I’m in Gainesville, Florida this week, “helping” my husband give some
lectures here. This is the northern, chilly, inland part of Florida
rather than the sunny, beachy, Margarita part.
Even so, it’s lovely in its own way–loblolly pines, palmetto, Spanish
moss. Even more lovely to me, because I remember my dad’s pleasure in
these exotic words long ago, on a family car trip (never repeated) to
Florida.
The university has about 50,000 students. That’s a college bigger than
the town I grew up in. It stretches over acres and acres of ground,
with a lot of agricultural and veterinary specialties–including a race
horse clinic. There are multiple lakes and ponds on campus, most of
them full of egrets and alligators.
worship (the campus team and mascot) is intense. In the small
downtown area, half the stores are named Gator-Something. Most have
Gator shirts or stickers for sale.
On the two hour drive south from Jacksonville’s airport, we drove
through what I think of as traditional southland. Nascar races in
Daytona had just let out, and everyone at the Waffle House was just
thrilled.
“That was so amazing, what happened with Number Four,” said the
waitress who took our order. “And I guess I don’t have to tell you who
Number Four is.” I tried to look friendly and knowledgeable, eating my
grits and wondering if I was supposed to add salt or sugar, and if a
fork or a spoon was the right utensil.
The highways south were speckled with little churches. Some typical signs
on roadside businesses: “God bless our
soldiers.” “God bless the USA.” “God bless you.”
I don’t understand this public concept of God, though I do understand
that it doesn’t seem strange to somebody who grew up with it. And I
might once have had a cynical sense that the signs’ secret message was
“Agnostic Yankee, go home!” But the Waffle House waitresses were so
darn nice, I’m rethinking that.
weblog every single day.
So aside from the fact that Adam writes a pretty darn good weblog–he’s Feedster’s Feed of the Day to inspire the rest of us to sit ourselves down and…
Write something!
Every.
Day.
Tags: Metablogging
February 12th, 2004 · 4 Comments
The CIA has a new “Iraqi Rewards Program” offering cash to those with useful information.
Check out the list, and then read it again to notice the useful information they don’t want.
What they do want, and will pay for: “Iraqis who are
able and willing to provide detailed information on Iraq’s WMD programs and efforts to hide them. ”
What they don’t want, or at least aren’t willing to pay for:
- Iraqis who are
able and willing to provide detailed evidence that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
- Iraqis who are
able and willing to provide detailed evidence about people who worked to exaggerate the importance of the Iraqi WMDs
No word on what fraction of rewards for WMD testimony will be paid for by the Committee to Re-Elect George W. Bush.
*****
From the CIA Inbox
Dear CIA, Yes! I’ll confess! Iraq had a huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction including 17 H-bombs. Why can’t you find any? They were, uh, airlifted to North Korea by FedEx.
Please disregard my previous letter saying that the weapons were loaded into a flying saucer by Jane Fonda dressed up as Barbarella. Note that my new story has one more H-bomb than the previous one. Could I have my money in small bills please?
Tags: Invisible primary
February 12th, 2004 · Comments Off on Central “Intelligence” on WMD
|
If you have information
relating to Iraq which you believe might be of interest to the U.S.
Government, please contact us through our secure
online form. We will carefully protect all information you provide,
including your identity.
To help us confirm
and act quickly on your information, you must provide your full name,
nationality, occupation and contact information including phone number.
This allows the U. S. Government to grant rewards for valuable information.
We will maintain strict confidentiality.
Imminent attacks:
If you have information regarding an imminent attack by insurgents or
terrorists we ask that you also contact a Coalition Force member or
Iraqi police immediately.
Weapons of
mass destruction: The presence of weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq puts at risk the health and safety of all Iraqis. The U.S. Government
offers rewards to Iraqis who give specific and verifiable information
that helps Iraqis rid their country of these dangerous materials and
devices. Rewards will be available for specific and verifiable information
on:
- The location
of stocks of recently made chemical or biological weapons munitions,
missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, or their component parts;
- The location
of chemical or biological laboratories and factories, development
and production sites, and test sites associated with WMD, or sites
where these materials were secretly disposed of;
- Weapons system
plans, military orders, or other relevant documents about biological
and chemical weapons, missiles, or unmanned aerial vehicles;
- Iraqis who are
able and willing to provide detailed information on Iraq’s WMD programs
and efforts to hide them.
Ba’thist leaders:
U.S. Government Rewards are available for the following information
on former Ba’thist regime leaders, including 10 million U.S. dollars
for information leading to the capture of former Revolutionary Command
Council Chairman `Izzat Ibrahim Al-Duri:
- The current location
and activities of these individuals;
- Who these individuals
are meeting with and their future plans.
Insurgency
and terrorism: Insurgents loyal to the former regime, and terrorists
are trying to undermine Iraq’s future. Rewards are available for specific
and verifiable information that helps in their capture or otherwise
to deprive them of sanctuary and support, such as information on:
- Al-Qa’ida, Ansar
Al-Islam, Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi and affiliates in Iraq;
- Individuals or
groups obtaining explosives and other weapons to use against Coalition
forces, Iraqi police, Iraqi Civil Defense Corps members, schools,
businesses, or civilians;
- Individuals or
groups providing insurgents and terrorists with safe houses, training,
logistics support;
- Individuals or
groups involved in, or knowledgeable about, terrorist smuggling routes
into Iraq;
- Individuals or
groups recruiting, facilitating, fundraising, and otherwise supporting
terrorism in Iraq;
- Facilitators
providing documents that assist terrorists’ travel to Iraq;
- Travel agencies,
NGOs, and front companies involved in facilitating terrorists’ travel
to Iraq.
