March 27, 2002 at 2:47 pm
(meh)
Oh yeah, and another thing. I gotta go with Lileks on this one… the hell with creating an international tribunal to try Saddam Hussein for his crimes against humanity. I’d normally never advocate anything remotely like this, but considering that Saddam long ago devolved beneath anything that should even have the ability to organize itself in a multi-cellular format, I’ll make an exception. Take that beautifully written lawsuit, bind it up real pretty at your local Kinko’s - hell, splurge and go for the parchment covers with colored ink - and strap it to the nosecone of a thermobaric explosive. As Lileks puts it, “The new American Air Force’s motto: Neatness counts.” Next I’ll be quoting Conan the Barbarian…
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March 27, 2002 at 2:29 pm
(meh)
So there’s more - I’m not done yet. I just had to take a break before I added my two cents on the Arab Summit in Beirut - okay, here goes: quit fucking around and wasting this opportunity whining about who gets to talk to who regardless of the fact that half the leaders who really count stayed home pouting because they wouldn’t serve Kristal because it might offend someone from the Gulf who wouldn’t notice anyway as long as he got his shrimp kabobs and just settle down, peoples!!!!
Crown Prince Abdullah, having been reminded of just where (*ahem* America) the cash for his extensive collection of marabou-trimmed Rolls Royces came from and will continue to come from as a result of a steady trickle of oil purchases, finally stepped up to the plate, as it were, by putting forth his *original* idea of land for a comprehensive peace in the region. Goody for him. No, really - the rest of the Arab world now has tacit and not-so-tacit permission to dialogue with Israel - and when you talk to someone, you acknowledge his existence, by definition. While the Saudis strew money around whenever prevailed upon by their Muslim Arab brothers, they also hold a certain gravitas as the Keepers of the Holy Places - Mecca and Medina - and for the head Saudi (let’s face it, the King is pretty much a vegetable) to put out there that he thinks it would be a Good Idea to spare further bloodshed and suffering by moving in teeny-tiny baby lockteps toward letting the Jews have that strip of dirt that nobody really wanted anyway because there’s not enough oil there to fill up more than a few dozen tankers a week, is indeed an historic statement. To you leaders of the Arab world - let’s not blow it here like Arafat and Netanyahu did five years ago - time to act like grownups, before any more babies die - and Sharon, that goes double for you. Shame on you for that stupid egotistical chain-yanking to try to make the point that you are in control of someone who can’t even control his own bladder without a kilo of C-4 close by; and Arafat, shame on you for allowing the Israeli government to do that to you - it’s not like you’ve never been kicked out of your home before… it was a cheap price to pay for finally getting the chance to just maybe make a real difference for your people instead of skimming off their aid money.
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March 27, 2002 at 2:04 pm
(meh)
I just gotta go off here. I am fed up and sick sick sick (and tired) of the Middle East. Nevermind that I’m actually a specialist in the history and politics of same, and that I focused on ancient semitic languages while studying linguistics at UCSB so I actually get a lot of what the respective parties are saying in their own words: *blah* *Blah* *BLAH-FUCKING-BLAH!!!!!!* If I hear anything else about suicide bombers or Sharon or Arafat spewing bilous pigshit at each other and pointing fingers I’m gonna lose it. Okay, so I won’t really lose *it*, I’ll just go sit in a corner and mutter to myself and maybe play a first-person shooter for a while or make a new Sims neighborhood and fill it with nasty folks from all over the Middle East and let them fight with each other until I drown them all in their swimming pools.
*pant*
Honestly, I used to work in trauma surgery at Martin Luther King Hospital (a.k.a. King Drew Medical Center) here in Los Angeles, so I’ve seen plenty of people die of gunshot wounds and lemme tell you, that is no way to go. The fact is, there’s no good way to go that’s as a direct result of a foreign object piercing your body and letting all the good stuff leak out. That includes shrapnel from those thrice-cursed suicide bombers - who the hell do they think they’re hurting? Half the time they don’t manage to kill anyone but themselves, and the other half they take out people at parties, kids, old folks who probably didn’t have anything to do with the rocks in their rice that morning anyway - unfortunately, it’s becoming an effective tactic for maintaining public dialogue, but it just lowers the Palestinians once and for all to the level of the Israelis. And the freakin’ idiot 20-year old IDF soldiers in Gaza and the Occupied Territories who will cheerfully admit to journalists that they feel like shit for busting into people’s homes and arresting their menfold in front of their families and beating their womenfolk for protesting when they break bones instead of the good china, yet haven’t got the balls to “Just Say No” to those orders… it’s okay if you’re only following orders, after all… why are we giving them so much of our money? Strategic colony in the Middle East - agreed that it’s necessary, but the only way to get a rabid dog to heel is to beat it with a big stick - in this case, a big banking stick. How about we withhold 75% of the aid money we give to Israel every year until they reach and actually follow through on a final land-for-peace agreement. Their economy is already fucked because of the bombings - how about we squeeze their balls a little just to make it a bit more urgent that we not have to deal with this spoiled-brat, dick-waving bullshit anymore… it’s not like holding out for Arafat to quell Al-Aqsa will do a damned bit of good - everybody knows he doesn’t control any of the real psychopaths. He’s become an impotent old man whose Nobel Peace Prize permanently put the lie to any remaining semblance of credibility that whole three-ring circus might have had; like an old bear that doesn’t know how to do anything but bite the hand that feeds it, he even double-deals in a clumsy fashion. Did Arafat really think that nobody would notice his receipt of arms from Hizbollah and Iran? Did he think nobody would care? While I admit that *Amu* Arafat might have been acting out of some paternal sense of responsibility for seeing to it that his people are able to resist the opression that they’ve suffered under, he really stepped on his dick with that one. And doing business with Sharon is only possible if you can ignore the blood running down his chin… there are just no nice kids to play with, so I think I’ll go back inside and read a book.
