Smile

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.
-- Voltaire

Ridiculous enough yet?
How about this?

Who is Ted Stevens?

Don't forget to vote. Vote early if you can- avoid the rush.

Going down.

Disturbing. Oy vey... first we ignored them and let them be raised by television and video games, then we relegated them to anonymous slots in over-crowded, under-funded classrooms, then sent them out into an economy that neither had enough jobs for all of them, nor paid them a living wage. So then we trained them to kill while telling them they were being trained as peacekeepers, then sent them to where they were utterly unwelcome and greeted with hostility, ...and now they're home. I'm horrified, but not entirely surprised at what's happening.

Here's the deal: we are all human, and we all need a little love. Maybe I'm being simple-minded, but people only act anti-socially when they feel excluded. Maybe I'm being naive, but it seems to me that -more than anything else-- these people need to remember that we're all human, and most importantly, all in this together. Reach out to someone who's not expecting it, today.

Led Zeppelin without Robert Plant? Um... I've always been a purist, as far as group identities go: minor changes in the lineup of small combos make for major differences. I suppose I see such bands as entities in and of themselves: Pink Floyd without Roger Waters is like watching a headless zombie: you have to admire how it moves, but it doesn't say anything worth listening to. Imagine the Beatles without John Lennon --what?? The Rolling Stones without Mick Jagger? Queen without Freddie Mercury? It's just not the same- it'd be like ...well, it'd be like listening to Van Hagar. I mean, why bother?

Like father, like son?

Rather, like mother, like daughter. Though it does remind me of W's foreign policy...

The bubble to end all bubbles.

When I find I'm not as eloquent as my thoughts and ideas demand, I remain quiet.

On this day in 1787, “Don Giovanni” premiered in Prague. In 1884, Bela Lugosi was born. In 1923, Turkey became a republic, with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk as its founder and first President. In 1929, this was Black Tuesday, the worst day of 1929's stock market crash. In 1969, the first-ever computer-to-computer link was established via ARPANET.

Lollipops and moonbeams

Our economy, our entire material culture really, is a tower with a roof of solid gold, built on a foundation of balloons and soap bubbles. Now we're supposed to be surprised that it's collapsing.

You probably don't remember this, but for years and years and years, nobody called what happened in VietNam a war. "No no," they'd say. "It wasn't a war, it couldn't be; America doesn't lose wars." No, it was just a conflict. The VietNam Conflict. Isn't that nice? Nice.

I wonder when we'll stop calling this mess in Iraq a "war"? We're not winning anything there, and we never will, because of course it's not a war, it's an occupation.

Why didn't we call our engagement in SE Asia a 'war'? Lots of reasons: we had just recently fought a real war with real enemies (WWII) and the pain of loss was still tangible; we were still mired down in Korea (that other 'conflict'); we had just suffered a series of horrible tragedies (all the assassinations of the '60's- JFK, MLK, RFK, Malcolm X, plus the attempts on George Wallace and others); ...but primarily because it just wasn't war, and we knew it. It was an occupation, plain and simple (and that's what all those Hippie protests were about- not anti-war: anti-occupation).

On this day in 1838, in response to what he termed "open and avowed defiance of the laws, and of having made war upon the people of this State,” Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs declared that “... the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace—their outrages are beyond all description." This came three days after disaffected church leaders Thomas Marsh and Orson Hyde attested in an affidavit to Joseph Smith’s intention to conquer the world. Theodore Roosevelt was born on this day in 1858, and John Cleese was born in 1939.