Long Time Gone

Republicans, Dadaists Declare War On Art WASHINGTON, DC-Citing the "proliferation of immoral and offensive material throughout America's museums and schools," and waving placards emblazoned with agit-prop fotocollage reading, "diE KUnst ISt tOT, DadA ubEr aLLes" ("Art is dead, dada...

As much as I enjoy "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" on MSNBC, he'll be out of a job if a Democrat is elected president because he'll have no more fodder against to rail each night. [Title of this post is play on his pet name for rival Bill O'Reilly, "Bill-O"]

Maybe I like Obama too much to vote for him. I will quickly grow tired of listening to Hilary speak, though, and she'll be all-too-easy fodder for the Radical Right ("Radically Wrong"?). My boy Obama looks uncomfortable in the one commercial of his in which I've seen him, which tells me he's not comfortable as a sell-out.

Wesley Clark is such a cutie! I wonder what he looked like as a young man. And there's something slightly socially awkward about him that is either endearing or a little unsettling, I'm not sure which. I believe he's the general who did not receive a single demerit during his time at West Point. Either impressive or a little creepy. He was so not cut out to run for president, he seemed a bit stiff and cardboard-like in front of the cameras, but he's clearly a very competent, bright, and well-respected man.

"And, action!" I feel like little has changed, except for a decade+ time warp, since OJ's first courtroom circus. Even his current girlfriend looks eerily like Nicole Brown Simpson. Yes, attorney Johnny Cochran has ascended to the big courtroom in the sky, and Judge Ito has probably retired to somewhere near a golf course in South Florida, but Kato Kaelin was all cued up and ready to go on "Nancy Grace" tonight. None other than a completely re-vamped Marcia Clark was seated in the Las Vegas courtroom today, whom I would not have recognized had not numerous news anchors pointed her out. Someone even tracked down Christopher Darden outside a courtroom near to wherever he lives now (undoubtedly an "undisclosed location"--or it should be).

How strange to look back at 9/11 (MSNBC re-broadcast the events of that morning in real time, and I was oddly drawn to it)and see it as a time of innocence, given where we are today and how much more we know now than we knew then. Of course, it was at the same time a day of shattered innocence and a broken national conciousness.

Hard To Tell If Wikipedia Entry On Dada Has Been Vandalized Or Not ZURICH, SWITZERLAND—The Wikipedia entry on Dada—the World War I–era "anti-art" movement characterized by random nonsense words,...

Not quite Matt Foley's "down by the river," of SNL fame, but almost.

I'm currently engrossed in Mark Bowden's book "Killing Pablo," about the unbelievably bloody and protracted struggle to get rid of the man who just about brought Colombia to its knees, Pablo Escobar. The US helped in the effort for our own interests, because Bush and Clinton were fighting the "war on drugs" and cocaine was a seriously destructive force for our country. Now we're trying to eradicate poppy production in Afghanistan, which amounts to our asking poverty-stricken people to do us the favor of decreasing the supply of heroin to our streets. Granted, there are greedy and unethical drug traffickers in Afghanistan, but so few people can afford to feed their families that they often resort to growing poppies as their only means of subsistence, and we are depriving them of that. A lose-lose situation.

The name is Jeffs, Warren Jeffs--polygamist, cult leader, pimp, and child rapist, and he's going on trial shortly for his crimes. The quote is from the old Civil War song about Confederate "president" Jefferson Davis.

A ridiculous new TV infomercial hawking some odd headache treatment that involves rubbing a cream "directly on the forehead" rapidly became the butt of jokes on late night comedy shows, because the voiceover would intone repeatedly "apply directly to the forehead" over and over. In thinking about how to poke fun at Osama's new look on his latest video, this commercial came to mind. Osama has dyed his graying beard black in a pretty cheap, homemade sort of way, and trimmed it neatly, which is interesting, since I thought that strict Islam forbade grooming facial hair because it showed vanity. But that wouldn't be the first time Osama has demonstrated hypocrisy. He looks a sallow green color in the video, and aged well beyond his would-be sprightly 50 years. Lastly, his neat turban resembles more closely the pillbox style hat that women wore in the 1960s than an Islamic or Arab-style turban. Is he a Jackie O fan?

Not only did Bush begin his speech at the APEC conference in Sydney, Australia this week by referring to the organization as "OPEC," he referred to Australian troops as "Austrian." *sigh* Before we know it, he'll invade Iowa, thinking it's Iran. Or possibly Ohio--no, Oman. Omar?

I was watching a bizarre documentary on Madman Manson the other night, and during his interview (from many years ago), he interspersed his rants and raves about Jesus and righteousness and how the world "done him wrong" with genuine points about the environmental crisis--and this was about twenty years ago. Who knew?

He has vowed to ban abortion if elected, somehow omitting the fact that the president can't do things like that. A moron in a morass. He's easily one of the least palatable of the Republican bunch. On "The Daily Show," in reference to a recent presidential debate, Barack Obama said "There's nothing like waking up at 8am and coming face-to-face with Mike Gravel."

Yes, that's right; our befuddled, oppressed Senator from Idaho, Larry Craig, has decided that maybe he won't resign, after all. Sort of the way he decided he was guilty of "lewd behavior," pled guilty to the charge, and then decided that he wasn't, and tried to un-plea his guilty plea, culminating in an embarrassing announcement heard round the nation (and probably the world) that he isn't gay. It's a little like Brad Pitt shouting at the top of his lungs that his hair isn't blond, don't you think?

I knew it. I knew that Michael Vick's faux-contrite speech was just that--insincere. I never believed it for a minute. It turns out that his "notes," from the press conference he gave, have surfaced on the internet--where he basically mapped out everything he was going to say beforehand, fooling many pundits--temporarily. I just knew it. As if torturing dogs weren't bad enough, now he's only pretending to be sorry, when he should genuinely be.

is that it is nothing to be ashamed of.