Dick Jones' Patteran Pages

30 June 2003

I stumbled across this on someone's Salon weblog, copied it to Word & then forgot whose blog it was. In the unlikely event of the source coming upon it in my weblog, please declare yourself & claim credit for your vigilance. It's a splendidly barbed few moments of spleen from Hollywood loose cannon Michael Moore. "...It's not the lying and the doctoring of intelligence that has me all upset. It's that you've had control of Iraq for over two months now -- and you couldn't even find the time to plant just a few nukes or vats of nerve gas and at least make it LOOK like you weren't lying to us. "You see, by not faking some evidence of weapons of mass destruction, it shows that you thought no one would mind if it turned out you made everything up. A different kind of president, who believes that the American public would be outraged if they ever found out the truth, would go to great lengths to cover up his subterfuge." Cruel but fair, I think... 1:03:27 AM    Mmm? []

29 June 2003

SPAM, SPAM, SPAM... There's an amusing entry in KatieMac's On It about spam. Whilst not exactly recommending that in the face of overwhelming odds we invite it in & snuggle up to it, she is at least getting a few laughs from it. If my weblog had a little bit more reach I'd propose a competition for various categories of spam received - the grossest, the least feasible offer, the wildest interpretation of the English language, the most entirely bizarre etc.   I've actually eliminated most of the stuff aimed at my pc. After the most prolonged installation/uninstallation process ever mounted, I finally found a spam program that works. For the first time in my anti-capitalist life I shall endorse a product. It's called Spam Inspector & you can sample it for 14 days via download.com. 1:17:15 AM    Mmm? [] UK EDUCATION THE BEST. DRAMATIC FINDINGS As proof positive of the towering superiority of British education, I present the following. They are all genuine excuse notes sent by parents to explain the absence of their children from school. My son is under a doctor's care and should not take P.E. today. Please execute him. Please excuse Lisa for being absent. She was sick and I had her shot. Dear School: Please excuse John being absent on Jan. 28, 29,30, 31, 32, and also 33. Please excuse Gloria from Jim today. She is administrating. Please excuse Roland from P.E. for a few days. Yesterday he fell out of a tree and misplaced his hip. John has been absent because he had two teeth taken out of his face. Carlos was absent yesterday because he was playing football. He was hurt in the growing part. Megan could not come to school today because she has been bothered by very close veins. Chris will not be in school cus he has an acre in his side. Please excuse Ray Friday from school. He has very loose vowels. Please excuse Pedro from being absent yesterday. He had (diahre) (dyrea) (direathe) the runs. [words in ()'s were crossed out.] Please excuse Burma, she has been sick and under the doctor. Irving was absent yesterday because he missed his bust. Please excuse Jimmy for being. It was his father's fault. I kept Billie home because she had to go Christmas shopping because I don't know what size she wears. Please excuse Jennifer for missing school yesterday. We forgot to get the Sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it Monday, we thought it was Sunday. Sally won't be in school a week from Friday. We have to attend her funeral. My daughter was absent yesterday because she was tired. She spent a weekend with the Marines. Please excuse Jason for being absent yesterday. He had a cold and could not breed well. Please excuse Mary for being absent yesterday. She was in bed with gramps. Maryann was absent December 11-16, because she had a fever, sore throat, headache and upset stomach. Her sister was also sick, fever and sore throat, her brother had a low grade fever and ached all over. I wasn't the best either, sore throat and fever. There must be something going around, her father even got hot last night. Please excuse little Jimmy for not being in school yesterday. His father is gone and I could not get him ready because I was in bed with the doctor. 12:49:33 AM    Mmm? []

27 June 2003

DOMESTIC NOTES REUBEN with his faithful accolyte BOLLOCKS, the bear 7:11:15 PM    Mmm? []

