idiots!

If you've been following the baseball-steroids-Mitchell Report story, then you know that Roger Clemens takes up nine pages in the report and appears to have used a lot of performance enhancers. So his HOF status is now in doubt because some people are freaking morons. Look, I don't give a shit if he used steroids, he's the Barry Bonds of pitching. Greatest of the last 20 years, no question, hands down, it's not even close. The point of this report is that in that time period, EVERYONE was doping, and he still managed to elevate his game above everyone else. It's the steroid era, you idiots. Clemens and Bonds should be mortal locks. They deserve it.

San Francisco Chronicle writer Ray Ratto said it right in this ESPN story.

"I would vote for Bonds on the first ballot, as I would vote for Clemens, because the Hall of Fame isn't church,'' Ratto said. "It's the history of baseball, and this is part of the history of baseball. I can assure you that Bud Selig will be voted into the Hall of Fame, and he is the commissioner whose name will be linked with the steroid era by first ignoring it, then profiting from it, and finally blaming others for it. I know that Cap Anson is in the Hall of Fame, and he was instrumental in the creation of the color line, which is way worse than PEDs. So this discussion ends up being an excuse for people with no institutional memory or understanding to claim a moral superiority they're not really equipped to display.''

giddy

Taking a break from my India paper to report an event that made me feel like a little kid who just opened the present he'd been hoping for all year. I've known for a while basically what I want to argue in this paper (which asks us to explain the disparity in economic growth rates between India and China). There's lots of peripheral support for the argument in the literature we read for class, plus some stuff I've found on JSTOR, Project MUSE, etc. But just now, on JSTOR, I found an article written by none other than Tom Weisskopf, the erstwhile director of the RC and professor of economics here. It makes my argument, but in 1975. Absolutely brilliant. The greatest possible thing I could have found: An article totally legitimating my argument but far enough removed that I can avoid being completely derivative. I could sing.

two new links

Two I've been meaning to put up: one for a couple of days, the other for months. CHF International is the IDP/refugee organization in Silver Spring that Jeff Meer works for. And Kalil's World Passport is the fantastically eclectic podcast site that I've been going to since the beginning of the year. It's got music from all over Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, and a little from the States. So cool. Now it's time for bed. Although I'm kind of afraid because Jon has been talking so loudly in his sleep than I can hear him clearly through the door. Sometimes in French, sometimes in English. But definitely complete sentences or at least ideas. God I can't wait to have my own room next semester.

more books -- updated!

Two books reviewed in Salon recently really caught my eye. The first is Peter Hoeg's new book, The Quiet Girl. He wrote Smilla's Sense of Snow, which I read last summer at the beach and really liked. The second is My Colombian War, by Sylvia Paternostro, a Colombian-American who went back to Colombia after 22 years in the States and wrote a book about Colombian life outside the drug war. We essentialize Colombia so much, tie it so closely to drugs in our own imagination, that we can't think about what she calls "human dynamics, the relationships between employer and employee, between man and woman, teacher and student, government and citizen, artists and civil society."

In other news, I finally found the website of the organization that I think I remember Jeff Meer works for or is connected to in some way. It's called CHF International. Wouldn't mind working there right out of college. It's on Georgia Avenue, for crying out loud.

UPDATE

Also Waiting by Ha Jin.

rip sean taylor

For those of you who don't know already, Washington safety Sean Taylor died early this morning from a gunshot wound to the leg after somebody broke into his home in Florida. I find myself much more affected by this than I would have thought I could be by the death of somebody I don't know, and don't even really know that much about. Nothing I have to say about this situation is original, so I'll spare you (and myself) the cliches. Suffice it to say that it is tremendously sad. My heart goes out to his family and especially his baby daughter. If you want to read more, here's the ESPN article about it.

what a fucking disgrace

Well, the final opportunity of my student career for us to beat Ohio State comes to nothing because our offense was absolutely execrable. That actually isn't strong enough a word. We were pathetic, disgusting, an embarrassment. Ninety-one yard of offense. Fifteen yards rushing on 24 attempts. Dropped pass after three-and-out after dropped pass. Our D played well, held OSU to just 14 points, but the offense just didn't fucking show up. Walking out of the Big House as the band played the fight song one last time was one of the most depressing experiences I can remember.

new blog...by sebi brown!

Sebi is a kid I went to high school with until senior year, when he went with his family to live in Jerusalem. He's at Juniata now, and really into immigration and border issues. He started up a blog about them, so I thought I'd give him a plug here. Here it is, you should check it out. Sebi, if you find your way to this blog anytime soon: It's been too long, man.

300!

This. Is. Spah! Ta! I still haven't seen that movie, nor do I plan to. This is my 300th post, though. Anyhow, nothing particularly interesting to report other than that I called Kucinich's scheduler back today and left another message, which I'm afraid I kind of blew by making it too snappy. Not in tone, just in a particularly phrase... I'm probably just freaking myself out. Another thing, before I head to fascism class: Reading Sidney Blumenthal's column in the Guardian today, I got to thinking about the US Civil War. Now, I generally picture the war in terms of two massive blocks, blue and grey, going at each other around the Mason-Dixon line. Those blocks are solid on the map, the whole populations covered by each are incorporated by and support them. Of course many northerners were racist and had Confederate sympathies in that they favored slavery and weren't too fond of the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln didn't suspend habeus corpus because Marylanders were his biggest fans. So the blue block begins to take on a bit of nuance. But what about the South? I still can't think of anything I've read or heard about that suggests divisions in southern opinion surrounding the secession and then the war. There must have been some southerners who supported the Union, or opposed slavery. Unanimity just doesn't happen on that scale. But who were they? Did they write anything down? How were they treated by everyone else? How did they make out during and after the war? Who knows. And now I'm going to be late for class.

my legs feel like napalm

After lifting Sunday, practice yesterday and a stair workout today, my legs don't feel like jelly. They feel like PETROLEUM jelly. In bomb form. No pain, no gain, though. In more exciting news, today I talked to Dennis Kucinich (!) thanks to Jules. He wants to set up an appointment for an interview as soon as possible! I was practically having palpitations in class this morning waiting to call him. I emailed him and called his scheduler, too. I keep telling myself that I have a pretty slim chance of this going anywhere, but it's cool just to have the opportunity. Also I went and hung out with Hanna Ketai today at her co-op, which was nice because I hadn't seen her in a while. One of the things we talked about was self-expectation and optimism versus pessimism when going for new things. She tends to have really high expectations for herself and other people, so she's disappointed a lot. I tend to have low expectations for myself and other people, so I'm constantly pleasantly surprised. This happened most recently with frisbee. But her point is that the laws of attraction apply; you get in life what you think you can get. So if you think you can't get very much or go very far or make that new friend or get that job, you're less likely to get it. You are what you project, in part. It's also a lot braver to have high expectations than low ones. I'm feeling really unfocused right now, so that's enough for now. But I'll return to this theme, I think it's an important one for me. Also, at some point, to the various discussions I've had recently with people about grad school. And my senior release! I can OFFICIALLY graduate on time as of today. Now, a badly needed shower.

caetano!

Because I'm going to see him at Hill tonight, and because I haven't put up a song in a while, here's Caetano Veloso's classic "Tropicalia." Enjoy!

i mean, you don't even really have to read past the headline

This post, "White House tells Pervez Musharraf to never restrict constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism" at Crooks and Liars just kind of left me numb. It's unbelievable. What do you do with hypocrisy that deep?

short story

Well, I promised that I'd put this up once it was done, so here's my short story about being in Santiago on September 11 of last year. Hope you like it. It's called, in a stroke of creative genius, "El Once de Septiembre."

Eric took down his blazer, slacks, his one button-down shirt and tie from their hangers and laid them on the bed. Gingerly, using only his left hand, he took off the sweatshirt in which he’d slept, removing his left arm and his head before sliding it down his right arm and onto the floor. He held his right arm to his chest as he slid his pants down his legs and then took of his socks one by one. Shivering against the chill and puffing little clouds of condensed breath from the effort and pain of undressing himself, he put on his button-down shirt and his slacks and black socks. Tying his shoes was the hardest task of all. He crammed his knees into his chest and reached, panting and grimacing, until his right hand could just barely do its job in tandem with the left. The necktie he abandoned after visualizing the motions he’d have to go through in order to get it on. Last, he put on the white mesh sling that the nurse had given him at the hospital two nights earlier.

* * *

While Eric struggled to dress himself, shopkeepers across Santiago began to unlock their front doors and put their merchandise out on display. On this day, the thirty-third anniversary of General Augusto Pinochet’s bloody coup against the ailing socialist government of Salvador Allende, many added a Chilean flag to their front windows, or made sure to have patriotic music playing extra loud. Pinochet ruled as a brutal dictator for 17 years, and the anniversary of his rise, so long officially celebrated as a great victory in the fight against socialism, had become a day of anger and protest. In the central places, the shopkeepers made sure they had brooms ready to clear the sidewalks of broken glass, and most did not remove the metal screens from their windows at all.

