it comes in pints?

Well that was fun!

I had lunch today with frequent commenter MeTooThen. Fine fellow, not sure why he'd hang around with the likes of me.

Burgers, beer, and a stimulating discussion of blogs, politics, current events, science, medicine, and boobs. A good time was had by all and we didn't even get kicked out - a rousing success!

And thank you for lunch, MTT. Next one's on me.

He Would Have Been My Last Guess...

...Eddie Izzard as Charlie Chaplin, that is.

I See The Boys of Summer

I see the boys of summer in their ruin
Lay the gold tithings barren,
Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils;
There in their heat the winter floods
Of frozen loves they fetch their girls,
And drown the cargoed apples in their tides.

These boys of light are curdlers in their folly,
Sour the boiling honey;
The jacks of frost they finger in the hives;
There in the sun the frigid threads
Of doubt and dark they feed their nerves;
The signal moon is zero in their voids.

I see the summer children in their mothers
Split up the brawned womb's weathers,
Divide the night and day with fairy thumbs;
There in the deep with quartered shades
Of sun and moon they paint their dams
As sunlight paints the shelling of their heads.

I see that from these boys shall men of nothing
Stature by seedy shifting,
Or lame the air with leaping from its hearts;
There from their hearts the dogdayed pulse
Of love and light bursts in their throats.
O see the pulse of summer in the ice.

II

But seasons must be challenged or they totter
Into a chiming quarter
Where, punctual as death, we ring the stars;
There, in his night, the black-tongued bells
The sleepy man of winter pulls,
Nor blows back moon-and-midnight as she blows.

We are the dark derniers let us summon
Death from a summer woman,
A muscling life from lovers in their cramp
From the fair dead who flush the sea
The bright-eyed worm on Davy's lamp
And from the planted womb the man of straw.

We summer boys in this four-winded spinning,
Green of the seaweeds' iron
Hold up the noisy sea and drop her birds,
Pick the world's ball of wave and froth
To choke the deserts with her tides,
And comb the county gardens for a wreath.

In spring we cross our foreheads with the holly,
Heigh ho the blood and berry,
And nail the merry squires to the trees;
Here love's damp muscle dries and dies
Here break a kiss in no love's quarry,
O see the poles of promise in the boys.

III

I see you boys of summer in your ruin.
Man in his maggots barren.
And boys are full and foreign to the pouch.
I am the man your father was.
We are the sons of flint and pitch.
O see the poles are kissing as they cross.

-Dylan Thomas

Random Poetry Generator

For those of you who may be looking for fruitless ways to make the time disappear, I give you the Dylan Thomas Random Poetry Generator.

Did you know that Thomas was also once slung out of a bar in Wales for helping himself to the tap?

"One day Dylan went to the pub with World War 1 flying ace Ira Jones, and had a pleasant afternoon's drinking.

"Unfortunately, they then decided to help themselves to drink from behind the bar and the landlord, Tom Jones, physically removed them from the tavern.

"Apparently Ira Jones shouted 'Do you know who we are?' to the landlord who replied 'I don't care' before banning them."

The ban was lifted in 2003. I'm sure Thomas would appreciate that. You know, if he weren't dead and everything.

Attention SoCal Residents

Independent filmmaker Deniz Michael will host a FREE screening of his new film, Solitary Fracture, on Friday, June 18th, at 8:00pm on the USC Campus in George Lucas 108 Theater. The theater is located at 850 W. 34th Street., Los Angeles, CA 90089. Did I mention it is FREE? Well, free for you and me, as Michael, who spent more than two years writing, directing, producing, editing, writing the score and starring in the film, is screening his labor of love at his own cost. For more information, you can visit his website here.

Breaking news [updated]

George Tenet has resigned.

'Bout time.

BTW, I beat the Instasquirt on this. I'll update when he gets around to noticing.

[UPDATE] The Instasnail has finally noticed, only 3 hours and 16 minutes later. Oh, and notice the wording.

Best line of the week, possibly the year

Tim Blair writes of Cathy Siepp and Maureen Dowd:

"...Cathy Seipp, who is to Dowd as sulphuric acid is to kittens."

OTOH, Jim Treacher points out in the comments:

"Except that the kittens, after a brief period of yowling, would then be forever silent. No such luck here."

Another good line...[updated]

...heard on the way to work. A listener writes into the KSFO Morning Show:

"I hear all this talk about writing a constitution for Iraq. Why don't we give them ours? It worked for 200 years and we're not using it anymore..."

