Oh, goody, the breathalyzer on my PC is broken.

“…excellent as a pre-dinner drink”??? WTF??? Here it is, 23.50 at night, I’ve been pouring this stuff for hours, and it’s supposed to be a pre-dinner single-malt? Hell with that, I had a gin tonic as an aperitif, dude. Then a nice red with dinner (pasta), and since then, Glenkinchie.

I shant be embarrassing, my kid reads this. I’m never embarrassing to my kids. Around my kids. Whatever.

Heh.

Self-publishing is a double-edged sword, isn’t it?

Two things: be careful what you hate, and not interesting in person:

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Bush is Lord.

Susan Sontag on torture.

An old friend who had been underemployed with one crappy job after another (but a wide variety of them) for the last twenty-three years, all topped off with a period of unemployment followed up by another crappy job, this friend just landed a dream job. The job incorporates all the skills she accumulated in those other jobs. She beat out more than 200 other applicants for the position because she was a perfect fit. That last sentence almost but not quite sounded dirty didn’t it? My point is some of us — exactly how many I don’t know, let’s say 100% — go through life like that, bumbling along thinking our life is going nowhere, when in fact we are becoming more and more unique and suited for our dream job, a perfect situation where all our unique skills and qualities we’ve developed are put to perfect use, empowering and fulfilling us and helping others at the same time. Some of us — let’s say 99% — of course don’t know exactly what this dream job is, and some of us are like, gonna drink all that gin all by yourself? Because maybe we never find that position. Not sure what that percentage is, but it’s probably depressingly high. What I’m saying is, life has value and you’re like a diamond, somehow, maybe, even if that dream job never gets invented, because you’re getting better and better at being yourself. Not that diamonds get better at being themselves or anything, that diamond image just occurred to me as I was typing this, because a diamond is a small, hard expensive thing with faults, like a human heart or soul or third eye or something.

I found out yesterday, by the way, that the UN commissary here in Vienna does not stock absinthe, for heaven’s sake. I’ve seen it in grocery stores in Vienna, but not there. I’ve never been inside the commissary, because you need special commissary status to do that, so I don’t know what it looks like inside. Maybe it’s logical that they don’t stock absinthe. But it’s just as possible that they do stock all these ususual drinks from various cultures around the world, such as single-malt. Which I know for a fact they do stock. I mean, I can imagine a conversation like this:

Absinthe, no what is absinthe? Is something for eat?
No, it’s a green drink.
Try wine section?
No, a bright green booze. It would be in the booze section.
Ah, such as gleen!
Gleen?
Is very rare. Top shelf. Made with small monkey, live high up in forest canopy usually. Catch them, feed with gleen, that is why is called gleen you see?
Gleen is made of gleen, then? So what is gleen?
Green booze, I say already. You want fifth or gallon bottle? Good for gleen ceremony, is traditional.
Um…

Anyway, no absinthe.

A friend of mine has a new political blog, Big Time Patriot, and so far it’s pretty good.

There was an article in some newspaper I read, International Herald Tribune or the Japan Times, on the left page down low (maybe, if I remember right — think twice before calling me to act as a defense witness at your trial), about what’s-his-face that fat leftist who makes “movies” that (duh) win prizes in France, and Disney not wanting to distribute them in the US. And Eisner says this and those other guys on the other side say that, in the article. And Disney’s excuse (in this article, which is a couple days old by now so maybe they have a better nother one now) is (and I paraphrase) “Some of our customers may be offended by the movie.”

And it occurred to me that I am a major Disney customer (I have a 7-year-old girl, dude) who is offended by their decision not to distribute the film in the US and (it would seem) to delay as long as possible anyone else from distributing it in the US either. So I am boycotting them. No more Disney products, no Disney films (unless the name Pixar is also on them, that’s my one exception), no Disney media or other productions of any kind, nothing licensed by Disney, no cereals or sheets or items of clothing, no nicknacks that glow in the dark or sparkle, none of that despicable shite (unless Gamma screams her head off, of course, in accordance with my parenting strategy of rewarding my offspring for screaming their heads off, on the theory that getting good at screaming your head off helps them out later in life). I estimate (conservatively) that our household spends about $2 million annually on such Disney products, so they’ll feel this, man.

And anyway, be honest: Disney is fucking creepy. Walt was the philosophical father of Michael Jackson, wasn’t he? He had a thing about kids too, didn’t he, and putting them on rides, that whole pre-pubescent thing, Annette Funicello and Britney Spears and Mouseketeer and all that shit. And Disneyland is so clean and sexless and usually always works and people wait passively in very long lines and don’t get pissed off and childhood is worshipped as some special place instead of the

1. fictional cultural construct, and

2. oft-times horrible, or at least confusing and complicated place

it really is. With fucking pirates and anthropomorphosized (and superanthropomorphosized) creatures of various species. And goddamned Peter Pan, the very symbol of all that trash. It has always struck me as a fascist utopia, and this current Disney support of the Bush regime and corruption on a massive scale and torture and denial of due process and all those other human rights violations, and all that other rogue superpower stuff fits right in with that, doesn’t it? If you look closely at the guy in the Mickey Mouse costume, you’ll see an Uruk-Hai squinting out the eyeholes.