The 'Burbs

So I just had my first Dammit, I'm a City Kid! moment here in sunny suburbia.

You see, growing up we never had a lawn. Well, we did, but it was about 2' x 6', literally. So that didn't exactly require a lawn mower. Mostly, our neighbor who was a professional gardener just weed-wacked it from time to time.

Anyway, this evening I got out of class early (the professor decided that we were ahead of schedule, so he skipped the lecture and just gave us the quiz - awesome!), so I came home and decided to be productive by mowing the lawn. So I got out of my work clothes, dragged the mower out of the garage, and then, in full view of the neighbor lady who was outside on the phone, proceeded to have trouble starting the damn thing. Mildly embarassed, I gave it a couple I'll-pretend-I-know-anything-about-engines once-over and then tried again.

Nothing.

Okay, so now I wheeled the thing out of her view, and proceeded to check the oil. It was fine. Then I checked the gasoline. Hmm, I thought, gasoline doesn't normally have tiny little bubbles in it. That most be what they're talking about when they say don't use stale gas. So I went back to the garage, got the gas can, and proceeded to pour in new gas. I then promptly overfilled the tank and spilled gas on the mower. Dammit. That's okay, cause gasoline evaporates quickly.

So I screwed the gas cap back on tightly, and decided to wait a few minutes. Well, while I'm waiting, how about I check the underside of the mower, just in case something is stuck in the blade? So I tilted the mower over, and cleaned out some clumps of grass. Excellent. Now, let's turn her back over. Oh shit! Gas has now spilled out of the overfilled (remember?) tank. It's all over the engine and there's a puddle on the ground.

So at this point, I figured I ought to get the hose and dilute the spilled gas on the ground. But, trying to play it cool, I decided to water the petunias, rain lillies, and boxwood bushes. That done, I sprayed down the driveway to dilute the spilled gas (which has mostly evaporated already). Down the drain (and into Lake Michigan!) went the last of the gasoline.

Now I looked at the mower. The gas on the engine appeared to be evaporated. But it still smelled of gas. Dare I start it and risk igniting the entire damn thing? I hemmed and hawed for several minutes, crouching thoughtfully by the mower, trying hard to look like I knew what I was doing. Finally, I decided to just chicken out.

Defeated, I went inside to burn some CDs and write this post. The computer! There's a machine I know how to use.

Exam

So I had an Exam in my Civil Procedure class last night. The teacher told us beforehand that it was going to be 50 questions, mixed true/false and multiple choice, and that it would only take about 30 minutes. So I totally wasn't worried about it, even though it covered 7 chapters. After all, how hard could a 30 minute test be?

Well, I'm not going to say it was really hard, but I should have studied much better. There were at least a dozen questions that I really wasn't sure about, and when I checked some of them later in the book, I realized I had missed most of them. So I think I'll be lucky if I end up with a B on this test. Which sucks, because the percentage of my tuition that my employer reimburses is tied to my grade, and we only have two more tests. So I'm thinking that I pretty much have to ace them to get an A in the class (and get 100% of my money back).

Things that Suck

1. Karl Rove
2. The Kelo Decision
3. Torture
4. The War
5. John Bolton

You know those surveys where they ask "Do you think that overall the country is heading in the right direction?" I never know how to answer, because it's a ridiculously broad question. But this week, I have no such reservations. Things are looking pretty bad on the political front.

1. So Karl Rove thinks all liberals are sissy traitors, huh? And the White House is standing behind his comments? Well, with all due respect, fuck you Mr. Rove, and fuck you, too, Mr. Bush.

For the last week, we've been told that Senator Durbin's comments comparing American torture with that practiced by totalitarian regimes was so beyond the pale that the Senator should be forced to walk on his knees five miles across broken glass before apologizing to every member of the armed forces personally. But Karl Rove's comment? Perfectly acceptable. The White House finds it "puzzling" that anyone would object.

Fuck that. As a liberal who most certainly does not think that terrorists need therapy (they need a bullet in the brain or a 500-pound bomb in the gut) I want a personal apology from Rove. What's say, Karl? Are you man enough to admit your error?

