awkwardly: 06/01/2003

An article to make you proud to be an American, in spite of our leaders' crimes.

My America vs. the Empire
Why I'm Not Ashamed to be an American
...There are two Americas: the televised America, known and hated by the world, and the rest of us. The former is a factitious creation whose strange gods include "Sex and the City," accentless TV anchorpeople, Dick Cheney, Rosie O'Donnell, "Friends," and the Department of Homeland Security. It is real enough--cross it and you'll learn more than you want to know about weapons of mass destruction--but it has no heart, no soul, no connection to the thousand and one real Americas that produced Zora Neale Hurston and Jack Kerouac and Saint Dorothy Day and the Mighty Casey who has struck out.

O My God, this is so fucking classic. Women on Waves is an activist group sailing under a Dutch flag, with the purpose of providing reproductive education and safe, legal abortion services on ships slightly off the coasts of nations where abortion is otherwise illegal. Privateers for reproductive rights! (And I mean that in the most positive way, as a fan of piracy and anyone who grabs autonomy or anarchy when they are outside the reach of monarchs and capitalists.)
From their Activities page: By providing abortion services outside territorial waters, women and abortion providers cannot be charged or prosecuted when returning to port because applicability of national penal legislation, and thus also of abortion law, extends only to territorial waters. Outside that 12-mile radius it is Dutch law that applies on board a Dutch ship. Thus it is possible to sail to international waters, provide the abortion pill and return all in the same day.

Mark Thomas wrote about the exaggerated/fabricated pretext for invasion of Iraq in the 16 June 2003 New Statesman:
Rarely, though, has a dossier gone from "sexed up" to "fucked up" so quickly....If the evidence was not "sexed up" for political reasons, we can only assume that the security services are staffed by the cast of The Office, or by a bunch of lads from Ilford frantically trying to finish their work after a lunchtime session on a Friday. Giggling and jacketless, the lads are shouting: "Oi, Tel, I've found this student's stuff on the net!" "Bung it in, bung it in, oo's gonna know. It's Saddam, innit? 'E's a fucka. So it's probly true, an' if it ain't, it should be."

Wow, I was right! Syria was next!

Finally integrated this blog into the front page of my regular website. Now the archives seem to have disappeared. I was calling the blog "Notes to Self and Kid" for a few months, but now it doesn't make sense to have a separate name for it.

Dude on Todd Mundt show today said that enough sperm is produced in one man's orgasm to impregnate every female in Europe (in theory). Cool!

Tuesday when I sat down in Jocelyn Barchetta (our Chevy Metro), I noticed a fuzzy, black jumping spider which had hopped off my knee and onto the console. He had probably built a web in between the front door and the screen door, and accidentally came for a ride when I walked through it.

A little smaller than a dime, the thing had green dots on his front mandibles or fangs or whatever you call those little appendages where it's mouth ought to be. So I was not content to let him sit there. Being a man of peace like Ariel Sharon, I didn't want to kill the gruesome little cutie, so I tried to scoop him up on a piece of paper and toss him out the door. I started wondering if I'd have to be ten or fifteen minutes late chasing the bastard around the car, when he obliged me by jumping somewhere out of sight. I could have crawled to a position where I could see under the dash board, but that would have taken even longer. I drove to work constantly checking my arms and legs and scanning the floor and seats for any sign of him. With any luck, he'll build a web and dry out in there with a few afternoons of baking in the sun.

I know it wasn't a fascinating story, but I really needed to retell Bush's joke about Sharon being a man of peace. Here's another one:

Bush is talking with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia (or use any Middle Eastern politician who makes the joke more timely) about American television. King Fahd says he enjoys watching Friends and F Troop and I Dream Of Jeannie, but his favorite is re-runs of classic Star Trek. "I have one question," King Fahd says. "Star Trek shows people of many races working in peace. African, Asian, European, Russian, so many people are portrayed, but why are there no Arabs?"

"That's easy," says Bush. "Star Trek is set in the future."

"We ought to be beating our chests every day. We ought to look in a mirror and get proud and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies and say: 'Damn, we're Americans!' ." -- Jay Garner, Retired US General who was in charge of rebuilding Iraq for about two or three weeks before being replaced.

Written In Stone - I got another Call of Cthulhu story seed thingy posted at Tales of Terror.

October 2002. Congress approves the use of force in Iraq. Not exactly a declaration of war, more like turning over to Bush their Constitutional right to declare war.

March 2003. US and UK invade Iraq.

June 2003. Congress investigates whether the "intelligence" Bush gave them was reliable.

Wouldn't it have made more sense to double-check that before handing a blank check to Bush?