[UPDATE] I also heard this little Memorial Day incident and this little tidbit on the show but couldn't find links right away. I wonder if Lee and Mel read the Rottie?

The funny stuff you hear...

...while driving to work at 5 in the morning. Two amusing items heard on the KSFO Morning Show - just getting to it now because I had to search for links (and do actual work, too):

it's a party!

Go join in the fun!

Addiction

I have come to realize that I am addicted to one of the great banes of modern civilization.

It started out innocently enough. I wouldn't have gone looking for it, but they offered it to me. They didn't really push it, it was just there and available to try. So I did.

The first time, I felt more alert and active. I had much more energy to get through the work day. Soon, it didn't produce the same effects, and I had to double up. Then, its seductive qualities got their tentacles. "Another hit", it would say, "just one more hit, it's okay". Now it's three or four on an average day, sometimes five or six, just to be functional.

Sadly, there is no rehab clinic for this addiction and I will have to fight it cold turkey.

Bushism of the day (updated)

Someone should call Michael Kinsley Jacob Weisberg so he can add this to his collection of verbal gaffes that supposedly demonstrate illiteracy and stupidity. It's a few weeks old, but I hadn't seen it before and it definitely shows a tenuous grasp on the correct meaning of certain words.

Update: Many thanks to Eugene Volokh for pointing out that I had the name of the Bushisms author wrong.

This amuses me

Unfortunately, I don't know how long it will stay on the front page and I don't see a direct link, but this amuses me in that "Gee I'd love to take a stick and hit him" sort of way.

Pet Peeve of the cunning linguist

While Emily's away, the Sad Sack of marsupial bloggers will play.

This post of Bill's reminded me (as if the 24/7 coverage of the Peterson trial didn't), at this very moment, there is no more irritation phrase to me than "went missing". Rant below, not for the faint of heart.

No Bloggy No Cry

I guess I've run out of things to say for now and will be taking a little break due to 1) lack of blog interest in general 2) a busy schedule and 3) I'm depressed because it's the first of the month and I'm already broke. *Sigh*. How about a little more of the T-Man to cheer meself up?

My Hero Bares His Nerves

My hero bares his nerves along my wrist
That rules from wrist to shoulder,
Unpacks the head that, like a sleepy ghost,
Leans on my mortal ruler,
The proud spine spurning turn and twist.

And these poor nerves so wired to the skull
Ache on the lovelorn paper
I hug to love with my unruly scrawl
That utters all love hunger
And tells the page the empty ill.

My hero bares my side and sees his heart
Tread, like a naked Venus,
The beach of flesh, and wind her bloodred plait;
Stripping my loin of promise,
He promises a secret heat.

He holds the wire from the box of nerves
Praising the mortal error
Of birth and death, the two sad knaves of thieves,
And the hunger's emperor;
He pulls the chain, the cistern moves.

-Dylan Thomas

Weekly Check on the bias™

Jeff owns this particular TM, of course, but it is once again my inestimable pleasure to note that Alphecca's weekly check has been posted.

Venal politicians, retarded editorial writers, righteous shootings, bullet-riddled lamps, all the things we grown to expect from Jeff.

And an added bonus: A mention for Alphecca in Outdoor Life magazine. Our boy done hit the big time!

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

-Dylan Thomas

Notes From Underground

Dostoevsky's anti-hero, on reason:

Ah, but there's the rub! Forgive me, gentlemen, for all my philosophizing - it's my forty years underground! Allow me to indulge my fancy. You see, gentlemen, reason is unquestionably a fine thing, but reason is no more than reason, and it gives fulfillment only to man's reasoning capacity, while desires are a manifestation of the whole of life - I mean the whole of human life, both with its reason and with all its itches and scratches. And tough our life in these manifestations will often turn out a pretty sorry mess, it is still life and not a mere extraction of square roots. After all, I quite naturally want to live in order to fulfill my whole capacity for living, and not in order to fulfill my reasoning capacity alone, which is no more than some one-twentieth of my capacity for living. What does reason know? It knows only what is has managed to learn (and it may never learn anything else; that isn't very reassuring, but why not admit it?), while human nature acts as a complete entity, with all that is in it, consciously or unconsciously; and though it may be wrong, it's nevertheless alive.

