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Monday, January 31, 2011
Well.. he isn't blond and his name isn't Cade, Aikmen or Harman - but I love him anyway
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Say It Ain't So
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It is a sad day in black rock (actually it was a sad sad week-end). It was only a few (5) years old - but it was well loved and lived a full life. Even in passing it saved money - since I had one I got about 50% of the brand new super-sized one.
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The new one shipped today. Black arm bands are being worn until it arrives.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Events Conspire In The Mid-East
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1. Revolutions in the street are happening in Egypt and Yemen - after the Tunisia Revolution. This is critical to us in the states because a stable Egypt is what we have long based our foreign policy on in the region.
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1.a If Egypt goes more populist, the piece treaty with Israel could be repealed. The majority of factions vie'ing for power in Egypt rail against Israel with the same intensity that Rush Limbaugh rails against Democrats. If anyone takes power they could either attack Israel (unlikely) or open arms pathways to the Gaza Strip (hugely likely). (a more Democratic Mid-East - careful what you wish for)
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1.b Yemen is the current hotbed of Al Quada. We have responded by bombing the countryside - with the support of their government. If the government is overthrow, we will have a government that is hostile to us AND has easy access to Saudi cash.
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2. Hezbollah has taken over Lebanon this week. After driving Syria out, the United States and Israel -rather stupidly - decided to break Hezbollah in Lebanon, rather than deal with it (Hezbollah in Lebanon even sent a representative to talk to us under Bush). But America cold-shouldered the group and Israel attacked them. Both of us - a little to cocky. Israel got sent home in shame and Hezbollah took the US snub and returned back to their traditional allies of Syria and Iran. Well as of this week they are in charge in Lebanon - and not afraid of Israel.
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3. The Palestinian Authority on the West Bank is in fuck-all trouble for agreeing to Israeli demands to keep much of Eastern Jerusalem. Two weeks ago, Al Jezera (the "free press" of which we in America always tell people to adopt) has reveled that during negotiations a few years ago, the Palestinians agreed to hand over much of East Jerusalem to Israel in a land swap. This has pissed off the Palestinians for 2 reasons. Less important - but more as a campaign issue - Palestinians have always said they want all East Jerusalem back. It is an empty by effective promise (think Republicans and a Balanced Budget). MORE IMPORTANT - Israel said no. We always hear from Israel that they offered Yassar Arafat 99% of what he wanted and he said no. This "proved" to Israel that Arafat wasn't negotiating in good faith. Well, since then the Palestinians offered Jerusalem and their current settlements to Israel for a land swap they agreed to before. Israel's dismissal of this "proves" to the street that Israel isn't negotiating in good faith.
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The Palestinians that want peace now have no partner to talk to, and very little leverage in the government.
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4. Israel has the most hard-line government in recent history. Their Foreign Minister has dismissed talk of a 2 state solutions, his party is pushing to make Arabs Israeli's non-citizens (he wants not as Israeli state, but a Jewish Only Israel state).
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Add to this Iran that would love to stir up any trouble to get the mid-east focus off them.
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Events Conspire.
Just a thought
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Okay: An Admission
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And leave, happy, my iPod my own little sound track, through white streets that weren't ploughed yet and devoide of cars and yes. .. okay yes... it was.
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it was...
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pretty.
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There I admit it. Happy now!
Snow Details
Definition of a "Unknown Unknown"
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Look at the Middle East now. At the beginning of the year there were things we didn't know (and still don't) were, Will Iran Get a Bomb? Will Isreal Attack Iran Before It Gets a Bomb? Will Iraq now allign with Iran? these were unknown, but we knew they were out there.
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But there were things we didn't know that we didn't know. For example, we had no idea we didn't know was Will a lone demonstrator and Twitter cause enough turmoil in Tunisia to Bring Down the Government? Will This New Street Power Bring Down Egypt, Jordon or Algeria? What does an Egypt run by The Muslim Brotherhood mean for peace in the region? These are things that were also unknown, but we didn't even know they were out there.
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The world is a complex place.
Roof Next Door
Musty versus Musky
Morning Snow
So it schnowed last night. This morning the sidewalks were totally snowy and Trevor was hard pressed to pee (don't even pretend like he could poop in this stuff).
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This was the scene outside this morning on 42nd Street. Luckily I only have a few buildings to go before I get to the Port Authority and then Times Square. All of those are cleared regularly - so actually not to much trudging for me.
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Eddie has the real schelp across Times Square and then another 1/2 mile to 30 Rock.
