Happy Damn Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a happy damn Thanksgiving. I had a pretty darned good weekend, full of overeating, movies, football, and overeating.

It started Wednesday, when Rebecca's mom came into town. I had to preview the movie out at my theater, so they came out to watch it. Debbie came bearing gifts: some stuff for the apartment, a book (see below), and a gift card that I shall use to purchase a messenger bag to replace the one that Rebecca wants back, the one that I took from her after her cat Mini vomited into my backpack lo these many months ago. It's too bad that the movie, Fallen Angel, wasn't very good, and it's too bad that the Mexican restaurant screwed up the food order so I had to eat a burrito with too many onions, but it was a good evening anyway.

Actually, it started earlier on Wednesday when I discovered that I'm on the Internet Movie Database. I'm fricking famous! Line up over here for autographs.

Thursday morning, bright and too early, I left for Michigan in my creaky car. Since I got it "fixed," it's been making a funny creaking sound when I hit bumps or shift. I called the mechanic on Tuesday and told him that I'd be bringing it in on Friday, and he said that I should go ahead and bring it in. The roads were clear, which was a nice surprise after the crappy rain and sleet from the night before. I got to my family's house in Muskegon just before dinner at 2:00. My oldest friend in the world, Moosie, and his girlfriend Erin came for the day, which was nice. I don't see enough of them. They're getting married next summer, and I'm supposed to be the best man. Any suggestions on speeches?

Anyway, dinner was really good. The turkey was perfect, the rolls weren't burnt (long story), and nobody was in a bitchy mood. After dinner, we draped ourselves over the furniture and watched the Lions getting their asses kicked. Moosie and I had a spirited discussion about whether the tryptophan in turkey was enough to make people drowsy; I argued that it is an urban legend that it makes you sleepy, and I am right. Moosie, Erin, and I had a pillow fight that turned into a wrestling match, while my mother poo-pooed that we had never grown up. What's wrong with that?

My dad and I continued our tradition of going to see the local minor league team, the Muskegon Fury, play that night. They won, as they do quite often: they won the Colonial Cup of the United Hockey League last year, and they've only lost once in the past 25 or so games. I'm sure you're glad to know that. It was nice to see live hockey again, and it's always nice to go to games with Bob.

Friday morning I drove my car out to the garage, to find that the bastard who runs it lied to me about being there. He was out of town for the weekend. Now I'm really pissed at him, and I'm going to sue him for whatever it costs to fix my car. I went back home and watched the Michigan high school football state championships with Bob. Muskegon had two teams in two different divisions playing at the Silverdome, and both teams won. Wahoo!

Friday afternoon my ex Jennifer arrived from her family gathering in Kalamazoo. We went book shopping, then went to see Finding Neverland, which was pretty darned good, but not great. Johnny Depp was really good, as was Kate Winslet, but the movie could have used a more fantasy-oriented director like Tim Burton. My mom made her famous macaroni and cheese, and my sister made her famous rice krispie treats. All was good with the world.

Along the way I started reading the book that Debbie got me, Tepper Isn't Going Out by Calvin Trillin of the New Yorker. It's a really funny story of a guy named Tepper who likes to sit in his car and read the newspaper. Drivers honk at him, asking for his parking spot, but Tepper isn't going out. After some newspaper coverage, people start to flock to him: some think he's an oracle who can help them with their problems, some think he's a rebel fighting for whatever cause they support, and the by-the-rules mayor of New York City, called Il Duce (but modeled on Guliani), thinks he's the first attack of the forces of disorder. The book is delightful, even though I hate using that word. Go buy a copy and read it.

Saturday I drove home in crappy, vision-obstructing rain, and I made it home in time for a nap before going out to my theater to show Fallen Angel. We had a really big crowd, which is always nice. I was there late because I screwed up yet again taking the film apart after the show. Some things never change.

Today I slept in and spent the rest of the day researching and watching Twilight's Last Gleaming, which we were thinking about showing next season out at the theater. I decided that it was a little too much for our mostly senior citizen crowd: too much violence, too much language, and too much radical leftist politics. We don't want to alienate our regulars, so we're showing Two for the Road instead. Then I got takeout from Boston Market and watched a couple of episodes of Angel. I'm going to watch a couple more before I go to bed.

I hope everybody had a good weekend.

The First Bushippic

From Demosthenes's First Philippic, 351 BCE. I didn't have to change this one very much. It's too close to real life.

For observe, [Americans], the height to which [Bush]'s insolence has soared; he leaves you no choice of action or inaction; he blusters and talks big, according to all accounts; he cannot rest content with what he has conquered; he is always taking in more, everywhere casting his net round us, while we sit idle and do nothing.

When, [Americans], will you take the necessary action? What are you waiting for? Until you are compelled, I presume. But what are we to think of what is happening now? For my own part I think that for a free people there can be no greater compulsion than shame for their position. Or tell me, are you content to run round and ask one another, "Is there any news today?" Could there be any news more startling than that a [criminal] is triumphing over [the Constitution] and settling the destiny of [democracy]?