* * *

In the kitchen he put on water to boil for tea and made some toast with jam and then called a cab, relishing briefly in his mastery of this small interaction in another language. As the tea began to wake him up, Eric thought about the day. It had been a perfect morning five years earlier, as everyone recalled now. But his thoughts were interrupted by a beep-beep outside: the cab was waiting.

The taxi driver smiled at him as he got in. “Buenos días, señor, ¿a dónde va usted?”

“La embajada de Estados Unidos, por favor” said Eric.

The cabbie nodded and started to drive. “¿Le molesta si subo el volúmen?” Do you mind if I raise the volume?

Eric did not mind, so he shook his head and the cabbie turned up the radio, which crackled with the iconic voice of Victor Jara, of whom Eric had never heard before coming to Chile.

“Seis de los nuestros se perdieron
en el espacio de las estrellas.
Uno muerto, un golpeado como jamás creí
se podría golpear a un ser humano.
Los otros cuatro quisieron quitarse
todos los temores,
uno saltando al vacío,
otro golpeándose la cabeza contra un muro
pero todos con la mirada fija en la muerte.”

Eric translated to himself, Six of our own were lost in the space of the stars. One dead, another beaten as I had never imagined a human being could be beaten. The other four wished to remove fear from themselves, one leaping into the emptiness, another striking his head against a wall, but all with their gaze fixed on death. “God damn,” he said out loud, but the taxi driver didn’t hear.

The taxi turned off of Los Leones onto Once de Septiembre and five minutes later they arrived at the US Embassy, where Chilean policemen in formal dress checked Eric’s passport before allowing him through the gate. A steady stream of somberly-dressed Americans preceded and followed Eric out of taxis and into the fortresslike embassy’s garden. In twos and threes they addressed each other in hushed tones, shaking their heads and clicking their tongues. In the garden, they gathered around a temporary podium by a small patch of flowers. Eric, alone, wandered off to admire the mountains to the east, beautifully lit in the morning light, and wished that Santiago’s urban planners had decided to build in a place that obscured less of the view, or perhaps to limit the height of new buildings. Behind him, the US ambassador began to speak, and Eric turned around.

First in Spanish, the ambassador talked blandly about the grief everyone present felt, the need for togetherness and cross-cultural understanding. Then he simply read from President Bush’s prepared speech for the day. “They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other,” he said. The ambassador was serious but stoic and unemotional as he recited platitude after platitude.

Eric sneered and turned away. He was embarrassed by the ambassador’s execrable Spanish accent, by his lack of creativity, by the gigantic glass office buildings, by the Starbucks he knew was right down the street. This is what we have to offer to the rest of the world? Exasperated with the present, Eric slipped into the memories that had been interrupted earlier by the taxi’s arrival. He turned his mind back to the morning, five years ago, when he had been sitting in English class, close to the window, and his government teacher had walked into the room and said, “Turn on the TV.”

Ten minutes later the class was in total silence, its attention undivided as it watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center. A second plume of thick gray smoke joined the first. No one could call anyone; the cell phone circuits were jammed. At quarter to ten, CNN cut to a shot of the Pentagon spewing that same smoke from a new, gaping hole and his friend Carla screamed. Both her parents worked there, worked in that part of the E-ring. They and their offices had been blasted apart. So much grief came out of that day. Anger, too, a desire for revenge, but mostly it was just pain.

The sound of “Taps” being played mournfully by a lone bugler brought Eric back into Santiago. Marines came out and laid a wreath of flowers on a small monument next to the podium and then the mourners, perhaps 70 of them, filed out just as quietly and gravely as they had entered.

His shoulder throbbed dully as Eric walked down El Bosque towards the Metro. As he passed Roger de Flor he saw one of the other kids on his study abroad program, Lewis, on the other side of the street. He called to him and Lewis stopped and waited for Eric to cross over.

“Coming from the embassy?” he said.

“Yeah,” said Eric. “Where were you?”

“Why freeze my ass off at some ceremony? I know what happened, I don’t need them to remind me.”

“True, true,” Eric said. “I mean, it was kind of bullshit anyway, the ambassador just read Bush’s speech. He barely mentioned Chile, I wanted to be like, ‘Dude, we’re ten blocks from a street named after this date! We know what happened to us sucked, you’re the fucking ambassador, why the fuck aren’t you talking about what’s up here?’” But I thought that maybe other people wouldn’t appreciate me yelling in the middle of the ceremony.”

Lewis laughed a little. “Yeah, probably not. Where you off to now?”

“Well, I don’t really want to go home right now, you know, my family is all pinochetista and I don’t think I could handle a lecture about how great the coup was right now,” Eric said.

“Yeah, man, sucks that your family’s like that,” said Lewis. “It’s so weird that people still think that way. I mean, most don’t but so many people still support him.”

“I know, right? Where should I go instead?”

“I don’t know, man. I’m about to go to Starbucks, do some reading, if you want to come.”

“Nah, Starbucks is not what I need right now,” said Eric. “But thanks, though.”

Lewis laughed again. “Fair enough. Alright, see you mean.”

“Chao,” Eric said.

They parted ways and Eric walked the rest of the way to the station. He boarded a train and stayed on past his stop, watching as more and more people got on. No one seemed to be getting off and Eric absently wondered why. He thought about the ceremony that he had just left. It had been so sterile, so disconnected and false. Of one thing Eric was sure: Everyone there had been truly sad and had come to the embassy desiring a meaningful shared reflection and recognition of their tragedy. What they got instead was a selection from the President’s official address for the day and a wreath. They left in the same ones and twos and threes in which they had arrived, talking together in the same hushed tones as before.

At Estación Plaza Italia, the central stop on the line, the cars emptied, and Eric flowed out with the crowd through the gates and up to the vast intersection of Santiago’s main arteries. When he arrived at the top of the stairs, Eric paused and looked around and his eyes opened for what felt like the first time all day. He took in the scene that faced him. An angry crowd had gathered, chanting, banging drums, waving flags and bearing bright signs and portraits of Salvador Allende. The current of people around him dispersed into the crowd and swelled it, and the plaza rang with their fervent shouts. In the middle distance stood a line of policemen on horseback, but the throng paid it no mind. Eric saw more police peeking out of every side street up and down the main road, standing in riot gear alongside their hulking armored cars. The people around him pulsated and moved in all directions at once, but the police were very still.

His pocket vibrated: a text message. It read, “US Department of State security warning: In light of day’s events, all US citizens are advised to avoid large crowds,” and Eric was suddenly very aware that no one else in sight was wearing a blazer.
He sat down on a bench and took off the sling in order to stretch out his elbow and take his shoulder through its still-limited range of motion. Just as he was finishing this already-routine exploration of his shoulder’s pain tolerance, Eric felt the crowd snap. A great shout went up and people who had been milling about aimlessly suddenly chose a direction and started running: half towards the mounted police and half in the other direction. Eric did not know what to do, so he remained seated and watched.

A short man with a moustache stopped in front of Eric, grabbed him by the lapel and pulled him to his feet. “Qué carajo estai haciendo ahí, huevón? Ándate! Vamos!” the man shouted. What the fuck are you doing there, man? Move! Let’s go! So Eric got up and ran. Over his shoulder, he could see the mounted police advancing on the crowd, shields up against a barrage of rocks. And down the street, the armored cars were beginning to move. As he ran, Eric found to his surprise that instead of being afraid, he was exhilarated by the movement, the noise, the violence he could sense behind him. Up ahead he saw a plume of smoke and as he drew closer he realized that someone had set fire to a car parked along the sidewalk.

The flames and heat and billowing smoke transfixed Eric. He slowed to a walk and then stopped beside the car. People rushed all around him but several stopped next to him, to watch. The heat became to much and he blinked and turned away and, his concentration broken, noticed that he no longer had his sling. He wanted to go back to get it, but he realized with a jolt that the ache in his shoulder was gone. Looking back up the street, Eric saw police beating back surging young men with sticks and high-pressured hoses and felt suddenly overwhelmed by the scene, by the seething fury of the mob and the cold, systematic advance of the police. Young men, his age, alive with fear and rage, were beating at each other to commemorate the anniversary of their deeply ambivalent national trauma.

He ran again, away from the truck and the burning car, until he found himself in the lobby of a friend’s apartment building a few blocks away. He called her to no answer but then remembered that she was visiting family on the coast, so he took the elevator up to the roof and joined a small, quiet gathering of people watching the action on the streets below.

The day slouched towards twilight and then night. His fellow audience members began to move back downstairs to their apartments, but Eric could not join them. He stayed on the roof, leaning on the railing and watching as more cars went up in flames, as new skirmishes started and finished, as shop windows were shattered by stray and sometimes not-so-stray rocks. It was in the small hours of the morning when Eric finally went back out onto the street and hailed a cab to take him home. As he climbed into the taxi, his shoulder began to throb again, and he remembered his dislocated collarbone for the first time since he’d jumped up off the bench many hours earlier. He thought ruefully of the pickup soccer game where he’d injured his shoulder a few days earlier. A mid-air collision with his friend Carlos had ended with him writhing on the ground in pain and Carlos frozen between celebration for having won the header and scored a goal and guilt for having rammed Eric into the ground.

Eric smiled to himself. “Poor guy,” he thought. “At least it wasn’t confusing for me. For me, it just hurt.”

