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massive blog
middle east blogs
sharp minds and useful idiots |
Well Done, Iraqis
Big up to the Iraqi people
I'm tempted wax Jeffersonian about the prices of freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of processed food, but it's a different thing emerging, nay, being born, in Babylon. They'll have a Jefferson of their own some day. He might be teenager right now, in Basra, thinking about what's going down.
What indeed?
Exit polls suggest the Iraqi voter turnout will top 70% nationwide, which beats the hell out of American election turnouts, and we don't even have to duck snipers and grenade throwers on the way to the polling stations to pick between giant douches and turd sandwiches. Asshole insurgents threatened anyone who voted with separation of head from body or a shrapnel salad to the torso. Any violence towards the ends of tyranny is abhorrent, but the number and lethality of attacks on Iraqi polling stations was surprising low. It seems between two and three dozen people lost their lives in the voting process, and for sure more will be tracked down, via the indelible ink stain on their hand which signifies one having voted, and killed. But Iraqis are willing to die for this freedom thing, who can deny that now? Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Asshole-in-Chief of the nihilistic wing of the insurgency (as opposed to the greed-gluttony Baathist wing), is no doubt bummed that his threats and proclamations of democracy being the spawn of Satan and America and Zion as an affront to his 11th century woman-hating vision of a deity was not taken to heart by most Iraqis.
Zarqawi deserves a cactus catheter and then a good roasting on the stake. All people are not equal before a just law, and folks who willingly spurn all tenets of human decency deserve no decency towards them. I feel the same way towards serial killers and baby-rapers: slow execution via mind-twisting tortures. It's not about equality before the law, and it's not about revenge, but for some folks, prison or even a hanging is too good. Zarqawi is such a person. I'll be saddened if he escapes his carbon-based shell with just a bullet to the head. He deserves so much more. Really. Sorry if that bothers you, but he is filled with an ism that can't be diluted, and thus it needs to be burned away, exorcised.
The Civil War is essentially here, and the question is and will be to what degree. Sunnis in many restive areas around Baghdad stayed away from the polls. Some stayed away because they fear being murdered-- and I have to condone that even if I don't respect it-- and other Sunnis stayed away because they do not want to share power, and thus they want the insurgency to bring back the good ol times of Baathist rule, not necessarily because they back Zarqawi's vision. I think that Shia and Kurd factions will be somewhat gracious in how they wield power, and therefore will reserve some room at the governing table for Sunni chieftains when they are ready to put down their guns and work towards true pluralism. But enough of that.
The so-called silent majority in Iraq speaks nicely when given the chance. Messages both real and implied have been sent not only across Iraq but across the Middle East as well. That so many people believe in the democratic process, even in the absence of security speaks a lot towards the power of faith. Iraqis voted in large numbers simply on the premise that things will get better, and the cool implication of that is the feeling that ordinary Iraqis are ready, at last, to take things into their own hands. While newly elected government officials are hammering out a constitution, don't be surprised that insurgents have fewer places to hide, and that it's the Iraqis themselves and not US troops meting out justice to the nihilistic crews.
The United States needs to start negotiating with the incoming government about troop withdrawals. Nothing crazy, but but five-to-ten thousand troops a month beginning early this spring should head back to the states...not Iran. Naturally, we'll keep advisors and trainers there indefinitely, as there will be special ops around that neighborhood for a long long time, but apparently the Iraqis get it...thank God. What a joy it would be to see, in my lifetime, a free, prosperous and stable Middle East, beginning with that country, drawn together by a whim of British colonialism, torn asunder by wars and tyranny of many stripes, pounded to mush by laser-guided bombs, and somehow reborn into a place where hope thrives. I guess that's why, at the end of the day, I always retain some faith in the true nature of humanity.
Sidebar
PBS's kiddie programming is kinda strange. I caught about eight minutes of the Teletubbies this morning, and man, them's some freak visuals. People in fuzzy suits talking the goo-goo-goo and being watched from up high by a satanic-looking baby-sun-god. Does this make little kids feel more secure...have focus groups been tested, and if so, what are the metrics here? Whoever created the Teletubbies and certainly whoever wrote / directed the piece I saw does a lot of drugs, acid and X mainly, from what the snowflake-star-energy spitting windmill told me while powering up the tele in my tummy. Very very strange show. Of course the three-to-six year old demographic is pretty out-there too. Anyway, I hope that little Iraqi kids will be able to connect with that kind of show because I think that would portend good things.
- k
Hate it or love it
My friend Matty pointed me to a hilarious list containing the 50 Most Loathsome people of 2k4. Check it out. The list explains the loathsome behavior that warranted said person's inclusion on the list and goes on to suggest how the rat bastards in question ought to be punished. I could spew for a few thousand words on almost every selection, but for some reason, 50 Cent, coming in at number 47, got me to thinking. Buffalo Beast justified it as thus:
Crimes: Sole credential for being a rapper, aside from his affiliation with Dr. Dre, is having been shot several times. Spent his first record company advance on crack to sell. Can barely talk, let alone rap. Represents the worst aspect of urban culture, its tendency to collapse in on itself in an orgy of mobsterism and self-destructive spending. Obnoxious tendency to pull out large wads of cash and wave them around in people’s faces (not a figure of speech).
Punishment: Gets ass kicked by Will Smith
Memo to Will Smith: Fiddy Cent ain't Carlton, or Uncle Phil for that matter. Anyway, The reason this was on my mind at all is because Dr. Dre and Eminem's newest protege, The Game, dropped his so-so debut a few days ago, and 50 Cent drops his best verse ever on a track with the same title as this blog entry. No use reciting that verse in print, because it reads like a teenage gangbanger's daydreams. 50 Cent ain't much of a writer, his thing is the delivery, which I have to admit is just about the best out there in the commercial hardcore rap scene. Goes to show that talent and intellect don't always go hand in hand, or for that matter, intellect and hustle-skills. Like 50 Cent, The Game (real name Jayceon Taylor) has been shot several times. According to various boasts and press clippings, he's bringing the real back into hip-hop cause niggaz ain't been sayin nothin, and I assume by extension he means that white boys, Chicano's, and Greeks and whatnot have nothing to say either, or as well, you know what I mean:
A lot of rap today is bubblegum bullshit that says nothing and means nothing to anybody living in the ‘hood,” says the 24-year-old with a tattoo of NWA’s Eazy-E on his right forearm. “I’m not knocking anybody’s hustle but I can’t feel what’s in hip-hop today. Everybody’s rapping but they’re not saying anything. NWA, Biggie, 2Pac, Snoop and Jay-Z all had something to say then Biggie, Pac and Eazy died and it was devastating. We almost let rap die until the Great White Hype (Eminem) saved hip-hop and 50 dropped the gangsta wake-up call. I feel like it’s my turn now and I can fill the shoes.
