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| B-52H radar navigator Capt. Zachary Proano (left) and navigator Capt. Andrew Parlsen work at their stations during a training mission dropping live ordnance over the Nevada Test and Training Range, Feb. 11, 2014. They are members of the 23rd Bomb Squadron at Minot AFB, N.D. (Air Force photo by SSgt. Jonathan Snyder) |
The people who must never have power are the humorless. To impossible certainties of rectitude they ally tedium and uniformity. Since an essential element of the American idea is its variety, I have tried to celebrate things that are amusing for their own sake, or ridiculous but revealing, or simply of intrinsic interest. All of the above might apply to the subject of my little essay on the art and science of the blowjob, for example, while not quite saving me from the most instantly misinterpreted of all my articles, concerning the humor deficit as registered by gender. Still, I like to believe that these small-scale ventures, too, make some contribution to a conversation without limits or proscriptions: the sin qua non of the sort of society that knows to keep the solemn and the pious at bay.
What The Good Captain said.Noam Chomsky
Chris Hitchens treats him roughly.
(It’s no use excerpting Hitchens; he’s like a seven course meal, and must be taken sequentially.)
If I am pessimistic about the future of liberty, it is because I am pessimistic about the strength of the English-speaking nations, which have, in profound ways, surrendered to forces at odds with their inheritance. “Declinism” is in the air, but some of us apocalyptic types are way beyond that. The United States is facing nothing so amiable and genteel as Continental-style “decline,” but something more like sliding off a cliff.
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Continental Europe has given us plenty of nice paintings and agreeable symphonies, French wine and Italian actresses and whatnot, but, for all our fetishization of multiculturalism, you can’t help noticing that when it comes to the notion of a political West—one with a sustained commitment to liberty and democracy—the historical record looks a lot more unicultural and, indeed (given that most of these liberal democracies other than America share the same head of state), uniregal. The entire political class of Portugal, Spain, and Greece spent their childhoods living under dictatorships. So did Jacques Chirac and Angela Merkel. We forget how rare on this earth is peaceful constitutional evolution, and rarer still outside the Anglosphere.
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Within the next five years, the People’s Liberation Army, which is the largest employer on the planet, bigger even than the U.S. Department of Community-Organizer Grant Applications, will be entirely funded by U.S. taxpayers. When they take Taiwan, suburban families in Connecticut and small businesses in Idaho will have paid for it. The existential questions for America loom now, not decades hence. What we face is not merely the decline and fall of a powerful nation but the collapse of the highly specific cultural tradition that built the modern world. It starts with the money—it always does. But the money is only the symptom. We wouldn’t be this broke if we hadn’t squandered our inheritance in a more profound sense.
I have already offered the excuse that the puerility of these was at least a muscle-building dress rehearsal for a higher form. You may think it absurd or pathetic, for example, to see what happens when you subtract the word “heart” from any well-known title or saying and then substitute the word “dick.” Some of the results are in fact mildly funny (“I Left My Dick in San Francisco,” “Bury My Dick at Wounded Knee,” “Dick of Darkness,” “The Dick of the Matter,” and so forth), and others can recur to one at absurd moments (“Dickbreak Hotel,” “The Sacred Dick,” “The Dick and Stomach of a King,” “The Jack of Dicks,” “An Affair of the Dick,” “The Dick Has Its Reasons,” “The Dick Is a Lonely Hunter”) where they even threaten to be apposite.
You can—I warn you—spend years working on a coal-face like this before hitting an unlooked-for seam. How were we to know that Woody Allen, when questioned about his decision to run off with his adopted teenage daughter, would so tonelessly say: “The heart wants what it wants”?I've spared you the instances where Hitchens and his literary round-table... gathered for drinks and a meal at some watering hole... substituted the Anglo-Saxon euphemism for sexual congress for the word "love" in book and song, but those substitutions are no less hilarious than the examples cited above. And there are many such. This is definitely NOT a case of "you hadda be there," even tho I wish I could have been.