PS: I kind of hate this ending, but I couldn't think of anything that would work better there despite trying at least eight or nine different things. Any suggestions?

genarlow wilson freed!

At long last, a court has ordered that Genarlow Wilson, a black kid from Georgia who was sentenced to 10 years in jail for having consensual oral sex with a minor, although there was only two years' difference between them (he was 17, she was 15). The Georgia state legislature changed the law that put him away, but he didn't get out until the state supreme court ruled today that his sentence was cruel and unusual under the state constitution. It's about damn time. Here's TalkLeft's post about it.

the revolutionary guard is a "state sponsor of terrorism"

Here's the Times article about it. Gee, just like our military is, however inadvertently, sponsoring the PKK in Northern Iraq. Only difference is, the PKK has actually INVADED AND KILLED THE TROOPS OF ANOTHER COUNTRY. The Revolutionary Guard is horrible and probably responsible for a lot of really bad shit. But the PKK overtly attacked one of our major regional allies, Turkey, without whose help any future withdrawal from Iraq will by much, much harder.

The Bush foreign policy gets more tortured and hypocritical every day. What's perhaps most unbelievable is that I'm not even the least bit surprised by this potentially catastrophic turn of events. Just another day for Bushco. Madame Speaker, I know you said you wouldn't impeach Bush. But you know what? HE AND HIS ARE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY AND EVERYTHING WE STAND FOR. They are war criminals, domestic felons and usurpers of the Constitution. If that's not enough to get impeachment hearings going, I don't know what is. Oh, right, the right wing noise machine is enough. Damn, wish we had our own army of horribly dishonest demagogues ruling the airwaves and editorial pages. That'd be nice. Related note: The top three opinions on wapo online today are by Broder, Novak and Will. That they even pretend to be fair there anymore is distressing. And that anyone accuses the Post of being left-leaning is simultaneously laughable and sneerable. Sidney Blumenthal's piece in Salon this week is about media complicity; I couldn't even open it because I'm angry enough as it is.

On a lighter note, I'm loving fascism class more and more. It's really nice to be in an interesting and edifying setting where I feel like I really get the connections and implications and nuances of what we're learning about. Now it's time for me to go home and change before the MagnUM track workout at 7. Oh, one more thing. I really, really love Los Fabulosos Cadillacs' cover of "Revolution Rock," by the Clash. So here's a video of half the song (couldn't find a complete one).

Todo el mundo moven los pies, ya bailan hasta morir!
[Everybody move your feet, now dance until you die]
Esta música causa sensación, este ritmo toca la nación!
[This music causes feeling, this rhythm touches the nation]
Llama a viejo, llama a tu vieja!
[Call your papa, call your mama]
Todo todo todo va a estar bien!
[Everything's gonna be all right]
Escuchálo, no lo ignores, todo va a estar bien!
[Listen to it, don't ignore it, everything's gonna be all right]

new blog

Just now I read a column by Berkeley public policy professor (and former Clinton cabinet member) Robert Reich about the need to raise taxes on the wealthy (and why Democrats are reluctant to do it). It was very good stuff, and there was a link to his blog, which is also full of good stuff. So I'm going to be adding it to my list and reading it. You should, too.

turkey

Juan Cole has a really interesting article over at Salon today about the abject failure that is the Bush administration's foreign policy. Here's a particularly troubling excerpt:

As usual, the Bush administration has reacted to these predictable problems in a purely ad hoc manner. There is no evidence that anyone in the administration has crafted a policy for dealing with tensions between Ankara and America's Kurdish allies. The U.S. State Department has designated the PKK a terrorist group, but the PKK is given safe harbor by the Kurdistan Regional Authority of northern Iraq. What will Bush do about having wound up as the de facto protector of a radical peasant guerrilla group that is attacking the troops of a NATO ally? If the United States acts against the PKK, it risks alienating the Iraqi Kurds, whose pro-American peshmerga fighters perform security duties and enlist as troops in the new Iraqi army. If Bush does not restrain the PKK, then he is playing Mullah Omar to its al-Qaida and "harboring" terrorists, which he trumpeted six years ago as grounds for war.

frisbee

Well, after two weeks of psyching myself out, telling myself over and over that I'd get cut in the hopes that if it happened it wouldn't hurt quite so much, I didn't get cut! I made the B-team (which they're calling the Developmental team now). So there was room for me after the shake-up after all. Only five new guys made the A roster, and they are all clearly better than me, so no hard feelings about that at all. I'm just glad I get a chance to keep playing. So, image for the day:



Magnum on three, Magnum on three...one two three MAGNUM!

david horowitz is criminally fucking insane

This week at Michigan. I don't even know where to start with this. Horowitz and everyone who thinks like him are a threat to national security. People are dying in Iraq and dying in Israel/Palestine because of this kind of totally divorced-from-reality worldview. Bush DID create the War on Terror. To even try to deny that is laughable on its face. He obviously didn't create jihadi Islamism nor its conflict with the US; nobody who's even been paying a LITTLE bit of attention thinks that. But the War on Terror is his ugly, disfigured offspring. Also I'm not sure I've ever seen or heard a left-winger claim that global warming is a greater threat to national security than "Islamofascism." Not least because left-wingers tend not to use unbelievably dishonest terms like "Islamofascism."

Juan Cole has a good and very upsetting post on a related topic today, though, so go read that.

ron paul

Came to campus last night to speak on the Diag. I went to see him, along with a couple hundred other people. It was nice because I got to talk to Jessica Hibma for a while, and Sam B-F. They're both cool and I hadn't really talked to either of them in a while. Well, I guess I saw Jessica earlier in the day yesterday, but it was in passing and hardly counts. Anyhow, to sum up Paul's speech: "Freedom freedom Constitution troops home freedom freedom government BAD." He's a racist libertarian extremist who wants to abolish the IRS and the Federal Reserve, and in 1992 had this to say about black people in his personal publication:

Regardless of what the media tell us, most white Americans are not going to believe that they are at fault for what blacks have done to cities across America. The professional blacks may have cowed the elites, but good sense survives at the grass roots. Many more are going to have difficultly avoiding the belief that our country is being destroyed by a group of actual and potential terrorists -- and they can be identified by the color of their skin. This conclusion may not be entirely fair, but it is, for many, entirely unavoidable.

Indeed, it is shocking to consider the uniformity of opinion among blacks in this country. Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty, and the end of welfare and affirmative action.... Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the "criminal justice system," I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.

If similar in-depth studies were conducted in other major cities, who doubts that similar results would be produced? We are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, but it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings, and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers.

Perhaps the L.A. experience should not be surprising. The riots, burning, looting, and murders are only a continuation of 30 years of racial politics.The looting in L.A. was the welfare state without the voting booth. The elite have sent one message to black America for 30 years: you are entitled to something for nothing. That's what blacks got on the streets of L.A. for three days in April. Only they didn't ask their Congressmen to arrange the transfer.

Maybe I'm just being judgmental and unfair, but I feel like a lot of the people who were there last night waving signs with his name on them were sucked in by his being against the Iraq War. Well, kudos to him for being right on that count, but he's wrong on just about everything else and I feel like he wouldn't have so much support if people knew just a twinge more about him. One thing I can say, though, is that he does seem like a principled guy, never really wavers or compromises what he believes in. The problem is that his principles are terrible.

glory days!

Big news! I'm going to Naperville, IL this weekend for Glory Days, which is a big fall ultimate tournament. So that should be fun.

okay, and a song

Because it's a great song.

back by popular demand

Well, I've just finished my paper for tomorrow on the federal budget as key to understanding real governmental priorities, and let me tell you, the budget is really interesting. The paper topic and limits (1000 words hard cap) meant that writing this baby sucked. I would have much preferred to write 5000 words and been able to get into real meaty rants about public and media misunderstanding--and governmental manipulation--of tax policy, but as it was I barely covered revenues, outlays and expenditures and a couple of recommendations for shrinking the deficit (another area I could have really sunk my teeth into) in the space allotted. Oh well.

Seems that some people are asking for a little update about school so far, so here goes. My classes are as follows:

ENGLISH 223 Intro to Creative Writing
ENVSTD 232 Intro to Oceanography
POLSCI 300 Contemporary Political Issues
POLSCI 357 History and Politics of India and South Asia
POLSCI 489 H & P of the European Right

So far, the first two have been satisfactory but kind of up and down. At least they've been easy. The Poli Sci classes, on the other hand, have been fantastic. CPI, for which I was writing until 15 minutes ago, is really basic but engaging all the same and also easy in terms of reading/work load. The India and European Right classes feature fascinating subjects and are taught by two high-powered and absolutely terrific professors, Ashutosh Varshney and Andy Markovits. I could (and do, often) go on and on about these two, but won't right now.

My apartment is big and beautiful, although we've had a few problems with leakage from the apartment upstairs and with our dishwasher, which is on wheels and supposedly hooks into the sink, but which doesn't, in fact, hook onto the sink. No really big deal there, we just have to do dishes by hand and they pile up sometimes.