It's part of a typical marketing ploy, when a new and heavily backed rapper announces to the world that his rhymes are the dopest most original verses since Paid in Full was wrapped. Mainly The Game name-checks half the people in NYC and LA County, as well as all the major gang-crews across our funky plains...even Chicago's Vice Lords get a shout out...is that pining for unity or what? No more of the EastSide v. WestSide nonsense, it's all about the universal hustle. The Game's voice is like a meld between Kurupt and NAS, but without the flow or vocab. I love this genre...no wonder rap works so well with the NBA.
I've listened to The Game's The Documentary, okay about three-quarters of it, via my Real Rhapsody connect. note: for $10 a month, you can sign up with Real Rhapsody and have access to more music than you can possibly fathom. Granted some stuff like the entire Warp label catalog...and the Beatles...and Zeppelin, are unavailable for on-demand listening, still it's the best deal out there. Unless you own like 60,000 cd's, you can't even sniff this kind of variety...your dog couldn't sniff this kind of variety, and dogs got sniffing down like Magic and the no-look. The Game does not have rhymes down to that degree. He is a so-so rapper, better than Vanilla Ice, no where near Jay-Z or Tupac, but the beats are just sick. Dre, Timbiland, Scott Storch, and Em all contribute fine work, so that even before The Game utters a word we're looking at a decent album. My mom could rap over those beats and people would buy the record, and my mom can't rap at all. The Game can rap better than my mom, but he's got a ways to go before anyone confuses him with the cats he throws props to.
That's where 50 Cent comes in. Fiddy is a gold mine in rap these days, which is why you can hear him on three songs on The Documentary. The ghetto kids feel what Fiddy's doing and thus appreciate the hustle, but primarily hear his stuff off mix tapes, cause there aren't too many people in the ghetto with an extra 20 bucks for a CD. But the suburban kids got that 20, and they wanna be just like Fiddy Cent, or at least know all his manners. College what? Professional who? Professor Rock, beeotch! For as long as I can remember, sons and daughters of the professional class wanna be gangsters, but they have some serious handicaps that keep them from pulling it off correctly. Chief among them being a healthy fear of death and lack of nihilism. If you grow up in places like Compton or Brooklyn's Marcy Projects, you're prolly willing to take certain chances, cause life is bleak as a bleach sundae, and going with the flow means you get flushed away.
So I disagree with Buffalo Beast's loathsome assessment of 50 Cent for a couple reasons. Foremost is that Fiddy has talent-- again, his flow is nice even if his words and subject matter are simple like buttered toast. But I like buttered toast. Also, Fiddy's going to act ghetto because he is ghetto, ghetto to the core. He spent his Columbia Records advance on crack because the advance in his pocket was 5k and Fiddy was goin to have to make it last a year...tough to do in NYC. Fiddy flashes wads of money in front of people because, well, it's the freakin' ghetto. What, you expect hustlers and junkies to exalt themselves by quoting Eliot? It's the ghetto...the American Dream turned upside down and shaken apart. You either flash money of shoot someone to make your point. Duh.
Fiddy never knew his dad. His mom, a drug dealer, was murdered when he was eight. That's a couple huge strikes against good human development, and Fiddy's story is not all that unusual considering the terrain. On top of that, naturally, 50 Cent's not-ghetto model for inspiration and or aspiration was the New York City public school system. You checked out how big-city schools are run these days? 32 kids for every numb teacher doesn't produce much business for anyone aside from parole officers and or coke-connects...and despite Bush's promises to the contrary, inner-city schools will not be a shining example of our system as long as the sun rises in the east. Fiddy said it best: I wanna live nice so shit I'll sell dope. It's not like the dude's going to score a 1600 on the SAT and snag a chair at MIT...and some folks would rather risk prison and or death than sweep a floor. Makes for a dynamic society, no? Whether it be Detroit, Flint, Chicago, NYC, or wherever drug-soaked victim-centric clusters of cats reside, 50 Cent's story plays over and over again everywhere, and as long as messed up people keep making messed up choices and as long as the rest of society has no desire to interfere...well, nihilism with a crackrock and a bullet is what you get. Like Ice Cube once said, life ain't nuthin but bitches and money. Yep...gonna be a lot of differential equations churning forth from that mindset.
ungh
- k
p.s. listen to Aceyalone's Book of Human Language
New England Patriots = football's version of The Borg
The Patriots dumped the Steelers, no doubt, but it wasn't the lopsided punking people are making it out to be in print and across the airwaves. If Ben Roethlisberger doesn't throw 3 interceptions, the game is deadlocked to the end. Granted, New England would have found a way to win because that's their way, but it wasn't an annihilation by any means. A couple plays here and there....
Who am I kidding? Pittsburgh was overmatched where it counts, execution and coaching, and that's that. I'm already telling myself that Philly will play better (I like McNabb more than Brady, but they're both credits to the game), and that maybe the Iggels will find a way. Maybe they can hire some shady folks to abduct Bill Belichick and keep him taped up and tied to a lightpole behind some dodgy Motel 6 until the Super Bowl is over. Or maybe Belichick and his staff all decide they want to smoke weed with Ricky Williams in the South Pacific, RIGHT NOW, and jump ship. I feel bad for Eagles fans, because they are telling themselves the same thing: baring something absolutely unforseen and crazy, they'll have to be satisfied with the NFC championship.
It's been said that in today's free agent / salary cap NFL, a great coach is worth four-to-six wins over a mediocre coach. As a Lions fan, I haven't seen this notion play out up close, but I'll buy into it. I'm also not dissing Andy Reid, he's the right guy for Philly, and that team is very solid, and will continue to be for several more years...especially if McNabb and T.O. continue on their present trajectory. But even if Andy Reid is the second best coach in the league, he's a ways behind Belichick, who obviously thinks like a chess master and has a sense of symmetry I haven't seen since Bill Walsh's 49ers of the eighties. All other things being equal, if you're smarter than your opponent, you'll win.
The parts of Belichick's game that everyone talks about-- the three phases of the team knowing what the other's strengths, weaknesses, and goals are, everyone buying into the program 100%, every single one of the rosters' 53 men participating on the field during games-- that's the easy stuff. A lot of high school coaches get that. Hell, every one of Pittsburgh's players would run through a brick wall for Bill Cowher, and they all believe in his football philosophy, and they should. Along the past five years, Pittsburgh's prolly been the second best team in the AFC. Great coaches not only get their teams to play like a single-minded collective, but they also devise effective schemes that no one else would think up. Effective is the key word here, because as the Rams Mike Martz shows regularly, creativity for creativity's sake doesn't do that much in the long term.
