Thanks for all your letters saying how much you miss your Disinfotainment Today. My computer broke down. I'm using a borrowed Win95 machine with a big 4 meg hard drive and 32KB of memory. It's like one of those nightmares where you're running but the air is molasses. No getting into fourth gear, stuck in first. Used to working with 10 windows open, now using only four and it's SLOW. Takes minutes to do things that used to take seconds. Didn't actually lose anything but none of it will load into this computer. Sending this truncated issue out to let everyone know I'm okay but definitely not up to speed. Doing the best I can with what I got.
In an effort to present a "balanced" view of last Monday's "Day without Immigrants," local NBC affiliate KMIR interviewed people planning counter demonstrations, including a woman who was livid when she found out that Mexicans were asking people not to shop, so she planned on shopping non-stop all day in protest. Can you wrap your head around that? Follow me, if you will, as I eavesdrop upon this woman's thoughts while she browses through the items in her local antique store, picking up a collection of turn-of-the-century doilies the price of which would feed a family of four for a year. "I really shouldn't," she thinks, "but anything to let those Mexicans know who's boss."
Is there anyone on this planet more deserving of a smack in the face than this deliberate icon of all that's wrong with humanity? One look at her and there are several things about this blowsy pickalittletalkalittle nose in the air woman I believe it is safe to assume. She is a housewife married to a millionaire. She has never worked a day in her life. She is a Republican. Immigrants mow her lawn, clean her pool, and raise her children (who may take a clue from the Menendez kids one day and blast her with a shotgun). She calls herself a Christian but if Christ himself showed up at her door she'd have him arrested for trespassing. She is distantly related to Marie Antoinette.
The most frightening thing is that there are others like her, who think that shopping is the cure for everything. Depressed? Shop. The president lied to us about going to war? Shop. The unwashed masses want a fair shake against the inbred cretins who own the earth? Shop. Half the products in the marketplace are produced by slaves in foreign sweatshops? Shop. The tired and poor who are yearning to breathe free have crossed your imaginary line in the sand and trod across your lawn with the keep off the grass sign? Declare them all felons and shop.
Since both sides seem to have some valid arguments, I wasn't sure exactly where I stood in the incredibly complicated immigration issue, maybe some sort of compromise was necessary, until I saw this hifaluten dandy of a woman and realized that whatever side she was on was unquestionably the opposite of mine. Our government isn't running out of money because there are too many immigrants taking advantage of social services. That's just a diversion from the corruption at the heart of our system that's robbing from everybody but the 1%. The reason we can't find jobs is because there are less jobs. If Mexicans REALLY want American jobs, they should be moving to India.
If North Korea relaxed its emigration policies and allowed its citizens to move to South Korea, the world would celebrate this new rebirth of freedom, and South Korea would somehow cope with the new influx of refugees. I don't remember anyone protesting the fall of the Berlin Wall just because East Berliners took jobs that West Berliners wanted. And yet we're contemplating building another wall, just like the one keeping the North Koreans in, just like the one the Kremlin built in Berlin, and we're thinking of making Mexicans felons for doing what all free people should have the right to do, to move around, to look for work, to feed themselves and their families. Any law that criminalizes millions of people for normal behavior is a bad law. Look how effectively drug laws have stopped people from doing drugs and prostitution laws have stopped all men from paying for sex. Might I point out that turning undocumented workers into felons and stopping them from working while putting them in jail, which houses and feeds them for free, will cost the US taxpayers MORE money, not less?
We're all in the same boat, and this knee-jerk reaction against immigrants is just the upper class passengers in the Titanic complaining against the lower class passengers who are drowning in the hold and pounding down their doors.
A day without immigrants made its point, but what we really need is a day without ignorance.
MD
"Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
- Eugene Debs at his sentencing hearing after being convicted for giving an anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio, in 1918. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. -
"Me too. As long as there's a man out of work, I won't work. As long as there's a man who can't get laid, I won't get laid. As long as there's a man without medical insurance, I won't see a doctor. As long as there's a man without freedom of speech, I'll keep my mouth shut."
- George W. Debs, Eugene's illegitimate son -
The Party of the Master Class
by John Sanford
This government cannot endure permanently, half-slave and half-free.
- Abraham Lincoln
In due time, the Republicans took care of that; they got rid of the half that was free.
- from Intruders in Paradise
Unsolicited Plug of the Week
Searching for free music on the net is very much like searching for free porn, menus lead to other menus and infinite pop-ups and pop-unders and spyware and cookies that more often than not lead to something that turns out not to be free after all. I'm sure I wouldn't have any idea where to find the good free porn, but I'm happy to say that EasyMP3s turns out to be a major site for relatively hassle free, and genuinely cost free music. The best thing about it is it's NOT primarily focused upon rap like most MP3 sites. Yeah, you've got to wade through pop-ups and it uses a small Java applet to download, but if you click on "full albums" in the left menu, at this very moment you can download the following new CDs in their entirety without charge: Paul Simon's Surprise (worth the wait), Neil Young's Living with War (major fantastic anti-war statements), The Red Hot Chili Pepper's Stadium Arcadium (incredible double CD), Bruce Springsteen's We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (of the best musical tributes of all time), and Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris's All the Roadrunning (subtle and beautiful), each and every one brand new and pretty damn good. One caveat - though the site is called Easymp3s, the songs are in OGG format, the latest open source compression technology which makes files much smaller than MP3s. They sound just as good and play fine in Winamp.