"[Did Kerry win]?" you ask. "No, indeed; [Bush got re-elected]." And what is that to you? Even [in 2008], you will soon raise up a second [neocon], if that is the way you attend to your affairs; for even this [neocon] has not grown great through his own unaided strength so much as through our carelessness.

Stupid Oscars

The Academy has released a list of the documentaries in competition for the Best Documentary Feature award. Typical of a category that has historically been a mess, they left out some of the best docs of the year. No Tarnation, the best documentary, and best film, to be released yet this year. No Control Room, the best traditional documentary released this year, and one of the best films of the year. No The Corporation, a thoughtful and compelling documentary about how corporations are psychotic. Some of it might be the intricate rules governing the category, which have shut out a fair share of great films. A lot of it, though, is the documentary branch's legendary bad taste.

The Oscars have a history of screwing up the documentary category. Those three films join Hearts of Darkness, Brother's Keeper, Truth or Dare, and Hoop Dreams on the list of documentaries that were unjustly ignored by the Oscars (not to mention all of Erroll Morris's films until The Fog of War). And let's not forget that the winner of the 1966 Best Documentary award was The War Game, which could only be a documentary if the Russians had actually launched a nuclear attack on Great Britain.

This was the best year for documentaries in a long time. Pundits are hailing the birth of new age of documentaries when they are finally accepted by mass audiences (but I'm still not holding my breath). As usual, the Oscars missed out. I haven't seen the films on the shortlist, but I doubt that there are five of them better than Tarnation or Control Room.

Randomizer

From the "I'm from the government, and I'm here to feed your kids rat poison" files. It's not a new story; why hadn't I heard of it before?

OK. Fine. I'm done being polite. It's not really fair. There are probably more than a few mistakes in it. But it just feels good to vent. Even when it's someone else doing the venting. Fuck the south.

Go watch Eminem's "Mosh" video. It's the most daring political statement to come out of this election year.

Fun with flash news alert: neocons are dangerous.

My friend Gaia on being a citizen of the world.

Tee hee. An ASCII war. I wonder if the LOLcity is red or blue?

Here There Be Neocons

From the 1486 Malleus Maleficarum, the Inquisition's guide on how to identify and destroy witches. We now know how Bush answered when Glinda the Good Witch asked, "Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?"

"And [neocons are] the most powerful class of witches, who practise innumerable other harms also. For they raise hailstorms and hurtful tempests and lightnings; cause sterility in men and animals; offer to devils, or otherwise kill, the children whom they do not devour... They can also, before the eyes of their [constituents], and when no one is in sight, throw into the water [civil rights]; ...they can transport themselves from place to place through the air, either in body or in imagination [or in Air Force One]; they can [stack the courts with reactionaries] so that they cannot hurt them; they can cause themselves and other to keep silence [about authorizing] torture; they can bring about a great trembling in the hands and horror in the minds of those who would [uphold the Constitution]; ...they can at times strike whom they will with [smart bombs], and even kill some [innocent civilians]; ...they can at times bewitch men and animals with a mere [Fox News broadcast], without touching them, and cause death; they dedicate their own children to devils; and in short, as has been said, they can cause all the plagues which other [Republicans] can only cause in part, that is, when the [half-asleep American populace] permits such things to be."

While most people know that the Inquisition was a tad overzealous, we can see here that they had nothing on the neocons.

Swords Drawn against Democracy

In Marcus Tullius Cicero's famous second Philippic (published around 49 BCE), he discusses how Bush and the neocons have wanted to destroy this nation for over 2000 years; of particular interest is the attempted murder of democracy in a bookstore.

"[Bush and the neocons], being compelled by the revelations of the accomplices, by their own handwriting, and by what I may almost call the voices of their letters, were confessing that they had planned the parricidal destruction of their country, and that they had agreed to burn the city, to massacre the citizens, to devastate [the United States], to destroy the republic... You have said that [democracy] was slain by my contrivance. What would men have thought if [it] had been slain at the time when you pursued [it] in the forum with a drawn sword, in the sight of all the Roman people; and when you would have settled [its] business if [it] had not thrown [it]self up the stairs of a bookseller's shop, and, shutting them against you, checked your attack by that means?"

Bush and his neocon dogs will stop at nothing to destroy this country. When was the last time you felt at risk in a bookstore? The illusion of safety in the climate-controlled palaces where learning and commerce coexist peacefully has now been destroyed, and it's all Bush's fault.

Inaugural Bushwatch

In this new blog category, I will show, by examples gleaned from historical documents, that Bush's evil has spanned the entire history of human civilization. My first example is taken from the forthcoming Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold: Abundance and Excess in the French Renaissance by my favorite art historian. The quote dates from the late 16th century.

