I’m so glad that the new biopic about Christopher Hitchens is coming out in February.
I’m not sure about the casting, though . . .
Business as usual
According to this article, the sex-biz is back to normal in Thailand. I’m not sure which line is funnier:
“Yes, we are just as busy as before the tsunami,” said Toto, a drag queen.
or
[S]ex tourism […] accounts for 5 per cent of Thailand’s gross domestic product.
because with the latter, you can talk about just how gross that domestic product really is.
Is it genocide yet?
Nope, not yet. Just ask the UN.
Oh, wait: my bad! That link was about how Kofi Annan’s son was actually involved in negotiating a deal to sell 2 million barrels of oil in the UN’s oil-for-food scam.
HERE’S the link about how the UN has determined that there’s no genocide occurring in Darfur. I lose track of this stuff sometimes. Sorry.
Puts my NBA preview in a new light
The Sports Guy has a new mailbag column, and it includes a letter that made me laugh like a retard:
Q: Not that there is anything wrong with this, but have you ever noticed that most NBA team names sound like gay bars? Bulls, Bucks, Rockets, Cavaliers, Nuggets, Mavericks, Jazz, Hawks, Blazers, Warriors, Heat, Bobcats, Pistons, Spurs, Timberwolves, and Grizzlies all sound like they are catered to the leather and mustache set. I also think Magic, Wizards, Kings, 76ers, and Pacers sound like male performance enhancement pills. Rockets could also fit into that category as well.
–Scott G., Chicago, IL
Just thought I’d share.
My City of Ruins
Theodore Dalrymple has a very thoughtful essay about Dresden in the new City Journal.
Nowhere in the world (except, perhaps, in Israel or Russia) does history weigh as heavily, as palpably, upon ordinary people as in Germany. Sixty years after the end of the Second World War, the disaster of Nazism is still unmistakably and inescapably inscribed upon almost every town and cityscape, in whichever direction you look. The urban environment of Germany, whose towns and cities were once among the most beautiful in the world, second only to Italy’s, is now a wasteland of functional yet discordant modern architecture, soulless and incapable of inspiring anything but a vague existential unease, with a sense of impermanence and unreality that mere prosperity can do nothing to dispel. Well-stocked shops do not supply meaning or purpose. Beauty, at least in its man-made form, has left the land for good; and such remnants of past glories as remain serve only as a constant, nagging reminder of what has been lost, destroyed, utterly and irretrievably smashed up.Nor are the comforts of victimhood available to the Germans as they survey the devastation of their homeland. Walking with the widow of a banker through the one small square in Frankfurt that has been restored to its medieval splendor, I remarked how beautiful a city Frankfurt must once have been, and how terrible it was that such beauty should have been lost forever.
“We started it,” she said. “We got what we deserved.”
But who was this ‘we’ of whom she spoke?
Who, indeed? Dalrymple explores that notion of culpability, that almost Greek tragic sense of a cursed house, nation-wide Atreides, shame that pre-emptively annihilates the possibility of pride.
Perhaps I’ll give Sebald’s On the Natural History of Destruction a read this week.
Back
Flight from St. Louis was delayed for a while today, but I got in safe and sound.
Also, the extra time allowed me to finish The System of the World, completing Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. It was a heck of a read (started the first book at the end of September), with plenty of material to chew on. My brain’s percolating away, and I hope to write about the books sometime in the next few weeks.
I was worried, as I closed in on my home, that the snow would be drifted up 30 inches high in my driveway. I was in no mood to start shoveling around 8:30 pm, which is when I was going to reach my house.
Fortunately, the snow wasn’t as bad up here as I’d feared. It was only 8-10 inches high, and pretty powdery. My gold standard for messed-up weather is the blizzard of 1996, in which we got pasted with about 30-35 inches, so tonight’s level was officially No Big Deal.
