Another Fuckin' Storm

♠
In the wee hours of the morning, maybe two, my window vanes are being noisily blown around. I see that this wind is also blowing some rain hard against the window. I just shut it all down. But maybe it was too late.

I am now feeling some of the symptoms of a cold or flu, the scratchy throat, a slight fever, a tenderness of body that wants to stay in bed and heal. I'm not knocked out and still have at least 90% functionality, but I worry a little that this may worsen. And this is the week when I need to put in the extra work at the Neumanns! Score Gremlins: 2.

At least it didn't seem to rain much at all. I thought we would be flooded when I took Bo out this morning, but the grass isn't even wet. Thank God for small favors, but I don't think I'll score the Angels anything.

___ ___ ___

To keep myself interested, I think I will make a game of the ups and downs of Monk's existence by keeping score: Angels vs. Gremlins. I'll rate a particular event on a score of one to four, from rather lame to great move. Could be fun.

xXx

Another Fuckin' Storm

♠
In the wee hours of the morning, maybe two, my window vanes are being noisily blown around. I see that this wind is also blowing some rain hard against the window. I just shut it all down. But maybe it was too late.

I am now feeling some of the symptoms of a cold or flu, the scratchy throat, a slight fever, a tenderness of body that wants to stay in bed and heal. I'm not knocked out and still have at least 90% functionality, but I worry a little that this may worsen. And this is the week when I need to put in the extra work at the Neumanns! Score Gremlins: 2.

At least it didn't seem to rain much at all. I thought we would be flooded when I took Bo out this morning, but the grass isn't even wet. Thank God for small favors, but I don't think I'll score the Angels anything.

___ ___ ___

To keep myself interested, I think I will make a game of the ups and downs of Monk's existence by keeping score: Angels vs. Gremlins. I'll rate a particular event on a score of one to four, from rather lame to great move. Could be fun.

xXx

The War on Terrror with a G-String

♠
"The Unknown Terrorist" by Richard Flanagan looks like a promising novel, about a stripper girl trying to make good in the world and getting ensnared in the War on Terror in a criminal case of mistaken identity, thanks to a one-night stand with a stranger named Tariq. Nasty, violent, and topical - you cannot ask for more:

Although the basic outlines of this story come from Heinrich Böll’s novel “The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum,” written in response to the terrorism scares that Germany suffered in the late 1960s and ’70s, Mr. Flanagan has turned the story into an armature for a brilliant meditation upon the post-9/11 world, a globalized world in which fear is a valued commodity for terrorists and governments alike, a world in which rumors and misinformation circumnavigate the globe in the flash of an eye, and narratives — constructed by politicians and tabloid reporters, and avidly consumed by a spectacle-hungry populace — replace facts and truths. Identity has become a commodity and construct in this world: something that can be manufactured, stolen or counterfeited.

If you check it out at Amazon, you see it opens with a meditation on love, Jesus, and Nietzsche. I think this novel wants to crowd near the top of my reading wish list. I'm a sucker for love. And strippers.


(Source: MICHIKO KAKUTANI for The New York Times)

xXx

The War on Terrror with a G-String

♠
"The Unknown Terrorist" by Richard Flanagan looks like a promising novel, about a stripper girl trying to make good in the world and getting ensnared in the War on Terror in a criminal case of mistaken identity, thanks to a one-night stand with a stranger named Tariq. Nasty, violent, and topical - you cannot ask for more:

Although the basic outlines of this story come from Heinrich Böll’s novel “The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum,” written in response to the terrorism scares that Germany suffered in the late 1960s and ’70s, Mr. Flanagan has turned the story into an armature for a brilliant meditation upon the post-9/11 world, a globalized world in which fear is a valued commodity for terrorists and governments alike, a world in which rumors and misinformation circumnavigate the globe in the flash of an eye, and narratives — constructed by politicians and tabloid reporters, and avidly consumed by a spectacle-hungry populace — replace facts and truths. Identity has become a commodity and construct in this world: something that can be manufactured, stolen or counterfeited.

If you check it out at Amazon, you see it opens with a meditation on love, Jesus, and Nietzsche. I think this novel wants to crowd near the top of my reading wish list. I'm a sucker for love. And strippers.


