Raiders 34 Titans 25

The Raiders were, at one time, up 17-0, then let the Titans back into it with some poor 3rd down defense and an inexcusable Collins interception that was returned for a late touchdown. Warren Sapp was really the player of the game. He sacked Steve McNair three times and a forced fumble that Jerrod Cooper recovered for a touchdown. The Raiders went up late in the game on a 44-yard TD pass from Collins to Jerry Porter. (Collins finally realized that Porter does, in fact, exist.) That was the ball game.

So the Raiders have managed to crawl their way to 3-4 with a game ahead at Arrowhead Stadium against the Chefs. Good for them. Here's hoping that Moss is healthier and the Raiders can once again appear on TV.

Oh, and if anyone out there knows, could someone tell me why, with few exceptions, only one of the two major networks gets to show a doubleheader on Sunday? I know all about the blackout rules when a home team is on TV, but today the Seahawks had a bye week. FOX showed two games, but CBS only showed the late game, flooding the early time slot with infomercials hawking fake cures for cancer. Is it the affiliate's option, or do they make that decision at network? Either way, what makes them think that opposing the other network with informericals instead of games makes financial sense? If the Raiders-Titans game, just as a for-instance, had been on TV, CBS might have drawn a lot of viewers away from a snoozer of a Giants-Indigenous Persons game. I have to figure there's some kind of NFL rule working here, but I can't figure out what it might be. Would someone who knows please explain?

Again, For Those Keeping Track

I managed to complete a first draft of the new novella. Soon the revising begins.

Brace Yourselves

With Harriet Miers out of the picture, will George W. Bush take the responsible course and nominate a proven professional with the capacity to judge fairly, or will he decide to use the nomination as a means to stick it to his political enemies? Need I ask?

Raiders 38, Bills 17

Jordan was dominant in today's game, running for over 100 yards and scoring three touchdowns. These were the Raiders we were promised at the beginning of the season. May it continue.

Behind the Scenes At the Factory

Those of you keeping track might be wondering why "Is the Library Burning?", Novella #3 of the long delayed Escape Velocities collection isn't done yet. I'd promised to wrap the thing up by the end of August, but, well, I'll explain...

In mid-September, I'd reached page 90 of the novella. My financial problems were a distraction, but I'd still been able to maintain a decent rhythm. Writing long fiction is more a question of dogged, grinding work than inspiration, and after three years writing The Ice Age, that's the pace I'm accustomed to. Anyway, I'd reached the 90th page, when I found myself pausing and procrastinating. My thumbs started to hurt from late night Madden football games. Each time I tried to get back to work, I'd stare at the screen, tap keys, and move to check my e-mail or read news that hadn't changed in the five minutes since I'd last read it.

For a couple of weeks I blamed the stress of finances, but after my hearing at court, I came to realize the truth. I'd written ninety frigging pages and had no idea how to end the fucking story. If I went ahead with the ideas I had, the novella wouldn't so much end as it would splat, like a tomato thrown off a skyscraper. I spent a few days wavering between total panic and abject depression. Tutoring sessions and my birthday trip kept me grounded, but I couldn't see a solution and saw visions of four months of wasted effort--me and Sisyphus working for the same temp agency.

But then Seattle's horrible traffic came to my aid. On a day when it took me forty minutes to travel six miles, I went over the story in my mind. "Is the Library Burning?" is about a woman named Theresa who, while recovering in Cairo from injuries she suffered in a bus bombing, wonders whether she wants to return to the United States or move to the E.U. and leave the what she sees as the fanaticism of the U.S. behind. Included in her deliberations--most of which are about the deaths of Hypatia of Alexandria and Cicero, who failed to extract themselves from societies descending into tyranny before the mob could catch up with them--is the question of abandoning her mother, who fears travel. I realized while groaning at the hideous standstill of I-5, that while I'd done a good job exploring Theresa's thoughts on history and the decline of the U.S., I'd given the problem of her mother nowhere to go. They got along too well at the beginning, and their one argument over whether to leave the U.S. lacked a personal element. It was entirely ideological. I'd lost an opportunity to explore the larger issue of abandonment. I'd already established that Theresa was divorced. If I could work more in that area, perhaps making the divorce a source of tension between mother and daughter, I might solve the problem of the ending. The stakes can rise from the relatively narrow question of leaving the U.S. to the larger issue of the role of abandonment and disillusionment in Theresa's life.

Will it work? I don't know yet. I had to go back and do a lot of revising in the early sections. I feel like I have an ending in mind, but it remains to be seen whether this one will be the right one, or even mean what I think it means. Still, I feel a lot better at this point in the month than I did at the beginning, and I guess we will see what we will see.

Bits of Light in the Gloom

Yes, we live in a fascist state, New Orleans and Iraq are wrecks, and the Raiders couldn't cross the goal line in a tank; but there are small reasons to live. The Rockford Files, after endless delays, will come out on DVD December 6th. I can't wait.

The Wish For Kings

In his "Notebook" column in this month's Harper's Lewis Lapham points to an Umberto Eco essay on the common ideological points of all species of fascism:

"The truth is revealed once and only once.
"Parliamentary democracy is by definition rotten because it doesn't represent the voice of the people, which is that of the sublime leader.
"Doctrine outpoints reason, and science is always suspect.
"Critical thought is the province of degenerate intellectuals, who betray the culture and subvert traditional values.
"The national identity is provided by the nation's enemies.
"Argument is tantamount to treason.
"Perpetually at war, the state must govern with the instruments of fear.
"Citizens do not act; they play the supporting role of 'the people' in the grand opera that is the state."

This reads like a checklist of the reasons why the U.S. is in so much trouble now. For me, it's always gone beyond Bush. He's simply one of the nastier symptoms of the underlying disease. I'm afraid that a large percentage of Americans have simply lost the habits of mind necessary to sustain a democracy. They have lost faith in their ability to reason and to learn something new, and prefer the assurances of those who claim to hear the voices of gods. The government of capable but flawed human beings seems to them less attractive than rule by the decree of a leader whose heart is always pure (because he says it is) and whose guts are always right (because his wise counselors always praise them). Given the right ad campaign and a little more social conditioning, the House of Bush could probably have itself installed as an official dynasty, with James Dobson as their Archbishop and Dick Cheney as the Lord High Executioner.

According to Lapham's satirical riff, America won't change very much under fascism. Our overlords needn't burn books--only a few people read them, and they're easily caricatured by their choice of pricey caffienated beverage. Also, although a playwright could become president of the Czech republic and a poet might as recently as ten years ago become President of Russia, writers are so deeply in the margins of American society that, however rudely they might treat Laura Bush at a book fair, nobody outside a few coffeehouses has heard of most of them. Besides, most writers are so busy chasing after a spot in the Oprah Book Club that they have little time for planning assaults on the palaces of the mighty.*

Further, our overlords needn't destroy the radio stations. Their allies own most of them, and given the way they've written the rules, they should be able to buy the rest without any ugly resort to bloodshed. Most of our labor unions have already been broken up, and once Wal Mart gets into other lines of business, they should be able to clear out the rest. Besides, the corporations promise that if you work hard and ruthlessly and avoid the trap of friendship, you can rise high enough in the corporate structure to eventually become Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. (They'll probably rename it C.E.O. of the U.S. Treasury, to avoid unnecessary confusion in titles.) So there's no real reason to comb the middle classes for signs of incipient rebellion. (Making it possible to include promoting unrest as a reason to lower credit scores or raise health insurance rates out to take care of most troublemakers. Much more civilized than a concentration camp, you have to admit.)

Reading Lapham's essay helps me understand why I feel so little joy at Bush's 37% approval rating. We had to lose an entire city to get it down there, and under the circumstances 37% seems awfully high, doesn't it? If the President launched a nuclear missile at the San Andreas fault and sank the West Coast into the sea, we might get it down to 30%. (Though it might pop back up once Pat Robertson points out that Bush destroyed the unholy sewers of both Hollywood and the Castro District in one quick strike. I'm sure that Bush's handlers could work out the spin for that. They're clever people.) And even if we should rid ourselves of Bush, can we say we've cured ourselves of the affliction that brought him to us? Or will we just turn to another would be Duce and nod our heads at his crackpot notions of how the world works? What do we have to do to cure both the symptom of Bush and the underlying illness? No less than restore to Americans the idea that we are citizens, with a responsibility to continue learning and questioning not only our governments, but also our bosses and our clergymen. We have to drum it into our own heads that any problems that we have will need to be solved by other citizens who are both as intelligent and as ignorant as we are; and that no citizen should be able to claim sole possession of the unerrant truth without the rest of us laughing him out of the building.

That's a hard thing to fix, and I fear it's already too late to start. Sad. Sad. Sad.

*Just in case Oprah is reading this, I don't mean to imply that the Oprah Book Club is a bad thing. I'm glad you started picking living writers for it again, and even though your first choice, James Frey, seems like an uninspired one, I have every confidence that it'll get better and every hope that you'll (please-oh-please-oh-please) include my own work in it someday. Listen, it'll be great, Oprah! Me and you! Wait, where are you going? PLEASE! I'M SO BROKE!

A Barren Source of Amusement

San Diego 27; Oakland 14

Randy Moss suffered an injury early in the game. LaMont Jordan ran for two touchdowns and gained 100 combined yards, but the Raiders sink to 1-4. I stopped listening to the game toward the end of the 1st half, when San Diego took a 24-7 lead, choosing instead to watch Misery. Kerry Collins still can't find the end zone without a map, in spite of two weeks of practice. The offense can't find rhythm or consistency when it counts, and Collins's streak of pass attempts without an interception came to an end.

The New Bond

It's Daniel Craig. (I won't bother linking to anything. You couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a story about it.) He looks like he'll be all right in the role, though I'd rather they retained Pierce for a last film. It would be nice if someone would dig down to the truth about Brosnan's dismissal, but that won't happen as long as film journalism remains with the likes of US Weekly.