Missing Coalition
personnel: Rewards are available for information on missing
Coalition service personnel, as well as Gulf War officer, U.S. naval
aviator Michael Speicher.
|
Tags: Stories
February 11th, 2004 · Comments Off on Joe says–it ain’t so.
Big media has been happily bashing both sides of the Dean-Trippi divide.
Sure, Howard Dean lost a string of primaries–but Dean must be a villain to replace Joe Trippi as his campaign director.
Sure, Trippi turned Dean’s campaign from a footnote into a frontpage story–but he must be a villain because his company got paid millions to place Dean’s ads.
Funny how Trippi’s alleged greed never makes Dean less of a villain for replacing him. Funny how Dean’s alleged ingratitude never makes Trippi less of a villain for getting paid for the work he did.
One side of the story, at last, speaks up for himself.
Joe Trippi just got his own blog, Change for America”.
In today’s post he tells the story big media doesn’t want you to hear.
I recently inquired about the contract and my compensation. It turns out it was a 7% contract. Meaning that if $7 million in TV was bought 93% went to TV stations to buy the time and 7% or $490,000 was paid to the firm in which I was a partner. My firm has 3 partners so my third or share comes to approximately $165,000. I will let the grassroots and donors of the campaign decide if that was too much compensation. $165,000 is a lot of money, but it is not the $7 million the media and those leveling the attacks want you to believe either….
My partner Steve McMahon had handled Governor Dean’s media for over 12 years. And Trippi McMahon & Squier were hired as the media firm long before I volunteered to run the campaign when not many would. This is important — because this fact means that as a 1/3 partner in my firm — I would have made the $165,000 in 2003 if I had gone golfing in Fiji for the entire year instead of going sleepless in Burlington….
I do not talk about the Dean campaign in the past tense. Because I still think Howard Dean can turn the race around. I have said it as loud as I can — that I am out of the campaign, but I am not out of the fight.
Thanks, Joe. We’re glad you’re still in the fight with the rest of us.
Tags: Invisible primary
February 11th, 2004 · Comments Off on The anti-Janet-Jackson picture
Note: This funny photo is all over the web with no attribution, but absolute props to whoever came up with it!
Tags: Learn to write funny
February 9th, 2004 · 1 Comment
Linkage!
- Movie clichés
- For example, “All beds have a special L-shaped top sheet, which reaches up to armpit level on women but only to waist level on men.”
- New Tasmanian photojournal I heard about from Frank Paynter
- “You know the bluebells in Hagley Park? My father planted them,” says the author.
- New issue of David Langford’s Ansible
- Sci fi fandom–I love Thog’s Masterclass, whose examples of bad writing this month featured “perambulating buttocks.”
- Beer, as you’ve never seen it before.
- Beautiful microphotographs of beer–for example, the photo above is a slice of Molson Light.
- Want even more linkage?
- I just got finished my Monday writeup of a week in review for Feedster’s Feed of the Day.
Enjoy!
Tags: Life, the universe, and everything
February 8th, 2004 · 1 Comment
Classic image–the hero stands alone, facing a battle that everybody expects he’ll lose.
Those who were once his friends are filled with doubt. The forces of evil–for example,
big moneyed media–have done all they can to make sure the hero goes down.
If you read my blog, you can guess who the hero is–Howard Dean, a feisty Democrat from Vermont.
From my point of view, Howard Dean has already won. He has turned the Democratic primaries from a banal centrist teaparty into a spirited critique of George W. Bush. Candidates like Kerry and Edwards who once were politely suggesting that Bush might have gone just a teeny bit too far got pushed by Howard to point out that Bush’s presidency has been a major disaster to our economy, our children, and our friendships abroad.
I’m still hoping that Wisconsin will bust the conventional wisdom–that the enthusiasm and heart of Dean’s young supporters will carry his message to the Wisconsin voters.
Because, in the end, it’s not the enthusiasts like me who get to make the choice. It’s the actual voters, voting one by one.
If this were a Terry Pratchett novel, I know Howard Dean would win. Good luck, Howard. My heart goes with you.
Tags: Invisible primary
February 7th, 2004 · 2 Comments
Ayers Rock with guitar and pandas–these are the ingredients for another wild Flash animation from RatherGood.com, the team who also gave us Gay Bar kittens.
Email has started trickling up from down under, where Mickey is enjoying green Tasmania before heading north to the wide Australian mainland. I was eager to post some of her wild wildlife stories (platypus ponds!) Then I realized–she might want to blog them herself when she gets back.
Email! I love it!
Where was email in 1973? The day after our wedding, Frank left for a three-week summer school in Sicily–and the first paleblue air letter didn’t arrive until he’d been gone a whole week.
Let me spell that out for you:
a
*WHOLE*
WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!!!
But I still have all Frank’s low-tech letters, thirty years later. Meanwhile, our high-tech early memories, Super8 film of Mickey learning to walk and talk, have been declared obsolete over and over again. First, we were supposed to get them converted to VHS tape. Then, we were supposed to get the VHS converted to DVDs. Now HDTV is in the offing and who knows what the next format will be.
Email. I love it not least because I can print it out and then it is *mine*.
Tags: Pilgrimages
February 6th, 2004 · 3 Comments
…and in my nightmare, I am back in grade school.
And one of my friends has embarassed the heck out of me–by saying stuff about me he meant as a compliment. And another friend is making little public jokes about us both. And then–
And then I wake up.
It’s morning, and I’m not in pre-teen hell and you can’t send me back there.
I have, as the New England saying goes, “better fish to fry.”
And how I wish I had known that years ago.
Tags: Metablogging
