These people we wasted here today are the finest human beings we will ever know

I'm off againt to hold my grandmother's hand while she transacts some business with her financial advisor/insurance agent/whatever. I've met him several times, a short, slight man who is as soft-spoken and nice as it's possible to be. I learned since our last meeting a couple of years ago that he was "at" the My Lai massacre. All he apparently told my grandad about it is that whatever he'd heard, the truth was worse. I expect he'll tell me how those mutual funds have been doing, and how that unusual life policy works.

I'll be back Thursday or Friday.

Addendum: He's not on the wikipedia list of participants, reinforcing my scare quotes meant to indicate that he was, to my knowledge, simply "at" the massacre in some unknown capacity.

We have to destroy the village in order to save it

To repeat something I've said in assorted far flung comments threads, shooting a few looters really would be an excellent idea, and would have been a pretty good one yesterday. Yes, I am sympathetic to the argument that food and water are better off in the hands of people who can use them than rotting in a flooded store that may never reopen. It is also true that people taking TVs and such aren't really hurting stores that are going to be a total loss, nor helping themselves, since they're only going to be leaving with what they carry.

But. The problem isn't the immediate looting, it's what follows. There are reports of guns and razors being smuggled into the Superdome, and three shootings inside already. (The razor report was a credible interview by a local news source, the shootings just some blogger's claim.) And what happens when the food stolen from the stores starts to run out? Do you think some of yesterday's looters might become tomorrow's murders and thieves?

Count on it. I trust that those making excuses for the "oppressed" taking what "they deserve" form the evil store owners will soon explain why grandma had it coming because she wouldn't give the local ad hoc gang what they wanted. Dumb ass policies intended to help the poor in the short term inevitably hurt them the most in the end.

You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here

The Superdome held 10,000 people, by most estimates, when Katrina hit. These were the too poor or disabled to evacuate, but those smart enough to get somewhere relatively safe. Today, we hear, they have been joined by those moved from hospitals, as well as those too poor to leave town, not smart enough to leave their own houses, and lucky enough not to die, for a total of at least 30,000.

Now these people need to be evacuated from the Superdome. Somehow. Somewhere. For sometime, probably months. That's where it gets interesting, because they won't be alone. Of the 400,000+ population, it's a fair bet that many evacuees didn't go very far, and that their financial resources will soon be exhausted. A reasonable estimate of the permanent homeless with nowhere to go and no way to pay for temporary housing might be around 100,000.

Knowledge of New Orleans' demographics and socio-economic climate, confirmed by watching the disaster coverage, indicates that nearly all of these people will be black. I strongly suggest that when the government creates semi-permanent squalid settlements to house all of these people in abominable conditions, with the predictable problems for adjacent landowners, they not call them townships.

In the absolute worst scenario, however, I do happen to know South Africa has some fairly humane laws these days to balance fair evictions with private property rights, and by the point similar things are needed here the media will have already spotted the parallel. To avoid embarassment, however, make sure that any model South African laws were drafted after 1994 and stay away from the Zimbabwe example at all costs.

The media circus and editorials are going to be quite bad enough without those sorts of mistakes.

Update: And so it begins. [Addendum: The title of this beautiful Kossack piece, which might change before you read it, is currently "Put the N*ggers in the Superdome: Part II"]

Update II: Outstanding! Fox News reports they're planning to bus about 25,000 people from the Superdome to the Astrodome. I look forward to the immediate sanitation and climate control problems being solved. It will be interesting to watch the longer term problems of what to do with so many people with no jobs, no homes to return to, no income except relief/welfare payments that won't happen for a bit, and no connections to the local community develop.

When the levee breaks I'll have no place to stay

I'm always surprised by how many of my friends and acquaintances don't have or don't watch TV and thereby manage to remain remarkably ignorant of the news. But some of them do read this blog, so, and you know who you are, please be aware New Orleans is an ongoing disaster, as best chronicled here and here.

I'm frankly skeptical that the city as it was will survive. The government optimistically(!) projects schools will not open for at least two months, a decent proxy for a return to basic residential and commercial life. In that period many mobile businesses and residents will relocate, some permanently. A nation without the Big Easy will, of course, be a much less interesting one. Cajun food will survive in smaller Louisiana towns, jazz in larger spots throughout the region and country, but where will drunk women go to bare their breasts in return for cheap plastic trinkets?

Come to think of it, I've got some free space in my apartment, and my social life is itself something of a disaster lately. Let the healing begin.

Mama mia

I was pleased to learn that Monica Bellucci had a daughter nearly a year ago, so I know what I'll be doing in 2022. I was less thrilled to see evidence she's trying to shave four years off her real age, a move that may not be unrelated to her protest against the Catholic Church's IVF stance.

Personally, I think when you're 40 and look that good you need to flaunt it, and surely we can all agree that any truly benevolent god wants all available means used to ensure Monica's genes are passed on to the next generation. I predict a "Bellucci exception" to cloning bans will be the first moves towards a bipartisan consensus on the ethical uses of human cloning.

Time is gonna tell your little secrets to me

I haven't looked at PostSecret in a while, and at some point it became a lot more visually interesting than I remember, to the point where I suspect some of the "revelations" may be an excuse to use a nice piece of art more than anything else. Some, on the other hand, are more disturbing than ever. But the really noteworthy thing about this week's post is the closing paragraph someone sent in:

"I have made six postcards, all with secrets that I was afraid to tell the one person I tell everything to, my boyfriend. This morning I planned to mail them, but instead I left them on the pillow next to his head while he was sleeping. 10 minutes ago he arrived at my office and asked me to marry him. I said yes."

In addition, you might get wet

I love water, I like rain, and the heavier the better. Although it was economically disasterous and killed a several people, including a distant acquaintance of mine from college, Tropical Storm Allison was a blast to get caught in as I was leaving work and then trapped at the Friday night poker game.

