Life in the Styx (Emeritus)

I'm down to 100 during the wonderful window when Tylenol and Advil overlap. I'm still feeling like a bus hit me. The clinic said my lungs are clean so no worries about Bronchitis, Pneumonia, or Pterodactyl Syndrome. The worst part is that I need to be quarantined away from my son… and it's a medical fact that I need to play with him every day or I'll go nuts. He misses me, too. Durn you, virus!

My temp is now 102, guess I'll watch the Oscars from the clinic. Wish me luck.

Fever has hit 101.2. A record for at least 2 decades. We'll see if I need
to go to the clinic.

Ya know, I had a grand plan as to how I was going to predict this year. Every year I have a grand plan, I know, but after reading a bunch and analyzing even more I realize that: (a) I've been doing it all wrong, and (b) almost everyone else does too.

Ya see, Oscars are voted by an electorate that is largely unknown and many of them do not express their opinoins in another forum. Academy members are all professional Hollywood workers; the largest category are actors, but the next higest are Producers.

Only a few of the other awards given for movies overlap with the Academy electorate. All the guild awards, for example, are good indications for some direction, but not one guild has enough voters to be a sure thing.

The majority of voters are "Old Hollywood" - money people who are and were the idiots that turn out sequel after numbing sequel. The smartest people in Hollywood are Directors; the dumbest are actors, but a close second are producers.

Moreover, even though the nominees are chosen from the particular industry (cinematographers choose Best C, actors the 4 awards, writers the screenplay awards, and everyone the Best Picture), everyone in the Academy votes for the winners. The same meathead Producers who make movies of talking toasters and toilet monsters are allowed to choose Best Editor. They have no idea how editing is done, nor cinematography, etc. So they vote Best Picture all over again. Or, big "or," they could split their ticket based on sentimentality for the underdog. It's anyone's guess because the voters are so stupid.

This is why there are sweeps - because the lazy geriatrics in the Academy will just vote one movie across the board when they are overly enamored with a film (something that doesn't look likely this year)

The only way to have a really good idea of where the Oscars are heading is to be a Hollywood/Los Angles insider. To know who is popular to the electorate. That’s why critic awards (e.g. Golden Globes) are largely useless. Who in Hollywood likes critics?! If anything, the critics' awards can backfire because the Old Guard wants to demonstrate independence or the wonderful trait of Stupid People to assert their ability by being contrary.

A romp through past races shows that the Critics awards are anecdotal and useless.

There have been many upsets in recent years (e.g. Roman Polanksi for Best Director in 2002, Adrien Brody for Best Actor in the same year; Marcia Gay Harden for Best Supporting in 2000) that I haven’t heard good explanations for except that there was some politicking on the ground in LA.

For example, if an actor is criticized by the White House between when the electorate receives their ballots and when they are returned, that could tilt the votes. Million Dollar Baby was attacked by conservative critics for advocating euthanasia during this period - was that enough to tilt the voters? No idea.

So for my predictions, I will start from the standpoint of the Guild and then gauge how the Academy Old Guard will manifest their Idiocy this year.

The Producer's Guild voted for Aviator.

Directors Guild: Clint Eastwood

Screen Actors Guild
Best Actor: Jaime Foxx
Best Actress: Hilary Swank
Best Supp Actor: Morgan Freeman
Best Supp Actress: Cate Blanchett

My predictions:

1. Best Picture: Aviator
2. Best Director: Martin Scorcese
3. Best Actor: Jaime Foxx
4. Best Actress: Annette Bening
5. Best Supp Actor: Morgan Freeman
6. Best Supp Actress: Cate Blanchett
7. Best Original Screenplay: "Eternal Sunshine"
8. Best Adapted Screenplay: "Sideways"
9. Best Animated Film: "The Incredibles"
10. Best Documentary Feature: "Super Size Me"

I choose 10 because that makes the tzedaka easier.

Why these?

I think "Aviator" is Oscar bait and the Academy bit. It's perfect irony that Scorcese is overlooked for his real masterpieces, but if the Academy will redeem Polanksi, so they'll support Scorcese. It’s an epic film, a bio-pic, and fuels nostalgia for the bygone era of the majority of Academy electorate. Bada-bing.

Bening over Swank. As one critic put it - Swank isn't one of the greats, why would they award her with 2 awards in 5 years? Bening is Hollywood royalty (married to Warren Beatty) and the very fact that the movie she's nominated for was disliked and unknown shows how the academy is trying to rescue her. I think Winslet deserves it for the awesome "Eternal Sunshine" but Jim Carrey was even better than she was and he was ignored, so I think the academy will ignore her. I've heard good things about Vera Drake, which will be ignored for the same reasons.

