WEATHER: Look out Houston

The Band wrote a great song in which they sang: "Look out, Houston, There'll be thunder on the hill. Bye-bye, baby, don't you lie so still." I just spoke to my best friend who lives there. He's on his way out to higher ground, but not until he catches the premiere of America's Next Top Model. After all, a man has to have his priorities.

I hope everyone stays safe.

At the same time, I wonder, how can the country handle another major disaster? We've had three. Two off the Gulf of Mexico and one near the Tigris and Euphrates. Egad.

WRITING: 100 Words or Les Nessman

I have played the 100 words or less game with my writing students for years. I've been playing along on this site for weeks. It's alright. I wish that there were more people commenting and that better stuff was coming out of it, but it's a start. (By the way, the title is the link.)

FUNNY: Buy this guy's pants

There was a great eBay post about a guy selling the Ark of the Covenant. I wonder if that's still up there. This one isn't that, but it's good anyway. If you place a bid, keep it to yourself.

SOCIETY: The Next Thing on the Shopping List

I have an iPod mini that my family was nice enough to get me for my birthday. A week or so ago, Apple discontinued the mini and introduced the nano. I thought, "geez, I wish I had that instead."

Then I thought about it. I want a machine that plays lots of music while I work out and while I drive the car. Did the mini do that for me in August? Yeah, it did. Does it still do that? Yes, it does. Do I need the nano in any way at all? No. No, I don't.

I wonder what else I don't need.

POLITICS: Perhaps He Needs Some Discipline

CNN is running this story about Jeb Bush's son being arrested for having too much to drink and resisting arrest. Perhaps he should get together with an organization that would teach him some discipline and send him to a sunny spot out in the desert where he could do the country some good. All he needs to do is volunteer. It's a good war over there. That's what his uncle says anyway.

TECH: Googling "failure"

Just saw this on another blog (from which I've navigated away and don't have a link, sorry). Do the following:

Go to Google, type in "failure", and hit "I'm Feeling Lucky".

Enjoy.

POLITICS: Alright, I'm Obsessed

I was listening to NPR's Science Friday on the drive home yesterday and the talk was of a gamma ray burst that happened when the universe was only 900 million years old. The speaker then talked about the way the universe has unfolded. He didn't say it, but I found myself using the phrase, "the evolution of the universe."

An alarm went off.

Currently, the intelligent-design creationists are using their misguided (to put it kindly) notion to encroach on the teaching of science in Biology classes across the country. Isn't it just a matter of time before they expand out of Biology and into Physics, Earth Science, and Chemistry? Isn't the majesty of the hydrogen atom just too perfect not to have been created by the gods? And isn't the universe only a couple thousand years old?

They will allow us to disagree but then likely require us to teach their mythology alongside science.

The speaker on the program addressed this by saying the following. The universe is thirty seconds old. Any thoughts that it is older than that are due to memories implanted in us, thirty seconds ago by the gods. Prove me wrong.

Well that sounds just like the intelligent-design creationists' argument. Go figure.

POLITICS: Remembering September 11, 2001

I was teaching high school. That morning, I had driven past all the local primary signs and thought that I needed to remember to vote that afternoon. At school, we were outside on a fire drill. As we returned to the building, our secretary told me that someone had told her that a plane had flown into the Twin Towers. I figured it was a commuter plane and went to check the web. I couldn't get CNN or any other major news site (and we didn't yet have cable in the classroom), so I checked Slashdot and there it was.

A colleague said to me that nothing would ever be the same. I believed her, but then, in the months that followed, it seemed that everything was getting back to normal. What I didn't realize then was that we were seeing something that, if it wasn't the end of the government we had known, was certainly the final ascendency of the Executive branch and the catapulting of an inexperienced, rash, and dangerous President into an even more powerful position than he had been entrusted with originally.

Today, four years after the fact, after all the promises, and in the wake of Katrina, we see that the promises have nearly all been hollow. The compassion that was supposed to accompany this administrations compassion is an emotion reserved for other people than the average American. Today, I see that things will never be the same, but it isn't the terrorists who have one. Rather, it is the Bush Administration who has reaped the rewards, stealing from all of us, to give to the very few who share their circles of power.

The legacy of 9/11, as written by the Bush Administration, is one of greed, hollow promises, false sympathy, and the desecration of those who have died and the documents on which our country is based. That's what we have learned. So far.

POLITICS: Cindy Sheehan Thankfully Overshadowed

Cindy Sheehan is still on tour and still writing, but she has been overshadowed by the disaster on the Gulf Coast. And for that, I'm thankful. I was very supportive of her encampment in Crawford and I'm grateful to her for getting people to finally join a peace movement in this country. That said, I'll be more grateful when she is almost completely off the political stage. Her letters are hosted on the web by Michael Moore's site and she has gone the way of Michael Moore. Which is to say that what began as a good idea, a powerful movement, and a reasonable program has devolved into bitter foolishness.

