberts. Yes, really. And after a month, she proposed. And her mother was talking to me about stuff and saying that I was the one Julia had been waiting on for so long. (The trigger: I read in People yesterday that a 17-year-old kid saw Julia on location and hastily scribbled a sign asking her to the prom. She declined because she’s already married.)

The second dream was just as strange. Back-to-back dreams. My sister was driving her Suburban, I was in a Cherokee and Frank in the Wrangler. We were in Oklahoma City and going back to Duncan. She had a young Asian couple with her. The man rode with Frank, but my sister said this would be a good time for the woman to drive me in the Cherokee. We got in and she proceeded to be unable to make turns and drove through a field, laughing and having a good time, with me trying to turn the wheel back to the road and explaining that she has to take it slow and easy because of the Cherokee’s higher center of gravity. As we were about to get on I-40, the alarm rang and woke me up.

Yeesh.

I’m a little late on this, but here goes.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

“But this is to anticipate the end, rather than to find a serviceable beginning.” [The Third Reich: A New History, Michael Burleigh (2000, New York: Hill & Wang).]

Much more bustling downtown today. Still not like a typical school day, but Steve says the traffic getting around town, especially around State, was actually worse than during the school year. A mixed bag, I think. I found a table in Ambrosia easily. Campus (the outdoors parts) seemed fairly busy. The libraries were fairly dead. As I walked home after work tonight (first time I’ve walked all the way from campus home in a long time) there were a couple of parties going on out on front lawns on South State, including a volleyball game in front of one of the frats; not sure if these were just stragglers or what. I was able to cross South State without getting killed, which would not have happened on a typical day during the year. So, I’m not sure. Like I said, a mixed bag. It definitely doesn’t feel as though the town has emptied out, though.

The Boy Emperor’s Cabal’s attempts to screw workers out of overtime pay were scuttled by the Senate, at least temporarily, :

‘The U.S. Senate voted to block … Bush’s administration from putting into effect overtime pay regulations that would limit extra pay for some workers. Senators voted 52-47 to bar changes in overtime rules that would shrink the number workers eligible for overtime and 99-0 for another provision that guarantees overtime for workers in 55 professions, including computer programmers, teachers and journalists. Both provisions are attached to a tax bill that is being debated. … The votes mark the second time in a year senators moved to stop the Labor Department from issuing rules that would restrict overtime pay.’
—Bloomberg.com

Hooray for the Senate. But of course, the Orwellian administration immediately started bleating, ‘Won’t somebody please think of the corporations!!!!’ and whining that those nasty idiot workers at places like Wal-Mart are about to scuttle the entire economy and deny any profit at all for the embattled and put-upon rich by their endless whining and lawsuits:

‘Labor Secretary Elaine Chao has said the revisions would save U.S. companies including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and RadioShack Corp. $2 billion a year in litigation costs for overtime disputes. They would cost companies $1.1 billion for extra wages in the first year and $375 million for higher pay each year after that.’

The corporate shill/harpy has been on an extended PR campaign (a la Johnny Reb Asscroft’s tour of cities to drum up support for USAPATRIOT) to whine and moan and bitch and complain about those evil mean Democrats and labor unions:

’”As the issue moves to the House, we will continue to expose the misinformation campaign against the rules and strengthen overtime rights for workers,” Chao, 50, said in a statement.’

Isn’t it great how this disingenuous idiot warps the truth by saying that they want to ‘strengthen overtime rights for workers’ by stripping workers of overtime rights?

How disgusting are they gonna get?

While subbing in the media center of a south central AA middle school today, the latest issue of People came in, featuring the ‘50 Most Beautiful’ yahoos on the planet, headlined by Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, of course.

Two selections catch the eye however; both are the offspring, next-generation of 1970s pop culture people. The first is Josh Ritter, John Ritter’s son. Look for a Three’s Company: The Next Generation movie soon, methinks.

The second is heiress and Symbionese Liberation Army gun moll Patty Hearst’s daughter, and let me just say I have rarely seen a more anorexic-looking apparation in the pages of People. Well, at least not since 30 pages before with Jennifer Aniston’s pics, but you get the idea. I mean, I’ve seen Somalian famine victims in the ‘80s with more meat on their bones.

But isn’t it nice to know that the legacies of John Ritter and Patty Hearst will be with us for another few decades? Of course, if Patty’s offspring doesn’t eat a burger soon, that may not be true.

Listen to me, so catty today. That comes from the gorgeous spring day outside and the deserted, sepulchrous media center inside. The highlight of the day was helping students research old dead presidents this morning and discovering that the school has killer wireless internet access.

Not that I’m complaining. I hadn’t read an issue of People in, oh, say three years. So now I’m caught up on that …

I read on one Okie blog that respondents to a poll on that site voted that computer access and refrigeration are more important than indoor plumbing.

Let’s just say that it was an unscientific poll and leave it at that.

After all, my ancestral state has far bigger problems than little polls. « The Daily Oklahoman just wrote an editorial bemoaning the expansion of Oklahoma higher education in the state »:

‘Last we checked, Oklahoma had 13 publicly funded comprehensive and regional universities, a dozen two-year colleges and two higher education centers. From Goodwell to Durant and points in between, college students have no shortage of choices. Now they may soon have yet another. The state House of Representatives gave final legislative approval last week to a bill that would make Duncan the home to a branch campus of Cameron University. Cameron is located in Lawton, which is just 30 miles from Duncan. … Under House Bill 2624, by Rep. Jari Askins, D-Duncan, a learning center in Duncan will be used to offer lower- and upper-division courses and master’s-level graduate courses. Askins says no additional state funding would be needed to operate the campus. We’ll be interested to see how long that lasts. Askins is in line to become House speaker if Democrats retain their control in November, so it’s unlikely Gov. Brad Henry will want to buck his colleague on this. But he should weigh it carefully. There’s no question Oklahoma needs more college graduates, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it needs more college campuses.’
—The Daily Oklahoman

Couple of problems here. First, Duncan has had a higher education center in partnership with my alma mater, Cameron, for several years now. This represents just an expansion of its mission and offerings.

