Boviosity!

Predictions, 12/31/2003

To heck with all those people making predictions for 2004, I have another challenge: predict what hilarious hijinx the Capital Steps will get up to in their yearly hate-fest on NPR tonight!

My prediction (and if it's on the promotional clip at the site, I swear I didn't listen to it):

"Where Did Our Love Go," sung by Saddam Hussein to his old buddy Donald Rumsfeld! Because we all know the '80's aid to Hussein occurred in a vacuum. In fact, I think that's the chorus of a current protest song:

It all happened in a vacuum, a vacuum
It all happened in a vacuum!
He shook Saddam's hand
And doomed Iraqi-land
And it all happened in a vacuum!

R.E.T.

I was going to link to Lileks' amazing post yesterday but Tim Blair, a world away and already breathing the air of 2004, beat me to it. Since I would just pull the same quote he did, I'm linking to Lileks through Blair.

Which Louie Anderson Are You?

Click here to take the quiz!

Blair Quotes Redux

I've found my favorite quote in Tim Blair's Best In Quotes 2003 (now available with a single click here).

From March:

• "On each side of the war against war, hopes soar, hopes dive, hour by hour now. Resignations abound, timetables slip, and the world waits, mesmerised. I'm off to Melbourne to record an arts chat show." -- Margo Kingston

C-ya!

Blogrolled!

For reasons known only to himself, blogger Kevin Cole has blogrolled Boviosity. This is a first for me: blogrolled without begging and pleading to have it done. Anyway, check out his site. He seems like a nice guy and there really are a lot of interesting links to check out there.

Bargain Bin Christmas Candy Review

Reese's White Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Miniatures: Not as wrong as you might expect. In fact, quite tasty.

That's Nice.

Plus-sized find a wider selection -- headline at AJC.com.

UPDATE: Woo-Hoo! I sent this link to James Taranto, who used it in his "Best Of The Web Today" and credited me by name!

It's a Bovious Christmas!

Mine was good but intensely exhausting. Up with the kids before 8 (I'm betting Annie will get us up earlier next year.) Presents with the kids. We got Will the BC Rich Warlock Promo (it looks like this but with a sort of pointy Telecaster head stock and considerably cheaper.) And Annie loves her Barbie Shower Play.

We had brunch for the whole hee-haw Jones family at 10:00. My brother brought me a beautiful bottle of hooch! Thanks, man!

A slight respite, then to the Ramfos family gathering for dinner.

Headache started around 6:00. Home by 8:00.

Kids went to bed with no problem. Despite headache, I stayed up to watch "Door To Door." Blubbered like a baby. I'm reexamining the movie now to figure out why it affected me so, but I'm guessing the best answer will be, because I needed it to.

Tasha's using some gift certificates I got to buy me the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set today. Yee-haw!

Best Christmas Present Ever

Go to Tim Blair's site and just start reading. Thanks, Tim! Magnificent job!

I'll post a Christmas present later this week, probably after Christmas. That's me, a day late and a dollar short. Get used to it.

Poseur Alert (Special Edition of Ebert Watch)

Roger Ebert, on Return Of The King:

It is a melancholy fact that while the visionaries of a generation ago, like Coppola with "Apocalypse Now," tried frankly to make films of great consequence, an equally ambitious director like Peter Jackson is aiming more for popular success. The epic fantasy has displaced real contemporary concerns, and audiences are much more interested in Middle Earth than in the world they inhabit.

Wow, a sociologist AND a fat puling hack film critic! Who knew?

I suppose when a movie doesn't support your particular worldview, it must be airily dismissed as "archetypes" lacking in "psychological depth." You keep saying that movies aren't about what they're about, they're about how they're about what they're about. I've always admired that stance and I guess it's true, unless they're about the reality of Good and Evil and the need for Good to sacrifice some of its easy complacency when Evil is determined to kill it. Then they just need to be dismissed as "for adolescents (of all ages)."

Even adolescents know a shite-spewing poser when they see one, Rog, and I'm looking at one right now. If you'd had the ring, you'd still be using it to sneak through Bill Clinton's secret service coterie and give him big sweaty bear hugs...right up until you got run through with a rusty Nazgul sword, of course.

