Nobody Knows Anything

Gotta admit that I haven’t missed having every telephone pole and traffic light pole covered with those ubiquitous “Work from home” and “You can lose weight — ask me how!” signs that are all the work of poor deluded Herbalife salesmen who are quite sure that they’re going to find the last people in the city who haven’t a)heard of Herbalife and b)tried it.

My friend Rob has told me that I should scale my paranoia way, WAY back; these folks aren’t the Mafia, he says, they’re the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. He proceeded to list off a number of the gaffes, errors, and blunders the Ministration has made and the American people are waking up to. You know: WMD (or WMDPRA, or whatever it is this week), Valerie Plame, Halliburton, Enron…

And I said, so why is the Resident still getting 50% in the polls?

His answer was basically that the polls are nonsense, taken by people who don’t have the sense to use Caller ID. He wants me to take off the tinfoil hat. Concentrate on the edublogs. That kind of thing.

Okay, okay. So, I’ll do it. They’re not out to get everyone, they’re not out to steal everything, they’re not out to use burn the Constitution and form a theocracy that applies to everyone except the top 1%, who will have all the money and will continue doing exactly what they like. I will not share with you my belief that the GTCSS has done such egregious things that they will do anything, anything, to stay in power come this November, because they have way, way too much lose. (Yes, the phrase Reichstag fire Gulf of Tonkin October Surprise could come to mind, but saying it out loud would be wrong and, you know, paranoid.)

I’m calm. I’m relaxed. The tinfoil hat is off and my hair looks great. I’m playing a few games with my kids on the weekend and all is right with the world.

You, on the other hand, are invited to peruse:

• David Neiwart’s seminal “Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism.” Give the man the $5, read it, then cry. Actually, while you’re at Orcinus, check out “The Personal and the Political” too. The man’s writing is fantastic and powerful.
• A timeline to the events before, during, and after September 11.
• Whatever happened to the 9/11 Commission, by the way?
• Since we’re talking about September 11, some unanswered questions.
• Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of crazed religious fanatics! Or, “More WMD found in Texas than in Iraq.”
• Shorter Paul Krugman: What American dream?
• So a plaintiff goes hunting with the judge hearing his case. What’s wrong with that?
• Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ken Lay, California’s fiscal crisis.
• Our national heritage, going cheap.

In the immortal words of Teresa Nielsen Hayden—only a year ago! imagine that—“I deeply resent the way this administration makes me feel like a nutbar conspiracy theorist.”

Did. Did make me feel like a nutbar conspiracy theorist. It’s all better now.

So, the finalists for the Koufax Awards are up at WampumBlog. In case you’re wondering about the genesis of the name…what was Sandy Koufax famous for (besides that Sabbath thing)?

The Koufax Awards are also a good way to get an overview of the “top guns” of the progressive side of the blogosphere, in case you’re dipping your toes into the waters and are scared silly of the list of blogs I have over there.

The Mars Spirit rover is evidently having problems.

Right. “Having problems.” We all know the Martians have done in every damn probe we’ve sent to that planet. When they said they didn’t like solicitors, they meant it.

Evidently translates to “Wake up 3:30, be extremely antsy, convince Mom to take you downstairs, hand her the remote control, and watch Toy Story.”

He seemed to have a little fever, so I gave him some Tylenol before we came down here. He’s so totally in love with Woody and Buzz from Toy Story, nothing makes him happier than running around the room with his Buzz doll yelling the rough equivalent of “To infinity! And beyond!”

Thankfully, he is not doing that now. He is quietly watching the movie. I am hoping he zones out.

I, however, want to go graze in the kitchen. What is it about being up in the middle of the night that says, “Go ahead! Eat! It’s a fine time to have your biggest meal of the day, despite (or maybe because) it’s weigh-in day!”

For those of you who do not read Riverbend, go read how things are going over there from the horse’s mouth:

I usually ignore the emails I receive telling me to ‘embrace’ my new-found freedom and be happy that the circumstances of all Iraqi women are going to ‘improve drastically’ from what we had before. They quote Bush (which in itself speaks volumes) saying things about how repressed the Iraqi women were and how, now, they are going to be able to live free lives.

