Silflay Hraka

8/10/2002





Stalking the Readers



This space for rent.


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Pamphlets? Are you insane?


Normally I'd expect to see this linked over at Glenn's place, or perhaps Bill's. They must be enjoying the weekend. The NYT compares bloggers to pamphleteers. Bloggers are right-wing and have websites. Pamphleteers are left-wing and don't.

The war on terrorism may be giving new life to the old-fashioned pamphlet as well. This winter, "9-11," a stinging indictment of American foreign policy packed into a 125-page, pocket-size pamphlet by the M.I.T. linguist Noam Chomsky, became a best seller in five countries, setting a new sales record for the Open Media pamphlet series published by Seven Stories Press. Begun during the Persian Gulf war in 1991 by a pair of Rutgers University graduates hawking Xeroxed copies of an antiwar tract on New York City street corners, the Open Media pamphlets now appear as glossy bound little books on hot-button topics — terrorism, the Middle East, civil liberties — by scholars like the radical historian Howard Zinn.

Blogging can be like a conversation. Pamphlets are lectures. Noam Chomsky writes pamphlets because Noam Chomsky isn't interested in your views or your comments, because Noam Chomsky is omniscient. The most enlightened among us can drink from the fountain of distilled wisdom that is his pamphlet. The NYT writes about him because the NYT likes being America's paper of record, and the rise of pamphleteering doesn't threaten that position. Blogging does, until you find someway to dismiss it.

"We wanted to explore a serious issue using a novel medium, " said Paul Grabowicz, director of new media programming at the school and a co- teacher of the course. "When you have journalists sitting down to write a weblog, what happens to objectivity? Obviously, a weblog is far more interactive. It starts to mix journalists and their sources together. Then you have those people responding to postings on weblogs: What do you do with those?"

The implication here is that bloggers aren't objective, and that is a bad thing. Horror of horrors! I find it hard to believe that anyone nowadays still holds the belief that the media is objective. Certainly the NYT is not, and I say that as a person who reads the majority of it, at least on the web, every day. Here's a surprise for Mr. Raines, I don't want or care for objective reporting. I want honest reporting. Ernie Pyle was an honest reporter. Edward R. Murrow was an honest reporter. You know who I bet considers themselves objective reporters? Damn near every member of every local news team anywhere in the US, which is why local news is dying. Objective reporting, truly objective reporting, is very rare, and boring as hell.


The vast majority of bloggers are not only honest, but intellectually honest. We learn from our mistakes. In story after story, from the civilian casualties in Afghanistan to the "melting" of Alaska, the NYT demonstrates that it does not learn from its mistakes, nor does it care to. Its fiction of "objectivity" is the garish mask of make-up you find on the face of an elderly whore, one who insists she's still a virgin. I feel like a Soviet citizen, parsing the stories in Pravda to determine the truth.

And finally, pamphlet's? What is up with that? Are these people congenitally stupid? A pamphet is going to reach, at max, a few hundred people a day.

Noam Chomsky, meet Jack T. Chick. He's as looney toons as you are, but at least he has the sense to put up a website as well as printing out his little screeds. He reaches thousands more people that way, you idiot. In the contest between your ideas and Mr. Chick's, he's winning. The idea that you think some sort of Xerox'ed zine is the best way to communicate your ideas is the best argument against them. If you had any sense, any goddamn sense at all in that woolly head of yours, you'd have a website. The fact that you get trotted out as a member of the "left" by the media is the single best argument I can think of against the idea that the media is left wing.

Now that I think about it, the fact that you don't put your ideas on the web is a strong argument that you don't care enough about them to present them well. My god, you must be cynical, to keep flogging the same tired crap even after you've discovered you don't believe it yourself.

Update: Turns out we've been compared to pamphleteers before. Thanks to Andrea for the heads-up


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8/09/2002




Aussies Stage Beer Can Boat Race

When I was younger, there was a point in the evening that we called "Going to Florida." It's from the Larry Miller's Five Levels of Drinking. It's that point in the evening where the stupidest crap in the world makes perfect sense. Down Under they must refer to this as the "Let's make Something from the Empties" point. It's Australian for "Severe Lacerations."

DARWIN, Australia (AP) - Some Aussies know how to recycle their empties: by sailing them. Last Sunday, nine boats competed in the 28th Darwin Beer Can Regatta.

8 of them beat Dennis Connor

The boats have to be made from empty beer cans. An estimated 10,000 people watched the race from the beach in Australia's self-described beer capital. But some of the sailors may have had a little too much of the raw material. Some of the boats went to the bottom shortly after the start of the race. Winning skipper Adam Davey of Melbourne admits he was little surprised his boat would actually float.