I'm less sanguine about the producers turning Casino Royale into an origin story. It wasn't one initially; Bond was already a "00" agent at the beginning of the book, and though the novel establishes several characters, there's a sense that Bond already knows most of them--either through work or by reputation. We have a sense that we're entering a universe that was already running when we got here, which is an underrated sensation. Honestly, I can't think of anything duller than finding out how Bond got his number--a story Fleming told only in summary because it was, really, kind of dull and grim--or how he got his Aston Martin. (I already know, actually. We saw it in Goldfinger. Q-Branch retired Bond's Bentley and assigned him the Aston Martin DB-5, which Bond proceeded to ruin by crashing it into a wall at Goldfinger's plant.) Over the years, the films have given us hints of backstory--the deaths of Bond's parents in a climbing accident (Goldeneye) or his failure to graduate from Cambridge (The Spy Who Loved Me), but nothing too specific.

I prefer it that way, really. It's possible to write about Bond as a man in the grip of his own past, riven by deep-seated interior conflict, etcetera, etcetera; but was that ever what made his movies fun in the first place? It's a mistake to confuse Bond with Batman. Batman's internal struggles are interesting mainly because there has to be some explanation for why a good-looking grown man with a life to lead would choose to assume the identity of a flying predator and battle criminals in the Gotham night. But Bond doesn't assume other identities. He's always 007. He likes drinks, hot women, sports, fast cars, and good suits. He also has a keen interest in the natural sciences and speaks an astonishing array of languages. He seems to be supremely at home with himself, never interrupting the action to contemplate his inner demons (which, if he has them, he has the good British decency to keep well-hidden while in company). The last thing I want to see is a Bond who dwells, and what is an origin story but a place where we give the hero things to dwell over?

For an example of what I mean, think of Bond's clubland literary ancestor, "The Saint". The TV series (and the books) never got into Simon Templar's origins, but the 1995 movie did (he was supposedly an orphan in Hong Kong who chose his name after one of the brutal warders beat him). Which would you rather watch--Roger Moore in a pair of the TV episodes, or Val Kilmer in the movie? If you answer the latter, you are beyond pleasure, beyond pity, and beyond hope.

Dispatches

The meeting with the Jack Straw people was productive. The demon voices in my hair have stopped, and I'm going to stick with the literature project for now. My other labors stand where they've stood. In a way, it hardly seems worth blogging about, but it was my long day and I'm beat.

Before I go, however, I will mention that I saw Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie last night. The novel on which it was based was a brilliant twist on the inspriational teacher formula of Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and the movie picks it up brilliantly. I can't imagine anyone but Maggie Smith in the role of the fascistic Jean Brodie, and the cast of young actresses who played her students was excellent. See it. Live it. Love it. Be it.

Two Cheers For Ron Sims

Hip! Hip! Uh--What took you so long, Ron? Our county executive finally rejected Southwest Airlines' plans to move from SeaTac airport to Boeing Field. I saw no reason to give Southwest Airlines the right to force millions of dollars worth of road upgrades on us, as well as all the air traffic and noise difficulties that would have arisen from having another major airport five miles away from SeaTac. Sims should have rejected the idea out of hand, but at least we won't have to speak any more about it.

Southwest has threatened to move their operations to Everett or out of the area altogether. If that's what they want to do, let them. After that 11-hour flight I took to Chicago, they can go as far away as they like. They'd open their gates up to another airline--one that may actually believe in getting their passengers where they're going in less time than it would take to walk. Let's face it, even if Southwest moved from Seattle to Everett, they'd probably take ten years and go through Renton, Bellevue, North Bend, Woodinville, Marysville, and Bellingham first.

Happy Birthday To Me

It's tomorrow actually, but because Monday's a business day for me, I celebrated over the weekend with bitterspice and my father. We had a great time. I made some of the Chicken with Herbs and Yogurt and my dad went out, bought some oysters, and fried them up for poor boy sandwiches. Good stuff all around.

This year I used my birthday money for a food processor and DVDs of The Incredibles, Psycho, and Misery. Now I'm turning my attention to the Jack Straw writing fellowship. I'd already planned to submit a story for the writer's portion, but the demon monkey who live in my head are telling me to submit a portion of Diary of A Superfluous Man to their artist's project fellowship to see if I can pick up 20 hours of free studio time and put together a radio version of the play. The only question I have is what I'd do with the fucker once I had it. Anybody who knows radio drama--Larry, I'm talking to you--give me a shout so that I can learn how that world works.

Speaking of Ads

A bit of political reform I'd like to see--no more bullshit names for political action committees. I'm tired of ads sponsored by Patients and Doctors for Responsible Reform (the insurance industry) or Voters and Entrepreneurs for Unfettered Street Commerce (pimps). Of course it's pretty easy to figure out that this or that ad is sponsored by Big [insert industry here] instead of a genuine grassroots organization; it's the dishonesty of the formulation that grates on me. They should make the ad producers put their corporate sponsors' logos in the ad, kind of like a race car sticks its sponsors' logos all over the chassis. I realize this might have a chilling effect on fake-grassroots advertising, but...hmm...where's the problem?

Me Again

Yeah, I've sold out. I put ads on the blog. Why? Because nothing makes me happier than forcing a giant corporation that could crush me like a bug to send me a check for $0.35 every month.

I'm Beat

Who knew that two minutes in Federal Court being interviewed by a woman who hasn't had a good laugh since Sputnik could be so enervating? All went well, though. It looks like the legal process will, for me, be much less Kafkaesque than I feared.

I need to unwind and rest, so that I can get up for thinking about the misery of life under Bush, Iraq, bird flu, my student loans, advancing decrepitude (my birthday is in six days), my career, the sorry state of the Oakland Raiders' red zone offense, the problems that have crept into my new novella, and assorted worries, cavils, and carps.

See y'all later.

George W. Bush is the most brilliant man I know

Now that I've said this, can I be on the Supreme Court too?

August Wilson Dead

It was something I knew was coming, but it's still crushing. He was a giant.

Cowboys 13; Raiders 19

At last. Lamont Jordan and Sebastian Janikowski are clearly the big heroes here. Yes, Moss had 125 yards against the Cowboys defense, but it was Jordan's running (126 yards) and SeaBass's foot (4 FGs, two from 40+ yards) that gave the game to Oakland. The Raiders have victory #1.

Some causes for concern.

1) Collins is still streakier than I'd like. He needs to develop more consistency.

2) The Raider defense was excellent until late in the 4th quarter, when they suddenly broke down and handed the Cowboys two long passes that put them in position to steal the game.

3) Jake Grove left the game with a knee injury. I don't remember hearing that he was back in the lineup. This bears watching, because he is a fine pass-blocker with remarkable skills for such a young player.

4) Adam Treu, the long snapper, gave both Lechler and Janikowski a few high snaps today, putting the kicking game in unnecessary peril. He's usually good about these things. Let's hope it's just a temporary problem.

5) As always, penalties. The Raiders should have won this game by a lot more than they did, but drive sustaining and drive killing penalties kept the Cowboys in it. Warren Sapp did something unusually stupid when, having already wrapped up Drew Bledsoe, he threw him down to the turf, forcing the referees to hand the Cowboys fifteen big yards on a 3rd and 8. The Cowboys ended up getting a field goal a few plays later. Yes, the refs have it in for the Raiders. We need to count on seven or eight penalties per game. Still, that's no reason to make things worse than they need to be.

Some reasons for optimism.

1) The Raiders found their running game, against a defense that hadn't given up 100 yards to a rusher since early last year. Over time, this should help the Raiders with play action and give Collins more chances to look down the field.

2) Randy Moss is still Randy Moss, and is consistently good for at least one spectacular play per game.

3) Kerry Collins still hasn't thrown an interception, though he came close a couple of times today.

4) The defense really seems to be coming together. They're still missing some pieces, and will break down from time to time, but we're seeing much greater solidity from them as a unit. As long as the defense sustains this level of play, the Raiders need only score more than 20 points per game to win consistently.

Glad of the Weekend

I'm more than usually tired after this week. Yesterday's marathon commute to Federal Way really took it out of me. I'm damn glad that I've worked the business out so that I have three-day weekends because tonight's commute looked even worse. Now I can rest, recharge, finish reading a book, see bitterspice, and put the last ten or fifteen pages on the new novella. (This one will complete the linked-novella collection Escape Velocities which I started seven years ago.) The Raider game won't be on TV up here, but I'll monitor it as best I can.

All in all, I hope to take it easy. The upcoming week doesn't promise to be a whole lot of laughs.

Thought for the Day

"I Gave Up Hope And it Worked Just Fine"
--"Advice and Self Help Titles" George Carlin

Katrina Victims About To Get Hammered Again

Thanks to the Republicans' refusal to given them an exemption to their scummy, putrid, awful new bankruptcy law. You can read about it in the New York Times. Those who know me understand that I have personal feelings about this. I won't get into them. I'll just say this. The whole point of bankruptcy laws is to give people who suffer enormous losses--as most of us are bound to at some point in our lives--a chance to emerge from crushing debt and start their lives over. Half of personal bankruptcies owe to massive medical expenses. Most of the rest come from natural disasters, layoffs, job loss, divorce, deaths in the family or other bad circumstances. It's sickening to see a gaggle of pampered congressmen, whose every breath is covered by the best insurance taxpayers can buy, drafting laws to punish people who find themselves in these positions. It's one thing to have government by benign neglect (the best outcome we could have hoped for from Bush); it's quite another to have a government that seems to actively hate the people it governs.

Taste the arrogance in this statement by James Sensenbrenner:

Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, rejected the notion of reopening the legislation, saying it already included provisions that would ensure that people left "down and out" by the storm would still be able to shed most of their debts. Lawmakers who lost the long fight over the law, he said, "ought to get over it," according to The Associated Press.