Foxx is everyone's "shoo-in" so who am I to argue?

Freeman hasn’t gotten an Oscar yet, would you believe that? A crime.

Blanchett is the most nostalgia driven character in "Aviator" - and has built up an impressive career. I'm banking that Aviator is stronger than Million.

"Sunshine" may not win Screenplay - because the movie is too too good. But I'm hoping that after five high profile films, (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Adaptation, Human Nature, and Being John Malkovich) Kaufman's genius will penetrate the Geriatric Boneheads.

"Sideways" for Best Adapted because the critics' darlings are never given top awards but they seem to be recognized in the screenplays. My theory is that in non-sweeps years, the Geriatrics don't vote for this category, allowing the Young Turks to win.

"The Incredibles" for Best Animated Film because even though "Shrek 2" made more money than the European Union, it was hackneyed trash. The Incredibles is for the older, more staid crowd.

"Super Size Me" for Best Documentary Feature because it was the second most famous doc this year (after "Fahrenheit") and is widely credited with making McDonalds drop 'super-sizes' from their menus. Hollywood likes that kind of power.

I don't know if I'll be awake enough to watch the show. Let me know how I did…

I've been fighting colds on and off this whole winter but a week of no-sleep finally brought me down. A mild fever, a hacking cough, and epic langour are perfect to round out this unhealthy season. I've been trying to sleep all day and get plenty of fluids. I'm heading into a heavy speaking season so I hope I can lick this quickly.

Does anyone know anything about the "Square K" - from Seattle? Square-K Kosher Services POB 18915, Seattle, WA 98118. (206) 878-1065; Fax: (908) 370-0467. Rabbi Moshe Londinski.

The hekhsher is left off some good lists and included in some bad ones, but I know very little about the West Coast Scene.

Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of the conference, I finally get to look at a Times - the only source I have when I'm in hyper-focused conference mode - and I get floored by Thompson's suicide.

Hunter S. Thompson, by all accounts, was a paranoid degenerate and deeply weird person who nonetheless had an immense effect on my writing and literary worldview. Even deeper, I felt a kinship with his outlook - that were he to have been born an orthodox Jewish redhead in 1972 he'd be me instead of being a godless coked-out gun-crazy superfreak. The converse is true, because I felt he was a brother under the skin, I was long afraid that there but for the grace of God go I. I feel the same way about Belushi.

Thompson was an outlaw, a unique voice, and one of the most important writers in the 20th Century. His concept of "gonzo" journalism is based on the phenomenological philosophy of the breakdown between subjectivity and objectivity - his most important contribution to literature, epistemology and that rarefied nexus between ethnography and journalism that the greatest non-fiction writers inhabit.

I was very worried that his suicide came from the inevitable depression inflicted on we who see too much - a depression that may have been fueled by his mythically enormous drug consumption. Thank God, sorta, it turns out that he gunned himself down for all-too-understandable reasons for someone of his Libertarian freaky-deaky worldview: he was getting too sick.

We didn't think he was going to die quietly. A profound egotism drove his appetites for narcotics, pornography, guns, explosives, the fourth amendment, Freedom and is the very basis of Gonzo Philosophy. It's that same egotism that drove him to go out in a blaze of glory.

The gifts of family and God that I was given have kept me away from that egotism and those appetites, but I still mourn the loss of a person who spoke to my mind with an eerie resonance.

I've had this idea for a while - that Election Day should be a national holiday. First of all, it would make it much easier for people to vote. But also because Election Day is greater than even the Fourth of July to demonstrate what America is all about.

Now I see that Hillary has the same idea and is sponsoring this in the Senate (Sen. Clinton Pushes for Voting Holiday). Well, that's the *perfect* way to kill it.

Michael Chertoff was the perfect choice for Homeland Security - I have no idea why Kerik came before him. Chertoff was confirmed as DHS Secretary last Tuesday (Feb 15) which makes him the Bush's first Jewish cabinet secretary. Bush is such a friend of the Jews that it took him 5 years to find someone qualified enough to be in his cabinet, but he chose well.

Ya see, while Kerik was merely a rapacious crook, Chertoff is a moral midget. I mean, who else should be head of Homeland Security than
the man who wrote the execrable Patriot Act?

It's ironic - our current Attorney General (Hispanic) allowed torture and the DHS (Jewish) allowed our civil liberties stripped. At least they should switch jobs!

We're leaving soon for this year's Wexner Alumni Conference, held in sleepy Tarrytown. Trivia buffs know that Tarrytowbn became famous as the setting of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving (or Irving Washington)- the first sentence being:

IN the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail, and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market-town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town.