In her latest letter, linked above, Sheehan's prose is that of a high school student ranting about ending the war the way students write about legalizing pot or lowering the drinking age. All three are reasonable ideas, but most high school students argue the points poorly and often fall into the trap of whining and making themselves foolish. Reading their words, I'm left unsympathetic to their cause and often dismissive of their opinions.

In Crawford, Cindy Sheehan's protest was the best thing that could have happened for Democrats and all those opposed to the war. On the road, writing frothing rants, she is the second best thing Republicans could ask for. (The first is Jane Fonda in a bus powered by vegetable oil.) Like Moore, Sheehan has gone past being useful. I sympathize with her pain and her anger. In Crawford, the story was her pain and her simple plea to question our President. Late in that stay and on the road now, it's all about her anger. I'm not buying it.

Goodbye, Cindy. If you can get past spleen venting, stay on the bus and keep going. If not, go home. That behavior won't get us anywhere.

SOCIETY: A Conservative Proposal

In light of the disaster in New Orleans and the rising prices of energy and aside from the obvious need to conserve our resources and preserve the environment, I offer this conservative, if not modest, proposal:

Every American should, for the sake of those suffering from the Katrina disaster and for their own sake, shut off one appliance, light, or other energy using device that they normally use and cut one car trip out of their day.

This is the sort of sacrifice our leaders should be calling on us to make. Actually, in such a time of crisis, wouldn't it be refreshing if they called for much more?

bgfay: Negotiating Peace

I asked the cat how she slept so well. This was yesterday morning, about four-fifteen. We were sitting on the couch watching an ad for Girls Gone Wild.

“It's a matter of finding the right spot—here on the couch next to the pillows is good—and then being at peace with the world,” she told me.

“That second part,” I said, “is where I'm having some trouble.”

“I've noticed.”

A girl on the screen pulled up her shirt and screamed with her eyes closed. Another did it and another, then two girls kissed while falling down, and another girl got spanked. I wondered how all these girls slept and realized that I was supposed to be thinking of something else. Another girl screamed while pulling her shirt up. She kept her eyes open.

“It's not on the television,” the cat said.

A girl in the commercial said, “peace isn't in human nature.” She was drunk and had just spanked herself while licking her lips and the tip of her index finger.

“I think she's right,” I said, looking at the cat and pointing my thumb at the television.

“She's not,” said the cat.

“I should take your word over hers?” I asked.

Again I pointed at the television but now two guys were arguing over how best to make a video of the hottest girls ever. The cat looked at me. She yawned. The television warned me that some of what I was about to see for the fourth time was not suitable for someone or other.

“Keep watching,” the cat told me. “I'm sure you'll find all the answers.”

“Sarcasm?” I asked. “Is that peaceful?”

She shushed me and closed her eyes.

“You're keeping me awake,” she said.

The girls started screaming, whooping, and pulling up their shirts to show blurred breast-like shapes. The cat rolled onto her back and put her paws up as if in surrender. The girls on the screen kept moving.

I looked out the window behind me. Tremendously large flakes of snow drifted side to side as they fell the way sheets of paper fell from the towers when they came down. I switched off the television and lie down next to the cat. I watched the snow and told myself that it was just snow, just snow, just snow and that I would find peace, that it was waiting for me to fall into it. I told myself these things while beside me the cat slept deep and long and no one screamed.

[ fiction by bgfay, september 1, 2005 ]

POLITICS: You, sir, are no FDR

Slate is running a good piece about Bush's comparison of himself to FDR and of the current "war" on terror to World War II.

This goes to the notion that I keep asking those who say they support the troops: In what way are you supporting them? I keep waiting for one concrete example that goes beyond prayer or the application of a bumper sticker yellow ribbon. My brother started me on this and I have to finally agree with him in part: I do not support our troops. It's not that I am in any way angry with them, or that I would not attend a parade for their return (though I really hate parades). It means that I don't do anything to support them and I admit that.

Well, there is one way in which I actively support them. I am writing these words and trying to convince as many people as I can that they should come home, that the Bush administration should publicly apologize to them and to us for their lies, and that we should begin to work for peace. I support that. I support the hell out of it.

SCHOOL: I'm ready to teach Intelligent Design

The New York Times has an article today about the true nature of how the world was created. It is must-read stuff for all true believers. Go now, read, bow down, and then write to every public official you can think of to get this into the schools. The Flying Spaghetti Monster commands it.