September 2003 Archives

So my last trip to Toronto, I picked up this excellent first novel by a Canadian author. I'm heading back to Toronto tomorrow, but sadly, the title and author both eluded my tired brain... I could only recall the overall themes and the name of one of the characters. Not to worry. Typing

canadian novel artist ireland molly

into Google got me my answer in the first result: Martin Sloane: A Novel by Michael Redhill.

(And visiting Indigo/Chapter's website confirmed that he has a book of short stories out now.)

... Much less IN one.

Truly disturbing.

--> Diebold Internal Mail Confirms U.S. Vote Count Vulnerabilities

So last night, in my neighborhood, something occurred which was described to me as "a drive-by shooting". Some guy driving around just firing off a gun. One of my neighbors was nearby, caught a good glimpse of the car, and called the police. They have a suspect — an employee of Fenton's Ice Cream. (This is the place that got torched by a disgruntled night manager two years ago. Makes ya wonder.) Anyway, nobody got killed or hurt, but... yikes...

So on a pleasanter subject... I've been thinking about songs I've liked that I wish I could find.

1. "Fly Girl", by the Boogie Boys. This would be dumb, but catchy, rap from the 80s.
2. "Just Ice", by Just Ice. Ditto. I used to have it on tape.
3. This song whose title and artist names I don't remember, that they used to play a lot at clubs like the Berkeley Square in the 80s. (Are you beginning to see a theme here?) Anyway, it was very blippy and electronic sounding, and the thing I mainly remember is that it had a woman's voice saying "N-N-N-No, Senor" over and over again. There were some actual lyrics too, all in Spanish.
4. "Lovers In A Dangerous Time", live accoustic version, by Bruce Cockburn. KFOG plays it sometimes... it's from one of their "Live From the Archives" CDs, which are all sold out.

Those are the songs I can think of at the moment; I'm sure more will come to mind. (And now I have this terrible suspicion that some spammer will come across this post and start sending me ads for music services.)

It's all over the news today. Maybe the Ninth Circuit saw my blog posting from yesterday (joke!) and took pity on me, personally, but they postponed the recall pending review by the Supreme Court.

And check this out. I thought Cheney was lying. It's nice to have backup. I can't believe that he's still peddling the same old bull about a link between Saddam and Al Queda, though. I guess he knows that people still will believe it.

You Californians are off the hook because you already feel my pain on this one. One hundred and thirty five names. In no particular order. (OK, there's an order, but it's different in each county so as to not give any candidate an unfair advantage, and to give the rest of us who aren't running for this office migraines.)

So many candidates, so little point. I guess I'll be voting for Bustamante, even though I really enjoyed Arianna's Flash movie piss-take against Arnold (and I definitely won't be voting for Arnold!)

I'm deeply scared I'm going to punch the wrong little chad. (I'm wanting to punch something, all right...)

And unfortunately, I'm talking about Democrats!

We're going to lose the 2004 race if this keeps up. I'm not impressed with Lieberman or Gephardt, to put it mildly.

Not terribly interesting, but because the guy said "You will also ignore this letter and respect our trust in you by not exposing this transaction, even if you are not interested." I feel obliged to expose away.

Really, people still fall for this shit?

Dumbasses.

From: Jeff Maluleke
Attorney at Law
South - Africa

Dear Friend,

My greetings to you and your family and I hope this letter meets you in good health. I hope my letter does not cause you too much embarrassment as I write to you in good faith based on the contact details given to me by a friend who works at the South African Embassy in your country. Please excuse my intrusion into your private life.

I am Barrister Jeff Maluleke, I represent Winnie Madikizela Mandela, former anti-apartheid campaigner and wife of ex-South African President, Nelson Mandela. My client has been losing a lot of money due to vindictive government officials who are bent on dealing with her. Based on this therefore, she has asked me to look for a foreign partner who can work with us so as to move out the total sum of US$22,000,000 (Twenty Two Million US Dollars) presently in her possession. This money was of course acquired by my client and is now secretly in her possession. The bid by some government officials to deal with my client has made it necessary we seek your assistance in receiving this money and investing it on our behalf.

This must be a joint venture transaction and we must all work together. Since this money is in cash, extra security measures have been taken to protect it from theft or seizure pending when agreement is reached on when and how to move it to you. I have personally worked out all modalities for the peaceful conclusion of this transaction.

