Archive for March, 2005

Johnny Cash Song Desecrated

Sunday, March 20th, 2005

Evidentally, someone somewhere took the Johnny Cash song “When the Man Comes Around” and made a music video that serves as a haliography of George W. Bush out of it.

I can’t find the video — all I find immediately are praises from Rush Limbaugh Online and Free Republic.

I didn’t say it adequately before…..This is awesome. I believe this has captured the evil of the terrorist, the sinister mainstream press, the dangerous left, and the greatness of GWB. Thank You,

Yes. That is exactly what has been captured.

It’s no longer here. It’s online… somewhere.

Curiously enough, I always thought of it as something of an anti-Bush song.

Baseball

Saturday, March 19th, 2005

I don’t understand why everybody is saying that Mark McGwire came off badly during the Congressional hearings, while all the other baseball players came off okay.

It’s all based on the idea that Sammy Sosa and company said that they never used Steroids, while Mark McGwire evaded the question while cynically evoking a higher purpose on how this line of questioning won’t get us anywhere: if a player admits using steroids, they’ll be attacked — if a player doesn’t say he used steroids he won’t be believed, and where’s this all going anyway?

The idea is that it is now obvious that Mark McGwire used steroids, and his silence speaks voumes — he can’t speak on the matter without avoiding perjuring himself. (He can lie to the press before taking the stand, but he can’t lie under oath.)

But I’m thinking (granted, I didn’t bother to watch any of the proceedings, and only heard about some of the events because they were in the way of more pertinent matters) he came across well enough. After all, imagine if it came out — indisputably — that Sammy Sosa jacked up on Steroids. Then, I ask again: who comes out the bigger jackass — McGwire or Sosa?

I think the answer is obvious. So why’s everyone harping on McGwire here? He did the only decent thing a steroid-using baseball player could do!

Uh… huh.

Saturday, March 19th, 2005

I’m so glad my spammers are so very literate. More literate than your spammers, I imagine:

… so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those
who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent,
and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious
and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
— Voltarine de Cleyre

And there’s your pitch for a cheap prescription drug source.

In the meantime, if you desire to buy this book:

Perhaps in the one marketed to College Republicans…

My brother Jeff has a bookstore.

Sit Barry Goldwater’s book next to William Buckley’s God and Man at Yale and you’re all set for your retro fit – Young Republicans book club.

Best. Pinkwater Book Review. Ever.

Friday, March 18th, 2005

Well, actually the best review of a Pinkwater book came from a webpage from 1997 (or 1998?) on The Education of Robert Nifkin. It started with “This is the time of year that pre-schoolers experience alphabet envy” and discussed how the “letters jump of the page”. But, this one — from 1982 — comes in second:

In the first few pages of “Young Adult Novel” we read that Kevin Shaprio’s mother is locked away in a madhouse and his father is a living vegetable as a result of an explosion in a methane factory. Kevin’s sister works the bars near the local bus depot as a prostitute, and Kevin supports himself by stealing and selling drugs in the schoolyard. How about that for an opening for a comic novel for preteens?

The novel then goes on to describe a slapstick confrontation between a group of Dadaist students and a straight-arrow school administration, during which the students create a campus hero out of a little creep who much prefers to be left alone. The story is, I suppose, to be taken as a rollicking lower-school version of the film “Animal House,” but I found it distressing.

Mr. Pinkwater has been rightly praised as a children’s author who does not treat his audience as if they are all little darlings, and I agree that children are essentially little monsters with a thirst for the forbidden. But I have considerable reservations about how assiduously they should be pandered to in this matter. Vulgarity is something children should be allowed to work out for themselves, if for no other reason than it is more fun that way. If adults are forever illuminating the dark corners of children’s lives, they deny them self-discovery. Of all the debts of gratitude I owe to my mother and father, the one I feel most keenly is that we never had a candid discussion about sex. Instead, they extended to me the wondrous coutesy of leaving me alone.

In “Young Adult Novel” Mr. Pinkwater smothers his young readers with a racy bonhommie that smacks too much of adults who think they are getting close to young people by slam dancing with them, an enterprise distressing to children and degrading to adults.

I orignially read it as part one of three in Young Adults, thus I tend to forget that it was once published as a piece of work unto itself. But it is worth noting that when it came time to publish it in “5 Novels” — the second and third parts were left out because the publisher found it too vulgar. This one was acceptable.

I wonder if this was the review that sparked Pinkwater to write that it was his “devout hope that in time he may be able to produce acceptable books about cute furry animals — and for the older reader — stories about high schools in California with really good athletic programs and uniformly attractive students.” Mysteries run around the place.

Events at good old Himmler High School continue apace. The second part features the kids getting out of meetings with a psychologist by telling him (as they surmise he’s obsessed with the topic) that they masturbate all the time. The third part continues apace, and has a sex scene.

I don’t know. I was 16 when I read this. It’s not “The Blue Moose”.

press conference

Thursday, March 17th, 2005

I find George Bush terribly insincere here:

I like the idea of people running for office. It’s a positive effect when you run for office, you know. Maybe someone will run for office and say, Vote for me, I look forward to blowing up America. I don’t know. I don’t know if that’ll be their platform or not. But it’s– I don’t think so. I think people generally run for office say, Vote for me; I’m looking forward to fixing your potholes or making sure you got bread on the table.

I don’t know. I think our government would do everything in its powers to undermine a candidate running on the “Death to America” platform, but maybe I’m mistaken.

Hezzbollah could probably do the pothole thing and the “Death to America” thing… except, not so much America as Israel.

Hm?