Uh-huh. They'll be forced into Chapter 13 if the income they had before the storm rubbed out their jobs indicates that they have enough disposable income to pay a high percentage of their total debt. And they'll have to attend "consumer counseling" classes which will advise them to--what--live in a place that doesn't suffer from storms, floods, or earthquakes? Then they'll have to go through a six month waiting period, during which creditors will treat them oh, so gently, with the lawsuits and wage garnishment and other fun stuff. They'll need to have enough to hire a lawyer because Sensenbrenner and his buddies complicated the law to make filing bankrupcy pro se nearly impossible. And they'll still have to spend money paying off debt that they could have otherwise spent rebuilding their ruined lives.

Thanks large, Sensenbrenner. Fuck you and your mamma.

Religion may be the opiate of the masses...

...but what's even more like an opiate, is the opium. (Or the methamphetamine, as the case may be.) I will have to remember this if I'm ever picked up for drug possession--not that I would be. "Officer, I was only carrying this brick of high-quality Cambodian heroin in my ass because you never know when you might be taken hostage."

Now That's Good Watchin'

Cosmos, Carl Sagan's landmark science series, will be back on television, digitally remastered, starting tonight. If I had a TiVo it would be so totally filled. Sagan made me want to become an astronomer. I didn't, as it worked out; but I still find the series inspiring.

New Raider Blog

Quaketown has a pretty good little Keebler tree running, and I'm not just saying that because I am the Official Raider Take Technical Advisor, with all the rights and responsibilities appertaining thereto. Now if only I could get Norv Turner to return my calls. I've won dozens of John Madden Super Bowl titles. I can cure what ails them, Norv! I can cure it!

Anyway, check it out. No other fan writes better haiku about Raider defeats.

Why Am I Not Surprised?

The Patriots' thrilling come-from-behind win apparently got a little help from the refs. (I know you're all shocked, shocked, shocked to learn this.) Apparently, the Patriots got 52 more seconds than they were entitled to to mount their game-winning drive. Their last drive should have started with 29 seconds on the clock.

Now, in fairness, the error goes back to a play early in the 4th quarter, and undoubtedly both teams would have managed the game rather differenly if the clock had been properly set. Still, it would have meant the Steelers had that much less clock to run off once they had the lead, and as we know, every second can be huge.

Still, it's stuff like this that explains why I don't hate the Buccaneers or the Ravens, who ended our other two runs at a championship this decade, but I loathe the Patriots. The referees supply the deus ex machina for them with a regluarity that's awfully tedious.

There is some fun to be found in the league, though. The Colts and Steelers look great, and the Buccaneers and Bengals should be fun to watch. It looks like I'll have a fun season rooting for Anyone But the Patriots, even as my beloved Raiders struggle.

Finally, a candidate who really cares about San Diego-er-Seattle-er-Whatever

From today's Seattle Times:

"Ángel Bolaños was the only Seattle City Council candidate to take a firm stand against taxpayer support for the NFL's San Diego Chargers.

"That's right. Bolaños, who finished fourth in a four-candidate primary Tuesday, lifted almost verbatim the campaign platform of San Diego City Council candidate Kathyrn Burton and put her policy positions on his Web site.

"In some cases, Bolaños replaced references to San Diego with Seattle. But he didn't catch them all."

I don't think he should have backed down, the sellout. It's high time someone in this city stood up to the San Diego Chargers. Indeed, I propose that the City Council pass and then rescind funding for the Chargers as a gesture of defiance. What kind of politician is this guy, anyway? Rather than admitting to plagiarism, he should have said that he stands shoulder to shoulder with Kathryn Burton and any other politician who has the guts to oppose the San Diego Chargers--that he calls upon officials in other cities to make the same strong stand against their cruel, championshipless tyranny.

At least he had the political savvy to blame his unpaid peons. Now wave goodbye, Mr. Bolaños, and tell us you're happy to spend more time with your family.

TV Presidents

I don't write all that much about TV, because aside from the NFL, I don't like much that's on TV. Still, having seen the ads for the new Geena Davis presidential drama "Commander in Chief", I feel an urge to say a few things. The ads tells us, in big bold shocking letters, "A WOMAN WILL BE PRESIDENT". The ad makes it sound like a more remote prospect than it really is. I doubt that any Democrat will win the White House in 2008 (how many of us will Bush have to kill before the Democrats get their shit together? It's way past urgent, kids.), but among the field so far it looks like Hillary Clinton may have the best shot. There are other several female senators--Boxer, Feinstein, Mikulski, Granholm, Murray, Cantwell, Dole, and Hutchinson. Among them, Dole has already taken a shot at the presidency. There are also many female governors and House members. It's not a huge talent pool compared to the guys, but it is growing all the time.

The really remote prospect, a favorite convention of the more gutless species of TV writers, is an Independent Vice-President ascending to the top job. What color is the sky in their world? There are, at this moment, no independent governors. We have one independent senator--ex-Republican Jim Jeffords of Vermont, who became an Independent because the White House insisted on treating him like something the cat dragged in. He caucuses with the Democrats. There is an independent House member, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a lovely freedom socialist (bless his Eugene Debsian heart) who also caucuses with the Democrats. (There's something about Vermont. It must be the syrup.) The bench is awfully shallow there, as it always has been for 3rd party types. And further, why would a hard-line conservative administration choose an independent at all? If tacking to the middle is an issue, and it hasn't been for national Republican campaigns in a while, why not use one of the northeastern moderates that the party keeps around as pets? How do you think Colin Powell ended up as Secretary of State? Because he would bring a strong credible voice to foreign policy? Don't be silly. He was there so that people could look at the Bush cabinet's group picture and say, "Any administration that has Powell in it can't be all that crazy or incompetent." The Republican party still has enough of those guys lying around that they don't really need an independent whose loyalty might be less reliable.

TV writers love political independents for shows based in D.C. It doesn't automatically piss off half the audience, and allows the lead character to seem like a throughtful, good-hearted public servant who struggles against all the nasty partisan politics in Washington. (That many political independents, like Jesse Ventura and Ross Perot, turn out to be cranks fails to register with them.) Partisan=bad. Moderate=good. Focus group tested and family approved TV, as bland as plain nonfat yogurt mixed with Wonder bread. Gutless, cheap, predictable, and unwilling to take a stand. Tired.

The West Wing has its own problems as far as the Republican party is concerned. The Republicans in that alternate universe nominated a centrist agnostic as their candidate, and the show portrayed him as a preordained juggernaut. I guess the Christian Right vanished into that other alternative universe where Spock has a beard. The Alan Alda character would never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever get within a thousand miles of the Republican convention hall. He would be the sort of person in the party whose very existence would be denied. Agnostics rarely get elected to anything in this country. Churches are just too big a part of the organizations of both parties to allow that to happen. The Alda character is a non-threatening Republican for a show whose audience craves a weekly escape from the world where Bush is in charge, but his stature in the fictional Republican party strains the willingness to suspend disbelief. I can understand the desire, the deep desire, to imagine a different world from the one we inhabit, but this is a situation where the reality-based community needs to get real.

Raiders 20; Philly 23

The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...The Raiders could have won but...

And I Thought Richard Lee Was Fucked Up

From AP:

"IDAHO FALLS, Idaho – A Pocatello weatherman who gained attention for an unusual theory that Hurricane Katrina was caused by the Japanese mafia using a Russian electromagnetic generator has quit the television station."

What a frigging loon! The only question is when he'll get a job in the Bush Administration.

Friday Random Ten

From iTunes Party Shuffle

1. Airport...Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers (She's the One)
2. Irish Rover...The Clancy Brothers (Ain't It Grand Boys)
3. "Il tempesta di Mare" III. Presto...Antoinio Vivaldi (The Four Seasons and other Concertos)
4. Layla (Live at the Hammersmith)...Eric Clapton (461 Ocean Blvd.)
5. I'm a One Woman Man...Hindu Love Gods (Hindu Love Gods)
6. Waiting For the Miracle...Leonard Cohen (The Future)
7. Kokomo...The Beach Boys (The Greatest Hits)
8. Tivo!...Patton Oswalt (Feelin' Kinda Patton)
9. Wish You Were Here...Pink Floyd (Wish You Were Here)
10. Don't Fade On Me...Tom Petty (Wildflowers)

Saturday

By the way. I'm thoroughly enjoying Ian McEwan's latest novel Saturday. It's an odd thing, but I have more of an affinity for British novelists than I do for American writers. (My appreciation for my righteous MFA classmate Doug Heckman notwithstanding.) I suppose the connection for me springs from a shared interest in incorporating scientific discourse in narrative. I like exploring the ways in which science affects the way we think about, and talk about, one another, and the Brits just seem to work that theme harder than Americans do. Amercian fiction writers seem to be, for the most part, either uninterested in or afraid of science, and I find that sad. While I've lost interest in being a science fiction writer, I think that writers do themselves and their readers a terrible disservice if they cut themselves off from that segment of the academic conversation. Charles Johnson, my mentor at the UW, puts it, not surprisingly, better than I do:

"If you are a writer who regards literary creation as, not merely a possible profession, but as a passion, there is always something to do. If you are not writing fresh material, you are revising; if you are not revising, you are reading--litearture, philosophy, mythology, the sciences--everything that employs the world."

McEwan's novel employs the world. He takes it all, literature, medicine, the arts, terrorism, civilization, and puts it on the page. It's something I always try to do in my own work, and it's an inspiration to see him do it in his. Check it out.

Admitting Defeat

Kevin Drum on the CNN/USA Today poll numbers for the Iraq War:

"If you add up the numbers, 63% of Americans think it's still possible for us to win in Iraq. And no matter what they tell pollsters, my guess is that anyone who thinks we're capable of winning the war won't trust a politician who advocates withdrawal. This is the Democratic dilemma in a nutshell, and it probably explains this Knight Ridder report:

"'Nationally known Democratic war critics, including Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Russell Feingold of Wisconsin and John Kerry of Massachusetts, won't attend what sponsors say will be a big anti-war rally Saturday in Washington.'