Frisbee has been a little more stressful than sophomore year because they're shaking up the way the teams are organized and as a result there might not be space on either the A or B teams for an average-skilled, average-athletic player like me. We hosted a tournament last week, Best of the Midwest, which was really fun and led to me making the first cut down to about 70 guys (from close to 150). So now, really all there is to do is keep showing up and playing hard and hope not to be in the next 20 cut (there'll be about 25 on each final roster). I'd say my chances are about 50-50. But we'll see. Hopefully I get invited to the Glory Days tournament in Naperville in a couple of weeks, that would be a good sign, I think.

Things seem to be going pretty well on the family front, which is obviously great, and even more so because things have been a bit chaotic here. Okay, I've run out of energy to write for the time being and my eyes are starting to cross, so I think I'll close up shop here at the library and head home. Sorry for the abrupt ending. I'll try to post more frequently, but now that I'm back in the country the blogosphere has become a lot less important to me in general. As a final note, I feel compelled to announce that Blogger's own spell check doesn't recognize the word "blogosphere." And with that, good night.

ferlinghetti

Found this poem thanks to C&L. I think it's called "Pity the Nation." Pretty straightforward stuff, I guess, and at some level I don't even think this is a very good poem, but on the other hand, here I am, posting it on my blog. Wonder what that's about.

Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation -- oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.

some new music

I like this song okay (my roommates are going to have me sold on at least some techno by the end of the semester) but what's really cool is the video. Make sure to watch until the lady starts speaking in tongues. It's really cool. The song is "Det snurrar i min skalle" by Familjen.

michigan 38, notre dame 0

That's better.

thank you, jhumpa lahiri

I read this story, "The Third and Final Continent," again just now, in a lull before class, and once again shivered at how true it rings, how beautifully it's written, how closely it strikes me. It feels so intimate to me and I almost get choked up towards the end, all the more so now because I know it so well. Here are the last few sentences:

In my son's eyes I see the ambition that had first hurled me across the world. In a few years he will graduate and pave his own way, alone and unprotected. But I remind myself that he has a father who is still living, a mother who is happy and strong. Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no obstacle he cannot conquer. While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have travelled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.

I have no words.

you can't talk to a man with a shotgun in his hand

I'm sitting in Angell Hall having just read a few posts from Orcinus and Unsane and I'm feeling infused with energy. Being back at school is great, my apartment is working out wonderfully so far, classes start tomorrow, I found out about a neat-sounding volunteer organization that works with the Latino community in and around Ann Arbor. Plus I'm feeling full of fire, ready to go freaking FIGHT and bring some people to the light, to help someone. Sara at Orcinus has a really good post reprising her trichotomy of authoritarians in the States and I'm getting waves of goosebumps at the thought of engaging the ones here.

abriré la ventana.
abriré la ventana.

seems i'm getting tired of writing this

I no longer really feel a need to write on this with any kind of regularity, and when I sit down to write about, say, the amazing time we had at the beach last week, other things always seem more important or interesting or worthwhile. However, I'd like to just say that if we go to war with Iran, any shred of doubt left in my mind about George W. Bush's guilt as a war criminal will be gone.

west africa is where it's at

Listening to Tinariwen with Dad the other day, he pointed out the obvious: that even after listening to just part of one song, those musicians listen to lots of blues and blues-rock from the U.S., and how that music in its turn came from the traditional music of West Africa. It's all one big circle, albeit one filled with a lot of pain and suffering in the form of slavery and racism and imperialism. But having just started to discover bluesier artists like Amadou et Mariam, Ali Farka Touré, Boubacar Traoré and Tinariwen, and really just starting to discover Afrobeat and Afrofunk, well, the current stopping point of that circle has produced some kick-ass music over the past 30 or 40 years. Here's a song by Fela Kuti, "Sorrow Tears and Blood." Forgive the still image, even YouTube has limits to its selection. I suggest closing your eyes and paying no attention to your body. If it doesn't start moving of its own accord, you're probably quadriplegic.

puerto rican obituary

Found this poem today by Pedro Petri, written in 1973. I had never heard of it or him before but, well, damn. Here it is:

Puerto Rican Obituary

They worked
They were always on time
They were never late
They never spoke back
when they were insulted
They worked
They never took days off
that were not on the calendar
They never went on strike
without permission
They worked
ten days a week
and were only paid for five
They worked
They worked
They worked
and they died
They died broke
They died owing
They died never knowing
what the front entrance
of the first national city bank looks like

Juan
Miguel
Milagros
Olga
Manuel
All died yesterday today
and will die again tomorrow
passing their bill collectors
on to the next of kin
All died
waiting for the garden of eden
to open up again
under a new management
All died
dreaming about america
waking them up in the middle of the night
screaming: Mira Mira
your name is on the winning lottery ticket
for one hundred thousand dollars
All died
hating the grocery stores
that sold them make-believe steak
and bullet-proof rice and beans
All died waiting dreaming and hating

Dead Puerto Ricans
Who never knew they were Puerto Ricans
Who never took a coffee break
from the ten commandments
to KILL KILL KILL
the landlords of their cracked skulls
and communicate with their latino souls

Juan
Miguel
Milagros
Olga
Manuel
From the nervous breakdown streets
where the mice live like millionaires
and the people do not live at all
are dead and were never alive

Juan
died waiting for his number to hit
Miguel
died waiting for the welfare check
to come and go and come again
Milagros
died waiting for her ten children
to grow up and work
so she could quit working
Olga
died waiting for a five dollar raise
Manuel
died waiting for his supervisor to drop dead
so he could get a promotion

Is a long ride
from Spanish Harlem
to long island cemetery
where they were buried
First the train
and then the bus
and the cold cuts for lunch
and the flowers
that will be stolen
when visiting hours are over
Is very expensive
Is very expensive
But they understand
Their parents understood
Is a long non-profit ride
from Spanish Harlem
to long island cemetery

Juan
Miguel
Milagros
Olga
Manuel
All died yesterday today
and will die again tomorrow
Dreaming
Dreaming about queens
Clean-cut lily-white neighborhood
Puerto Ricanless scene
Thirty-thousand-dollar home
The first spics on the block
Proud to belong to a community
of gringos who want them lynched
Proud to be a long distance away
from the sacred phrase: Que Pasa

These dreams
These empty dreams
from the make-believe bedrooms
their parents left them
are the after-effects
of television programs
about the ideal
white american family
with black maids
and latino janitors
who are well train
to make everyone
and their bill collectors
laugh at them
and the people they represent

Juan
died dreaming about a new car
Miguel
died dreaming about new anti-poverty programs
Milagros
died dreaming about a trip to Puerto Rico
Olga
died dreaming about real jewelry
Manuel
died dreaming about the irish sweepstakes

They all died
like a hero sandwich dies
in the garment district
at twelve o’clock in the afternoon
social security number to ashes
union dues to dust

They knew
they were born to weep
and keep the morticians employed
as long as they pledge allegiance
to the flag that wants them destroyed
They saw their names listed
in the telephone directory of destruction
They were train to turn
the other cheek by newspapers
that mispelled mispronounced
and misunderstood their names
and celebrated when death came
and stole their final laundry ticket

They were born dead
and they died dead

Is time
to visit sister lopez again
the number one healer
and fortune card dealer
in Spanish Harlem
She can communicate
with your late relatives
for a reasonable fee
Good news is guaranteed

Rise Table Rise Table
death is not dumb and disable
Those who love you want to know
the correct number to play
Let them know this right away
Rise Table Rise Table
death is not dumb and disable
Now that your problems are over
and the world is off your shoulders
help those who you left behind
find financial peace of mind

Rise Table Rise Table
death is not dumb and disable
If the right number we hit
all our problems will split
and we will visit your grave
on every legal holiday

Those who love you want to know
the correct number to play
let them know this right away
We know your spirit is able
Death is not dumb and disable
RISE TABLE RISE TABLE

Juan
Miguel
Milagros
Olga
Manuel
All died yesterday today
and will die again tomorrow
Hating fighting and stealing
broken windows from each other
Practicing a religion without a roof
The old testament
The new testament
according to the gospel
of the internal revenue
the judge and jury and executioner
protector and eternal bill collector

Secondhand shit for sale
learn how to say Como Esta Usted
and you will make a fortune
They are dead
They are dead
and will not return from the dead
until they stop neglecting
the art of their dialogue
for broken english lessons
to impress the mister goldsteins
who keep them employed
as lavaplatos porters messenger boys
factory workers maids stock clerks
shipping clerks assistant mailroom
assistant, assistant assistant
to the assistant’s assistant
assistant lavaplatos and automatic
artificial smiling doormen
for the lowest wages of the ages
and rages when you demand a raise
because is against the company policy
to promote SPICS SPICS SPICS

Juan
died hating Miguel because Miguel’s
used car was in better running condition
than his used car
Miguel
died hating Milagros because Milagros
had a color television set
and he could not afford one yet
Milagros
died hating Olga because Olga
made five dollars more on the same job
Olga
died hating Manuel because Manuel
had hit the numbers more times
than she had hit the numbers
Manuel
died hating all of them
Juan
Miguel
Milagros
and Olga
because they all spoke broken english
more fluently than he did