26 June 2003

THE WAY THINGS ARE   Sit down here, by this closed window and think of it this way: that not even dust remains of what once might have been. You know the properties of hopes, of dreams, of rumours: how rich the imagined landscape, how true that stranger’s voice. And then a sighting here and there of those enchanters in their motley, dancing like dervishes and singing in the old tongue? Maybe.  But now consider this: the light that shivers in my brandy glass, the blue fumes from my cigarette, are of the real world. Watch them with me now, just the two of us, and know from these my words and this the sound of my voice, the way things are. 12:19:33 AM    Mmm? []

25 June 2003

TEST. 6:07:48 PM    Mmm? [] DESPERATE MEASURES In order to try to tug my flagging weblog out of the basement (it's not even making the ground floor of the Salon Hot 100 any more), I'm going to devote tomorrow's postings entirely to sex. Links to the most sophisticated, the most specialised, the most perverse of sites will be made available. I shall display also my Visa card details so that readers will be able to register, pay for & enjoy the dark fruits thereof. I shall publish also extracts from my own erotic diaries. These legendary documents will reveal at last my labyrinthine sexual connections with members of the British Royal Family. You will learn precisely whereabouts on Prince Charles' lithe, tanned body is situated that fabled third nipple. I shall disclose exactly which sections of Boccaccio's Decameron & Dante's Inferno Sophie Windsor has tattooed on her right inner thigh. I shall divulge the identity of the Premier Division soccer star whose name Princess Anne calls out at her moment of consummation. I shall clarify finally what actually transpired the night that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II & I shared a small & squalid room in the Crooked Member Motel in Dorchester. Finally, high quality photographs of acts of bestiality & depravity beyond even your imaginings will be posted. These will be accompanied by the cell phone numbers & email addresses of the sheep & cattle involved. So, my devoted readers, be there or be distinctly square. What price filchyboy or The Reverse Cowgirl or Pornographer's Choice? This will be the real deal. I'd be grateful, then, if the two of you would sort of put the word about a bit… Right, that's enough for tonight, Mr Jones. Nurse, the screens... 12:33:34 AM    Mmm? []

24 June 2003

WELCOME, STRANGER, TO MY DOORSTEP NOW… "Beriwan Ay loves Mondays", Paul Kelbie of the Independent on Sunday tells us.  "It's the one day of the week when her monotonous existence as a detainee of Britain's asylum policy is broken by a chance to play table tennis.  If she's really lucky she might even get a banana". 14-year-old Beriwa is a Kurdish asylum seeker.  She, her mother & three sisters are incarcerated in the bleak Dungavel Detention Centre in Lanarkshire, Scotland.  They live in one 13'x13' room in an old hunting lodge, surrounded by a steel fence topped with razor wire & watched by surveillance cameras.  The crime that warrants this sentence (which, incidentally, has no fixed term) is being a Southern Turkish Kurd who fled oppression. There are detention centres all over Britain set up to contain men, women & children who have acted on the notion (surely the triumph of hope over observed experience) that the democracies of Europe will provide a natural harbour for those fleeing tyranny.  Whatever the sources of this intelligence - television, videos, newspapers, glossy magazines, propaganda from the democracies that toppled Saddam Hussein, word of mouth - somehow a picture has been formed of nations free from fear in which children might be educated & an honest living might be made.  Such is the clarity & potency of this vision parents will uproot their families &, leaving all that is familiar (sometimes all that is known), they will cross continents in appalling discomfort & constant danger, frequently having spent all their money on the venture.  And them, on arrival in the target country, all reasonable expectations of a warm welcome are dashed.  If briefly left to their own devices they encounter active hostility across the full spectrum of xenophobia.  When in the custody of the state the insubstantiality of the democratic dream becomes fully apparent. Why are we so afraid of these people?  Whenever it is announced that an old hotel or a disused house is to be converted to accommodate asylum seekers, neighbourhood reaction is almost universally negative.  When questioned local residents simply state that the location is unsuitable.  Sympathy for the plight of these terrified aliens is declared but there is implacable resistance to the prospect of its being made practically manifest next door.  However, if pressed by a dogged journalist or TV interviewer an individual might just be manoeuvred into taking that extra step, that fateful forward motion from bland & non-specific concern into particular prejudice.  Awkward reference might be made to reservations about cultural mismatch & language problems, these worries murmured with eyes averted.  Further probing might provoke more assertive anxieties - a rise in the area's crime rate, property values plummeting, schools flooded with non-English-speaking children, these worries delivered with increasing emotional emphasis, both verbal & tonal. And when these individuals gather collectively that patina of respectable detachment peels away & the cheery, slow-talking guy who sells you vegetables or takes your cash at the filling station becomes someone else, someone ugly, someone scared & he doesn't know why. What a very short distance we've covered from cave to castle to condo.  Difference, just difference - not difference as in scales or fins or horns - pushes us straight back into that hole in the rockface.  And it's not just the guy at the filling station who doesn't know any better.  It's police officers, customs officials, judges, government ministers.  It's Michael Howard, Tory Home Secretary under John Major, whose swingeing proposals concerning foreign immigration would, had they been imposed when his central European father brought the family into Britain seeking asylum decades before, have denied him the opportunity to vote in this country, much less be a member of the Cabinet.  I wonder whether Beriwa Ay will be playing table tennis or eating her occasional banana in Dungavel Detention Centre in a year's time.  Or will she by then have been returned to her Kurdish homeland in Southern Turkey?  Whatever her individual fate, the certainty seems to be that institutional hostility to the huddled masses of the world will be even more secure in philosophy & practice than is the case now.  And the corollary of that can only be that, as tyrannies fall, those that inherit power will remember our generosity well. 1:15:17 AM    Mmm? []