"[Bush] fattens his breasts with the people's blood to nourish leeches, that is that he fills his coffers with his subjects' money to keep unworthy favorites who suck on him continually and commit him to the most foolish expenditures. The wings and the dragon's tail show that, having made a pact with Satan through his sorcery and magical practices, he took the devil's form from the moment he gave himself to him."

It's clear that this was really about Bush. Raising taxes on the poor and giving cuts to the rich, leeches (neocons) who convince him to commit to the most foolish expenditures (like illegal wars), wings and a dragon's tail... I don't need to spell this out for you people. Stay tuned for future installments. I hope to do them at least once a month.

The Calormenes Hate Our Freedom

I'm done with the fifth book of C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, The Horse and His Boy, which is almost universally seen as the worst of the series. I agree. But it's also the most interesting one, from a US foreign policy standpoint. You see, the bad guys of the book, the Calormenes, are Bush's conflation of al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Let me explain.

The Calormenes are a desert-dwelling, dark-skinned race with Arabic-sounding names whose leaders live in sumptuous luxury (Saddam's palaces) while the rest of the population starves. And they hate our freedom. Well, they hate the freedom of Narnia, which is a stand-in for Britain, which might as well be the US.

"It is very grievous," said the Tisroc in his deep, quiet voice. "Every morning the sun is darkened in my eyes, and every night my sleep is the less refreshing, because I remember that Narnia is still free."

In his efforts to destroy Narnia, the Calorman leader, the Tisroc, allows his renegade son Rabadash (Osama bin Laden) to embark on an illegal raid (terrorist attack) against a neighboring country in order to sneak up on Narnia. If the raid fails, the Tisroc will pretend that he didn't know that his son was conducting the attack. After the attack fails and Rabadash is captured, he refuses all efforts of the Narnians to be nice to him, because he thinks they are infidels who worship a false god (Alsan).

I don't know why everybody else disliked this book when they were kids, but I disliked it because it was so incredibly racist, way too much for me to ignore. Why did you hate it?

Shameless Begging

As the happy holidy shopping time approaches, remember that I get cold, hard cash if you buy your Amazon stuff through the little box located at the bottom right corner of this page. It doesn't cost you a dime, so pretend I'm the Salvation Army Santa ringing his bell and make Amazon drop me some change.

Any frequent readers who attempt to advertise their own scams—er, programs—in my comments will be terminated. Get your own blog! :)

Cautiously Good News

A federal judge ruled that a military tribunal at Guantanamo is unlawful, bringing the tribunals to a halt, at least for now. The judge said that the accused in the case deserves to see the evidence against him.

I needed this. After the crushing disappointment of the election and Bush's confidence that he can continue his dismantling of the social safety net, I needed to hear some good news.

Hiding

I'm going to have to stay away from the news for a while. Everything I read just increases the panicky tightness in my chest that started at around 9:00 on election night. I just read a couple of articles about Michigan's Proposition 2, which outlawed gay marriage, and I'm scared of what it could mean. It reads "The union of one man and one woman in marriage shall be the only agreement recognized as a marriage or similar union for any purpose." It's those last six words, "or similar union for any purpose," that scare me. (The rest of the useless, unnecessary amendment just pisses me off.) Some opponents think that this will mean that public universities and municipalities that offer domestic partner benefits to same-sex couples are now violating Michigan's constitution. I wonder when the lawsuits are going to start, as the conservative fucks who pushed this amendment gleefully go about stripping away the rest of gay people's rights? A coworker of a loyal reader put it succinctly: "Americans aren't against gay marriage, they're against gay people." I'm ashamed of my home state and of my country.

If It's Not One Thing...

I recently put $800 into my car. It needed a new clutch, the valve cover gasket was leaking, it needed a tune-up, the horn was broken, the washer pump was broken, and it wouldn't start most of the time. I finally got it home yesterday and was happily driving around when I noticed a popping sound coming from the area of the right front tire. The mechanic had said that at some point in the future it would need a new axle because of some age-related wear on some schmoo or another. Some point in the future is today; the new axle will cost me another $200.

I had considered just getting rid of the damn thing, but since I live in Hyde Park, being without a car would mean being basically stuck in purgatory. It takes at least an hour to get out of here by bus or train, and late at night it can take me over two hours to get home from the north side, including a .66 mile, poorly lit walk from the bus stop.

Election

I'm having an out-of-body-politic experience. I'm hovering above the body politic, looking down in wonder as it appears that Bush is heading toward a victory. I wonder who these people are who vote for him... no, that's not it. I know who they are. What I wonder about is why more people haven't become convinced that he's bad for this country, that all he's proven in four years in office is that he's not qualified or capable of being president.

In 2000, I went to bed on election night, saying "maybe I'll wake up in the morning and find out that this was all a dream." Of course, I woke up to a worse dream, of five weeks of uncertainty, followed by four years of anger and sadness. I'm going to bed now. I'll crawl out of bed in a few days, when the smoke clears.