"For more on this, see Lorelei Kelly. As a conservative journalist told her today, "The liberals were pretty much right on Viet Nam. And what did that get them? They destroyed their reputation on national security for three decades." I have a feeling that's a widespread attitude."

I wonder if Americans actually understand what victory in war really means. World War II is the war we typically refer to whenever we set off on a military adventure. Images of Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler, the press for total subjugation of Germany military forces, and Parisians dancing in the streets were used as metaphors to help us understand the stakes in the War with Iraq. The UN, ostensibly, was Chamberlain, weakly offering concessions to the maniacal aggressor Hussein. The objective of our forces was nothing less than an advance to Baghdad, just as the allies had pushed into Berlin. And our forces, like the forces that liberated France, were to be greated with flowers and parades.

Why did these metaphors fail to match the realities of this war? Because, in almost every way, World War II was an anomaly in the history of warfare. Very seldom in human history has a figure like Hitler risen to power in a state capable of conducting war on a global scale, and then used that power as aggressively as Hitler did. Hitler not only felt a need to attack and conquer his neighbors, but he also felt that this had to be accomplished as quickly as possible. Nazi ideology, unlike that of Soviet Communism, made it necessary for Hitler, personally, as the one leader destiny chose for the Reich, to accomplish his mission to acquire lebensraum and annihilate the Jews while he was still young enough to carry it through. (He turned fifty the year the war began). Nazi ideology permitted no compromises with enemy powers, nor tactical withdrawls from tenuous positions. This made him impossible to deal with by any means short of total victory. We could not, as we did at the end of World War I and most conflicts in years and ages past, conclude the war by a negotiated settlement.

Hussein, obnoxious and thuggish though he was, was not Adolf Hitler. He did not pose a unique threat. His assaults on his neighbors--the Iranians and the Kuwaitis--were bloody and expensive to reverse, but were reversed without the need to press into Baghdad and overthrow the regime. Even the Iranians, who despised Hussein, were able to reach a negotiated settlement to end the Iran-Iraq war. Though Hussein does subscribe to a crude kind of pan-Arabism, he never possessed the military or economic resources to make himself a hegemon, much less the undisputed master of the region. He was, at most, a local irritant, a sociopathic thief who robbed and murdered his own people. He was clearly no good for the Iraqi people, but was not the serious threat to those living far outside his borders that Hitler was.

Further, Hussein, unlike Hitler, was sensitive to outside pressure. In the months before the invasion, Hussein had allowed inspectors into his country to examine WMD sites. He did his best to slow them down, not so much because he wanted to conceal his chemical and biological weapons as because he didn't want his enemies inside Iraq to know that he didn't have chemical and biological weapons. Hussein was, in comparison with Hitler, a rational actor, and would back down if clearly outnumbered and outgunned. Up to the moment the war was launched, the possibility that the whole Iraq question could be resolved through diplomacy was still out there.

The metaphor connecting the UN (or France) with Chamberlain also fails under scrutiny. By the time Chamberlain went to Munich, the Germans had already annexed the Saarland, remilitarized the Rheinland, murdered the Austrian president, and annexed Austria. It was tragically clear what Hitler was after by the time Chamberlain met with him in Munich. Appeasement was not only a disaster, but a predictable one, given the character of Hitler's regime. The outstanding question with Iraq was, if the UN had gotten its way and the inspectors had been allowed more time to complete their examination of suspected Iraqi WMD sites, what would the harm have been? Was Saddam about to invade another country? Was he, at the time, even threatening to do so? How indeed, would allowing the inspectors, whom Saddam didn't want in his country at all, to continue their work constitute appeasement?

We need look no farther than the news dispatches from Iraq to realize that our armies were greeted with rather more explosives than flowers. This too was predictable. Iraq's major ethnic groups have had incompatible political goals ever since the British manufactured modern Iraq in its partition of the Ottoman Empire's old holdings. This has not changed and will not change. Ethnic ambitions are almost impossible to supress without the application of spectacular amounts of violence and intimidation, and even then, they fester and wait for the oppressor (whether native or foreign) to tire. So it will be in Iraq. The Iraqis, when they're not too busy killing one another, will kill us until we leave.

And don't let's start the nonsense about there not being enough troops in Iraq. We don't have, and did not have before the invasion, enough troops for this sort of mission. Our military resources, already somewhat strained by Afghanistan, were broken in Iraq. Recruitment has collapsed. We're shoveling billions of dollars into the fire just to get the horrible results we're getting now. We don't have what it takes, and neither does the rest of the world. And while it would be nice to get other nations involved in bailing Iraq out, it's questionable that they would do so because they would see it as sending good money in after bad. Why should the French or the Germans or the Russians, who told us not to go in, now sacrifice their blood and treasure because we insisted on ignoring them? In the meantime, as we saw with Katrina, we've blown both financial and human resources that we need to cover our own problems on our adventure in Iraq.

I don't know what victory in Iraq would look like, but I know a defeat when I see one. Aside from overthrowing Saddam, we have failed in every political and military aim that this war was supposed to gain for us. We are isolated from the world. We're still under terrorist threat. We've exposed our inability to cope with terrorist threats. We've created a new middle eastern hegemon in Iran. We've emboldened the North Koreans, and we've produced a simmering civil war in Iraq that will propogate new and exotic terrorist threats in the future. I'd love to think that we still have cards to play there, but we don't. We can withdraw now, and admit failure, or we can take more casualties, withdraw later, and admit failure. If Americans can't see that, it's because they're still deluding themselves with glorious memories of a war that bears no resemblance to what's going on in Iraq.

As George Kennan put it:

"Except for our own Civil War, which was quite a different thing and was fought for a different purpose, our involvements with the use of armed force in the modern age have occurred primarily in the confusing and to some extent misleading experiences of the two world wars of the [20th] century. Both these wars ended in unconditional surrender, encouraging us in a view that the purpose of war was not to bring about a mutally advantageous compromise with an external adversary seen as totally evil and inhuman, but to destroy completely the power and will of that adversary."

Our distorted, World War II/Greatest Generation view of warfare led us to suffer greatly in Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, and now in Iraq. How long do we have to bleed before we realize that our country can lose, has lost, and is losing? What kind of national security can we expect to have if our leaders can't tell the difference between a win and a loss, and don't know what's at stake when they take risks in foreign affairs? What has our erroneous conviction that America has never lost a war (not counting, I guess, the War of 1812 and Vietnam) done to the way we approach armed conflict? In light of this poll, I have to wonder about the 65% of the American people who see a prospect for success where there is none. It is a shame that Democratic politicians won't take the trouble to cure America of this delusion, because when a nation's politicians are no longer capable of responding to the realities of the world, it isn't long before the barbarians arrive at that nation's gates.

We're headed for a lot of grief, aren't we?

I've Crapped Bigger Than This Name

The Jack Palance reference in the quiz made me do it. That and several viewings of the MST3000 version of Outlaw. Anyway, I took a quiz because Larry did (and I follow him as blindly as Renfield follows Dracula). Here are my results:

My pirate name is:

Iron Morty Read

A pirate's life isn't easy; it takes a tough person. That's okay with you, though, since you a tough person. Even through many pirates have a reputation for not being the brightest souls on earth, you defy the sterotypes. You've got taste and education. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.

Update on My New Orleans Relatives

My Aunt Anne and Uncle Stanhope are in Houston now. Their house, under seven feet of water the day after Katrina hit, is now under four feet of water. They'll have to raze it because it's now infested with toxic mold. My cousin, Stanhope Jr., and his family are planning to settle in Houston. They have a young daughter who'll have gotten used to a new school by the time they could move back.

What's the Matter With Collins?

QB Kerry Collins is a tough guy to figure out. He certainly has a first class arm, and with Randy Moss he can be frighteningly effective. In preseason, he looked almost Gannon-like, finding open receivers with ease and completing a high percentage of his passes. Even now, in two losses, he looks good statistically. Yes, he has a fumble problem, but so does Daunte Culpepper, and so did Warren Moon, yet I'd be more comfortable with either of them running the Raiders' offense than I am with Kerry Collins. Why? What do I see that's lacking?

There's a reason they call it intangibles. Football intelligence, game management skills, improvisational ability, call it what you will. Great quarterbacks have it. They're calm and creative even under spectacular pressure. You know that as long as their throwing arms remain attached to their bodies, your team has a chance. They keep plays alive that should be dead. They find the open receivers you don't see. They make everyone around them better.

Peyton Manning is one of these guys. So is Donovan McNabb. So is, and I will choke as I write this, Tom Brady. The Raider parade in this area includes Gannon, Plunkett, Stabler, and Lamonica. Michael Vick may one day be one of these guys, once he puts all his tools together.

Kerry Collins is, well, not. Pressure disrupts him too easily. He can't scramble or move out of a collapsing pocket. And while people play reasonably well around him, it's hard to say that they become better for his presence. He's fine, as long as there's nothing at stake or he's got a wave of emotion carrying him, but once things go badly, or the team really needs a score, his accuracy and poise vanish. When the heat's on, rather than making those around him great, he needs everyone around him to play perfectly for him to be good.

If the Raiders continue to struggle, they'll sooner or later have to turn to Marques Tuiasosopo and begin his tenure as a Raider starter. They've invested a lot of time and money in Gannon Jr. His time may come faster than anyone expects. Tui may be great or he may be nothing, but Collins is what he is. And we know from what's around the league that we can do better.

Fuck!

KC 23; Raiders 17. The Raiders might have won this game had the offense not taken most of the second half off. I won't blame it all on Collins, but he seemed awfully slow on the trigger. The sportscasters said that the receivers weren't running crisp enough routes, and that may be part of it. The defense played pretty well, given their talent level, making key stops, forcing a fumble and blocking a field goal attempt, but the Raider offense just wasn't able to convert any of that into points. They once again left a lot of yards on the field. While they were good in spurts, they weren't consistent.

