Wednesday, April 30, 2003 :::
Leave It To The Guardian
Headline on the story of the murder of three Israelis by a human bomb at Mike's Place in Tel Aviv: "Bomb Mars Historic Day for Palestinians."
Those poor, poor Palestinians.
::: posted by Brian Jones at 4:10 PM
Tuesday, April 29, 2003 :::
Memoirs - Beaumont Drive, Battle Creek
When I lived here as a child, the land to the east of circular Beaumont Drive was a huge forest. Northeast was a graveyard. My brother & neighborhood kids & I spent countless hours in those woods, exploring, playing, toboganning (which I now recall with a frisson of horror - how dangerous was that?) If pressed to guess, I would have said that those woods must be long gone. This map makes it look almost like I might have been wrong. That would be so great.
We walked to school at Wattles Park Elementary (I lost a great picture I had of that; hey, CJ, if you're reading this, send it back to me!) then Harper Creek Jr. High; my fondest memory of that house was walking to Julio's Mexican Restaurant on Michigan Ave., which I don't see on google any more.
UPDATE: Oops, brother points out that was Emilio's, not Julio's. Man, Emilio would've never let me hear the end of that. He once was heard from his little kitchen screaming, "WHO ORDERED THE HOT DOG!!!" the night one of us boys, tired of mexican food (a strange thing for me to type), ordered from the gringo menu.
::: posted by Brian Jones at 5:22 PM
Friday, April 25, 2003 :::
"Trapped like a ring-tailed rock wallaby!"
"What a pinhead! Does he not fear us? We must teach him, Max!"
I'm not a comics collector or anything, so I wonder if my Sam & Max comic would be worth anything. I do know that it's one of my most-quoted treasures.
::: posted by Brian Jones at 12:44 PM
Robotwisdom watch
I noticed the other day that Jorn Barger's Robotwisdom.com, the first weblog I ever encountered, had switched to a black background. Then yesterday I noticed (after it occurred to me to look, since he's done this kind of thing before) the new slogan at the top of the page: "we are all palestinians now."
Mmm...HUH?
I'll try to find out what he means by that. I used to think of Jorn's occasional political postings as speedbumps on the way to my enjoyment of the wonderful links he puts up and the amazing people he introduced me to. I even chided him and got friendly e-mail back over things I found there and learned that, like me, he is something of a closet Kate Bush fan. Then I noticed an incredible uptick in links to commondreams and other tinfoil-hat sites. If memory serves, it seems this change came during a controversy over a link he posted, with the shockingly (then) tendentious and spiteful link text, "Is Judaism A Religion Of Hate?" I'm surprised to note that the page referenced above says it covers October 2001 through November 2001; I would have sworn Jorn showed these colors long before 9/11.
::: posted by Brian Jones at 11:17 AM
Thursday, April 24, 2003 :::
Natalie Maines makes with the non-apology apology:
Am I sorry that I asked questions and that I don't just follow? No.
Gads, this kind of talk is poisonous. I know that, more than any anti-war talk, it has driven a wedge between me and my former liberal friends.
See, everybody who disagrees with her is just a sheep following the party line. *She* is just a deceptively rustic but actually Will Rogers-ily country girl "asking questions."
Note to Natalie: I asked questions too, fat girl. And when they were answered, I got with the program. Asking questions over and over again waiting for an answer more to your liking is not a sign of sophistication; it's a sign that you think you're four years old again and asking Mommy to please let you have another slice of cake, knowing she'll eventually give in.
Do questions remain? Sure as hell they do. Asking questions is never a mistake. Your mistake was asking them in the manner of a little adolescent snot who thinks she's finally got mom over a barrel.
I hate doing this name-calling thing. But as far as I'm concerned, with the statement shown above, Natalie started it.
And, if she is like any of my liberal former friends, she will never, ever admit it.
(Link via Charles Johnson)
::: posted by Brian Jones at 11:29 AM
E-Culture Watch
With everybody except your doddering Aunt Lillian now aware that the Nigerian Bank Scam is, well, a scam, can a wave of Iraqi Bank Scam e-mails be far behind? Think of it: huge stacks of cash shown being wheeled out of dirt shacks and dog runs on CNN and everywhere...
::: posted by Brian Jones at 10:21 AM
Blogrolled!
Be sure to check out Mitch Berg's Shot In The Dark, the first and only blog in the entire world to have Boviosity in its blogroll. This puts my Instapundit number at 1 (where 0 is a link in the Instaman's blogroll.)
Thanks, Mitch! I'll try not to embarrass you.