And now they are together
in the main lobby of the void
Addicted to silence
Off limits to the wind
Confine to worm supremacy
in long island cemetery
This is the groovy hereafter
the protestant collection box
was talking so loud and proud about

Here lies Juan
Here lies Miguel
Here lies Milagros
Here lies Olga
Here lies Manuel
who died yesterday today
and will die again tomorrow
Always broke
Always owing
Never knowing
that they are beautiful people

Never knowing
the geography of their complexion

PUERTO RICO IS A BEAUTIFUL PLACE
PUERTORRIQUENOS ARE A BEAUTIFUL RACE

If only they
had turned off the television
and tune into their own imaginations
If only they
had used the white supremacy bibles
for toilet paper purpose
and make their latino souls
the only religion of their race
If only they
had return to the definition of the sun
after the first mental snowstorm
on the summer of their senses
If only they
had kept their eyes open
at the funeral of their fellow employees
who came to this country to make a fortune
and were buried without underwears

Juan
Miguel
Milagros
Olga
Manuel
will right now be doing their own thing
where beautiful people sing
and dance and work together
where the wind is a stranger
to miserable weather conditions
where you do not need a dictionary
to communicate with your people
Aqui Se Habla Espanol all the time
Aqui you salute your flag first
Aqui there are no dial soap commercials
Aqui everybody smells good
Aqui tv dinners do not have a future
Aqui the men and women admire desire
and never get tired of each other
Aqui Que Paso Power is what’s happening
Aqui to be called negrito
means to be called LOVE

holy crap dream

Kellyanne, Robin H, Josh Scannell and I had decided, on our last day of high school, that we were sick of a particular class and instead of having it we'd bring some guns and hold up the teacher so we could just goof off instead. This we did; my gun even had a silencer. It was kind of fun, in the dream, but also strange, the teacher (it may have been my 8th-grade English teacher Mrs. Kajder) was so quiet and clearly confused and scared. Anyhow as I was leaving the room at the end of the period arms reached out and grabbed me from behind: a cop. I no longer had my gun so, perfectly aware of my guilt, I started playing innocent, acting like I didn't know what was going on. The officer didn't say anything, just marched me to an empty hallway, where Robin and Kellyanne already were, in long flowy dresses. Josh had apparently gotten away. I lay down on a bench (Robin and Kellyanne were dancing) and was depressed and kind of disbelief that I had done something so stupid. It was scary, I was sure that I'd go to jail and never get to college or amount to anything.

After a while waiting on that bench, someone came and brought the three of us to an auditorium, where a collection of police officers in plain clothes were getting ready to talk about how to solve our case. Lincoln was also there, and motioned to me to sit next to him. But he was in a three-seat section of the room, and the seat next to him was taken and in front of the other one stood a woman talking to the people in the row ahead. I went and squeezed into that other one and there was some awkwardness about how she was supposed to sit, but she ended up going elsewhere. The lights dimmed and a cartoon was put on, a Looney Toon, that I had seen before, about what to do with bad children, punish or give a second chance? On the way home with Mom and Dad (Lincoln had to stay at school) I was very upset, especially because Mom and Dad were saying that now I'd never get into the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins because Aunt Katie had just gotten in and now, with this whole gun thing, I could never measure up to her as an applicant.

I was at home alone with Jack, waiting for news about the investigation. We had a chair, one of our real-life kitchen chairs, fitted with a rocket pack. I decided to try it out and started flying little sorties around our neighborhood and back. I looked longingly at maps with Jack, talking about where would be the best place to go in the chair to get away from all the mess I'd started. Eventually I decided to take a slightly longer trip and began flying away towards DC. The flying, by the way, was really fun. I got pretty far, but realized at some point that I was going to run out of fuel, so I tried to race back home. No such luck, and I touched down, totally empty, next to Farragut West metro (although the setting actually looked more like Gallery Place did ten years ago). Having just flown away from home, I had nothing in my pockets, no way to get the rest of the way home, and no way to call. The streets were pretty empty and I didn't want to ask anyone for change. Finally I decided to suck it up and find some quarters to call home with. When Mom picked up and I explained the situation, she laughed and said of course she'd come pick me up. That's all I remember.

I didn't make a single iota of that up. Holy crap.

ratatouille

I can't believe it was still playing, but Mom and Jack and I went to see it yesterday evening at the Majestic and all three of us LOVED it. Brad Bird, who made "The Incredibles," too, basically proved to me with this one that A) he's a really good director and B) he knows how to make really cool credits. Or maybe the credits thing is just Pixar. I had read in a review a while ago that one of the great things about the movie was that it didn't shy away from the rats' being rats. They don't look like Mickey Mouse, they don't look like the bugs from "A Bug's Life," they look and move like rats. It fit and amplified perfectly the message of the film, which is that anyone can do anything with talent and perseverance, no matter what how daunting the obstacle. It sounds trite like that, but in the context of the movie it's quite wonderful. The food and kitchen themselves are also terrifically depicted and animated. It goes into my second tier of animated movies (below "The Lion King, "Beauty and the Beast" and "My Neighbor Totoro").

h/t dad

Good alternate (and somewhat more levelheaded) argument for why people should stop hating on Barry Bonds at Girls in Short Shorts.

barry bonds

Okay, you fucking sanctimonious shithead airbag idiots. I've had enough of your slamming Barry Bonds. The last straw, and the one that pushed me into shouting, raving mad territory, is today's piece on ESPN.com by Eric Neel comparing Bonds to Mickey Mantle. His basic question is who disappoints us more, Mickey Mantle by being an alcoholic and basically throwing away his 30s in favor of booze, or Barry Bonds, who almost undoubtedly took some form of performance-enhancing drugs starting in 2000 and giving us some of the greatest offensive years in baseball history? Neel says,

"Steroids are creepy, alien, illicit doorways to a frightening cyborg future. We want no part of them. They make us long for purity and certainty. They're a threat not only to baseball records we cherish but to our very sense of self, to our most basic understanding of what we mean by 'human being' and what we understand to be the limits of human accomplishment."

This is asinine. Performance-enhancing drugs may be illicit, but they're hardly "alien." Barry Bonds has been taught since he was very young that all the matters is to be the best he can be at the sport he plays. It became evident to him around 2000 that a good way to do that was to take performance enhancers. They worked. He was already a mortal lock for the Hall of Fame and now he's a mortal lock for any discussion about the GOAT. "Frightening cyborg future"?!?!? What planet is this guy living on? Athletes have taken performance enhancers since ancient Greece (that always seems uncomfortable to me as a starting point because it's so Euro-centric, but that's another story). They often didn't work, and the only reasons steroids and HGH have become so controversial is because their effects are clear and dramatic. But why should drugs be the only form of body-enhancement that's considered cheating? What about the sharkskin bathing suits that Olympic swimmers now wear? What about Tiger Woods' laser eye surgery that allows him to see WAY better than 20/20? Or Mark McGwire's custom-made contacts that had the same effect? Or the fact that cyclists in the Tour de France not only have oxygen-pumping drugs but also superfast custom-tailored bikes and helmets of which cyclists of yore couldn't have dreamed. The way sports are played changes all the time, the ceiling to which they can be practiced raises ever-higher as technology improves. Performance-enhancing drugs are just a technology. Of course Barry Bonds (and Rafael Palmerio, and Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire, and Roger Clemens, and Jason Giambi, and who knows how many others) were going to use them. The drugs made them better. Just like not playing against people of color made Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb better.

The only argument I can see against steroids is that they are unsafe, which they seemingly are, but we are moving closer and closer to a time when that is no longer an issue. When the health risk from taking them is gone, they should be legalized and permitted in professional sports. Period. I don't give a shit if Barry Bonds stuck some chemicals in his ass, I only care that the other night, sitting alone in my living room, I was overcome by happiness and wonder at the sight of Bonds, raising his fists, impassive as the ball went out to the right-center bleachers and then finally cracking a smile as he rounded the bases to thunderous adulation in San Francisco. I had goosebumps from my scalp to the soles of my feet when he broke down thanking the sky in place of his father. It wasn't quite 2131 for me, but it was pretty amazing. Sportswriters like Eric Neel need to shut the fuck up and sit down. Let awesome be awesome. Rock on, Barry Bonds.

last night i had a dream

naked dream...frisbee...walking through neighborhoods to get to field...waking up in a bed with everyone looking down at me...why was i naked?

A naked dream. I was walking with some people to a field, through neighborhoods that in retrospect remind me a little of Villanueva de la Cañada, where I lived in Spain for a week in 8th grade. We were on our way to play frisbee and everyone was following me because I knew where the field was. There was a big mix of kids: City at Peace people, Michigan people, Blair people. I got to the field first and there were already a couple of kids throwing a disc around. I threw a couple with them and then the next thing I knew I was racing, buck-ass naked, after a deep huck. But I realized halfway there that I wasn't wearing any clothes and alarm bells started going off. So I turned around, hand over privates, and sprinted back towards my clothes to general laughter and shouts of encouragement for those closest to me to get a look. I tried desperately to pull my shorts back on as discreetly as possible and people started crowding around. I woke up in a bed with those same people looking over me. Other things happened in the dream but they are less clear. It was the first naked dream I can remember having.

