Sunday, May 30, 2004

The Final Days Alright, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up. According to the Status Center, this blog will go offline on Tuesday evening. For forty bucks I could continue for another year, but the time has come to move on.  Blogging is a low-risk, low-reward activity. It costs basically nothing to do, which is no doubt explains why there are millions of them out there. Leaving out a few prominent blogs like Andrew Sullivan's, I would hazard to guess that most people who read blogs are bloggers themselves. It is truly an echo chamber. On the plus side, blogging is a lot of fun. No matter how tiny your audience, you feel like you are part of a vast conversation... I just spent about ten minutes looking for my disintegrating copy of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. One of the central symbols of the novel is a giant library, and toward the end Eco offers the epiphany that the books in the library are full of references to other books in the library, and are therefore engaged in a conversation, one that takes place over a time scale of centuries. A blogger participates in such a conversation, vastly sped up. It is tempting to think of this blog as one volume in a library, but that doesn't quite work because it is going to be offline. It will continue to exist only on my hard disk, where only a highly determined hacker could possibly find it. This is fitting, however. Rapid conversation implies rapid decay. If newspapers are ephemeral, blogs are hyper-ephemeral. Dust in the wind. A comforting thought: Although our media may be more transient, we have the same brains as the monks in The Name of the Rose. Human memory lasts longer than RAM and hard disks. The traces of the conversation will persist. Goodbye, my friends. Woody Mena     P.S. I'll still check my mail once in a while. 1:10:10 PM    How's them apples? []

	Tuesday, May 25, 2004

The Slide Continues "[Bush's] mind is like one of those spinning cages where you pull out the winning lottery numbers - but there's only four goddamn little balls in his cage: 'Freedom', 'Democracy', 'Terror', and 'Stay the Course'. He opens his mouth, one of the balls drops out. That's not a conversation, that's Keno."                                                                Get Your War On, 4/16/04   7:36:04 PM    How's them apples? []

	Sunday, May 16, 2004

This Is Not a Monkey             Last night I heard a species-dysphoric novelty singer on the radio who believed that he wanted to be a monkey. I say “believed” because his lyrics revealed that he actually wanted to be a chimpanzee. He thought that if he was a monkey he could be in show business and perform humorous skits. Fat chance. Chimps, like the one above, get most of the good comedy roles. (Gorillas get some comic parts too, but they are big and scary enough that they are more suited for abusing luggage.) The gentleman also believed that monkeys were Michael Jackson’s “second biggest weakness”, but that’s only true if Jacko is in the mood for swinging (pun intended). Bubbles is a chimp. This guy is far from alone in his confusion. Your average working primate, like Bubbles, is in great danger of being called a “monkey”, whether he is or not. If he know what people were calling him, he would be pretty torqued off.             Some other figures you may be confused about:             J. Fred Muggs? A chimp.             (BJ and) The Bear? A chimp.             Bonzo? A chimp.             Curious George? Supposedly a monkey, although he looks more like a furry human child.             So what does like a monkey look like, you ask? Like this.             Monkeys tend to be small. Small body, small head. They don’t really remind people of human beings. Not much prospect in show biz, unless they can find an organ grinder.               So now you know. Go and sin no more.   Woody   10:22:03 AM    How's them apples? []

	Thursday, May 06, 2004

9:19:57 PM    How's them apples? []

	Tuesday, May 04, 2004

What Do You Mean, We, White Man? There has been a lot of discussion about whether English should be official language of the US. What we do have, apparently is an official skin color. At least according to our thoughtful President last Friday: There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern. This passage is disturbing in so many ways that I don't know where to begin. Obviously, in his heart of hearts, Spurious George thinks that he is the president of a country of a white people. When George says "we", he means Caucasians. Equally sad is the fact that he thinks that he is making some sort of bold statement by asserting that you don't have to be white to practice democracy. I believe that this was the cutting edge of political thought about 140 years ago, or maybe quite a bit longer. Finally, he seems to be confusing race with religion. Our P(r)esident - racist or just confused? You make the call. Woody P. S. Credit to George Will for pointing this out. No kidding. P. P. S. Just a case of run-of-the-mill hypocrisy, but the US has not been real eager to actually hold elections in Iraq. 7:12:11 AM    How's them apples? []

	Monday, April 19, 2004

Guess Again "I am overjoyed to be back in my homeland, the true North, strong and censor-free." -Alanis  Morissette Sadly, Alanis is mistaken. Canada is far from censor-free. In fact, Canadian customs regularly detains or ceases "obscene" books. In a notorious case, the censored author was none other than Andrea Dworkin, who ironically had a hand in writing Canada's censorship laws. (The books: Pornography: Men Possessing Women and Woman Hating.) Link: http://www.freedomtoread.ca/default.asp 9:11:31 PM    How's them apples? []

	Saturday, April 10, 2004

New Poll Notice addition of Pew poll, which must be making Karl Rove lose even more of his hair. 12:39:45 PM    How's them apples? []

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