23 June 2003

Here we go again - the world, not as it is but as it should be, courtesy of an assortment of Science examination answers.     Q: Name the four seasons.  A: Salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar.   Q: Explain one of the processes by which water can be made safe to drink.  A: Flirtation makes water safe to drink because it removes large  pollutants  like grit, sand, dead sheep and canoeists.   Q: How is dew formed?  A: The sun shines down on the leaves and makes them perspire.   Q: How can you delay milk turning sour?  A: Keep it in the cow.   Q: What causes the tides in the oceans?  A: The tides are a fight between the Earth and the Moon. All water tends to flow towards the moon, because there is no water on the moon, and nature hates a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight.   Q: What are steroids?  A: Things for keeping carpets still on the stairs.   Q: What happens to your body as you age?  A: When you get old, so do your bowels and you get intercontinental.   Q What happens to a boy when he reaches puberty?  A: He says good-bye to his boyhood and looks forward to his adultery.   Q: Name a major disease associated with cigarettes.  A: Premature death.   Q: What is artificial insemination?  A: When the farmer does it to the bull instead of the cow.   Q: How are the main parts of the body categorized? (e. g. , abdomen).  A: The body is consisted into three parts -- the brainium, the borax and the  abdominal cavity. The brainium contains the brain; the borax contains the heart and lungs, and the abdominal cavity contains the five bowels, A, E, I, O, and U.   Q: What is the fibula?  A: A small lie.   Q: What does "varicose" mean?  A: Nearby.   Q: Give the meaning of the term "Caesarian Section"  A: The Caesarian Section is a district in Rome.   Q: What does the word "benign" mean?  A: Benign is what you will be after you are eight.   12:24:29 AM    Mmm? []

