Coming back to my apartment just now, I said out loud to a plant looking not so well, “I don’t know how to take care of you. If I did, I would.”
What this says about me, I don’t know.
Month: April 2003 (Page 2 of 7)
Away we go
Flying out to the Washington, D.C. area tomorrow morning to visit my grandmother. Back Sunday afternoon. In the meantime, visit people on my links list, and be sure to buy lots of shares of words mean things on Blogshares. See you next week.
Happy Birthday, Mom
For those who aren’t lucky enough to know my mother personally, I’ve collected a few of my favorite posts about her. Happy Day, Mom. I love you.
Law-and-order candidate
A Christmas story
Forrest Gump
Happy Mother’s Day
E-U-C-K
New Fox Reality Show to Determine Ruler of Iraq
U.S. General Jay Garner (Ret.) will host the show under the auspices of the Pentagon. The three celebrity judges will be choreographer and former Chrysalis recording artist Toni Basil, internationally renowned hairstylist Vidal Sassoon, and television star Kevin Sorbo.
As John has said, thank goodness the Onion hasn’t yet been shut down by the government.
Own a Piece of History! Proof that spam can be both funny and sad at the same time.
A real leader
“Even more amazing than the President’s pragmatic power over military resources is his apparent spiritual power over so many minds. Bush is not the only one who decided rather suddenly that disempowering Saddam had to be the world’s top priority. When Bush decided this, so did almost every congressional Republican, conservative TV pundit and British Prime Minister. In polls, a large majority of Americans agreed with Bush that Saddam was a terrible threat and had to go, even though there had been no popular passion for this idea before Bush brought it up. You could call this many things, but one of them is leadership. If real leadership means leading people where they don’t want to go, George W. Bush has shown himself to be a real leader. And he now owns a bit of history to prove it.”
–Michael Kinsley, Time, April 21, 2003
Insightful words from Kinsley. I’m amazed that more people haven’t brought up the group hypnosis that created an instant “Saddam Must Go!” climate in this country. It sort of reminded me of the stage hypnotist who convinces the audience member that he’s a chicken. He’s clearly not – any objective observer would realize he remains a human – but he believes passionately (and instantly) that he could lay an egg at any moment.
Time also used their cover to depict Saddam’s face with a bloody X through it. The last time the magazine did this, the face was Adolf Hitler’s. Way to go, Time.
It’s been quite a Mac weekend. On Saturday, I helped my friend Mike with his new flatbed/negative scanner (he later returned it, but oh well) on his Mac desktop. And yesterday, I picked up my mom’s little-used iMac from 1999, bringing it back in preparation for donating it to NAMI Wisconsin. They will use it in their new library space so people can have a computer for internet searching. I’m pleased about this.
Since I needed to power the Mac up and delete her old files, I thought I would try hooking it up to my DSL connection. Worked flawlessly. In fact, I’m posting this from the iMac.
It’s times like these that I seriously think of switching back. I feel it like the pull of the tides. Maybe Steve Jobs will put me in an ad.
Things I’ve learned
Easter egg hunts can be fun for adults. But much more so when you’ve hidden the eggs, rather than had to find them.
So I’m driving back from a nice family Easter out at my Mom’s place, minding my own business, and lo and behold, on the radio comes a new (? new to me) Toby Keith song. I can’t believe that I’m still able to be flabbergasted by this guy, but he manages to do it by following up his pseudo-patriotic claptrap with a song celebrating, I still can’t believe it, the DEATH PENALTY. With a little frontier justice thrown in for good measure.
Toby Keith – Beer For My Horses
Well a man come on the 6 o’clock news
Said somebody’s been shot, somebody’s been abused
Somebody blew up a building
Somebody stole a car
Somebody got away
Somebody didn’t get too far yeah
They didn’t get too far
Grandpappy told my pappy, back in my day, son
A man had to answer for the wicked that he done
Take all the rope in Texas
Find a tall oak tree, round up all of them bad boys
Hang them high in the street for all the people to see that
(Chorus)
Justice is the one thing you should always find
You got to saddle up your boys
You got to draw a hard line
When the gun smoke settles we’ll sing a victory tune
We’ll all meet back at the local saloon
We’ll raise up our glasses against evil forces
Singing whiskey for my men, beer for my horses
We got too many gangsters doing dirty deeds
We’ve got too much corruption, too much crime in the streets
It’s time the long arm of the law put a few more in the ground
Send ’em all to their maker and he’ll settle ’em down
You can bet he’ll set ’em down
————-
Memo to Toby: What’s the next subject for Mr. Songwriter? Tax cuts for the wealthy? Iraqi oil? Cutting down the rain forest? I await your next artistic endeavor with slack-jawed interest.
Oh and I almost forgot. Remember when you said getting booted off that Fourth of July special last year was “censorship”? Sort of puts the whole Tim Robbins/Susan Sarandon thing in perspective, doesn’t it?
For all those who labeled me a misanthrope after my post about retail greeters, I wanted you to know that I actually had quite a nice conversation with the woman who rang up my purchases at Borders today. We were talking about American Idol, since I was buying, among other things, the new Kelly Clarkson CD (who are you to judge me? :-). I enjoyed the interaction because she seemed genuinely nice, and not talking to me as part of some retail training strategy. So maybe I’m not an irredeemable hater of humanity after all.