Answer to Last Issue's Stupid Question
I seem to recall I asked what are your hotel requirements? It also seems that all your answers are on my old computer.
Stupid Question of the Week
The latest baby steps towards the decline of western civilization include Deal or No Deal, the only game show in the history of television that requires absolutely no skill whatsoever, and the incredible magic trick of ABC managing to squeeze David Blaine holding his breath for nine minutes into a tight two hour time slot.
Let's say there was a game show called "The Decline of Western Civilization" hosted by David Blaine. What would it be?
What the Bush Administration Forgot to Get
Before it Invaded Iraq
Satan Doesn't Want Me to Know
How to move all the information from my old computer onto this one.
Don't Take My Word for It
"You cannot imagine what it is like to be described as a terrorist - and a dead man - when you are innocent and alive." - Saeed Al-Ghamdi: One of the supposed hijackers portrayed in the film United 93 -
"Would I rather be feared or loved? Easy. Both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me."
"It is told that a traveler, having come from far to gaze upon and marvel at the redwoods, found a pair of woodsmen engaged in felling one of the great trees. He asked why they were thus killing a plant seeded in the time of Charlemagne, and they replied that they were making room for cabins. 'Cabins?' the traveler inquired. 'Cabins for whom?' And they said, 'Cabins for people like you, who come to see the trees.'"
- John Sandford: For the Sequoia Sempervirens -
"Bush admits he selectively leaked classified information that wasn't declassified until days after he and Cheney had Scooter Libby leak it to Judith Miller, the pro-war megaphone for the New York Times publication of Bush lies. Bush 'authorizes' this leak at a time that he is claiming that if he ever finds the leaker, he will basically fire him, meaning himself. Then he continues a public and Department of Justice vendetta against leakers, but not himself: the leaker-in-chief.
"Okay, now Libby is sent out with the leak in order to debunk Joe Wilson's accounting of the truth about the non-existent Iraq-Niger uranium deal. Libby actually makes language up that doesn't exist in the document to further the lie that Wilson exposed. In short, Libby selectively used classified information to try to smear the truth with more lies.
"Okay, it gets better (or actually, worse). When Bush is exposed through Libby's revealing to Patrick Fitzgerald that Bush gave the green light to leak a lie to cover up a lie and prevent more lies from being exposed, Bush admits to leaking, but tells the American people that it was to get the 'truth out.'
"We have created so much disease in this country, and we have based our economy on it to such a degree that, frankly, we cannot untangle this situation without causing economic distress. If there were a cure for cancer, diabetes or heart disease tomorrow, where a person could wave a magic wand and instantly eliminate those diseases, and if every person in the country did that tomorrow, the sobering truth is that our national economy would collapse overnight. It would collapse because there's so much money, so much real estate, so much education and so much expertise and research invested in disease that we could not financially survive in an economy based on health and abundance, at least not the way things are configured right now."
"The moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out."
- James Baldwin -
"There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple - my philosophy is kindness."
- Dalai Lama -
"This administration doesn't feel they need a mindful audience. They don't care about facts, logic or consequences. They are the most cynical people that I've ever encountered in politics. This is the most cynical bunch -- just think about that 'reality-based community' quote. They create their own reality. I don't think I've ever seen that kind of cynicism before, and I'm the guy who interviewed Richard Nixon.
"These guys are, as John Dean keeps pointing out, far worse than the Nixon crowd because they think they can get away with it. Nixon, at the end of the day thought it mattered what the New York Times said. He felt that if there was a big contradiction, a big error, they would catch him and there would be all hell to pay.
"There's no longer that feeling. Over the years, I'm not getting cynical - they're cynical. If I were truly cynical I wouldn't be talking to you, and I wouldn't be writing and teaching. Mark Twain said a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth puts its pants on. Well, the fact is the truth does get its pants on, it does catch up, and right now 65 percent of Americans think Bush lied to them...
"When it comes to national security and foreign policy, the public is particularly vulnerable. When you're writing about a local school board race, or whether that traffic light should be moved, readers and voters are very smart because they can figure it all out. They know whether the school is working, and whether the light should be moved.
"When you're dealing with foreign policy, the information can be kept from you. You can't tell someone that wants to know about police arrest records that they can't be made public. Everybody knows that we have a right to that information. You can't use the national security argument.
"In foreign policy, we have classification and secrecy, and the public comes to believe that maybe it's necessary, that we can't be told everything because lives are at stake. It's much easier for leaders on that level to manipulate and to exploit our fears. What the Bush people are able to do is say that we're in this endless war on terror, so we can torture, lie and distort the facts. Hardly a day goes by that we don't have another credible witness to the lying of this administration, and yet they can get away with it because we're in this permanent war...
"I've been doing this a long time, and if you want to reach people, you have to be ruthlessly honest about what you don't know, what you do know, and where you're coming from. We need to let people know there are real issues to think about, and that they're interesting and exciting. They affect your life."