I'm afraid I'm going to be writing "The Raiders might have won this game if..." a lot this season. They seem so frustratingly close. All the ingredients, or at least most of the ingredients, are there. Maybe it's the youth on the offensive line. Maybe it's Collins's decision-making. I will say this. The defense held up their end of the bargain tonight, and the offense should apologize to them for failing in their responsibilities.

We pissed this one away.

Cookery Corner

Smita Chandra has kept me well fed for several years now. (Shout out to bitterspice for buying me the cookbook.) I just tried a recipe of hers and it knocked me out, so I thought I'd share.

Chicken With Herbs and Yogurt (Sindhi Murgh)

What you need:

2 pounds of chicken drumsticks or thighs, skinned
2 medium onions
1/2-inch piece of fresh ginger
2 large cloves of garlic
1 green chili (optional) (I like it like this)
1 cup fresh coriander leaves and tender upper stems
1/2 cup fresh mint leaves
4 tablespoons plain yogurt
1 teaspoon tamarind paste or 2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin seeds
Salt, to taste
1/2 teaspoon tumeric
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
3 tablespoons of vegetable oil

Instructions: Skin the chicken, wash and pat dry. Make deep gashes in the chicken surface, then set the pieces aside. Chop the onions, ginger, garlic, and chili coarsely. Place them in a food processor or blender along with the coriander and mint leaves. Blend smooth, adding 1 to 2 tablespoons of water if needed. Transfer to a bowl and mix in the yogurt, tamarind, cumin, salt, tumeric and garam masala. (If you're using lemon juice instead of tamarind, mix the lemon juice in when you're ready to serve.) Rub the paste over the chicken pieces and marinate in a refrigerator for 2 to 3 hours.

Scrape the marinade off when you're ready to cook. Reserve the marinade. Warm the oil in a large skillet over medium heat then brown the chicken for five minutes on each side. Reduce the heat to low and toss the chicken with the reserved marinade. Cover and cook for 25 minutes or until the chicken is tender. Serve hot.

If you want more recipes, buy the book.

A Little Business

We've got two more additions to the blogroll today. (Oh, my, I've got the vapors! I swoon!) There's Life on the Wicked Stage, a blog about the Wayside Theater in Virginia, Tablet PCs, and miscellany. And there's Fred the Blog. Check 'em out, or I'll clamp your eyes open and make you watch Five the Hard Way.

Jon Mikl Thor is Back and...there's nothing you can do about it!

Word from the Onion AV Club is that, after eighteen years, we'll finally get the sequel to Rock n' Roll Nightmare starring the brilliant Jon Mikl Thor (here's hoping he hasn't porked out). You can check out a hilarious clip of the original here. See how Thor expertly convinces us that the satanic starfishes actually adhere to his taut, tan, muffiny chest. This is his true medium. He's a master.

UPDATE (SLIGHTLY LATER): Actually, it appears that Thor has been hitting the twinkies pretty hard these last eighteen years, so we'll amend the hope. Here's hoping he doesn't appear in a leather loincloth. The black is very slimming.

When Fetish Picnics Go Bad

They're Remaking The Omen

Trolling through IMDB today I found that the geniuses at 20th Century Fox are doing another version of The Omen. Some of y'all might remember the 1976 version with Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, the incomparable Billie Whitelaw, and the usually-dead-by-the-end-of-the-film David Warner. It's a pretty good high concept premise. Logline: a wealthy ambassador discovers, after several people around him die in bizarre accidents, that his adopted son may be the antichrist. I'd commission a treatment if I were a producer. The story turns out to have more holes in it than Bush's National Guard record, but with Peck adding his credibility and director Richard Donner keeping the thing moving briskly, those holes are hard to spot with just one viewing.

Therein lies the problem with remaking this thing.

Not only have most horror fans already seen this movie, but they've seen the two sequels, which were not only bad movies by themselves, but they helped expose the plot problems that Richard Donner had so brilliantly glossed over. Problems like these:

1) It's apparent in Damien: Omen II that Damien's canine origins can be detected with a simple blood test. How was it that such blood tests were never done during the first five years of this kid's life? One of my earliest memories is of some enormous nurse driving a huge spike into my finger and blood gushing forth. Pediatricians are all over you during the first few years of your life. Unless the Thorns were Chrisitan Scientists, Damien would have had many blood tests as a toddler, making concealment of his ancestry impossible.

2) The rules of prophecy seem to be pretty loose in the picture. According to The Bible, the mark of the beast is supposed to appear on the hand or forehead of those who follow the devil. Why does Damien get to keep his beneath his hair, and why, for that matter, does the dead priest have it on his inner thigh? And my impression of the Book of Revelations (which has its own story problems) was that the antichrist only placed the mark on people after his rise to power. How then can people have the mark of the devil as a birthmark before Damien is even born? Are people predestined to be followers of the antichrist? If so, wouldn't the all-knowing God who set this whole thing up get the body parts right?

3) Why would the devil wait until people have spilled the beans about Damien before he kills them? The movie suggests the devil made some attempts at preemptive cover-up--burning the hospital and the maternity wards to destroy all the birth records. (Ancillary plot hole. Wouldn't Robert Thorn, the ambassador to Rome at the time, have heard about the terrible fire that burned down the hospital where his son was born? Why would he need a cab driver to explain it to him five years later?) Why does the devil not simply kill those involved in the birth of the antichrist as soon as is convenient? Surely the devil would have met enough mob guys to learn the old saying "Three can keep a secret if two are dead." Why, indeed, would the devil wait to kill Robert Thorn until Thorn's got his little boy on a church altar with a holy dagger ready? Thorn flew back to England from Rome. Can't the devil, who has engineered all kinds of accidental deaths by now, arrange a simple and easily explained plane crash? Of course, this may be the predestined way that this has to work out, (the photographs foreshadowing the deaths imply it), but the movie never really thinks that possibility through. If the devil has to play by certain rules, wouldn't it be handy if someone in the movie could let us in on what they are?

4) Why does the priest who first hips Robert Thorn to the whole antichrist thing choose an approach that will make him impossible to believe? I know it's hard to approach someone with a message like that without sounding crazy, but most people would at least try.

There are other story problems, but you get my point. Any remake of the movie would probably retain these flaws (unless they're planning to radically restructure the story), while lacking the element of surprise that made the original a hit. The Omen didn't allow us the time to recognize its flaws when we first saw it, but horror fans have had almost thirty years to mull them over. The only way the movie works now is as a means to admire the professionalism of Peck, Remick, Whitelaw, Donner, and composer Jerry Goldsmith, who manage to make the absurd seem frighteningly credible. And because that movie is now on DVD with loads of commentary and extras, what earthly (or unearthly) reason anyone would have for shelling out ten bucks to watch a remake is beyond me.

He's Going To GitMo For this Bit, As We Will For Laughing

From Bill Maher:

Mr. President, this job can't be fun for you any more. There's no more money to spend--you used up all of that. You can't start another war because you used up the army. And now, darn the luck, the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping poor people. Listen to your Mom. The cupboard's bare, the credit cards maxed out. No one's speaking to you. Mission accomplished.

Now it's time to do what you've always done best: lose interest and walk away. Like you did with your military service and the oil company and the baseball team. It's time. Time to move on and try the next fantasy job. How about cowboy or space man? Now I know what you're saying: there's so many other things that you as President could involve yourself in. Please don't. I know, I know. There's a lot left to do. There's a war with Venezuela. Eliminating the sales tax on yachts. Turning the space program over to the church. And Social Security to Fannie Mae. Giving embryos the vote.

But, Sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why? Because you govern like Billy Joel drives. You've performed so poorly I'm surprised that you haven't given yourself a medal. You're a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire city to rising water and snakes.

On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans. Maybe you're just not lucky. I'm not saying you don't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side.

So, yes, God does speak to you. What he is saying is: 'Take a hint.'

Supreme #2

Bush will be making his next Supreme Court pick, and based on the John Roberts hearings precident I was thinking of all the things we can expect to learn from our newest imperial overlord. (Remember when I said I wouldn't talk about it? I lied.)

1. His favorite movies. (Provided they aren't in current release or among coming attractions. The nominee wouldn't want the actors in upcoming films of similar genre to think he didn't have an open mind.)
2. The sport from which he prefers to draw his metaphors. (I'm thinking we should go for a bumper pool or four-man bobsled guy this time, for diversity's sake.)
3. Whether death is the opposite of life. (Provided that no one is even contemplating suing over that issue.)
4. His opinion on the closely split decision in the first trial of Balboa v. Creed.
5. L.A. or New York. For the last time, which is better? (I hope someone presses the nominee on this one, so that it can be settled as a comic/preppie lifestyle magazine premise once and for all.)
6. That he has, or at least has rented, a highly telegenic brood.
7. That even though everyone George W. Bush has appointed to any position of lasting responsibility has been a ruthless, yet incompetent, zealot; somehow the nominee, a fair-minded fella who's never really given any issue much thought, managed to slip under Karl Rove's radar.
8. That he once took a Democrat out to lunch.

I'm sure we won't want to miss that one. Fire up the TiVo.

Submitted for Your Approval

My friend, actor and bon-vivant Larry Dahlke, now has his own blog, and I'm linking to it. So read it, live it, love it. And if you act now, you can read a special quote from me not available anywhere else on this or any other planet.

To the Moon, Alice!

AP reports that NASA wants to go back to the moon. Why they wish to do this they don't actually say. The story doesn't mention any research that they might want to do, or any permanent infrastructure they might want to try to build. They just want to go again by 2020. Now I know that with George W. Bush selling all of our assets to Halliburton we don't have much left to do anything, NASA has to limit its dreams. Still, the moon again? Why not start thinking about how to construct a better means of moving materials cheaply into space? Now that carbon nanotubes are a reality, we might be able to take a run at building a space elevator. Why not start designing orbital facilities for spacecraft repairs and construction? Why not put the money into more sophisticated robots for exploration of Mars, Europa, Titan, and the asteroid belt?