::: posted by Brian Jones at 10:11 AM
Tuesday, April 22, 2003 :::
Working with smart people
It's great to work with bright, humorous people. Here's an actual conversation that took place when my coworker Keith walked in on me while I was brushing my teeth in the men's room. I gagged a little on my toothbrush, which prompted him to remark, "Don't go too far in there, Brian."
"It's good for you," I replied.
"What, want to make sure to get rid of all the bad humors?"
"Laugh it up, black bile boy."
This prompted a discussion of an antique Steve Martin bit on SNL.
Hey...two medieval-related posts in a row!
As a reward for your patience, I will link to my favorite medieval fantasy/science fiction novel:
Or, maybe I won't. Amazon won't load for me. I know not why. What the hell?
UPDATE: OK, it finally loaded. Read this book.
::: posted by Brian Jones at 1:57 PM
I'm afraid this is quite true.
My liege!
What Monty Python Character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
::: posted by Brian Jones at 10:46 AM
Monday, April 21, 2003 :::
Driving Fun!
I drove to Jasper, GA for a family Easter gathering yesterday, with my wife reading the directions she'd copied from an e-mail (I'm too cheap to get a printer for the home computer. I don't think it would have helped in this case, anyway.)
So I'm driving along, and she's navigating.
Me: "That next turn...did you say it was Hwy. 53?"
Her: "Yep."
Me: "OK, thanks."
Drive drive drive drive.
Her: "Hwy. 53."
Me: "Yep. Lookin' for it."
Her: "Yep."
Drive drive drive drive
Me: "YOU KIDS KEEP YOUR VOICES DOWN AND KEEP YOUR HANDS TO YOURSELF!"
Driiiive drive drive drive drive
Me: "Here it is! Hwy 53! Cool. OK, we're turning which way?"
Her: "Hwy 53? What? I don't know? Is that where we're going? I don't see their house? This looks like a major intersection!? I thought it was a mountain cabin? We're supposed to look for a gas station, an Ingles, and a Popeye's chicken. Where's their car? I thought we already did Hwy 53!!!"
Me: "I think you said left earlier...I'll turn left and pull in somewhere and we can look things over."
Her: "LEFT! Yes, go left! And then go 6.2 miles and take another left! Whew!"
Me: "[...]...OK. Thanks."
Her: "6.2 miles. Drive 6.2 miles."
Me: "OK, thanks. Current mileage is xxx107.6, so I'll start looking for a turn at xxx113.8."
Her: "OK."
Driiiive drive drive drive. I'm watching the road and the odomoter. The odometer hits 113.4.
Her: "JERUSALEM CHURCH ROAD! THAT'S THE TURN!"
Me: "JERUSALEM CHURCH ROAD? I mean, ok. Why didn't you say so?"
Her: "I didn't know it."
Me: (Pulling into a driveway to turn around to go back to the Jerusalem Church Road.) "Can I see those for a second?" (I read to myself, merely for my own edification: "6.2 miles, Jerusalem Church Road, left.")
Driiiiive drive drive drive
Me: "OK, what next, hon?"
Her: "Didn't you read it?"
We made it, and it was a wonderful time. I successfully repressed this memory until now. I'm sure my family are all grateful.
::: posted by Brian Jones at 4:06 PM
Amateur patriot Roger Ebert holds forth on Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon's being banned from baseball.
Celebrities who speak out politically are made into targets as a way of discouraging dissent. I have not heard a single thing Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, the stars of "Bull Durham," have said about the war, but I have heard countless attacks on them for saying it. When you attack the messenger instead of the message, you are essentially saying, "Since you disagree with me, shut up." This is profoundly anti-American.
It's so hard not to call people names when they're being this thick. The density of ignorance in this brief paragraph is astonishing. It's almost as if it was edited to seem perfectly and wilfully ignorant.
1. Celebrities aren't "made into targets." They make themselves into targets, both for admiration (by doing a job and doing it well) and contempt (by using their access to the media to say stupid things about war, peace, religion, sex, politics, Texas, you name it.)
2. Nobody's trying to "discourage dissent." They're responding to the dissent in the only manner available to them. If you don't want people responding to your viewpoints in the media, DON'T PUT FORTH YOUR VIEWPOINTS IN THE MEDIA.
3. Sure, Roger. Eeeeverybody condemns Sarandon & Robbins for what they've said about the war without providing a single quote from them. Sorry, I think you're just lying here. More likely, you've read responses to the attacks on Sarandon & Robbins (i.e. the responses you're simply regurgitating here) and those responses naturally no longer contain the original statements. Perfectly understandable.