How in God's name do you get to be the Beer capital of Australia? It's got be as hard as being the Redneck Capitol of South Carolina, if not harder. The competition must be fierce. How do you win? Is there an annual event that determines the winner? Are there announcers?


Andy Raymond: "G'day to all and welcome to the Fifteenth Annual Australia Beer Capital Competition, brought to you by Victoria Beer! And by Foster's, since we're hoping to get picked up by ESPN and it's the only goddam beer the friggin Yank's have ever heard of. Foster's! It's Australian for donkey whiz. I'm here with Eric Bischoff, our color commentator and Lilian Garcia, who going ta show us 'er tits and mangle the live interviews. Eric?"

Eric: "Wall, it looks to be a good day for a booze-up, Andy. The temperatures are hot enough so that we can expect a massive wave of dis-robing somewhere after the Tenth round, but not so hot that it's going to affect our beefier competitors. I expect we'll be seeing some fine drinking today, Andy."

Andy: "Lets get right to it, folks. Here's the event list. We've go the Stout Feller Stout Stoat Catch, where your heftier members of the town drink five pints of Cooper's Best Extra Stout, chase down and capture a live weasel in their empty stein. Afterwards is the Budweiser taste test, where famous Australians must correctly distiguish between Chicago tap water, urine, and Budweiser.

Eric: "Always the toughest event of the day, Andy. I can't help but think of the year Paul Mercurio projectile vomited his first Bud into his nearest competitor's mugs.

Andy: "Hazards of the Game, Eric. And Ms. Kidman showed her true colors in winning the event anyway. Speaking of Paul, I believe Lilian is with him down at the Pig & Whistle. Lilian?"

...............

Andy: "Damn the woman. Go to commercial!"


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8/08/2002




War Now discovers the umma in Tonga. I'm not sure, but I think the story is tonga in cheeka.


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More readings from the New Perfect Manhood

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Part 7 - Facts a Young Husband Should Know

Don't marry young. Whoops, too late!

The vagina of a virgin is normally guarded by a delicate membrane, called the hymen.

As in "Hi, men! Come near me and the next thing you feel will be pa's shotgun in your quivering buttocks!"

The hymen contains a small opening about the size of a lead pencil, through which passes the menstrual flow.

For all you kayakers, this constriction of the passageway generates rapids rated Class 3 and up. For the non-kayakers, here are the American Standard Vagina Rapids Classifications.

Class 1 -- few ripples, maybe some small waves and few, if any, obstacles.
Class 2 -- easy rapids; wide channels with little maneuvering necessary.
Class 3 -- more difficult rapids with large waves; narrow passages requiring maneuvering.
Class 4 -- large, long and difficult rapids that usually require precise maneuvering.
Class 5 -- terrifically difficult, extended and often violent rapids with constricted passageways.
Class 6 -- generally considered unrunnable. Experts only.


The hymen, if not broken before marriage, is broken at the time marriage is consummated.

Proceed with caution, as the shards can be sharp.

Naturally, this is attended with more or less pain.

As I said, sharp. Most men seem to find a way to continue, despite the terrific pain they suffer at this time.

Where the hymen is quite tough and strong, the pain is considerable.

It will wring your manhood as the cook does a chicken's neck. But don't back out now, man. Think of England!

Under normal sexual excitement the vagina secrets a lubricating mucus with aids in the sexual act.

Do not, and I cannot stress this strongly enough, offer her any of your mucus if you think the supply is running short.

Nearly all girls have heard frightful stories of the sufferings experienced by some women the night after marriage.

They wake the next morning unfulfilled, slathered in someone else's mucus, and legally bound to a husband whining about how sore he is.

This explains, in part, why nearly all brides have no little hesitancy and dread as the first night after marriage approaches.

Calm her fears by explaining that you have warded yourself against hymen shards by means of a thick application of coal tar.

When the bride has complete confidence in her husband and he has caressed and loved her as he should, she will, at the proper time, invite the consummation of marriage.

Look for a small notecard on the bedside table with the letters R.S.V.P. written on it. Under no means proceed without it, as this would be rude.

By this time nature will have prepared her for this new experience.

Nature achieves this through a complex process involving the fermentation of grains, colorful small umbrellas and oddly shaped glasses.

Any pain will now be greatly reduced and unnoticed by her.

Better put on some more coal tar just to be safe, though

Next: Proof of Virginity after the Consummation of Marriage.

Kind of late to be worrying abou that now, don't you think?


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We just had a visitor from western Canada (Using shawcable.com 24.80.198.203) who found us via a search on bagdhad +temperature (yes, I know it's mispelled).

Now who from western canada would want to know the temperature in baghdad?

I bet one of these guys would. Maybe he's deciding what to pack?