So, we'll be gone til Wednesday. Any of you who live in New Haven want to drive by our house to make sure it's still OK, be our guest.

So, ya see, the synagogue wanted to get me cell-phone that can be an exclusive 'all-points' way of getting in touch with me. Great idea. Cingular was having a massive sale, so I felt it was the best option - also beause they could get you a phone number immediately and the phone soon after.

Well, turns out that Cingular had just merged with AT&T Wireless and was in the process of integrating their computers. After two days of waiting, one of the poor saps who works their customer service told me that because of the computer trouble, there were unprocessed back orders from two weeks before me. At that point I started cursing in Jedi. They took my point and rushed my order through and I got the number soon after and the actual phone in a few days.

But the phone didn't work. I tried vainly to get it set up, but it didn't budge. The phone said that I lacked the SIM chip (short for simian, I suppose) and it was supposed to have come with the phone. My office, never in a full state of organization, was turned upside down in my search for the chip which runs the phone and which supposively came with the package. No dice (or chip).

This morning, my wife went to a Cingular Authorized Dealership Emporium to get a replacement SIM chip (and to holler at them for not sending me one). She just called to tell me that Cingular did send me one - and installed it in my phone as a courtesy. They just installed it upside down.

AUUUAUUAUAUAGH.

While I like to see Burt's smiling face, telling me all's Yellow in the US, I'm wondering if I should keep the terror alert up. First of all, the java-mojo mechanism that runs the alert slows down the blog's loading. Second of all, and most importantly, the terror alert is unlikely to change now that (a) Ridge is out of a job, (b) Ashcroft has left, and (c) Bush has been re-elected.

Even though we are far more vulnerable now than three years ago, Burt will not help us despite his mighty powers.

If you have opinions on the matter, let me know.

Rented and saw Dreamworks Shark Tale (2004). It reminds me of "Matrix Reloaded." Actually, it reminds me of the movie review I wrote for Reloaded (see below) - the critics savaged "Shark Tale" for reasons that I cannot understand.

What's wrong with these people? Have all journalists been taking stupid pills with their whiskey? The older I get, the more I realize how much I need other people to help understand the world yet the more I realize most other people have the minds of dumpsters.

Check out this review from the once reliable Onion A.V. Club:

"the real, uncredited architects are a bunch of kids in the mall: Every single joke, character detail, music montage, and pop-culture reference looks extensively market-tested, whether via screenings, focus groups, or other box-office successes. With dollar signs in its eyes and nothing in its heart, Shark Tale calculates each moment for the broadest appeal, but its impact couldn't be more impersonal. The filmmakers are convinced people will like it because the spreadsheets and pie charts tell them so, not because they've invested it with originality or passion. "

What on earth is he saying? The movie was very smart - the amount of detail that went into the Fish World and the fast, frequent inside jokes that NO kid would understand show that this movie wasn't a cheap knockoff of "Finding Nemo" (a claim almost every review made), e.g. from the Onion "Shark Tale steals shamelessly from Finding Nemo"

OK, first of all, these animated movies are so long in pre-production that there's really no way they stole from Finding Nemo. Second of all, "Nemo" had almost nothing in common with "Shark" except that they were under water. The movie industry has this weird tendency to put out two movies from two studios on the same theme (e.g. "Volcano" and "Dante's Peak"; "Armaggeddon" and "Deep Impact"; and most relevant for this discussion, "Antz" and "A Bugs Life")

The comparison to Antz/Bugs Life is apt because "Antz" was from Dreamworks and "Bugs" from Disney-Pixar and it was seen as the first stage of the battle of animated giants (which sounds like another good movie idea, by the way). Critics of all brain-capacities have weighed in on which movie was better (or "won") but they are very different films. They are both remakes, "Bugs" of "Magnificent Seven" and "Antz" of "Love and Death" (roughly). But Bugs was G, Antz PG - and that's just the beginning. Antz was adult oriented and had a A-list celebrities parodying their personas in a knowing, mature way. Woody Allen, Anne Bancroft, Danny Glover, Gene Hackman, Jennifer Lopez, Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone, Christopher Walken in a plot about betrayal, government genocide, and headless bugs. Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin playing WASPs was funny for me but would fly over the head of a 16 year old. "Bugs" was a cute movie about believing in yourself.

"Finding Nemo" vs. "Shark's Tale" is the same story. Nemo has all B-listers and the protagonist is the irritating Albert Brooks. The theme? Finding yourself (and your son). Actually it has the adult theme of not being as uptight as Brooks and more uptight than the fish Dory. I liked the movie, no doubt, but it's not in the league of "Shark's Tale" for references and easy humor.

