Salvation Amy

Well, this is too cool. I wonder if he’d give me a couple of stock tips. Hmmm - I wonder if this is real…

IRAQ-O-METER Educates and Entertains

Now I will Rant About the Government

Have you stopped to ask yourself who profits from this war?

Do you know that you’d better not ask the wrong questions, or look too suspicious, or look too possibly foreign?

Sometimes, when I have extra time on my hands, I kick around the age old conundrum, who is more arrogant? Justice Scalia, or Justice Rhenquist. Here is an entertaining recap of the recent argument of Lawrence v. Texas before the US Supreme Court. It is worth reading for the headline alone, because it just sounds better than “Supreme Court hears Oral Argument on Sodomy.”

We are killing people. Lots of them are civilians. It is painful, it is bloody, and we are merciless.

Okay - it’s not that I necessarily think that this is a bad idea, so much as a completely weird idea. And I wonder why the Keystone Cops of Congress don’t have anything better to do. And President Bush? Declaring a day of Humility? Isn’t that sort of a little like Mother Theresa declaring a day of Hedonism? I think I liked these jokers better when they were looking for food to rename.

A Bunch of Stuff that is Pissing Me Off Lately

It is very hard to know where to start on this war, what with the propaganda, and the flag waving of the media, the media. Has anyone ever heard that theory that the Free Press is almost another check/balance in the political system? Remember that?

I guess I am starting with the media. Okay - First of All - the “liberal media” and by that I mean the big corporate morass that runs the media and spends its evenings lolling about in bed with the Bush Administration, giving it hot oil massages and peeling grapes, has been shouting down voices of dissent right and left lately. And I am pretty sure that means that we had all better SIT UP AND PAY ATTENTION. Because, in case you haven’t noticed, Our Executive Branch is not what we might call The Great Champion of Civil Liberties… So here’s a roundup of some stuff that’s happening in the media lately.

Clear Channel Communication, a media giant, operated by people with ties to our ersatz president, has been organizing a bunch of the pro-war rallies that have been going on around the country. You may read about it here.

Here is the last column of OpEd writer Brett Flynn to appear in the “Star Community Newspaper” cluster. Ironically, it’s about the importance of the First Amendment.

Kevin Sites’ blog has been shut down, well, temporarily suspended, by CNN, who, apparently pays the bills. Sites is a journalist who has been keeping a war blog of this, and other conflicts. His photoblog of Iraqi people is beautiful. Check it out, look at their faces, wonder what their future will bring. Ask yourself who we are fighting, and what for.

Media Consultants advise clients to wave flag and keep dissent low key to maximize profits during war time.

California Journalist suspended over antiwar protest.

And please, take a look at the way the press reported Michael Moore’s Oscar Acceptance Speech (and also one at the Independent Spirit Awards. “Bush Bashing Bonanza. “Violent Attack”. Now - you know, I’m sorry, but, uh, a violent attack, doesn’t that better describe the bombing of the Iraqi market yesterday which killed civilians, 15 of them children? Read about it here “Is this the humanity that Bush is talking about?” implored Ali Kadhin, whose 3-year-old son was badly wounded in the explosion. Hey, hey, now, Mr. Kadhin - watch that violent attack on our president now….

Hello, Hello - I have been quite away lately, working very hard. I love my job. I love my family. Nick broke the growth plates on both of his wrists this week, and is in two casts from his fingertips to his elbows. But that was just the other day, and does not account for where I’ve been all week.

We have virtually no clients at work. So I have been cleaning the office. This has consisted of putting stacks and stacks of paper that were all over the place into piles. David looked at me quizzically, when I told him that something was in the filing cabinet in alphabetical order, and said "How will I find it?" I think I will most likely give him a list, and then a test. And then, I will have Scott install a hidden camera, and I will call him up and go "can you check the file on the Perinatal Association and tell me when your next meeting is?" and sit and eat popcorn and laugh as the hilarity ensues.

But I signed up with the referral service on Thursday, and they called me that afternoon with two new clients, and said some of our areas were areas where they got calls, but had noone to refer people to, and they were excited to have us.

From the Independent

This morning I woke up and in my e-mail was my Today in Literature daily update. And they quoted a poem by Billy Collins who, it turns out, is our current poet laureate. And I don’t know so much what the quote was, but the name of the poem was "Lines Composed Over Three Thousand Miles from Tintern Abbey" which I thought was a great name for a poem, with apologies to Wordsworth, who, were he still alive, would owe me an apology or two for the number of times I was subjected to his poem about Tintern Abbey. So anyway, I looked up this Billy Collins, and it turns out he writes poems like this and this and this one, which I think is my favorite. I have not been this excited about something someone does with words since I thought I was the first one ever to discover Hemingway in college (which, it turns out, I was not). And it is a cross between really good poetry like this and really bad poetry written by teenage girls with lots of castles and symbolism, which is why I won’t even try to write poetry.

But speaking of poetry, Ananaia and I were doing just that last night, in the context of the war, and I read her this one by ani difranco and she e-mailed me this one by Amiri Baraka both in reaction to the attack on the World Trade Center.

This just leaves an aching hole in my chest.

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I have been working on a Senatorial beefcake calendar for many years. Unfortunately, it has not taken off, because I can only fill three months because there is just not all that much beefcake in the US Senate. And, as much as I disagree with a lot of his politics, John McCain has always served as Mr. July in beefcakeville, because I just think it’s refreshing to find a politician who will tell you what he thinks, without worrying about what people are going to say or think about it. Unfortunately, this means he also will say what he thinks, even though it means he is now risking being cut out of the calendar. His points are very well reasoned, and as always, deeply held. I just disagree with him. Because even with all those well reasoned points, I still think war is mean.

This guy is both weird and cool at the same time. If you’ve ever wondered how many pumpkin pies you could make from a giant pumpkin, or what on earth you can do with a giant map of California, or just how oddly the human mind can work - ladies and gentlemen, I give you cockeyeddotcom.