Last night I went with Mom to get dinner and go see "Mar Adentro," which I thought was directed by Pedro Almodóvar but was in fact directed by Alejandro Amenábar. It's a movie about assisted suicide, for those not in the know, and it's among the most moving and beautiful movies I've ever seen. As I have mentioned here before, I am not prone to tears during movies, or books for that matter, but this was the second during which I had to wipe away tears. Perhaps I'm becoming more empathetic? Or perhaps I care less what implications my crying carries to the people around me? I'm not sure. In any event, the talk afterwards (this was part of Mom's office's Science in the Cinema series at AFI Silver, which is such a cool thing) was by a pretty high-powered guy in the field of bioethics and particularly as relates to end-of-life issues. But his comments were extremely brief and I thought pretty unsatisfying. The movie is not really about the science of assisted suicide or euthanasia, no doctors are involved. Its real themes, to my view, are relationships and selfishness (or lack thereof). It would have been better, perhaps, to have someone NOT a medical doctor (perhaps someone from the Hemlock Society?) give the talk. To be fair, I think he was thrown a little by the first question, by a man clearly out of touch with the context, who, with some doggedness, asked about stem cell research and aborting fetuses.

Right this instant I must go shower, but I will soon hold forth on Barry Bonds, about whom I've discovered I feel quite strongly. Oh yes, the big news from yesterday was really that I had my check-up with Dr. Kline and my blood pressure is totally, 100% normal. What a relief. I had lunch with Dad at Firehook Bakery afterwards, which was really nice (thanks, Dad!) and where I realized definitively how fired up this whole Bonds thing gets me.

boston legal

Is an incredibly sexist show. But it's hilarious and clever and fun to watch, so at first I didn't really notice. Now I do, all the time; it's not exactly subtle once you start noticing. I suppose this is probably true of most things in our culture; I think it was Last Plantation (although I'm not sure) where I read about the online flight magazines, which I had never noticed are totally dominated by photographs of white people, even on flights that are majority-minority, such as the one I took from San Salvador from DC. Racism and sexism and homophobia are most clear in overt forms, obviously. Matthew Shepherd, Pennsylvania crowds railing against "illegals," the Supreme Court ruling against women in that whole pay raise thing. It's far more difficult to notice, and far more difficult to call others' attention to, things like the sexism on Boston Legal. After all, some of the women appear powerful. They are confident, articulate, demanding and usually win arguments. But sexually they are clearly inferior to the male protagonists. The women are unlucky in love, either because they get the wrong guy, or they can't have the guy they want, or what have you (I won't even get into the episode where the young black female attorney basically uses her body to scam a pervert pastor/lawyer into settling a case). Then men all, by virtue of the same confidence that the women show, get pretty much any woman they want, when they want. Bully for them.

The problem for me, here, is that I like Boston Legal. I feel guilty for enjoying it, and I'm torn over whether my objections to some of the show's undercurrents should be enough to make me stop watching. What really makes me uncomfortable is that the sexist part is fun/funny, too. Sexist and racist jokes make me laugh sometimes and I don't know whether that's wrong or not. I know those topics are not funny and I try hard in my life to fight the inclinations I and those around me have in that regard. But what about humor? I don't know this is coming out all wrong. Maybe it'd be better to come back to it when I've got my thoughts a little more organized. Interesting topic, though.

acantilado

That means "cliff" in Spanish and it's the closest I could think of to "drop-off," even though the connotation "decrease in production" doesn't translate very well except in a complex metaphor. Whatever, I've been experiencing a drop-off in posting and I'm not entirely sure why, but I suppose mostly because I've been busy (couldn't you tell from my last post?) and without the energy needed to blog. Still, I should do it more and perhaps expect myself to write more than I have been. In lieu of writing right now, though, because it's 2 a.m. and I seem to have gotten up to my old trick of reading a really good book in bed, which is a terrible strategy for going to sleep, I'll just post a song, a freaking great cheer-up track that I got by accident from somebody who'd grouped it with "Buena Vista Social Club." Which it is, kind of; it's "Pa Mayte" by Carlos Vives featuring BVSC. Hope you like it.

in spanish

el jueves fui a ver unos amigos de city at peace y volvi mucho mas tarde que
queria...estaba tan volado. el viernes me levante a las 8 (grrr), lleve los perros a la
peluqueria y lincoln a su trabajo. despues pinte, almorze brevemente con mi mama, maneje al optometra (que queda a 45 minutos de mi casa), casi me dormi mientras manejaba, volvi a buscar lincoln en su trabajo y los perritos, llegue a mi casa y dormi 2 horas. me levante y me fui directamente a college park para el cumple 21 de cori! fue divertido pero medio raro. hoy me levante nuevamente a las 8 y fui a mi antiguo campamento, catoctin, porque fue el dia de visitas (las familias de los chicos) y habia prometido visitar a unos amigos que son counselors ahi. esta noche comimos con mi papa y mama (lincoln esta con amigos y jack estaba trabajando) y dimos un paseo a una heladeria buenisima y despues a buscar una pelicula (the parallax view). eso tambien fue genial, pero estoy tan cansado. oy vey. con eso me acuesto. yuck, estoy sucio. pero no tengo la energia de ducharme. oh well.

Busy, busy, busy.

election day

Did I go to New York this weekend to see Halley in a play? Was the play called "Election Day?" Was the other purpose of my visit to see Peaches and the Herschkowitzes? Would that be a good name for a band? Did I like the play? How are Jenny and Julie? Did I go out for drinks after the play with Halley and a bunch of the cast and crew? Was that fun? Did I eat delicious challah french toast on Sunday morning? Did Peaches and I hang out in her new apartment and then walk around the West Village for a while? Was that great, seeing her? Did I also see the Richard Serra exhibit at MOMA? Did I pay more attention to Peaches than the exhibit, but still enjoy the show? What did we talk about then? Where was that drag queen in the furniture shop from? Did I read a short story by Donald Barthelme called "Concerning the Bodyguard"? What did I think of it? Did Mom and I have really nice drives both ways? Did our topics include the Oxford English Corpus, theology, and internet ethics? Was my new cell phone waiting for me when I got home? Did I talk to Vale on Friday night, and again on Sunday? Is it strange and hard to talk to her on the phone? Is it worth it? How is she doing? Did I play frisbee last night with the Blair clique team, and did we lose 15-11? Was it fun? Did Lincoln and I finish the guest bedroom in Erin and Arthur's house? Was Cori there this afternoon and did we get to talk for the first time in weeks? How was her trip in Bolivia? Did it sound like a nightmare? Did I do prep for painting the hall? Was dinner delicious tonight, and did it consist of orange-mint lamb, corn on the cob and pasta? Is that a lot of starch? Did I talk briefly to Nora and am I going to call her in a little bit? Did Vale's postcard get here? What am I going to do tonight?

What was that short story about?

i think blogger is confused

It says my most recent post was on Monday but that's not possible and also doesn't make sense from the context of what I wrote. Anyhow, today is Friday, and it seems that I'll be painting once again. Painting sucks, especially by yourself, and I'm not sure whether I'll actually do any today. I've worked plenty of hours now for the amount Lincoln said he'd pay me to help out. But we'll see.

Yesterday was the most eventful day in a while. I painted most of the ceiling over at the Fulham-Cohens' (the job today would be to finish it). Then Linc, Mom and I went to the Phillips for the ColorField (the only art movement ever to come out of DC) show there. It was cool for the location aspect and some of the pieces were nice but this was not a big or particularly influential movement. The real show is upstairs in the permanent collection, which has some really tight pieces by the heavy hitters of the past 150 years: Cezanne, Picasso, Renoir, Miro, Klee, etc. Plus some excellent less-well-known stuff. Right after that I went and met up with Robin (!) and her friend Boris to go to a one-man show at Busboys and Poets about the Arab-Israeli conflict. It was neat, he used beat-boxing and singing plus a whole host of characters to illustrate some tired but important themes about the similarities between the people on either side of the walls there and about the dehumanization of each side by the other. But it cost a lot of money and Busboys and Poets isn't cheap, either. In the end I spent 20 bucks on it, which would have been unheard of in Chile for the same show. Oh well, guess I've gotta choose more carefully down here. It was great to see Robin, though, she's such a cool girl. And I liked Boris.

A couple of other notes: I've taught Lincoln and Jack carioca, although we haven't played a complete game yet because it required a real time commitment and we're all busy and on totally independent schedules. But Jack and I did play a game of Scrabble, which, to my surprise, I won 403-315. Not bad after a year with not a single game in English! Also I found --bless you, Dad, the only THINGS you obtain are books and music and 90% of the time they're great-- an album in the kitchen by a guy named Boubacar Traoré. Well the album's great, and I did some snooping around on YouTube to try and find something to put up here and, well, I got to clicking and discovered a couple of other awesome musicians: Ali Farka Toure, Salif Keita, Corey Harris. It seems Mali produces a lot of great music: Amadou et Mariam, Tinariwen, Traoré, Keita, Toure. Sheesh. It's really interesting to cruise through YouTube, though, and hear just how much of a continuum there is between the traditional African sounds and American blues. Awesome. So the song I settled on ended up being Taj Mahal and Corey Harris playing "Sittin' on top of the world." Enjoy!

i finished harry potter

Because people who give spoilers are basically on par with violent felons, I'll refrain on saying anything about it, period.

