I don't know why I've been thinking on this agonizing song by Leah Andreone. Perhaps it was reflecting on the utter uselessness of death of the young woman from Lewis in the Outer Isles. Perhaps it's the sickening feeling of watching the Theatre of the Absurd play out inside the Beltway, as the supposed Grown-up Party (can we EVER justify calling the GOP that again?) pisses on the hopes of millions of jobless to shower largesse on an American plutocracy as bloated as it has ever been since 1928.
Perhaps it's just the approach of the relentlessly Wenceslausy Season, which always makes me reflect on the immense abyss between what we say we care about and what we really do care about.
Anyway, I couldn't find the original video for "Lamentation". But the creator of this version does, I think, a good job of using Andreone's wrenching music to score the story of J.R.R. Tolkien's fated shieldmaiden Eowyn; another tale of waste and tragedy.Given the "yea, verily!" prose that Tolkien wrote, I'd argue that brilliant imagery of Peter Jackson's portrayal of the woman who loves and despairs is superior to the original. But that's just me. But I think it's hard to disagree that Miranda Otto's performance is both stern and vulnerable; I think she does a terrific job with a minor charcater. Watch the film and see if you agree.
Anyway. It's a sunny day today, and I'm going to go for a walk and try and shake the blues. Hope you are enjoying a sunny day, as well, and have no cause for lamentation.
Friday, December 03, 2010
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Like there's a monkey in your pants...
Whaddya think; a game or "Truth or Dare"? Youthful high spirits? Dancing to the beat of an...umm...VERY different drummer?Whatever the reason, I love this gal. I wish I could dance like that. And had a good reason to.
(h/t to Jezebel)
(h/t to Jezebel)
Tradition!
Big Boy came home this week with something called "Thanksgiving Homework" from his second grade class.
This consisted of a two-page (double-sided) sheet with some fairly incursive questions about what he had done for T-giving and things like his personal favorite sights, smells, sounds, and tastes of the holiday. Oh, and he had to draw a family tree.
The question that stumped us, though, was regarding "family traditions".
Because, you see, we're the very worst sort of rootless, mongrel Americans. Homogenized, pasteurized, bland...our families got to this continent and dropped their old customs and mores like a live grenade.
And we have so far successfully resisted the late trend for "re-traditionalizing" families and holidays. We gesture towards the occasion, but, really, I am an utter pagan and Mojo, who does randomly lurch towards some sort of holiday spirit now and then, is really too slothful to complete the effort.
So we sat there, the three of us; the Boy poised with his pencil and his shining evening face looking for parental guidance, and my bride and I, utterly clueless. Bereft. Vacant of inspiration. Utterly gobsmacked.
We could not think of a single, solitary family "tradition" - for Thanksgiving, or for any other holiday, for that matter. We were adrift in a sea of postmodern American anomie; we had no traditions.
Finally, in the way my mind always works, it drifted from trying to think of a family tradition to the notion of tradition in general and from there to historic quotes regarding tradition, and from there to Winston Churchill. And that's where I came upon a suggestion for the Peep.
"Rum, buggery, and the lash?"
Mojo and I were forcibly struck by the likely reaction of Peep's very dignified second-grade teacher confronted by this as a family tradition, and spent the next four minutes or so snorting and giggling.
The Peep was NOT amused. He had no idea what the three things were, but he knew that his parents were being irresponsible, and refused to write it down. I think he settled for "Eating Thanksgiving dinner with family".
Smart boy.
I suspect that if one of our children turns out to be a serial murderer or a Wikileaker no one at the elementary school will be surprised. We're such bad parents.
This consisted of a two-page (double-sided) sheet with some fairly incursive questions about what he had done for T-giving and things like his personal favorite sights, smells, sounds, and tastes of the holiday. Oh, and he had to draw a family tree.
The question that stumped us, though, was regarding "family traditions".Because, you see, we're the very worst sort of rootless, mongrel Americans. Homogenized, pasteurized, bland...our families got to this continent and dropped their old customs and mores like a live grenade.
