Most of these lists are top ten or top twenty, others are just lists. My favorite so far is "Mark Allen's Renewable, Cross-Referenced, Self-Mutating Top Ten List of the Most Popular Top Ten Lists..
." Rich "Inflatable Squirrel Carcass" Hazelton again lists life with his wife, Tamar, as his #1, which makes sense to me since I also adore her. A few lists might seem to scream "Check this out, I'm so cool.
" But I leave it you to decide who they are. I don't put much effort into my list. A "best of" for me would consist of individual musical selections rather than whole albums or books.
But it requires going through my own playlists plus the playlists of the WFMU DJs I listen to on a more-or-less regular basis some that I don't. It always includes some stuff I've had for more than a year because I get things in anticipation of wanting to hear or read them in the future, or feel I'm missing something put them aside for awhile. The photo collection, "Surfing San Onofre to Point Duma, 1936-1942" was the latter, I'll be posting an example of what I learned from it.
# posted by Bob : 6:44 PM 0 tips comments A brief account of Ford's World War Two service in the U.S. Navy hair-raising experiences on the USS during the incredibly destructive typhoon that hit Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet on 18-19 December 1944.
# posted by Bob : 8:06 PM 0 tips comments This lawsuit is still a big deal among the "Sex the City" era Repug political junkies who read the old Wonkette faithfully are perversely interested in how other young, beautiful privileged American fascisti have sex. Admittedly, I was once mildly surprised to learn that some of these "conservatives" - who sterilize their underwear in microwaves snort expensive fragrances to mask the odor of the unwashed masses - enjoy doggy style don't consider oral sex disgustingly unhygienic. They are, after all, the same ambitious youngsters who advocated the impeachment of Bill Clinton for revealing nuclear attack codes to bimbos demanded the Smithsonian display the Stained Apparel of Monica.
For years they smirked privately at Mark Foley, gladly worked for bigots who want homosexuals castrated or clitorally circumcised. They lined up to lick the arsehole of any rightwing Bible bleater with a full collection plate the influence to help their careers. Photos from Abu Ghraib gave them months of masturbatory pleasure, but now videos of beheadings bloody Baghdad carnage hardly get their juices flowing.
Decades on a radio station that permitted me all the freedoms not prohibited by the F.C.C.
, long associations with alternative publications that printed just about any confessional-style poem I submitted, made me circumspect about the kind of personal information I revealed. There are certain laws regarding "libelous" portrayals of living persons not famous. What I know about others they may also know about me.
But what they know is merely embarrassing rather than interesting. So what to make of someone who published the details of her jaded interactions with under-the-beltway penises on the internet now defends herself not on the grounds of free speech (we'd hardly expect that in the era of heightened National Security), but by claiming a blog is a personal diary like something she left out on her coffee table for her friends to browse. Steinbuch is a jerk.
Cutler is an exhibitionist. In a different life she'd be in porn films. Instead, she by posing for Playboy writing an urbane "novel" 100 pages too long for the genre that one could display two summers ago next to one's cocktail high end cell phone on any of the East Coast's exclusive beaches.
Go at it, kids. But your 15 minutes worth of fame has already lasted half-an-hour, your 120 Days of Sodom for nearly six years counting. # posted by Bob : 5:22 PM 3 tips comments # posted by Bob : 12:09 PM 3 tips comments # posted by Bob : 6:01 PM 0 tips comments # posted by Bob : 2:04 AM 3 tips comments # posted by Bob : 8:19 PM 1 tips comments pulled out of a tribute to Dolly Parton after she was unhappy with her second attempt to perform Parton's hit song 9 to 5.
Simpson got the song's words mixed up during a tape of the annual tribute show for the US Kennedy Center Honors. She recorded it a second time but was again unhappy and asked for it to be removed from the tape. "She really wasn't happy with her performance," said Simpson's spokeswoman Cindi Berger.
"She did want it to be perfect for Dolly, who she idolises," she added. Simpson fled the stage after getting flustered during the first take. Let's briefly mull this one over.
