Vacation: A Clarified Definition

We recently returned from a "vacation." Actually, it was a trip to a far away place to celebrate a graduation. We stayed in a resort. There was a bit of time to play. It was not, however, a vacation.

I posit a clarification to the definition of vacation. A vacation cannot include anything mandatory, however "fun." If there is any expectation or obligation, that day, at least, cannot be counted as a vacation day.

Maybe it is too much to ask, but someday I'd like to do nothing significant. Let me rise, eat, play, nap, eat, and sleep.

Could Somebody Please Tell Me Again Why I Should "Support Our Troops"?

There never was a more rhetorically unassailable phrase. Of course we don't wish the volunteers ill; nevertheless, I have difficulty understanding how the ribbons and unceasing chant mean anything more than a validation of their mission and actions. And I can't do that.

It would be political suicide to question this evil turn of phrase, but that doesn't mean it should be forbidden to mention how pampered this gang (for whom the bar for enlistment continues to be lowered) has become.

"Some front-line units continue to operate out of spartan outposts where a hot meal is a luxury and flush toilets unknown. But growing numbers of troops live on giant installations complete with Wal-Mart-style post exchanges, movie theaters, swimming pools, gyms, fast-food eateries (Subway, Burger King, Cinnabon) and vast chow halls offering fresh-baked pies and multiple flavors of ice cream. Troops increasingly live in dorm-style quarters (called "chews," for "containerized housing units") complete with TVs, mini-refrigerators, air conditioning/heating units and other luxuries unimaginable to previous generations of GIs."

So when the administration begs for more borrowed money to "Support Our Troops" in the manner to which they have become accustomed, it may strike some as a bit disingenuous that the implication is that all the money is being spent to protect them. Well, a pointless and unnecessary "war" (in truth nothing more than invasion and occupation, complicated by a pandemonium of armed thugs intent on resistance and fratricide) is rather difficult to explain. The logic must be, by necessity as fluid as a bag of Jello®, and so it is.

Tell me, why are they there? Are we each getting our $4,000+ annually for their actions? I hope they're enjoying their perks, it sounds like more opportunities for fun than I have! Your tax dollars at work.

That's enough.

Leave No Defense Contractor Behind

I know now that I should have thrown all the little money I had into defense and oil stocks after the coup of 2000. Look at the new budget for validation.

RIP Molly Ivins

With this I mourn Molly Ivins.

The world has few enough smart people, and far too few of them come from Texas.

When my brain finally started growing in, her words helped me come to terms with politics.

Why her? Why Ann Richards? Why the good and not the evil?

Howl at the moon. Mourn the sharp-witted and brilliant.

In an age when and country where the President sounds like "Mater" from Pixar's "Cars" and the smart men he "defeated" sound like college professors, we needed brave voices like Molly's. Who will stand up and be the next H. L. Mencken heir?

Time

"And then one day you'll find
Ten years have gone behind you.
No one told you when to run,
You missed the starting gun.
So you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking.
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older.
Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death."

Roger Waters/Pink Floyd said that in 1973, and it resonates with me today. But it's 20 years, or more.

Where the FUCK did the time go? How the FUCK did I get here? Why the FUCK didn't I ... ?

Where's Chris Doty?

"Nobody said it was going to be fun. At least nobody said it to me."
- Richard (The Big Chill)

Washington Chess

Has anyone else made the connection between John Negroponte's move to #2 at State and Dick Cheney's forthcoming resignation?

Here's what I expect to happen:
1. Dark Lord Cheney resigns for "health reasons."
2. Bush preemptively pardons him.
3. Condi moves to VP, the third Bush "impeachment-protection Vice President" (including Quayle).
4. Negroponte gets Secretary of State.

Watch for it before too much longer.

Forks in the Road

Maybe it's because I'm sitting here at age 45 watching the kids in the tub, but while watching "The Devil Wears Prada" (with frequent pauses to deal with assorted domestic crises) this New Years Evening I had another epiphany regarding how things might be different. If I'd had the vision to follow my bliss to RIT and avoid being sent to Mount Vernon Nazarene College I might be shooting fashion in Paris instead. Or had I come back from Japan and sent a blind letter to the Smithsonian HR office... But either of those would have resulted in three fewer marriages and four fewer children. Hmmm.

Scruffy Inspiration

There may be some Derridian or Freudian or some other-ian explanation for this but I realized today that my two most significant television-derived inspirations have been, to be kind, "scruffy."

I bought my first serious camera in part because of "Animal" from the show "Lou Grant" in the 1970s. Photojournalism isn't my milieu.

I don't know what is.

Tonight, as I avoid putting the children to bed, we're watching "Northern Exposure" Season III; while these first aired a dozen or so years ago (before I even met the mother of these, my day job), the seed of inspiration may well have been received then. It may be that "Adam," the characterAdam Arkin played, was the first "chef" I ever encountered. Now I cook. Mostly for my own amusement and probably my equalibrium.

No time for photography.

In any case, I acknowledge my debt to Adam and Animal. My photos and food make people happy and keep me from being even grouchier. While I am fairly scruffy, it's more a function of time (can't always shave or dress well while trying to get the young folk rousted) than fashion.

