Posts

If dissent is unpatriotic, then apparently Senator Kennedy dissented his way all the way on to the no-fly list. (Of course, my first thought was that past legal troubles…ahem…might have something to do with it, but that should only affect his voting status in Florida. Oh, wait, he’s white. Florida doesn’t care about revoking his right to vote.) Seriously, though, if the terrorist watch list includes possible terrorist aliases like “Edward Kennedy,” how do folks named John Smith ever manage to get on board a plane? ...

Is it a story of greed, ambition, and ruin? Well, no, but it is a story of incompetence and indifference, and what happens when you can buy and sell a post office. Courtesy of The New York Times (free registration required)

Okay, so it turns out we’re not the only two people watching this show. (The premiere episodes, at least, turned out to have been pretty highly rated for UPN.) And, looking on some message boards, we’re definitely not the only folks who like Mose — it’s MOSE, not MOSES, English — the best of all the people in the house. However, I’m almost willing to guarantee, from the same boards, that we’re the only folks who like Ariel, the spaced-out vegan who believes cows might be aliens. Heck, I think she and Mose might work out as a couple. Too bad they’d probably have to live around cows. :) ...

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” President George W. Bush August 5, 2004 Remarks by the President at the Signing of H.R. 4613, the Defense Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2005

I realize we’re in the middle of fighting Evil, one medium-sized country at a time, but growing up in the 1970s and 80s, I still have a healthy respect for the nuclear weapons issue. (You know, the one that says we’re glad they haven’t been used in a while and we know the probability of their being used approaches 1 every time another country develops them.) From what I recall, as late as 1994 a primary concern of our government was making sure nuclear weapons capability wasn’t spreading around. We didn’t do a great job, but hey, it worked somewhat well for fifty years or so. ...

“Republicans Look to Harvest Amish Vote” - AP I can see U.S. 250 near Wooster, Ohio now, packed with buggies heading towards the polling places on Election Day. :)

Possibly as an antidote to the mind-altering tedium that is the working world, Lorrie and I decided to watch three documentaries on DVD over the weekend: The Kid Stays in the Picture Very good. Based on the book by the same name, the documentary tells the rise, fall, and rise again — sort of — of Robert Evans, possibly the movie industry’s most influential producer during the Seventies ( The Godfather, Love Story, Rosemary’s Baby, etc., etc., etc.). Since the movie is narrated by him, and the story is told completely from his perspective, part of the fascination is how much could possibly be real. However, no matter what, it’s a great Hollywood story. ...

Went to the Sarah McLachlan concert in Raleigh Friday evening. While we’re both fans, neither of us had seen her in person before now, and I was a little worried about how the whole singer/songwriter thing would come off in an arena (the RBC Center…or Centre, since RBC stands for Royal Bank of Canada). Of course, I had forgotten that Sarah is Big in Canada™, and that usually means Good Live, no matter where you see the act. (Think Rush.) The RBC Center is a good venue for that sort of concert — it was built recently to house hockey and basketball, meaning the seats would need to be fairly close to the court area. She hit the usual hits, as well as a fair amount of material from the latest album, much as one would expect, and the crowd was really into it. We got two encores, one that was probably planned and one that perhaps was not. (Oddly enough, someone threw a broken lighter up onstage during the concert. I’m not sure what that was about. Those floor tickets were too expensive to buy just to show up and throw hard objects.) ...

Yesterday was the 35th anniversary of one of humankind’s defining achievements. Amazing how far away it seems now.

Good list from McSweeney’s. I want to hear “How Are We Going to Get These Dogs Back In?”, but I know I’ll just hear it played too often and hate it.