Garfield Dreams

Watched "The Goodbye Girl" on TCM last night, first time I've seen it since the '70's. It's held up pretty well and it was fun falling in lust with that pug-nosed freak Marsha Mason again and looking at the kooky/kitschy set design (anybody have any idea what that poster just inside her bedroom door was? I wanted to say Lisztomania but that wasn't it.)

But I was completely floored by an unsuspected aspect of the movie. I told you folks that I'm going to be appearing in a smallish role in "My Fair Lady" with a group of people I've never worked with. Rehearsals start in January. I've had a couple of nightmares about that, and watching the movie last night I realized they were all based on Elliott's nightmarish turn as Richard III with the cretin-from-Mars director. I even remember seeing some of the same faces in my nightmare! Seriously, I got the same tightening of the chest while watching Elliott's rehearsals as I did in my nightmare.

Strange how the mind works.

Just...damn

Commenter Amos at Tim Blair's weblog nails Mark Morford to the freakin' wall.

I love the way Bush is a towering figure in Morford's elaborate, delusional persecution complex, dominationg his every waking moment and haunting his nightmares- yet Bush is blissfully unaware of Morford's existence.

Follow the link, read, and smile. Think about whether you know anybody like poor little Mark. Feel compassion.

In fact, read the whole comment thread. Best example of right-wing thuggery against the invincibly unconvinceable I've ever seen.

(That's a good thing.)

Amos needs a blog. I'd click it.

What would experts do without experts?

Providence author is the expert on the expert of Cheaper by the Dozen

What would workers do without experts?

Workers can be driven too hard for too long, expert says

The Pupkin Presidency

Mitch Berg's Shot In The Dark has a "poll" going:

See how many of them [the "usual leftyblog suspects"] try to disavow the link between the invasion of Iraq and Libya's disavowal of WMDs.

That's similar enough to one of my bingo posts that I'm claiming blog bingo ;).

But anyway, here's Josh Marshall on Libya:

[...]a few comments on the Libya deal.

First, this has only a tenuous link to the Bush Doctrine, though the White House and some of the more gullible columnists are going to great lengths to portray it that way. Libya has been trying to get good with the US and Europe for half a dozen years -- as signalled by the first on-going and now just concluded negotiations over the Pan-Am bombing.

(The Libya deal looks like an especially good example of the Bush Doctrine in action if you haven't been paying any attention to Libya for the last dozen years. Along those lines, here's a good article on that history, and a recent update by the same author.)

Second, Libya's 'WMD' are awfully primitive compared to be the big-boys of the rogue state universe. They have mustard gas, a World War I era weapon, and some very preliminary nuclear stuff, not even remotely close to having a serious facility let alone a bomb. So that context is important.

Having said all this, some are pointing to this development as a sign of the merits of talking versus fighting in turning back the scourge of weapons proliferation.

But that won't do either.

Talking, in itself, means nothing. It's only a way of lubricating or finessing the application of different kinds of force or pressure. And the pressure applied to Libya has been fierce. Only it wasn't principally military, but economic.

Libya has been under fierce UN-sanctions for a decade. And the strangling pressure of those sanctions, combined with rising internal political strains which magnified their effect, prompted the shift of course.

Does the backdrop of Iraq play into the decision? Of course, it does. But this isn't a break with the direction Libya's been pursuing, but a continuation of it.

Got that? This would've happened under President Gore, too. It was just a matter of time. Josh is apparently running a home-made tape in his head, of President Gore praising the UN's mighty works in Libya, thanking President Clinton for his historically significant work in laying the groundwork for this achievement, praising Col. Qadaffi for his cooperation (maybe offering him a promotion to General), and warning Saddam Hussein (politely, of course) that he's about to receive the UN's undivided attention unless he stops developing WMD's right now. (Remember, in this tape, the Democrats still believe Saddam has WMD's.)