So, taking into account the usual damp squibs (heh) we get from overhyped media weather hysteria, I was rather looking forward to the "imminent destruction" of New Orleans. My tentative plans to meet a friend there around now rather permanently fell through, much to my disappointment, so my black heart felt some pleasure at the idea that it couldn't have happened anyway. True, one of my best friends and former roomates from college lives there, but his family business is repairing insured home damage caused by fire...or flood. (Although they're Italian and his dad looks like an extra from the Godfather, I strongly suggest you not joke about whether they "help things along.")

Alas, my pleasure at the impending catastrophe disappeared when I actually watched the coverage and realized exactly how bad it might get. My friend's business isn't going to do him much good when it's under water that might take months to pump out. The tens of thousands sitting in the upper levels of a Superdome that might just have all of the exits flooded isn't terribly amusing. And mindful of my own recent experience, I hate to imagine what's being done, if anything, for the hundreds in hospitals too sick to be moved.

So I was already feeling the proper usual human emotions of sympathy before I saw this National Weather Service message reproduced at Catallarchy.

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA
413 PM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005

...EXTREMELY DANGEROUS HURRICANE KATRINA CONTINUES TO APPROACH THE
 MISSISSIPPI RIVER DELTA...
...DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED...

MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER. AT
LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL
FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY
DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.

THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL.
PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD
FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE
BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME
WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.

HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A
FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.

AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH
AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY
VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE
ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE
WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.

POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN
AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING
INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY
THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEW
CROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BE
KILLED.

Christ, even James Wolcott, not well known for his capacity for shame or restraint, is backing away from his past hurricane boosterism. And the above is only considering the winds, not the potential for a semi-permanent flood.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it

Can someone who still has Westlaw access find the 9th Circuit case dealing with Hawaii's concentrated wholesale market in gasoline that I know I read in a business related class, probably contracts? Every time someone expresses surprise that the Hawaiian gas caps are at the wholesale level I'm reminded of this not terribly recent case and that the existence of only two wholesalers has been a hot issue there for a very long time.

E.T. cash check

Scott Scheule points the way to Longbets, where you can wager and vote on a wide variety of predictions. Some of these are incredibly easy money:

The Bet: By 2050, we will receive intelligent signals from outside our solar system.

I'd gladly wage half of my savings on this, except for one thing - the ridiculous time horizon. It adds very little risk to losing the bet, but it completly erodes any financial incentive to make it. Even if the risk of losing is damn near zero, as I'm quite certain it is, I can do a lot better than waiting 45 years to double my money.

Actually, upon reading the rules, I see such a bet would be even dumber than I thought. Not only are you limited to even odds, your winnings go to charity. What initially appears to be a good idea for truly helping provide more accuracy in forecasting seems doomed to do nothing but allow people to painlessly feed their fantasies and egos.

Update: Heh.

Smile softly and carry a big stick

Amanda Butler discusses how former communist countries aren't as happy as you'd expect for their wealth.

Happiness under transition, they argue, depends also on three factors.

1) increased inequality = decreased happiness

2) slow economic reform = decreased happiness

3) high inflation = increased happiness

I would think "national greatness" concerns play a not insignificant role as well. The first thing this brought to mind is an old joke about the psychological benefits of being hated, one version of which I found here (also here and here):

Back in the 19th century, one poor Jew always saw his neighbor reading a terrible, anti-semitic rag on market day. After many, many months, he finally stopped and said, "How can you stand to look at this, and all the disgusting lies they tell about us?"

The other poor Jew looked up, smiled, and answered: "I read it to see how powerful I am."

Indeed. Can anyone doubt that many Americans would be considerably less happy if a peacenik Congress cut defense spending by 80%, even if the savings were passed on in the form of tax cuts or benefits? There's a certain satisfaction that many get from knowing "we" are global badasses, and the lack of fear and accompanying respect for their countries must be a factor in former Soviet/Warsaw Pact nations' unhappiness.

The very model of a modern major general

I'm not sure when Peggy Noonan's usually saccharine Catholicism turned into weirdly pessimistic psuedo-mysticism, but it's not encouraging.

The federal government is doing something right now that is exactly the opposite of what it should be doing. It is forgetting to think dark. It is forgetting to imagine the unimaginable.

Governments deal in data. People in government see a collection of data as something to be used, manipulated or ignored, but whatever they do with it, it's real. It's numbers on a page. You can point to them.

To think dark, on the other hand, takes imagination--and something more.

As adults living in the world, we know some things. As Murphy taught us, if it can go wrong, it will go wrong. As the journalist Harrison Salisbury said, in summing up what he'd learned in a lifetime observing history, "Expect the unexpected." As JFK taught us, "There's always some poor son of a bitch who doesn't get the word"--someone in the field who doesn't know what's going on and does exactly the wrong thing. As Ronald Reagan once said in conversation, man has never invented a weapon he didn't ultimately use. And as life has taught us since 9/11, we live in a dangerous age and the dangers aren't over, if they will ever be.

When you think dark, you're often and inescapably thinking with your gut, a vulgar way of referring to a certainty that lives somewhere between your spirit, soul and intellect. Your gut knows things your brain can't assert as fact because they're not facts, not yet. It can take guts to listen to your gut.

This long winded digression is her set up for why the government shouldn't be closing so many bases - they're a comfort blanket for a worst case scenario.

So we are imagining America being forced to fight for its survival on its streets. How does this get us to base closings? On the day the big terrible thing happens there will of course be shock and chaos. People will feel the need for protection--for the feeling of protection and for the thing itself. They will want and need American troops nearby and they will want and need American military bases up and operating to help maintain some semblance of order. The very presence, the very fact of these bases will help in the big recovery.

That's what all these bases are going to be needed for. To help us survive a very bad time.

After reading this pablum I reall expected to find "someone" is trying to sell an old BRAC Commission report on which an image of the Virgin Mary has allegedly appeared, but no dice. I guess we'll just blame this on garden variety stupidity.

I was actually happy when I saw the subtitle of this piece, because I've been surprised at the relative lack of discussion of this issue on any of the sites I read, and I assumed this would be a piece on the need for redundancy, imagining unconventional attacks by terrorist organizations (or the special ops by nations like China) to cripple an important capability concentrated in a single location.

