George W. Bush et. al.:
Allowed September 11 terrorist attack to succeed by ignoring numerous warnings and failing to take precautions against hijackings
–That’s a pretty serious charge. What were they supposed to do?
Planned to invade Iraq with 250,000 troops, without Congressional Declaration of War as required by the Constitution
–I thought the Constitution was about my right to buy Playboy and bear arms?
Threatened seven nations with nuclear war

–Seven eeeevil nations.

Continue reading →

Proof that Miguel is evil.

Via that evildoer dederdebelg, coiner of the word apocapitalist.

Location: Interior, tastefully-appointed middle-class rural Austrian kitchen, a little on the rustic side but not too bad. Little sister, 5, is sitting at table. Dad messing around with breakfast at counter. Big sister, 13, enters, wearing jeans with a fit some women would kill for, and a beige bra with clear shoulder straps.

Dad: [Reaction shot: thinks, whoa, where'd all those curves come from suddenly?]
Big Sister: Grnmph.
Little Sister: Hey, why aren’t you wearing a shirt?
Big Sister: [Groggily] Eh, forgot.
Little Sister: You look like Shakira. [She's a huge Shakira fan.]
Big Sister: [Does double-take.] How would *you* know what Shakira looks like? You don’t even have a TV.
Little Sister: Sometimes she’s on when I watch TV at grandma’s.
Big Sister: Hrm.
Dad: [Goes into cellar to laugh.]

If you have a lot of experience driving beaters, you are familiar with the state of subconscious vigilance as you drive down the road, grooving to whatever music is on the radio, perhaps hearing the rhythm of the tires on the seams in the road or of the windshield wipers keeping time to Me and Bobby McGee or something, but simultaneously part of you is always on duty and at attention, listening for sounds of breakdown – the screech of the fan belt, a new engine knock, squeaking brakes, something funny in the transmission, the Formula One sound of a muffler going. Even after I bought a new car for the first time, it took me months to get out of the habit of turning off the CD player to try to determine if the high-pitched tones I’d just heard meant my rear axle was about to fall off, or were just something the producer had added to the mix in the studio to give the music a little more high end.

We’re currently hearing noises in our house as well. After all, it’s September, the expensive month. There is the familiar sound of the upstairs shower dripping; one of us hears it, says we should get it fixed because it’s bad feng shui, and the other says, “yes, as soon as we find the part…”. Two nights ago, there was the sound of the dishwasher running all night, instead of turning off after an hour as it’s supposed to – dishes sure were clean in the morning, though.

Also new is the weird thrumming in the middle of the night. I guess it’s always there, below the threshhold of perception during the day when kids are fighting and in-laws are butting in; but at night it sort of emerges from the background, as if the house is meditating. “Ommmmmm.”

Alpha: “What’s that sound?”
Miguel: “Um, burglars?”
Alpha: “No, we thought we heard burglars last week. No, that humming sound.”
Miguel: “I thought it was my tinitus.”
Alpha: “No, your tinitus is a high-pitched whine.”
Miguel: “I thought that was… never mind.”

The noise was loudest in the stairwell. Was it the furnace, which we’ve just turned on and are still trying to get to work right? Maybe not, because the sound gets quieter when you go into the furnace room, not louder. Some wiring problem? Could be – we just had an electrician here “fixing” things. Or maybe the plumbing is getting weird, preparing to burst through the walls when we have guests here for Thanksgiving?

Who knows. After an hour of going from room to room in the middle of the night, head tilted at an angle to best listen to the night, we said, “fuck you, mysterious noise,” and went back to bed.

Also, this morning we noticed that I’d forgotten to lock the front door for the first time in my life, and speculated about what a burglar would’ve thought if he’d marched in. “Where the hell’s the TV? No stereo either, just a bunch of books! Someone beat me to it!”

Boy, having a full range of movement sure is nice.

APOCAPLECTIC
Main Entry: ap.o.ca.plec.tic

Pronunciation: “a-po-ka-‘plek-tik
Function: adjective
Etymology: French or Late Latin; French apoplectique, from Late Latin apoplecticus, from Greek apoplEktikos, from apoplEssein, from English apocalypse
Date: 2002
1 : state of extreme agitation over the end of the world
– ap.o.ca.plec.ti.cal.ly /-ti-k(&-)lE/ adverb

Example: “George became quite apocaplectic when he discovered that the genetically-altered virus targeted his genome.”

[Partly to blame on an AIM conversation with D.]

“These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world.”

And he’s not talking about bloggers.

[via the usual suspects]

My first car was a turquoise 1958 Chevy Apache half-ton pickup truck that I bought for $350 and I still miss it. I sold it to some guys for a little less than that when it became clear that it was nickle-and-diming me to death. As soon as I fixed one thing – bad breaks or leaky head gasket – another thing would go out – muffler, headlights, etc.

I thought about the truck last night at the bone doctor, as I showed him the results of my MRI scan and threw in some X-rays of an old wrist injury for the fun of it. The wrist isn’t worth messing with, he said, since it’s not really in pain, but he had a little fun with the shoulder.

Look, I’m not old, so I won’t go on about my aches and pains, and I won’t go into the details of the diagnosis. I’m not afraid of getting shots, but when I saw the size of the syringe, and needle, I had to sit down. I got a shot of painkiller and cortisone, which was okay except it freaked me out a little how he moved the needle around in the shoulder joint, injecting here and there. I’ve never perceived my skeleton like that before, really, had it brought to my attention that way, by a needle moving around between the ball and socket joint.

But 5 minutes later most of the pain was gone, and I could put a T-shirt on without pain for the first time in years.

Also, when I mentioned how now I would be able to play the cello without excruciating pain in my shoulder, he told me about a Danish discus thrower he had treated once – “this tall” he gestured (about 6’10”) and “this wide” (about 4′ broad at the shoulders). The man was a huge athlete, but had acquired a shoulder problem from playing the trombone.

Musicians live dangerously.

Also, the doctor told me that if this shot and physical therapy don’t help, the only alternative would be an operation.

Me: “What sort of operation?”
Doctor: “Well, one of those minimal things, we just make a couple incisions…”
Me: “How many exactly?”
Doctor: “Two or three. One here to look in, one or two here to work.”
Me: “Doesn’t sound so…”
Doctor: “And then we take this grinder…”
Me: “Uh…”
Doctor: “You know, like a router or something?”
Me: “Eh…”
Doctor: “Only for medical purposes, of course. It fits right over the end of the joint and we grind off 5mm to make room in there.”
Me: “And the telephone number of the physical therapist was what again?”

[Gotta go, colleague is trying to fix my hard drive...]