Oooh, I got goose pimples. Call it the Pupkin Presidency. In Martin Scorses's "King Of Comedy," pathetic wannabe talk show host Rupert Pupkin ran his idea of the perfect talk show in his basement, with mostly imaginary guests. I can't help but think of Josh and others as imagining an endless series of Gore presidential press conferences announcing breakthroughs in the "Response To 9/11 Program" (what, you think they'd have called it the "War On Terror?" Get real.)

Somebody needs to put together an alternative history of the Gore presidency. The "Thank you, Libya" press conference would definitely be there.

Josh gets style points for the blithe reference to "gullible columnists." Of course that's the only word for anybody who fails to see to the dark heart of the Bush administration, right?

Update: Clark Credits Clinton for Ghadafy Breakthrough

Treacher Says It All

Sometimes, words just aren't enough.

Next on Show and Fall:

Teen Drug Use Falls, Federal Study Shows

Where was it?

Presiding officer finds case against major weak

What would medical professionals who kill do without experts?

Motives vary among medical professionals who kill, experts say

(Bovious channels Taranto!)

This Just In

Aliens driving illegally cause traffic problems

(Bovious channels a vacationing Taranto!)

You be the teacher!

You're a high school history teacher who decides to throw a historical costume pageant. One of your students announces his intention to show up in a, shall we say, controversial costume. What will you do?

Before you answer, check out what happened to Tennessee high school teacher Mickey Vanzant:

[...]when one of his students dressed up as an infamous Ku Klux Klan leader for a project in one of his honors classes last week, Vanzant acknowledges he got a lesson in sensitivity.

The parents of Khym Wilson, who is black, criticized Vanzant for permitting a student to dress as Hiram Wesley Evans, the national organization's Imperial Wizard in the 1920s.

Vanzant is not an innocent victim in this controversy; the story makes it plain that the student sought approval for the costume.

It's plain why this is controversial. The KKK are and were evil, deluded people. And their appearance prompts visceral revulsion in me; I can only imagine what it does to a non-white person. So Khym Wilson's reaction, at least to a point, is understandable.

But by the time a kid hits high school, one of the important lessons he needs to learn is to "get over it." If I'd thought in high school that the world owed me a comfy landing spot, I would have had even more problems than I did. I thank God that when I was accepted for the county honor band but ordered by the pothead band director to stay away (because I had quit the school band, which was being run into the ground by said pothead director,) my parents encouraged me to stand up for myself. I demanded a meeting with the principal, and got it. He backed up his band director, as he had to do, but I stood up for myself. And that meant something. Looking back on it, this story would probably have been of at least slight interest to the local newspaper. I'm glad I don't have a scrapbook image of myself looking sad and forlorn holding my trombone in the local rag, though. It took me awhile to get over it, but I understand what happened.

Khym, I understand your revulsion and perhaps even fear at what happened in class. I just think you could have confronted it more constructively.

And Mr. Vanzant, shame on you for not making it plain up front that you expected your students to handle controversy like young adults.

(Link via Romenesko)

Treacher Rule Goes Into Effect

Starting today, I'll adhere to the Treacher Rule of Weblogging.

"Post something every day, even if it sucks."

So here ya go.

'tis The Season

(If you're ever in a guessing game with my 5-year-old daughter, there's an easy way to win. Just ask her "what to try." For instance, if she tells you to guess what color her Alex cat is, ask her what to try and she'll say, "Grr..Grr..Graaaaay.") She asked me the other day to list all the holidays I could think of. I decided to start with New Year's Day, but before I could even get to MLK Day, she started giving out hints: "k-w-aaaaaaa...k-w-aaaaa...."

Oh, lordy. Only in Pre-K and already the indoctrination has started. She's going to enjoy me, she is.

I did not recite this, from the Relapsed Catholic, to her, but boy is it a beaut.

'Twas the night before Kwanzaa And all through the 'hood, Maulana Karenga was up to no good.

He'd tortured a woman and spent time in jail.
He needed a new scam that just wouldn't fail.
("So what if I stuck some chick's toe in a vice?
Nobody said revolution was nice!")

The Sixties were over. Now what would he do?
Why, he went back to school -- so that's "Dr." to you!
He once ordered shootouts at UCLA
Now he teaches Black Studies just miles away.