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March 26, 2002 at 11:42 am
(meh)
if the shoe fits, don’t light it - I am a convert to the Church of Bleat - this guy is great and timely and human and readable… wish I took that kind of time every day to post, I might actually get a readership too ;->
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March 21, 2002 at 3:36 pm
(meh)
I finally understand it all, thanks to the kolkata libertarian.
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March 21, 2002 at 2:26 pm
(meh)
on a happier note - I do believe that one of our strengths as human beings and particularly as Americans is our ability to laugh at anything
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March 21, 2002 at 2:02 pm
(meh)
irony and the peace of the dead… “It’s very ritualistic. What they’re finding is clothing - barely a trace of a human being. In a way, it’s very peaceful there, almost Zen-like. The people are mixed into the dirt. Dust to dust is not just a saying now, it’s become a reality.
One night I found a smashed up office chair; that was the only thing that stood out. Nothing has colour or tone anymore, it’s all just this dull grey. We look but there’s nothing solid except papers and office manuals. Sometimes it seems like only the bureaucracy survived.”
I’ve always felt that irony, unlooked for, was an important component of anything and everything - like getting a medium-nice toaster from my incredibly wealthy cousin when indigent widowed aunts scraped pennies from under their couch cushions to buy me a full set of formal wedding china, an event I greeted at the time with a smirk and a sense that all was right with the world - but this hurts my heart in a cockroaches-are-scuttling-back-under-the-corpses kind of way. I’m not even sure what I mean by that, only that it stirs a grey, burning mist in the back of my throat and I want to cry again.
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March 21, 2002 at 10:03 am
(meh)
oh yeah - and I found my character who I lost back in January… whee!!!!
in case I forget him again - he’s the fireman plumber. there. it’s permanent now - matter of public record. yay!!!!
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March 21, 2002 at 9:58 am
(meh)
I was sitting in my office late last night contemplating the small pile of bills I need to write checks for before I screw up my credit again when suddenly the faintest tinkle of Beethoven’s 5th drifted into the room. It must have been pretty loud outside, as all our windows are double-glazed and we have plantation shutters on top of that, but I could barely make out the faintest pastel strains and it sent a dim shiver of nostalgia across the nape of my neck. I realized one thing that’s missing from my office/writing space is music. I’d always thought it was best to have total quiet when creating, but all my other senses are stimulated in that room - the softly bruised purple walls, the thick oriental rug in yummy vegetable colors, various herbal and flower scents from candles and incense that may or may not be lit at any given time combined with the dusty acid smell of my books, the bowl of hard candies I suck on when I’m working in lieu of pacing and smoking - it’s all there but the sound. My mom got me a little desk fountain for Christmas - I guess she could tell I needed something to inspire inner peace (she’s good that way) - but I have yet to pour water into it and turn it on. I told AliBaba (my dear hubby who’s far too dignified to be known by that name in public, much less the other nickname - Sugar Butt) that I needed music - I needed to hear Bach and Nine Inch Nails and The Eagles and anything else and he asked why I don’t listen to music from the web like he does when he’s working. Thing is, I have a very nice laptop, but there’s probably no laptop in the world with music-quality speakers - I could plug in headphones, but then I’d be tethered to my desk and sometimes I have to pace or flop on the floor and roll around to shake the right words into my brain, so that would be bad as I’d end up dragging the laptop onto the floor and breaking the screen or something equally noxious and ungraceful. So he said he’d buy me a little boombox with a cd and radio and tape player - awww…. he really does everything he can to support me as a writer - there’s not a week that goes by when he’s not asking me what I’m working on and if I’m writing, etc. - not in a nagging way, but in a constructive pushing way. I think he’d give up his office to a baby’s room or guest room before he’d let me give up mine. Maybe ;->
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March 19, 2002 at 11:02 pm
(meh)
here’s at least a minute of my life that I’ll never get back… how come there were no women involved? or was that the symbolism of those little pills - the uterine quick-fix for all that ails a man?
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