the return of truly lazy blogging...

Since this is the last day of the first five months of the year, I think it's time to make some June 1st resolutions:
1. I will post more pictures of cars, especially old cars that you won't see on basic cable(i.e. not muscle cars. I have nothing against old pony cars per se, but I want my blog to be something different.)

2. I will post more serious stuff.

3. I will post more mirthful stuff. Well, based on my interpretation of mirth. Yours may differ, as is your wont. But I like mirth, see? If you don't like my notion of mirth, you're more than welcome to start a more mirthful blog. You can even tell me about it in the comments, if you're nice about it. As far as I know http://themostmirthfulblogimagineable.blogspot.com/ is not taken.
(I don't know about typepad.)
4. Now that I have the no. 1 and no. 2 search entries for Lorna Doone Blogging, I will move on to new vistas, hitherto unexplored...

perhaps lamp blogging?




or Fiat blogging?

(fiat-500 w girl in polkadot dress from fiat500club.nl)

I tried to encourage Don of the Fiat Blog! to do this, but to no avail.

the return of truly lazy blogging:
some posts new and not so new:
from the Big Picture: dead centagenerians(Strom Thurmond and Lord Shawcross) summer 2003.


the party of big government, by Norman Singleton at the Lew Rockwell blog,summer 2004:


Digby on populism (referencing Orcinus's Dave Niewert,"healing the heartland" which is also worth noting:


from Law.com, "scientology and the IRS"


Politus:
"DEBUNKED: Clinton's Haircut at LAX Delayed Flights"




"Chrysler Airflow spotted near Pohenegamook, Quebec; this, too was a revolutionary car, but was never accepted by consumers"
from canadiandriver.com


from Jonathan Schwarz's archives(12.2004):
"Heart of Darkness": Prescient Masterpiece of World Literature, Or Airy-Fairy Egghead Nonsense Like All Books Everywhere?"

I'm watching CBS's "48 hrs reality mystery" as I post this. I hate the way the networks do these true crime things, squeezing every bit of emotional pornography out of the stories of people who've had loved ones murdered. But I am watching, and ask myself if it's partly because of hostess Maureen Maher, and how fetching she is.

awrgerhh

happy memorial day everybody.

Don of the Fiat blog asked me some questions about my profile-- although the groundswell of people wanting to know answers to questions about my profile isn't exactly deafening, I thought I'd answer (some of) the questions here, just in case you want to know these things(also, I'm stuck on a topic right now, and I don't know what I could add to the blogospheric conversation regarding the Newsweek fiddly business, the fillibuster sellout, or John Bolton and his frightening mustache that hasn't already been touched upon elsewhere.) So here goes:

The picture at the upper right is of Victor Hugo, the 19th century French novelist. I call on him as inspiration because he was a politically active progressive in his age, when it was a riskier proposition than it is today, the forces trying to again make it a risky propositon notwithstanding. I think the image is from a famous contemporary portrait of him.

And no, I'm not 101-- I'd say I'm in the middle of life(or not quite there yet if I actually make it to 101, which (I think) would be nice, if unlikely.). But don't tell the people at blogger,ok? They keep sending me free stuff like senior's vitamins, bee pollen, coupons for colonoscopy and a truss, and I may need these things someday. Tell you what-- if you want to blackmail me, you can have the truss. How's that?

Yes, I like Herb Alpert and Dumbo. What's wrong with Dumbo? Disney stuff from the 30s and 40s was a whole lot better than latter day crap like Aladdin. I like Dumbo's mother, and the crows:

"well, I heard of a shoe fly, a horse fly,
I even hearda house fly,
but I ain't never hearda no elephant fly."

