What the hell is wrong with this world? Will I ever live in a time where I don't ask that at least 10 times a day?

You may have seen the marvelous "Sudo make me a sandwich" piece - the cartoonist at xkcd.com is really great.

GW and Pompey - Updated

When my friend Joe was last in town from England, he gave me an excellent gift of a book by a Roman author named Suetonius, called The Twelve Ceasars, providing biographies of twelve Roman leaders from Julius Ceasar to Domitian.

Besides having a bewildering-place-in-time moment this morning when I realized the source of "July" (Julius Caesar) and "August" (Augustus Caesar), I also noted that most excellent passage on Julius.

Whether or not this description is true (or the general ethics of Caesars overall legacy) is not the issue - what I find fascinating is the wisdom of this perspective, as opposed to - say - WPE.

Suetonius, contrasting the leadership conduct of Julius Caesar against his political opponent Pompey:

Nobody can deny that during the Civil War, and after, he behaved with wonderful restraint and clemency. Whereas Pompey declared that all who were not actively with the government were against it and would be treated as public enemies, Caesar announced that all who were not actively against him were with him.
(The Twelve Ceasars, p. 35)

It seems a subtle distinction, but the effect is unification, not fear and a splintered society.

Update 9/8: The irony of this post - placing GWB at odds with Caesar (and in line with Pompey) is that Julius Caesar is often considered the mark of the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire. He assumed an extraordinary number of unheard of (in a republic) powers, was awarded the honor of "dictator for life," and was assassinated out of fear that he was becoming too king-like and endangering the freedoms and the character of roman civilization.

Also interesting, it is noted, that the rise of a dictatorship is not always evident to the people involved. Wikipedia, on such a shift from the former republic:

This is a distinction chiefly made by modern historians and not by the Romans of the time, however. The early Julio-Claudian emperors maintained that the res publica still existed under the protection of their extraordinary powers and would eventually return to its republican form.

Uh-huh. The Patriot Act is just temporary.

Rush on CBS

In Katie Couric's CBS Evening News they have a segment called Free Speech, where, according to Katie, "newsmakers, opinion makers, and just plain folks tell us what's on their minds."

Well, who better to have on to tell us like it is than Rush Limbaugh, September 7th??

[...]

But some Americans, sadly, not interested in victory, and yet they want us to believe that their behavior is patriotic. Well, it's not. When the critics are more interested in punishing this country over a few incidents of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay than they are in defeating those who want to kill us, when they seek to destroy a foreign surveillance program which is designed to identify those who want to kill us and how they intend to do it, when they want to grant those who want to kill us U.S. constitutional rights, I don't call that patriotic. Patriotism is rallying behind the country, regardless of party affiliation, to defeat Islamofascism. Patriotism is supporting our troops in the battlefield, not undermining the mission and morale.

[...]

Next up, Dobson?

T-Shirts Chosen, 9/7/06

This morning, someone picked up these t-shirts out of their drawer and said "Yeah, THAT's the one for me today."

No Money
No Car
No Chance

and

Why Can't I Be Rich Instead of Just Good-Looking?

Angry Astronomer notes that California legislature spent taxpayer money drawing up an official resolution condemning the decision of the International Astronomical Union to revoke Pluto's status as planet. ("Excuse me, IAU? You have a phone call from California." "Who?" "It's one of the provinces of the USA")

Among other inane reasons, they point out that "the deletion of Pluto as a planet renders millions of text books, museum displays, and children's refrigerator art projects obsolete."

This is exactly the kind of "aww, poor Pluto," nostalgia-trumping-science shit that makes me sick. Science exists to make what you believe today wrong in the future. That's what it does. Dragging your feet makes you look not quaint, but rather like Flat Earthers or Young Earthers.

"But I Liked the Brontosaurus!!!"

Now if you want to complain that the IAU vote was done on the last day of the conference, with a small number of members still around, or that the new definition is vague, that's another thing...

Update 9/8: AA has updated his post to note that the bill is in fact a joke. Ha ha.

There's a wonderful billboard near where I work that shows a toddler's face. The text reads:

Every time you yell at another driver, she learns a lesson.

You're always teaching. Teach carefully.

The British Sound French

NYT: Coalition of the No-Longer-Willing: "7 British Officials Resign in Revolt Over Blair"

Also, does this mean they would be Against Us?

MOST people believe that the Blair Government’s foreign policy has increased significantly the risk of terrorist attacks and now want Britain to distance itself from America and set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, according to a poll for The Times.