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Anyway - it wasn't horrible. Just gungy.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
You know how some people..How when it comes to presents you never know what to get them - they always say "I don't want anything"
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You know how some people..how when it comes to presents you never know what to get them - they always say "I don't want anything"
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I am not one of those people.
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I like this a lot! (via restoration hardware of all people)
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Is the "Education" problem really a "Poverty" problem?
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Michelle, Michelle, Michelle - My Little Magpie
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Yet again she schelps out another lie that has been debunked, this time (in the State of the Union Rebuttal) she talked about 16,500 new IRS agents. (Last time it was the $200,000,000 a day trip to India - a huge ass debunked falsehood).
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Actually LIE is a little harsh. I think she is like a magpie, she sees a nice shiney trashy comment and has to repeat. In this case embellish. She is not only repeated this flasehood - but railed against it as it already happened.
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Here is the deunked link.
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(continued at the site).
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Less An Abberation Than a Movement Based on Lies
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But now, it appears that it is a full blown Tea Party Meme (and lie) to rewrite history. Our founding fathers were intelligent men, in many ways years ahead of their time. Unfortunately, on the subject of slavery, this isn't true. Despite the lies of Michele Bachmann to the contrary.
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Sarcasm 101
And Now No More Taco Bell
Ha Ha: Joke's On Me.
Well, well, fucking well.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Loving Lavin
SIX - Scooter is not amused
That's Fahrenheit too. It is -14.4 C.
And, if you can see the face, it is 6F now, with a projected high of 18 and a projected low of 15. Time to update the projected low dummies!
Also of note, Trevor is a lot less tra-la-la smelling when it is 6 degrees. Walk briskly, pee, walk briskly, pee, walk briskly, poop, go home with one last stop at the trash can to empty what remains. It would be great if it wasn't so freaking cold.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Bow Wow
Friday, January 21, 2011
Holy Moly!!!
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Angels in America 20 years on…
Let me explain. In 1992, everyone who had AIDS died. Everyone did or would. In the 18 months after I saw Angels in America I probably went to 10 funerals – including my lover’s. And I skipped dozens of others. So the anger, the pain, the invisibility was terrifyingly real (hard to imagine now that there was a time thousands of dead gay people were invisible – but we were. Now we are everywhere, mainly as a result of watching so many thousands die).
Angels in America screamed out that we will fight death. We will not go quietly (like we ever could). Pryor Walter is still alive 5 years later in the play – which seemed more like wish fulfilment than reality.
So how is it possible to see if through last century’s eyes? It is like watching yet another play about the Potato Famine or the Holocaust. Those wereterrible, sad phases of history. But it is history. Thank God. And now the constant brooding specter of death hanging over AIDS in particular and gays in general is history. Thank God!
Now... on a pure “how was the play” level, it was amazing. The Mark Taper show was played on a nearly empty stage – which was confusing, but made it more ethereal. Today's show handles the huge number of scenes and sets amazingly well with grace and seamlessly. They do it by having 2 main sets that revolve (but people pushing them) that handle the 5 major sites. The other scenes occur in between the 2 sets or on the proscenium – it sounds confusing but it isn’t. And where separate characters come together in a delusional space (either you know what I mean or you don’t – but trust me) the cross out of these sets wonderfully.
As for people – baby Zachery Quinto rocked! Rocked! He plays Louis and makes an unsympathetic character hold your attention. Christian Boryle as Pryor was really good, but the original, Stephen Spinella, had the role essentially written for him – it is hard to get him out of your mind.
Finally, I didn’t like this Roy Cohen. I saw Ron Liebman in the role in LA. He won the Tony for it in New York. He FUCKING WAS ROY COHEN, YOU ASSHOLE, AND DON’T FORGET IT! Honey, can you connect me to the 202555 1239. Girlie – come on here, I can’t get an outside line. FUCK TALKING TO THE DOCTOR IF YOU DON’T DO IT RIGHT THIS MINUTE I AM GOING TO STRANGLE MYSELF WITH THE IV. DO YOU WANT THAT? THE DOCTOR WILL FIND ME DEAD. Ok, thank you. No, don't ring back call. NOW NOW!! See, that wasn’t so hard, Thank you.Yes that is Ron Leibman as Rachel Green's father on Friends. That's were most people know he from.Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Geary's New Signature Theater Down the Road from Us
IRAQ was behind 9/11: Remember that - Now Obama's Team is Doing it
Remember when Iraq was supposed to be behind 9/11?
