Category: Politics (explicit)

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Treadmilling

I tellya, dear readers: I’ve been in overdrive at the office for about 5 months now, and it’s been burning me out something fierce. I’ve been facing one big issue of the magazine after another, plus a ton of responsibilities for our annual conference. I think it reached a point where I didn’t know how to slow down. But I figure that’s a lot better than being unemployed.

On the plus side, it means I actually hammered the crap out of our November/December issue, wrapping it up today even though it’s not due at the printer till Tuesday. Our issues have been running late all year for a variety of reasons, so I was just hoping to get this one ish out by deadline. Even though I was early, I still sprinted to the finish line, working on news pages last night and spending the early morning gathering photos for the features.

The upshot? I got the last few files to my production manager by noon, which meant I could take a half-day and chill the heck out.

In my world, that means driving down to Montclair, picking up some coffee over at Bean’s, walking around town a little (cold and drizzly today, but hey), and hitting the Book Center for a little stochastic research!

Within a minute, I opened a book to a page that provided all sorts of grist for the imagination-mill. You can expect my novel sometime around 2020.

After that score, I browsed for books on my wishlist, and ended up finding a bunch of little treasures on the cheap —

Waiting for the Weekend – Witold Rybczynski

Elvis Costello’s Armed Forces – Frank Bruno (from the 33 1/3 series of books-about-albums)

Prince’s Sign O’ the Times – Michelangelos Matos (ditto)

Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 3 – Robert Caro

The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia – Peter Hopkirk

— for a grand total of $35!

Now it’s on to a nice, relaxing weekend of wrapping up the annual NBA preview, reading Middlemarch, and, um, sleeping.

So don’t call, is what I’m saying.

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Penn Paul

Driving to Pennsylvania yesterday (for this news event), I was reminded of what it’s like to live in a swing state. In presidential elections, NJ’s firmly in the Democratic camp, so we tend not to get much (any) outdoor political advertising.

In fall of 2004, I drove on Rt. 95 into Philadelphia and was amazed by the sheer volume of election signs as I approached the city. My favorite enormous billboards were the ones that complained about the loss of our freedom of speech.

Now, the general election is more than a year away and the state’s primaries are six months off, but Pennsylvania reminded me of its swing state status almost instantly. Moments after I entered the state, I saw yard signs for Ron Paul. As I drove below overpasses, I looked up to see banners for the guy.

No other candidates had any presence, so I’m not sure if this means that Paul’s got an iron grip on the Rt. 78/22 corridor of Pennsylvania or if his supporters are jumping the gun by a few months.

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More cold war relics

In keeping with the previous post on Norman Mailer’s gnostic wackiness, I should probably also relegate Ben Stein to “relic of the cold war” status, but he seems to have adjusted pretty well to the modern age, and offers some pretty good life & investment advice in his most recent column in the NYTimes:

GET A BIG DOG And have that dog sleep in your bed with you. Dogs know nothing of mortality, and they share that peace with you.

INVEST FOR THE LONG HAUL If you are a smart long-term investor, do not pay any attention to short-term developments. They are often reported by people whose motivation may be to scare you (screaming about the subprime “crisis”) or to make you giddily greedy (screaming about that one certain stock you should buy to retire rich).

On the other hand, Terry Eagleton comes off as a Marxist douchebag.

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But Michael Vick can’t catch a break

Great article in the NYTimes today about Pakistan’s supreme court ruling on Nawaz Sharif’s right to return to the country and campaign for high office. Now I’m not praising the article because it shows how the weakening of Musharraf’s support has led to an independent-minded judiciary. Nor am I praising it because of its deft depiction of the intricacies of power relations among Musharraf, Sharif and Benazir Bhutto.

No, I’m praising it because it included one very specific detail:

On Thursday, Mr. Chaudhry, leading a bench of seven judges, declared to a packed courtroom that the Sharifs had an “inalienable right to enter and remain in country, as citizens of Pakistan.”

Mr. Sharif’s supporters hugged each other and poured out of the white marble building onto the main avenue, where they slaughtered four goats in celebration. As blood spilled on the asphalt, Mr. Sharif’s backers shouted: “Farewell, farewell, Musharraf, farewell.”