Everyone knows that a keystone of Belichick's game-planning is taking away the chief strength of the other team. For the Colts, it was messing up Peyton Manning-- physically, shutting down his passing lanes, and sticking to his receivers. With Pittsburgh, it was shutting down the running game and making a rookie quarterback win the game. Again, just about every coach in the NFL would have come up with the same goals. Of course you want to shut down Peyton Manning if your playing the Colts, and stuffing Pittburgh's running game in frigid weather during a title game is so out-front obvious, that any coach who game-planned to drop seven in coverage and let Pittsburgh run would be arrested from his crack problem. Belichick's goals are obvious, but he delivers a scheme that his players can execute. Other coaches do not. The level of detailed knowledge needed to pull that kind of thing off, time and time again, is mind-blowing.
What almost makes it unfair if that New England's core players have been playing in this system for three to five years. Brady, Brushi, Vrabal, Dillon, Givens, Branch, etc. aren't going anywhere soon. And yes, let the Brady / Montana talk begin for real. The rest of the league has to find a way to catch up, but that would mean the Patriot players and their coaching staff backsliding, and neither component, it's safe to say, will let the other dissapoint...it's been etched into the system, ala a perfectly trained special forces squad. Like Bill Walsh, Belichick is the total package, crazy-smart, effective, team unity, all that. I respect that, yet I still hope Philly wins in Jacksonville, but suffice to say the New England's front seven is going to be all up in Donovan McNabb's business. It'll be interesting to see how he handles it.
- k
Bush's Inauguration speech looked nice on paper. Promoting freedom even into the darkest corners of the world is a just and noble goal, and in the end, our national security depends on it. In practice, though, we have some room for quibbling.
Okay, a lot of room for quibbling.
If I was old enough in 1973 to soak in Nixon's second inauguration, I imagine that I'd be feeling a good dollop of deja vu now. The circumstances bridging the two moments are eerily similar: Overseas war in a formally despotic land against robust insurgencies; tons and tons of civilian casualties; economic frailty brought on in part by energy instability; an uber secretive Administration; feared and scorned by other democracies across the globe; a deepening us versus them mentality; and a chief executive who lives in a very insular world, who dismisses all criticism outside his small advisory circle, who are by any stretch, an echo-chamber for the President's own beliefs.
I could go on.
Nixon, of course, was taken down because his incompetent thugs and lackeys couldn't pull off a clean burglary, and I suspect that Bush's folks have learned from that and made sure to pay for top talent, so embarrassing gaffes like Watergate don't gain traction. Of course, with today's congress, something like Watergate would be seen as a paranoid witch hunt driven by bitter liberals and thus couldn't make it out of a sub-committee-- controlled by heads of the Grand Ol Party, don't ya know. Indeed, the 2k4 national elections have just about made Dubbya scandal-proof, and with the way this administration views the relationship between ends and means....
In a moving display of courage, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, very ill with cancer, swore in Bush when many figured he just couldn't do it, physically. This speaks to a power that Bush has that Nixon never did...the ability of a true believer to stir a conservative soul. Chief Justice Rehnquist is pretty far to the right, and he hates judicial activism, unless it pertains to abortion and the death penalty, and the Chief Judge also happens to love, deeply, George W. and where he's taking our country. Think about it, if you're hurting with a potentially fatal bout of thyroid cancer...bedbound for the past few months, and damn well feeling more than your age of 80, stepping out into 10 degree weather in front of the entire planet to swear in some executive to high office doesn't happen unless your heart is really into it. Nixon never had that kind of love and loyalty. People feared him, some respected him, many detested him. Dubbya is loved or hated by all. His following feel more strongly about him than Clinton's following, and those who despise Dubbya do so with more venom than anything conjured by the right during Lewinsky-gate. That's a powerful dichotomy, and Dubbya calls himself a uniter?
Ha.
Moral license is important when trying to remake the world in your image, even Hitler understood that. Wilson understood that, as did Napoleon and Alexander. I'm not sure if Dubbya understands. I'm not at all sure he knows that the debacle in Iraq, and it's scandals, combined with domestic business scandals, and massive tax cuts, and wholesale shunning of the world order adds up something less than the virtuous spread of freedom and democracy. What other country, you may ask, is up to the challenge? Not a one, of course. We are it, the democratic hyperpower for good or ill, and at our worse a million times better than the Taliban and three times as nice as whatever Putin has up his sleeve. But we act like assholes too often...following the steps of our leader who read every word of that speech with every tendril of its ironic base escaping him.
Nixon knew exactly what he was doing, every step of the way. That's why folks called him Tricky Dick. He was a scheming snake-oil salesman who used policy to build his own power and try to repair is fragile sense of worth. These are issues that Dubbya does not wrestle with, for he is absolutely sure of himself and the righteousness of his cause. He believes that God has placed him at this point in history to drive the American agenda out and over the rest of the world, and that by doing so the world will be a better place, even if it doesn't know it yet. Finally, Dubbya believes that any means employed to get to his desired ends are okay, since, you know, it has been ordained.
And I'm just gonna let that last bit sit there....
- k
I no longer have the words to describe my contempt, nay, utter hatred towards MicroSoft. Where does one even begin, regarding retribution? It goess beyond material damage. The human race has been poisoned by these bastards, who rain bad product on us all like DDT on foliage. There are some MicroStank executives who deserve to be sodomized by long rusted sections of rebar pulled from the perimeter of San Quentin, or whatever junkyard is nearest to Redmond, WA. While Microsoft's chieftains grow to Trump-like proportions by shilling faulty product, good and gullible folk throw their precious time into the void dealing with their crap...and don't kid yourself, it's crap. This time I'm speaking of their browser..Internet Excrement 6.
IE 6 is an unsafe chunk of code spawned by poor thinking, and I imagine, no accountability. Using IE 6 to surf the web is like rolling into a Bangkok whorehouse with a fistfull of busted condoms. If this is what our deregulated future looks like, we might as well stick a fork in our backs every morning before we dress for work...just to get used to our futures as a species. But I digress, er, rant.