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As a noun, and perhaps marginally more ambitiously, the word (love) was to be dropped and replaced with “hysterical sex” thus: “The Allegory of Hysterical Sex,” “Hysterical Sex Is a Many-Splendored Thing,” “What Is This Thing Called Hysterical Sex?” “Hysterical Sex in a Cold Climate,” “Hysterical Sex, Actually,” “Free Hysterical Sex,” “Hysterical Sex Story,” “Hysterical Sex Potion Number Nine” (which has only just occurred to me), and “A Fool for Hysterical Sex” as well as “Ain’t No Cure for Hysterical Sex.” In spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of…
“Care to meet the new Leader?” Who could refuse?
Within moments, Margaret Thatcher and I were face to face. Within moments, too, I had turned away and was showing her my buttocks. I suppose that I must give some sort of explanation for this. Almost as soon as we shook hands on immediate introduction, I felt that she knew my name and had perhaps connected it to the socialist weekly that had recently called her rather sexy. While she struggled adorably with this moment of pretty confusion, I felt obliged to seek controversy and picked a fight with her on a detail of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe policy.
She took me up on it. I was (as it chances) right on the small point of fact, and she was wrong. But she maintained her wrongness with such adamantine strength that I eventually conceded the point and even bowed slightly to emphasize my acknowledgment.
“No,” she said. “Bow lower!” Smiling agreeably, I bent forward a bit farther. “No, no,” she trilled. “Much lower!” By this time, a little group of interested bystanders was gathering. I again bent forward, this time much more self-consciously. Stepping around behind me, she unmasked her batteries and smote me on the rear with the parliamentary order-paper that she had been rolling into a cylinder behind her back. I regained the vertical with some awkwardness. As she walked away, she looked back over her shoulder and gave an almost imperceptibly slight roll of the hip while mouthing the words: “Naughty boy!”
I had and have eyewitnesses to this. At the time, though, I hardly believed it myself. It is only from a later perspective, looking back on the manner in which she slaughtered and cowed all the former male leadership of her party and replaced them with pliant tools, that I appreciate the premonitory glimpse—of what someone in another context once called “the smack of firm government”—that I had been afforded.
Even at the time, as I left that party, I knew I had met someone rather impressive. And the worst of “Thatcherism,” as I was beginning by degrees to discover, was the rodent slowly stirring in my viscera: the uneasy but unbanishable feeling that on some essential matters she might be right.
"As contemptuous, digressive, righteous, and riotously funny as the rest of the author's incessant output, this memoir is an effective coming-of-age story, regardless of what one may think of the resulting adult . . . Hitchens paints a credible and even affecting self-portrait." (The New Yorker )As for the quotables... you could mebbe expect a few from this book in future. One of the things I dearly love about the Kindle is the ability to bookmark and save passages. You may have noticed, Gentle Reader. And now it's out to sit under the awning with book, beer, and cigar.
"In this frank, often wickedly funny account, Hitchens traces his evolution as a fiercely independent thinker and enemy of people who are convinced of their absolute certainty ... Revealing and riveting." (Kirkus Review )
"The most erudite and astute political and social commentator of this era has written a memoir that not only give the reader a view of the man behind the words but also a perceptive look at society over the past decades. Hitchens fascinates with the life he has lived and observed and, as always, relates his story with precision and consideration." (Nicola's Books Bill Cusamano )
"Hitch is as Hitch does, and he's not apologizing to anyone." (Time Out New York Drew Toal )
"[H]e has so many great quotes and quotables . . . that one cannot read his latest masterpiece for having to stop, find a pencil and page stickers in order to underline and signify his many remarks, each greater than the other." (wowOwow.com Liz Smith )
A short time ago one of my Daily Reads put up a post about Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck, to the effect that one of the authors of this two-person blog... Naked Writing... likes these two (excuse the term) asshats. The other author(ess) does not. A difference of opinion, which is always good blog-fodder, especially among those who favor civil discourse and can disagree without being disagreeable. Old Iron and KC make it work, which is a rare thing on the inner-tubes. 
