Palahniuk on Orwell

Candy bars bad for you? Now they tell us!

from Eat This Not That's "Best and Worst Halloween Candy" List:
(lest someone somewhere somehow forget that candy bars aren't full of fats and sugars)

Choice words from Philip Marlowe

Reminds me of Robert Frost's response when asked to explain one of his poems - "What?  You want me to say it worse?"

Now it makes sense ...

Clearly, this is how movie hackers crack any system in 10 keystrokes.

Thank you, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Arizona, and New Mexico

For being the only 5 states with higher poverty rates than Rick Perry's Texas and the miraculous job engine he gave us.












Mississippi - 22.7%
Louisiana - 21.6%
Georgia - 18.7%
Arizona - 18.6%
New Mexico - 18.6%
Texas - 18.4%


National Poverty Rates by State

Again - as much as I'd like Rick Perry to move on from Texas, our gain would be a loss for the entire US if he gets elected President.

pre-madonna?

So - they're acting like "pre-madonnas" ... like ... Mary before the Annunciation?

Seems like that would've been a good thing - at least as good as post-madonna.

Or maybe he and/or she mean the chefs are like American pop music before Madonna. 

I can see pros and cons there.

At least they're not acting like prima donnas. 

That wouldn't be good.  Being a prima donna is even worse than being ill literate, though it's always sad when literate people don't feel well.

(yes - I mis-spelled that on purpose.  Thanks for asking.  You know who you are.)

Just when you thought it was safe to go into the bookstore ...

riders of the twilight

In our sleep
and in our waking,
the dust and ash
still settle.

Sirens wailing and belching
are cousins
of the sirens that responded
on that morning,
when blue sky
was replaced by billowing sorrow.

The clouds came low
dust bowl in Manhattan -
fine particulate,
powdered grief,
speaking of thousands of
innocent dead,
drifting out
and up,
and blending theirs
with the dust and ash
of the millions of innocents
taken already.

Smoke from Buchenwald
and Dresden
and Hiroshima
and Guernica
and fiery pogroms.

Innocents -
numerous
and universal
and silent
as falling ash -
pray for us.

Dust from Russian gulags
Nanking streets
Southern cottonfields
West Bank bulldozings
coal mine explosions
diamond mine collapses
dry footfalls on the Trail of Tears.

Innocents -
so abundant
you shroud the sun -
pray for us. 

Classic Shot

Bogart as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon

Rick Perry and Consequences

Inconsequential?

Perry can't acknowledge it, being committed to his populist panderings amongst Tea Party activists, but there are some positive consequences of Washington's involvement in our lives, even if the government haters don't like it.

I'm fond of higher clean water standards, pollution controls, interstate highways, federal racketeering and conspiracy laws, our armed forces, our air traffic control system, drug regulation, our common currency, and even our federal appeals court system, to name just a few.

They're far from perfect, but they're more comprehensive a safety net than any state and local systems could manage.

And think what you like - no, make that react how you like.  Too many people don't think, they simply react.  Anyway, however and whatever you like, if you assume I'm an unabashed fan of big government, you're wrong.  There are plenty of things that seem to be done more poorly the more distant the people managing it are.

I'm no fan, for example, of the Army Corps of Engineers, who to this day retains too much of a sense of manifest destiny when it comes to rivers.  The levees they build don't hold as well as they ought, and when they do, they mostly serve to transfer the problems upstream or down, not actually resolve them.  It's hubris to think we can tell the Mississippi River what to do, and it will meekly comply.  No china shop was ever saved by putting the bull on a leash. 

I also have doubts about government being able to provide affordable health care that is responsive to the actual needs of people, and not just to actuarial tables somewhere.  I don't want a soulless bureaucracy managing my health, and my relationship with my doctor and hospital of choice.  Unfortunately, I can't say I've been well-served by the soulless insurance companies that have been doing it.  I could move to some remote village in Alaska, I suppose, where bureaucrats and accountants are seldom found ... but then, the same would be true of doctors and hospitals in remote Alaskan villages. 

I'm all for Washington being as unobtrusive as possible, but inconsequential?

What I'd like to do, as a Texan, is make Rick Perry as inconsequential in my life as possible.  Unfortunately, sending him to Washington would only compound the problem, not solve it.