A Reagan Primer

In the WaPo of all places.

Frisbee Alternative

I guess I need a tetherball set now. And another corgi.

I Miss Deadwood Because It Was Great Drama

but also this (NSFW)

And They've All Got Facebook Pages

No Comment

anything at all would be superfluous.

A Crocodile
by Thomas Lovell Beddoes
Hard by the lilied Nile I saw A duskish river-dragon stretched along, The brown habergeon of his limbs enamelled With sanguine almandines and rainy pearl: And on his back there lay a young one sleeping, No bigger than a mouse; with eyes like beads, And a small fragment of its speckled egg Remaining on its harmless, pulpy snout; A thing to laugh at, as it gaped to catch The baulking merry flies. In the iron jaws Of the great devil-beast, like a pale soul Fluttering in rocky hell, lightsomely flew A snowy trochilus, with roseate beak Tearing the hairy leeches from his throat.

The Attorney General of California

looks like a movie star. I had no ideal until Charlie Rose had her on tonight discussing the SOTU speech. Why her? No idea.

Benjamin, One Word

graphene

Ah, Yes. January. Midwest.

In this case, Stow, Ohio.

Tiger Mothers

By now you've heard about the Tiger Mother controversy, right?
No? Okay, well there was this Chinese American Harvard Yale law prof who wrote this NYT WSJ op-ed piece about how she drove her two daughters to specified goals, wouldn't let them have sleepovers even, and threatened all sorts of wildly lunatic reprisals just because she loved them and wanted them to succeed and by the way, please buy the book about it.
So after that it was a long, is she right, is she wrong debate, mostly among men but some women, too, including at least one Chinese American daughter of a lunatic mother who begged to differ about the approach.
Me, I pretty much got over wondering if I was some sort of a monster because I took a more laisse faire approach, since it's fairly clear I am a monster, but not necessarily because of that. But who knows?
Anyhoo, the debate is still going on and I found this great quote:

It’s just way better to be the world’s best acrobatic kite-surfer than the third best pianist in Cleveland. Also, the ethos of hyper-individuation is about activity/personality search and matching. It’s better to be happily mediocre at something you love than miserably amazing at something that never quite felt right.

I'm not sure it's right, but then I'm not sure of much. Although I can talk a good game.

Quote O' Teh Day

Thank you, Andrew Sullivan. Thank you for saying this. It's about the torture, of course, which Bush has gladly, proudly admitted to.
I used to read Scott Horton every day. Then I couldn't stand it anymore.

Under international law, George W. Bush is a war criminal. There is no dispute about that outside a tiny coterie of legal mediocrities and political hacks and a general public as yet unable to grasp that their ex-president should be in jail.)

Which gets me to thinking, how many known, living war criminals do we have, the U.S. and Britain. Is is agreed Kissinger is a war criminal? McNamara and minions, I guess, can't remember if he's still alive. Sullivan says the jury's still out on Blair.

What I Want To Be When I Grow Up

"...a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls."

 Orwell on Dickens. This is from a piece Andrew Sullivan is pondering as he ponders the call for civility following Tucson. Me, I learn where I can.
Smelly little orthodoxies. Love that. 

The Dowager Dutchess

"One can't got to pieces over the death of every foreigner. We'd all collapse the minute we opened a newspaper."

I love Maggie Smith and I love Downton Abbey.

That is all.

Previously.
"What is a weekend." (accent on the second syllable, can you hear it?)

Quote O' Teh Day

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd." - Voltaire

From this, which came from this, which came from this.
It started here.

It's all in the oneness, right? Is the internet God?

No Bunnies Today

Candygram

Pretty Good One This Morning

Pericardium
 by Joanna Klink                 

 Am I not alone, as I thought I was, as I thought
The day was, the hour I walked into, morning
When I felt night fly from my chest where prospect had
Slackened, and close itself off, understanding, as I thought I did,
That the ground would resist my legs and not let them
Break nor let them be released into air as my heart, in its
Muscle, might be released from the body that surrounds it,
Like someone who, placing a hand on a shoulder's
Blade, felt a life move inside an hour and a day
Break from the day the hour meant something more than weakness,
More than fear, and flew forward into the depths of
Prospect, your arms, where you'd been, before me, waiting
For me, the way the body has always been waiting for the heart to sense
It is housed, it is needed, it will not be harmed.

SNL:Jan. 8, 2011

Pretty good show tonight, and when I watch, I'm usually disappointed.
Actually laughed out loud quite a bit, always a good test.
Thanks, Lorne.

Congress Shall Make No Law

ever again.
A cutting satire from David Cole at WaPo.

I Have A New Guru

His name is Andrew Oliver Burkeman. I chose him because of this. Other than that, I know very little about him.

“Give up on yourself. Begin taking action now, while being neurotic or imperfect, or a procrastinator, or unhealthy, or lazy, or any other label by which you inaccurately describe yourself. Go ahead and be the best imperfect person you can be and get started on those things you want to accomplish before you die.”

Japanese psychotherapist Shoma Morita,

Jorge and Alexa

Cover a song by the Acoustic Zeroes. Sullivan says this was viral in 09. I never saw it, so how could it have been viral? Besides, it still has less than 700,000 hits.