But, no. Instead the WSJ puts its imprimatur on this nonsense. Is she worried about reduced, less capable, or more vulnerable forces? No. Bizarrely, she proposes spending billions of dollars to ensure that the national guard/reserve unit doing...something in the event of an unlikely catastrophe came from 50 miles away instead of 200 or 300. And no, the benefit is not supposed to be improved response time, but warm fuzzies at knowing they're good Cook County boys from 'round here doin' what needs to be done, not those Indiana hicks from across the border.

Even if such "morale effects" exist and are worth spending money on, I can't help believe that we could more effectively accomplish the same thing at less cost by stockpiling teddy bears to be airdropped on particularly sad and worried areas. In return, I'll take the saved money and larger pool of equipment available to be shared by Guard and Reserve units at the cost of some longer drives for those reporting and deploying.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the Ellsworth saga has destroyed my illusions that redundancy matters much. I suppose in the 50's when people still had crazy concerns about maintaining a viable conventional force after a nuclear strike it made sense to scatter these sorts of things everywhere, political pork considerations aside. But the modern horrors that redundant bases supposedly save us from are not convincing.

The Air Force will continue to operate two B-1 bomber bases, providing the military benefits of redundancy – perhaps the strongest argument in favor of retaining Ellsworth. The South Dakotans called it the “putting all your eggs in one basket” argument, that is, for both operational and strategic reasons, keeping all your B-1 bombers at one location is a bad idea. Two bases provide flexibility: You can fly your bombers at 300 feet over much more of Wyoming and South Dakota than Texas. Furthermore, the Soviets cannot take out the entire B-1 fleet with a single ICBM barrage. (Well, the general principle holds. A more likely scenario than nuclear destruction: If dust storms disable Dyess, then Ellsworth will be OK; if blizzards disable Ellsworth, then Dyess is all right.)

To beging with, if we need the B-1s as part of our nuclear retaliation we've made far greater planning mistakes than closing a single base. (Do we even still have deployable, air droppable nukes that aren't on ICBMs? "Soviets"?) But leaving that aside, "Texas" and "West Texas" are two very different things, B-1s aren't exactly the premiere low level bombing platform in an Air Force that hasn't had to do such bombing in a very long time, and avoiding a 5% chance of an up to 48 hour (or whatever) delay in deployment of one of our most wasteful and least needed weapon systems isn't worth a whole lot of money.

Which is not to say Ellsworth should be closed. If the BRACC is right that the Pentagon's savings estimates are bunk, keep the status quo, say I. But let's not pretend that we're going to need B-1s if someone nukes one base but for some reason not the other, that Al Qaeda is likely to be capable of or attempt crippling attacks on (arguably more defendable) centralized Reserve/Guard depots and staging areas, or that we're going to rue the day that urgent intelligence makes us want to surge a fucking submarine out of Connecticut to sink the nuke carrying container ship bearing down on NYC.

Update: Apparently I just read the wrong sites. Thus:

Keep a bunch of military bases open in case our national security apparatus is so stunningly incompetent that they'll likely forget the keys to the armories in the event of an attack.

The author of this is, of course, war pornette Peggy Noonan, assuming that the man of all men she loves and adores will leave us so utterly unprotected that terrorists can walk down our streets, sodomizing our children and teaching them evolution while nuking individual fetuses for fun.

Yea:

I've been an inveterate fan of Peggy Noonan for years now and seldom take issue with her. She's a wonderfully gifted writer and, to me, usually makes good sense and in an intelligible manner, which is both her gift and her strong suit. She oftentimes writes about exactly what her readers are thinking, but expresses it so much better than they do; and they delight in and savor her ability to do so.

But her most recent column is without a doubt the most facile piece of writing she's ever published.

Verily:

The anniversary of September 11th approacheth, and you know what that means, buoys and gulls.

Yes, it's time for Peggy Noonan to give lyrical Jeanette Macdonald voice to her full blow dementia.

I hadn't read the Noon the Loon in a spell, which may explain how my brain cells had regained their lustrous shine. I'm going to ration my reading of her in the future to prevent a relapse, but her most recent column is too nutty to ignore.

Tool:

Peggy Noonan is one of my favorite columnists (after Mark Steyn), and she hit a home run today in her Opinion Journal column. I posted along similar but narrower lines a while ago.

The bald and the beautiful

Speaking of things Melkonianian, his post on shaving his head inspired me to finally hook up my new scanner/copier/printer and scan the following.



The hair is by lots of alcohol, a bet gone wrong, and a very painful beard trimming add-on affixed to an electric razor. This particular cut was the second of three in college.

The girl was provided by a moment of temporary insanity, when she picked me as her first choice for "big brother" in our coed "professional" business fraternity. Alas, she was one of a kind and moved far away long ago, although she did give me one of Jermajesty's many love interests (the plastic one) to remember her by.

As far as the combination of hair and damsel, ever since my prior career I just can't seem to avoid the look.




Maybe it's time again. Ladies, email me for audition information.

Boys, you don't know how lucky you are

This may just be the greatest blog in the history of the world recently making fun of the latest commiefest in Venezuela. But with the exception of one German, I hope his titular claim to have pulled more wool than the bourgeois has over the eyes of the proletariat is greatly exaggerated, somewhat more promising earlier pictures notwithstanding.

Especially because, as he points out, Venezuela is second only to Australia for male deaths due to twisted testicles. The winner, I think, should come as a surprise to no one. Sure, "rugby," that's it. And did you know that while Australians barely outnumber camels, it's supposed to be the best place to be a woman? How great a weight the "Dylan does not live there" factor played in the latter methodology is unclear.

Have your cheesecake, but don't eat it, too

Tom Kirkendall identifies more reasons not to eat at Raffi's nemesis.

Most embarassing

One of the more annoying habits of the summer sailing camp I attended for a few years was that everyone got an award. You might not be the best sailer, but you could be Most Friendly, Best Sportsman, or the dreaded Most Improved - "now sucking less than ever!"