"Simply put: we can't get opposition because we have one party with two names. It is not a party of the people but a party of the corporate establishment. It is a party that came up with a prescription drug plan that had the sole purpose of enriching the pharmaceutical industry. It is a party that came up with a bankruptcy law with the sole purpose of protecting the financial institutions. It is a party that can't come up with a health plan that won't have the sole purpose of enriching the insurance industry.
"We must face the fact that our votes are worthless. Our votes only decide which politicians will carry out the agenda of the corporate establishment. We must face the fact that we live under the tyranny of 'taxation without representation.' We must face the fact that we have to take control of our government."
"As some of you may be aware, according to the President and Congressional Republicans, a bill does not have to pass both the Senate and the House to become a law. Forget your sixth grade civics lesson, forget the book they give you when you visit Congress - 'How Our Laws Are Made,' and forget Schoolhouse Rock. These are checks and balances, Republican-style."
"As the Washington Post reported last month, as the Republican budget bill struggled to make its way through Congress at the end of last year and beginning of this year (the bill cuts critical programs such as student loans and Medicaid funding), the House and Senate passed different versions of it. House Republicans did not want to make Republicans in marginal districts vote on the bill again, so they simply certified that the Senate bill was the same as the House bill and sent it to the President. The President, despite warnings that the bill did not represent the consensus of the House and Senate, simply shrugged and signed the bill anyway. Now, the Administration is implementing it as though it was the law of the land.
"Several public interest groups have sought to stop some parts of the bill from being implemented, under the theory that the bill is unconstitutional. However, getting into the weeds a bit, they have lacked the ability to stop the entire bill. To seek this recourse, the person bringing the suit must have what is called 'standing,' that is they must show they were injured or deprived of some right. Because the budget bill covers so many areas of the law, it is difficult for one person to show they were harmed by the entire bill. Thus, many of these groups have only sought to stop part of it.
"After consulting with some of the foremost constitutional experts in the nation, I determined that one group of people are injured by the entire bill: Members of the House. We were deprived of our right to vote on a bill that is now being treated as the law of the land...
"As many of you know, I have become increasingly alarmed at the erosion of our constitutional form of government. Whether through the Patriot Act, the President's Secret Domestic Spying program, or election irregularities and disenfranchisement, our fundamental freedoms are being taken away. Nothing to me is more stark than this, however. If a President does not need one House of Congress to pass a law, what's next?"
"If the American people should lose their democratic institutions, it would not be because those institutions had failed or because the ideals on which they rest are transient. Disaster will come only if the American people themselves, because of indifference, carelessness, or complacency, refuse to bestir themselves in time and to take the necessary steps to practice and defend the ways of democracy."
"There is no 'other world.' I only know what I've experienced. You must be hallucinating."
- Jalal-Uddin Rumi (1207-1273) Persian Sufi Mystic Poet -
"Those who like to fight and so exhaust their military inevitably perish." - Sun Tzu -
"The secret of all good writing is sound judgment."
- Quintus Horacius Flaccus -
"When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not guilty'." - Theodore Roosevelt -
"I dote on his very absence." - William Shakespeare -
"With over 1200 Christian organizations, the USA has a greater number of Jesus fan clubs than any other country in the world. The proliferation of variegated brands of Christianity in America is so extreme that it acquires a comic dimension. One might discern only a subtle difference in name between, say, the Evangelical Congregational Church and the Evangelical Covenant Church, or the Church of God in Christ and Church of Christ but miss a gulf of doctrinal distinction.
"But then, who is bothered about doctrine anyway? Denominations, a source of so much anguish and bloodshed in the past, have diminishing importance in the era of evangelical psychosis, mega-churches and apocalyptic blockbusters. The important thing is to 'have religion'. With 'religion' you are a patriot, defending the American way of life; without religion you are a subversive radical, an enemy...
"Although awash with so much love of Jesus, America is not the land of charity and compassion. It is ruthlessly selfish and woefully violent...
"The antics of whore-mongering, money grabbing egotists with an enthusiasm for Jesus would be mildly amusing if it were not for the fact that they have political clout and financial muscle. They attack rational education and have intruded an agenda of doomsday scenarios and apocalyptic meltdown into the political mainstream. Their propaganda extends far beyond the Bible belt and has global reach. 'World missions' invasively erode other cultures, arrogantly assuming exclusive possession of civilized values and moral rectitude. Their God-given mission is to 'Bring Jesus' to the whole of humanity.
"An important new opinion poll reveals that Americans know more about The Simpsons cartoon TV show than about the US Constitution. Conducted by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum, the poll found that only 28 percent of those surveyed could name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution, while almost twice as many Americans (52 percent) could name at least two characters from The Simpsons cartoon show. The survey found that one in five Americans could name all five of the fictional Simpsons cartoon characters, but only one in 1,000 people surveyed (0.1 percent) were able to name all five freedoms granted under the First Amendment. The survey revealed that 41 percent of those polled could name two of the three judges from the American Idol television show - but only 8 percent could name three of their First Amendment freedoms. About one in five polled (21 percent) believed 'the right to own and raise pets' is guaranteed by the Constitution, while one in five thought the right to drive is guaranteed by the First Amendment. All this from a country whose leaders claim to have a duty to spread democracy around the world."
