Whew. My Dell desktop computer died last night.

–I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all ––

I was just surfing around, McAfee antivirus supposedly working, when the system started running funny. Does it all the time. I rebooted, as I have a thousand times. Nuthin. No computer anymore. System 32 is corrupt or missing – major component of Windows. Wouldn’t start in safe mode or even find the BIOS.

Thanks to my brother Joe and the ancient minor miracle of long distance telephone, I’ve reinstalled Windows XP. Joe had the poop on how to do it – which is good because the instructions on the Microsoft Web site are nothing less colorful than complete bullshit. I now have a totally new OS, and of course everything on the computer is gone.

Thanks to me being one of those annoying people who just can’t live in the moment, most of it was backed up. Not all, but most. So if I see you downtown and seem oblivious, it’s not my fault. Data not found. So it goes.

Oh, and by the way, does anyone find it strange that a computer’s spellcheck doesn’t recognize the term BIOS?

It was on this day in 1940 that 75000 men were drafted into involuntary military service, on orders of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was the first peacetime draft in American History. Germany had overrun Poland and controlled much of western Europe. American needed an Army, Roosevelt believed, and the one we had was very small.

A fundamental difference between the 1940 draft and that of the Civil War was that rich men could no longer hire a replacement. This practice had sparked riots protesting the exploitation of the poor in 1863.

The draft ended in 1973, though I remember registering in 1979. And as far as I know, one must still register at age 18.

Today, a person still can’t hire a replacement if there is a draft. But those without the means or the inclination to seek a college education, or enter the private sector, may still find themselves seeking transitional employment in the Armed Forces, and thus subject to being fodder for Bush’s infernal misadventures. I believe this truth was illuminated by Senator Kerry in the recent election. The fact that he botched his “joke,” and that it is a tasteless truth, makes it no less the reality.

Stay in school, kids, or face death in the war on terr’r.

Which reminds me, the very fine poet Phillip Levine was interviewed by The New Yorker a few weeks ago, and said this about his poem Refusing to Serve – Dawn, 1952:

I remember Howard Moss [The New Yorker’s poetry editor from 1950 to 1987] saying to me, “Don’t you think we should call this ‘Conscientious Objector’?” And I said, “No, that would be inaccurate.” I was not a conscientious objector. I refused to serve. I was not a pacifist. And when asked that very question by the draft board, I said, “No, I could kill some people, but they’re all here in Detroit.”

A few lines from a new work in process …

By the way, there is a pitcher on top of the white hutch, where she keeps her dishes. The ones she uses for holidays, for when her sister comes. The pitcher was her mother’s and her grandmother brought it from Ireland wrapped in cheesecloth and stuffed with soft rags, among the quilts in a leathern trunk. She lives in a house too small for memories, so this is all she kept of them. Stoneware pale as milk, and chipped a little at its base.

If you stand at the edge of the field behind her house, at dawn of any fall or winter day, you’ll see the world through leaded glass. The Diablo Range with all that light behind it shifts and weaves. The mountains try to disappear; they hesitate to wake and stand for this. But she is up and moves about the house, forgetting things.

She intends to forget them all, and wait for death as someone might wait for a bus. Patiently, with no concern for time of day, but with an eye on the long road.

Wherever there’s injustice, oppression, and suffering, America will show up six months late and bomb the country next to where it’s happening.

– P.J. O’Rourke

Baghdad’s morgues so full, bodies being turned away – CNN.com

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — Baghdad’s morgues are full.

With no space to store bodies, some victims of the sectarian slaughter are not being kept for relatives to claim, but photographed, numbered and quickly interred in government cemeteries.

Men fearful of an anonymous burial are tattooing their thighs with names and phone numbers.

In October, a particularly bloody month for Iraqi civilians, about 1,600 bodies were turned in at the Baghdad central morgue, said its director, Dr. Abdul-Razaq al-Obaidi.

Two thoughts. First, the director of the morgue is worried, the article implies, about whether his computer will "bear up" under the load. I rise and move we buy him a new one. 

Second, these lines from Shakespeare’s Henry V:

I come to thee for charitable license,
That we may wander o’er this bloody field
To book our dead, and then to bury them;
To sort our nobles from our common men.
For many of our princes–woe the while!–
Lie drown’d and soak’d in mercenary blood;
… O, give us leave, great King,
To view the field in safety, and dispose
Of their dead bodies!  

All this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country’s pride.

— Bertrand Russell, philosopher
on WWI

Back in the late spring of ’05, when my Tasha first started getting sick, the vet thought at first that it was an infection that made her throw up. Lab tests soon proved that it was CRF, but for a short time there, Tasha was taking a most hateful and disgusting antibiotic. I had the hardest time getting her to take it. Nothing I could find to hide it in would work, because the pills were so foul tasting, and she could smell it coming when I opened the bottle. Poor baby. A few times, I just had to hold her and pill her by hand….

A couple of days ago, I saw a doctor who prescibed some medication for my gallbladder (expensive? oh yeah) and a cocktail of antibiotics for related issues. So a few minutes ago, I went in the kitchen to take my medicine like a good boy. When one of the pills hit my tongue, I wasn’t quite ready with the water. Talk about an awful taste. I looked down at the bottle — I thought it sounded familiar when the doctor mentioned it — it’s the same damnable stuff. Flagyl. The same stuff Tasha wouldn’t take.

It’s a wheel, my friends. Karma, I mean.

The wheel is turning
and you can’t slow down
You can’t let go
and you can’t hold on
You can’t go back
and you can’t stand still
If the thunder don’t get you
then the lightning will

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.
-Bertrand Russell

LONDON – A 22-year-old man suffered internal injuries after lighting a small firecracker he had inserted into his …

 

The World’s Great Age begins anew,
     The Golden Years return,
The Earth doth like a Snake renew
     Her Winter Skin outworn:
Heaven smiles, and Faith and Empires gleam
Like Wrecks of a Dissolving Dream.