2. The Supreme Court thinks it's okay for private property to be seized by eminent domain and given to other private citizens/corporations? Wait, when did this become a communist country? I thought our system was supposed to be based on individual property rights. But I guess the 4 liberal justices + 1 proved me wrong.

Well, guess what? When Walmart comes for my house, I'm coming for yours, Justices Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, Kennedy, and Souter.

3. This hasn't really been much in the news recently, but y'know, aren't we still torturing/murdering inmates and not really coming clean on it?

Are we going to start acting like a civilized country any time soon, or is it anything goes?

4. Oh, and remember that war in Iraq thing? It's still going on. And we're not winning. And the President doesn't really seem terribly concerned.

I mean, it's been over two years now, and there's no end in sight. The solution? More of the same. Here's a different idea - how about anything else? More troops might be a good place to start. But that would require admitting error, and that seems unlikely (see number 1).

5. Can we drop the fiction that John Bolton is going to walk into the U.N. and magically the place will start working perfectly? That's the best argument conservatives have come up with for why an untrustworthy, incompetent, undiplomatic (more precisely, anti-diplomatic) bully should become ambassador the United Nations, but it's complete hogwash. If confirmed, Bolton will instantly become the least popular guy at the U.N., meaning that he will accomplish zero. I agree that the U.N. needs reforming, but this isn't the way to do it.

Pot Kettle Black

Okay, I'm not a big fan of Howard Dean, but this comment by Dick Cheney struck me as utterly absurd:

I've never been able to understand his appeal. Maybe his mother loved him, but I've never met anybody who does.

This from a man who'd kill and eat Santa Claus if the Energy Industry told him it would increase profits.

Cardinal Sin

Cardinal Jaime Sin. Good man. Unfortunate name.

Sin had a sense of humor about his name, often referring to his residence as "the house of Sin."

Ancient Civilizations

As a follow-up to yesterday's post, there is this recent article on what appears to be the oldest known civilization in European yet uncovered by archaeologists:

Archaeologists have discovered Europe's oldest civilisation, a network of dozens
of temples, 2,000 years older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids.

More than 150 gigantic monuments have been located beneath the fields and
cities of modern-day Germany, Austria and Slovakia. They were built 7,000 years
ago, between 4800BC and 4600BC. Their discovery, revealed today by The
Independent, will revolutionise the study of prehistoric Europe, where an
appetite for monumental architecture was thought to have developed later than
in Mesopotamia and Egypt.

To continue on yesterday's theme, I find it fascinating that one of the first things ancient civilizations from all parts of the world did was built huge temples and shrines - that there was, as they say, "an appetite for monumental architecture." I guess the urge to build huge monuments has always been there, just because. And to this day, we carve faces in mountains, construct massive dams, and build 1,776 ft. tall buildings. But in doing so, we're not really besting our ancestors, but emulating them with ever more sophisticated techniques.

Just one more piece of evidence that humans across all cultures are really more alike than different.

This Is Neat

I saw this story in today's San Francisco Chronicle online:

Until now, few scientists have dared to speculate that the ancient Polynesians visited Southern California between 500 and 700 A.D., that is to say, in the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire. This is known as the "transpacific diffusion" hypothesis.

I find theories like this to be really cool. Not because I want to prove that "the man" has been hiding information about the achievements of minorities or something, but because the idea that technologically primitive people in the past were still incredibly smart, resourceful, and brave. Most people wouldn't travel across the ocean in a canoe nowadays with a GPS guidance system, but here's evidence that a number of people made the trip roughly 1500 years ago, presumbably with only the stars to guide them. That's impressive. And every time I hear about one of these fantastic trips in the ancient or medieval world - Chinese ships circumnavigating the world, Basques fishing off of Canada, Roman legionnaries fighting in China - I find it fascinating, even if I know that some of the stories might turn out to be unfounded.

Ryan Adams is Crazy

So, this is a tardy follow-up to my previous post about Jeff Tweedy. As you'll remember, I was worried that Tweedy was too happy, sober, and stable to keep making good music.