Then to top it all off, the good Doctor's new plan
Was to get rid of Christmas and piss off The Man.

Read the whole thing. As if you could resist it after that taste.

(Link via the Scrutineer.)

Got him!

Everybody knows that today we captured Saddam Hussein. I heard when I got up for church this morning - 7:15, after staying up half the night drinking whiskey at my mother-in-law's Christmas party (Thanks, Peggy!) When I heard it, my first impulse was to fire an automatic weapon into the air, so I gained a little understanding of Arab culture this day.

Now for some understanding of lefty culture! Yes, it's Wrong-Footed Leftyt Reaction To Hussein's Capture Bingo at Boviosity!

I have two bingo items. Please add your own. They shouldn't be hard to capture in the wild. No fair reading ahead - you have to make your predictions before you look for examples.

My predictions:

Now that they can no longer snark that he hasn't been caught (as if that was supposed to be the administration's sole purpose,) every casualty from now on gets the, "sure glad they caught Saddam, fat lot of good that did" treatment (as if the administration promised an end to hostilities once he was captured.)

and

"Unseemly gloating unworthy of a so-called superpower."

(Confession: I actually caught one of those in the wild, on an e-mail group I frequent, in response to the first prediction above. But I still get bingo points if one appears on a lefty blog or major media.)

and

"Bush knew yesterday - how many US lives did he risk by sitting on the information in order to time the announcement to appear at a more convenient time in the news cycle?"

Hippercritical

I've recently started visiting hippercritical. Why don't you, too?

I don't usually do this

"God Talk" gives me the hives. An early post on Boviosity linked to this story and I stand behind every word (scroll down - it's near the bottom):

This is from "Phrase the Lord" in a recent issue of New Man, the publication of Promise Keepers: "Suppose all Christians wore uniforms simply because they saw others wearing them and figured it must be the Christian way. Once that trend got started, we would know they were Christians by their . . . love? No, by their plaid Bermudas, bow ties, and little beanies. I know, that's silly. But have you ever noticed how we Christians sometimes wear funny little verbal 'uniforms'? They're otherwise known as Christian cliches, Christian lingo, Christianese, Christian jargon, or God talk. I'm talking about a word like 'just,' which often shows up in prayer, as in, 'Father God, I just want to pray right now, Lord. . . .' [...]You could make your own list of Christian phrases that have gone dull. In church, after listening to 'special music,' we 'share joys and concerns.' Then we 'come before our Maker in prayer.' So-and-so is a great 'prayer warrior.' She provides 'prayer cover' and asks for a 'hedge of protection' around the young couple who just had their first 'gift from God.' The pastor has a 'heart for missions.'

So what I'm about to say may come as a shock to you. I had what can only be described as a "God Moment" last night. I bought a piano at the Salvation Army store near my house this weekend and I've been worrying over how I could get it delivered for cheap or, better yet, for free. The guy recommended by the store charges more than half what I paid for the piano. I don't know anybody in my neighborhood well enough to ask. Naturally I thought of my church but I was nervous about asking these people. I can't quite say why; they're nice people and all, but I just feel a bit of distance from most of them especially when it comes to asking semi-big favors.

So I went to Wednesday night supper determined to ask *somebody* for help, but not having any idea who.

After going through the line, I sat, as I sometimes do, with John and Michele, a nice couple, and their three young children. I said hello, and John looked at me and said, "Hello. I just got a new truck."

I think I looked at him for a second in disbelief. I might have shook my head, but I smiled and said, "I just got a new piano. Can you help me move it?"

We have a tentative piano-moving date tomorrow afternoon. Even if it doesn't pan out, I have to say - I've just had a God moment. That's one of those moments when EXACTLY the right thing happens at EXACTLY the right time, through no fault of your own.

I know, it's just a coincidence. But it's more fun to tell it this way.

UPDATE: The piano is here, but it wasn't John who brought it, it was Michael, another church friend. However, God was spotted thumbing a ride beside the highway as we passed by, and he winked at me and reminded me to lift with my legs.

Zounds!

I love the internet: One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons.