The trouble with NASA is that it doesn't think about what its real mission is in space exploration, and doesn't think more than one step ahead. There's no plan. (I don't count the Bush-to-Mars thing as a plan. That was a head fake to draw attention away from corpses in Iraq.) Will a President come along to correct this and restore a sense of purpose to the agency? Maybe, but by the time that happens, the Chinese will be waving to us from their massive orbiting spacedock and the E.U. will be sending manned missions to Saturn.

By the way. I won't say anything about the President's speech yesterday or John Roberts's confirmation. They were both empty bits of theater. If you want to see good absurdist comedy, find someone who's putting on Rhinocerous or Waiting For Godot. You'll have a much better time, and you'll probably come away better informed about the state of the world.

Nothing to be done.

The AFC West in Week #1

The Chefs were the only winners this week, wiping out the Jets 27-7. Both the Broncos and Chargers died, with the Broncos suffering the more ignominious fate by losing 34-10 to last year's doormats, the Miami Dolphins. We already know, of course, what happened to the Oakland Raiders against the Patriots.

It's ill advised to read too much into the first games of the season, but I do have some observations to make.

1) The Broncos look like they're in huge trouble on both sides of the ball. The Dolphins dominated them from beginning to end. Champ Bailey, who cost the Broncos so much last year, couldn't handle WR Chris Chambers, who torched him repeatedly for big plays. I guess this is one man who'll really hate seeing Randy Moss twice a year. They didn't just look bad, they looked incompetent. It was a nasty, humiliating, epoch-shattering loss for Denver. Whatever problems the Broncos have they need to fix quickly, or the rest of the division will make them suffer (starting with the Chargers next week).

2) The Chargers looked like they were in trouble defensively the entire game. They allowed the Cowboys to convert 7 of 11 third downs en route to suffering a 28-24 loss. The Cowboys' defense, by contrast, held Ladanian Tomlinson to only 72 yards on the ground and ended the game in dramatic fashion with an interception in the end zone with twenty-some seconds to go. Next week, the Chargers have their star TE Antonio Gates back. We'll see if they look any better against Denver.

3) Kansas City was impressive both offensively and defensively against the New York Jets. Larry Johnson and Priest Holmes combined for over 200-yards of rushing offense, while the K.C. defense forced six fumbles from QB Chad Pennington and held Curtis Martin under fifty yards. The amount of pressure that K.C. was able to apply to Pennington should give the Raiders' offensive line a few sleepless nights as they think about protecting the less-mobile-and-now-fumble-prone Kerry Collins. In the plus column, the Raiders held the Patriots to seventy yards rushing, so it looks like Holmes and Johnson will draw a tougher assignment next Sunday night. Anyway, because they got the only win, K.C. is so far the class of the division.

People of Faith are Pissing Me Off

Just seconds ago I decided I was fed up with the term "people of faith". This, and its cousin, "faith-based organization" conceal religion under a baby-soft, p.c., bullshit cover term. I'm not sure if the coinage originates with Bush, whose Orwellian uses of language are far more frightening and frustrating than the malaprops for which he's famous, but he was quick to grab it for his policy of funneling money to religious organizations. If you go to the FEMA website right now, you can find prominently listed Operation: Blessing, a religious charity belonging to would-be Presidential assassin Pat Robertson. Secular charities, conversely, remain off the FEMA lists.

Religious organizations love the "faith-based" term because it allows them to slip into schools and government offices without scrutiny. Creationism is religious dogma. Intelligent Design is a faith based alternative to Darwin. Sounds nicer, doesn't it? And so the blessings of ignorance are secured.

To all news organizations. Catholic Charities is a religious charity organization. It's correct to call it that. The Pope is a religous leader. It's correct to call him that. Pat Robertson is a dangerous lunatic. It's correct to call him that. Intelligent Design is right-wing religious dogma in a mask. It's correct to call it that.

That's today's message from your Uncle Jim, a fact-based writer.

People of Faith are Pissing Me Off

Just seconds ago I decided I was fed up with the term "people of faith". This, and its cousin, "faith-based organization" conceal religion under a baby-soft, p.c., bullshit cover term. I'm not sure if the coinage originates with Bush, whose Orwellian uses of language are far more frightening and frustrating than the malaprops for which he's famous, but he was quick to grab it for his policy of funneling money to religious organizations. If you go to the FEMA website right now, you can find prominently listed Operation: Blessing, a religious charity belonging to would-be Presidential assassin Pat Robertson. Secular charities, conversely, remain off the FEMA lists.

Religious organizations love the "faith-based" term because it allows them to slip into schools and government offices without scrutiny. Creationism is religious dogma. Intelligent Design is a faith based alternative to Darwin. Sounds nicer, doesn't it? And so the blessings of ignorance are secured.

To all news organizations. Catholic Charities is a religious charity organization. It's correct to call it that. Pat Robertson is a dangerous lunatic. It's correct to call him that. Intelligent Design is right-wing religious dogma in a mask. It's correct to call it that.

That's today's message from your Uncle Jim, a fact-based writer.

Conrad's Killers

The New York Times Book Review has an article on Joseph Conrad's tales of terrorism. I've read only one of his pieces--The Secret Agent--but based on the descriptions in the article I think a trip to the library may be in order to catch the others.

Tuck Rule Spin

I hate to wade into this again, but for a Raider fan, the "tuck rule" game is a bit like the Kennedy assassination--the story that won't go away. This time its ressurectionist is the Page 2 columnist, and Patriots fan, Bill Simmons, who said this:

"Every time the Tuck Rule Game gets mentioned, three other things should also be mentioned: First, Gruden had second-and-3 to close out the game, ran the ball twice up the middle, didn't get the three yards, then punted on fourth-and-inches. If they had gotten those three yards, Brady never gets the ball back. Everyone seems to forget this. And second, on the famous play, WOODSON CHOPPED BRADY IN THE HEAD TO CAUSE THE FUMBLE!!! Not only is that illegal, it's one of the few guaranteed "we're calling that every time" whistles in football. Everyone forgets this, too. And third, not only was the rule interpreted correctly, but they voted on keeping it at the next Rules Committee Meeting.

"To recap: Raiders fans have spent the last four years complaining about a play in which (A) their player should have been penalized, (B) the rule was interpreted correctly, and (C) it never should have happened in the first place because their coach choked away a second-and-3 situation and lacked the testicular fortitude to go for it on fourth down. Those are the facts. If you want to keep complaining, so be it."

A few problems with Simmons' facts:

1. "And second, on the famous play, WOODSON CHOPPED BRADY IN THE HEAD TO CAUSE THE FUMBLE!!! Not only is that illegal, it's one of the few guaranteed "we're calling that every time" whistles in football."

The reason the ball left Tom Brady's hand was that Charles Woodson's hand stripped it. It had nothing to do with any chopping to the head. Woodson's hand may have slightly grazed Brady's helmet on its way down (the replay doesn't seem all that clear to me on this point, though Patriots fans admit no doubt, calling the hit vicious. So vicious perhaps that it induced amnesia in everyone watching as well?), but the target was clearly not the head, it was the arm, which Woodson's hand struck. If C-Wood did chop Brady to the head, and it's one of those penalties that they call "every time", the referee, standing right there, didn't seem to notice. (And since when have the referees ever failed to notice an Oakland Raider committing a penalty?) The referee called the play a fumble, something apparent not only to the Raiders, but to the sportscasters, the crowd, both coaches, and, let's not forget, Brady himself, who walked off the field looking like someone told him his dog just died. He didn't jump up and complain, or gesture that he had been in the act of throwing. Brady's demeanor at that moment indicated consciousness of guilt, which is appropriate because he was, in the eyes of anyone with simple common sense, guilty.

2. "And third, not only was the rule interpreted correctly, but they voted on keeping it at the next Rules Committee Meeting."

Partly true. The Rules Committee did vote to keep the "tuck rule" at the next meeting, but not because they were happy with it. Indeed, most thought the rule was ridiculous, and for a while it looked as if they might throw it out. The trouble was that the committee couldn't come to any kind of consensus on what the new rule should be. It was quite clear that, at the moment Brady fumbled, he had no intention of attempting a pass. (Quick, tell me who the intended receiver was supposed to be. Was David Patten running a curl pattern in Brady's shoe?) Brady was holding the ball, trying to reset, when he was hit. Unless we interpret the rule in such a way as to say that a quarterback need only pump and hold the ball away from his body to immunize himself from fumble calls, it's hard to say that the ruling from the booth was remotely sensible. (I wonder. Could Brady have scrambled around like that, holding the ball out, and then, if hit, claim that he was still in his motion?) I'm in favor of ditching all the legalistic mumbo jumbo about what does and doesn't constitute a fumble and let the referee make the call based on his own best judgement of the events of the play. Rule #1, if a ball comes out of a player's hands when he is neither down by contact nor clearly attempting to throw a forward pass, that player has fumbled.

The play may have been, within the narrowest technical definition, legal, but so is marrying a 14-year-old in Nebraska (or is it Kansas?) or stopping a manual recount in order to make George W. Bush president. Right now, in my state, it is legal to fuck a cow, because nobody ever bothered to pass a law against it. To be legal is not to be right, or even reasonable. Ask any coach not connected with the Patriots whether that play resulted in a fumble, and I'll bet most would say yes. (I haven't actually taken a poll, but Mike Holmgren and Jeff Fisher have both gone on record saying it was a fumble, while none, to my knowledge, agreed with the replay official. Gruden will never change his mind, understandably.) The Patriots ultimately got the game, just as Bush got the Presidency and Washington's cow-fucker got off (pun intended), but we call these things bullshit because, legality notwithstanding, that's just what they are.