I've been building, by way of slicing, a new image map for banner / navigation purposes. Nothing obscenely difficult...some javascript, some CSS, a lot of slicing. Adobe's ImageReady is decent with this kind of thing, to the point that I only had to hand-code half the scripts. But hell, that beats what Macromedia's apps do, which is toss in a couple hundred lines of code that just aren't needed, so of course everything has to be done cross platform unless I wanted to do the slices and image maps manually, which would be cool in an old-timey way, but I'm so close to trashing my place as it is, I can't go there.
Anyway, I'm testing as I go, almost slice by slice, cause I know how this stuff works. Finally, at the end, after having tested everything at least once across several browsers, I'm ready to upload:
Firefox = glorious...exactly the way I want it
MicroBitch's IE 6 = nothing, a void, must be work I only did in my head.
I tried tweaking, I tried porting the script to a remote .js page, and calling it to the html pages to which I was adding the rollovers, and...you get the point. After some noodling and whitling, everything works, and I've learned some important lessons...two of which will stick to me for some time.
1.) MicroSoft sucks Satan's.....
2.) Today's browsers are not quite ready for nested layers...a bummer because CSS looks so good on paper, but most browsers, i.e. IE, don't work so well with thickly layered dynamic stuff. Now I know why people throw their hands up and build Flash sites that can't be indexed...there's always TV to get the word out, or your church newletter...the kiosk outside the methadone clinic...
Now kiddies, I shall pour myself a glass of good bourbon and read some Martin Amis.
- k
"Strong, long lasting, that's what it's all about"
As the Falcons were stomping the Rams out of this NFL's post-season yesterday, I kept thinking one thing: The Lions beat these guys...the Lions beat these guys this year. The Lions beat Atlanta, in Atlanta, without Kevin Jones or Roy Williams, who were both nursing gimp ankles. The Detroit-WTF-Lions went down to Georgia last October and held Mike Vick to 29 yards rushing and beat them...beat the no.2 seed. Sometimes the playoffs are tough for a Lions fan, because our wounds not only never heal, new ones are torn into us at regular intervals, sometimes daily. What can you say about an organization that lets Matt Millen stay on as honcho? I mean, 16 wins over four seasons would put a high school coach on the dole...collecting that government cheese, wondering why that speedy transfer from Flint Northern never worked out, and why the alumni never understood.
Just as well, screw the Rams. Mike Martz deserves loss and embarrassment until he leaves the game. Anyone that deep into the coaching profession who can't manage a clock or team discipline reaps what he sows, in a dome no less. The Falcons looked like vintage early-50s Cleveland, running over and through the overmatched Rams in a way that somehow obscured the fact that the Falcons were a dome team. The Rams of course are a dome team, and they looked as surprised as anyone that their adversary opted to play a power game with Vick, Dunn, Duckett running straight into and through the Rams' collective grills. It also surprised me that a head coach named Mora won a playoff game....guess some cursed don't pass from father to son, and that's cool, glad to see it. I just can't shake loose the notion that the Lions, on paper, were good enough in the woeful NFL to be a 2 seed this year. Guess that's why the flophouses and sticky-floored pole-dancin places are full of potential.
The Lions aside, there are some NFL teams I like, some I couldn't care less about, and some I don't like. It usually has to do more with personnel than city or tradition, just because as a true American, I don't believe in permanence or tradition...strip and burn baybee, and get good quick or your ass'll be selling church insurance in Helena.
I've always disliked, in almost the strongest possible terms, the Dallas Cowboys. I've never liked their coaches or their owners, nor a good portion of their players...Emmitt and Irvin aside. The fact that they still suck after two years under Parcells brings me almost as much joy as a Lions victory when it counts-- or I imagine such...since the Lions secure a meaningful victory once every 50 years or so. Kind of like the Arizona Cardinals, who I also don't like, because they suck, year after year, and they suck in a nice climate, which strikes me as wrong.
Conversely, I like the Jets and I like the Steelers. Herm Edwards and Bill Cowher are both tributes to the coaching profession, and both teams try their best to beat the snot of their opponents, and excepting a certain Jets lineman who refuses to play hurt, not a character-wuss in the bunch. Yesterday's game was a nice thing to watch. The teams smacked the holy hell out of each other, and Pittsburgh won despite Ben Roethlisberger playing like a jumpy rookie-- over and underthrowing, and tossing a brutal 3rd quarter interception that looked to be a death knell for the Steelers. The game was too goofy I guess for things like critical interceptions and a 4th quarter fumble by Jerome Bettis to decide the outcome. It came down to the kickers. Doug Brien of the Jets missed two kicks of 47 and 43 years, and the Steelers' man Jeff Reed made his. The Steelers escaped by the shorthairs. The Jets should be real good next year, and they they'll definitely be saying goodbye to John Abraham...let him be a me-first clone in Arizona where the weather's great this time of year and the trophy case is bare, just like it is in Detroi---oh for crying out loud.
Donovan McNabb apparently has something to prove. Aside from exactly two dumb throws, neither with serious consequence, McNabb's been quick and accurate, and his receiving core are doing pretty good without T.O. Todd Pinkston is catching the ball, Brian Westbrook is running and catching, and the Philly o-line is dominating, it's not even close...like they're swatting away some Div III team back 5 years after every snap. That's good to see, because I like the Eagles, but I don't like the Vikings, and with about 18.5 minutes of football left and the Eagles up 21-7, hopefully I can look forward to Philly plucking and roasting the Falcons, ending their own little mini-curse of unfortunate NFC championship games, and by extension putting Atlanta and thus Detroit out of my head, so the what-if monsters can rest for a bit.
(another Joe Buck Budwieser commercial....slam-a-lamma-ding-dong, why did I ever say Randy Moss was wrong, and now there's this festering sore growing on my...guess karma was right all along.... Yes folks, Joe Buck, moral guide for the common folk...do your dirty things in the dark, and if you're gonna talk about sex and violence for God's sake let them football games and Levitra commercials do the talking. Leave it to the professionals)
Of course, Joe Buck is a damn good announcer, no getting around it, which is why I rag on him for the Moss hypocrisy, and in their own way, Chris Collinsworth and Troy Aikman seem to razzing Buck a bit in the booth, but just a little, barely perceptable, but those three are for the most part a good booth...they don't talk too much, usually, which is a highlighted rarity in a three-person booth in the NFL.