22 June 2003

GREAT TRUTHS We most of us share - usually without knowing that we do - strange, wayward, sometimes quite dark little perceptions of the world around us.  We keep these notions to ourselves, convinced that, however compelling they are, they must mark us out as lone neurotics surrounded by the palpably sane & rational.  From time to time a chance revelation makes it clear that the reality is, in fact, the reverse: the odd lone sane & rational being walks alone amongst the palpably neurotic.  Consider the convictions that doom & disaster will attend you if you step on the division between paving stones; that if there are 12 telegraph poles left before you reach the corner, it will all turn out all right; that the universe (from night sky to hearth & home) is a dream & even Mum & Dad are figments of it & very soon you're going to wake up… I found the following simultaneously comforting & disturbing… Triangular sandwiches taste better than square ones. At the end of every party there is always a girl crying. One of the most awkward things that can happen in a pub is when your pint to toilet cycle gets synchronised with a complete stranger. You've never quite sure whether it's ok to eat green crisps. Everyone who grew up in the 80's has entered the digits 55378008 into a calculator. Reading when you're drunk is horrible, don't even bother trying if you're stoned. Sharpening a pencil with a knife makes you feel really manly. You're never quite sure whether it's against the law or not to have a fire in your back garden. Nobody ever dares make cup a soup in a bowl. You never know where to look when eating a banana. It's impossible to describe the smell of a wet cat. Prodding a fire with a stick makes you feel manly. Rummaging in an overgrown garden will always turn up a bouncy ball. You always feel a bit scared when stroking horses. The most embarrassing thing you can do as a school child is to call your teacher Mum or Dad. The smaller the monkey the more it looks like it would kill you at the first given opportunity. Some days you see lots of people on crutches. Every guy has at some stage while taking a pee flushed half way through and then raced against the flush. Old women with mobile phones look wrong. It's impossible to look cool whilst picking up a Frisbee. Driving through a tunnel makes you feel excited. You never ever run out of salt. Old ladies can eat more than you think. You can't respect a man who carries a dog. There's no panic like the panic you momentarily feel when you've got your head or hand trapped in something No one knows the origins of their metal coat hangers. Despite what the story says, you have never met anybody who has had their arm broken by a swan. The most painful household incident is wearing socks and stepping on an upturned plug. People who don't drive, slam car doors too hard You've turned into your dad the day you put aside a thin piece of wood specifically to stir paint with. Everyone had an uncle who tried to steal their nose. Bricks are horrible to carry. In every plate of chips (fries) there is a bad chip 1:04:43 AM    Mmm? []