File Under Effortless

You know what's a great song? R.E.M.'s "I Am Superman," from 1986's Life's Rich Pageant. They were effortless then.

Ministry of Success

Apparently, the Global War on Terror is being waged perfectly. It just needs a new name.

What is needed, said Army Col. Gary Cheek, is to recast terrorists as the criminals they are.

"If we can change the name ... and find the right sequence of events that allows us to do that, that changes the dynamic of the conflict," said Cheek at the Defense Forum Washington, sponsored by the Marine Corps Association and the U.S. Naval Institute.

"It makes sense for us to find another name for the GWOT," said Cheek. "It merits rethinking. I know our European allies are more comfortable articulating issues of terrorism as criminal threats, rather than war ... It ought to be our goal to partner better with the European allies so we can migrate this from a war to something other than a war."

If you've ever seen Cat Power struggle in a concert, you'll be pleased to read this review and see these pictures.

This guy's site's fantastic, so bookmark it or subscribe to it.

(image property of chromewaves.net, so all honor to him!)

Okay, shrub, if Bin Laden's so much like Hitler, why have you been ignoring him for years? You're out of your league, you're terrified, and you're fucking up this planet and all of our futures. It doesn't seem like you're even TRYing to make sense anymore.

It has been a beautiful gray rainy day in NYC, where the mist is deep enough that the city looks like a comic book. There just seem to be a wider variety of experiences going on in NYC when it's like this. On a sunny day, it seems like everyone's in the same head space, and I don't always want to share my head space with 10 million others.

Condi, speaking to Essence magazine, compares the present situation in Iraq and the War of Terror to the US Civil War:

Secretary of State Rice compared the Iraq war with the American Civil War, telling a magazine that slavery might have lasted longer in this country if the North had decided to end the fight early.

"I'm sure there are people who thought it was a mistake to fight the Civil War to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold," Rice said in the new issue of Essence magazine.

"I know there were people who said, 'Why don't we get out of this now, take a peace with the South, but leave the South with slaves?'" Rice said.

Could this get any more condescending?

(via The Carpetbagger Repor)

On 9/11, every channel on the air had news tickers running along the bottom of the screen. That was a new thing - having it going constantly - and I realized today that they're still here, and that it is a permanent addition to the "language" of TV interface. It's not going away. It was new and glaring at first, but we've grown used to it, and no channel's going to back up now.

Keith Olbermann speaks bravely and clearly and forefully. This is a truly excellent speech. I beg you to watch or read it.

Smithers, You'll Have to Drive the Cab!

Senator Conrad Burns, from Montana, says a "faceless enemy" of terrorists "drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night."

Are we Being Protected now?

These nasty edges of The Republican Party are making me think of the Bosses in videogames where, after a long long battle, the thing stops moving, a light grows within their body, bursting out at the seams, and then they explode.

This is the same asshole who called his housepainter a "nice little Guatemalan man" - and there's more at that Washington Post story.

(via Think Progress)

The other day I finally got around to buying the three new Cure reissues. Buying reissues makes me feel like an aging hippy buying the umpteenth reissue of some Eric Clapton something-or-other, but maybe I understand their mindset a bit more now (?).

I've now bought remasters I love of The Cure, Echo/Bunnymen, Slowdive and the Cocteau Twins, and have loved every minute of it.

This time it was

- Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me
- The Top
- Head on the Door

I always adored The Top (especially Bananafishbones), felt lukewarm about Head on the Door, and felt all over the place about Kiss Me.

Once again, however, the damn Pitchforkmedia ends up being more right than I want them to be. They gushed about Kiss Me, and after a lot of relistening in the last couple of days, I have to say I agree with them. It's an astonishing album, and really really holds up over the years.

This blog has been dead for a bit, but I'm resurrecting it, with a slightly different approach. I don't always (much?) agree with Dave Winer, but I enjoy his stream of posts approach. That's not to say I won't ever post longer "pieces," but for now I'm looking forward to posting whatever observations or small (even IMAGE-less!) thoughts I have.

Lucky for you.

The other night I was watching The Colbert Report, and was stunned to see the TV Ad he selected as representing, in his glorious sarcastic way, some sort of centerpiece of our current American experience. It was that damn "Crubelievable" ad from Kraft that I was going on about a few months back! Oh, well, I can pretend that my blogging inspired him.

The video's up at Comedy Central, called American Pop Culture: It's Crumbelievable!