"Some people posit that legalized meth would send the wrong message to people about using meth. However, the governments role is not to send messages to us about what is right or wrong or good or bad. We don't need messages from government. Free people determine for themselves how to run their lives. I have a right to be a self destructive idiot if I choose. I own me.
"Additionally, the 'messages from government' objection overlooks an important point. The concepts of legal and illegal are far different from the concepts of right and wrong or good and bad. Because an activity is legally permissible does not obligate people to conclude such an activity is right or good. Merely because the law allows my kids to insult other kids doesn't prevent my wife and me from successfully teaching them not to do it. The unwillingness or inability of many people to invest the mental acuity to distinguish between these concepts has contributed to an intellectual feeblemindedness which is akin to a malignant tumor killing our society. The messages from government objection nourishes that tumor. We should embrace the concept that we are free to adopt personal standards of conduct which exceed the minimal threshold defined by law."
"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."
- Noam Chomsky -
"If Belgium becomes a nuclear power, the Dutch have no reason to believe it would be a factor in, say, negotiations over a joint highway project. But Iran's nukes will be a factor in everything. If you think, for example, the European Union and others have been fairly craven over those Danish cartoons, imagine what they'd be like if a nuclear Tehran had demanded a formal apology, a suitable punishment for the newspaper, and blasphemy laws specifically outlawing representations of the Prophet. Iran with nukes will be a suicide bomber with a radioactive waist...
"What, after all, is the issue underpinning every little goofy incident in the news, from those Danish cartoons of Mohammed to recommendations for polygamy by official commissions in Canada to the banning of the English flag in English prisons because it's an insensitive 'crusader' emblem to the introduction of gender-segregated swimming sessions in municipal pools in Puget Sound? In a word, sovereignty. There is no god but Allah, and thus there is no jurisdiction but Allah's. Ayatollah Khomeini saw himself not as the leader of a geographical polity but as a leader of a communal one: Islam. Once those urbane socialist émigré were either dead or on the plane back to Paris, Iran's nominally 'temporal' government took the same view, too: its role is not merely to run national highway departments and education ministries but to advance the cause of Islam worldwide...
"With the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, a British subject, Tehran extended its contempt for sovereignty to claiming jurisdiction over the nationals of foreign states, passing sentence on them, and conscripting citizens of other countries to carry it out. Iran's supreme leader instructed Muslims around the world to serve as executioners of the Islamic Republic - and they did, killing not Rushdie himself but his Japanese translator, and stabbing the Italian translator, and shooting the Italian publisher, and killing three dozen persons with no connection to the book when a mob burned down a hotel because of the presence of the novelist's Turkish translator.
"Iran's de facto head of state offered a multimillion-dollar bounty for a whack job on an obscure English novelist. And, as with the embassy siege, he got away with it...
"Anyone who spends half an hour looking at Iranian foreign policy over the last 27 years sees five things:
contempt for the most basic international conventions;
long-reach extraterritoriality;
effective promotion of radical Pan-Islamism;
a willingness to go the extra mile for Jew-killing (unlike, say, Osama);
an all-but-total synchronization between rhetoric and action."
"The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror said that 'allowing Iran to have the bomb is not on the table. We cannot have nukes being sent downstream to a terror network. It's just too dangerous.' He added, 'The whole internal debate is on which way to go' - in terms of stopping the Iranian program. It is possible, the adviser said, that Iran will unilaterally renounce its nuclear plans-and forestall the American action. 'God may smile on us, but I don't think so. The bottom line is that Iran cannot become a nuclear-weapons state. The problem is that the Iranians realize that only by becoming a nuclear state can they defend themselves against the U.S. Something bad is going to happen.'”
"It is now seven months before what could be a radically influential congressional election, a vote that could very well give power back to the Democrats, who will (with any luck) waste no time launching a number of long-overdue investigations into Bush's failed war and the various scandals and lies and fiscal abuses that led us all here.
"For Dubya, now is the time. One last, desperate gamble. Slam that last drink, scrunch up your face, screw the rules and let the bombs fly. What, you don't think he could do it? Don't think a nuclear attack on Iran is possible? You haven't looked into the tiny, ink-black eyes of Dick Cheney lately. You haven't seen Rumsfeld's arrogant sneer, seen Bush looking confused and lost, wondering where all his 'capital' went, desperately hunting for a legacy and finding only irresponsibility and self-righteousness and death."
"I strongly urge that in breaking down the walls of Marxist fantasies you do not fall into the prison of the West and the Great Satan. I openly announce that the Islamic Republic of Iran, as the greatest and most powerful base of the Islamic world, can easily help fill up the ideological vacuum of your system."
- Ayatollah Khomeini in a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989 -
"According to the Treasury Department, the forty-two presidents who held office between 1789 and 2000 borrowed a combined total of $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions. But between 2001 and 2005 alone, the Bush White House borrowed $1.05 trillion, more than all of the previous presidencies combined. Having inherited the largest federal surplus in American history in 2001, he has turned it into the largest deficit ever - with an even higher deficit, $423 billion, forecast for fiscal year 2006. Yet Bush - sounding much like Herbert Hoover in 1930 predicting that 'prosperity is just around the corner' - insists that he will cut federal deficits in half by 2009, and that the best way to guarantee this would be to make permanent his tax cuts, which helped cause the deficit in the first place!"