The people who write those emails often lob Iraq together with Saudi Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan and I shake my head at their ignorance but think to myself, “Well, they really need to believe their country has the best of intentions- I won’t burst their bubble.” But I’m telling everyone now- if I get any more emails about how free and liberated the Iraqi women are *now* thanks to America, they can expect a very nasty answer.

You know, shortly before the war started, I saw on the news (a rare occurence—I do not watch the news on television, which seems to me to be completely content-free, even with all of its pictures; if a news program starts on a channel not in the pocket of Viacom, GE, Disney, or ADM, let me know) some story that included an excerpt from the Iraqi state news, which had a female newsreader. Who was not covering her head in any way.

And I thought, I wonder what other Islamic nation we’d see that in?

(ObHappyNewsSlam: she wasn’t 26, anorexic, and blonde either.)

Oh yeah. Those Iraqis are so fucking free they can fly.

Man, I am so glad I don’t drink: The State of the Union Drinking Game.

My personal favorite is what to do if the Res says, “Don’t mess with Texas!”

Update: Damn. South Knox Bubba rules. He’s gone one better than the Drinking Game and really put his money where Bush’s mouth is.

Damn. Bubba’s going to listen to the speech and check the transcript? That is dedication. I think I have to soak in a lavender bath Tuesday night. But I think I’m in with Bubba…now I just gotta pick a charity…

And yet more update: Adam Felber’s totally hilarious SOTU drinking game. My favorite bit:

At any point during the War portion of the speech, any player may assume the role of Rogue Nation - exclaiming “Yikes!” and then ducking and cowering. Everyone else must follow suit immediately. The last player to do so becomes the Next Pre-empted Nation, who is then obliged to take a drink.

No matter how dangerously drunk the Pre-empted Nation becomes, nobody is permitted to suggest that they be given a break. Anyone who does so immediately becomes “France,” and is obliged to finish their own drink while being ridiculed by the other players.

Update, Tuesday: I’ve decided on my charity. It’s CoffeeKids, a charity devoted to making the lives of coffee growers better.

Update, Thursday: And CoffeeKids has my money.

So, inspired by Mo, amongst others, I have started a new blog: That Calvin Klein Skirt, my fitness blog. You know: my workouts, my weigh-ins, my thoughts on fitness and body issues, etc.

Recently I bought The Assassin’s Cloak, a wonderful anthology of excerpts from a wide variety of published diaries and journals, organized by date. (So you can open it to, say, January 17 and read all the entries for that day, spanning hundreds of years.) I noticed that a large number of the excerpts mentioned political occurrences happening in the lives in the writers, and I thought, “I never write about the external world at large in my journal, I should do that more.”

So I sat down and wrote what I thought would be a short summary of my take on the current political scene in my diary.

It ended up going on for pages.

And I realized that I am so scared about what’s going on in the world today (and am such an inherent coward to begin with) that I would never, ever post any such thing on this page. Because, you know, they’re reading.

Paul O’Neill collaborated with Ron Suskind on The Price of Loyalty, and when asked, pre-publication, if he was worried about possible repercussions, he said something to the effect that he was rich, he wasn’t worried.

In the week since, Paul O’Neill has started backpedalling on his words something furious. He’s been misinterpreted. He’s not anti-Bush, in fact, he’s voting for Bush. Things are just great.

Paul O’Neill is a wealthy, respected man who’s had a long career.

You think you’re tough? Maybe not so much.

I know I’m not.

I will, however, point you to this: The Tom Paine State of the Union Scorecard, which you can use to judge the SOTU address coming up on Tuesday.

Right after we got back from Thanksgiving, I bought a doctor’s scale much like my in-laws’ (you can see it here). I haven’t used it much, since I started attended WW every week and I use their weigh-in as my official weight. But the scale at home agrees remarkably well with WW; in fact, on Wednesday I was warned ahead of time not to expect miracles at my weigh-in.

I decided to start weighing myself once on the weekend, just to check in, make sure I hadn’t swallowed a cow unexpectedly or anything.

This morning? 3 pound loss.

Heh. Heh. I see.

Given that I haven’t had any surgery and no limbs have fallen off…I guess I was just retaining water.

I’ll shut up now.