Dolly Parton, country music icon, terrific singer, wonderful songwriter, great sense of humor, astute businesswoman (she even out-foxed Col. Think of the high quality of female singers songwriters in country music now, all of whom owe a lot to Dolly. But the producers of the Kennedy Center Honors show booked Jessica Simpson, a "celebrity" of proven witlessness marginal musical talent to do homage to genius Dolly, apparently on the basis of her realistic portrayal of Daisy Duke, the sort of dumb country comedy character Dolly has been satirizing for 40 years.
Jessica blew the song onstage then wasn't even able to perform it later in a controlled retake. # posted by Bob : 2:09 PM 0 tips comments # posted by Bob : 11:45 PM 1 tips comments It's all over but the counting (of the $$). Barring some health problem or scandal or outrageous faux pas, John McCain will be the Repug nominee in 2008.
The Bush Junta has already given him the nod all that remains is to negotiate the VP various key adminstration appointees, there's plenty of time for that. Same thing happened in 1998-1999 when Bush II was annointed. Besides, they haven't really got anyone else they know it.
Condi's a sentimental insider favorite, but a childless, unmarried, black female intellectual who doesn't especially want the job (or can't quite convince herself she can have it) has even less interest in baking cookies than Hillary would be a really hard sell to Southern Baptists. # posted by Bob : 2:55 PM 1 tips comments # posted by Bob : 11:09 PM 2 tips comments # posted by Bob : 9:27 PM 1 tips comments # posted by Bob : 6:39 PM 3 tips comments More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.
"This is reality-check research," said the study's author, Lawrence Finer. "Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades." Does this mean I'm an American pioneer?
I've never had sex while I was married. It lends weight to why I'm not in favor of abstinence-based sex education: total abstinence is unlikely. I'm for laws designed to protect minors from sexual predation exploitation by adults, but I believe that adolescents have a right to express their sexuality, it is far to better to teach them how to express it safely, with caution, with respect for oneself one's partner, than to try to dissuade them altogether, or coerce them into signing "chastity pledges" that for most will only last until the combination of opportunity hormones coalesces into the "right" time.
Sexuality is warped by sexism bigotry. The bigotry was on display over the weekend as several Virginia Episcopal churches preferred aligning with a loony Anglican Bishop Akinola from Nigeria to coexisting with a sane gay clergyman from New Hampshire named Gene Robinson. Sexism is everywhere, no need to go to Saudi Arabia.
I hear it in American pop music all the time, some velvety voiced very mature experienced convincing male singer intoning over the slow sexy beats how he'll "Give it all to you if you give it all to me" while a chorus of what sounds like 14 year old female naifs chirps back,"I'll give it all to you, I'll give it all to you," I feel like yelling at them, "You dopes, what he's gonna give you is a pissing, pooping, crying baby." Maybe abstinence is a reasonable option. I'd also recommend the part of the movie "Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex" where Woody Allen plays Sperm #1.
If the science part of this sex thing is too difficult to understand, then just assume you have to somehow stop a frantic, obsessed nebbish guy you can only see through a microscope from reaching this thing inside you called an "egg." # posted by Bob : 9:23 PM 0 tips comments I rode the glass elevator up down three times then took a gooey cinnamon bun cappuccino break. I stopped by the magazine stand browsed the entire December issue of Tattoo, which I didn't buy because it had sticky bun stuff on it.
A side trip through the Everything Plus Drugs Store I exited with a roll of Homer Simpson wrapping paper, a Santa Claus Pez dispenser, a bottle of Tylenol PM. This year all the employees at Our Toyz R Not Discounted were dressed up as wooden soldiers, which is better than than the year they wore propeller beanies. I wasn't interested in the 200 pound teddy bear at $1999, but I made the "associate" pull it off the display for me anyway.
"Do you carry gorilla costumes?" I asked. Shopping was wearing me down.
I headed back to the food court. The sushi line was too long so I settled for a pint of moo goo gai pan a corn dog. Next time you're in the shop with the music boxes, see how many of them you can make play simultaneously.
The Environmentally Correct Store was devoted to saving the whales by selling very expensive biodegradable items. I picked up some buffalo chip patio torches banana fiber rolling papers. Time for a Jamoca Almond Fudge ice cream cone, double dip.