My client is willing to give you a reasonable percentage of this money as soon as the transaction is concluded. It will however be based on the ground that you are willing to work with us and also all contentious issues discussed before the commencement of this transaction. You may also discuss your percentage before we start to work. As soon as I hear from you, I will give you all necessary details as to how we intend to carry out the whole transaction.

Please do not entertain any fears, as all necessary modalities are in place and I assure you of all success and safety in this transaction.

Please this transaction requires absolute confidentiality and you will be expected to treat it as such until the funds are moved out of this country. Kindly furnish me your contact information which is your personal telephone and fax numbers for confidential purpose and acknowledge receipt of this mail through this email address.

You will also ignore this letter and respect our trust in you by not exposing this transaction, even if you are not interested.

I look forward to working with you.

Truly yours,

Jeff Maluleke Esq.

My immediate family doesn't like to do the funeral thing. We don't go for the open caskets, don't go to church or synagogue... when my grandmother died, she was cremated — her firm choice, even though we're Jewish. We chose to have her memorial service in the back yard of her home. Friends and relatives gathered to tell stories about her. I wore a blue dress because she always hated black. Anyway, we wanted to celebrate the good years of her life rather than dwell on the sad way it drew to a close.

So naturally, this attitude towards funerals and death has seeped into me. (Not completely — I do love a good walk in a nice cemetery!) I see the photos of people gathering at the World Trade Center site, and I read about the plans for a memorial to be established there, and in some ways I understand it... it's like trying to take a place where something horrible happened and purify it again, the way that people leave flowers at the site of a horrible car accident. But in other ways, it completely puzzles me.

Because such memorializing can only commemorate the tragedy. It can't truly commemorate the lives of the people who died that day.

Think about it. Would you like people to think of you only in relation to your workplace or commute path?

So I think they should make plaques — I always liked those little blue historical plaques all over London, etc. — and place them in the places where those people lived and played. Places that meant something to them. Include a few autobiographical details. "Joe was a guitarist and liked to play poker and watch South Park. This is the bar he used to hang out in with his buddies." "Sarah loved spending time with her kids and her kids' friends. This is the park they used to spend Saturdays in."

Sure, the effect would be less dramatic, more diffuse... but people would notice them from time to time. Maybe they'd even stop and read one.

And those people would be remembered, not once a year on September 11 or whenever the president wants to promote another distasteful policy, but in the places they loved.

So we now have a president who says marriage ought to be restricted to being between a man and a woman, and folks like Santorum who compare gay sex to child molestation and "man on dog"... a slap in the face of people like Mark Bingham's mother. Bingham was a hero, but he got overshadowed by his planemate, Todd Beamer, who apparently coined the would-be-patented phrase, "Let's roll" as they tried to take back the doomed plane from the hijackers two years ago tomorrow.

And apparently, there are people all over New York who breathed in poisonous dust in the weeks after the towers collapsed, reasured by the EPA that it was safe. We won't know the true toll of that noble act for years, but we can guess... there was a lot of asbestos in those buildings. That's how the White House treated the victims of terrorism.

And our brave fighting forces? Hopefully they'll do better than Vanessa Turner, who collapsed from the heat while on duty in Iraq, was in a coma and suffered leg damage, and ended up homeless back in Boston with her daughter. (Thanks to media attention, she's finally getting some help...)

Why was she there anyway? She was part of an invasion that seems to have exacerbated a bad situation — if there weren't Al Queda terrorists in Iraq before, there sure are now. (Yes, Saddam was/is a bad man, but that wasn't the point, was it?)

And I haven't even gotten to the Patriot Act, which Congress, thankfully, is trying to tame — and Bush is threatening to veto their attempts. Or the Benladen family members that were escorted out of the country without questioning. Or the 9/11 report with all the information excised.

Meanwhile, another video arrives from Osama...

It should go without saying that the 9/11 plotters and their deeds were horrible beyond belief. They hate us and want to destroy us.

Does this administration have to help them achieve their goals?