Me? The one time I can recall, I was Most Outspoken.

In that spirit I note that the Washington Monthly has created a new and probably short lived college guide that ranks universities according to leftyish criteria of what a university should do, including community service, research, and fostering social mobility. I note that not only is my alma mater in the top ten of the new rankings, but it looks like when compared to US News rankings it has grabbed the dreaded Most Improved slot under the new criteria, jumping 53 spots.

I can claim some of the credit. I did almost no community service while I was there, and no research at all worthy of the name, but I'm making quite a bit of progress on the social mobility front, looking set to drop my standard of living considerably below that of my family so that others may rise in my place.

You're welcome. If you want to thank me, I'll be the guy in the glasses reading a copy of the Economist under your local overpass.

Who am I? Why am I here?

I finally got around to opening the birth certificate I ordered months ago just in case I wanted to register for the bar exam. It's all wrong.

In a brief moment of insanity my parents decided to spell my name "Dylon," a travesty that I only just got around to changing on my Social Security card but that has never appeared on any other records. Naturally, it's still on my birth certificate where it will haunt me forever.

I suppose my father's name isn't actually "wrong," just my memory of it. I was quite certain he had my grandfather's first and middle names but reversed, with both going by their respective middle names. But no, it appears that dad is a junior, and he's been using the middle name. "Dylon" aside, I'm damned glad I didn't get dubbed a III.

If I had, I'd surely have changed my name, as my mother did. I knew she'd gotten rid of the oppressive "Elizabeth," which has been inflicted in some form on every female of that line for the last 50 generations or so, in favor of a shortened, fairly unique, yet not stupid form, but I hadn't realized the big E was only ever her middle name. Margaret? Oh, poor mommy.

It's also interesting that her maiden name is listed on the certificate, which in no way evidences my parents' marriage. Historically the case to make records clearer, or a post-sexual revolution change to lessen the stigma of illegitimacy?

What did the leper tell the prostitute?

Keep the tip.

I am absolutely flabbergasted by the not uncommon enough blog rants I stumble across bitching, moaning, and wailing about the supposed evils of male circumcision. This appears to be largely a gay thing, and I'm morbidly certain there's someone completing a thesis on why that is.

I'll take a pass on reading it, thanks. The straight women are pretty solidly on the other side for reasons that are readily comprehensible, so I decline to regret the advantages of my condition, sadly theoretical as they may presently be.

Update: I do, of course, eagerly await Eugene Volokh's impending post on this vital topic.

Update II: Is Slate the new Advocate? Or maybe I just have a facility for creating grand theories from a pair of data points.

Nawww.

He who must not be named

I'm so misunderstood.

Time is on my bad side

For many of my favorite books and movies there's a moment I remember that hooked me, the prism through which I viewed everything else about the work. A couple of these were revisited this weekend.

First is The Last Hot Time, a "contemporary fantasy" whose conceit is elves "returned" to a blasted 90's Chicago that has reverted to gangland style and technology. Every time I reread it it's briefly my second favorite novel because of passages like this in the first few pages, driving into town:

Danny looked at his watch. The liquid-crystal display read FEAR. Danny blinked, angled his wrist to catch the light. 2:28 AM. No wonder he was seeing things. He'd been driving for nearly nine hours straight before all of this. [...] Danny's watch said 2:30, and then RAGE, and then 2:31.

Later, waking in town:

A sliver of light ran around the drapes. He got hold of his watch, which read PAIN; he threw it across the room. The bedside clock's hands pointed to ten past five. PM, presumably.

One of the common complaints about this mostly highly rated book is its (sub-)minimalist touch, while a frequent point of praise is the skill with which those minimal details flesh out the world and atmosphere. And indeed, this passage, a couple of references to (invariably old model) cars working poorly even with magical help, and the issue of a pocket watch with a set of new clothes are the only signs you get of why the tech line is where it is, what works, and what doesn't - presumably nothing digital functions where magic does, and even simple electronics are touchy. (The phones rely on switchboards, the cars all predate computers under the hood.) This is ever so more sexy than just having a character explain, and prepares you for the subtlety/obscurity (when it isn't just plain missing) of explanation throughout the book.

On the other hand, I fell for one of my favorite movies, Russian Ark, for a time related reason before I'd even rented it that had nothing to do with the story itself. A review somewhere mentioned it was the longest movie (96 minutes) ever filmed in one continuous shot. This I had to see, and I'm damned glad I did - a couple of years after first watching, I broke down and bought it on Friday.

The storyline is minimal. A ghost/spirit narrator wanders the Hermitage museum, drifting between rooms and decades. We hear his voice, but do not see him; his eyes are the camera. We do see his guide and companion (the ghost of a 19th century French aristocrat), the fabulous artwork, and historical figures great and small going about their lives. It's visually stunning, making it somewhat hard to follow the relatively few subtitles, but the true amazement comes from watching it and knowing that not only was it shot in one single take but also on the first try without ever rehearsing in the actual museum, which was closed only for a single four hour block to allow filming.

In a way, the substance of what the actors and cameraman/narrator are saying and doing hardly matters - this is a movie foremost for procedure buffs, watching careful (or perhaps sometimes skillfully ad libbed) coordination, footwork, and pacing as our two central characters move, unseen, through this huge maze of a building and its often furiously active inhabitants. You're impressed enough the first hour, and then...

Ah, the grand ball. I have no idea how the hell they pulled this off. It would be a tough enough job to shoot this damn thing in pieces and edit it together smoothly. But to coordinate the bands, the floor dances, the spectators, the actors, and have the whole ridiculously long segment flow smoothly from close up to dialogue to wide view of the room and back? Maybe massive central planning can work. I'm sure glad it did here.

Pick three

Despite having the choice of a daughter twice my age or a grandson she has adopted, is legally her son, and lives five minutes away from her, I somehow got brevet promotions as Aide de Camp to my grandmother and Acting Patriarch, which meant, among other things, that I had to stand by her in the receiving line after my grandfather's memorial service and listen to a parade of women in the their 70s and 80s tell me how handsome I was. That wasn't the most embarassing thing.