And second, as someone who spent five years of his life commuting on Oklahoma’s terrible two-lane roadways that 30 miles between Duncan and Lawton that the Oke seems to think is piffling, well, let’s put it this way: ‘Hey, Daily Oklahoman! Bite me!!!

The condescension, arrogance and petulance in the editorial is just amazing, particularly on this subject. Bringing the opportunity to get a college degree to more and more Oklahomans is a great thing and the Daily Disappointment should be leading the cheerleading instead of trying to snark negative political points against Jari Askins and the Democratic governor.

Shame on them.

Former rightwing attack shill David Brock has « a new website, Media Matters », ostensibly dedicated to combating the same Fascist claptrap he used to produce.

How the worm turns.

Still, donkeys are flying; let’s not criticize them too much and see how far they fly …

« Here’s how our Tough-on-Terror Boy Emperor is protecting us from evil »:

‘The Treasury Department agency entrusted with blocking the financial resources of terrorists has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track Osama bin Laden’s and Saddam Hussein’s money, documents show. In addition, the Office of Foreign Assets Control said that between 1990 and 2003 it opened just 93 enforcement investigations related to terrorism. Since 1994 it has collected just $9,425 in fines for terrorism financing violations. In contrast, OFAC opened 10,683 enforcement investigations since 1990 for possible violations of the long-standing economic embargo against Fidel Castro’s regime, and collected more than $8 million in fines since 1994, mostly from people who sent money to, did business with or traveled to Cuba without permission.’
—Yahoo News

Yup, that’s the Boy Emperor’s Cabal for you … always and above-all is the ideology, while they pretend to do the opposite.

Don’t you feel safer?

The Boy Emperor’s twin ideological tenets, tax cuts for wealthy people and privatization of everything so that those wealthy get even wealthier, is « trickling down all over »:

‘This summer, when backpackers, hikers, and families—with kids in tow—pony up to get into America’s national parks, they could be in for a rude and crude awakening. Due to dramatic budget cuts some parks may be cutting back their hours, hiking trails may be un-passable, educational programs may no longer exist, and even some bathrooms may be shut down. Over the past few months, the National Park Service (NPS) has quietly imposed a hiring freeze, abandoned maintenance projects, cut visitor services, and reduced park hours at a number of America’s national parks. In response, according to Ski magazine, “Forest Service officials appear to be leaning toward a policy change that would allow more visible displays of sponsors, whose logos, names or ads could appear on items they underwrite.” The NPS believes that “its private partners in the tourism industry can help stem the decline in park visitation through aggressive efforts to lure more paying customers into the parks,” says Scott Silver, the executive director of Wild Wilderness, a Bend, Oregon-based environmental advocacy group.’
…
‘The National Park Service used to be one of the most dependable government-run outfits, Silver says. “From its earliest days, the idea behind the agency was that our national parks would be to America what the Cathedrals and architecture of Europe were to those countries, and most NPS officials cared a great deal for the parks and did a good job managing them.” … during the mid-sixties, the tourism industry begun to sink its claws into the NPS and “the process of Disneyfication” had become well-established by the time George W. Bush took office. Now, “politics rule supreme within the Department of Interior and it appears that when the leadership of the NPS is not misdirecting the media and the American public, they are speaking out of both sides of their mouths,” Silver told me in an e-mail exchange.’
—Working For Change

Sounds like the Boy Emperor’s administration: Mortgage our future, rape our past, make our present as Orwellian as possible. The depredations of snowmobiles in Yellowstone will be looked upon nostalgically in a few years when we have to pay Dreamworks a fee to look at Old Faithful, which will only erupt after the captive audience has seen seven previews of upcoming movies starring the Olsen Twins, Jim Carrey, Angelina Jolie and William Hung.

Says Pat Boone, « ‘Censorship is healthy‘ »:

‘A healthy society needs censorship to survive, 1950s musical icon Pat Boone said yesterday. He added that he would welcome strong content restrictions governing movies and other artistic works. “I don’t think censorship is a bad word, but it has become a bad word because everybody associates it with some kind of restriction on liberty,” said Mr. Boone …’

Censorship is NOT a restriction on liberty, I see. This is a joke, right? Not exactly:

‘A more serious meeting of celebrities was when Mr. Boone was invited to a private screening of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” “After the screening was over, I turned and said, ‘Mel, you’re an apostle,’ ” said Mr. Boone, who has appeared in 15 films. “An apostle is one commissioned by God to tell the story and you are telling it more powerfully than it has ever been told or will ever be told, and you are therefore an apostle.” “I consider it the most important film ever made. It is a film that is not only of gigantic proportion but one that changes life, that affects people’s eternal destiny.” It is all the more significant, he said, “because Hollywood has an open antipathy toward Christianity itself.”’
—The Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times

Mel Gibson, an apostle and The Passion the most important film ever made.

Well, I think I might actually find myself in agreement with Pat: Censorship just might be desirable … so somebody slap some tape on his mouth.

After all, shutting Pat Boone up isn’t a restriction on liberty, right?