On "virtuous and sensible people":

And then there is this curious thing that you encounter every minute: you constantly come up in life against those virtuous and sensible people, sages and lovers of mankind, who make it their very life's purpose to conduct themselves at all times as properly and sensibly as possible; to serve, as it were, as guiding lights to their fellow men, to he end of proving to them that it is indeed possible to live in the world both decently and sensibly. And what does it all come down to? We know how many of these lovers of mankind have sooner or later ended up by betraying their own fine principles and pulling some scandalous antic - often of a most disreputable nature.

In other words, "fuck it. If downfall is so seemingly inevitable, why be good?" I should have guessed, a book that starts with the words "I am a sick man...I am a spiteful man" would wind up such an obsession. It's been in my back pocket for three weeks.

Memorial Day II

Bill's got a great post befitting the holiday.

The weather is beautiful today. The windows are all open, the smell of BBQs everywhere. I can hear the laughter of the neighborhood kids playing with squirt guns in the street. Prompted by the Silver Fox fellow, I popped in Sam Cooke singing "Summertime" from Porgy and Bess. I can't remember the last time life felt so perfect.

God, I love summer.

Notre-Dame des Fleurs

I actually ripped the book in two trying to fold open the pages to memorize this passage:

Here I am this morning, after a long night of caressing my beloved couple, torm from my sleep by the noise of the bolt being drawn by the guard who comes to collect the garbage. I get up and stagger to the latrine, still entagled in my strange dream, in which I succeeded in getting my victim to pardon me. Thus, I was plunged to the mouth in horror. The horror entered me. I chewed it. I was full of it. My young victim was sitting near me, and his bare leg, instead of crossing his right, went through the thigh. He said nothing, but I knew without the slightest doubt what he was thinking: "I've told the judge everything, you're pardoned. Besides, it's me sitting on the bench. You can confess. And you don't have to worry. You're pardoned." Then, with the immediacy of dreams, he was a little corpse no bigger than a figurine in an Epiphany pie, than a pulled tooth, lying in a glass of champagne in the middle of a Greek landscape with truncated ringed columns, around which long white tapeworms were twisting and streaming like coils, all this in a light seen only in dreams. I no longer quite remember my attitude, but I do know that I believed what he told me. Upon waking, I still had the feeling of baptism. But there is no question of resuming contact with the precise and tangible world of the cell. I lie down again until it's time for bread. The atmosphere of the night, the smell rising from the blocked latrines, overflowing with shit and yellow water, stir childhood memories which rise up like a black soil mined by moles.

Jean Genet wrote Our Lady of the Flowers from prison. This is the dream of a deservedly incarcerated man, as if man was even the proper word in this case. Degenerate. Pervert. Deviant. Criminal. Prostitute. Thief. In the case of Genet, these words almost seem generously kind.

Yet I can't help but feel some sadness for him.

French novelist, playwright and poet Jean Genet was born in Paris on December 19, 1910. Abandoned by his parents, he spent much of his youth in an institution for juvenile delinquents. At the age of ten, he was accused of stealing. Although innocent of the charge, having been described as a thief, the young boy resolved to be a thief. "Thus," wrote Genet, "I decisively repudiated a world that had repudiated me."

This is not to say that I think he made many proper choices in life, but rather to think for a moment that a clogged toilet for most people brings to mind plungers and plumbers. To Jean Genet, it brought to mind childhood memories.

Under Milk Wood

I was up before the roosters this morning, despite having been at this joint until nearly 2 am with the Yuppies, Jordan ("Spike TV, dude, you got served") and a couple of *shock* non-bloggers. There's not much to do at 5 o'clock in the morning, so I re-read Under Milk Wood while waiting for the rest of the world to wake up.

Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night. Only you can see, in the blinded bedrooms, the combs and petticoats over the chairs, the jugs and basins, the glasses of teeth, Thou Shalt Not on the wall, and the yellowing dickybird-watching pictures of the dead. Only you can hear and see, behind the eyes of the sleepers, the movements and countries and mazes and colours and dismays and rainbows and tunes and wishes and flight and fall and despairs and big seas of their dreams.

From where you are, you can hear their dreams.

Dylan Thomas called it "A Play for Voices". I love that.