20 June 2003

A friend of mine emailed me the following piece.  A pal of his is a standup comic.  I've never caught the guy's act but people in the know tell me he's good.  What is recorded below is supposedly an accurate account, written by the comic after the event, of an entirely improvised rant.  Read it & see what you think… GOD BLESS AMERICA I was doing a bit of anti-war stuff at a gig recently and prefaced it by saying that I didn¹t want to imply that all Americans were war-mongering morons but that these were smart gags and like smart bombs, they sometimes do collateral damage, despite what the makers claim.  Couple of gags in, I got heckled by an American.  I kind of lost my temper a bit: it came out in a bit of a torrent so this isn¹t verbatim but pretty close. His heckle was "God Bless America".  There was vocal objection from the crowd, but I stopped them.  And then improvised this put-down. God Bless America?  Well, that depends on what you mean.  If you mean God Bless the America of Woody Guthrie, Martin Luther King, Bob Dylan, Franklin D Roosevelt, Rosa Parkes, then yeah, God Bless America. Frank Capra, Mark Twain. Jay Leno, Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Bill Hicks  then God Bless America. If you mean God Bless the magnificent idealism contained in your Declaration of Independence and your Constitution, what a testament to faith in human nature and understanding of its limits - based incidentally, as I¹m sure you know, largely on the ideas of Voltaire, Diderot and Montesquieu,  who were French.  Or cheese-eating surrender monkeys, as I believe you so wittily term them now (and we accuse you of having no sense of irony); and there you are hurling insults at the French on the relative merits of your diets.  That seems pretty fucking ironic to me.  If you mean God Bless that in America  all men are created equal and have an equal and common right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness  then, yes, God Bless It.  If you mean God Bless the America of Emma Goldmann,  "Bring me your poor, bring me your tired and huddled masses",  then, yeah, God Bless It.  Those words, of course, inscribed on another present to you from the French,  unless the original statue was melted down by Oliver North into bullets for the Contras, as some rumours have it.  And, by the way, is it just another rumour that the lines go on now:  "Bring me your tired and huddled masses and I will make them work for minimum wage and live in appalling fear and poverty while they wait for all that wealth to trickle down"? If you mean God Bless the America of people like Rachel Corrie,  young and beautiful and with her whole life ahead of her, who chose  to live and protest in the ghetto called Gaza that your government and their barbaric Israeli allies sustain while traducing and staining the memory of the Holocaust victims with their disgusting and indeed counter-productive brutality…  If you mean people like Rachel Corrie, who was crushed to death by an Israeli Defence Force bulldozer protesting for justice and liberty and fighting, without weapons, for the idea that all are equal and entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then God Bless America. (Israeli Defence Force - there¹s another fucking irony).  If you mean God Bless that America  then,  as I believe they say in Philadelphia,  then fucking A, God Bless America. If you're talking God Bless America about just about all the Americans that I know right across it from Georgia to Oregon and from Boston to California,  from sea to shining sea,  generous, delightful, newspaper-reading, democratic and caring,  then God Bless America.  If you're talking about all the millions who risked their lives for civil rights and gay rights and often gave them, God Bless America.  If you¹re talking about the servicemen who fought and died against the Nazis,  then God Bless America.  Although  to be unfair - you did take your time didn't you?  So don't fucking give me any of that, "If it wasn't for us you'd be speaking German"  cos we stuck it out for two years on our own, getting the equivalent of the twin towers nearly every day for eighteen months -   and, by the way, I do speak German. And French.  And Spanish and Italian.  And a little bit of Swedish, Greek, Welsh, and Hungarian.  And enough to be polite in Arabic and Hebrew.  Just threw that in to show it's not just Americans and Germans who can be arrogant. If you're talking about the America of Steve Earle and John Steinbeck and Maya Angelou and Lisa Simpson, then God Bless America. But.  However. That Being Said.  On the Other Hand: If you say, God Bless America and you're talking about the self-serving cabal of war-mongering gangsters and religious hypocrites who run your wonderful country as an arrogant, blundering, profit-hoovering war-machine without even being elected, then fuck you and everyone else in the ring-fenced, muddy hole at the shallow end of the gene-pool you crawled out of.  And, by the way, if there actually is a Supreme Being to carry out the blessing, I'll bet my last...Euro that when Dubya and his team of plundering robber barons get to the Pearly Gates then I bet you that Supreme Being shoves them off the cliff and into the lake of fire so fast He wouldn't be able to piss on them to put out the flames if He wanted to. So Peace and Love and let me get on with my work.  I'll take the First Amendment, you take the Fifth. I suppose I could just have said, "I remember my first drink." And then I returned to my prepared material. I'm not at all sure what I make of all that. That it packs a punch is unquestionable.  That many Salon residents would find much common ground therein, albeit uncomfortably close to cultural hearth & home, seems likely. But I'm not sure I'm comfortable with it. Is it comedy or is it rant?  Does it pass the Bertold Brecht test & manage to slip us truths through our laughter?  Does it pass the Lenny Bruce test & shock us into recognition through our laughter?  Or does it come across simply as smug & self-congratulatory, a piece of hubristic rhetoric? We need comedy now. The darker the times, the more acute the need. Well-judged, well-timed satire, parody, ridicule do more damage to dodgy regimes than a parcel of streamlined, analytical speeches.  Or a barrage of any weapons of mass destruction that can be made ready in 45 minutes.  Comedy is a weapon of very specific & selective destruction & its currency should never be devalued.   1:12:31 AM    Mmm? [] 12:15:48 AM    Mmm? []