How would 'focus group kids' get the trivia? http://imdb.com/title/tt0307453/trivia
e.g. "When Lenny coughs up the objects on the table, one of them is a license plate with the registration "007 981." This is the same plate found inside the tiger shark in Jaws" or that the fish voiced by Renee Zellwegger responded well when Will Smith's fish nonsensically said "You had me at hello"

Now, if you want to trash focus-group trash, take out "Shrek 2." Yeeeeeeeeugh.

I finally put the "test" eparsha page up as the real page. The same mechanisms at work that kept so many drafts on this blog in underdraft kept me from putting the new webpage up - I was stuck on one small procedural problem and when that happens, everything is held up. Story of my life.

The head of the Judiciary rules for life - a way to remain impartial and above politics. The Supreme Court justices are the last ones who are appointed by the old system of double-elections; i.e. the used to be chosen by electors (and even though we still do that, there's bunches of laws restricting electors from changing their votes, so it's meaningless) and the Senate was elected by the state legislatures. SCOTUS justices are appointed by the president and voted by the senate - thrice-removed and in it for life - a remnant of the 18th Century fear of a craven government, affected by the passions of the moment.

How ironic that all those great Enlightenment brains couldn't have protected us from the Rehnquist court, or Rehnquist himself. Who would think there'd be a further embarrassment after Bush vs. Gore (2000) - a landmark case of craven momentary passions on the level of Dred Scott.

But we have it as seen from today's story: Rehnquist Won't Be on Bench When Supreme Court Convenes… but "The chief justice has given no indication that he plans to step down."

Oh yay.

Rehnquist - who personally designed his robes with gold stripes - has taken his role as American Pope too literally. Just like the real Papist, Rehnquist will cling to his catherda until he bites in on the bench. I'm not happy about term limits nor age limits but do we really need to have this joker still in office?

What Summers' did wrong was substitute a conclusion for a hypothesis. This happens all the time in the social-sciences. Summers is an economist (I believe) and all they *have* are hypothesis so who can blame him for just repeating the intellectual guano he's been trained to shovel.

Are women innately worse than men in math and science. Don't know. But it's a hypothesis (to answer the question 'how come there are way more men than women in engineering/math/physics'). If you stop at the hypothesis - and its a quick fix - then you'd be able to share your conlusion with your bar buddies but not with scientists and the rare intellectual.

Summers should have said 'Are the centuries-old prejudices true? Are women worse at math than men? I sure hope not, but if not we need to find a compelling reason why my Physics department has 10 men to 1 woman, etc etc).

And another point; speaking as a non-math dude; why is it an insult to suggest that women are worse than men at math? I am a verbal whiz and a math sloth and I am quite happy with that arrangement. The fact that people are angry at the suggestion means that they have incorporated the real prejudice - that because men ruled the culture, they (we) claimed that whatever we were good at was the right and superior set of skills. Anything non-masculine became sub-standard.

Thinking that math skills are inherently better than verbal skills is something that only a math-oriented person would say - or someone immersed in a male values dominated culture.

Ironically, the biggest display of chauvenism in this whole mess comes from Summers' critics who cling to the hierarchical prejudices of an arachaic system.

As you may know, Larry "Lounge Lizard" Summers, President of Harvard is in deep trouble after he said the most terrible things anybody has ever said about women.

Not even getting into whether Summers has a valid point about women in the sceinces is the way the University "community" is handling it. [University Community is simultaneously a tautology and oxymoron; both mean 'all for one' yet universities are by degign fractious. Whenever a University's denizens unify you should run to the hills; academics who agree only do so in order to squash a third person]

According to the Times, Summers said (according to the now released private transcript):

"My best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon - by far - is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity; that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude; and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination,"

According to his critics, he in fact said "Women are stoo-pid" in a Gomer Pyle voice.

More importantly, the University may throw him out on his pasty white rump. I love this - Harvard is showing its true colors; in the battle between academic freedom and political-correctness, PC will win.

Bye-bye Summers, next time run a real school.

Living outside of The City for the first time in 8 years, getting to the SOY Sale is very difficult. I haven't missed the sale for all those years; it's like a religious experience!

In any case, going to a booksale unprepared causes me much anxiety. Actually, that sentence made me sound like Yoda, which I guess proves the point. I have stacks and lists of books to buy and smaller stacks of files of the books I own. The danger of buying a book I already own is very high - there's just not enough time for me to keep track of my holdings. I don't know if it's pretentious or pathetic, but I think I need a private curator. Benjie is too small for the job (and he eats every single book he gets in his fisty mitts).

My ethic this year is when in doubt, I will not buy a book - which will make my family happy (except for Benjie, naturally).