And we have so far successfully resisted the late trend for "re-traditionalizing" families and holidays. We gesture towards the occasion, but, really, I am an utter pagan and Mojo, who does randomly lurch towards some sort of holiday spirit now and then, is really too slothful to complete the effort.
So we sat there, the three of us; the Boy poised with his pencil and his shining evening face looking for parental guidance, and my bride and I, utterly clueless. Bereft. Vacant of inspiration. Utterly gobsmacked.
We could not think of a single, solitary family "tradition" - for Thanksgiving, or for any other holiday, for that matter. We were adrift in a sea of postmodern American anomie; we had no traditions.Finally, in the way my mind always works, it drifted from trying to think of a family tradition to the notion of tradition in general and from there to historic quotes regarding tradition, and from there to Winston Churchill. And that's where I came upon a suggestion for the Peep.
"Rum, buggery, and the lash?"
Mojo and I were forcibly struck by the likely reaction of Peep's very dignified second-grade teacher confronted by this as a family tradition, and spent the next four minutes or so snorting and giggling.
The Peep was NOT amused. He had no idea what the three things were, but he knew that his parents were being irresponsible, and refused to write it down. I think he settled for "Eating Thanksgiving dinner with family".
Smart boy.I suspect that if one of our children turns out to be a serial murderer or a Wikileaker no one at the elementary school will be surprised. We're such bad parents.
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Axe to the Head
So remember the "No Pity" scarf billboard?
Here's the latest addition;
I don't know quite what to think.
I like the graphic, but why the babe (other than the general likeability of babes in general)? Why not kit her out in a Timbers strip? With the blue shirt (and if you don't recognize the logo in the lower right) she looks more like she's flogging some sort of "Don't Go In The Woods" Paulette Bunyan-the-Slasher flick.
Here's a thought: how about reproducing this only with Timbers fans in the same pose? Moms, kids, dudes, dudettes...make the connection. Are you listening, Timbers marketeers?
Here's the latest addition;
I don't know quite what to think.I like the graphic, but why the babe (other than the general likeability of babes in general)? Why not kit her out in a Timbers strip? With the blue shirt (and if you don't recognize the logo in the lower right) she looks more like she's flogging some sort of "Don't Go In The Woods" Paulette Bunyan-the-Slasher flick.
Here's a thought: how about reproducing this only with Timbers fans in the same pose? Moms, kids, dudes, dudettes...make the connection. Are you listening, Timbers marketeers?
November in December
Missed my internal deadline for the Battle for November, so the Battle of Unsan will be coming your way this week. It's just been a busy, rainy week and I've been getting home dirty, tired, and wet. Not conducive to good blogging.
I note in passing the relative insignificance of this little blog, sadly, in comparing the reaction to this post here - nothing - to the same post over at MilPub; a host of comments and discussion about the Christmas Tree Moron and his FBI-fueled fantasy.
I'm glad that people like MilPub. I'm just a little sad to see this place decline into a naething.
I note in passing the relative insignificance of this little blog, sadly, in comparing the reaction to this post here - nothing - to the same post over at MilPub; a host of comments and discussion about the Christmas Tree Moron and his FBI-fueled fantasy.
I'm glad that people like MilPub. I'm just a little sad to see this place decline into a naething.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
In The Rose City
there's...
I love this billboard for the pure opacity of it. This is the back side of the official Timbers Army scarf.
But the thing is, you wouldn't know that unless you are familiar with the team and its supporters. Which means you probably already support the team.
So as marketing, I'm not sure if this isn't a fail.
But as a symbol of the great soccer spirit here in the Rose City, it's a 5-nil winner.
I love this billboard for the pure opacity of it. This is the back side of the official Timbers Army scarf.
But the thing is, you wouldn't know that unless you are familiar with the team and its supporters. Which means you probably already support the team.So as marketing, I'm not sure if this isn't a fail.
But as a symbol of the great soccer spirit here in the Rose City, it's a 5-nil winner.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Spy vs. Spy: Beaver State Fathead Edition
So it turns out that I now know a total of something like a dozen people who were in Pioneer Square in downtown Portland when this fucking idiot 
thought he was committing an act of guerilla violence.