Update: If it is military, that's the fourth one in the last three hours, which is unusually high for me. Anyone else noticing this? mmmmmm......paranoia.

Update: Because you know, the most logical thing in the world to do is to go visit some blogs before you head out overseas.


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Surely you've already heard that the speed of light may vary over time. But should you be the one person in then world who reads only this blog (Hi Mom!), then you'll appreciate my unflagging devotion.


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Microsoft decides that if you can't fix it, then there's no point in calling it a "security vulnerability"


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I don't normally describe things as "touching." It's just not the way I think of things. This story of a little girl meeting her genius sperm donor dad for the first time can only be described that way, though.


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Slate has a copy of the Pentagon Powerpoint Presentation (ahhhh, alliteration) arguing that the Saudi's are our chief enemy.


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8/07/2002





Bring back Ian!


Just before I went on vaction, Bill Quick posted a note on Zimbabwe that created a mild ruckus in his comments section. I'd planned on posting about something about this before we left, but didn't get time to. I'd forgotten about it until I saw his link to this story on Zimbabwe's famine yesterday. I went back and read through the comments log for the original post again, where I found this quote.

"Ian Smith promised the whites who elected him Prime Minister of Rhodesia in 1982 that he would keep Rhodesia white, at any cost. To stop the black guerrilla fighters trying to overthrow his regime, Smith rationed food for Africans whom he believed were feeding the guerrillas. This cruel measure only served to starve the already undernourished black population. Studies found that over 90% of Rhodesia's black children were malnourished and nutritional deficiencies were the major cause of infant death."

The story is just plain wrong, as Ian Smith left office in 1979 and Robert Mugabe was elected to power in 1980. There's only one other site on the web that even mentions the story, and it places it in 1962, when the Prime Minister of Rhodesia was not Ian Smith, but Winston Field. If Ian did do such a thing, then he's got balls of solid steel, because he lived in Zimbabwe until Mugabe stripped his citizenhip from him in March. You'd think the originator of such a policy would have felt a little retribution before then.

But for the sake of argument, let's assume that it's true.

That makes Ian Smith a bastard, and we know Robert Mugabe is a bastard, right? But which is worse? Can a comparison be made? The last available data for Rhodesia comes from 1974. I've posted it with comparative Zimbabwean data from the last two years.

Infant mortality rate
Rhodesia - 1974 - 33.5 per 1000 births
Zimbabwe - 2001 - 62.6 per 1000 births

Death Rate
Rhodesia - 1974 - 14.4 deaths/1,000 population
Zimbabwe - 2001 - 23.22 deaths/1,000 population

Birth Rate
Rhodesia - 1974 - 47.9 births/1,000 population
Zimbabwe- 2001 - 24.68 births/1,000 population

Male Life Expectancy
Rhodesia - 1974 - 50
Zimbabwe - 2001 - 41

Female Life Expectancy
Rhodesia - 1974 - 53
Zimbabwe - 2001 - 39

Population growth rate
Rhodesia - 1974 - 3.35%
Zimbabwe - 2001 - 0.9%

Now these numbers are obviously affected by the AIDS epidemic raging throughout Southern Africa, but an economic comparison may also be made. And the richer a country is, the less AIDS affects it at present, as there is more money to spend on treatment of the disease.

GDP is slightly harder to compare than health statistics, as the Rhodesian numbers from 1974 must be adjusted. The world almanac lists the GDP in Rhodesia for 1974 as $3.15 billion. I converted that amount to what it would be worth in the year 2000 using the inflation calculator found here. I did the same for the per capita GDP, which was listed at $502.

Adjusted GDP
Rhodesia - 1974 - 11.79 billion
Zimbabwe - 2000 - 7.19 billion

Adjusted GDP per capita
Rhodesia - 1974 - $1879.39
Zimbabwe - 2000 - $536

You'll see much higher numbers on many sites for the 2000 GDP numbers, if you bother to look. That's because many sites use number that have been adjusted according to Purchasing Power Parity. Click on the link and you can read all about it. I used the unadjusted numbers for 2000.

So, let's assume that in 1974 Ian Smith had been deliberately starving the black civilian portion of Rhodesia's population for 12 years. They were still better off under his racist, colonialist oppression than they are under Robert Mugabe. They were richer and lived longer.

Ah, you say, "But they weren't free!"

Umm. They're not free now.

Update: But they do have an air force!

Update: Cornfield Commentary informs me that Mugabe has rejected a shipment of corn intended for his starving citizens on the grounds that some of it was genetically modifed. It'll make him more popular in Berkeley, at least.


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Only three wheels away from being an event at the X-games.


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Feel the need to bitch to a live person at Blogger when you have problems? Well, you can't. But you can leave a message, which is still more satisfying that going through the "help" process.

Here are numbers you can call.