One of them also told me she has a daughter who is single, which unless she took early advantage of medical advances that I've only heard of in the last decade means my potential intended must be about my mother's age. That also wasn't the most embarassing thing.

Later my actual mom came to sit next to me as I was talking to my grandmother's nephew, a chap from California I'd never met before who showed up wearing a gray handlebar mustache, dark (designer?) jeans, and a sort of floral/Mexican waiter shirt.

"Is this your wife?"

While trying to expel the roast beef I'd just inhaled, I did have to admit she'd done wonders with her hair and makeup. Also in attendance was a perfectly serviceable 31 year old stripper ("I'm a bartender") with the most spectacular post-child physique and pair of DD implants I've ever seen. She's only related to me through her mother's long-ended marriage to my uncle would have provided a huge ego boost had she been mistaken as my wife, but I'm never that lucky.

Gone grievin'

My paternal grandfather died Wednesday, and his memorial service was yesterday, the reason why I blogged neither day. I'll be spending some of next week helping my grandmother with the necessary paperwork and other adjustments, so expect nothing on Monday and Tuesday at the very least - she no longer has a computer in the house.

I have a book length blog post about my grandfather's life and death written in my head that I've been working on for weeks and do not plan to ever actually type or post. The below snippets shouldn't be taken for more than what they are, some brief thoughts and narrow snapshots on an extremely complex and largely positive relationship.

Dying is politics by other means

I think we're all familiar with the use of one's will as an instrument of revenge, reward, and manipulation, but I'd never really considered that one could arrange to have his memorial service act as an unrebuttable post-mortem campaign speech in the ongoing family debate on your degree of culpability in the corruption and failure of your descendants. I already knew grandma excelled at the former, but damned if grandpa didn't pull off the latter quite well.

He'd had plenty of time to plan for the events of this week, and I know that in cooperation with my grandmother he did so in detail. I doubt he actually wrote all of the words his minister spoke at the service, but neither can I entirely discount the possibility. Certainly the invocation of the parable of the prodigal son was my grandfather's idea, as was the surprisingly lengthy digression on how he hadn't believed in tough love and why this was supposed to be a good thing.

I stopped crying long enough to roll my eyes and think a brief uncharitable thought, but then let it go by. Alas, my angry aunt and my grandmother's more than slightly tipsy best friend couldn't, and felt the need to bitch to me about it at the house afterwards. Well played, granddad, well played. You may have raised one son who killed himself, one who's stark raving mad and obsessed with your supposed plot to kill him for insurance money over 40 years ago, another who looks set to live his life out sponging from your estate as a sort of male, trailer trash version of Paris Hilton, and a truly bewildering assortment of grandchildren screwed up to one degree or another, but at least you got the last word.

I guess the minister had to cut out Sinatra's best known hymn due to time considerations.

Money can buy you love

While discussing with my grandmother last night her ongoing feud with my aunt, she remarked that one of the reasons she treats my aunt's son differently from some of her other grandchildren is that despite attending college just under an hour away he visits rather less than others farther away (ahem). Some of this can be explained by different ages and present circumstances, a little more, perhaps, by actual differences in affection, but as any good economist would suggest, I prefer to look at the incentives.

Is it an accident that those she perceives as most devoted are present or recent beneficiaries of financial support? Of course not. Even adjusting for age, is it significant that when I visited semi-frequently from 3 hours away she was paying for my undergraduate education, while my aunt's son hasn't drawn on his college fund because his mom's job gets him free tuition? Duh. I often wrestle with whether to bring this unseemly but obviously correct explanation to her attention, especially when she gushes over my thoroughly worthless but charming sponge of a cousin who she preserves from the consquences of his sloth, illegitimate children, and brushes with the law, but she's too stubborn to see the truth, and if somehow she did grasp it, would it really make her happy?

No. It's simply a happy coincidence that this silence aligns with my own incentives.

Ivory palaces

Compare:

I find it odd, too, that so many academics profess to be egalitarians, yet academia as a whole has produced one of the most radically inegalitarian societies to be seen since Louis XVI fled Versailles. Many academics of my acquaintance profess to be aghast at the "status seeking" in which their neighbours engage--and yet I have never met anyone as obsessed with collecting professional merit badges as an academic. Nor have I experienced any other organisational culture, even in hyper-competitive consulting or investment banking, in which professional success is so readily confused with personal worth.

And contrast.

The only way to win is not to play

Ladies: What Shall I Be? The Exciting Game of Career Girls

Alas, neither lawyer nor librarian, to take just a couple of examples, appear to be acceptable choices.

Sin no more

Sin City came out on DVD Tuesday. This is no great cause for joy.

I had a mild interest in seeing it when it came out in theatres, thinking it looked like an interesting idea likely to be implemented poorly, but none of my friends wanted to test the hypothesis with me at that time. It turns out I was half right. The source material wasn't terribly interesting, and Robert Rodriguez apparently chose not to add to it, instead filming each panel more or less as it was drawn and written.

Bad idea. Visually I can forgive it, but the measured, limited dialogue of a comic book graphic novel works because of the break in the panels. The reader can subconsciously assume some human-seeming transition happens between each snapshot of the action we see. That illusion is what's missing from Sin City, and it suffers for it.

So much for story telling. Was the story worth telling? Not really. The Hartigan (Bruce Willis) storyline was boring and conventional, the Dwight/Oldtown bit too corny. I'm probably quite rare, however, in loving the psychogorefest that was Marv on his quest for Goldie's killer. Now that's embracing the conventions of the "graphic novel" and unashamedly translating it to the screen.

I have a strange love for morally revolting characters thrust into the hero role, the subject of a future post, and Marv's mix of mental illness, physical near indestructibility, sadism, and heart with a small bit o' gold makes him one of the greats of all time. Mickey Rourke simply owned this character, and Elijah Wood as the mute serial killer who is almost as crazy and ten times sicker than Marv? Brilliantly weird.