I pulled into a neighbor’s house and started shoveling the mouth of my driveway, which was much higher and denser. Soon, my neighbor came out with his snowblower. I insisted that he didn’t need to, and that I’d just roll my Element up the driveway once I cleared this part out. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer. It was awfully kind, as he cleaned up the entire driveway, and made me realize that I really need to buy myself a nice snowblower.
So that’s about it. No witticisms, polemicisms, or politicisms. But I will share some pictures from the weekend:
A surprise birthday party for Shannon (the blonde on the left).
Doug & Brewster, the latter being an affectionate dog.
My beautiful niece, Liat.
My beautiful niece, Liat, who has dressed me up in several different scarves. It was even worse than it looks. Laugh while you can; you’ll get yours.
Betcha Carnac didn’t see this one coming . . .
Johnny Carson, RIP.
Dodging Bullets Like Keanu
The official VM girlfriend & I are off in St. Louis, visiting family (mine) and friends (hers). While we’ve been pissed off about the weather here (15 degrees, insane winds), it’s nothing compared to the stuff we narrowly missed at home. To quote Weather.com’s severe weather announcement:
…NORTHERN FAIRFIELD CT-NORTHERN NEW HAVEN CT-NORTHERN WESTCHESTER NY- ORANGE NY-PUTNAM NY-ROCKLAND NY-WESTERN PASSAIC NJ- 600 AM EST SAT JAN 22 2005 CORRECTED EXPIRATION TIME
… BLIZZARD WARNING FOR THIS AFTERNOON THROUGH SUNDAY MORNING…
SNOW WILL MOVE IN THIS AFTERNOON… AND WILL BECOME VERY HEAVY LATE THIS AFTERNOON AND EVENING. THE SNOW WILL CONTINUE INTO SUNDAY MORNING… THEN TAPER OFF SUNDAY AFTERNOON. TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS WILL BE 18 TO 24 INCHES BY SUNDAY EVENING. IN ADDITION TO THE SNOW… NORTHEAST WINDS WILL INCREASE THIS AFTERNOON… AND WILL BE QUITE GUSTY TONIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING. WINDS MAY GUST UP TO 45 MPH LATE TONIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING… ALLOWING VISIBILITIES TO DROP TO NEAR ZERO AT TIMES. THESE WINDS WILL RESULT IN SIGNIFICANT BLOWING AND DRIFTING OF SNOW AS WELL AS POWER OUTAGES. WIND CHILL VALUES WILL BE BELOW ZERO AT TIMES.
A BLIZZARD WARNING IS ISSUED WHEN SUSTAINED WIND SPEEDS OR FREQUENT GUSTS OF OVER 35 MPH ARE EXPECTED WITH CONSIDERABLE FALLING AND OR BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW. VISIBILITIES WILL BECOME POOR… WITH WHITEOUT CONDITIONS AT TIMES. THOSE VENTURING OUTDOORS MAY BECOME LOST OR DISORIENTED… SO PEOPLE IN THE WARNING AREA SHOULD STAY INDOORS.
ANY TRAVEL IS STRONGLY DISCOURAGED. IF YOU LEAVE THE SAFETY OF BEING INDOORS… YOU ARE PUTTING YOUR LIFE AT RISK.
THIS IS A LIFE-THREATENING WINTER WEATHER SITUATION! PREPARATIONS TO PROTECT LIFE AND PROPERTY SHOULD COMPLETED BY NOON TODAY!
Notwithstanding the lack of etiquette shown by using all caps, the weather guys seem awfully freaked out by this storm hitting NY/NJ/PA. In fact, my Dad called from NJ a few hours ago to say, “One inch already, it’s horizontal from the wind, and it’s 8 degrees out.”
If we start to get hit with Hot Hail anytime soon, then I’ll have to assume that Ming the Merciless has returned.
The Ground Beneath Her Feet was bad, but not that bad . . .
Remember, kids: There’s a difference between a state sponsoring assassination, and a head of state inciting assassination.
Holy Crap
A few weeks late, but mind-blowing messed-up-edness from some guy’s family Christmas get-together.