4. Telling someone to shut up, and having them shut up when they realize that they've brought a shitstorm onto themselves, are two entirely different things.
5. Actually, Roger, doesn't attempting to force people to listen to idiots seem more unamerican to you?
I really shouldn't read Ebert. I love movies, and he does too. But he has this utterly mistaken notion that he's got something to add to the political debate, when what he actually does is just regurgitates whatever Joe Conason or Terry McAuliffe put out in their latest columns. His brand of fatuous credentializing in lieu of engaging the ideas, so obvious in his statement above, just drives me up the freakin' wall.
::: posted by Brian Jones at 3:39 PM
Friday, March 28, 2003 :::
Toothpaste Rules
"For best results, squeeze tube from the bottom, flattening as you go up."
You mean, picking it up and squeezing it in the middle with your little fist gives less than optimal results? Who'd'a'thunk it? Oh, that's right, the guy (Not the woman. Never the woman.) who occasionally has to rescue the toothpaste stranded at the bottom of the tube by this neanderthal maneuver, THAT's who. Hey, we're all in a hurry and too busy to think when we brush our teeth, right? Who can remember to squeeze from the bottom, flattening as you go up? Just don't come crying to me if, during one of my practiced bottom-dwelling toothpaste rescuing maneuvers, I accidentally introduce a twist or fold into the tube, making it awkward to get the last bits out of the tube.
What am I saying? By the time *I'm* getting the last bits out of the old tube, *you're* halfway into the new tube, aren't you????!???!?
Um. Sorry.
Best results? BEST RESULTS? That's the best they can come up with to describe this utopian state of affairs?
::: posted by Brian Jones at 2:43 PM
Friday, March 14, 2003 :::
I haven't blogged in awhile. Every time I read "we are witness to a massive slippage in abortion language nowadays," I want to run out and puke. Why do I write so pompously sometimes? [Sometimes? --Ed.] [Bite me -- B.]
You know what the human shields would have done if they were truly interested in peace? I'll tell you what. The second it became clear that Saddam intended to send them to military targets instead of to the daycare centers and hospitals they thought they were going to protect, they would have stood up and said, "I refuse to go to the missile base. I will not be moved from this hospital entrance. The media are here filming what you do next."
Instead, this is what we get:
"The Iraqi government was acting absolutely very stupid," O'Keefe said, dressed in a long Arabic dishdasha robes while talking to The Associated Press at a small hotel in downtown Amman. "If they had only cooperated and let us do part of what we wanted to do, we could have worked with them also to protect these sites and we would have brought in more people to stay."
So they burn a ticket home onto mommy's Visa card and get out of there, with nary a change in their rhetoric toward the Bush administration and nary a condemnation of what Saddam is doing to his own people. This is because they know that Bush won't kill them, and Saddam will. Moral and physical cowards, not a Martin Luther King or even a Rosa Parks in the lot.
::: posted by Brian Jones at 9:30 AM
Tuesday, January 07, 2003 :::
We are witness to a massive slippage in abortion language nowadays. I'm referring to a commercial for breast screening awareness that runs during my 2nd favorite TV show (after "Angel"), "Buffy The Vampire Slayer." I was appalled when they ran pro-abortion commercials during the show, with their soft-focus glamorization of baby-killing, but this breast screening commercial just startled me in another way.
It refers to breast screenings as a "choice." Yes, that word. So, you see, from now on when they say, "woman's reproductive rights," and "choice," and you say, "why don't you just come out and say 'abortion,'" they get to say, "no, see, we refer to breast cancer screenings as a matter of 'choice' as well. You don't have a problem with breast cancer screenings do you, you troglodyte? Geez, you single-issue people and your unending efforts to keep women in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant and with a full radical mastectomy!"
Or, maybe I'm just paranoid.
::: posted by Brian Jones at 9:51 AM
Friday, December 20, 2002 :::
I'm glad somebody besides me thinks this way:
Unlike the Democrats with Clinton, the Republicans have purged themselves of someone who didn't belong in the office he held. The failure to do so cost the Democrats greatly. I think that the Republicans, meanwhile, will reap benefits from their action.
It was exactly the circle-the-wagons dance that the Democrats did around Bill Clinton that cemented my disgust with them. I hope the Instapundit is right. Furthermore, look for a number of Democrats to spin this as a defeat for the Republicans, that they couldn't bring themselves to be loyal to one of their own and keep him at all costs.
::: posted by Brian Jones at 1:35 PM