I don't think Mike Tice holds on to his job after this game, because Minnesota has far too much talent to be a ~.500 team. These guys try, I'm not calling them lazy, but they're not disciplined, they don't get their heads cracked enough by the coaches, and the best coaches don't let things like excessive penalties, and botched trick plays (Moss walked off the field and stayed off during a fake field goal where he was supposed to catch a TD lob from Gus [another Lions project] Ferrotte. That's on the coaching staff as much as Moss. Speaking of whom, does anyone think that Moss could get away with his antics with Lombardi, Shula, Jimmy Johnson, or Belichick? Randy Moss would have been duck-taped to a Gillette Stadium goal-post by coaches and teammates if he walked off the field during a game...hell Belichick might have paid some pyro freak to set Moss's afro on fire...videotape the whole thing, don't try to hide what you are. Anyway, Dante Culpepper is one hell of a QB and he deserves a legitimate shot at an NFL title, but he won't get it having to depend on Mike Tice and Randy Moss. (see Joe Buck could have put Moss's moon in that light...that you can't expect to go all the way with him, because he's not held together properly. But it's not disgusting.)
Early in the 4th and the Eagles get stronger, and the Vikings are fading, as the last paragraph should've alluded to. Randy Moss's ankle is getting stiff, and Culpepper's face has taken on the same grimace as that midget guy seeing Bad Santa peeing himself in front of a line of kids...it's a painful grimace to watch. But like I said, the Vikings are lucky to be this deep into the playoffs. I don't think very many sober people bet on the Vikings anyway, unless they were getting 14 points from their bookie.
Moss's ankle must be killing him, dropping passes he shouldn't be dropping, but refusing to come out of the game...then making a nice 4th catch for 1st down yardage, even though it's over and done with. It's never cut and dry.
Falcons and Eagles next week. Birds that play together, prey together.
Some Six Hours Later
Bill Simmons will be talking some poo this week. His Patriots were absolute beasts on the frozen field inside Gillette Stadium, and the Indianapolis Colts were, well, were fit for the glue factory. I don't know how New England does it, really, I don't. They have three defensive starters injured and out, and they stuffed one of the best offenses, as Tom Brady said, in NFL history. Bill Cowher and the Steelers must be letting loose with a collective oh shit. It's not the Steelers are easily intimidated, and besides they're currently 16 and 1 for the season. Next Sunday will be TV and pizza, and beer, and concentration...turn the phone off, crank the surround system, and soak in the orchestrated violence. That's going to be one hell of a game.
I watched three-fourths of the Colts / Patriots game at Mom's place while helping her rearrange furniture throughout her house since her fiancee was buying a new bedroom set and God knew what else-- Frank likes to shop, and when he gets on a roll, you never know what he's going to show up with...vanity mirrors on sale, strange vases, manual sun-roofs by the half-dozen...retirees have the strangest habits. And that's okay, I get weirder with every passing day. That's what aging does, makes you crazy. Thing is, I didn't have to watch the entire game to get a feel for what was going down. New England's defense, especially linebackers Teddy Bruschi and Mike Vrabel, were smacking the holy beejesus out of every Colts player who came within five yards of the football. People become gun shy after being shot at a few times, and the Colts must hope, at some level, that they never have to play New England again.
- k
The Coming Civil War In Iraq
Not that long ago, a sectarian war in Iraq was considered a brutal, near hopeless, outcome...not to be uttered in the ear-space of Sir George Dubbya the Junior. During the run-up to the war, Bush and his boys dismissed the possibility of civil war. Who wouldn't want to live in a Democracy, pard? For starters, a minority with a monopoly on power may not like the idea of sharing that power. People are funny that way. Well, such concerns, along the notions that there may not be WMD's, and the notion that our troops may be greeted with more RPG's than flowers and candy, were all dismissed. Old hat...let the river carve it's path as necessary.
Now it's time for us to get the hell out of Iraq and let the Iraqis settle their business. Sunni extremists of several stripes, not the least Baathists and radical Islamists, want to run the country their way, which is to say, totalitarian, no questions asked...lots of head-chopping, and for sure, no friggin' infidels staining their paradise. Who are we to quibble with that? There's about 85-90 percent of Iraq's population who think the extremists are full of crap, and many are willing to stand behind that sentiment with guns in hand.
In southern Iraq, where reconstruction moves forth at a respectable pace, Shia militias are salivating to take out the Sunni extremists. Whenever you read about about car-bombs going off next to Shia Mosques and whatnot, believe that some folks want revenge. Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani has been the main force keeping the Shia militias from stomping their tormenters. As a quick aside, can you imagine how hard it must be for the Shia to hold back from meting out rough justice at this point? Saddam was Sunni, as were his closest cronies, and he treated the Shia like garbage (and the Kurds too) for 30 years.
When I was staying in Bahrain several years back, I made a point to ask locals about Islamic issues, and the differences between the two major sects of Islamic faith. The short and dumb way to look at it would be to say that in matters of clergy and fellowship, Sunni's believe that merit alone allows one to become an Imam or leader of the faith. The Shia, by contrast, believe that the Prophet Mohammed's bloodline is divine and that his relatives / offspring have rights to the power centers of Islam. The Shia will sanctify their most respected Ayatollahs, and to the Sunnis, that's idolatry. Mecca is the spiritual touchstone and ground zero for all Muslims, but in private conversation, it's a Sunni place. Or, as a cab driver in Manama once told me of the Shia, they're not real Muslims...don't even know how to pray. It's like the Catholics and the Prodestants...but different, always different, since every situation is special. Ask anyone in Najaf if ye have the balls.
As it always happens, a small sect of freaks will make it hard road for everyone. In Iraq, a lot of blood will be shed over the next few years, and I may have to eat my words and deeds regarding Baghdad being a great place to visit in ~5 years, well ~4 now. I'll still go, but if I need body armor, I'll take it. Thing is, you don't want to look too combative, it's a cat and mouse thing. People thick with camo and guns and armored Hummers are targets moreso than regular folks who may or may be with the good guys. I hate being wrong, and I've been wrong about a few things regarding this war. However, I still believe in the decent outcome if for no other reason that the vast majority of Iraqis want the decent outcome. That's enough for me. Still.
Start withdrawing of our troops within 90 days of this election's certification. The good outcome will be up to the Iraqis themselves. It's going to be another leg in a tough slog-- purges, death squads, more tens-of-thousands of dead people that few if any will remember, and of course it's not fair. We share a lot blame for this, and it bothers me that Bush sleeps well at night, and that his boys didn't see ANY of this coming...I'll never stop harping on that because it's that big of a gaffe. But hell, at least our taxes are low, right? I mean that must make up for bad planning and cutting corners.