--> "Two years later: A steely resolve, borne of anguish; Alice Hoglan, mother of Flight 93 hero, turns focus on airlines, gay acceptance", San Francisco Chronicle, September 10, 2003, www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/ archive/2003/09/10/DD308737.DTL

--> "9.11.01: Two years later: Ground zero air quality was 'brutal' for months; UC Davis scientist concurs that EPA reports misled the public", San Francisco Chronicle, September 10, 2003, www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? file=/c/a/2003/09/10/MN266317.DTL

--> "Congress uses scalpel to cut up Patriot Act; Bills would repeal parts of anti-terror law, but Bush threatens vetoes", San Francisco Chronicle, September 10, 2003, www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? file=/c/a/2003/09/10/MN268312.DTL

--> "The Nation’s First Homeless Veteran of the Invasion of Iraq Speaks Out", Democracy Now, September 2, 2003, www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/02/1416256

--> "A Guide to the Patriot Act", Slate, slate.msn.com/id/2087984/

--> "Iraq-Terrorism Link Continues to Be Problematic", WXXI, September 9, 2003, www.publicbroadcasting.net/wxxi/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=543517


Edited to add: Mark Fiore feels the same way! www.markfiore.com/animation/twoyear.html

I'm deleting my spam to my work email account. Apparently over the weekend,
Mauricio Mathews needed to contact me about "RE:erect Hoooo dt ounzj" while Mary Eastman felt that "canvssback earrieg lzvfp wjyyrje" would be something I'd be interested in. (And Maude Gamble writes me "Melt Away Body Fat while you are sleeping fm". BOOORING!!!)

But I thought this was a good quote:

Dean's not flashy — he’s bright. His interest seems to be the phenomena of the political, social and international moment and he appears to interpret and diagnose the moment in pursuit of a healthy outcome. He seems holistic. As with the human body, he's not unaware of the interacting systems of domestic and international organisms and how that interaction affects individual human beings.

His present positions do not unanimously agree with mine but I believe Howard Dean actually deals with evidence and reality and then arrives at a solution and a considered policy. In other words, I believe a citizen might be able to change Dean's mind. And I believe he would change his mind not for approval but because evidence and opinions would be presented and he would be able and unafraid to recognize their merits. This belief engenders hope that the American experience would be presided over by an intelligent evolution of thinking and that kind of thinking would be a consolation not only to American citizens but also to heads of state around the world.

--> "Why I support Howard Dean", Bill C. Davis, www.commondreams.org/views03/0903-02.htm

So after a twenty-minute walk to retrieve my car on Russian Hill, and then a frantic half hour trying to get out of San Francisco, followed by a traffic-plagued drive down 280, we were rewarded with a very nice garden party at Representative Lofgren's house in San Jose. (We talked to a woman who had driven up from Monterey County, so our trip wasn't nothin', really.) And I got to see Howard Dean speak, in person! I'm not very good at explaining this stuff (I'd better improve by election season!) but... wow. He really communicates passionately, but not bitterly. He hits at Bush hard, but he says positive things too, about his record in Vermont and what this country could be like. Dean's the kind of person who can, and does, say "We're all in this together" — and seem to mean it. For somebody who was considered an upstart, he harks back to better days of old quite a bit... and it's a good thing.

He's funny, too. When talking about the "No Child Left Behind" act, he said, "Teachers refer to it as "No School Building Left Standing.' Or, as I like to call it, 'No Behind Left.'" At a few points in the speech, his brain seemed to race ahead of his mouth — or perhaps he'd just repeated himself too many times that day — and he tripped over his tongue. He finally stopped himself with a loud "Bleh!" and commented that his speech would either end up in Mad Magazine or Karl Rove would be using it in his marketing materials next year.

I think this guy could really be president. Did I just jinx things? But this is as hopeful as I've felt about things here for a long time.

(P.S.: He talked about renewable energy! It gladdened my little former Home Energy magazine employee heart.)

So there's an article in today's Chronicle about how some fringe environmental folks are increasingly turning to blowing things up as a form of protest. Some are saying that since there have been crackdowns from the government on legimate forms of protest, they are left with little choice.

I have to confess to a twinge of amusement when I heard about the SUV and Hummer vandalism a few weeks ago. (I hates me some Hummers — what a pointless form of transportation. The Hummer started getting marketed to consumers after the first Gulf War. Nuff said.) But still, bombing offices? Or worse, going after executives homes, which is supposedly the next step in the Chiron protests?

What happened to civil disobedience? Or Michael Moore-type tactics, like bringing the Washington D.C.'s Gay Men's Chorus to sing "On the Street Where You Live" at the home of Jesse Helms?

Once you start viewing the world as being at war, it's very hard to turn that off, and it unleashes all kinds of ugliness. I don't think there's a single terrorist alive who thinks "I'm going to go do evil things today!" Nope, they think they're part of "Operation Just Cause" (say, what a great name for a military action.)