(Source: MICHIKO KAKUTANI for The New York Times)

xXx

Politics and Courage

♠
When Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 prepared to ask Americans for a stronger defense against the danger of Adolf Hitler, his handlers reminded him that the country was isolationist and such boldness would jeopardize his third-term campaign. Roosevelt overrode that advice. He presided over American history's first peacetime draft call—a week before the 1940 election. His isolationist ambassador to London, Joseph Kennedy, bluntly told him, "You will go down either as the greatest in history—greater than Washington or Lincoln—or the greatest horse's ass." FDR replied that there was "a third alternative": if he didn't strengthen America's defenses, Roosevelt said, Hitler could rule the world and "I may go down as the president of an unimportant country."

-- Michael Beschloss for Newsweek

I'm sleepy and it's nappy time and I only skimmed this four-page article, and I'm mainly getting this down to have in the archives, but I thought I'd share this little historical nugget. The piece is about presidential courage. I'm not sure that Bush wouldn't feel that he was engaging in an exercise of great political courage by bucking all the voices to cut our losses in Iraq, though I suspect that that is not what Beschloss would have intended. Bush would have to win to be proven right, and that would seem to require a genuine miracle at this point.

xXx

Politics and Courage

♠
When Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 prepared to ask Americans for a stronger defense against the danger of Adolf Hitler, his handlers reminded him that the country was isolationist and such boldness would jeopardize his third-term campaign. Roosevelt overrode that advice. He presided over American history's first peacetime draft call—a week before the 1940 election. His isolationist ambassador to London, Joseph Kennedy, bluntly told him, "You will go down either as the greatest in history—greater than Washington or Lincoln—or the greatest horse's ass." FDR replied that there was "a third alternative": if he didn't strengthen America's defenses, Roosevelt said, Hitler could rule the world and "I may go down as the president of an unimportant country."

-- Michael Beschloss for Newsweek

I'm sleepy and it's nappy time and I only skimmed this four-page article, and I'm mainly getting this down to have in the archives, but I thought I'd share this little historical nugget. The piece is about presidential courage. I'm not sure that Bush wouldn't feel that he was engaging in an exercise of great political courage by bucking all the voices to cut our losses in Iraq, though I suspect that that is not what Beschloss would have intended. Bush would have to win to be proven right, and that would seem to require a genuine miracle at this point.

xXx

Fat People Got No Reason

♠
The Times has a fascinating article on dieting and metabolism that runs counter to the idea that fat people are just "greedy", as one young hottie put it on her profile at some webcam site that has stuck in my mind. This article covers the gamut of studies and surveys uncovering all the possible relations between a person's weight and his habits and his environment and his family tree. And it looks like people are just fated to be what they are from birth, or at least they have to work damn hard to achieve and maintain a counter-ideal.

After reading the article, I was wondering what possibly could be the answer to this problem. Moreover, it seems to me that it is fair to say that it is only recently that we have been seeing a serious 'obesity epidemic'. If this is accurate, why is that the case? According to these studies, the answer is not the popular one that we have just grown lazier and more self-indulgent as a society. Monk then darkly chuckles that maybe society has provided too good of a safety net to capture all the losers, and we have been seeing more people who otherwise would have fallen out long ago - we have removed some of Darwin's filters to weed out the undesirables, such as Monk himself. So, the only answer would seem to be to not let fat people procreate! At least Monk is in no danger of contributing to that problem.

( article )

xXx

Fat People Got No Reason

♠
The Times has a fascinating article on dieting and metabolism that runs counter to the idea that fat people are just "greedy", as one young hottie put it on her profile at some webcam site that has stuck in my mind. This article covers the gamut of studies and surveys uncovering all the possible relations between a person's weight and his habits and his environment and his family tree. And it looks like people are just fated to be what they are from birth, or at least they have to work damn hard to achieve and maintain a counter-ideal.

After reading the article, I was wondering what possibly could be the answer to this problem. Moreover, it seems to me that it is fair to say that it is only recently that we have been seeing a serious 'obesity epidemic'. If this is accurate, why is that the case? According to these studies, the answer is not the popular one that we have just grown lazier and more self-indulgent as a society. Monk then darkly chuckles that maybe society has provided too good of a safety net to capture all the losers, and we have been seeing more people who otherwise would have fallen out long ago - we have removed some of Darwin's filters to weed out the undesirables, such as Monk himself. So, the only answer would seem to be to not let fat people procreate! At least Monk is in no danger of contributing to that problem.

( article )

xXx

If That's All There Is...

♠
Listening to the Sinatra station, I caught this nice, melancholy Peggy Lee number, "Is That All There Is?" I like the philosophy of it enough to keep it.

If That's All There Is...

♠
Listening to the Sinatra station, I caught this nice, melancholy Peggy Lee number, "Is That All There Is?" I like the philosophy of it enough to keep it.