Martin Picard is my current idol, just a chef, I think. His foie gras poutine may kill me. And that's OK.

Nancy Pelosi for President

It's a big if, but it gives me hope to think the Forces of Evil will lose their control of the House and Senate in November, and that in January the hearings and trials will begin. They'll have to take both Dark Lord Cheney and the Chimp in the Oval Office out, but that shouldn't be especially difficult. And according to what's left of the Constitution, the Speaker of the House is next in line, QED.

Dick Cheney is a Vogon

It's the only explanation that makes sense.

"Vogons are extremely ugly, extremely officious, and generally not much fun to be around. They emerged from the seas of the planet Vogsphere, and gave up on evolving there and then. Only their stubbornness allowed them to survive."

"They generally become bureaucrats in the galactic government. Their unpleasant demeanour makes them ideally suited to such employment"

Prices Matter, Not People!

"I shop at Wal-Mart (and the other big boxes) because I want cheap stuff. Human rights don't matter. Fair wages and working conditions, and especially the environment don't matter. I don't care how it affects my community or Chinese slave laborers. I got it for less at Wal-Mart!"

The Dent in Al and Tipper's Bedroom Wall

If I can't take the madness of Emperor George, I can hardly imagine how Al Gore feels. It would be perfectly justifiable for him to get out of bed every morning and bang his head against the wall.

I know I've written before about having gone through the looking glass, but I really wonder what that alternate reality looks like, the one that had Ralph Nader reconsider and support the Gore/Lieberman ticket.

The one we're living in is really too weird.

American Freedom*

I'm going to get in trouble for this one, I'm sure. But I'm wondering what happened to civil liberties.

Impeachment? Hell no, impalement

Will Durst in WorkingForChange.com: Why are we sick of George W. Bush? Pick a reason

I can't say it better myself.

Arbeit Macht Fries

Anti-fascist, liberal arts educated, underemployed, overtired...

"Sometimes I just think funny things." (Arthur Bach)

It made me giggle this morning.

Let the War Crimes Trials Begin!

If it's a war (on "terror", on Iraq, on facts, on evolution, on whatever), I'm looking forward to the War Crimes Trials.

Talk about your overflowing prisons! Where will we put them all?

The cartoon is from July 2004. What's changed?

I Prefer France

For a variety of reasons, I live in the United States of America. It isn't necessarily my first choice (especially since the forces of evil completed their takeover in 2000), but that's how it goes.

There is a certain contingent of Patriotic Amurcans who, for some reason, have a problem with France. I think it's because the French weren't bullied into supporting Dark Lord Cheney's wealth-transfer scheme that is otherwise known as the War on Iraq. Is there any thinking person left on the planet who believes the French weren't right to doubt the Bush gang on this one?

I took my shoes to be repaired at a little shop over the hill and noticed on a shelf there a combat boot that had been painted pink and a French flag sticking out the top. When asked what it was about, the cobbler said, "the French are pussies; they won't fight." I don't blame them, and I suspect that most of the poor lunks who find themselves on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan wish they were somewhere else, too! (This excludes the ones who are enjoying the opportunity to "make the ragheads pay for 9/11.")

Yep, I'd take a farmhouse in rural France or an apartment in Paris in a second if the opportunity presented itself.

Arbeit Macht Frei

Yep, work brings freedom.

There are lots of businesses with "Freedom" in their name these days. Just today I recycled a phone book put out by a firm called "Freedom Publications." Just up the road there are two car dealerships called Freedom whatever. Yahoo yellow pages lists several more of these patriotic establishments. I'm fairly confident that none of them are owned by people who think Dark Lord Cheney and his cabal's adventures in invasion, torture, and wealth transfer is a bad idea.

Then again, I've been doing Anne Frank research, and there are too many parallels for a thinking person not to get nervous.

Since they've co-opted family, I'm going tribal.

First they stole the word "life" (Pro-Life, Culture of Life, etc.) to mask their efforts to limit women's reproductive rights and control people through the end of their lives as well, and now they've laid claim to the word "family." My favorite definition of family is "a circle of people who love you." The folks behind this latest insidious plot to Redeem America have appropriated this perfectly serviceable noun and made it mean "that which is opposed to 'the homosexual agenda', any abortion, same-sex marriage, non-religious science education, and anything else that might offend the church ladies."

The American Family Association
Focus on the Family
Family Research Council
and
FamilyLife.com, a family ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ

It's like heaven: if these are the people who are going to be there, I'll pass. If they're the ones defining family, I'll call my circle a tribe.

Pity the Persecuted Majority

It is bad enough that white Christian Republicans control the government and much of business and media in America, but claiming that "conservatives" (a code for this brand of theo-fascism) are unfairly treated is unseemly. The fact that thinkers outnumber believers at many schools where thinking is permitted, and that the Wonderland logic that governs much of "conservative" dogma is discounted or ridiculed results in outcries claiming that they are persecuted on campus. The irony is that thoughtful, intelligent, truly compassionate, inclusive thought and action are decried as liberal idiocy by this gang of fools. Their ideological lock-step is way too close to a goose-step.