Other than that, things have been going all right here, I suppose. Mom, Dad and Linc are all pretty busy, but I'm still waiting for word from Sparks and Jack is sick still from El Salvador, so he and I have been chilling at home. I emailed our landlord today and applied for a couple of work-study jobs in Ann Arbor for this coming year. However I'm still not sure what to do about spending money; SAT tutoring came to mind today as I searched CraigsList.

Judy and I went out for coffee tonight. It was nice to catch up, and also to drive around a little bit, as cumbersome and useless as the car is at the distances I was traveling (my house-Mayorga-downtown Silver Spring). She seems to be making the most of her summer, working at a nonprofit in DC and biking and although Bethesda is suffocating her, she's getting along fine. Talking about being abroad is nice in general--lord knows I've learned enough things and had enough unusual experiences to fill at least one decent conversation with anyone--despite the fact that it brings my mind to Vale and Rodrigo and Cecilia and the other people I miss and the people I missed the chance to get to know enough to miss. And Vale. But talking to someone who has been abroad recently is so much easier because the shared experience, although we may have gone to such different places, is very powerful.

Dad, Linc and I went to Deb's on Monday night. It was kind of boring and not very fulfilling, which is an unusual experience there. But really there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of tension in the house right now. Stress, to be sure, but we're not taking it out on each other. In other news, I've fallen back into my old practice of reading eight hundred books at the same time; right now they include: Super Fiction, Forty Stories by Donald Barthelme, Cotidianas by Mario Benedetti, Harry Potter (which I obviously just finished, but like 20 minutes ago, so it counts), and Ficciones, plus the usual New Yorker, Outlook, New York Review articles. I've been laying off the blogs, though. It's interesting, when I was in Chile they provided an intellectual link with the day-to-day issues that I care about at home and I drank them in effortlessly and eagerly. But now that I'm here they remind me mostly of sitting next to Vale in her apartment in Santiago de Chile, of how strange it was to be keeping in touch with the goings-on up here through the opinions of other people rather than just by simply being at home.

Anyhow I've got to rise and shine tomorrow, to await word from Sparks and then go to the dentist at 10:15. Hope I've got a car, walking there would suck shit through a wet paper straw, as a certain recent houseguest might say (although he was talking about the Yale University bureaucracy). One last note before I conk out: WHEN IS IT GOING TO FREAKING THUNDERSTORM!?!?!??!!? I feel ripped off.

at home

Jack comes home tonight and we will finally be all five of us together again. Being at home is really wonderful and also really strange and hard. Details and reflections will come about that in time (I know I've written that before but I need to keep telling myself to do it or too much time will pass). Really I just wanted to post about how happy I am that I'll get to see Jack again today after so much time.

leaving so soon

Vale made me promise not to use my computer at all tomorrow, so I figured I'd better post now because my next opportunity will be Friday. First, I've got another book for the list: Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy by Barrington Moore. Okay, now that I've got that out of the way, it's time to write a little about what's going on here.

Yesterday Vale and I went to Rodrigo and Cecilia's for a good-bye dinner, which was lovely despite one last Transantiago nightmare getting there. We laughed a lot, as usual, and stayed so late that we ended up spending the night even though Vale had work this morning. It was strange saying bye, I've gotten pretty close with that family over the past few months and I will miss them a lot. Today Ceci drove us to the metro bright and early and Vale went to work and I fell asleep. On waking up I had my second round of good-byes, in the COPA office, to Isa and Katty. I haven't been as close to either of them this semester and it was a little weird and awkward, but they have also been very important this year for obvious reasons and I'm glad I went. Tonight we'll go one last time to the Pilars', but not for dinner. David and I talked last week about me going over there for lunch one day but he never called back to tell me when I should come over and I didn't call him back, either. I'll also leave without seeing the Diaz family one last time. I regret not having made a greater effort to get over there (it's been months since my last visit). Good-byes are awkward and hard and I've shied away from a lot of them or avoided going out of my way for them, which I'm not exactly proud of. I wish I could have said bye to the frisbee crew, but the game got called off yesterday because of rain. Tomorrow I'll spend with Vale, who of course will be the hardest good-bye of all, and then at about 3 on Thursday morning a van will come pick me and my mountain of stuff up (and hopefully Vale) and take us to the airport and away from Chile for a long time. But not forever, and hopefully not even for that long. I love this country and certainly some of its people and there is still so much for me to learn and see and do here.

Some real reflections on the past year will come along soon but not now.

more music wish list

First, I've decided I really like Vale's card game, carioca, which I wrote about in a rather negative light a few days ago. Family, expect to learn this game. Now, the music:

"Sailin' Shoes" by Little Feat.

"Give it Up" by Bonnie Raitt.

"Supa Dupa Fly" by Missy Elliott. From which comes this freaking awesome single/video:

comments follow on harry potter 4

First of all the theater was jammed, lines out the door for the 7:30 subtitled show and the 8 dubbed show. We got there around 7:10 and first went into the wrong line, so when we finally made it into the theater our seats kind of sucked (pretty close the screen, no raised at all, off to the side) but could have been worse. As far as the movie goes, I liked it for the visual imagination it showed. The effects, particularly in the battle scenes, were beautiful. I wasn't expecting much and that was enough to push me into the positive camp. But as far as a retelling of the book, it missed a lot of points. The whole thing about finding out where the Room of Requirement was, for example, with the cursed contract and Cho's friend betraying them and getting "SNITCH" written across her face, was a great episode in the book. The movie's kind of awkward Harry-kisses-Cho-then-thinks-she-betrayed-him-but-Snape-vindicates-her way of making up for it didn't work at all. Or the kids flying on the dead horse things: In the book, there's a whole scene where the kids who haven't seen death get coaxed up onto the horses and it's all very bizarre and cool. In the movie, the horse things are introduced in the beginning, briefly explained and then abruptly, flown on! later. Then again, that's what you get when you're trying to make a 2-hour movie out of a gigantic book. They need to bring back Cuarón, or some other director with the spine to take the book and make a really good movie out of it, rather than trying to cram a summary onto the screen. Another minor complaint: Helena Bonham Carter should never find work as an actress again, ever. She's so irritating and unbelievable I could barely watch her scenes, and she's way deep into typecast territory now as the "kind of scary/crazy but a little bit hot, maybe?" woman. All the other villains are tight, though, especially Ralf Faiehness.

In other news, briefly, I found out my final grades today. They are as follows: Sistemas Electorales (5,3); Conflicto Armado (5,9); Economía Política de Europa (6,5). In other words, B+, A, A. Judging by the grade for EPdE, I did really well on my final paper. Good news. Now I'm going to start making lunch.

going to start tagging posts

What the title says.

camille paglia

Well I'd never heard of her before today but I clicked on her column on Salon and read it all the way through. I don't agree with a lot of what she says but she's definitely way unorthodox and way unlike a lot of the other people I read on a regular basis (not so much Unsane and Safe, who I like more and more as time goes on). No knock on the liberal bloggers, Add two new books to my wish list and throw them pretty high up there: Sexual Personae and Break Blow Burn. Plus she pisses off lots of people, like John Updike and Betty Friedan--thank you, Wikipedia. Any self-proclaimed liberal who pisses off that many bona fide liberals certainly piques my curiosity. I mean, they really hate her. (The book list will eventually take true list form, along with the music list, in a future post.)

Speaking of which, scratch Andy McKee from the music list, that one song is really impressive to watch but GOD is his music boring. The one video, though...damn. Okay, I'm off to buy HP tickets so we're sure to get a seat tonight. In really shitty news, Cori is stuck in Bolivia and won't be coming into town, after all. Getting back to the States can be a nightmare. Oops better run.

two new sites

A new blog, Science and Politics, and a new website, Public Library of Science. The former is a guy in Chapel Hill, Bora Zivkovic, who writes about puppy dogs and ice cream. I mean, science and politics. He's got a couple of other blogs, too, but that one seemed like the most interesting at the moment. He just interviewed John Edwards, whose office is in Chapel Hill (the whole damn world is against me, I hate Chapel Hill...sorry, Dad), about his positions on various science related topics. The interview is here if anyone wants to read it. The latter is the organization that Zivkovic works for, an open-access science research library, mostly consisting of peer-reviewed journals broken down by discipline (genetics, pathogens, computational biology, etc.). Mom, I'm not sure if you've heard of PloS, but if not it seems like it'd be right up your alley. Pretty cool stuff.

quick note on gladwell

Because it's irking me at the moment, here's one nit-picky complaint I have about Gladwell's writing. I've just come across my umpteenth "brilliant" paper/book. The word "brilliant," like the word "stupid" or the word "intelligent" can be usefully descriptive, but when it's used over and over again in different contexts within a short space it loses most of its meaning. How is it brilliant? Is it very insightful? Particularly well-written? Extraordinarily creative? "Brilliant" doesn't tell me anything worthwhile about it at all.

