Month: September 2002 (Page 1 of 5)

if we instantly felt better upon taking in the words “everything is ok” it would be etched into the moon.

I read Bobby’s site and I am amazed. And I have hope for humanity. If even one person can write like that, we have hope.

The Wisconsin gubernatorial candidates, Scott McCallum and Jim Doyle, have been slinging a lot of mud lately. All the political ads they’ve been running talk exclusively about the other guy, and how he’s an evil, puppy-killing scum who’s going to ruin your life.

I think one of the best skewerings of this was on the Simpsons episode where Sideshow Bob was running for mayor of Springfield against “Diamond Joe” Quimby.

TV AD:
Mayor Quimby supports revolving door prisons. Mayor Quimby even released Sideshow Bob — a man twice convicted of attempted murder. Can you trust a man like Mayor Quimby? Vote Sideshow Bob for mayor.

I also love how everyone clucks their tongues at the negative ads, editorials decry them, and yet politicians keep doing them – because they know they work. If commercials full of kittens and rainbows got people elected, they’d use those. People say they hate the negativity, but they eat it up.

Sort of like McDonald’s.

Yes, I admit it. I watch the “Anna Nicole Show.”

Best thing about tonight’s usual round of cringe-inducing behavior? Watching Anna greet a tiny Martin Sheen backstage after they’d both appeared on the Tonight Show. Sheen, clutching some guest gifts, looked somewhat terrified, like he was Tokyo being threatened by a giant blonde Mothra.

?The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.?
-Herman Goering at the Nuremberg Trial

Lots of good stuff over at Liberal Slant.

For all of us who love language, a visit to The Apostrophe Protection Society is imperative. Don’t miss the examples.

I was fascinated with Sparky’s recounting of his dreams, and even told him I was a little disappointed that I rarely remember mine. And when I do, they’re pretty standard anxiety dreams that usually involve something like losing my class schedule in high school.

But then coincidentally, I found in some old files something I’d written about a dream I had. Obviously I wrote it out because I so rarely remember them, and I wanted to remember this one. So here it is:

I was this vain, good-looking movie action star. I was shooting a sort of medieval Mad Max movie, where the setting was sort of medieval but there were guns and motorcycles. There was this group of people trying to kill me because they thought my movies glorified violence. Some of them may have been extras on the movie set. I remember trying to look in a mirror because I wanted to see what I looked like, so I looked at my reflection in a window. I looked sort of like me, but a good-looking version of me. At one point I did a thing I called “running the gauntlet,” which meant riding my motorcycle down this street that was lined with screaming fans, and they were all trying to touch me and get me to talk to them. Also people had baskets that they would hold out, hoping I would toss change into them, sort of like people hoping for candy tossed to them along a parade route. Then on the set, once in a while an extra would come out of the crowd and try to attack me, and I would use karate moves to fight them off.

Watched the two-hour “West Wing” premiere tonight, which I taped from last night. It was good, generally, but I think it would have been better as just an hour. With two hours, Aaron Sorkin predictably gave in to his tendency to over-emphasize the policy-wonk sections of the story, shortchanging the human side that I love.

I must admit, though, that I’m tremendously entertained with how they’re skewering GWB’s triumphant no-nothing attitude in the persona of James Brolin’s Gov. Ritchie. Let’s hear it for a smart, articulate, thoughtful person in the White House. When exactly did that become a bad thing?

Could the Navy lower my self-esteem any further?

“If they wrote a book about your life, would anyone want to read it?”
-Navy recruiting commercial

Just a thought

Isn’t it strange how we call Saddam Hussein “Saddam”? Isn’t that sort of like Harry Truman calling Stalin “Joe”?

35 questions. (via Tuesday, who kicks some serious ass in her commentary about them)

Related: Al Gore (remember him?) on Dubya’s plans.