[From Dec 19, 2004 - this was just a title and a link]

According to the newest reports, Guantanamo operated under similar torture rules as did Abu Ghraib (At Guantanamo, a Prison Within a Prison

Maybe I'd feel better about the torture and rape if we actually were (a) not in a fictional conflict in Iraq, (b) the prisoners were dangerous people, (c) the prisoners knew something about the people who truly are trying to hurt us. Yet there have been no convictions from the torture; no proof that what we're doing is right. We fought a war - back in 1776 - to stop this kind of stuff, no?

As it is, we are just destroying people for fun. This is shameful. Again, I implore the GOPers out there, you have a voice, talk to your commandants about stopping these un-American activities before they actually become considered American activities.

[Started Dec 17 2004 with really just one insight... I don't even know if the link works]

So Bernie Kerik has imploded (Lapses Feared in 2000 Vetting of Kerik) - and that's saying something for a Bush appointee. Kerik's big error was to commit his felonies *before* he joined the cabinet. The sad thing is that Kerik is so terrible that Guiliani may go down because he vouched for him!

[From Dec 13 2004 - I just had the link but I think I rememeber what I wanted to say]

It's big news in the Jewish Bloggosphere, Protocols has closed!

In case that announcement means nothing to you I will explain: it means nothing to me too. There's this whole world of Jewish bloggers, growing daily, with a frightening level of cross-referencing and self-congratulations. "Protocols" was considered the mack-daddy of the Jewish Blogs because it had some important people writing for it - people so important that I'd never heard of them nor felt what they had to say was worthwhile.

I can say all this with the supercilious disinterestedness of an Old School blogger - as it says on my first post, I was blogging in the days before blogs, when Netscape ruled, when Google was still an experimental site at Stanford U, when email was still called e-mail. I don't actually expect anyone to read what I'm saying either (although I appreciate your comments) - I just need a place to release my brainwaves before they begin to rot in my skull.

Protocols is (are?) over. Long live the Blog.

[From Dec 8 2004, this is still difficult to finish because I still don't have all the right details...]

Bush is the best friend Israel has ever had - at least better than Clinton - at least better than his father - or actually, I'm not sure if he's such a friend. A few months ago there was a celebrated case where a membre of AIPAC

It seems that the FBI investigated two members of AIPAC who have been accused of spying for Israel, giving them details of the secret US deliberations with the Iranians. [Recent reports accuse them of leaking the secrets of the McShwarma]. Here's the original story (CBS news)

However, as the Jerusalem Post indicates the FBI set the whole thing up. It's pretty complicated - but as far as I can tell, the FBI entrapped two AIPAC members as part of a strange paranoid witch-hunt. As this article indicates, there's a subtle double-standard against Jews in the intelligence agencies about loyalty to Israel.

Thank you Ashcroft for keeping America safe. How many terrorists have you caught yet? None?

[From December 8, 2004]

The last men standing after all the cabinet shuffling is Don "Dishonor" Rumsfeld and John "Freefall" Snow (Snow to Stay on With Bush) - which makes total sense. While Bush has been, overall, one of the worst leaders of a North American republic, his very worst areas have been in economic policy and in war planning.

Then again, if you see things my way, that staying part of the Bush cabinet is a grave punishment, then actually Rumsfeld and Snow are getting what they deserve! Either way it's a clear case of 'aveira gorreret aveira'

[From December 7, 2004 - all I had was the article link, which still works, so here goes]

In case you're wondering what kind of lily-livered pinko bleeding-heart liberals are warning about Bush's economic policies, there's the Leftist smear rag The Economist. True, The Economist is generally seen as a conservative magazine (when they say they're Tories, they mean 18th Century style), but how can they be if they claim that Bush's trade deficits and all-around economic bumbling will soon convince the world to dump dollars in favor of Euros?

Does anybody think that Bush is doing good things for the US economy? Can anyone say that our situation is truly the aftermath of 9/11 and not the results of the first MBA president (who never ran a successful company and doesn't even know what assets he himself owns?)

Thank Jezuz that Bush has a plan to save the economy by gutting social security. His evangelist-hypnotist guru must have told him that if he really wants to channel Hoover he not only needs to lose more jobs but also to plunge the country into depression. This does explain why Bush hates social-security - how else to be Hoover but to reverse everything FDR did? The next step? Bush will un-cure polio and discontinue the dime.

I don't know what is more of a shock - that the NHL is, in the words of the
Times story "the first major pro sports league in North America to lose an entire season to a labor dispute" or the fact that I had absolutely *no* idea that the hockey season was supposed to have begun. Does anyone outside Canada know when hockey season starts anyway?