I have an idea for a brand new type of newspaper feature. And gosh do newspapers need one. No industry in living memory has collapsed faster than daily print journalism. You can still buy a buggy whip, which is more than can be said for a copy of the Rocky Mountain News, Cincinnati Post, or Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
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One bright idea isn’t going to solve the problems of the American newspaper industry, but it’s one bright idea more than the American newspaper industry has had in 40 years. What I propose is “Pre-Obituaries”—official notices that certain people aren’t dead yet accompanied by brief summaries of their lives indicating why we wish they were.
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Jimmy Carter is 85. We must hasten to throw the Camp David Accord in his face before he heads to his eternal camp-out with Anwar el-Sadat. Gore Vidal is 84. There’s no chance he’ll end up in the same place as Bill Buckley. We ought to take up Buckley’s gauntlet and slap Gore’s face here and now. Noam Chomsky is 81. Why should Satan have all the fun? We own pitchforks of fact aplenty with which to prod his living flesh. Norman Lear is 87 and will be married to Maude forever any minute now. (Although Lear may find himself forgiven. He never meant to make Archie Bunker a hero and a role model, but perhaps the road to heaven is paved with bad intentions.) Ed Asner is 80. Put him together with Ben Bradlee (88) and Alan J. Pakula, director of All the President’s Men (died in 1998, darn it), and you have the villains in the tragic tale of the American newspaper’s self-congratulatory ossification. Ross Perot also will be 80 soon. We owe him one Bill Clinton-sized philippic. Ralph Nader is 76. High time that someone, metaphorically, flipped him in a Corvair. And Paul Ehrlich is 78. In these days of the graying workforce, baby bust, and demographic decline, surely he needs a population bomb in his underpants.
The Wings are one of the great franchises in sports, a perennial playoff team and an occupant of the past two Stanley Cup finals. But teams like that -- talented, savvy, experienced teams -- don't let young teams off the mat. They don't let upstarts embarrass them in their own building -- especially when a victory would have sent those kids home.
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Let's be blunt. Dance time is over. If the Red Wings want to prove that they are still, when it counts, the Red Wings, if they want to prove that being a five seed was just a number, not an evaluation, they will have to pluck some new strings out in the desert Tuesday night.
Because they are suddenly out of tune.
And soon to be out of time.
4. Brewing is Woman’s WorkIn ancient and medieval times the job of making beer fell to women. In some cultures it was considered such an honor that only beautiful or noble women could do it. In medieval Europe brewing was one of a housewife’s regular tasks, just like cooking and cleaning and baby making. Some of these women became famous for being exceptional brewers and started supplying people other than their own families.
In much the same way, the Deemocrats are deeming their health bill to control costs rather than actually controlling them. Medicare doesn't reimburse doctors the cost of treating the patient; it reimburses what the bureaucracy "deems" it to have cost. In a deemocracy, this works. In real life, it's more problematic.
Investor's Business Daily argues that the "health" debate is really a proxy fight on the size and role of government. According to their poll, 64% of people think the federal government has "too much power." Correct. But a big chunk of that 64% voted less than 18 months ago for a man and a party explicitly committed to more government with more power, and they're now living with the consequences.
Obama is government, and government is Obama. That's all he knows and all he's ever known. You elected to the highest office in the land a man who's never run a business or created wealth or made a payroll, and for his entire adult life has hung out with guys who've demonized such grubby activities. Obama's Cabinet has less experience of private business than any in the last century. What it knows is government, and government's default mode is to grow, and grow.
MUNICH—Beer enthusiasts might want to keep closer tabs on the Catholic calendar. Two weeks after Fasching, or Fat Tuesday, each year, a short list of local celebrities gathers at the Paulaner cellar in Munich to watch an honorary braumeister drive a brass tap into a new keg. The content he unleashes is called "strong beer," and when it starts flowing, Starkbierzeit, or strong beer season, officially kicks off.