19 June 2003

BRITISH EDUCATION - BEST IN THE WORLD I tried posting this shortly before my first fall from grace when, for a long, dark night of the soul, I lost contact with my weblog.  I'm not sure whether it ever upstreamed.  Well, since I still can't access my archives & therefore nor can you, here it is again. A note for those unacquainted with the arcane terminology of the British education system.  A comprehensive school is a 16+ state school & a public school is a private school for the highly privileged.  (Don't ask).  Read on… The Department of Education has realised that there is a difference between comprehensive schools and public schools, and from now one will issue separate secondary Maths Exam papers.  Attached are the most recent maths exam papers so that you can see the difference.  MATH TEST FOR COMPREHENSIVES  Name   _____________________________  Nickname _____________________________  Gang Name _____________________________  1. Simon has 0.5 kilos of cocaine. If he sells an 8 ball to Matt for 300 quid and 90 grams to Ollie for 90 quid a gram, what is the street value of the rest of his hold?  2. Damon pimps 3 bitches. If the price is £40 a ride, how many jobs per day must each bitch perform to support Damo's £500 a day coke habit?  3. Crackster wants to cut the kilo of cocaine he bought for 7,000 quid, to make a 20% profit. How many grams of strychnine will he need?  4. Trev got 6 years for murder. He also got £350,000 for the hit. If his common-law wife spends £33,100 per month, how much money will be left when he gets out? (Extra Credit Bonus: How much more time will Trev get for killing the slapper that spent his money?)  5. If an average can of spray paint covers 22 square metres and the average letter is 1 square metre, how many letters can be sprayed with eight fluid ounce cans of spray paint with 20% extra paint free?  6. Liam steals Jordan's skateboard. As Liam skates away at a speed of 35mph, Jordan loads his brother's Armalite. If it takes Jordan 20 seconds to load the gun, how far will Liam have travelled when he gets whacked?    MATH TEST FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS Name____________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________  _________________________________  (If longer, please continue on separate sheet)  School ___________________________________  Daddy's Company __________________________  1. Harry smashes up the old man's car, causing X amount of damage and killing three people. The old man asks his chum, the local high court judge to intervene in the court system, then forges his insurance claim and receives a payment of y. The difference between x and y is three times the life insurance settlement for the three dead people. What kind of car is Harry driving now?  2. Fiona's personal shopper decides to substitute generic and own-brand products for the designer goods favoured by her employer. In the course of a month she saves the price of a return ticket to Fiji and Fiona doesn't even notice the difference. Is she thick or what?  3. If Verity throws up four times a day for a week she can fit in a size 8 Versace. If she only throws up three times a day for two weeks, she has to make do with a size 10 Dolce & Gabbana. How much does liposuction cost?  4. Rupert is unsure about his sexuality. Three days a week he fancies women. On the other days he fancies men, ducks and vacuum cleaners. However, he only has access to the Hoover every third week. When does his "Sunday Independent" column start?   7:28:14 PM    Mmm? [] DON'T STAND IN THE DOORWAY, DON'T CLOG UP THE HALL Scepticism is now so ingrained a reaction to the maneuverings of politicians that one might almost assume that it's an essential component within mother's milk or the municipal water supply.  The noblest practitioners are defined by their last venal act; the basest are seen as offering the benchmark for the rest. Any self-respecting anarchist should be delighted by this fundamental & near-universal mistrust. The predictions of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta concerning the collapse of the old world order might be seen as coming to pass. Sadly not the case. For scepticism in the greater majority of cases read cynicism. It is widely assumed that the plausible proponent of, or apologist for, the latest policy handed down by government is at best a bullshitter, at worst a crook & the standard reaction will be to turn away from the television with a sardonic rendition of that most jaded & disinterested of contemporary cries, 'Whatever…'. But maybe just now & then a minister, a congressman, might just pull one stroke too many & the blatancy of the offense will provoke censure. A newspaper will pick up the cudgels & there will be a brief trial-by-media before the unfortunate chancer is forced to resign. The public will watch the bloodletting with the casual interest of the latter-day Roman mob & life will go on much as before. And then, more rarely in these days of moral lethargy, a prime minister, a president, in full arrogant season, might attempt to cross a bridge too far. Well, so far our prime ministers have either stopped just short of the bridge or they've galloped across it & onto the other shore before their audacity has been noticed. In the States only Nixon has been brought before the full majesty of the law & even then he managed to wriggle past its due processes. So what are the smart odds on either Blair & Bush (or both?) being brought to account now that the mills of God are grinding small on the issue of WMD?  It seems just about as clear as it could be that both are knaves or fools. Either they lied or they got it wrong when getting it right seemed the only possible option. I believe that on the spectrum I am still more sceptic than cynic. But I cannot recall a time in recent political history that has tested the parameters more fiercely. On February 15th 2,000,000 ordinary men, women & children walked through the streets of London, the bulk of them knowing that a.) the imminent war was illegal because b.) there was no credible evidence of the existence of WMD, & c.) the aftermath would be chaos & disaster in Iraq & beyond. Those marching plumbers, doctors, shop assistants, teachers, tree surgeons, film stars knew this but the professional politicians didn't. And now they are equivocating, dissembling, sidestepping & downright lying as the scenario that we described continues to play as reality. If these men are allowed to bluster & bludgeon their way out of the tight little corner into which they have painted themselves then we richly deserve the governance that we currently have. The next few weeks are crucial: within them we shall declare as the citizens of two of the world's oldest democracies either our burned out & impotent cynicism or our active disgust, contempt & practical rejection of morally bankrupt leadership. 1:08:34 AM    Mmm? []

