I’m disappointed Clear Passage isn’t FDA-regulated, only because I’d love to see the Adverse Event Reporting for this side effect.
Favre and Away
In other news about people with strange last names, Brett Favre has retired.
Joining the Deities & Demigods
Gary Gygax, co-developer of Dungeons & Dragons, has died at the age of 69. I spent a lot of time playing D&D as a kid/teenager (along with Car Wars and Villains & Vigilantes); I bet a lot of my readers did, too. I haven’t played in 20 years, but the news of his death just deflated me.
Somehow, when we were all coming up with responses for my Exit, Ghost post, we managed to omit GG from the pantheon. (I’m looking at you, Scharf.)
Wanna know why I gave up writing about politics & politicians?
Because it’s all incredibly depressing bullshit. Need examples?
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A Canadian buddy of mine was freaked out that Obama and Clinton/B both spouted off about trashing NAFTA recently. I explained to him, “They don’t mean it; they’re just pandering to voters in Ohio. If either wins the election, they’ll repudiate all that based on ‘the realities of the office’ or something.”
Lo and behold, in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, there’s a short article on how both candidates are assiduously avoiding any mention of NAFTA in their speeches in Texas, where the economy is doing just fine, there’s job growth, and border towns are benefiting from the free trade pact.
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NYTimes writer (and St. John’s College alum!) Danny Hakim writes about how Gov. Eliot Spitzer is circumventing his own limits on political donations so that he can get enough funds together to knock out the Republican majority in the state senate:
The governor could not have been more emphatic when he initially announced his policy. On Nov. 30, 2006, before even taking office, Mr. Spitzer held a news conference to unveil a number of reforms he intended to undertake, with the $10,000 limit the most eye-opening proposal — well below the $55,900 that statewide candidates can accept.
“I think this is unprecedented,” the governor said at the news conference. “I do not know of another instance where others have acted unilaterally.”
[. . .] “The reason we do this [limit donations to the governor, but redirect much higher donations to the governor-controlled party fund], and the reason it’s a priority, is so that we can achieve a majority in the Senate to accomplish the necessary reforms,” Mr. Toohey said. “We’re never going to get the kinds of reforms that people want on a range of issues if we don’t have a Democratic Senate.”
Oh, and the other reason they do this is because the investigations into Spitzer’s unethical behavior will also be harder to shut down if his party doesn’t control the state senate.
What it is: 3/3/08
What I’m reading: Love & Sleep
What I’m listening to: Pubic Fruit
What I’m watching: Blazing Saddles
What I’m drinking: Flying Dog’s Gonzo Imperial Porter, because it has Ralph Steadman’s illustration on its packaging
Where I’m going: Providence next weekend, to visit friends and get away for an overnight that doesn’t involve air-travel
What I’m happy about: Today’s my wife’s birthday! Visit her site and wish her a happy birthday!
What I’m sad about: That Thai Essence in Nutley, NJ destroyed my belief that there’s no such thing as a bad dish of pad thai
What I’m pondering: How long it took J.R. Smith to get this much ink
Good night, sweet Gill Man
Ben Chapman, who played The Creature from the Black Lagoon, died last week at the age of 79. Condolences go out to Mrs. Creature.
(Courtesy of Universal Pictures, via Photofest)Â
Who Washes the Washmen?
Hey, world, thanks for letting me know that you’re not supposed to throw a chenille blanket in a washing machine. Jerks.
The garden
This morning’s reading, from Love & Sleep
But even if those fires really were the same fire — if both had been the one that began at the Oliphant’s trash baskets beside the old garage, in that summer of 1952 — still it might have been the Salamander who started it: might have been the Salamander who snatched the burning paper from Pierce’s rake, and blew it into the waiting mulleins and the milkweed. He experienced, and not for the first time this week, this winter, the sensation that he was simply creating the story backward from this moment, reasons and all. But isn’t that what memory is always doing? Making bricks without straw, mortaring them in place one by one into a so-called past, a labyrinth actually, in which to hide a monster, or a monstrosity?
Unrequired Reading: Feb. 29, 2008
Is it Friday already? I’d better make with the links!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: Feb. 29, 2008”
The Panamanchurian Candidate
John McCain: unnatural-born American?
McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a “natural-born citizen” can hold the nation’s highest office.
Almost since those words were written in 1787 with scant explanation, their precise meaning has been the stuff of confusion, law school review articles, whisper campaigns and civics class debates over whether only those delivered on American soil can be truly natural born. To date, no American to take the presidential oath has had an official birthplace outside the 50 states.