Category: words mean things (Page 41 of 223)

Osama bin Laden must be thinking he’s the luckiest man on the face of the earth. Despite all the rhetoric of “not letting the terrorists win,” his plans have succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. In less than two years, his actions have managed to fundamentally reshape American society, make us even more hated in Islamic societies, draw us into expensive and deadly conflicts on multiple fronts, and alienate us from long-time allies around the world. Isn’t that *exactly* what he wanted? How powerful must he be feeling right now?

And we served it all up to him on a silver platter.

I think a good exercise on this two-year anniversary would be to consider truthfully – what have we accomplished? What have we gained?

Yesterday was a quiet day for me. The computer and the TV remained cold. I listened to music, I read, I had lunch and dinner with friends. I thought my self-imposed exile from electronic entertainment would leave me jittery and shifty-eyed, but actually it was just the calming, brain-quieting experience that I’d hoped. A nice break, like a sorbet between courses. Even though I’ve been into computers since I was in junior high school, I never would have dreamed that being online would be such a crucial part of my life today.

Glad to be back.

Capturing the Friedmans

Finally saw this documentary about a father and son accused of sexual abuse. So many thoughts are running through my head right now, I have trouble sorting them all out.

Since I’m going to be taking tomorrow off from the web, I thought I would try something different with this “review” and open it up to my readers. If you’ve seen this film, tell us what you thought in the comments. It’ll give me something to read when I log back in Friday.

See you then.

John proposes that we unplug from the internet tomorrow as a way to commemorate 9/11. I think it’s a great idea and I’m going to give it a try. I honestly don’t think that I’ve unplugged successfully for an entire day other than when I’ve been out of town (like in the searing desert of Las Vegas recently). I think I’m going to keep the TV off too.

It’ll be an interesting experiment.

Word of the Day

prosaic

“Adam’s weblog writing is prosaic.”

I don’t hate the President. I loathe him. “Hate” might be reserved for people like Karl Rove, John Ashcroft, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. It was really they who took advantage of a freaked-out country to push through their scary neocon agenda. Bush was just along for the ride, as usual.

If we can’t get rid of these guys next year, after all that’s happened, we’ll be in permanent trouble.

Cognitive Dissonance Quote of the Week

“Men shouldn’t feel like fags just because they want to have nice-looking bodies…Gay people are fighting the same kind of stereotyping that bodybuilders are: People have certain misconceptions about them just as they do about us. Well, I have absolutely no hang-ups about the fag business…”

-California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger, in Oui Magazine, 1977 (by way of The Smoking Gun by way of John)

“Who are the ad wizards who came up with this one?” Campaign Award

An Army of One – U.S. Army

“Sarge, I’d love to follow your orders, but I’m an ARMY OF ONE!”

Oliver

I don’t know Dean Allen. I don’t know his dog Oliver either, although I’ve fallen in love with him because of the many amazing photographs Dean has published on his site. And when I read tonight of Oliver’s life-threatening illness, my heart was absolutely in my throat.

Oliver’s OK. I breathe a sigh of relief, and marvel again at what the internet can do.

OK so let me get this straight. I’m a little thick sometimes, so it takes a while for me to understand stuff. The President said last night, among other things ($87 billion ring a bell?) that Iraq is now the “central front” on the war on terror. A country that was doing absolutely nothing to threaten us, that had no ties to Al-Qaida and no “weapons of mass destruction” to give to anyone; a country that we invaded without provocation, and now are struggling to contain/rebuild, is the central front on the war on terror?

I guess the war must be going pretty well then.