Sadly, there's no more we can do about it...out of our hands. Sorry folks, we need to get out, starting this Spring. This insurgency has grown beyond a few bands of Baathists and assorted dead-enders as St. Rummy liked to call them, into a hot-leaded bitches brew of angry Sunnis who not only hate the fact they're giving up power, but also the fact that almost two years since the fall of Saddam, everything between Najaf and Mosul is still wrecked. Bush's company men live well in the Green Zone, and they are targets, and like our leader, they should have trouble sleeping well. Fat pocketbooks and power should derive from accountability and wisdom...that was part of the American ideal we meant to project on the Middle East as we set to remake it in our image. But our honchos aren't stepping to that plate anymore, and every day more and more Iraqis conclude that we were never serious about doing the right thing in the first place...probably not the best way to spread democracy.
- k
10jan05
Why are some people such prissy-ass ho's? I'm thinking in particular to the football media's reaction to Randy Moss' faux mooning of the Lambeau crowd after finishing a 40 yard td catch to effectively sink the Packers for the year.
Moss is a football player, not a pre-school teacher, not a headmaster, not a damned priest. He was an ass for walking off the field eight days ago against Washington with 2 seconds on the clock, but that is between the Moss and his team. It was a dick move, but it looks like Minnesota's holding up okay, judging by yesterday's teabagging of the Pack. But to freak out over that fake mooning to a Lambaeu crowd famous for abusing visiting players after games? During a football game? How exactly is that scandalous? Joe Buck was breathless from building his high soapbox in 2.2 seconds, between Moss' greeting to the crowd and...
"That's just disgusting ....completely disgusting?" Mr. Buck-nut said to all of America.
No, you blow-dried simpleton, it's a touch of bad taste at the end of a stunning play towards the end of one of many violent contests in the epoch of our favorite blood sport. Disgusting is torturing Iraqi civilians. Disgusting is how John Kerry ran his campaign. Disgusting is anyone who used the South Asian tsunami disaster for political gain.
For a snotty pampered jackass like Joe Buck (who does those Leon commercials for Budwieser to fatten his bankroll, and Leon is BASED on the Randy Moss mold) to feign indignation is such the joke. Someone needs to backhand him. That piece of poo makes money off the Randy Moss stereotype. Buck must have to drink a lot of scotch or eat much Ambien to sleep well. I wonder what's in his closet?
Chris Berman, Ditka, and all the others were about the same. Oh, such a travesty, such a terrible thing, Moss is such a terrible person, maybe he's even related to satan...feel the fire baby. I'll say it again. Media sucks ass, and sports media stands first in the salad-tossing line. I no longer blame athletes when they diss reporters, because often that reporter deserves to be dissed. Corporate bitches. By the way, big up to the likes of Mike Golic and Tony Dungy for stating the obvious: it was Randy Moss being Randy Moss, no one got hurt...let's talk football.
Randy Moss is a moody superstar, nothing more, nothing less. He gives his touchdown balls to crippled kids and he tells the media he plays when he feels like playing. Maybe he's got a chip on his shoulder, and maybe he's taking advantage of the game. But c'mon, Professional Football the blood-gut essence of physio-social Darwinism. If righteous assholes like Buck and Berman are offended, perhaps they should investigate a friendly youth league somewhere. I hear they pay well.
- k
9jan05
What 'Good Ol Days'? My grandparents and great uncles made the old days sound rough as hell. They came up during the Depression, and then for the most part, everyone came of age and either went to Europe or the Far East to kill Our Enemies. This is why prohibition came to an end. During the 1920s, when the boom was flush and folks were fat without effort, a lame idea like banning booze seemed reasonable: too much sloth, too much greed, too many bad un godlike things tearing our society down. I'm sure those frumpy temperance people meant well...the 20s were called Roaring for a reason, and if you have ~30 million angry preachers and wives pissed because the menfolk are spending their coin at the Cotton Club, catching Satchmo and an occasional hummer from a staff hooker, well, it rankles the rightous...and THOSE people always walk among us. The no-booze thing was even a Constitutional Amendment, a feat given the divisive nature of our government.
But still. Not everyone was born with the temperament and or brain chemical-balance needed to suffer all the idiots that are forever cramping our style and burning a black hole through our hearts, that is, without the aid of good drink. It's not even the fault of the idiots. Those who I despise prolly have friends and vice versa, it's just that there are so many of us refined apes that there will be conflict, everywhere. Go to a soccer match in the UK or a football game in Oakland, and banning booze might seem like a good idea, and Lord knows that a lot abuse issues are tied to consumption, but the alternative, as we found out in the early 20th century is worse: no drop in consumption, and a serious uptick in organized crime, which by definition, does little to move society forward, no matter how sympathetic one is to the plight of Italian-Americans.
Prohibition lasted almost 14 years in the States (1919 - 1933). We were a couple years deep into the Depression when FDR and lawmakers everywhere decided that maybe folks should be able to drown their sorrows without going either to hell or to jail. Even a good share of the religious authorities come out on the side of chemical relaxation. Life is tough at least half the time, and during the 1930s, when the average American had to scrounge for most of what they ate and used for heating fuel, the notion of risking imprisonment for a shot of corn alcohol was enough to maybe take them rowdy socialists seriously for a minute. At least in a society where God is banned, booze will be easy to come by. The Soviets taught us this.
But the religion thing plays huge in this country and that's a long way from changing. Opiate for the masses, truth wearing the silk robe, cast ye down to the burning fires, whatever. Because of the supposed separation of church and state, folks in this country are more serious about their monotheism than any first-world country not named Israel, and even they do it a bit different ...religious and all, but aside from the ultra Orthodox, not all that pious. There is a difference...not to mention that the Jews would never ever think about banning booze. Try dealing with a long intifada or memories of the Holocaust without a proper liquid salve. Exactly.
Comes down to balance my friends, it always does. The day-to-day is cake today compared to the 1930s and 40s, even though, ironically enough, nature really doesn't care how hard we try, and definitely does not care what out intentions are. Oliver Wendall Holmes was one of the first serious men on this side of the Atlantic to dismiss the notion of the importance of a man's heart...as opposed to his actions. The ol' judge was cool with debauchery as long as no one, unsuspectingly, was hurt: Your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. So, while you could sell yourself, you couldn't sell your brother. The booze police of the 1920s and the religious wackos of today, whether it be the Pat Robertson's or Osama's, have never understood that. If I want to shoot smack twice a day and send off tawdry letters to my governor, why not? Certainly it's a waste of life, and maybe a damn shame, but that doesn't make it fit for regulation. Or, as Bill Hicks once said, what concern of yours is it what I do to me body as long I harm no one else? Evolution happens though chaos, and sometimes we need to loosen up a bit to make the chaos work in our favor if we're to have a fighting chance...big-picture speaking.
