Peripatetic

I'm getting ready to travel, Cheney-like, to an undisclosed location for spring break. Updates will resume once I have computer access again Monday-ish.

UPDATE SUNDAY, MARCH 28: I'm in my hometown of San Diego, California. The reason for the cryptic post was that the visit was to be a surprise (for a couple of people). And it was. I'm going to photoblog the trip, and I'll have a link up soon.

The Funny

Called my brother earlier today. Here's a snippet of the conversation, following random small talk:

JOHN: I'm walking into the movie theater right now.

CHRIS: Are you going to watch "The Passion?"

JOHN: No, we're going to see "Dawn of the Dead."

CHRIS: Ah, so you're seeing the sequel to "The Passion!"

I'm a bad, bad person.

National Pentagon Radio

If I'm found dead behind the wheel of my car one morning with the engine still running, and an autopsy reveals that I died of a massive stroke... you can be certain that in my last moments I was listening to NPR and screaming back at the radio.

There were a few bits of wackiness on the program (Juan Williams' interview with a general, where Williams insinuates that John Kerry is a liar for claiming that some servicemen are having to purchase their own body armor, was a particularly apoplexy-inducing moment), but the crowning glory was an interview with Richard "The Prince Of Darkness" Perle; the nutjob behind the Big-Brotherish Total Information Awareness scheme who just resigned from Bush's Defense Policy Board. Perle spoke about the recent elections in Spain, where the Socialist Party won elections due to the former prime minister's handling of the Iraq war and the recent bombings in Madrid. Here's a transcript of his comments:

"It's a great tragedy that a Spanish Socialist leader... a socialist, a man of the left... would stand up and say that, uh, Iraq is a tragedy, a disaster, that the people of Iraq are worse off today than they were under Saddam Hussein. It's an extraordinary political combination when a socialist would-be prime minister expresses remorse at the passing of a fascist regime."

(This comes immediately after similar quotes by Congressthings such as Henry Hyde, where the people of Spain were called "appeasers.")

There are some problems with Perle's statement. First, Jose Zapatero's dismay with the Iraq war wasn't a function of a sympathy with Hussein... and Perle knows it. Secondly, equating leftist critiques of the war with facism and terrorism is getting really old. To their credit, NPR stated that PM-elect Zapatero refuted these opinions- saying that there is a distinction between the war in Iraq and the "war on terrorism," and that he never suggested that life in Iraq was better under Saddam Hussein... contrary to Perle's statement.

An interesting note: If you do a Google search for the term "prince of darkness", five of the top-10 hits are about Richard Perle. Googlebombing is fun.

Whatever and ever

If one more person says I look like Ben Folds, I will have no choice but to either:

a. attack them with the nearest blunt and/or sharp object, or

b. start a Ben Folds cover band.

Since I'm much more proficient at playing piano than I am at killing people, it'll probably be option B.

Meta-bloggery

I've been thinking a lot about the direction in which this blog is headed, and where I would like to see it go.

Political matters have been a huge part of my blogging since this past summer. However, I've resigned myself to the fact that "the bone" will never be one of the great political blogs. I don't have the readership base of TPM or calpundit, eschaton's ability to scoop the entire universe, or the elegant writing of liquid list, amleft, body and soul, or slacktivist. There are a few people doing humorous political content, and while there's room for one more in that niche I don't think I'm the one to fill it. I'm pretty funny in person, but my wit doesn't translate well to the page (the monitor?); I'm funnier when I can think on my feet, and in writing I just come off as sarcastic and angry.

I've toyed with the thought of doing a "teacher's blog," but it could never be on this site. Teaching blogs are best when they're anonymous, because it's then possible to be brutally honest without worring about losing one's job. And since my name is all over this site, my anonymity would be blown from the start. I could do a "place blog" based either on the Everglades or urban South Florida (probably the latter)... but I'm most likely going to be in graduate school next fall, and won't really be able to develop the idea and and gain a reader base by the time I move in July or so. And while there are a lot of people with successful, well-read blogs about their daily lives, let's face it... my life just ain't that interesting. The bookblog I'm currently working on is a great project, mostly because it has a real focus, but it won't ever be the type of thing that a lot of folks read.

And it all comes down to this: Is the purpose of this blog to create something that will be widely read? To serve primarily as a vehicle for self-expression without worrying about satisfying a readership? To entertain myself? To serve as an archive of my thoughts for future generations to reference after I ascend to my rightful place as "Philosopher-King of the Northern Hemisphere?" Frankly, I'm not sure.