(Bovious imitates Robotwisdom!)

Lefty Satire Takedown

In a review of DBC Pierre's Booker Prize winning novel Vernon God Little, Michael Lind says much of what I've tried to say in my "Lefty Satire Watch" series that I might just retire:

Effective satire should anger or humiliate its object, on the basis of the points of resemblance between the portrait and its inspiration.

I suspect that much of the lefty satire I've been watching lately settles for the first half of that definition. 't'is a pity.

(Link via The Scrutineer)

Now it can be told

A few weeks ago, there was a near-scandal involving Prince Charles; denials of any incident were heard, while no actual reporting of the incident ever seemed to take place.

Boviosity has learned shocking details of this incident and has courageously decided to go ahead with publication, despite the royals' notoriously rough treatment of whistleblowers:

Bush Interferes with Iraqi Parents

WASHINGTON, DC -- President Bush has so far failed to respond to charges from the left that, by digging up childrens' mass graves in Iraq, the coalition has destroyed the dreams of Iraqi children.

"This is a serious breach of parental trust," says Karen Byers, president of Stay Away From Iraqi Kids, a new non-profit group aimed at stopping the Iraqi occupation. "Before President Bush came and dug up these graves, many parents had convinced their children that they were actually 'Kid Farms' where [dictator] Saddam was growing playmates for them. I'm concerned at this evidence of Bush's willingness to destroy the dreams of happy playtimes for millions of Iraqi children in order to line the pockets of his cronies in the mass grave digging-up industry."

Reached for comment, administration spokespeople couldn't stop laughing long enough to put anybody on the phone.

Hopeful news on Jorn Barger

It appears that Jorn Barger has merely gafiated. Here's hoping it's true, and here's hoping he returns tanned, rested, ready, and slightly less ravingly anti-semitic and pro-terrorist. Keep reading, Eric Wagoner has the best news of all.

Krauthammer Imitates Scrappleface

Great column today by Dr. Charles Krauthammer:

Until now, Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) had generally struck people with previously compromised intellectual immune systems. Hence its prevalence in Hollywood. Barbra Streisand, for example[...]

That's what has researchers so alarmed about [Howard] Dean. He had none of the usual risk factors: Dean has never opined for a living, and has no detectable sense of humor. Even worse is the fact that he is now exhibiting symptoms of a related illness, Murdoch Derangement Syndrome (MDS), in which otherwise normal people believe that their minds are being controlled by a single, very clever Australian.

A-HA!

Apparently this isn't the first time a president has been caught displaying a prop as if it were the real thing:

Bush lied, reindeer paused!

WASHINGTON, DC -- Boviosity has learned that the pattern of deception that has been a favorite topic since President George W. Bush took office actually began years before. It can now be revealed that Bush daughters Jenna and Barbara Bush were repeatedly lied to by their father, a Republican, who frightened them with tales of a magical, fat, bearded Christmastime intruder. "Yes," a determinedly dry-eyed Jenna Bush admitted when asked, "I believed in Santa Claus." Barbara Bush (the hot one, not her grandmother) bravely confirms the lie: "I always used to get up and snoop around the governor's mansion in my little footy pajamas and look for presents, but when he caught me Daddy told me that Santa had them up at the North Pole so I wouldn't find them. Isn't that sweet?" No, Barbara. It's tragic. One day you'll recognize that.

The daughters, obviously in denial, refused to condemn their father for the deception. A Bush spokesperson, asked why the President had lied to his daughters, refused comment. Liars.

Oh no!

The Turkeygate scandal is spreading!

Update: I knew it!

Uh-oh...

Looks like Al Gore's got some explaining to do...

(See this for an explanation)

Holiday Blogging - Hawks game!

We took the kids to the Hawks game last night. It was a dismal affair and we left at half-time. The Hawks never led, that I recall. The most miserable aspect to me was the rote predictability of things under the Hawks' net. I'm not hip to the B-ball lingo (although I made up a new one last night: "Put the rock in the sock!" encouraging my son in his slam-dunking efforts) but it seemed obvious that all the Bucks D was doing was congregating under the basket and waiting for the Hawks to try to slip past. I wondered why the Hawks didn't respond by shooting from outside, but every time they tried to get the ball outside, it seemed, they threw it halfway across the court.