3. "First, Gruden had second-and-3 to close out the game, ran the ball twice up the middle, didn't get the three yards, then punted on fourth-and-inches."

This one I don't have much of a problem with, except to say this in Gruden's defense. Given that Gruden had one of the biggest offensive lines in football and that he had in Zach Crockett perhaps the best short-yardage running back around, I can see why he went that way. He was trying to run the clock out using plays that had been money for the Raiders much of the year. 20-20 hindsight allows us to see that a quick slant to Rice or Brown might have been the better option. (I'm sure Al Davis thought so, and the way the game ended helped lead to Gruden and Davis parting ways after the 2001 season.) None of this is relevant to the main issue, though. The result of that Raider drive doesn't remove the stench from the ruling the Patriots received minutes later.

It doesn't matter much to football as we play it now, but it is the thing that grudges are made of. I didn't hate the Patriots after they beat the Raiders in the 1985 AFC Title Game. Marc Wilson lost that one for us, and besides, the Patriots got theirs against the Bears in the Super Bowl. I don't hate the Steelers for the Immaculate Reception play. It's hard to tell whether the ball hit the ground or not on that one. But the snow job sticks in my craw. When "The Sports List" called it the 2nd worst call of all time, I wondered why it wasn't higher. (Actually, I can see it. The worst call in any game I ever saw was in a college game where Colorado got an extra down that allowed them to win the game.) What I hope for though, is revenge. Right now, Mr. Brady, have your fun. We've been in a coma for a while, but when we awaken, we, like The Bride, will arrive at your door to remind you that we have unfinished buisness.

Well, That Could Have Gone Better

Raiders 20; Patriots 30.

You have no idea how much I hate typing that. The disgusting vomitous masses from Boston win. The game turned on a Collins interception (it looks more like a fumble in the replay, but it was an interception). The Raiders had just forced the Patriots to turn the ball over on downs and looked like they had some momentum going, but then Collins loses it. It's a damn shame because up to that point Collins was doing all right. He had touchdown passes to Moss and Courtney Anderson, and the Raiders were only behind by three.

A few observations:

1) Turner should never let the Raiders use a three-down lineman set again. Brady was able to stand back and shred Oakland for the entire first half because of this lineup. When the Raiders switched to the 4-3 for the second half, they were able to apply good pressure to Brady and force him to miss throws.

2) Chris Carr is a damn good kick returner.

3) Randy Moss may be Neo, capable of entering bullet time at any moment, but that doesn't mean that Collins needs to go after him all the time. I saw several plays where Porter or Whitted was available elsewhere when Collins passed them up to challenge the Patriots' double and triple coverages. He also had a habit of locking his eyes on receivers. He needs to learn that you can look off to Moss and then throw to other receivers. This, in turn, will produce more opportunities for Moss. (At least, that's the way I'd explain it to him.) Moss had an impressive opening game, but the Raiders need to see to it that Collins looks for other options as well.

4) LaMont Jordan is a beast. Just get the ball to him and let him produce.

5) Warren Sapp looked a lot more comfortable this year than last. He seemed to be around the ball a lot. Also, the Raiders' run defense is much improved over last year's model.

The wheels really did come off with the Collins interception though. God, I miss Gannon. Turnovers are killers, especially on the road, and especially when they occur at your own 20-yard line. I can't think of too many occasions when Gannon lost the Raiders a game. (The Tampa Super Bowl doesn't count. Tampa's defense did the same thing to everyone that year. That's why they were the champs. Gannon didn't lose that game; Sapp, Barber, Simeon Rice, and Derrick Brooks won it.) The Collins interception put the Raiders in a pressure situation from which few teams can emerge victorious, especially against the defending world champions. Sea Bass's missed FG didn't help either. (Please don't tell me he has gout again.) But...dammit Collins!

The Raiders play at home against the Chiefs next. They'll need this game, because a week later they face Philadelphia (on the road again--that whole NFL conspiracy thing is starting to make a whole lot of sense), and I don't know how well this team could handle an 0-3 start.

Some other observations:

1) For a moment there I was looking forward to seeing the return of Monday night NFL highlights during halftime. I remember the old days with Howard Cosell narration "And on the next play, number 34, Earl Campbell, breaks through the line and runs sixty-six yards for the touchdown." If my team had won that week, I'd stay, glued to the set, waiting for him to describe the best plays. If my team had lost, well, I went to the kitchen for a sandwich. Anyway, as I say, I was looking forward to it, until Al Michaels (how I hate him) informed me that we wouldn't get narration. Instead, they'd show the highlights as a montage for Tim McGraw to sing variations of his hit "I Like It, I Love It" to. Why is this good? I realize this may appeal to hicks, but, speaking as someone who is not a rube, a kadodie, a shitkicker, or a cracker, I think it sucks. And no, I wouldn't be any happier if they used R.E.M., Lou Reed, Henry Rollins, or William Shatner with Ben Folds. Just show the damn highlights, jerks.

2) I also hate the dumb personal segment section where we get some player describing his biography to us. And no, I didn't just hate it because this week's bio was Tom Brady's. I just don't give a damn about the lives of sports figures. A few are interesting, but most of their stories are just dull recitations that all sound the same: "I grew up [insert city here]. I used to [do this exercise/do this non-sports job/have this disease/farm this crop]. From it I learned [to throw/to catch/discipline and character/to love rutebegas]. My idol was [Joe Montana/Muhmmad Ali/My father/Ray Rutebega and His All-Root-Vegetable Jug Band]." Who gives a fuck? If an player isn't huddling up, getting set, running, throwing, catching or hitting, why do you ask me to pay attention to him?

3) I don't think I'd hate the Patriots half as much if everyone in the organization wasn't described as such pluperfectly, wonderful, character-possessing, help-old-ladies-across-the-street, sweetheart-type people. Al Michaels spent half tonight's game sucking Bob Kraft's cock. It was nauseating. Are you a sportscaster, Al, or do you work in the Patriots's PR office? You know what I'd like to see? Tom Brady accused of shooting a small child. I'd like to see Corey Dillon picked up for exposing himself at the mall. Bob Kraft caught raiding a pension fund and moving the money to Switzerland would make my year. The encomia are enough to give me diabetes.

4) I miss Dan Dierdorf. He could keep Al Michaels in line. That is, of course, the likely reason for his absence.

The reason I can devote so much energy to venting about the game is that my relatives turned up alive in New Orleans on Sunday. They're in Houston now, staying with some of my other relatives; they'll have to figure out what happens next. I don't know.

That's your ball game.

Yeah, I've been Absent

Sorry about that, but some of me and mine are in New Orleans, and many more of my relatives have lost their homes and livelihoods. There's nothing I can about either but both absorb my attention. Any readers out there who can send money to the Red Cross or other relief agencies need to do so.

Worst Titles For Good Movies

Roger Ebert's current movie answer man (to which I can't link because the link will soon expire. Go to rogerebert.com and find the one dated closest to this entry in the archives) contains a letter that asks why the wheelchair-polo documentary Murderball has played so poorly. Ebert has an answer from the movies's co-director:

'David Alan Shapiro, "Murderball's" co-director, tells me: "It is indeed odd, as I reckon we're one of the best-reviewed films of the year, if not the decade. The press has been so kind, and as mainstream as it gets. Maybe people just don't like wheelchairs. Maybe we alienated our base by trying to gloss it up and go mainstream: big theaters, no festival laurels, no 'documentary.' Maybe the title paired with Zupan's goateed mug scare off half the audience. For better or worse, people are hearing 'sports film.' Maybe the sportos don't want to see a wheelchair doc, and the doc-heads don't want to see a sports flick. Maybe everybody thinks it's one of those cue-the-violins 'inspirational' weepies. Who knows?"'

Mr. Shapiro, I don't think that's what anyone's hearing with Murderball, which sounds less like a sports movie than it does a 1960s Roger Corman exploitation flick. Titles are so desperately important with movies. The good ones--Star Wars, Goodfellas, The Silence of the Lambs, or The Lion King--not only have a certain magical rhythm to them, but also give you a hint of the style and tone of the movie you're about to spend money on. When I hear that Murderball is doing poorly at the box office, I don't think "Oh, that poor documentary. I need to head down there, buy a ticket and give it a fighting chance." I think "You mean that piece of crap with Ice Cube in it? Good. Maybe the executroids will finally learn." I have to remind myself that a) it's a documentary and b) it's about wheelchair athletes. Any title that doesn't give you a hint about the subject of the movie is bad, but a title that gives the potential viewer the wrong impression is disasterous.

It got me thinking about good movies with bad titles. It's too easy to think of bad movies with bad titles, but try a good movie. It's hard. Here's what I came up with:

1. Murderball
2. About Last Night...(originally Sexual Perversity in Chicago
3. Playing By Heart...
4. The Exorcist III (originally Legion, and if they'd kept it that way they wouldn't have needed to add the superfluous exorcism scenes to the movie.)

I Meant Take Him Out To Dinner and A Show

It warms the cockles of my heart to see Pat Robertson take a pummeling for calling for the murder of Hugo Chavez. Now he says he was "misinterpreted" when he said that covert operators should "take him out". Just for history's sake, Media Matters reminds us of what he said:

ROBERTSON: You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don't think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United ... This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.

Apparently he wants us to forget that he employed the word "assassination" earlier in the paragraph where he said "take him out". And he hopes we'll ignore that after he said "assassination" he added "we really ought to go ahead and do it". What else could this be but a call for assassination? Will he next argue that when he said assassination he didn't mean "high profile political murder" but instead meant "kidnapping" or "an afternoon of tennis followed by a seven course dinner at The Tavern on the Green, and brandy, cigars and hints of indiscretion at 21"? This goes way beyond Bill Clinton's "definition of 'is'", occupying the same territory as those David Irving books that claim that all statements by Hitler, Himmler, and the crew about "ausrotten" the Jews meant anything but what "ausrotten" means--to exterminate. Next we'll talk to Pat Buchanan and Christopher Hitchens, who'll explain why there's nothing wrong with that.

