Category: Miscellany

  • Bofus?

    Damn! I subscribe to Mike Watt’s mailing list and wade through tons of announcements for gigs in the southland and then I miss a rare Banyan appearance in an intimate SF room? What’s wrong with me? How frustrating. It’s been too long since I heard my favorite bass player. Scot Hacker was there: To Elbo…

  • Bit the bullet

    Just now finally got around to upgrading the version of Movable Type driving this X-POLLEN blog. Since I installed version 2.5 there was a 2.51 upgrade and possibly a 2.52, and then the recent more substantial release of 2.6, quickly followed by bugfixes 2.61 and 2.62. So I managed to avoid a lot of interim…

  • Spare minimum

    The reverse cowgirl told me about this 5 line site, saying “thought this might vaguely entertain you.” The challenge, make a self portrait in 5 lines. Before studying the rules (380 x 380, what constitutes a line) I started doodling in the empty spaces left in a recently filled note book. These were my first…

  • Make Saddam an offer he can't refuse

    The Bush Crime Family meme I’ve seen bandied about on the Well and elsewhere has spawned a comic at the Village Voice, The Bushopranos. Where are those humorless lefties when you need them? This cartoon fights the Bush restoration/rematch narrative that put their team within striking distance of the prize with a psychoanalytical reprise of…

  • This morning I woke up in a curfew…

    First-hand reports from Miguel Octavio of The Devil’s Excrement indicate that Hugo Chavez has jailed opposition leaders in Venezuala: Woke up in a Dictatorship todayToday I woke up in a Dictatorship. Up to now Hugo Chavez and his hoodlums had been using the law to “hide” the repressive and intolerant nature of this Government. Last…

  • Once more, from the top

    Sing along with the vocal stylings of the spongmonkeys as they regale you with their acoustic guitar rave-up We Like the Moon.

  • Get your war on early and often

    My favorite pundit for these extreme times has gotten Get Your War On No. 19 out:

  • Brush with Havel

    Let’s Hear Your Havel Anecdotes! Everybody’s got one. Mine was already written once, by Greg McIlvaine. To loosen up your memory box, here’s a fine David Remnick essay in the New Yorker, a Paul Wilson National Post account of Havel’s last days, and some Guardian reminiscences from Timothy Garton Ash. –Matt Welch Brush with Havel…

  • Jack Straw from Wichita at the Mars Hotel (U.K.)

    Dave Winer says I’ve always wondered if Mr Straw knows that his name is the title of a Grateful Dead song. This is why weblogs are so revolutionary. Just kidding.” [Scripting News] I think he does. His boss, Tony Blair, was the frontman for a Dead cover band called Ugly Rumours when he was at…

  • Lucky Ducky strikes again

    Tom the Dancing Bug has been having a great old time lampooning the Wall Street Journal’s Lucky Duckies trial balloon that complained about the unfair and progressive U.S. federal income tax.

  • Guardian takes on "appeasers" meme

    The Guardian deconstructs the “Saddam = Hitler” argument (without invoking Godwin’s Law!), and turns the table on the question of who is appeasing whom. We’ll leave deconstructing the specious “Bush = Hitler” protest signs as an exercise for the class.

  • Gulf War II simulation

    Posing as an interactive game (there’s really only one choice, about halfway through, and I suspect it’s a Hobson’s choice), this Flash animation projects a worst-case scenario for the upcoming (ongoing?) Gulf War. [via Nick Denton]

  • Homeland security specialist career training

    Watching late-night TV (Ask Rita), I saw an add for a Homeland security specialist program at NIT schools’ San Jose campus. It started with an American flag and a voice over talking about how 9/11 changed everything. Quick cut to a man in a suit introducing himself and calling himself the “Director of Homeland Security.”…

  • xian's 115th dream

    I think I can safely file this under “blogging too much lately.” I had one of those long, convoluted dreams last night, much of which I can still remember even as the internal dream logic has started to tatter. Near the end, I was in a motel room with Mark Pilgrim. We were discussing Shirky’s…

  • While you were out (protesting)

    The war has already started. The Pentagon was leaking all over the place yesterday that we already have special forces inside Iraq. For example, the Washington Post reported: U.S. Special Operations troops are already operating in various parts of Iraq, hunting for weapons sites, establishing a communications network and seeking potential defectors from Iraqi military…

  • Just can't leave it alone

    I’ve already overcommented on the Burningbird: Boys with Toys thread (and related) at BurningBird, but I went back and read the three entries and their tails of comments again and I still feel that the various points of view are largely talking past each other, partly because they (we) are also having a metaconversation. The…

  • Hyperventilating about Flapdoodle

    On today’s New York Times op-ed pages, Bill Safire applauds the bipartisan shackling of the proposed TIA and gives cover to libertarian-inclined right-wingers waiting for a signal on Patriot II: the wrath of Ascroft. Over on the opposite side of the page Bob Herbert notes the stealthy way the Bushies are defunding “compassionate” priorities while…

  • Michael Lerner reconsidered

    OK, so wait a minute, is Michael Lerner (of Tikkun) “deeply silly” or not?

  • More on closed-source voting machines

    Every warblogger’s favorite idiotarian rag, The Guardian, has a little article today on voting-machine paranoia: One is Georgia, where all the votes in 2002 were cast on Diebold screens. The sitting Democratic senator and (to general astonishment) governor were both defeated in the election. Nine of Diebold’s 12 directors are listed as Republican donors. The…

  • Bob Weir was outvoted. Joel

    Bob Weir was outvoted. Joel Selvin covers the changes in Grateful Dead-land today: The decision to change the group’s name was not unanimous. “At least a couple of the guys really wanted to do it,” said Dead guitarist Bob Weir. “I think it’s a bit premature. I was just fine being the Other Ones. If…

  • You haff your papers?

    Ken Layne is concerned that airlines may be dropping the ID check at the gate. He calls it “one of the only sane security checks—is the guy with the boarding pass the same guy who cleared the first security gate?” John Gilmore sees it the opposite way. He points out that “People in the US…