Three glass elevator rides a stroll past the mall Santa his teenaged female elves brought me to the Native American Emporium. I tried on a Lakota war bonnet Tlinget frog mask, admired a Kiowa beaded bag, shook an Arapaho rattle to drive away evil spirits. But they no longer carried grizzly bear paw amulets, by law there's a two week waiting period before anyone can walk out with an Iroquois tomahawk.
So I bought a tiny Hopi Kachina doll for good luck locating my car hurried out into the Great Traffic Tieup beneath the cold starry night of generic nonsectarian seasonal good cheer. Now I have lots of presents to put under my tree, but I haven't a thing for anyone else except Spanish greeting cards from the dollar store. # posted by Bob : 10:48 PM 0 tips comments # posted by Bob : 1:51 PM 0 tips comments Safe Haven Infant Protection Act) the mother could have walked into the police station, handed it to the duty officer, walked out once it had been determined the baby was not abused, giving no more information than she was was willing to reveal.
Every cop, every firefighter, every EMT knows the law. Assuming the baby was abandoned at night, the mother (or whoever did it) could have wrapped up the infant left it just about anyplace it could be seen, even in the doorway of the mayor's nearby jewelry store, made an anonymous phone call to 911, or summoned a taxi to pick it up. Still, one has to imagine a person so out-of-it, so detached from reality, that they can't look at a helpless baby think, "I'm really fucked up, but this bahy deserves a chance.
" One doesn't want to imagine it. New Jersey's law designates police stations hospital emergency rooms as safe havens. Other states allow for locations such as firehouses.
Statistically, Safe Haven Laws are not obvious successes, but those statistics include only recorded Safe Haven drop-offs. A better measurement is the ratio of babies found alive compared to those not. A New York fire captain speaking on TV last week at the funeral for abandoned dead infant said he believed the laws were helping a lot because they are reminders that a "safe haven" is anywhere a baby will be quickly found, in the old tradition of leaving newborns at the door of the church rectory, so a living inflant found in McDonald's, though not the best possible circumstance, is good enough.
The utter senselessness, that it never has to happen. # posted by Bob : 7:11 PM 0 tips comments Brilliant at Breakfast this week not crossposting that stuff here. Tata from Poor Impulse Control is also contributing entries just for BAB.
I don't do much political commentary because people like Jill are dedicated to it, she gets out a morning edition so reliably that I stop by every day while I'm sipping my Chock full o' Nuts New York Roast with a splash of half half. Lovely mild weather, but the Sun has little heat to it. By six or eight weeks after the Solstice, in February, one turns one's back to the Sun feels the warmth again.
The duration of this mild spell is more unusual than the temps, that it's been pretty dry. But we expect the big blue bubble of Arctic high pressure on the weather map, it's coming eventually, within 24 hours the bottom drops out. These temperate days are rarely compensated by icy ones at the end of winter.
Just subtract them from the season, the longest night only a week away. # posted by Bob : 11:06 PM 1 tips comments Many of us Jerseyans look at this with a mixture of distaste pride. Distaste because it really is crappy, this corner was once a pretty classy city intersection.
Pride because we don't mind saying the scene is well within our zone of familiarity, we could walk right into it without anxiety. it still is in its way a great city intersection. # posted by Bob : 5:10 PM 3 tips comments # posted by Bob : 11:56 AM 5 tips comments Rutgers Lady Knights fell off the AP Top 25 poll for the first time in over two years.
3 of their 4 losses were against ranked teams - Duke beat them up badly. Their pre Big East schedule has no patsies - that's not coach Vivian Stringer's style. This year's Lady Knights are young mostly inexperienced = no seniors at all, but there's a lot of talent.
It's going to be fun watching these women learn to play together, see who steps up as leaders now that the great Cappie Poindexter is gone. Impossible to know how they'll be playing by March. What possessed me to buy a package of boxer shorts underwear today?
I've been a briefs guy all my life. A former girlfriend gave me flannel boxers during an unusually snowy winter I did wear them on occasion, beneath pants pantless around the house. Oh well, this is the sort of adventurous change I make in my life now.
# posted by Bob : 10:06 PM 1 tips comments Most of these lists are top ten or top twenty, others are just lists.
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