Combing over the bookshelves this morning, I pulled off a handful of titles that I've owned for a while and never read, or winded up buying through one of those book clubs where you're automatically shipped the book of the month if you don't send that little card back in time (man, for an absent-minded shithead like myself, those clubs are just evil. This is how I've ended up with CDs like The Greatest Hits of Travis Tritt and other various crap). Anyway, there's something very bothersome to me about perfectly decent books sitting on shelf and rotting while the owner has no intention of even cracking the cover to read the synopsis, let alone the whole bloody book, so here are three that I'll be happy to send to anyone who is interested, first to plant their flag in the comments section becoming the new owner (don't send an e-mail -- I don't want to have to explain over and over that the book's already been taken):

The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples by Herwig Wolfram, translated by Thomas Dunlap.

Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen.

Stonewall Jackson: The Man, The Soldier, The Legend by James I. Robertson, Jr.

Happy Memorial Day. Thanks to our fallen. Welcome to summer.

For chrissake, hasn't this meme run its course yet?

After all the debunking of Slate's "Bushism of the Day" by Eugene Volokh, one would think this meme was finally on the way out.

But no. I have absolutely no idea why Bizarro is carried in any newspaper - I have never seen a single amusing pane and normally just skip over it, but I glanced at today's. No link to it, I flat out refuse.

Today's panel has a fat-slob couple, in the "trailer trash" stereotype, watching TV, and the man says "Me likes president because he talk so smart like us do."

Another worthy cause

The Breast Cancer 3-Day is a series of three day walks to raise funds and awareness. The events are held around the country. Cities and dates are listed in the link.

Memorial Day

No, I'm not going to do a Memorial Day post (I hope you have your flags out tomorrow, though!)

I find it completely ridiculous for me to do a Memorial Day post. I stupidly began to compose one, knowing full well that others would do a better job than I possibly could. Fortunately for me, I took a break from composing this sorry little excuse for a post, and came across this. I trashed my pathetic little attempt immediately.

I thought the pictures alone said it all, but then I read the short commentary afterward and the further commentary in the update. I am currently wiping tears and wishing I had a tenth of the incredible talent Jeff has for bringing it home so well.

I'm crying again (I'm not joking), so while I can still type I give you Fallen Heroes.

Thrills!

Forgot to mention this on Friday, mainly because I'm a dopey geezer whose mind tends to go off track at the worst ti

Anyway, before I forget again, there is an airshow this weekend at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field. I am not able to attend, but I work nearby and managed to take some time outside to watch the practice runs on Friday. The participants are listed in the extended entry but in the limited times I had to watch I got to see the Thunderbirds, a barnstorming P-51, and the tandem P-15 and P-51 (utterly amazing to see a pursuit jet and the greatest prop fighter ever flying in tandem!)

Procrastinating With Bottom Feeders

My apartment's a disaster, but I can't be bothered to get around to it just yet. In my personal tradition of being fascinated by lowlife, scumbaggish men and their disgusting tastes and lifestyles, I've been reading E. Jean Carroll's biography, Hunter: the Strange and Savage Life of Hunter S. Thompson. She introduces the man so:

I have heard the biographers of Harry S. Truman, Catherine the Great, etc., etc., say that they would give anything if their subjects were alive so they could ask them some questions. I, on the other hand, would give anything if my subject were dead.

He should be. Oh, yes. Look at his daily routine:

3:00 p.m. rise
3:05 Chivas Regal with the morning papers, Dunhills
3:45 cocaine
3:50 another glass of Chivas, Dunhill
4?05 first cup of coffe, Dunhill
4:15 cocaine
4:16 orange juice, Dunhill
4:30 cocaine
4:54 cocaine
5:05 cocaine
5:11 coffee, Dunhills
5:30 more ice in the Chivas
5:45 cocaine, etc., etc.
6:00 grass to take the edge off the day
7:05 Woody Creek Tavern for lunch- Heineken, two margaritas, two cheeseburgers, two orders of fries, a plate of tomatoes, coleslaw, a taco salad, a double order of fried onion rings, carrot cake, ice cream, a bean fritter, Dunhills, another Heineken, cocaine, and for the ride home, a snow cone(a glass of shredded ice over which is poured three or four jiggers of Chivas)
9:00 starts snorting cocaine seriously
10:00 drops acid
11:00 Chartreuse, cocaine, grass
11:30 cocaine, etc., etc.
12:00 midnight, Hunter S. Thompson is ready to write
12:05 - 6:00 a.m. Chartruese, cocaine, grass, Chivas, coffee, Heineken, clove cigarettes, grapefruit, Dunhills, orange juice, gin, continuous pornographic movies.
6:00 the hot tub - champagne, Dove Bars, fettuccine Alfredo
8:00 Halcyon
8:20 sleep

O! It just hails cocaine in the Doctor's house. I once saw him put cocaine on his virile member and ask a Republican speech-writer to snort it off. She did.