The following couple of days my Facebook page was littered with posts to the effect of "OMG! I was there! Thank you, FBI!" and appended with comments praising God and the solder (or FBI agent) whom we adore.
Perhaps it was because I hadn't the slightest interest is watching the lights go on a big fir tree so I was at home playing Jenga. Or perhaps its because I'm a nasty, cynical SOB by nature. But you'll excuse me if I beg off the universal congratulations to my government for catching the next Khalid Sheik Mohammad.
Because from what I understand;
1. This idiot did everything but wander around Corvallis wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Osama and the legend "I'm With Stupid".
2. Ignoring the First Rule of Internet Hookups ("The chance that the hot sixteen-year-old soliciting for no-holds-barred wild monkey sex over the Internet is actually either a vice cop trolling for morons or a 42-year-old pervert looking to get you to post pictures of your pecker approaches unity the longer you keep searching the Net for loli-porn") the idiot splattered the Web with his jihadi spam until the FBI was unable to continue to ignore him.
3. The feds then:
a. contacted Mohamud in a June 2010 e-mail under the guise of being a jihadi.
b. met with the guy multiple times, where he pushed them to help him with his nefarious plans. Supposedly the agents "cautioned Mohamud several times about the seriousness of his plan, noting that there would be many people, including children, at the event"
c. pretended to help him with logistics, including "assembling" the bomb and testing a smaller version somewhere in backass Lincoln County, Oregon.
d. appeared in a video with him to record his "mission statement".
e. picked up Mohamud to travel to Portland to finalize details of the attack.
f. set him in the seat of his bomb-van with several fake drums of pretend explosives in the back (which the idiot failed to check, proving that he was a no-go at the first performance test of walking-while-breathing, "You need to be smarter than your equipment") which he dropped off near the tree-lighting spot
g. let him make the detonating phone call - twice - and then busted him.
So excuse me if I'm not celebrating the takedown of the greatest criminal mastermind since Professor Moriarty. This moron Mohamud sounds like he might have spent the next five years in his bedroom playing the jihadi version of "Call of Duty" and eating cheetos if the FBI hadn't pretty much handed him the color-by-numbers handbook for would-be jihadi truck bombers. This wasn't fucking Tim McVeigh. This wasn't even your basic Palestinian pay-for-kaboom suicide bomber. This was a fucking idiot who didn't have the basic common sense to check the equipment his suddenly confiding new "friends" procured, engineered, assembled, transported, and emplaced for him.
Don't get me wrong. I'm glad this guy didn't kill anyone. I'm GLAD he is a fucking idiot.
But I'm reading the skittish Facebook responses from the people who were in the square that evening, and wondering what will happen the next time someone proposes some sort of additional security theatre, or profiling the Somali immigrant community, or loosening the entrapment laws, or some other sort of exchange of liberty for "security".
And, of course, demands that all response to the nose-led idiot be based on panic fear and reflexive condemnation rather than skepticism and the Rule of Law.
Or, even better, turns into lynch mob counter-terror and attacks on American muslims because...well...because, y'know, they're terrists!
Because if the study of history and politics has taught me anything, it has taught me that there is no practical limit to the damage to a society that the society can do to itself when prodded by a single idiot.
Update 11/28 p.m.: Greenwald has more, including the vexing details that the FBI 1) may not have actual evidence that the moron chose his moron path and was not entrapped in some form, 2) paid him as part of smoothing his path to Pioneer Square, and that 3) "Here we find one of the great mysteries in American political culture: that the U.S. Government dispatches its military all over the world -- invading, occupying, and bombing multiple Muslim countries -- torturing them, imprisoning them without charges, shooting them up at checkpoints, sending remote-controlled drones to explode their homes, imposing sanctions that starve hundreds of thousands of children to death -- and Americans are then baffled when some Muslims -- an amazingly small percentage -- harbor anger and vengeance at them and want to return the violence. And here we also find the greatest myth in American political discourse: that engaging in all of that military aggression somehow constitutes Staying Safe and combating Terrorism -- rather than doing more than any single other cause to provoke, sustain and fuel Terrorism."
thought he was committing an act of guerilla violence.The following couple of days my Facebook page was littered with posts to the effect of "OMG! I was there! Thank you, FBI!" and appended with comments praising God and the solder (or FBI agent) whom we adore.