That's why God gave man the knowledge to craft mead or moonshine or harvest herb...and if Osama drank or smoked some weed now and then, we damn sure wouldn't be dealing with....oh, you know. The old folks still around damn sure know what I mean...since the uppity uber-temperance types tend to die off earlier.
Keith is right, it seems Peace requires Tension.
- k
Sloppy Blues
I've always been fascinated with dissonance in most of it's forms. The way heat and matter work together dictates that things are always falling apart, to some degree, in all environments with an ambient temp above absolute zero. That's one reason, I suspect, that glitchy music appeals to me. And by glitchy, I don't necessarily mean the accent of laptop rockers and early Def Jux jams. Glitchy music's been around for awhile, but was called other things, sometimes it was just called sloppy.
Neil Young's Ambulance Blues, his best slow tune by a mile, is so sloppy that a Stevie Vai fanatic wouldn't make it past Neil's first verse before destroying whatever format the music came from. Ambulance Blues (from On The Beach) is one of the sloppiest things on record. It's your crazy uncle smoking a blunt the size of a Louisville Slugger and breaking into the local guitar shop...his noodlings etched for posterity by a nearby secret mic that the store manager forgot to shut off before he closed shop for the night. It sounds like that...plink-plink-pluck-ploounng!!-plinky-plunky. And it's so heartachingly beautiful that it stands above and beyond rational judgment. I guess it comes to the whole truth and beauty thing. Something that really reflects the environment, is constructed with heart and knowledge, all that, doesn't have to adhere to a notion of aesthetic purity to work. The loose strings and mangled chord-changes Neil uses in Ambulance Blues (and across half the Crazy Horse catalog) fits so well with his brokenhearted crooning about friends and acquaintances stuck in a past of partying and uber selfishness that the messy playing was the only way to make it work.
Ambulance Blues prolly is not a tune for teens and 20-somethings. Neil's telling folks to grow up, and who the hell wants to hear that while they're in college? I was so deep into DC's debauchery scene when I was at Maryland, I would've backhanded any fool who tried to bless me with a song about responsibility. Yet Ambulance Blues it's a dirty song, dirty and sloppy. Conflict makes for good art.
At Maryland, it was about early Yo La and Sonic Youth. They were the dissonance masters, kicking forth this awesome form of aural post-impressionism, but they were were singing about young love, alienation, possibility with disappointment. Listen to Daydream Nation or Electro-Pura and you get the sense that there's a hell of a lot room for messing up...a lot of time for reckless experimentation. Ambulance Blues says them days are done. Of course, Neil always had the bit o sourpuss in him. At any rate, being around my family on a regular basis for the first time in years made me realize that feedback, fuzz, and other distortion schemes are not universally admired. Hell my sister, who's pretty smart, can't even stand Kid A...which makes concepts of dissonance pretty! Most of my high school chums feel the same way...pining for Maiden or Dokken. Play an old Pavement song and the reaction is likely to be Sounds like he's playing with a blown amp...man, I hope you didn't pay for that noise.
One man's noise is another's nectar.
- k
Beasties and Lions sans the beast
As part of a recent nostalgia blitz, I've been reconnecting to old music. Normally, I consider the past, in general, as a series of imperfections to be noted and examined to provide a guide as to what not to do in the future...that's the function of the past, and no one should spend much time on it. All the Faulknerian tripe about the past infecting the present and the future may be correct on paper, but it's definitely not American, and for the love of God, why would a Southerner want to obsess about the past? Really.
The Beastie Boys were one of my favorite bands from back in the day. I stopped paying attention to their work between Ill Communication and Hello Nasty, but during my teens and early 20s, they were the soundtrack to some of my best moments. Paul's Boutique was always the standard-bearer for me-- incredibly funky, juvenile, dense, and outright funny. For years on end, I could listen to Car Thief and practically break my ribs laughing...if I wasn't out in the middle of the street dancing, that's right, me and Rick James, funking up the atmosphere and posing and shakin rears. Kidding, I've never spent time with the late Rick James, and if I had, I wouldn't talk about it, since his name has certain pejorative connotations.
Recently, I've come to realize that Check Your Head might just be a better album than Paul's Boutique. It's weird, I've listened to both albums 100s of times apiece, and it was just automatic for me to give the nod to that which was touched by the Brother's Dust. Hindsight and perspective is a sumbitch, and so it is with my constantly changing list of artsy / pop favorites. Nowadays, Check Your Head is the abrasive blaxploitation funk/punk hybrid that captures the pulse of the hear and now better than damn near anything put out into the current market. Funny thing about art...ideally, the artist is not concerned with how his or her work will be studied and appreciated 10 or 1000 years down the road (though that happens a lot...such is ego), but Check Your Head fits today, the uncertainty, grit, and chaos around the corner that is your life. Paul's Boutique was a narrative happening to someone else, primarily the Beasties, while Check Your Head is universal for anyone living in a place full of guns, bums, and dodgy mass transit systems. Car Thief and Professor Booty are differences between window shopping and choking on herb smoke down in Guido's basement gambling emporium.
Revisionism is something to behold. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a footnote till the 60s, and by time I was in college, he was in the same breath as Hemingway and Yeats, the very top of modernist literature from lingua English. So it is with society-- warfare and policy of every stripe.
Wouldn't be wonderful if some form of revisionism could make the Detroit Lions into a proud franchise...with constant glory, and vanquished opponents at every turn. Alas, we'd have to be in North Korea or Cuba to pull that off, and even if we got the press to spew love and tribute to the Detroit Kittens, we couldn't actually let people watch them play, and if we did, we'd have to make spectators sign oaths that they would keep quiet about the abject incompetence that covers all things Lions like a gridiron shroud. Not a revisionist alive can take the last four years of Lions play and conclude that something good will spring from it. They might conclude that Matt Millen needs to be fired, but we know that:
2-14; 3-13; 5-11; 6-10!!! WTF? Really, WTF?
'Dark is not the opposite of light, it's the absence of light.'
Well shoot, Steve Marriuci was supposed to be that light, but what do we have, and what have we seen? Joey the C-average throwing short balls to the feet of his receivers, an offensive line that sucked beyond words for nine games, a secondary that got worse, like they were wheeling down a slope, every game after the Giants victory. This team was supposed to get stronger as the year wore on. Shit!