I'm not sure what it is that I find so interesting about these kinds of shitheaded men. I've read Notes From the Underground three times in the last two weeks. I memorize long passages from Jean Genet's novels just so that I can think the words in my head when I'm out and about. I read Thompson's biography, a veritable warehouse of scuzz-bucketry and the worst behavior of which a human being is capable, with laughter and glee. These are men that, were I to know them in real life, the tone of this post would be one of complaint. Yet through the safety of distance and death, I admire them on the page for their debauchery and bottom feeding. Just what in the hell is wrong with me anyway?

Question

Why do pacifists only survive in countries protected by capable military forces?

Lies and the lying lefty douchebags who tell them

[Warning: Long, but I think worth your time. Besides, if you have nothing better to do on a Saturday night than read this, you have no more life than I do.]

In a desperate effort to act as if she actually gives a rat’s ass about doing her job, San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris has decided to "get tough" on gun crimes, with the notable exception of a recent cop murderer who will not face the death penalty

My version of the ROTK DVD

I know so much of the world was eagerly awaiting the release of ROTK (except Bill, who got it about 4 months in advance). I understand this. I really do. I hope to see it soon.

But the thing that I've been eagerly awaiting is going to be available on July 13.

And behold! I no sooner hear of that than I learn that this has been officially announced.

Huzzah and hosannas! I'm dancing like a hobbit!

Action!

Many of you have expressed your concern to me regarding the current crisis in the porn industry, while I have made it clear that I deeply share in your pain. It's a good thing we had each other to lean on during these dire straits. It looks like we've managed to pull through:

Holding a video camera, the 38-year-old director stood behind the naked actor and near-naked actress on the wooden staircase and yelled, "Rolling and action!"

Then "Mr. Pete," a 20-something with cropped brown hair and lots of tattoos, and "Jada Fire," sporting a black bra and panties set and spike-heeled platform shoes, began having sex on the staircase.

With scenes like this one, the U.S. pornographic film industry, which until mid-May had been shut down for nearly a month by an HIV scare, was back in business. Said director Axel Braun of the filming, "It was so beautiful, I didn't want it to stop."

The shoot in a house in the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles, home to a large segment of the U.S. pornographic film industry, was among the first since the shutdown.

Breathing easy, coasting into the three day weekend.

A Threat In Verse

From CNN:

The California Supreme Court is deciding whether to throw out the conviction of a 15-year-old boy who served 100 days in juvenile hall for writing a poem that included a threat to kill his fellow students.

The case weighs free speech rights against the government's responsibility to provide safety in schools after campus shootings nationwide.

Attorneys for the San Jose boy, identified as George T. in court records, described the poem Thursday as youthful artistic expression. One passage says: "For I can be the next kid to bring guns to kill students at school." Another reads: "For I am Dark, Destructive & Dangerous."

"This is a classic case of a person expressing himself and trying to communicate his feelings through a poem," attorney Michael Kresser told the court, which gave no clear indication what it would do. A ruling is expected within 90 days.

Chief Justice Ronald George and other justices wondered aloud whether George T.'s statements were protected speech because they were presented as verses in a poem.

Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Laurence replied: "The First Amendment doesn't protect against criminal conduct."

What do you guys think? Please weigh in below.

What liberal bias?

The actual headline on this SFGate story is "U.S. soldiers escorting prisoners from Abu Ghraib exchange gunfire with unknown attackers", and overall the story seems balanced. But here is what the link on the main page at SFGate says:

"Troops Hit Moving Prisoners"

Yes, I took a screen shot in case it changes.

I. have. arrived!

Yes! I just got my first comment spam! I so proud!

Oh, almost forgot:

What the blogosphere is saying

Well, the wife's riding crop is out for oiling, so I have to turn once again to the blogosphere for my weekly abusing.

"Who? "
Glenn Reynolds

"He could be a good looking guy if he had a sailor suit. And a better haircut. And a little work done. Well, a lot of work. Maybe he could put on a dress and go on The Swan."
- Sheila O’Malley

"Filthy, cactus-humping scumbag"
- Ken Layne [Well, Edward Boyd quit using it, I figured it was up for grabs]

"I don't [just] like monkeys. [I adore them and want some hot monkey lovin']"
- Frank J