Friday, June 22, 2007

Rocky the squirrel

A friend sent me a link to this contraption that some squirrel hater had constructed. Got to admit, its probably better than what my Border Collie does. I found one she had killed in the backyard, her first. The poor fellow was on his back, blood covering his nose, as if he'd been shot. My wife walked right by the crime scene and I called her back to see "Freckles'" kill. Right then Freckles walked by and proceeded to begin to pick up the prize, no doubt to suck the eyeballs out as they are quite delicious. I told her to drop it and she gave me the same look she gave me when I told her to leave the possum she had captured alone. "You have got to be fucking kidding me?!" she pretty clearly declared with those fierce BC eyes of hers. I can only imagine what the squirrel must of thought as he cruised into his doomed fate. He may never have seen a Border Collie before. They are cat-like dogs and Freckles has made it her life's work to kill any four-legged mammal that comes into the backyard. She even used to chase their ghosts in the trees. Anyway, here's the link. Don't send it to PETA.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/oh,-food%21-i.ll-just-_-wahhhhhh%21%21/squirrel-catapult-is-awful-yet-we-cant-look-away-270290.php?autoplay=true

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Queens for Summer


Catch a free listen of the new Queens of the Stone Age cd. It doesn't sound like anything else out there right now. This is a good thing. I don't pump bands as a matter of course because most bands that are popular now are not worth it. They are just trying to fit into some Gen Y fantasy that I can only imagine smashing with big heavy objects. QOTSA seems to not actually give a fuck what anyone thinks. That is a big step in the right direction.

Monday, June 11, 2007

The lens of deceit

The United States lost the Vietnam War not because we didn't kill enough or weren't committed enough or got cheated somehow. We lost because we saw the war the the lens of the Cold War and we were convinced that the conflict was more about a global ideological struggle rather than the nationalist inspirations of the Vietnamese people. When Robert McNamara sat down with the foreign minister of Vietnam, a fellow named Thach, in 1995 he asked why the Vietnamese had fought so doggedly losing 3 to 4 million people to expell the Americans. To our way of thinking it seems so stupid and McNamara said as much to Thach. Thach replied:

"Mr. McNamara, You must never have read a history book. If you'd had, you'd know we weren't pawns of the Chinese or the Russians. McNamara, didn't you know that? Don't you understand that we have been fighting the Chinese for 1000 years? We were fighting for our independence. And we would fight to the last man. And we were determined to do so. And no amount of bombing, no amount of U.S. pressure would ever have stopped us."

In the last week I have read a couple of op-ed pieces by Henry Kissinger, Peter Rodman and William Sharcross. They point out what a disaster pulling out of Iraq will be and they lament that they real history of the Vietnam War and the American pullout has either not been written or has been missed. I honestly wish them suffer in hell for their words. Kissinger no doubt will be consigned to that imaginary place. But what galls me to no end is the willingness of our leaders to denigrate the idea of democracy and freedom. These bastards do not believe in democracy. They are fixers, like McNamara, smarter then you and I about the realpolitik world that matters. Fuck them. They hate all commoners. They give elitism a bad name.

The lens of deceit that motivates those who argue for our extended presence in Iraq was minted in the lying regime of the Bushies. Stupid is as stupid does and here again we have been sold a story about what Iraq means in the larger global war on terror. Iraq is not about terrorism. Terrorism is about war and terrorism is certainly taking place in Iraq but the terrorists in Iraq are not the one's we need worry about. Why would we allow our enemies to define the time and place of our battles? Why would we encourage the weak minded to become fundamentalist bombs? The lens that we see Iraq through will be proven in a generation to be as clouded as the Cold War lens that we saw Vietnam through. The problem is not in how the question is being defined as much as who is doing the defining. The proles do have enemies. They are here at home and it is these homegrown devils that we have the most to fear from. They are working, whether they want to or not, to deliver us a terrorism war here in America. They don't believe in freedom and they don't believe in anything but power. They will bring us nothing but pain.

Monday, June 04, 2007

Grumpy


A long fine weekend turned to shit in my mind in seconds. Whatever the fucking disease I have that prevents me from accruing bonus points for the positive things in my life in such a way as to ameliorate those exiquisite moments of mental breakdown when faced with a few perfect seconds of frustration, I need a damn diagnosis. On the plus side I have better dreams when I am basking in my own urines of angst. A fine yellow haze of malcontent envelops and I feel strangely liberated to not give a shit-whisker about the daily grind. Which may in fact be the name of the disease I am harboring.


My blessed wife can ascertain an iota of grumpiness in the timbre of my voice and I in turn can and do sift through the inflections of her comments like a Right whale pulling the krill of her judgements forth with my big stupid tongue. Something like that. This last weekend I dreamed I was decapitated and tortured which was not nearly as bad as it sounds and I dreamed Hunter S. Thompson was telling me something important around the time the pain generated by an nights worth of bladder juice was jabbing me to my feet to face yet another damn Monday. Fuck mo. I'd like to just get away or get into something that feels like it has nothing to do with me. I guess what I'm trying to say is that everything is totally fucking perfect right now. Like I am a perfectly perserved artifact of myself in the museum of my life. Better use those white gloves when handling the artifact . . .


Today's highlight had to be when I got a breakfast burrito from my usual spot and with my last bite I came down hard on a molar-sized piece of pee gravel that found itself in wrapped happily in that meatless sublime cholesteral delivery device. If the burritos start going bad in San Diego what is next? Closing the zoo? Padres position players who can hit? My daughter breaking up with her boyfriend? God only knows. Or would, if he existed.