Maybe poor casting is what made the rest of this movie so flat. Everyone else seemed far too wooden, too obviously playing a part, which only works for this sort of thing if you're going for camp. Rourke was that crazy bloodthirsty bastard.

See it if you really like over the top blood drenched revenge stories or you're desperate for 2 minutes of Jessica Alba screen time. For the rest, this is easily missed, and likely to be soon forgotten.

I'd like to visit there, but I just wouldn't fit in

Maybe emigration changed the population distribution?

A range of extra-large condoms has been launched in South Africa, to cater for "well-endowed" men.

"A large number of South African men are bigger and complain about condoms being uncomfortable and too small," said Durex manager Stuart Roberts.

Via Gene Expression, where the comments, as usual, verge on the surreal.

Well, they did have Hot Coffee centuries earlier

Slate investigates Islamic video games.

In order to evaluate the games' subversive appeal, Slate ordered three IslamGames titles—Maze of Destiny, Ummah Defense I, and Ummah Defense II—from a British Web site. Iran may be 10 years from the bomb, but based on these games it will be twice that long before there's an Islamic Halo 2. Or maybe radical Islam dreams not only of restoring the borders of the Caliphate, but also of freezing gaming technology at the level of the old Nintendo Entertainment System.

* * *

The fact that these games are derivative, look primitive, and aren't very fun to play doesn't mean they're not important. But they're also ideologically untroubling. In the Ummah Defense games, the "disbelievers" that must be destroyed are robots, not human soldiers. There's an outside chance that the robots are a metaphor for the Predator drones used by the United States military, but I doubt these games are going for that level of subtlety. It's more likely that the robots are a metaphor for Space Invaders.

Update: This guy needs the Gameboy version to keep him occupied on the Metro, and I'm just waiting for the LGF crowd to dominate the rankings.

Posturing and poseurs

Robin Hanson makes the interesting point that throwing tantrums is a status symbol, telling the world in effect that you can be a creep with impunity. This seems obviously correct - we call my little sister "the queen" for both her imperious demands and her worshipful followers who accept with equanimity her not infrequent abuse when they fail to meet her expectations.

The flip side of this, of course, is that there is little more pathetic than the tantrum that no one cares about. If you scream in a forest and no one cares, yes, you are uncool. Should you find yourself in such a situation, convert your "tantrum" into a more directed form of violence and/or rage. If you can't be a rock star who tears up his hotel room to show how important he is and that he can get away with it, be the asshole who does it terrorize the manager. Make it about them, not you. After all, rap sheets earn their own form of respect.

Done, done, and, finally, done

Shortly before I deleted the old blog I posted a review of sorts of the Old 97's album Fight Songs after having listening to it repeatedly on a long return trip from visiting my grandparents that was fueled by some temporary female-inspired angst. Fitz-Hume asked for future installments, and having just completed another drive home from the same starting point, I'm pleased to do the same for the serendipitously named Wreck Your Life by the same band.

I hadn't bought this one at the time of that last review, despite a past suggestion by my Old 97's muse that I would particularly enjoy the lyrics of the first song. But some unknown commentator claimed that while Fight Songs was a fine album, it was only their third best, falling behind both WYL and Too Far to Care. He was right on both counts, although I'll have to wait to address his ambitious claim that Too Far to Care is "arguably the best rock album of the last 25 years" until some later date.

Wreck Your Life is both the most and least consistent Old 97's album of the five I have. It is consistently the most country sounding offering from a group that is most often described described as "alt country (whatever that is)" but always found in the rock section of the music store. (N.B. - I hate country but still love this CD.) But despite the mostly appropriate title, a couple of cheerful and upbeat songs accidentally found their way on here, and the lyrics are all over the place. While sometimes a song with consistently off the wall or weird lyrics can create something greater than the sum of its parts, that's not what's going here. Many of the songs have a sometimes jarring mix of great and not so great lyrics.

1. Victoria

This is the story of Victoria Lee,
She started off on Percodan and ended up with me.
She lived in Berkeley 'til the earthquake shook her loose.
She lives in Texas now where nothin' ever moves.

Victoria you talk so low that no one else can hear,
Unless you point your megaphone directly at their ear.
This is the story of Victoria Lee,
She started on Rohypinol and ended up with me.

* * *

This is the story of Victoria's heart,
You might think it's stupid, but I still think it's art.
She lost her lover to an accident at sea.
She pushed him overboard and ended up with me.

Drugs and drowned lovers - awesome. The rest - cheesy. But when sung in an earnestly cheesy tone? Perfect.

2. The Other Shoe

The best killin' yer cheatin' wife song of all time, I didn't fully appreciate this one at first. I was focusing more on music, which is ok, than the full story. Big mistake. Every truly great 97's song requires a perfect understanding of the lyrics combined with the emphasis and tone of the music. So stick with the slow and lengthy setup:

One old brown shoe falls in slow motion,
And the bedsprings hover right above your head,
As bed springs do, when you're beneath them.
Someone else just climbed into your bed.

By the time she thought you'd probably got to Phoenix,
She'd arranged for your shoes to be filled.
Well you've got your pride, and a blue-steel .45,
And you're waiting for the other shoe to fall.

And then you can better appreciate the suddenly more melancholy then intense shift of the aftermath:

You'll dig a double grave out in the meadow,
And you'll curse the rain that turns the dirt to mud.
You'll take I-35 south towards Laredo,
Then you'll try to find a doctor who can prescribe an elixir
That'll make everything better, except your late wife and her lover.

By the time she thought you'd probably got to Phoenix,
She'd sealed her fate and gotten herself killed.
Well you've got your pride, and a blue-steel '45,
And you're waiting for the other shoe to fall.

This blog in no way supports killing unfaithful spouses, but highly recommends good songs about it.

3. Doreen

I hate the name "Doreen," this song sounds a little too conventionally country for me, and I can't identify with the guy's concern about what sounds like a scandalously young liason, but it's not a bad song.

Doreen, Doreen, Last night I had an awful dream.
You were laying in the arms of a man I'd never seen.
Come clean Doreen. Come clean Doreen.