Except for the movie "Slap Shot" (which we just acquired, thank you very much) hockey means oh so little to my world. But I love the Slap Shot (especially the Hanson brothers ... did you know that it was basically a true story! no joke!)

[from August 26, 2004 - an incomplete movie review]

The worst thing about Paycheck (2003) is the title - it means nothing; has no traction in yer brain; and does not inform you that this is a really good film. The most watchable John Woo film for the population at large. You know I love the Woo - but "a thousand bullets" works for only certain mentalities. Moreover, he has a poor ability to choose his American actors. While still in Hong Kong, Woo's finest work was with Chow Yun-Fat (called the "Chinese John Wayne"). Fat (Chow?) was strong, funny, emotive, smart - a great leading man and perfect for the Woo heroic model.

In America, Woo has used: Jean Claude Van-Damme, Christian Slater, Nick Cage, John Travolta, and Tom Cruise. Yuccch. Not one of those bozos can act nor think their way out of a paper bag. In "Paycheck" we get the dullest of them all, Ben Affleck (which naturally is the second worst thing about the film).

But the movie's smart, quick, fun, and not exremely violent (even by regular movie standards) and only one dove appears. In fact, I was wondering when the doves would arrive (which are the equivalent of Woo making a cameo) and when it finally flew into view it was actually appropriate and exciting.

[Dated from September 27, 2004 - I only had one line, I think I can remember where I was going with it]

I was doing Sukkot research online and stumbled across the Karaite form of Sukkot.

I think I wanted to weigh who is weirder or more obnoxious - the Messianics or Karaites, and I think the Messainics are still worse. The Karaites just take away from the religion but the Messainics add a whole mess of bad. In a certain extent, the halakha of 'Bal Tosif' is worse than 'Bal Tigra']

[From August 30, 2004 - an incomplete post]

We're told that a few weeks ago a house was robbed pretty close to ours. Naturally this is very disturbing news. We feel pretty vulnerable in general because we're new to this place and while it looks green and suburbyish, there's urban blight oozing out of the streets every few feet. Nice well kept houses next to disgusting decrepit embarassments.

[Note, since then, there have been a few drug busts on our corner. The Police sargeant says it was only heroin, so I'm not too worried about it. That and I am told that it's worse in other areas of New Haven]

[Started November 14, 2004]

Because of my busy schedule, I was unbale to read every single article in every single magazine I subscribe to at the moment it arrives in my house; I give myself several weeks (months) of idle or throne time to get through them all. However, now that the Disaster of '04 has happened, I find that all of these pompous, underthought political articles are just terrifying.

[My reflections on my mindset 3 months ago]

The spitting rage I was in 3 months ago has dulled into a lugubrious torpor. This is what it must have felt like in February 1973 in the shadow of Nixon. Except that the dirty tricks were more obvious under the Trickster (whose intelligence was a disadvantage, we see - the worst presidents were usually the meatheads and they were worst because they got away with it: see Harding, Bush).

The biggest - if not only - factor in Bush's victory was that we were attacked on our own soil. He's a fool to play it as a mandate but we's gotten where he is by being a fool, so for him it works. Bush is the Disaster President in more ways than one.

[This is a draft post from sometime in early March 2004 - I didn't post it because it was unfinished, as you can see from the Roman Numerals at the end of the post... I don't have time to finish it now, either, but I gotta make this blog less drafty!]

Hopefully, the end of this topic

Some last points about the "Passion."

First of all, I want to rationalize why we are spending so much time on it. I happen to believe that it is a significant point in early 21st Century. Yeah, this is just a film; yeah, its a pet project of a lowbrow religious punk - a punk who has been able to manipulate the entire Western World into paying attention to his personal demonology.

The 20th century saw the transformation of Western Culture from Idustrial to post-Industrial to Information. We are in the "information age" (for those who're keeping track) and when you recognize that information is all in the mind, you will recognize that anything which directlty impacts the mind is both powerful and significant.

In a land that holds free speech as an inalienable right, we have understood even back in the 18th Century that ideas are powerful and significant. However, over those hundreds of years, we've learned that speech can liberate as well as obliterate.

"Hate speech" is a difficult and nebulous substance that has only been seriously thought out in the late 20th Century. We have the Supreme Court cases that relate to dangerous speech (shouting fire in a crowded room) to hate speech. A watershed moment, I believe, was the Clarence Thomas - Anita Hill case which alerted America that sexual harassment is harmful and is accomplished in the intangible realm of verbal and non-verbal language. The fact that the culprit of the harassment is one of the most powerful people on earth is ironic but understandable when you see him as an antediluvian vestige and an accident of history.