This was starting to turn into a longer post but I'll wait until I've finished the book first.

summary

This is what has happened since last Thursday:
1) Finished school with final assignment turned in three minutes before the deadline due to extensive editing.
2) Went to Algarrobo with Vale, watched sunset over the Pacific, probably my last for a while. Spent the night at a nice but very cold hostel (no heater in the room), Residencial Vera. Next day went to El Tabo, walked on the beach, ate shockingly overpriced lunch (we saw the menu and thought, wow, cheap! and then it turned out the cheapness was directly related to the quantity and quality of the food...go figure). Really nice time except Saturday night I got very frustrated trying to learn a new card game.
3) Said good bye to Jesse Z and Leslie on Sunday night, to the tune of "Wet Hot American Summer," which I hadn't seen since senior year of high school and which was even more hilarious than I remembered. Great movie. Jesse's planning to visit Ann Arbor in January.
4) Last night Vale and I went out to Zanzibar for dinner, which provoked an avalanche of feelings in me that had nothing to do with leaving or going home, which I'm certain I will feel again in the future and which I will address then. They're important.
5) Talked to Mom Dad and Linc last night before dinner. Jack is in El Salvador. It sounds like things are going smoothly at the moment and that stress is low, which is great news. Hopefully that atmosphere holds until I get home, coming home to simmering clashes wouldn't really help with the whole transition thing, which is going to be hard enough as it is.

I think that pretty much covers the highlights. Cori gets into town from Bolivia tonight and she's here through Thursday morning (I think) before heading back to the states. I've got just over a week left and I'm not even sure where to begin trying to write about that at the moment, so I'll leave it for another day. Before I get back to The Tipping Point, which I'm finding better than Blink but still kind of disappointing, here's a great song by Chile's answer to the Clash, Los Prisioneros. It's title (and chorus) means, "Latin American is a village to the south of the United States." I suspect that most of the people who read this blog (all four of you) don't speak Spanish, but that's okay. Los Prisioneros were really influential in Latin America and their anger and resentment of US hegemony represent a lot of people down here.

new blog: the last plantation

The Last Plantation, commentary about racism in the US right now. Really thoughtful, well-written stuff. Check it out. Also, in case you didn't notice, I alphabetized the links list. Thank you, blogger. And now, I've got about 6.5 pages of my final done and need to start extending that. Here goes.

happy fourth of july

On this day, I will post two things. First, the national anthem in the most beautiful form I've ever heard it, the one I woke up to this morning: Marvin Gaye at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game.



And second, the transcript of Keith Olbermann's Special Comment last night, which I didn't get to watch for obvious reasons. But the transcript gave me goosebumps all the same. Keep kicking ass, Keith. (H/t Salon.com)

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on what is, in everything but name, George Bush's pardon of Scooter Libby.

"I didn't vote for him," an American once said, "But he's my president, and I hope he does a good job." That -- on this eve of the Fourth of July -- is the essence of this democracy, in 17 words. And that is what President Bush threw away yesterday in commuting the sentence of Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

The man who said those 17 words -- improbably enough -- was the actor John Wayne. And Wayne, an ultra-conservative, said them when he learned of the hair's-breadth election of John F. Kennedy instead of his personal favorite, Richard Nixon, in 1960.

"I didn't vote for him but he's my president, and I hope he does a good job." The sentiment was doubtlessly expressed earlier. But there is something especially appropriate about hearing it, now, in Wayne's voice: The crisp matter-of-fact acknowledgment that we have survived, even though for nearly two centuries now, our commander in chief has also served, simultaneously, as the head of one political party and often the scourge of all others.

We as citizens must, at some point, ignore a president's partisanship. Not that we may prosper as a nation, not that we may achieve, not that we may lead the world, but merely that we may function.

But just as essential to the 17 words of John Wayne is an implicit trust, a sacred trust: that the president for whom so many did not vote can in turn suspend his political self long enough, and for matters imperative enough, to conduct himself solely for the benefit of the entire republic.

Our generation's willingness to state "We didn't vote for him, but he's our president, and we hope he does a good job" was tested in the crucible of history, and earlier than most.

And in circumstances more tragic and threatening. And we did that with which history tasked us. We enveloped our president in 2001. And those who did not believe he should have been elected -- indeed those who did not believe he had been elected -- willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of nonpartisanship.

And George W. Bush took our assent, and reconfigured it, and honed it, and shaped it to a razor-sharp point and stabbed this nation in the back with it.

Were there any remaining lingering doubt otherwise, or any remaining lingering hope, it ended yesterday when Mr. Bush commuted the prison sentence of one of his own staffers.

Did so even before the appeals process was complete. Did so without as much as a courtesy consultation with the Department of Justice. Did so despite what James Madison -- at the Constitutional Convention -- said about impeaching any president who pardoned or sheltered those who had committed crimes "advised by" that president.

Did so without the slightest concern that even the most detached of citizens must look at the chain of events and wonder: To what degree was Mr. Libby told, "Break the law however you wish -- the president will keep you out of prison"?

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you broke that fundamental compact between yourself and the majority of this nation's citizens, the ones who did not cast votes for you.

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you ceased to be the president of the United States. In that moment, Mr. Bush, you became merely the president of a rabid and irresponsible corner of the Republican Party.

And this is too important a time, Sir, to have a commander in chief who puts party over nation. This has been, of course, the gathering legacy of this administration. Few of its decisions have escaped the stain of politics. The extraordinary Karl Rove has spoken of "a permanent Republican majority," as if such a thing -- or a permanent Democratic majority -- is not antithetical to that upon which rests our country, our history, our revolution, our freedoms.

Yet our democracy has survived shrewder men than Karl Rove. And it has survived the frequent stain of politics upon the fabric of government. But this administration, with ever-increasing insistence and almost theocratic zealotry, has turned that stain into a massive oil spill.

The protection of the environment is turned over to those of one political party who will financially benefit from the rape of the environment.

The protections of the Constitution are turned over to those of one political party who believe those protections unnecessary and extravagant and quaint.

The enforcement of the laws is turned over to those of one political party who will swear beforehand that they will not enforce those laws.

The choice between war and peace is turned over to those of one political party who stand to gain vast wealth by ensuring that there is never peace, but only war.

And now, when just one cooked book gets corrected by an honest auditor, when just one trampling of the inherent and inviolable fairness of government is rejected by an impartial judge, when just one wild-eyed partisan is stopped by the figure of blind justice, this president decides that he, and not the law, must prevail.

I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war. I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient. I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors. I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent. I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought. I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents. I accuse you of handing part of this republic over to a vice president who is without conscience and letting him run roughshod over it.

And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that vice president, carte blanche to Mr. Libby to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to grand juries and special counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.

When President Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre" on October 20th, 1973, Cox initially responded tersely, and ominously.

"Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and, ultimately, the American people."

President Nixon did not understand how he had crystallized the issue of Watergate for the American people. It had been about the obscure meaning behind an attempt to break in to a rival party's headquarters, and the labyrinthine effort to cover up that break-in and the related crimes.

And in one night, Nixon transformed it. Watergate -- instantaneously -- became a simpler issue: a president overruling the inexorable march of the law, insisting -- in a way that resonated viscerally with millions who had not previously understood -- that he was the law.

Not the Constitution. Not the Congress. Not the courts. Just him. Just, Mr. Bush, as you did, yesterday.

The twists and turns of Plamegate, of your precise and intricate lies that sent us into this bottomless pit of Iraq; your lies upon the lies to discredit Joe Wilson; your lies upon the lies upon the lies to throw the sand at the "referee" of prosecutor Fitzgerald's analogy, these are complex and often painful to follow and too much, perhaps, for the average citizen.

But when other citizens render a verdict against your man, Mr. Bush, and then you spit in the faces of those jurors and that judge and the judges who were yet to hear the appeal, the average citizen understands that, Sir.

It's the fixed ballgame and the rigged casino and the prearranged lottery all rolled into one, and it stinks.

And they know it.

Nixon's mistake, the last and most fatal of them, the firing of Archibald Cox, was enough to cost him the presidency. And in the end, even Richard Nixon could say he could not put this nation through an impeachment. It was far too late for it to matter then, but as the decades unfold, that single final gesture of nonpartisanship, of acknowledged responsibility not to self, not to party, not to "base," but to country, echoes loudly into history.

Even Richard Nixon knew it was time to resign. Would that you could say that, Mr. Bush. And that you could say it for Mr. Cheney. You both crossed the Rubicon yesterday. Which one of you chose the route no longer matters. Which is the ventriloquist, and which the dummy, is irrelevant. But that you have twisted the machinery of government into nothing more than a tawdry machine of politics is the only fact that remains relevant.

It is nearly July Fourth, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a king who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them -- or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them -- we would force our independence and regain our sacred freedoms.

We of this time -- and our leaders in Congress, of both parties -- must now live up to those standards which echo through our history. Pressure, negotiate, impeach: get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our democracy, away from its helm.

And for you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task. You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed. Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed on August 9th, 1974.

Resign.

And give us someone -- anyone -- about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say, "I didn't vote for him, but he's my president, and I hope he does a good job."