This country would be much more fun to watch from a safe distance. Unfortunately, I don't know any place that far.

Are Peace Movements Known For Hurling Spears?

AP Headline: 'Peace Mom': Spearhead of Peace Movement?

I hope this was AP's moment of headline irony for the day.

Seven Deadly Sins

Bitterspice tagged me, so here we go.

The Seven Deadly Sins

Anger

1. Who did you last get angry with? There must have been several thousand on the 405 today who learned how I felt about them.
2. What is your weapon of choice? A devastating insult, especially one involving yiddish words.
3. Would you hit a member of the opposite sex? If I suspected physical danger, yes.
4. How about of the same sex? Yes, and I would also cut off their faces and use them for masks during my escapes.
5. Who was the last person who got really angry at you? Bitterspice was upset with me a while back. I'm sure there have been others, but only her anger is in any way significant to me.
6. What is your pet peeve? Like George Carlin, I don't have pet peeves. I have major psychotic hatreds. Let's see. I hate weakness, racism, sexism, stupidity, willful ignorance, George Bush, Ann Coulter, the entire religious right, religion in general, salespeople, publicists, the questions Charlie Rose asks authors, Michael Bay, Jerry Bruckheimer, Tom Brady, the New England Patriots, Seattle traffic, whiny Seattle neighborhood activists who fuck up any attempt to alleviate Seattle traffic, Dick Cheney, anyone associated with George W. Bush in any way (including dog groomers and other minor functionaries), marketing people, cops, that BTK guy, terrorists, fundamentalists, McDonalds, Wal-Mart, Southwest Airlines (11 hours from Seattle to Chicago, you miserable fucks?), and anyone who started a letter writing campaign for Enterprise.
7. Do you keep grudges, or can you let them go easily? Tom-fucking-tuck-rule-Brady. I'll hate him three years after he dies.

Sloth

1. What is one thing you're supposed to do daily that you haven't done in a while? I've slacked off a little on pilates.
2. What is the latest you've ever woken up? Three in the afternoon.
3. Name a person you've been meaning to contact, but haven't? I can't think of any.
4. What is the last lame excuse you made? Can't remember. (That's one, isn't it?)
5. Have you ever watched an infomercial all the way through (one of the long ones?) Yes. Tony Robbins can be hypnotic sometimes.
6. When was the last time you got a good workout in? Monday.
7. How many times did you hit the snooze button on your alarm clock today? Twice.

Gluttony

1. What is your overpriced yuppie beverage of choice? I like vanilla lattes, but I don't buy them more than once or twice a month.
2. Meat eaters: white meat or dark meat? I like anything dead. Hell, I like sushi, so I'll even eat anything unconscious.
3. What is the greatest amount of alcohol you've had in one sitting/outing/event? A few years ago I drank a bottle of wine during a Raiders-Broncos Monday night game. It was very necessary.
4. Have you ever used a professional diet company? No.
5. Do you have an issue with your weight? I'd like to lose a bit, but I'm okay.
6. Do you prefer sweets, salty foods, or spicy foods? Spicy.
7. Have you ever looked at a small house pet or child and thought "LUNCH"? Mmmm...other people's children...Sorry, I was channeling Albert Fish.

Lust

1. How many people have you seen naked (not counting movies/family)? Fifty or so.
2. How many people have seen YOU naked (not counting physicians/family)? If you subscribe to my webcam, you could be one of them.
3. Have you ever caught yourself staring at the chest/crotch of a member of your gender of choice during a normal conversation? Yes.
4. Have you "done it?" Yes.
5. What is your favorite body part on a person of your gender of choice? It's all good.
6. Have you ever been propositioned by a prostitute? Yes. In Kenya.
7. Have you ever had to get tested for an STD or pregnancy? Nope.

Greed

1. How many credit cards do you own? Ask me again in two weeks.
2. What's your guilty pleasure store? I've never felt guilt about any place that I've shopped.
3. If you had 1 million dollars, what would you do with it? A million doesn't go very far. I'd probably invest it so that I could keep the career going.
4. Would you rather be rich, or famous? Wealth would be nice, but fame is more likely, given my career choice.
5. Would you accept a boring job if it meant you would make megabucks? No. I wouldn't be very good at it and would lose it quickly.
6. Have you ever stolen anything? I once jacked the Lawrence University student store for a can of soup. I was damn poor then.
7. How many MP3's are on your hard drive? Plenty, and I paid for all but maybe a dozen of them.

Pride

1. What's one thing you have done that you're most proud of? Wrote a novel that won an award.
2. What's one thing you have done that your parents are most proud of? The same, I'd imagine.
3. What's one thing you would like to accomplish in your life? To live well off my fiction earnings.
4. Do you get annoyed by coming in second place? It depends one who I lost to and what the stakes were, but generally no.
5. Have you ever entered a contest of skill knowing you were of much higher skill than the other competitors? Sure
6. Have you ever cheated on something to get a higher score? Yes, and I got caught. (It involved a metal shop toolbox in 8th grade.) I learned then and there that I have no talent for crime, forcing me to give up my dream of becoming a sophisticated international jewel thief.
7. What did you do today that you're proud of? Managed to survive three-and-a-half hours of traffic without slaughtering my fellow motorists.

Envy

1. What item (or person) of your friend's would you most want to have for your own? Nothing. I'm trying to limit my assets these days.
2. Who would you want to go on "Trading Spaces" with? Famed set designer Ken Adam.
3. If you could be anyone else in the world, who would you be? Brad Bird.
4. Have you ever been cheated on? I doubt it.
5. Have you ever wished you had a physical feature different from your own? Roger Moore's hair.
6. What inborn trait do you see in others that you wish you had for yourself? The ability to tolerate stupidity.
7. Do you wish you'd come up with this survey? No.

And finally, what is your favorite deadly sin? Lust. Especially as played by Raquel Welch in the original Bedazzled

I'd pass this on to someone else if I knew anyone. So at least as far as I'm concerned, the chain stops here.

Einer Kleiner Nachmittag Debunking

One of my students recently asserted, in response to my expressed hatred of spiders, that human beings swallow an average of eight spiders per year. Having heard this one before and with my own spider sense (or bullshit detector) tingling, I took it upon myself to check it out.

Find the answer here. Hint: don't you think natural selection would have taken care of predators dumb enough to crawl inside the mouths of larger predators? Spiders have infested the planet for millions of years, and show tremendous survival skills. I mean, yes, there could be the odd Inspector Clouseau spider, but his clumsiness and stupidity would injure other spiders, and predators who were trying to kill him, rather than himself. (Inspector Clouseau spider taps lightly at a human's lips: "Kato?") This would drive the Inspector Dreyfus spider crazy and he'd try to kill the Inspector Clouseau spider and this would inevitably lead to me extending this joke too far.

Also, if this were true don't you think that would mean waking up with an unswallowed spider in your mouth at least once? Men, have you ever had this happen to you? Man at water cooler: "I'm having the worst day. I was brushing my teeth and hooked this" (Picture of Spider). Well BILLY MAYS HERE TO TELL YOU ABOUT THE SPID-Y-B-GONE MOUTH GUARD IN A VOICE SO LOUD THEY CAN HEAR ME ON NEPTUNE! WOW!!!!

Yes, but then, what about the nose?

And Here I'd Just Assumed It Was A Remake

Apparently, the producers of Michael Bay's megaflop The Island didn't pay the producers of Parts: The Clonus Horror for the rights to their story, despite the films being so close to one another in theme and plot that even a cursory glance at plot summary for The Island made anyone who'd seen PTCH say, "My God, why would you want to remake that piece of shit? Oh, yeah, it's Michael Bay we're talking about." Indeed, months before the movie came out, the Internet Movie Database had it listed in its "Movie Connections" segment as a remake of PTCH, and no one bothered to demand a correction or issue a denial.

You can read about the suit here. It's kind of fun. I guess if the PTCH producer wins his suit (and it seems to me he has Bay and Dreamworks by the balls), he can finally quit his job. Maybe I shouldn't root for him too hard though. He might use the proceeds from the judgement to make a sequel.

Response to Raiders' First Preseason Series

I only heard it on radio, but everyone seemed pretty sharp. Lamont Jordan caught passes and ran well. Collins was sharp. The offensive line blocked well, and the defense held the 49ers to a three-and-out. Nice.

Friday's Movie Challenge

Via Majikthise:

"Amanda sets Friday's movie challenge: list your favorite well-drawn female characters in movies. I found this exercise much more difficult than I expected."

Me too. In some ways, and this is pretty sad, television has been kinder to women than film has. (Roseanne, Maude, The Sopranos, and Mary Tyler Moore leap to mind.) Still, I can think of some, and here they are:

Scarlett Johansson as Charlotte in Lost In Translation.

Halle Berry as Leticia Musgrove in Monster's Ball

Pam Grier as Jackie Brown in Jackie Brown

Nicole Kidman as Alice Harford in Eyes Wide Shut

Maggie Smith as Jean Brodie in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Shelley Winters as Charlotte Haze in Lolita (1962)

Jessica Lange as Julie Nichols in Tootsie

Lorraine Bracco as Karen Hill in Goodfellas

Margot Kidder as Lois Lane in Superman II

Every woman (Monroe included) who appears in All About Eve

Bette Davis as Baby Jane Hudson in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane

Janet Leigh as Marion Crane in Psycho

Susan Sarandon as Annie Savoy in Bull Durham

Faye Dunaway as Diana Christensen in Network

Beatrice Straight as Louise Schumacher in Network

Piper Laurie as Sarah Packard in The Hustler

Diana Rigg as Teresa D'Vicenzo in On Her Majesty's Secret Service

I think I'll stop here. I found quite a few, didn't I?