This is Munich's subdued and slightly delayed Mardi Gras of sorts. It's also described as the insider's Oktoberfest—there are still the party tents, but the beer is stronger and the crowds thinner.
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Befitting of its name, the beer is much stronger than what is served in late September—almost twice as potent. A byproduct of Germany's regulatory beer council, which flexes nearly as much muscle in its brewing judgments as the Supreme Court does in the States, is a set of guidelines for strong beer, or starkbier, that guarantees an alcohol percentage of at least 7.5%. Some weigh in at 9% alcohol, plenty potent to protect against the cold weather. (Standard Oktoberfest beers chalk up 4% to 6% alcohol.)
The "strong" in strong beer, however, doesn't refer to alcohol content, but rather to the heavy, full-bodied flavor, which 400 years ago was meant to be as much a meal as a tipple.
Starkbier is actually a doppelbock, or double bock beer, which is heavy on malt. It was first brewed by way of a religious loophole of sorts: In the mid 1600s at Munich's Neudeck ob der Au monastery, Paulaner monks concocted a beverage to sustain them through the Lent fast. They were forbidden to eat solid foods, but liquids were deemed acceptable. So they brewed the strongest, most nourishing beer they could come up with.Mmmm. Doppelbock. I'm thinking I might go on a beer quest this afternoon as I happen to know where there are Paulaner brews in stock. I saw some doppelbock hiding in the cooler the last time I was there, if I recall correctly. I might not be in Munich right now but I sure can drink the beer. Tis the season, and all that.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Sunday’s Olympic men’s hockey matchup between Canada and the United States is not the end of the world — not quite.
The loser will not be eliminated but will have to play an extra game to get to the quarterfinals. As this tournament has demonstrated, the more games a team plays, the more chances that something unexpected will happen.
Then there are the sociopolitical implications of the Canada-United States game.
"This is going to be unbelievable,” United States Coach Ron Wilson said. “It’s going to be on every TV in Canada and a good number in America. Anyone who is a hockey fan will be watching.
“It’s going to be a great day for hockey.”
That great day includes two other clashes between nations with a mutual history: Russia versus the Czech Republic to start the tripleheader at Canada Hockey Place, and Sweden versus Finland to end it.
The Right's Top 25 Journalists
The Left's Top 25 Journalists
God damn the Naughts. It was a perverse decade, in which that thing so many responsible people had agreed was the right thing to do, the removal of a dangerous, mass-murdering dictator, was strangely rendered not just unnecessary but an evil act by an unexpected twist of fate. The accusations of lies were themselves lies, all of it built on a tyrant’s framework of lies, that became an unquenchable fire that just burned hotter. It was as revolting as the stench of death.RTWT. It's very good.
That war dragged on and became a wretchedly divisive thing. Not only in the way it divided our nation. It cost people friendships. I saw some, friendships decades old, walk away. I walked away from others. It was an embittering experience. The thing that it became deepened political cynicism beyond what many of us might have imagined, as accusations of scheming met with accusations of political betrayal, cowardice, and opportunism., even as both sides claimed to represent the best interests of our nation, our soldiers and the world. It caused people to reconsider their allegiances.
The terrorist attacks on Sept 11, 2001, left a nation stunned, mourning and looking for answers. No one will ever forget the horrific images of airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center's North and South towers, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. In the days and weeks that followed, people turned to the Web to find timelines of what happened, photos and videos of the attacks and information about who was responsible. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida became household names.
Eventually, people began looking for sources of inspiration and healing. Images of the twin towers falling were replaced with one of ground zero's "Tribute in Light." Online memorials and dedications to the 2,976 victims became places of remembrance while people the world over searched for ways to help victims and their families. Iconic moments from "Saturday Night Live" (Lorne Michaels: "Can we be funny?" NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani: "Why start now?"), David Letterman and "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" gave people a reason to smile again.