Speech is a weapon; images are weapons. The cultural-conservatives who demand prayer in schools (speech), Ten Commandments in stone in the courthouse (images), no smut on television and radio (both), understand this.

In fact, were you to ask a cultural-conservative and a cultural-liberal what the greatest threat to American society is in 2004, the liberal would say "the near-fascist thuggery of our rapacious and illegally elected government." A conservative would say "Hollywood."

The reason why "The Passion" is so important is because it wages a war of images and ideas using the enormous power of Hollywood and Big Business. It's message - about religion and violence - has been the public discourse for the past 20 years and ever-so-much-more-so in the past 3 years.

That's why I think we need to still discuss it.

II. Why you do not need to see it
III. Christianity is anti-semitic by definition

[This is from December 1st, 2003 - in entirety! I'm not changing anything - see if it makes sense]

Is Gen. Clark a viable candidate for President? According to the New York Times analysis, there are 10 democratic challengers to the Presidential incumbent:

Wesley Clark, Retired 4-Star General, Arkansas
Howard Dean, Former Governor, Vermont
John Edwards, Senator, North Carolina
Richard Gephardt, Representative, Missouri
Bob Graham, Senator, Florida
John Kerry, Senator, Massachusetts
Dennis Kucinich, Representative, Ohio
Joe Lieberman, Senator, Connecticut
Carol Moseley Braun, Former Senator, Illinois
Al Sharpton, ?, New York

I have heard about all 10 except for Kucinich (the bio says he is the former mayor of Cleveland, but why would anybody claim that? Obviously he doesn't actually exist).

Clark has never held elected office (neither has Sharpton, whom I mention only to say that according to the website he doesn't actually have a job right now; also, for you trivia buffs, the site states: "he began preaching at the age of four and was an ordained minister at the age of nine." )

Clark, despite not being a politician, has spent oodles of years in government work and has a tested record of leadership, administration, and shooting people.

This does feel like we're in the 1840s or so. Back then, and now, the leadership of the nation has old ideas of the new Age; and the best electoral hope comes from untested war 'heroes.' Tippecanoe and Clark Too!

I like leaders with capability and vision. People like Reagan and Clinton stood for distinct visions; Bush I & II stood and stand for bubkis; just whitebread, inbred, Old Money backward ignorance. It's sad. The slogan of Bush should be "Meet the Face of Backward!"

Clark is kinda the "Anti-Bush":
Clark: Rhodes scholar & general
Bush: AWOL dim-bulb.

Clark finished first in his class in West Point. Bush's family got him into Yale (remember, none of his siblings could get in after him, why? because the Ivies stated to open the doors to un-bush-types, like Women, minorities, Jews). Clark rose the top of a grueling, demanding profession. Bush's family got him every single job he's ever held (and lost).

Clark's views on Israel and the peace process need work. So far, he sounds like a mushy Clintonoid. Considering that he is the Klinton Kandidate, this makes sense. I'm glad to see that the Clintons have held off on foisting Hillary in '04. We shouldn't be surprised when she does become a candidate in the next few years - if Bush wins again then she's a lock for '08 (if the country still has elections by then).

My favorite candidate has been and still is Lieberman. He's about as electable as Adalai Stevenson, which worries me, but it's rare for me to actually like a candidate.

[OK, this is from December 1, 2003 - I have no idea why it's been sitting here for so long...]

Movie Reviews

After many moons, I finally saw The Matrix Reloaded(2003). From this movie, I learned a great lesson: people are dumb. And petty.

The reviews for the movie were very bad. Why? It's not a bad movie. They were expecting something as earth-shattering as the original. A false hope, a stupid and untenable expectation. The complaints about the movie belied ignorance and a petty lowliness. I'm sorry to sound emotional or defensive about the movie, about which I don't really care that much, I am reflecting a proper backlash against idiocy.

"Matrix 2: The Matrix Sequel" suffers from "Empire Strikes Back" syndrome: in both cases the first movie altered the world (truly); it was made as a stand-alone prospect (even though the world it created allowed an open-ended story); it's meant to be all plot to lead the final resolution.

Certain fundamental flaws of sequels undermine both franchises, e.g. you need to get bigger and badder in sequels, but that destroys the continuity from the first film (see Terminator for the worst examples).

The philosophy is still good; the first film was about the reality of Reality and the mind-body problem, the second is about free-will & determinism and the essential definition of the human (as opposed to AI). The main concepts left in advanced metaphysics are: cloning and personal identity, moral philosophical issues of utilitarianism, the root connection between moral philosophy and metaphysics.

The movie is good, see it and understand it for what it is.

