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United States, North Carolina, Carrboro, English, Paul, Male, 56-60, All Music, All Food.

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Saturday, June 07, 2003

The Candy Colored Clown   The back porch was loaded with birds: egrets, penguins, roosters, woodpeckers, and the eagles were circling overhead. They were making quite a mess when Little Susie woke up and she decided to put on her best sweater – a hot little number highlighting adequate breasts with tapestry crap on it, shaped to emphasize her waist.   “Shoot the damn birds!” she insisted.   “No, “ I say, “we can’t do that – some of them are endangered.”   She walked off in a snit, so I complimented her sweater. “That sweater is nothing short of fabulous, where did you buy it?”   A voice echoed mine, a syllable behind, “That…that...sweat...sweat…er…er...” Oh shit, it was my nemesis, John The Doppelganger. Things go downhill fast when he shows up.   “I want to learn to play the spoons,” he says with way too much cheer in his voice.   Aha, I think, no problem, I can teach you to play the spoons. You get a pair of spoons in your fingers just right, like chopsticks, and you can rattle them together anyway you like, make nice snappy rhythms, hit ‘em on your knee and sometimes on the table for accents, drag ‘em across your knuckles for a roll, put another pair in your other hand and do some hot paradiddles even if you never took a drum lesson. Let’s go to the kitchen and get us some spoons.   Little Susie opened a door and the whole side porch was littered with sunflower seeds. “Who made that mess?” I demanded to know.   “Oh, I threw it out there…there were too many birds out back.”   Digging around in the kitchen drawer, no spoons seemed to match. Two big ones would be okay, or two little ones too. In a pinch, I could demonstrate with forks. We need rhythm. I grabbed a handful of silverware and went to do my presentation.   Not quite right. One of them was a Uri Geller spoon and it bent when I tried to get a rhythm going. Nothing matched, no way to get a rattle going. Nice wooden table to make the pops, but the silverware wasn’t cooperating. Fuck it, I grabbed a pair of forks and tried to do a nice snappy roll. No sound! I looked. One of them was a plastic fork! Damn!   John The Doppelganger pointed at me and laughed. I really hate it when that sunuvabitch shows up. Things Things go go to to hell hell real real fast fast. 9:50:16 PM    comment []

Rainy Day In Chapel Hill 3:43:56 PM    comment []

Then, like magic, as if in a dream, like manna from heaven, a pannekoeken appeared, loaded with dried Michigan apples and homemade cherry jam. There was a great joyfulness among the faithful, but also great weeping and ogden nashing of teeth among the doubters who were cast from the firmament after maintaining that it would not "go" with beer, especially at this "late hour." 6:11:16 AM    comment []

Saints & Sinners Thanks to Mark for the Bush halo pic, which I thought about the moment I saw the Blair (Tony, not Jayson) and thanks to Rayne whose comment about Chalabi woke me up. Credit where it's due, I get by with a little help from my friends. 4:30:31 AM    comment []

Dr. Ahmad Chalabi   Personal Information   Born - 1944. Marital Status - Unknown. Education - Mathematics (Chicago University and MIT).   Personal History   Dr. Ahmad Chalabi is a Shi'a Muslim. He is the son of a wealthy banking family whose grandfather, father and brother held prominent posts in Iraqi governments until Saddam Hussein's Baath Party seized power in 1968. He has not lived in Iraq since 1956, apart from a period organizing resistance in the Kurdish north in the mid-1990s. Chalabi was a math professor at the American University in Beirut until 1977. His main political support came from the US Congress, the Pentagon and parts of the CIA. The US State Department does not trust him and has raised questions about Iraqi National Congress's accounting practices. In 1995 he organized an uprising in the Northern Iraq, which was called off by the CIA at the crucial moment, and which subsequently led to the deaths of thousands of INC members. A highly controversial figure, he is charismatic and determined, though many also regard him as domineering. Since he left Jordan, Chalabi has resided in London and he is now a British citizen.         Political Activity       Dr. Ahmad Chalabi was leader of Iraqi National Congress until April of 1999, when he was demoted to the rank of an ordinary member. A collective leadership of seven persons, each representing one of the main opposition groups, was established in his place. He was the chairman of the Petra Bank in Jordan and was eventually convicted (in his absence) of fraud by a Jordanian court. He maintains he is innocent and says the Iraqi government trumped up the accusations.                                                                            Additional Information       Dr. Ahmad Chalabi has little support from leaders of the various Iraqi exile groups, or from Iraqis living in Iraq. The Arab governments in the Persian Gulf region have told the administration that they would not allow Chalabi to run a liberation army from their soil, even in an operation mounted with U.S. help. The ruling Sunnis of Saudi Arabia distrust Chalabi in part because he is Shi'a, a branch of Islam whose adherents make up just over half of Iraq's 22 million inhabitants. The Kuwaitis do not believe he could inspire a successful revolt and refuse to give him a staging area. Jordan would put him in jail were he to return because of the banking fraud. And on the other side of Iraq, Turkey wants nothing to do with Chalabi or his plan.   Update: This is the guy who allegedly provided the US State Department with “conclusive evidence” of the existence of WMDs, which they chose to believe rather than contradictory information from the CIA. His Curriculum Vitae includes leaving behind two failed businesses while making out like a champ himself. Even though that earned him the respect of Vice President Dick Cheney and senior officials at the Pentagon, all parties involved insist there are no plans to install him as the next leader of Iraq. 3:22:40 AM    comment []

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