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Whoa, sorry, I blacked out and did a face plant on my keyboard for some reason. And I broke the delete key. I'll just have to type carefully from here on.

I'm calling you Doreen,
But it rings and rings and rings.
Where is it that you are, if you aren't in our bed at home.

4. You Belong to My Heart

You belong to my heart
Now and forever
And our love had its start
Not long ago

We were gathering stars
While a million guitars
Played our love song

When I said I love you
Every beat of my heart
Said it too

"Twas a moment like this
Do you remember
And your eyes threw a kiss
When they met mine

Now we 're still gathering stars
And a million guitars
Are still playing

Darling, you are the song
And you'll always belong
To my heart

This is one of those inexplicably happy songs. It's solid, if you like that sort of thing, and reminds me of nothing so much as the kinds of songs they played at my summer camp's outdoor dances, the ones that I particularly associate with Michelle, the tall, stacked, scorchingly hot blondehghtgjknm hyu88yg

OUCH, my forehead! Anyway, the hot counselor I tried to dance with all night, with more success than I deserved. The fact that her mom was my (at that time long-lost) godmother probably didn't hurt, and no, that does not make it creepy, any more than my keeping our big group camp photo under my pillow for the rest of the summer so I could pull it out and stare lovingly at her six or so pixels was creepy. Ah, thirteen.

She'd be about 35 now, and I recently heard she's still single, apallingly sexy, and working as a parole officer of all things. I need to go shoplift something, now.

5. Big Brown Eyes

This is a potentially awesome song poorly performed here in a flat, emotionless tone, a fact the band apparently recognized, because they rerecorded it on Too Far to Care with ten times the energy and twice the pathos.

Well a box of red, and a pill or three,
And I'm calling time and temperature just for some company.
I wish you were here. I wish I was too.
I'll drink myself to sleeplessness, just like I always do.

Precisely the reason (well, a reason (ok, and not really a big one)) I've never cared to keep alcohol around the house.

If that phone don't ring one more time,
I'm gonna lose what's left of my mind.
You made a big impression for a girl of your size,
Now I can't get by without you and your big brown eyes.

Oh, song, where were you in high school when I needed you? You have no relevance to my life at all now.

I've got issues, yeah.
Like I miss you, yeah.
And I wish I weren't so thick.
I'm making myself sick.

bnjkklhjghjyj

I think I'll wear a helmet.

6. Dressing Room Walls

The most depressing of them all, and naturally one of my favorites.

I might have wound up in L.A. panning for gold
Found me a woman to warm up with when the water got cold
But I heard that there ain't no gold there
There's just line upon line of cocaine
I've been there once and I ain't gonna go there again

Better! After visiting Disneyland as a child, incidentally, L.A. was always one of the two cities I swore to raze if ever given the opporunity and means. I live in the second. Nothing is forgiven! Sorry, neighbors.

Anyway, what really makes this song work is the suspicion he's really been there before, and maybe more than once.

I stopped believing in true love when Reagan was king
The years have gone by now and the years haven't changed anything
Trying like hell to get better
But I'm gearing myself for the worst
The punk rock will get you if the government don't get you first

I'm gonna write down my name in the lady's room stall
Find me a pay phone and place a few calls
I'm gonna try not to fall down when I'm singing for y'all
I'm gonna die someday staring at the dressing room walls
I'm gonna die someday staring at the dressing room walls

My advice is to not let us boys in
For we chose misery as our rock
Misery must love all the new friends that she's got

Not all of us, damn you.

7. W-I-F-E

I never thought I could love a song quite this "country," but it almost makes me want to go out, get married, and cheat just so I can feel like this.

I've got my wife, the other women, and the whiskey killing me.
The first two make it so that I see red, the third one makes it so that I can't see.
If I had half a brain left after my debauchery,
I'd give up the other women, and the W-I-F-E.

It's just like my little sister (dear old momma) told me,
In the end, you reap what you sow.
I've been sowing seeds from Mexico to Tennessee,
And I'm reaping now an awful lot of woe.

Yes, "debauchery" and "W-I-F-E" may be the most obvious rhyme ever, but what are you going to do? They can't all be clever.

8. Bel Air

Ah, what a glorious trainwreck. Many parts of it sound awesome and couldn't possibly be sung any better or pack more into fewer words:

Well I like the way you walk,
That's why I left my door unlocked.
I must be going off half-cocked. (I sometimes do.)

Then they stumble with something like this:

You poured whiskey in my Slurpee, swear to God you got me drunk,
Now I'm thinking that I'm sunk.
(And I can't swim.)

We'll pretend you didn't just say that. What this song is really missing that virtually every other 97's song has is a solid refrain to tie it together. Instead, we get one measly line repeated, and it's an awful one.

(I'll stomp a mud hole in your heart.)

I've taken a page from my mother and learned to love it despite its flaws after over twenty years weeks of initial disappointment.

9. My Sweet Blue-Eyed Darlin'

The second happy song, it's short and sweet. Light, ok, but ultimately forgettable fluff.

You're my sweet blue-eyed darling
And my love belongs to you
All I ask (all I ask) of you my darling (my darling)
Is love me good (is love me good) and be true

Days come and go and I still love you
And I see your smiling face
Just tell me love, that you need me
And no one's gonna take my place

And today I need an answer
And I want to hear you say
You don't belong to another
And in my arms you're gonna to stay

Well, the bad news is I just broke my keyboard. The good news is the new one has a delete key. The better news is I think I might be getting over this curious illness.

10. Old Familiar Steam

Hmmm. This is a great story, getting aboard the train to nowhere, but sung in far too slow and mournful a tone for my tastes. I have a hard time following it as sung.

By the time you leave
I'll be saving all my green
For a homebound train to carry me
On old familiar steam.

I wish you'd hurry up,
And leave or come around.
Well the moon is waning hard tonight.
I'm leaving my home town.

And the train rolls on with no pilot.
And the station's left me I know.
But if you should happen to find it,
Please bring it home, bring it home.