Yes, I'm against animal testing, or at least for doing as little of it as possible, in a humane way. Yes, I hate SUVs and I worry about global warming. I'm angry at our government, oh yeah. But I want to yell at those stupid violent protesters, "Gee, THANKS A LOT FOR MAKING OUR SIDE LOOK BAD!!!"

A few weeks ago I had dinner with my parents and a friend of theirs who was visiting from New York. She kept mentioning her friend Kathy who was in prison and coming up for parole soon... turns out it was Kathy Boudin, who used to be a member of the Weather Underground, was in hiding for ten years, and finally got caught after a violent armoured-car robbery with the Black Liberation Underground. (She didn't shoot anybody.) My parents' friend explained that since she was on the run and the FBI had infiltrated the mainstream liberal organizations, she was pretty much driven towards the more extreme fringe groups. She's apparently a great person, and her life has been ruined... and she hasn't gotten to do all the great things for the world she probably hoped to do.

People just don't learn from the past, though...

--> "Activists see more violent activity from extreme protesters", September 6, 2003, San Francisco Chronicle, sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/09/06/MN258847.DTL

--> "The Object of the Outrage", Anna Quindlan, Newsweek, September 8, 2003, www.msnbc.com/news/959312.asp

Abbas Steps Down, Dealing Big Blow to U.S. Peace Plan
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Sept. 6 — Mahmoud Abbas submitted his resignation as Palestinian prime minister today and Israel lightly wounded the spiritual leader of Hamas with an airstrike in Gaza City, events that put the Bush administration's initiative for Middle East peace close to the point of disintegrating.

--> New York Times, www.nytimes.com/2003/09/07/international/07MIDE.html

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Read this article in Newsweek last night... and I am just filled with rage. Afghanistan is crumbling into chaos again, the Taliban has control of large areas of that country, and apparently, Al Queda does too. Bin Laden continues to send out communiques to his troops. And what do we do? We go and screw things up in Iraq and ignore Afghanistan. How sensible.

Imagine if we'd taken out Hitler, but had no Marshall Plan to rebuild the country. Imagine if we just left everyone in Europe to keep killing each other. Well, now you don't have to imagine it.

And as for us, we're in just as much danger as before. Probably more.

I fear that once again, we'll look back on this summer and say "The signs were there. Why didn't we connect the dots?"

And our illustrious leader will wrap himself in the flag again.

Oh, sorry, I forgot. I'm just a Berkeley liberal who hates America, and I'm "whining". Don't mind me.

--> "Rumors of Bin Laden's Lair: Some believe life on the run has made it impossible for Osama bin Laden to control and lead Al Qaeda. In Afghanistan’s Kunar province, people tell a different story", Newsweek, September 8, 2003 issue, www.msnbc.com/news/959544.asp

I think I earlier recommended Watchblog. I'm now reconsidering that recommendation. It's a neat idea, having blogs by Republicans, Democrats, and "third party" folks all on the same page, as it were, but the discourse is not so good. People rant, and then people rant some more in the comments section (which lacks a rating system or threaded discussions, so comments just pile upon each other.) The comments aren't edited... and the editors aren't edited either. (When one of the section managers consistently spells "their" as "thier", there's a problem).

But luckily I came across Greater Democracy on somebody else's blog. Good content by people who can spell, and a discussion area that's hosted on another part of the site. Good deal.

--> www.greaterdemocracy.org

A day after Dean questioned Ashcroft's patriotism, DeLay, a Republican lawmaker from Sugar Land, fired off a statement calling the former Vermont governor a "a cruel and extremist demagogue."

"If this cruel, loudmouth extremist is the cream of the Democratic crop, next November's going to make the 1984 election look like a squeaker," DeLay said in a reference to President Reagan's landslide victory over Walter Mondale.

Michael looked up the definition of the word "demagogue" in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:

1 : a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power 2 : a leader championing the cause of the common people in ancient times

'Nuff said.

--> news.mysanantonio.com/story.cfm? xla=saen&xlb=180&xlc=1049228

Yep, that's my sweetie. :-)

--> www.switchtodean.com

Update: the video isn't on Switch To Dean yet, but you can see it at the Internet Movie Archive website...

I just got an email at work that included this announcement:

"{Name omitted} will handle stock gift transactions for the General Fund on a go-forward basis."

And it made me wonder: just when did standard business English get fucked up so badly?

I was so tempted to write back and ask, "So does that mean that she'll be handling stock gift transactions for the General Fund from now on?"

Maybe I just need more coffee. (Or less!)