"A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you are keeping." - Kenneth Tynan -
"Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind." - Marston Bates -
"There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge - observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination."
- Denis Diderot -
"Love thy neighbour as yourself, but choose your neighbourhood." - Louise Beal -
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - H. P. Lovecraft: The Call of Cthulhu -
"Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood."
- H. L. Mencken -
"Well, here they come: the wannabe Rommels, the gaggle of generals, safely retired, to lay siege to Donald Rumsfeld. This week, six of them have called for the Secretary of Defense's resignation.
"Well, according to my watch, they're about four years too late - and they still don't get it.
"It wasn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who stood up in front of the UN and identified two mobile latrines as biological weapons labs, was it, General Powell?
"It wasn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who told us our next warning from Saddam could be a mushroom cloud, was it Condoleeza?
"It wasn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who declared that Al Qaeda and Saddam were going steady, was it, Mr. Cheney?
"Yes, Rumsfeld is a swaggering bag of mendacious arrogance, a duplicitous chicken-hawk, yellow-bellied bully-boy and Tinker-Toy Napoleon -- but he didn't appoint himself Secretary of Defense...
"Generals, let me give you a bit of advice about choosing a target: It's the President, stupid."
"We live in an ever-shrinking world thanks to technology; there's no logical reason why oceans and mountains or even different languages and cultures need to hinder trade and commerce. Likewise, there's no logical reason someone from another geographical region should be prevented from emigrating to another. What's the difference between a Chinese emigrating to New York and my moving to Brooklyn from Long Island? Essentially, there is no difference. And who the hell has the right to prevent me (or a Chinese or anyone else) from moving to where the grass is greener? What arrogance!
"After all, borders are just lines on a piece of paper called a map, to be obsessed over by presidents, dictators, and military men eager to protect what they seem to think to be their own personal property. In order to maintain their power, they have to stoke the collectivist fires of racism and xenophobia...
"Attacks on immigration, legal or otherwise, are attacks on individual rights, not to mention attacks on the market and a free society. The only 'aliens' we should be concerned about are those unsavory, ignorant, and politically-connected folks to whom freedom is an alien concept."
"Campaign finance reformers concerned about the pernicious role of private contributions on our public leaders seem to have overlooked the simple principle that transparency increases market efficiency and secrecy diminishes it. Most reformers instinctively favor full disclosure as an essential element of campaign finance reform. There is a powerful argument that this is precisely backwards and that contributions, like votes, should be secret.
"Imagine a simple law, outlined four years ago by two legal scholars at Yale, under which a candidate could only receive funds from a blind trust managed by the federal government. Citizens, companies, parties, PACs, and lobbies could all contribute to any cause, party, or candidate they wish - but their contribution would pass through the blind trust. Candidates would receive the money but would no more know the source of their contributions than they know with certainty who voted for them.
"This provision would powerfully change a donor’s expected return on investment. If the candidate to whom you are contributing cannot verify your generosity, you cannot invest with the expectation of any return beyond the benefit of a leader who shares your general political orientation. The need to restrict the size of contributions would be vastly diminished. Why would Big Oil, Big Labor, or Big Tobacco contribute to a campaign if there was no assurance of a payback? And how can a politician pay back a contribution if he or she cannot verify its source?"
dIsInFoTaInMeNt ToDaY is free and may be reproduced in any form, preferably parchment. It consists of information from dozens of sources, cut up, thrown in the air, and recycled randomly. It is sent all over the place, so I apologize if you're seeing the same thing twice. If you see a joke, graphic, or news item that came from or through you, thanks, send more, and please accept the fact that much of dIsInFoTaInMeNt ToDaY is unacknowledgeable, and if I sought permission from everyone whose bastardized material showed up here, I'd never get anything else done. Please note that I don't even put my own name on it. If you're still pissed off, hey, it's either satire or fair use.
One year ago, Southern Gothic went online with some of the best Southern Gothic fiction and poetry on the web. During our first year, two stories we published ("Space is Kindness" by first-time author Jason Sanford, and "An Aesthetic Education" by Catharine Savage Brosman) were recognized by the storySouth Million Writers Award as Notable Stories.
For the first anniversary, the tradition of excellence continues with two fantastic new stories - "Enucleation Means to Remove an Eye" by storySouth editor Jason Sanford, and "Vertically Divided, Blue-Red-White" by journalist Mark MacNamara.
Jason's work is already well-represented on the web, but I am grateful to him for letting us publish one of the best stories I've read in a while. His story is as Southern Gothic as it gets.
Mark MacNamara is an American journalist writing from Morocco, where parts of "Vertically Divided, Blue-Red-White" are set. The story grew out of a piece Mark wrote for Salon.com a few months ago. Although it's connections to the Southern Gothic tradition are thin, the story was just too good to pass up, especially as this is Mark's first piece of published fiction, and what a way to start!
We've also got a brand new look for the first anniversary, with photos and art by Michael Dare, and photos by Jon and Jackie Sparks. So please stop by and check out the new stories. And while you're there, please click on a few Google ad links and help us grow the Pay the Damn Authors Fund so that we can start paying authors for their work next year!