I traded all my stops
For a pillow made of rails.
In an empty room I listen to
The lonely whistle wails.

I always stick it out for the end, though, which finally gets a bit of oomph:

And the point of all this living,
Is the dying still to come.
And I could be forgiven,
But I just won't, I just won't.

Me, either. And don't miss:

(Cool Don Walser yodel & fade out)

Uh, is that actually written on the sheet music? Well, it is on the song, and well it should be.

11. Over The Cliff

I have no idea what's going on with this song, and never got much pleasure from my futile attempts to figure it out. There's some f-bombs, and their agent apparently required this disclaimer to be sung:

Well in New York and L.A. they're sending faxes
So the company can wash its hands of this
Yeah there was no one there to look after me or care
Well I'm going over the cliff

I'll say.

12. Going, going, gone

Now that I think of it, the penultimate song on an Old 97's album is usually a strong contender for being the worst, but you forget about it because of the strong finish. It's no different here. After you've shot her, cheated on her, taken a train to nowhere to get away from her, and had her drive you crazy five different ways, it's finally time to grow up, wash your hands of it all, say goodbye, and get on with your life. At last.

Gettin' out of the house.
I’m gonna go for a ride,
‘Cause I got me a five-o Ford
and the good Lord knows I tried
to make friends with you
and ev’rything went wrong.
Yeah, I’m goin'I’m goin' I’m goin' I’m goin' I’m gone.

Goin' down to the tracks.
I’m gonna hide out for a while.
Gonna have me some ranch-style beans
From a tin can hobo-style,
Forget your face,
If that can be done.
Yeah, I’m goin' I’m goin' I’m goin' I’m goin' I’m gone.

And you’ll find you a boyfriend
And he won’t like my cat.
And you’ll try to
Pretend that you don’t want me back.
Right now I’m leavin'. So you’d better say, “So long."
Yeah, I’m goin' I’m goin' I’m goin' I’m goin' I’m gone.

Gonna find me a boat
And a brand new name.
I’m gonna find some wall-eyed,
Weak-kneed European dame.
She’ll be my wife
And you’ll only be a song.
Yeah, I’m goin' I’m goin' I’m goin' I’m goin' I’m gone.

Whew, that blacking out thing really does seem to have finally passed. And so, after this lengthy slog and the recurrent pain in my head, it's time for me to be goin'. There's a brown-eyed weak-kneed dame I met this weekend who's expecting a call...and me without any wine or pills. Figures.

Kept almost out of view

Those concerned about leaving incriminating items in the Google cache or Internet archive, a number far smaller than it should be, may find Google's instructions on removing such things from their own database useful. Of particular interest is the tag to prevent archiving in the first place. Just copy and paste the following line into your template below your <HEAD> tag:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">

Prevention is always better than cure.

Well if I ever gave you any thought, I probably would

I don't really understand the DVD craze. I own a couple of dozen of them, mostly "serious" titles, but I hardly ever watch any. Indeed, in the five years since I bought it, I've managed to never watch Casablanca, my first, until this evening.

My sense of timing is either brilliant or horrible, depending on which end of the continuum you care to observe. There will never be more perfect night for watching it and identifying with Rick (there damn well better not be) but my perfect sense of bitter, poignant angst is somewhat ruined by my realization of the awful waste of the time value of money involved here. Note to self: don't buy Final Exit unless you actually need it right that moment.

You've got your pride, and a blue steel .45

Matthew Yglesias wonders why cheating in the military is punished so harshly, and for perhaps the first time many some of his comments repond with a modicum of sense.

Yes, it's pretty clearly the case that no one wants to serve with someone willing to cheating on their spouse or seduce someone elses. Infidelity on deployments is reportedly not a minor problem. It's also somewhat problematic to know that a general is willing to violate a solemn oath with attached legal consequences that he swore before witnesses to uphold. And, of course, it's never a problem when someone given a security clearance proves potentially vulnerable to sexual blackmail.

Three out of four ain't bad

Songs about me, the first in an occasional series:

I got a four leaf clover.
It ain't done one single lick of good.
I'm still a drunk and I'm still a loser.
I'm living in a lousy neighborhood.

I got a real live horseshoe,
And I hung it upside-down above my door.
But it don't do nothing to attract you,
So I don't know what the hell it's for.

Why don't you come over? I'll show you my four leaf clover.
Who'm I trying to kid? I'm not the kind of guy you'd go for.
I got a four leaf clover, but I ain't got no hope of getting you.

I got a lucky silver dollar.
My granddaddy gave it to me now he's dead.
At times like this I wish that I cound join him,
It might just stop this pounding in my head.

Why don't you come over? I'll show you my four leaf clover.
Who'm I trying to kid? I'm not the kind of guy you'd go for.
I got a four leaf clover, but I ain't got no hope of getting you.
I ain't got no hope of getting you.

Blogging at this newly created blog will already be light, as I'm headed out of town to pay a visit to my very ill paternal grandfather, who isn't quite dead yet, en route to a family reunion on the other side of the family, where I plan to get very sunburned, very drunk, and do my best not to think about a girl who doesn't want to think about me.

Actual content should begin early next week.

If they ask how I died, tell them: Still angry.

The Blog

Still Angry is dedicated, in no particular order, to the following goals:

1. The discussion of legal, economic, political, and cultural issues.

2. Hopefully infrequent yet embarrassingly detailed and amusing digressions into the author's sometimes rather twisted, bizarre personal life.

3. Post titles based on (a) Old 97's lyrics, (b) lines from obscure science fiction novels, or (c) if absolutely necessary, popular culture references.

4. Monica Bellucci.

5. No cat blogging.

The Author

Aggie, law school graduate, Army Officer Candidate School graduate, field artillery officer currently attending post-commissioning training at Fort Sill.

The Title

Fulfilling goal 3(b), the title of this introductory post and the blog as a whole come from one of the many quotable lines of a fictional revolutionary leader in Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon. I thought I'd test drive it before requesting it as an epitaph.

(Last updated - September 7, 2007.)