Anyway, after we left the game we walked through the lovely if somewhat sparse Centennial Olympic Park Christmas lights. We're going to have to return for the Ice Skating, but by the time we got there we were looking at our watches and figuring we'd better get the kids home & in bed. They were glad enough of that.

Best part of the night: the MARTA ride to the game. Kids love the train!

Spin despun

The CNN story from yesterday, spun by some as evidence of the administration's compulsive need to mythify the president, has been updated with more information, from the administration. It happened, but not as the pool reporter described it. Did the administration person who spun the yarn lie? Why would he? The correct version is interesting in exactly the same way as the misreported version, so it wouldn't make sense to lie. Did the person who spun the yarn misspeak? Exaggerate? Possibly. Was the reporter careless? Possibly. Is the administration hysterically adding lie on top of lie, hoping to cover over the original lie about being spotted by a BA pilot? I guess it's easy for some to believe that; I have nothing to say to them.

It's interesting that the president is now willing to respond to this kind of thing. Of course, it's a never-ending job, responding to sneering spin, so I suspect he'll tire of it soon. The original CNN "confusion reigns" story was weak tea, to begin with, of course. "No pilot has come forward," eh? Maybe the president had him killed, have you considered that possibility? Now if you'll excuse me, I have to check on the sound of black helicopter rotors apparently hovering over my house.

Jorn Barger Update

The post, "Jorn, Where Are You?" has been updated with new information on the status of Uber-blogger Jorn Barger. I'm worried.

Holiday Blogging

Our family had a most excellent Thanksgiving day. My brother came over for breakfast and then we all headed to beautiful Madison, GA to my wife's father's house. There we were warmly received and fed well. Then, while the wife & kids stayed the night, the brother & I headed back home, had some dinner, drank some whiskey and watched a frightfully scary movie. (Carnival Of Souls is genuinely eerie and it all depends on the beautiful Candace Hilligoss to punch it across. If you can overlook some wildly variable acting, it's a very nicely done little movie. Check out the Hilligoss images!)

Then on Saturday, my daughter took part in the Gwinnett Ballet Theatre's production of "The Nutcracker," playing a baby mouse. It was, to be brief, the cutest thing I've ever seen. Nutcracker is always a good bit of a slog for me - even the most professional group has a hard time making the party scene interesting, and boy does it drag on and on. But once the baby mice entered, I felt an adrenaline rush and my heart skipped a beat. Annie's little legs churning under that mouse suit, obviously struggling to keep up, gamely going along - I've never been prouder of her. Her grandma & shiny new grandpa, grammie & Aunt Alicia, and her Uncle were all there to make it even more special.

Sunday we went to see "Elf" (loved it) and then headed for Stone Mountain Park to check out the lights. Fortunately, we were also smart enough to drive through the Village of Stone Mountain, which also has beautiful lights up. The kids made us stop at the gazebo, and lo and behold there was a coffee shop open, so we browsed in there and got a cup.

Well, I went to the trouble to write all that so I guess I'll post it. Sorry if it's boring. I'm excited about Christmas and it's a beautiful time of year.

Much, much more to come. I'm determined to give Christmas Fun, Christmas Food, and Christmas Spirituality at least some large portion of their due this year.

Next: Hawks game! OK, not Christmas-related, but we're doing it during the Christmas season!

Bleat has a new front page

James Lileks's The Bleat now comes with a photo of Lileks as his daughter will surely remember him best. That shot is one reason I'm glad that I wasn't overly snapshotted as a kid. I play guitar and piano (not simultaneously) for my daughter's Cherub Choir at church, and looking out at the crowd I usually see that about half the kids are being filmed by their parents, and the other half have their parents' undivided attention. That seems excessive, to me. How many people really watch home movies and/or view scrapbooks enought to justify the effort and distraction that goes into filling them? Lileks frequently goes on about how he'll enjoy them when Gnat dumps him in a home - but I hope that when I'm in the home I'll have better things to do.