Enucleation Means to Remove an Eye - Jason Sanford When the eye bank hired Waidt, his trainer stated simply, "Avoid suicides, avoid murders." When asked why, the man mumbled about the paperwork of unnatural deaths, as if suicide and murder victims were awash in forms and signature slips while natural deaths passed with the simple blessing of organ removal.
Vertically Divided, Blue-Red-White - Mark MacNamara Let's put the country in the hands of gypsy mediums and Haitian babalaos. And all this because of a few burned cars. What those numbskulls should fear is that one day the highest point in Paris will be the top of a mosque, and the only way to stop that is hold on to reason. Without that no civilization " no life at all.
Annika Carlson: A Chat With Stephanie Tubbs Jones (campusprogress.org)
A powerful advocate for voting rights the urban poor, Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones of the 11th District of Ohio is an important leader in today's House of Representatives. Just three days ago she convinced a court in Ohio to force Cuyahoga County to keep its voting machines open later in the evening on primary day, because they were delayed in opening that day.
Truthdigger of the Week: Ray McGovern (truthdig.com)
Truthdig salutes Ray McGovern, the 27-year CIA veteran who articulated the outrage of a nation by publicly and heroically challenging Donald Rumsfeld's lies about Iraqi WMD at an Atlanta public forum on May 4.
Mrs. Betty Bowers is the First to Review "The Da Vinci Code"
The Da Vinci Code is a wildly contrived story about how the forbidden love between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, the Brad and Angelina of Judea, was revealed by Renaissance fresco-paparazzi, and later immortalized by Pierre Plantard, the L. Ron Hubbard of France, in the 1960s with his fabulous hoax called the "Priory of Sion," which author Dan Brown, the Tom Cruise of literature, took seriously.
ROGER EBERT: Au Revoir, les Enfants (1987; A Great Movie)
There is such exhilaration in the heedless energy of the schoolboys. They tumble up and down stairs, stand on stilts for playground wars, eagerly study naughty postcards, read novels at night by flashlight, and are even merry as they pour into the cellars during an air raid. One of the foundations of Louis Malle's "Au Revoir, les Enfants" (1987) is how naturally he evokes the daily life of a French boarding school in 1944. His central story shows young life hurtling forward; he knows, because he was there, that some of these lives will be exterminated.
This will be my third year of watching the pair of eagles hatch and raise their young at the Northeast Utilities System ~ Eagles Online, on an island in the Connecticut River. This year there are two hatchlings, but unfortunately their equipment is malfunctioning near the nest, which Northeast Utilities cannot access during the nesting season, for fear of disturbing the eagles. The last picture was April 26, 2006.
CBS begins the night with the SEASON FINALE'NCIS', followed by a FRESH'The Unit', then another FRESH'The Unit'.
Scheduled on a FRESHDave are Kurt Russell and the Little Willies.
Scheduled on a FRESHCraig are Betty White, Donald Faison, and Bill Bailey.
NBC starts the night with a FRESH'Most Outrageous TV Moments', followed by a RERUN'Most Outrageous TV Moments', then a FRESH'Scrubs', followed by a RERUN'Scrubs', then a FRESH'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'.
Scheduled on a FRESHLeno are Lindsay Lohan, John Krasinski, and Sergio Mendes with the Black Eyed Peas.
Scheduled on a FRESHConan are Sean Hayes and Cheap Trick.
Scheduled on a FRESHCarson Daly are Kristin Chenoweth and Rihanna.
ABC opens the night with a FRESH fearmongering made-for-TV-movie 'Fatal Contact: Bird Flu In America', followed by a FRESH'Boston Legal'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Kimmel are Reggie Bush and Lacuna Coil.
The WB offers the SEASON FINALE'Gilmore Girls', followed by a FRESH'Pepper Dennis'.
Faux has a FRESH'American Idol', followed by a FRESH'House'.
UPN has a RERUN'America's Next Top Model', followed by the SEASON FINALE'Veronica Mars'.
A&E has 'Cold Cse Files', 'Teen Thrill Killers', 'Dog The Bounty Hunter', another 'Dog The Bounty Hunter', 'King Of Cars', and another 'King Of Cars'.
AMC offers the movie 'The Godfather, Part III', followed by the movie 'Jaws III', then the movie 'Jaws The Revenge'.
BBC -
[2pm] 'As Time Goes By' - Episode 4;
[2:40pm] 'Are You Being Served' - Happy Returns;
[3:20pm] 'Keeping Up Appearances' - Episode 6;
[4pm] 'My Hero' - Taking the Credity;
[4:40pm] 'My Family' - Ep 3 What's Up Docklands?;
[5:20pm] 'My Family' - Ep 4 Luck Be A Lady Tonight;
[6pm] 'BBC World News';
[6:30pm] 'Cash in the Attic' - Lovell;
[7pm] 'The Benny Hill Show' - Episode 14;
[8pm] 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' - Episode 4;
[8:30pm] 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' - Burdett;
[9pm] 'What Not to Wear' - Episode 4;
[10pm] 'Rocket Man' - Episode 4;
[11pm] 'Creature Comforts' - Episode 8;
[11:40pm] 'Little Britain' - Episode 2;
[12:20am] 'High Spirits with Shirley Ghostman' - Episode 8;
[1am] 'What Not to Wear' - Episode 4;
[2am] 'Rocket Man' - Episode 4;
[3am] 'Conviction' - Episode 4;
[4am] 'Conviction' - Episode 5;
[5am] 'Conviction' - Episode 6;
[6am] 'BBC World News'. (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has 'West Wing', another 'West Wing', 'Kathy Griffin', and the FRESH'Salon Diaries'.