Somehow, judging from this picture of his latest Letterman appearance, I don't think I have to worry about that problem with Ryan Adams:

Summertime Blues

Ugh.

I'm taking two classes in summer school, which means for the next 7 weeks, I'm going to have 8 hours of work and 3 1/2 hours of school Monday-Thursday, plus of course, work on Friday. And then there's reading and homework. Now, there's a chance that my professors will let us go early every night (that has happened in previous classes), but I didn't get that impression from my first class last night.

I'd really prefer to only be taking one class, like a couple of my friends, but I need to maintain 6 credits to keep my student loans deferred for the semester.

At least this is only until the end of July. This too shall pass ...

Evil

In this complex world, one should usually be circumspect about making moral judgments ("judge not ..."), especially when it comes to categorizing something or someone as evil. But I feel no such need for circumspection in this case.

What is it with young, white Texans attacking mentally retarded black men? At least in that case, the attackers got justice, Texas-style (one got life in prison and two are scheduled for execution).

The most galling part of the case in Linden is this quote from the ex-mayor, Wilford Penny:

"But I don't think there was anything racial about it. These guys were drinking, and this guy [Johnson] liked to dance. I'm not surprised when they get to drinking and use the n-word. The black boy was somewhere he shouldn't have been, although they brought him out there."

Okay, three things:

1) there's nothing racial about calling a black man the n-word? um, what?

2) the "boy" in this case is a middle-aged man, thank you very much

and 3) the victim "was somewhere he shouldn't have been." Yeah, somehow I doubt we'd hear that rationalization if a white girl was raped in inner-city Houston or something of that sort. Then, it would be "how could something horrible happen to such a nice girl?"

Anyway, I hope you find yourself in hell some day soon, Mr. Penny (your clock is ticking). You and all the nice boys from Linden, Texas who think it's funny to beat retarded black men.

Iraq War Analogies

From the moment the President first started talking about invading Iraq, we've heard comparison after comparison to the Vietnam War. But this analogy has never really struck me as accurate. But I was thinking about it this morning, and it occurred to me that the better analogy is to the American Civil War:

1) One side (Union/U.S.) wins a decisive and total victory over the other (Confederacy/Iraqi Baathists).

2) The outcome leads to political freedom and emancipation for (a) oppressed group(s) (Black Slaves/Iraqi Shiites and Kurds).

3) Disgruntled members of the formerly dominant group (White Southerners/Iraqi Sunnis), rather than leading a guerrilla struggle against the occupying army (Union/U.S. Army), start killing innocent civilians (Black Freedmen/Iraqi Shiites and Kurds) and those cooperating with the occupiers (Carpetbaggers and Scalawags/Iraqi Police and Government officials).

Number three is the one that really distinguishes the Iraq War from the Vietnam War. The Viet Cong, though they killed plenty of innocent Vietnamese, used the classic guerrilla strategy - harass the occupiers until they crackdown on the civilian population, thus causing the civilians to look to the guerrillas for protection. Therefore, the Viet Cong gained strength by winning real popular support. The Iraqi insurgents have instead opted for a terrorist strategy, a la the KKK, which wins them no popular support, but which they hope will eventually cause the U.S. to throw in the towel due to frustration.

The good news? The Union Army eventually crushed the KKK, causing it to disband (it later reformed in the 1910s).

The bad news? Eventually the White Southerners won anyway. The Northerners tired of Reconstruction after 11 years and basically ceded control back to the good ol' boys, who ruled the South uncontested for 80 years until the Civil Rights struggle began in the 1950s.

Here's to hoping that we don't have to wait until the 2090s to see Iraq ruled freely and democratically.

Being Rich is Hard

Remember that song "Mo Money Mo Problems"? I always took that to heart, because it's certainly true that rich people live very difficult lives that I think us working people just don't understand. Further evidence comes from this story about Paris Hilton

Heiress Paris Hilton is wearing two engagement rings, because she can't choose between the two diamond bands her fiance Paris Latsis offered her.