18 June 2003

BUSHISMS  "Perhaps one way will be, if we use military force, in the post-Saddam Iraq the U.N. will definitely need to have a role. And that way it can begin to get its legs, legs of responsibility back." —George W. Bush, the Azores, Portugal, March 16, 2003 "The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein, and his willingness to terrorize himself." —George W. Bush, Grand Rapids, Mich., Jan. 29, 2003 "When Iraq is liberated, you will be treated, tried and persecuted as a war criminal." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 22, 2003 "One year ago today, the time for excuse-making has come to an end." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 8, 2003 "There's only one person who hugs the mothers and the widows, the wives and the kids upon the death of their loved one. Others hug but having committed the troops, I've got an additional responsibility to hug and that's me and I know what it's like." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2002. "The law I sign today directs new funds and new focus to the task of collecting vital intelligence on terrorist threats and on weapons of mass production." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Nov. 27, 2002 "I was proud the other day when both Republicans and Democrats stood with me in the Rose Garden to announce their support for a clear statement of purpose: you disarm, or we will." —George W. Bush, speaking about Saddam Hussein, Manchester, N.H., Oct. 5, 2002 "We need an energy bill that encourages consumption." —George W. Bush, Trenton, N.J., Sept. 23, 2002 "See, we love — we love freedom. That's what they didn't understand. They hate things; we love things. They act out of hatred; we don't seek revenge, we seek justice out of love." —George W. Bush, Oklahoma City, Aug. 29, 2002 "I'm a patient man. And when I say I'm a patient man, I mean I'm a patient man. Nothing he [Saddam Hussein] has done has convinced me — I'm confident the Secretary of Defense — that he is the kind of fellow that is willing to forgo weapons of mass destruction, is willing to be a peaceful neighbor, that is — will honor the people — the Iraqi people of all stripes, will — values human life. He hasn't convinced me, nor has he convinced my administration." —George W. Bush, Crawford, Texas, Aug. 21, 2002 "The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur." —George W. Bush, discussing the decline of the French economy with British Prime Minister Tony Blair "Over 75 percent of white Americans own their home, and less than 50 percent of Hispanos and African Americans don't own their home. And that's a gap, that's a homeownership gap. And we've got to do something about it." —George W. Bush, Cleveland, Ohio, July 1, 2002 "We hold dear what our Declaration of Independence says, that all have got uninalienable rights, endowed by a Creator." —George W. Bush, to community and religious leaders in Moscow, May 24, 2002 "We hold dear what our Declaration of Independence says, that all have got uninalienable rights, endowed by a Creator." —George W. Bush, to community and religious leaders in Moscow, May 24, 2002     1:01:37 AM    Mmm? []

17 June 2003

Well, like Lazarus experiencing Groundhog Day, I'm back for the third time with an empty weblog. Part digital ignorance on my part, no doubt, but the cockups are to do equally with the febrile nature of RadioUserland. Just check out the wailing & gnashing of teeth concerning its eccentricities that are to be heard in the discussion group... 4:13:35 PM    Mmm? [] test 3:47:06 PM    Mmm? []

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