And I like Mr. Sammler's Planet. I was in the last day of a two week orientation at a certain job that I got in the early 90s when I was reading Sammler. The orientation had different people leading the discussion on different days, and we had one particular person, the last orientation leader, for the last two days. By the end of the first day with this person I figured out that it didn't really matter if I was there or not because of how chaotic and unstructured the whole affair was, and during breaks I was reading the last few pages of Sammler, which much more interesting to me. So after lunch on the last day of orientation I decided to finish Sammler instead, and get back just before quitting time to sign the paperwork. Only I was caught. I was lectured at, but I didn't get into any lasting trouble, although for all I know the incident may still appear in my file.

I have a copy of More Die of Heartbreak, which I bought for a buck(hardback!) at a sidewalk sale. Don says he likes Updike. I also have a copy of The Coup by Updike,which I've had for many, many years. I have a lot of books which I haven't read. One of the reasons I hope there's an afterlife is because I'm a slow reader, am easily distracted, and have a lot of books I'd like to read someday. Yes, I know that must sound like a bizarre reason. I have other more conventional reasons as well, but this isn't the place to discuss them, anymore than it's the place to discuss the likelihood of an afterlife, or lack thereof. My impression is that most God-believing people believe that

there is a god, and

therefore there is an afterlife.

It seems to me that it's just as plausible, if not more plausible that

there is a god, and

there is no afterlife.

I'm not rooting for that contingency, mind you. But it strikes me as perfectly believable.

Ok, so I broke my made-up-as-I-went-along rule. Well, it's my blog.

another internet test: Dante

via Susie Madrak(Suburban Guerilla):

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Third Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very Low
Level 7 (Violent)	Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Test

We won!...something, right?

WASHINGTON (AP)—Averting a showdown, centrists from both parties ...blah blah blah...

“In a Senate that is increasingly polarized, the bipartisan center held,” said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.

“The Senate is back in business,” echoed Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of 14 senators who signed the two-page memorandum of agreement, which cited “mutual trust and confidence.”

Under the terms, Democrats would agree to oppose any attempt to filibuster – and thus block final votes – on the confirmation of Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown and William Pryor. There is “no commitment to vote for or against” the filibuster against two other conservative nominees, Henry Saad and William Myers.

As for future nominees, the agreement said they should “only be filibustered under extraordinary circumstances,” with each Democrat senator holding the discretion to decide when those conditions had been met*.

I wouldn't worry too much about Frist, nor feel particularly exultant at his supposed defeat. The movement conservatives love to see themselves as opressed underdogs, even when they're in power, and that's how he'll spin it, as a battle against the no-good scheming moderates for the soul of his party. And the money will flow.

Bush will get three of his marquee nominations and give up two of the lesser known ones. We get to keep the fillibuster, just as long as we promise not to use it. (Just one person could still scuttle this, and that thought makes me miss Wellstone all the more. He could've talked about... I don't know, the details of why Owens, Rogers Brown and Pryor are so unpalatable? You know, the annoying factoids the national press can't be bothered with?)

And the wackos on the right are protected from the public seeing them being wackos, unlike in the Schiavo scandal(which the dems also failed to exploit). I discussed their need to do this in January, here.

This is a "republican defeat" as transitory and insignificant as Jeffords's defection in 2001 proved to be in November of 2002.

*A right they already had- yipee!

A milestone 4 me

I've been an indolent blogger of late. Nevertheless, however undeservingly, I noticed when I checked my sitemeter stats--


that I passed 10,000 hits today.


So it's time to celebrate!


whoopee!

Musings from the bottom of the septic tank

tookong says:

If I was a fish, I'd be a big fish and I'd eat all the little fishes.
I'd have rows of triangular teeth and a hunger the size of a child's
fear. Conscience would be a grain of sand in a crater on the far side
of the moon. There would be no choice between stimulus and response and there would be no such thing as a bad decision. Things would just be.
Happiness would be a full belly and love would be nothing more than
violent copulations in a choppy sea.

more pictures: two pairs

clue: "the past is a foreign country"- L. P. Hartley










Here's another quiz: the four pictures represent two pairs; two of one theme, and two of another, related but different. The first picture is of an Orthodox monastery in Mosul.
(which was once known as Nineveh, by the way.)