Perhaps it was because I hadn't the slightest interest is watching the lights go on a big fir tree so I was at home playing Jenga. Or perhaps its because I'm a nasty, cynical SOB by nature. But you'll excuse me if I beg off the universal congratulations to my government for catching the next Khalid Sheik Mohammad.
Because from what I understand;
1. This idiot did everything but wander around Corvallis wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Osama and the legend "I'm With Stupid".
2. Ignoring the First Rule of Internet Hookups ("The chance that the hot sixteen-year-old soliciting for no-holds-barred wild monkey sex over the Internet is actually either a vice cop trolling for morons or a 42-year-old pervert looking to get you to post pictures of your pecker approaches unity the longer you keep searching the Net for loli-porn") the idiot splattered the Web with his jihadi spam until the FBI was unable to continue to ignore him.
3. The feds then:
a. contacted Mohamud in a June 2010 e-mail under the guise of being a jihadi.
b. met with the guy multiple times, where he pushed them to help him with his nefarious plans. Supposedly the agents "cautioned Mohamud several times about the seriousness of his plan, noting that there would be many people, including children, at the event"
c. pretended to help him with logistics, including "assembling" the bomb and testing a smaller version somewhere in backass Lincoln County, Oregon.
d. appeared in a video with him to record his "mission statement".
e. picked up Mohamud to travel to Portland to finalize details of the attack.
f. set him in the seat of his bomb-van with several fake drums of pretend explosives in the back (which the idiot failed to check, proving that he was a no-go at the first performance test of walking-while-breathing, "You need to be smarter than your equipment") which he dropped off near the tree-lighting spot
g. let him make the detonating phone call - twice - and then busted him.
So excuse me if I'm not celebrating the takedown of the greatest criminal mastermind since Professor Moriarty. This moron Mohamud sounds like he might have spent the next five years in his bedroom playing the jihadi version of "Call of Duty" and eating cheetos if the FBI hadn't pretty much handed him the color-by-numbers handbook for would-be jihadi truck bombers. This wasn't fucking Tim McVeigh. This wasn't even your basic Palestinian pay-for-kaboom suicide bomber. This was a fucking idiot who didn't have the basic common sense to check the equipment his suddenly confiding new "friends" procured, engineered, assembled, transported, and emplaced for him.
Don't get me wrong. I'm glad this guy didn't kill anyone. I'm GLAD he is a fucking idiot.
But I'm reading the skittish Facebook responses from the people who were in the square that evening, and wondering what will happen the next time someone proposes some sort of additional security theatre, or profiling the Somali immigrant community, or loosening the entrapment laws, or some other sort of exchange of liberty for "security".
And, of course, demands that all response to the nose-led idiot be based on panic fear and reflexive condemnation rather than skepticism and the Rule of Law.
Or, even better, turns into lynch mob counter-terror and attacks on American muslims because...well...because, y'know, they're terrists!
Because if the study of history and politics has taught me anything, it has taught me that there is no practical limit to the damage to a society that the society can do to itself when prodded by a single idiot.
Update 11/28 p.m.: Greenwald has more, including the vexing details that the FBI 1) may not have actual evidence that the moron chose his moron path and was not entrapped in some form, 2) paid him as part of smoothing his path to Pioneer Square, and that 3) "Here we find one of the great mysteries in American political culture: that the U.S. Government dispatches its military all over the world -- invading, occupying, and bombing multiple Muslim countries -- torturing them, imprisoning them without charges, shooting them up at checkpoints, sending remote-controlled drones to explode their homes, imposing sanctions that starve hundreds of thousands of children to death -- and Americans are then baffled when some Muslims -- an amazingly small percentage -- harbor anger and vengeance at them and want to return the violence. And here we also find the greatest myth in American political discourse: that engaging in all of that military aggression somehow constitutes Staying Safe and combating Terrorism -- rather than doing more than any single other cause to provoke, sustain and fuel Terrorism."
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