Comedy Central has 'Reno 911!', another 'Reno 911!', last night's 'Jon Stewart', last night's 'Colbert Report', 'Chappelle's Show', 'South Park', and 'Ron White: You Can't Fix Stupid'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJon Stewart is Eric Shawn.
Scheduled on a FRESHColbert Report is Frank Rich.
History has 'Engineers 2', 'Rogue Waves', 'Mega Disasters: Tsunami', and a FRESH'Mega Movers'.
IFC -
[6AM] You See Me Laughin';
[9:30AM] IFC Short Film Showcase: May;
[10:25AM] You See Me Laughin';
[11:45AM] Amerikan Passport;
[1:10PM] At The IFC Center #13;
[1:40PM] Afraid of the Dark;
[3:15PM] Johnny Stecchino;
[5:05PM] The Red Violin;
[7:20PM] Sweet And Lowdown;
[9PM] The Loss Of Sexual Innocence;
[10:55PM] The War At Home;
[1:05AM] The Loss Of Sexual Innocence;
[3AM] The War At Home;
[5:05AM] Samurai 7 Episode #6: The Fool;
[5:45AM] IFC In Theaters. (ALL TIMES EDT)
SciFi has the FRESH made-for-cable-movie 'Submerged', followed by the FRESH made-for-cable-movie 'Sub Zero'.
Sundance -
[7AM] The Naked Man;
[8:45AM] Star Wars Dreams;
[9:45AM] Playing for Change;
[11AM] FACE;
[12:30PM] In Short: In Short: Israel 3;
[1:15PM] The Naked Man;
[3PM] Silent Running;
[4:30PM] The White Balloon;
[6PM] Slings and Arrows: Episode 6: Birnam Wood;
[6:50PM] In Short: In Short: Israel 3;
[7:30PM] FACE;
[9PM] City of Men: Episode 2: The Man's Brother-in-Law;
[9:30PM] Slo-Mo;
[10PM] Rosetta;
[11:45PM] Carrington;
[2AM] Monkey Dust: Episode 3;
[2:30AM] City of Men: Episode 2: The Man's Brother-in-Law;
[3AM] Garden;
[4:25AM] L'Inondation. (ALL TIMES EDT)
U.S. musicians Allen Toussaint (L-R), Paul Simon and Irma Thomas acknowledge the crowd following their performance at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans May 7, 2006.
Photo by Lee Celano
In a gutted building with no interior walls, exposed pipes and no air conditioning to stave off the Louisiana heat, Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Garner and Cicely Tyson chatted with children who had lost their homes, then watched as they sang, danced and worked on art projects.
The movie stars were among a delegation of women touring devastated parts of the city Monday to meet with families and children trying to adjust to life after Hurricane Katrina.
"I don't think you get a real clear perspective unless you come down and see it," Witherspoon said after chatting with students at a "Freedom School" set up by the Children's Defense Fund to help young storm victims.
The visit was part of an effort by the fund to bring attention to the needs of storm victims, particularly traumatized children. The group plans to open more than 20 such schools in communities along the Gulf Coast: 13 for Louisiana and nine for Mississippi.
Honorary Mayor of Hollywood, Johnny Grant (L), and the granddaughter of the original 'Lady In Black', who withheld her name, smile together after laying roses on silent movie legend Rudolph Valentino's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to commemorate the 111th anniversary of Valentino's birthday in Hollywood, California May 8, 2006. 'The Lady in Black' was an unknown woman who would travel to Valentino's grave after his death to place flowers there to commemorate his memory.
Photo by Lucas Jackson
Anderson Cooper will contribute five stories a year to "60 Minutes" on CBS in an arrangement that also allows CNN to rebroadcast those reports, both networks said Monday.
Cooper, 38, fills a part-time slot previously taken by CNN's Christiane Amanpour and, along with Katie Couric's arrival at CBS this fall, gives a shot of new blood to television's top-rated newsmagazine.
Meanwhile, Mike Wallace isn't going anywhere. After a brief flirtation with NBC, he signed a four-year contract to continue contributing an occasional piece to "60 Minutes."
Mary Travers of the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary had plenty of causes to espouse in the 1960s and 1970s. Now she has a new one: saving lives through bone marrow transplants.
Travers, 69, began performing again late last year after successfully undergoing a bone marrow transplant to treat her leukemia.
"It was like a miracle," Travers said in an interview last week. "I'm just feeling fabulous. What's incredible is someone has given your life back. I'm out in the garden today. This time last year I was looking out a window at a hospital."
Now Travers wants others to benefit, too. She's encouraging the U.S. public to register for the National Marrow Donor Program's bone marrow drive May 12-14 at more than 100 sites U.S.-wide.
Keith Richards had surgery Monday in New Zealand to relieve pressure in his head following a fall, his representative said. The Rolling Stones guitarist was "up and talking" soon after surgery at The Ascot Hospital in Auckland, but was expected to take several weeks to recuperate, LD Communications said Monday in a statement issued in London.
