“Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values.”

– Golda Meir

Well, if that’s true, it explains quite a lot about America, doesn’t it?

A man enters a bar and orders a drink. The bar has a robot bartender.

The robot serves him a perfectly prepared cocktail, and then asks him, “What’s your IQ?”

The man replies “150”, and the robot proceeds to make conversation about global warming factors, quantum physics and spirituality, biomimicry, environmental interconnectedness, string theory, nanotechnology, and sexual proclivities.

The customer is very impressed and thinks, “This is really cool.” He decides to test the robot. He walks out of the bar, turns around, and comes back in for another drink.

Again, the robot serves him the perfectly prepared drink and asks him, “What’s your IQ?” The man responds, “about 100.”

Immediately the robot starts talking, but this time, about football, NASCAR, baseball, super models, favorite fast foods, guns, and women’s breasts.

Really impressed, the man leaves the bar and decides to give the robot one more test. He heads out and returns, the robot serves him and asks,  “What’s your IQ?”

The man replies, “Er, 50, I think.”

And the robot says … very slowly … “So … ya gonna vote for Bush again?”

A good time was had by all, and there were no serious injuries.  

I paused a few times to admire the deep quiet of my brother’s home in the woods.  But now in my condo, I can hear only the tap of the keyboard, the hum of the computer, and the faint whisper of distant traffic.  It’s every bit as quiet here, like it or not.  Without the talking of family, the laughter and singing of my little nephew, and the soundtrack of soft Christmas music, is much too quiet indeed.  

OK, there’s the neighbor’s plumbing, water in the pipes. Much better.  

I’ve missed four days of newspapers and CNN; they don’t choose to have TV up yonder.  So I’m a little behind the times.  But looking at Yahoo News just now, I see that the chaos and slaughter in Iraq continues apace.  So everything’s just as I left it.  As long as nothing changes, nothing changes. Which gives one a sense of security, yes?  Facetious I’m being, Yoda.

I didn’t take the time to think about changes to the blog, so I guess this won’t change either.  It will just have to morph with me, as I continue my quest to weigh less, think less, worry less, and Be more.  Sorry, I know it’s disappointing.

There was little time to visit any of your blogs over the long weekend, so hopefully you didn’t write either.  Because I’m not fully up to speed, and won’t read them tonight.  I’m tired.  It was nine hours on the road today, all of it dragging a big, wet shadow of post-holiday decompression.  It’s worth it: As the year to come wears on, grinding us like flour and water into big, toasted existential tortillas, we’ll have these Christmas memories to nibble on.  Sweet.

[click to enlarge]

Well well.  Here we are.  Rather, here I am and there you are.  No matter where we go, that much remains constant, doesn’t it?  So I think I’m going to take a few days off from the ol’ blog and spend (Western) Christmas pondering that.  

I keep thinking that metaphor needs to take a somewhat different tack, if we’re going to get to where we’re going, from wherever we are. It’s a mathematical problem: subtracting the net of where we are from the total of where we’re going, in order to solve where we were, and at least a few of the adjusted gross places we’ve been since we left.  I’m sure you understand.  

I plan on taking notes.  

And abstaining from Christmas cookies.  

Ho ho ho, and so it goes.

Before I sign off for the holiday, I’d like to point out that I’m not the only one who thought the point about Bush not being the Commander in Chief of the country, which I made recently, was germane. Behold:

“Do I have the legal authority to do this?” Bush said at a White House news conference. “The answer is absolutely. . . . The legal authority is derived from the Constitution as well as the authorization of force by the United States Congress.”

In the 2001 congressional resolution Bush cited, that authorized the use of military force in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, calls for the president “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks.”

But Temple Law School Dean Robert Reinstein, former chief of general litigation at the Justice Department, said Bush’s arguments don’t hold water.

“Being commander-in-chief of the military doesn’t make him commander-in-chief of the nation,” Reinstein said, referring to a 1952 Supreme Court ruling that said President Truman did not have the right to seize steel mills during a strike that threatened production needed during the Korean War.

“The president is putting himself above the law by this argument that he is commander-in-chief,” Reinstein said. “We are not talking about operations of the military abroad. We are talking about a law that was designed to protect people’s civil liberties.”

[Link]

See, I’m not such a doofus after all. So there.

This pretty much speaks for itself. Except to say I think they finally caught the beastie behind Dick Cheney’s rhetoric.

The first draft of anything is shit.
~ Ernest Hemingway

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
~ Thomas Mann

I never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written on it.
~ William Faulkner

 

 

This is good news. It means that the public is becoming more aware of the horrors of pet mills, and the global crime of animal cruelty. Celebrate: grab something fuzzy and give it a hug.

“Democracies don’t war, democracies are peaceful countries.”

~ President Bush, December 20, 2005

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

– Tolstoy

like Tasha, like when she
used to make this little snort
with her nose, sniffing
through the house.
I thought I heard just
that, from the hall. Maybe

I am not utterly alone.