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Some fascinating thoughts on "Modernism" vs "Primitivism"
The New Left of the 1960s and 1970s longed for small, participatory communities, and rejected the giant organizations that New Deal liberals had taken pride in. In the 1980s and 1990s, new urbanists converted most progressives to their nostalgia for the ephemeral rail-and-trolley based towns of the late nineteenth century. GM foods, which New Deal liberals like Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson would have embraced as a way to feed multitudes while sparing land for wilderness, were denounced by progressives who favored “heirloom” turkey and melons that the Pilgrims might have eaten. The increasingly reactionary American left, disenchanted with nuclear power plants and rockets and suburbs, longed to quit modernity and retire to a small town with an organic farmers’ market and an oompah band playing in the town park’s bandstand.
The Dark Age that began in the 1970s continues. Today’s conservatives, centrists, progressives -- most look like regressives, by the standards of mid-20th century America. Tea Party conservatives argue that federal prohibitions on child labor are unconstitutional, that the Fourteenth Amendment should be repealed, and that the Confederates were right about states, rights. Religious conservatives, having lost some of their political power, continue to their fight against Darwinism. Fiscally conservative “centrists” in Washington share an obsession with balanced budgets that would have seemed irrational and primitive not only to Keynes but also to the 19th-century British founder of The Economist, Walter Bagehot. And while there is a dwindling remnant of modernity-minded New Deal social democrats, most of the energy on the left is found on the nostalgic farmers’market/ train-and-trolley wing of the white upper middle class.
Here’s an idea. America needs to have a neomodernist party to oppose the reigning primitivists of the right, left and center. Let everyone who opposes abortion, wants to ban GM foods and nuclear energy, hates cars and trucks and planes and loves trains and trolleys, seeks to ban suburbia, despises consumerism, and/or thinks Darwin was a fraud join the Regressive Party. Those of us who believe that the real, if exaggerated, dangers of technology, big government, big business and big labor are outweighed by their benefits can join the Modernist Party. While the Regressives secede from reality and try to build their premodern utopias on their reservations, the Modernists can resume the work of building a secular, technological, prosperous, and relatively egalitarian civilization, after a half-century detour into a Dark Age.
Well This is New... and AWFUL
Monday, January 17, 2011
Danes in Blue Lagoon 2
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Ouch!
Since then: "Be Cool," "Wedding Crashers," "Fred Claus," "Couples Retreat." I mean, woof. That's less a career trajectory than a limo ride in a 2002 Hummer that smells of barfed-up Jägermeister. And if we're still being honest and if we admit that female celebs face this kind of scrutiny all the time, let's add that Vaughn doesn't look so great these days. He plays opposite Kevin James here, and both of them are swathed in untucked, tentlike garments. It's not altogether clear which one of them is supposed to be the handsome star and which one the chunky sidekick.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Tennessee Party Wants to Protect Childern from Learning Bad Things About the Founding Fathers
Fayette County attorney Hal Rounds, the group’s lead spokesman during the news conference, said the group wants to address “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Teaching a Pig To Sing
The White Death
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
BUZZZZ - Wrong Answer
Infidelity as Aggression
Have you been wondering why the man who cheated on you is also so furious at you? Where does he get off blaming you when he was the one who cheated? When my ex told me he was leaving I kept asking him why he was so angry at me, what did I do that was so terrible? He insisted that it wasn't about me. "Why do you always think everything is about you." he'd snap at me. I guess he meant it was about her--he fell in love with someone else. Then why was he so angry at me? Why did he blame me for the demise of the relationship, why did he seem to feel entitled to leave me for someone else, why the constant rage? I was bewildered by that.
"Dumping someone is certainly an act of fear, aggressiveness and symbolic violence. When an individual dumps a partner he expresses narcissistic rage comparable to a child's temper tantrum," explains sociologist Catherine B. Silver, in an essay in Cut Loose; edited by Nan Bauer-Maglin. This is the difference between men who are simply unfaithful but want to stay in the marriage and men who find someone else and dump their wives--the act of aggression. Why are some men so cruel? It's all about neediness. He needs you to admire and approve of him, but hates himself for having these unacceptable, "unmanly" needs. Men see us on some level as their mothers and when mommy lets them down they get mad, especially if their actual mommies let them down when they were kids. My ex's mom let him down big time by totally ignoring his emotional needs. I was supposed to take mommy's place and be the big tit, but I fell down on the job. When men hit middle age this internal conflict intensifies because they see that most of their life is over and they're never going to get whatever it was they wanted from mommy, i.e admiration, unconditional love. They direct their hatred at us, their longtime wife/mommy combo, because they're so dependent on us. Finding a new love cuts the umbilical cord. Of course the same pattern repeats with the new love, but by that time the marriage is long over.