Mooch tells us that we're close, oh so close to respectability. Really? I've heard that before. I hear it every year, and then I look at the stat sheets, and I remember my history and the following things stand out:
The Lions have not had a stud quarterback in 50 years. They have not had a stellar secondary in 50 years. They have not had a dominant defensive line...ever. You need at least one of the aforementioned three ingredients to have a shot. Great running backs suffer when they play with average quarterbacks and porous defenses, and since history can be a good guide, it looks like poor Kevin Jones may be the latest in a line of awesome Lions RB's who is cured to play with mediocrity. I know, I know, Roy Williams will get better, Charles Rogers might stay healthy for a season...Joey Harrington might string together two awesome games in a row, but we don't know that, and history tells us the chances of things working out for the best are slight or worse.
Of course, if the Lions somehow find their mojo and go 13-3 in 2k5 and play meaningful ball next January, all of us revisionists will get out the white-out and write and prattle on to the effect that it just took these folks a few years to build the young hungry angry monster that's laying waste to the NFL. History is funny that way...a little present daylight brightens even the darkest days of yonder.
- k
When your mind is packed with the urgent and mundane, important sensory input can fall into the mental abyss without proper processing:
I was driving from New Orleans to Pensacola a couple days back, shaking off a very splendid and appropriate New Year's soiree in the Quarter and later in the Warehouse District. In the Big Easy itself, I found myself lost for a bit near the Mississippi, southwest of downtown. I was skittish about asking for directions or help of any kind. See, New Orleans is considered the premium training ground for EMT's because they can log their training hours quickly...it's a violent place, and I could look out my window and see that. Kids were lighting off strings of m-80s in the middle of the street ahead of me. Two huge black ladies were practicing a new form of sumo wrestling infused with liquor and crazy. I was lost around Martin Luther King Ave, which, as Chris Rock has said, is bad news in any city. In New Orleans it means street corners packed with dealers, two kids riding atop the same bike, and everyone jaywalking...people were just daring me to hit the gas. The housing stock made south Detroit look like Paris' Left Bank. Flint's ghetto is Brentwood next to that. So, no, I didn't ask for directions to downtown. Luckily my spidersense kicked in and everything worked out without incident.
Parked in a casino lot and headed out-- intermittent rain, fog, college kids out the yang with promises of youth and better decisions to come, after they collectively yak on their shoes at sunrise...but that's what kids do on holidays-- I still managed to find my kind of people, which is bound to happen in a place like N'awlins when you're guided by energy and vibes.
Early morning New Years day, like 4am early, I escaped the city and headed east along I-10, and later US 90. I hadn't traveled across the Gulf States since the late 80s, and there were many changes to the scenery. For one thing, Gulfport and Biloxi Miss. are just teaming with casinos, cheap ones...sorrier than anything in Vegas and half of what stands in Reno.
The casino culture in non-Vegas environments is very depressing to me, because the only people getting over are the folks who build the casinos, and the overlords of the various vice industries that all casino scenes attract. Winners and losers like to celebrate equally even if their reasons, and means of celebration, vary. Don't need a reason to party, foo, life is hard...need to salve my pain...baybee. But I was pretty blurry when I passed through Mississippi, so maybe my goggles were a shade too dark. Maybe too dark to appreciate the pair of 60-something couples staggering out from Casino Magic in Gulfport at 6:30am, dragging themselves across US 90, just begging to be my hood ornaments with their garish Hawaiian shirts as homing devices. I should expect these things. If you're old and celebrating New Years in a smelly-ass 4th rate casino in the sub-tropics when outside dawn is pink and 68 in the shade, well, you've made your bones, eh? Either that or you've never experienced a Michigan winter.
Besides, the Mississippi Coast is not a place I hold to high standards. The state has finished either 49th or 50th in nationwide education surveys for about 50 years straight...so, sticking a couple dozen casinos on pristine Gulf beaches won't disappoint anyone. It isn't called the Redneck Riveria for nothin. Human wreckage served boo-fette supreme's by ornery yet strangely complacent immigrants only stands out as noteworthy to folks like me anyway, so why even notice? But like I said, I was blurry, strangely wired, and a tad contemplative, being it was New Years Day and I was damn happy to be away from Michigan's uber crappy weather.
I spent a bit of time on the beach in Gulfport and Biloxi, kept driving, and noticed going eastward that a lot of dwellings looked a bit ragged...moreso as I crossed into Florida, which doesn't have the casino culture. I figured that times are indeed dark when the Mississippi gulf coast looks better than that of Florida.
Two minutes into Florida and I'm shaking my head, man these people have totally let their environment go to hell. Trailers were falling apart. Every other gas station was at least partially boarded up, brush everywhere...piles of crap cast aside by rednecks too lazy to find an appropriate dump. It had been almost 18 years since my last visit to the Florida panhandle and all I could think was, was, these people don't even want to keep up appearances anymore. My mind all blurry and cluttered and trying to purge the vestiges of a very trying year...but my eyes wouldn't lie to me.
Wait, my brain was recalling something. Wait, last September...part of a rough stretch for Florida. Oh yeah, Charlie, Frances, Jeanne, and Ivan.
Oh yeah, this place got slammed by a huge freaking hurricane. Ivan. Oh yeah. 2k4 was so crazy, so many absurdly big things atop one another, that I had totally forgotten, that this sweet little town in the Florida Panhandle, and many surrounding towns, got leveled by 135mph winds and 8-foot surge. Well, I didn't take any pictures of the mess. It would have been wrong. Check out these images from the locals...the ones who have the karmic right to report tragedy when possible.
My intention was to head over to Pensacola Beach and lie in the sun for 3 or 30 hours, drinking Pacifico and reading this T.C. Boyle novel I've just started. Unfortunately, half of Pensacola Beach is still closed to everyone but property owners and builders, and the half that's open looks like Beirut ...I'm showing my age...I mean Fallujah, if Fallujah had a beach...a pastel Fallujah.
That's a snapshot of my New Year's Day. Strange. We are a selfish breed. I felt guilty, of course, that I saw all this decrepitude and figured that the area had simply hit hard times, like Flint had hit hard times. For the locals, especially the non-insured, this had been ocupying their thoughts, non-stop, for months now...I'm sure of this, and just to make sure, I asked a few people. To a person, everyone said that New Years was dampened by what happened to their tow. Pensacola's rebuilding, but there is a hell of a lot to rebuild.
Finally, to paraphrase the great James Lileks, Amazon makes it easy to donate....since half of everything lining the Indian Ocean got something a thousand times worse than Ivan.
I'm pretty damn lucky. And chances are, if you're reading this, you are too.
Still need to slap together a Lions post-mortem. 6 and 10 was a damn sight worse than what I expected, but these are the Lions, so what are, exactly, expectations?
Selah.
- k