"Last week Keith was under observation in Auckland following a fall in Fiji and was feeling well after being examined by doctors last week," the statement said. "However after complaining of headaches yesterday, doctors thought it prudent to move ahead with a small operation to remove the pressure."
Richards, 62, suffered the injury April 27, but details have not been confirmed. News reports have variously claimed that he fell out of a palm tree or from a jet ski.
Ian McKellen holds an apple as he poses on Tuesday, May 2, 2006 in Los Angeles. In the adaptation of Dan Brown's best-seller 'The Da Vinci Code,' McKellen plays Sir Leigh Teabing, the sinfully wealthy, polio-afflicted aristocrat who joins Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou's characters on their quest for the Holy Grail.
Photo by Kevork Djansezian
Mark-Paul Gosselaar and his wife, Lisa, are the parents of a baby daughter, the couple's second child.
Ava Lorenn was born Sunday in Los Angeles, the actor's publicist, Ame Van Iden, said Monday. Both Lisa and the newborn were doing fine, the spokeswoman said.
Seventy feet beneath the prairie, the government is filling limestone caverns - protected by guards and a bomb-sniffing dog - with truckloads of American Indians' financial and cultural records.
What is ground zero for an accounting that will take seven years and cost $335 million owes its existence to a bitter class-action lawsuit brought against the Interior Department a decade ago. Still, it's only a short version of the historical accounting that Indians demanded but no longer want, because they do not think it can be done properly.
The dispute dates to 1887, when Congress made the Interior Department the trustee for 145 million acres of Indian lands. Indians were supposed to benefit, but the government gave most of the land to white settlers.
Today, the department manages 10 million acres of trust land for individual Indians and 46 million acres for tribes. In 1996, the Indians sued to reconcile their historical accounts. The Indians, and Congress, demanded an audit. The Indians may be owed a century's worth of grazing rents, oil and gas royalties and timber sales from the land, plus interest.
Protesters shout as President Bush's motorcade drives by, Monday, May 8, 2006, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. President Bush is Visiting South Florida during a private reception for fellow Republican U.S. Rep. Clay Shaw.
Photo by Steve Mitchell
Two Australian miners trapped in a small cage deep underground for 14 days walked out of the mine on Tuesday, triumphantly thrusting their arms into the air after rescuers freed them shortly before dawn.
Brant Webb, 37, and Todd Russell, 34, wearing yellow jackets and mining helmets with their lamps shining brightly, walked confidently to a large board and removed their name cards -- declaring they had ended their shift underground.
The miners were trapped a kilometer underground in a wire cage, about the size of a double bed, on April 25 after a cave-in caused by an earthquake at the Beaconsfield Gold Mine on the southern island of Tasmania.
Performers dressed as ethnic minorities dance to folk music during the staging of 'Impression of Lijiang', the new musical of Chinese director Zhang Yimou in Lijiang, China's Yunnan province Sunday, May 7, 2006.
The old Guthrie Theater dimmed its lights for the last time after getting a rousing round of applause.
"Let's let the rafter ring in one final salute to the old place," artistic director Joe Dowling implored the crowd as the renowned auditorium closed Sunday night the same way it began 43 years to the day, with a production of "Hamlet."
The applause lasted nearly five minutes.
This summer, the Guthrie moves to a new, $125 million three-stage complex on the Mississippi riverfront in downtown Minneapolis. The old Guthrie probably will be demolished late this summer as the adjacent Walker Art Center makes room for an expansion of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.
Celine Dion jokes with her husband, Rene Angelil, while they pose for photos with a wax figure modeled after Dion before her 500th performance at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas on Sunday, May 7, 2006. The figure was prepared by the Grevin waxworks company of Paris.
Photo by Isaac Brekken
Apple Computer Inc. is entitled to use the apple logo on its iTunes Music Store, a judge ruled Monday, rejecting a suit filed by Apple Corps Ltd., the guardian of The Beatles' commercial interests.
Apple Corps, which contended that the U.S. company had broken a 1991 agreement in which each side agreed not to enter into the other's field of business, said it would appeal.
Judge Edward Mann ruled that Apple Computer used the fruit logo in association with the store, not the music, and thus did not breach the agreement.
The man known to the world as Johnny Paris of the 1950s and '60s rock group Johnny and the Hurricanes has died at a Michigan hospital. He was 65.
John Pocisk, whose group had instrumental hits such as Red River Rock and Beatnik Fly, died May 1 at University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor. He had been in the hospital for nearly two months, but his illness and cause of death won't be released until an autopsy is finished, said his son Jeff.
Pocisk formed his first band while in high school, and his next group, the Orbits, developed a following. When they backed a vocal group on a demo tape, a management agency noticed them, and the group became Johnny and the Hurricanes.
The group played at the Star Club in Hamburg in 1962, headlining a gig that included a little-known English group called The Beatles.
People walk around the last steam engine ever made for the Union Pacific railroad as it sits on a siding Sunday, May 7, 2006, in Alamogordo, N.M. The locomotive, Number 844, was built in 1944 and is on a 32-day,10-state trip around the country.
Photo by Ellis Neel
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