P.S. The same thing can't be said for all sequels; I finally saw "Charlie's Angels 2: The Crappening" which was poorly made, incoherent smut. And Bernie Mac should watch the dailies so he can modify his minstrel routine, I can't imagine he wanted to act that way.

[This was from December 29, 2004]

Jerry Orbach, Star of 'Law & Order,' Dies - he was really the only thing I liked about the newer episodes.

As I've said before, my wife got me into watching the shows which were good but in my mind not great. A good show is one that is intelligence-respecting, well-written, and entertaining. A great show is a must watch. Examples of Good shows, for me, are "Seinfeld," "The Shield," and "Cheers."

Great shows are "The West Wing," "the Sopranos," "Arrested Development," and the heliege "Simpsons."

But "Law and Order" was decent and I liked Orbach very much - it was nice seeing a plausible Jewish cop on TV.

[Started on December 23, 2004]

In the decription of American "war crimes" (that's what the story, War Crimes [washingtonpost.com], calls 'em), which includes our friendly torture of the random prisoners in Guantanamo, the interrogators would torment their victims with "humiliations such as being wrapped in an Israeli flag."

That's a direct quote.

I love this. I love the fact that our government is torturing people. I love the fact that the people in Quantanamo are denied civil and human rights. I love that the legal genius who allowed this to happen is our new Attorney General. I love that Bush is such a friend of Israel that he uses their flag as a tool of torture and humiliation.

Can one of you GOP supporters explain this to us?

In my senior year of college, when we needed to find quotes to put next to our pictures in the yearbook, a literary snob friend of mine said that the only legitimate quotes were those we found ourselves when reading or listening to songs. Getting quotes from a quotebook was not proper. Yes, she was an English major. I agreed in principle, except of course that I read quotebooks for fun so, by Talmudic logic, I was fine.

Ironically, I did have a quote from a story that I would have loved to use but I couldn't find it in time. Ten years, and one internet, later I can find the quote and broadcast it to ya'll

This is from Mark Twain - the only decent 19th Century American writer (who I am glad to say is not only better than Melville and Hawthorne but could also probably thrash them both in a barfight) - from his short story Extracts From Adam's Diary (about Adam Harishon and eating meat):

It was against my principles, but I find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed

Go Twain!

If you want to see a wonderful example of moral foreign policy, check out this (presumably undoctored) photo of Donald Rumsfeld Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein

This is from George Washington University's "National Security Archive" - a generally fun place to surf and get very frightened.

From January 13, 2005

As if you need more proof that the Kabbalah Center is evil, it appears that they are claiming that were they back in the time of the Shoah, they could have prevented it through the powers of [wait for it] The Kabbalah. On sale now, at the Centre.

See for yourself: Madonna's Kabbalah Center in Holocaust Row

[From Jan 3, 2005 - I have no idea why I sat on this one for so long]

So Dave is on official Hiatus (The last word, for now; humorist gives jokes a rest). Excuse me... [Sound of teeth gnashing, wailing]. By the way, do anything but teeth, gnash? According to the Dictionary it's exclusively for teeth... but we can apply it to other body parts if we try hard enough.

[From January 21, 2005 - ]

William Safire wrote in his paean for the Second Bush Second Inauguaral that "I rate it among the top 5 of the 20 second-inaugurals in our history."

No kidding. Safire really said that.

To be honest, Safire probably wrote those lines a few days ago in anticipation of his needed approval. Safire is an expert on language (even though his language columns reek with doctrinaire pedantry) and I challenge him to define himself as anything but a hack, at this point.

Shameless too.

[From Jan 27, 2005]

At last, one of the idiots who led us into the debacle in Iraq is leaving: DoD News: DoD Announces Departure of Undersecretary Douglas Feith. According to the cognoscenti, he was the worst of the bunch (and that's saying a lot). He was in charge of "Policy" in the DOD - which means he was the one who let us believe that the attack was necessary and (who knows) could be the one who ordered the devastation at Abu Ghrab and Gitmo.

The worst part of it is, his claim for leaving is "personal and family reasons." As someone who actually likes living creatures and as someone capable of the human emotion of love I resent that a moral vampire like Feith uses his family as an excuse for getting out while the getting is good.

I also resent the fact that the only Jews that Bush has in his employ are shameful; but I guess they best reflect Bush's worldview: "Weaker at home, shamed around the world."

While it may look like I've been only sporatically bloggin', I've actually been writing a lot in draft form. I will try to unclog the bottleneck and get those old posts out into the light.

My whole life has just come together in 25 seconds. McDonalds in Israel is now making a "McShwarma" sandwich and their commercial is a parody of the "quarter-pounder" scene from "Pulp Fiction."

See the commercial.

Download the commercial.