I do get quite a few hits, but they're mostly from my friends, or from random Google searches for things like "the translation of gunter glieben glauchen globen" or similar inanities. For now, I'm going to stay on my present course (politics, goofy/interesting links, and so on) and figure it out as I go along. Feedback is welcome.

I Wanna Be Sedated (or, The Day The Three-Chord Music Died)

links via metafilter

Declarations that "punk is dead" are more regular than a vegetarian who pops a daily capsule of Metamucil. That being said, my discovery of political sites aimed at conservative punks has finally convinced me that the "punk" label, which has been diluted for years, should probably be retired before any more harm is done.

I don't follow celebrity news to any great extent, so it was a huge surprise to find out from a MeFi thread that Johnny Ramone is actually a staunch conservative. The KKK Took My Baby Away, indeed.

n.b.: this news won't keep the anthology Hey, Ho, Let's Go out of my CD player, but when I think about "the politics of 'punk,'" I think of the Dead Kennedys, Fugazi, God Save The Queen, and so forth... these impressions are somewhat incongruent with the image of a member of the Ramones casting a ballot at all, let alone for Bush.

Oh, and the conservative punk sites are wildly entertaining. One calls the Democratic Party a "vile socialist organization, thriving on hate, fear, and class-warfare" and complains that "[t]he media is plastered with rallies and protests held by the Socialist Liberals." The other claims part of its mission is to "inform today's youth that identify themselves with the punk scene with the facts, rather than rumor and conspiracy theory," and was "created to counteract the multiple liberal punk sites on the web, which are run by only a small number of punk artists who are choosing to make up the minds of thousands of voters." It also contains links to great sites like anti-anti-flag.com.

When Ill Repute wrote "Clean Cut American Kid," this probably isn't what they had in mind.

Some confessional writing over in my bookblog.

The final word on The Passion of the Christ. Hysterical.

Godwin's Law is a longstanding Internet adage which states that "as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." The implication is that Nazi comparisons are distasteful and generally inappropriate.

That hasn't stopped one Republican congressman (Tom Cole, R-OK*) from implying that not re-electing Bush is similar to not re-electing Roosevelt in 1944 while Hitler was still running Germany, and then flat-out saying that "if George Bush loses the election, Osama bin Laden wins the election." (Link via Eschaton; Josh Marshall reports on Cole's response here)

Speaking of Godwin: I've been reading the blogs and posting a lot in election related threads at Tribe.net lately, and I'd like to update Godwin a little (with props to the Tribe poster who came up with the germinal form of this statement)...

The Bone's Corollary to Godwin's Law

As a post-9/11 online discussion of American politics grows longer, the probability of a comparision to terrorists, or an insinuation that the actions of one side or another endorse/promote terrorism, approaches one.

*Call me a hypocrite, but how about this: Tom Cole, R-Sudetenland.

An editorial from the Guardian: Why they had to crush Aristide.

Editorial cartoonist Ted Rall's strips have been removed from the New York Times (more here, from Rall's blog).

(adapted from a post I made at AmLeft this morning) On Venezuela's president calling Bush an "asshole:" The exact term Chavez used was pendejo. Even though I grew up less than 10 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, I never knew, until reading Monkeyfilter this morning, that the literal translation of pendejo means "pubic hair."

Which makes it very funny that this epithet was hurled at a head of state named, er... Bush.

As a South Florida resident, I've been watching the situation in Haiti pretty closely, suspecting that the rest of the country would ignore it. Fortunately, that hasn't been the case... especially with rad Congresswoman Maxine Waters asserting that President Aristide was kidnapped by American troops.

A few thoughts:

1. I have never heard a reason that rang true explaining why Aristide had to go. I have heard many that sounded like complete bullshit, though. He was fairly elected (the only head of government in Haiti ever elected democratically), and through our inaction we made a mockery of the democratic process in that country.

2. For a little while, charges have been floating around that the U.S. Government has been actively trying to destabilize Aristide's presidency. I don't know if it's true or not... but it's common knowledge that the CIA has overthrown foreign governments (in Guatemala, Iran, Chile... and those are the ones we know about). And given our country's past training and support of many of the current Haitian rebels, it's not too farfetched to imagine that the CIA had their fingers in this mess.

3. The same folks who ousted Saddam because he was a "cruel dictator" (which he was) seem fully prepared to prop up an unelected Haitian government run by murderous thugs and headed by rebel leader Guy Phillipe; a drug trafficker and terrorist "freedom fighter" (sorry... I briefly forgot that if they engage in terrorist activities, but our government likes them, we don't stick them with that label). Double standards are bullshit.

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Whew. In lighter news, there's an update in the bookblog with more to come in the next few days.