The Greek shipping heir gave Hilton a choice between two pricey rings from celebrity jewelers Harry Winston and Tiffany.

One has a 24-carat canary yellow stone, the other a 15-carat white diamond. They are worth $2.1 million and $4.2 million.

But the 24-year-old loves them both.

A source says, "She just can't decide."

Gulag Island

Any left-winger who wants to criticize President Bush should do so only after thinking to him/herself "are my comments more likely to make me or the President look like a fool?"

Case in point: the recent Amnesty International report which compared the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to the Soviet Gulag. The President called this charge absurd, and he's absolutely right. The Gulag victimized (and killed) millions of innocent Soviet citizens, while the abuses (which I strongly oppose, just so there's no misunderstanding) at Guantanamo Bay have victimized, at most, a few hundred people. Not only isn't Guantanamo equivalent to the Gulag, it's not even the worst prison system on the island of Cuba!

So, in the end, because Amnesty International decided to sex-up its report with a ridiculous historical analogy, rather than drawing attention to U.S. abuses, the report only served to discredit opponents of President Bush. So once again, us moderate liberals get to sit around and watch as those to our left consistently undermine us with their immature antics.

Deep Throat Caused the Cambodian Genocide ...

or so says Peggy Noonan:

What Mr. Felt helped produce was a weakened president who was a serious president at a serious time. Nixon's ruin led to a cascade of catastrophic events--the crude and humiliating abandonment of Vietnam and the Vietnamese, the rise of a monster named Pol Pot, and millions--millions--killed in his genocide.

Nixon's ruin led to the genocide in Cambodia? Um, wtf? It's one thing for conservatives to not consider Felt a hero, since he did bring down a conservative president. But it's another thing entirely to invent a sequence of events whereby Deep Throat is the cause of Pol Pot's genocide. That's absurd, slanderous, and way out of bounds for polite discourse.

But more importantly, it's totally incorrect. Several points:

1) It was the American Army's incursions into Cambodia while Nixon was President that destablized the country and started the sequence of events that led to the Khmer Rouge's takeover.

2) Pol Pot carried out his genocide while Nixon's appointed successor - Ford - and right-hand man - Kissinger - were still in power. These men did nothing to stop the genocide.

3) The North Vietnamese who Nixon was fighting actually did intervene in Cambodia, and ended the genocide by toppling the Khmer Rouge.

and most importantly 4) Nixon's downfall can be blamed entirely on one man - Richard Nixon. His resignation resulted not from some scandal cooked-up by liberals bent on his destruction but from his own criminality.

Ms. Noonan's retelling of history where Nixon would have somehow defeated the Viet Cong and strangled the infant Khmer Rouge in the cradle is pure fiction. But hagiographic fantasy appears to be her specialty.

Wilco

Oh, no - Jeff Tweedy is sober and happy! This almost assuredly spells the end of Wilco. How many rock band do you know who really hit their stride during periods of calm and happiness, singing songs of domestic bliss?

Now, of course, as a fellow human being, I wish Jeff Tweedy the best. I'm glad that he's kicked his habit and is enjoying time with his wife and children. But, let's be realistic. Jeff Tweedy isn't my friend or something. My main (read: only) interaction with him is through his music. And so my primary concern is that he continues to produce high-quality music for people like me to listen to. And, frankly, I don't think his current lifestyle choices are conducive to that goal (though I hope to be proved wrong).

Half kidding aside, the most worrying part of the article is where he says that he's not so interested in playing short rock songs anymore - he'd rather play extended jam songs like "Spiders (Kidsmoke)." Um ... Jeff, I'd really rather that you didn't. The short, tight rock songs are a big part of Wilco, especially live. I'd take "Outtasite (Outta Mind)" over any song on A Ghost Is Born, anytime - one of the most cathartic experiences one can have is shouting "Okay alright! Okay alright!" along with an entire theater of fellow concert-goers. Please don't deny us that pleasure in favor of a 12-minute version of "Spiders." You're not Phish, Jeff - try to remember on which side your bread is buttered.