(Via Joshuah Bearman)
you: curly haired, right wing zealot. me: cute, defenseless liberal…
i saw you when i whipped out my anti-Bush banners on the floor of the RNC last week and tried an impromptu bit of protesting. you restrained me, and then you started kicking me on the floor…i mean, yeah, it hurt a bit, and my ribcage is sort of fucked up now, and that’s why it’s taken me so long to post this missed connection, after my being in jail and then the hospital and then recuperating at my parents for a few days, but i think we shared a special moment, all circumstances aside. i keep thinking how clever it was of you to wear that green “monster” shirt while you hovered over me. i like that cleverness, and i liked your loafers. very casual, very firm.
if you’re interested…wanna get some coffee some time?
this is in or around Midtown
it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Month: September 2004
Last week, in a heated interview with Chris Matthews on Hardball, Senator Zell Miller told Matthews, “I wish we lived in the day where you could challenge a person to a duel.”
This week, Miller has challenged Hurricane Ivan to a duel somewhere off the coast of Jamaica to “protect the homeland” from high winds and potentially disastrous flooding.
And in a related note, Miller is expected to introduce legislation to make dueling legal. The ghost of Alexander Hamilton is expected to filibuster. But the ghost of former Republican (now the Democratic party) turned Federalist (the elitist party of the early 19th century) Aaron Burr is expected to pop a cap in Hamilton’s ass. Again.
Yes, we’re reusing this picture. How could we not?
And now, the easiest spec script sale in the history of man (from Done Deal):
Title: Untitled Addario-Syracuse Pitch
Log line: Two intensely competitive rivals on the women’s beach volleyball tour must learn to combine their vastly different playing styles to win back their honor.
Writer: Lisa Addario and Joey Syracuse
Agent: Sandra Lucchesi of The Gersh Agency
Buyer: Paramount Pictures
Price: Mid-six figures
Genre: Sports Drama
Logged: 9/9/04
More: Pitch. Preemptive buy. Vincent Newman Entertainment will produce.
No title, stars, or director? I know I’ve bought my ticket already!
Categories
Adjust the ‘Ph’ Balance, please
Hell just got a little bit more crowded, according to today’s New York Times.
Richard G. Butler, founder of Aryan Nations, died at age 86. (Not to be mistaken with Richard Butler, the former UNSCOM chairman who warned us about Saddam’s phantom W.M.D.’s.)
According to the Times‘s Daniel Wakin (Richard G. Butler, 86, Founder of the Aryan Nations, Dies), Butler, who had congestive heart failture, died in his sleep in Hayden, Idaho. No word on how much drawn-out, agonizing pain the old man endured or his karmic fate as a furrier’s mink in his next life.
The reason I point towards this piece is to address one of my biggest pet peeves: the misspelling of Adolf Hilter’s Hitler’s [Thanks, Matt!] name. According to Wakin, Butler, “lived out his final years in a house adorned with crosses, relics and books about Adolph Hitler and Holocaust denial.”
Sure, we all make mistakes, but this is one that seems to occur so often in publications it’s like a strange, unshakable tick. One possible excuse may be Microsoft Word’s spell-check preference for “Adolph” over “Adolf”: Can anyone explain that?
When “Adolph Hitler” appears on the web or squeaks through at an alt-weekly, you can almost overlook it, but because of its status as “the paper of record” a mistake like this in the Times makes it almost canonical, especially for copy editors who’ll frantically Nexis/Lexis the spelling during hellish, late night closes for their jobs and make the same error. So, hypothetical, overworked copy editors: use The New Yorker, and ignore MS Word, okay?
So, once and for all: It’s Adolf Hitler. ‘F’ ‘im—please.
From “U.S. Planes Hit Rebel Stronghold in Falluja; 6 Reported Killed”, the New York Times, September 8, 2004 (emphasis mine):
“There are no negotiations,” said Col. Robert B. Abrams, the commander of the First Brigade of the First Cavalry Division. “Sadr needs to disband and disarm, and then we can talk.”
“If they don’t disarm,” Colonel Abrams said of the Mahdi Army, “we will be back at this every month, forever.”
UNRELATED: Colonel Abrams, the MCA recording artist who released a small handful of top-ten singles in the mid-1980s, including “Trapped”, whose chorus is reproduced below:
Can’t you see I’m so confused? / I can’t get out / You see I’m trapped
Like a fool I’m in a cage. / I can’t get out / You see I’m trapped
Congratulations are in order to the United States military for finally crossing that all-important milestone the press has apparently been all-too-eagerly awaiting: 1,000 military personnel killed in Iraq! Judging by the likeminded headlines devoted to this phenomenon, it’s unclear which milestone was more excitedly anticipated, the one measuring the American military death toll or San Francisco Giants’ slugger Barry Bonds’ attempt to reach 700 career home runs. (Good luck, Barry, natch! We hear that one PFC Larry Gutierrez from Alameda is pulling for you from his base in Najaf.)
While cynics may charge that the idea of hyping or heavily reporting our nation’s having reached a four-figure death toll pertaining to the invasion of Iraq cheapens the equally tragic deaths of, say, numbers 997, 998, and 999, Americans can rest assured that the president is equally supportive of each and every death, or more significantly, what those deaths “represent” or “stand for.” In this vein, President Bush, noted disciple of Clement Greenberg that he is, warmly embraces symbolism by way of his henchmen. To wit, from the New York Times:
Mr. Bush never mentioned the figure on a bus tour across Missouri. But at the very moment he was criticizing Mr. Kerry as having flip-flopped on Iraq, his press secretary, Scott McClellan, told reporters that the 1,000 men and women had died “so that we defeat the ideologies of hatred and tyranny.”
For what its worth, we’re guessing that the more than 11,000 Iraqi civilians who have died in this same time period as a result of the invasion also gave their lives for such grandiose, abstract notions as “statehood” and “better prisons” and “a capital-punishment-free nation”.
Teresa Heinz Kerry, New York Observer, Sept. 9, 2004… Hillary Rodham Clinton, SPY, Feb. 1993
From “Study: Traffic costs billions of hours a year”, CNN.com, September 7, 2004, which examines the general trend of increasing traffic congestion in the nation’s largest urban areas, but which contains the following caveat:
Traffic in some cities has actually gotten better — but that’s because their economies have done poorly.
“In a lot of the places in the past we’ve seen success in cities suffering job declines — Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Cleveland,” Pisarski said. “Unemployment is a great solution.”
(With thanks to Jeff.)
Categories
Truly, There’s a New World Coming
From, There’s A New World Coming [via: Filthy Hippy Speak]
“Generations will know if we kept our faith and kept our word. Generations will know if we seized this moment, and used it to build a future of safety and peace.”
— George Bush, Convention Speech, Sept. 2, 2004
“For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.”
— 1 Thessalonians 5:2,3; KJV)
[A special thanks to Javier]