Drunk

He’s shitfaced.

-Atrios 10:42 PM

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The Los Angeles Times reports a surge in global terrorism, according to … The US Government. Oh dear.

Ever have one of those decades when everything goes wrong? I remember waking up early on the morning of September 11, 2001, and the TV coming on with its little timer. Then all hell broke lose, and we’ve been devolving into chaos ever since.

Let me just over-generalize a bit: Can anyone out there in the blogosphere think of one thing that we the people — collectively or through the powers of our supposed self-government — have done right, since those few weeks, when we made that great run of consumerism on all manner of American flags? You remember, we had them all over our cars, houses, businesses, lunchpails, t-shirts, undershorts, etc., in September ’01. But since then, has it not been one giant clusterf**k of national failure?

I’m not trying to kill the last vestiges of your nationalistic buzz, if any remain. I’m just saying, when are we going to learn? When are we going to organize and take back our national identity? Does anyone know any Latino high school students? They seem pretty well organized; maybe they can put some feet in the street.

Novel by Harvard Author Pulled From Stores

Let’s be careful out there, writers. Be sure you’re not planting your field with somebody else’s corn.

[E’gads, I just paraphrased Chaucer. I’ll be hearing from his publisher now.]

If you haven’t had the opportunity to read what Bill Cosby had to say on the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, about the failure of Black people to parent, you can find it here. It’s spot on, as the British say, though perhaps not so eloquent as Cosby could have made it. I suppose that’s beside his point, which may not be eloquence so much as simple competence.

My point in bringing it up is that it’s just as true for white people and Latinos as it is for Blacks. The failure of our society to teach and parent is endemic in every stratum of it, and emblematic of the impending fall of the West and the rise of Asia. So the next time you see a sauntering, blathering stereotype, tell him to turn his hat around, pull up his pants, and get his duly covered ass back in English class. It’s for his own good.

This blog stops at nothing to inspire society.

Every town has its haunted house. Here in my area, we have ourselves a haunted town. Summerland. A cute little town on a hill, between Carpinteria, where I live, and Santa Barbara. If you’ve seen my photos of the view from my balcony, you’ve seen my view of Summerland. And won’t bore you with how quaint it is; you can find that here.

The interesting thing about Summerland is that some people say the whole town is haunted. It was founded in the late 1800s by a man named Williams, as a Spiritualist colony. Lots of people with time on their hands were into seances and such back then. And I’ve heard that because of all their paranormal parties, the whole hillside is a little twisted. I think that twist comes more from ganga than ghosts, but that’s me.

The most haunted place in town is Williams’ own house. It’s big. It became a restaurant back in the 70s, was painted yellow and called — wait for it — the Big Yellow House.

I’ve heard a lot of stories about the activity in this place. A guy my Dad worked with lived in the house when he was a kid – before the restaurant – and he said it was haunted. A friend worked there as a dishwasher in the early 1980s, and he said it was too. There’s a ghostly lady in the dining rooms. The ghost of a very large black man conducts rituals beyond the range of human sight. And back in the day, I heard there’s a ghost of one of Williams’ own sons in the wine cellar, locked up down there in life because he was mentally deranged.

Well, right now the place is closed. After driving by several times and noticing it was dark, I called. A disembodied voice explained there are new owners, new management, and sale of the property is pending. They expect to reopen this summer. I wonder how the ghosts are doing, in there all alone. Maybe they’re lonely, weakened and pining for living energy to to help them manifest. Or maybe they’re having a hell of a time, so to speak.

Come to think of it, who are these new owners anyway? The staff says tips have been disappearing from the tables for years. And that’s a costly piece of property, but with interest compounding in eternity … you think?

The Hill:

House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told Republican colleagues yesterday that they will have a full and lengthy floor debate on the Iraq war, a dramatic change of course for GOP leaders who had previously resisted Republican and Democratic calls for such a debate.

Songbirds: Yahoo! News:

“The simplest grammar, long thought to be one of the skills that separate man from beast, can be taught to a common songbird, new research suggests.”

Dang, send those researchers to Washington. Maybe they can help W make a little more sense.

On second thought, the researchers are busy. Send the birds.