415-538-8404 (listed as contact info for blogger.com and blogspot.com at register.com)
415-824-5293 (listed as contact info for pyra.com at register.com)
408-871-9420 (listed as contact info for evhead.com at register.com)


And here's the president's email addresses: ev AT evhead.com, ev AT sonic.net, and ev AT pyra.com. Funny how he doesn't list any contact info at his personal blog.

Should you wish to try snail mail, which is probably just as fast, write to here.

Evan Williams
735 W. Sexton Road
Sebastopol, CA, 95472

or

Evan Williams
1386 Church Street
San Francisco, CA 94114

or

Evan Williams
350 Townsend St., Ste 110
San Francisco, CA 94107

I'm sure I'll hear back from them(right), for I actually paid to upgrade to Blogger Pro (must remember not to hold my breath). I called and bitched about my archive problem to the tape machine, because now I can't even submit a duplicate post of the one they've lost to certain days in the archives! All I get is line after line of error messages like this;

FTP Results

Errors:
code: 553
message: Permission denied.
file: /tmp/blogmover/3444451/archives/2002_07_14_silflayhraka_archive.html
code: 553
message: Permission denied.
file: /tmp/blogmover/3444451/archives/2002_06_30_silflayhraka_archive.html

If I had to guess, I would bet that the company has a problem on the Blogger Pro servers with archives of posts originally created and probably still stored on the free blogspot servers. On the plus side, permissions problems are usually easy to fix. On the minus side, it argues that they haven't got enough staff to even fix the "easy problems".


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You can call it a vacation if you want to. Call it whatever you want to call it. I know a trip to the vet when I see one.


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The Saudi's make their position absolutely clear

Saudi Arabia has made clear to Washington — publicly and privately — that the U.S. military will not be allowed to use the kingdom's soil in any way for an attack on Iraq, Foreign Minister Prince Saud said Wednesday.

"We hope this does not prevent you from remaining in the region as our bitch," He continued, as an ecstatic Colin Powell spitshined his shoes.

Saud said in an interview with The Associated Press that his country opposes any U.S. operation against Iraq "because we believe it is not needed, especially now that Iraq is moving to implement United Nations ( news - web sites) resolutions."

Iraq cleared its timetable with the Saudi's in advance, scheduling inspections to begin the day after Tel-Aviv is devoured by radioactive flame.

"We have told them we don't (want) them to use Saudi grounds" for any attack on Iraq, he said.

The term (want) used here is a close approximation of the Arabic term used by Saud. It has no literal counterpart in English, and roughly means "Your request offends me to the very marrow. Allah's curses upon your head, filthy pig-loving heathen."

With speculation building about possible U.S. military action. Iraq last week invited U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix to Baghdad for talks that could lead to a resumption of the inspections after more than 3 years.

And because Saddam needs hostages like Mars needs women.

President Bush ( news - web sites) has said he is committed to a regime change in Iraq, and Washington has dismissed the Blix invitation as a ploy.

Technically he dismissed it as a "Whatta ya call it, a duplitous, a dutplipous, a duplicioun, a...a, oh the hell with it. A ploy."

In a letter replying to the Iraqi offer, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan ( news - web sites) told Baghdad it must accept the Security Council's terms for the return of weapons inspectors.

P.S. A fictional appearance of acceptance is also fine, and is actually preferred. We're kind of short-handed, as most of my staff is busy with a sex tour of Bosnia.

Love and xxxx,

Kofi (puddin')


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8/06/2002




One of the main problems with blaming human activity for global warming is that the temperature rise is not uniform, as one ould expect if the cause of warming was earthbound.. The surface of the earth is getting warmer faster than the atmosphere is. But there is a theory of warming that accounts for the variation in temperatures. Cosmic Rays.


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Who watches the watchmen? Other watchmen, of course.
Photo courtesy of Harrumph


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Poetry and Notions.


I have this off-again on-again desire to prove to Unremitting Verse that whatever he can do, I can do worse. He posted some good new stuff last night, so I thought I'd do the same. He wrote rhyming haikus, I wrote rhyming haikus. He based his poems on news headlines, I based my poems on news headlines, assuming you accept Fark.com as a news site. He wrote well-crafted and pleasant poetry, I wrote...........well, I wrote these.

Early Morning Nude

Lady Godiva?
No, but her onlookers still
swallowed saliva.

The Seven Dollar Solution

Why coffin nail sales
are falling so fast, you ask?
Smuggling prevails!

Bleeping Lucky Guy!

Ozzie saves miners!
So yes, buy his albums, say
parents of minors.

A Modest Proposal

Enemy Saudis!
How to punish the princes?
Make them drive Audis.

Nose No Fear

The shark is his chum.
And all punning aside, don't
end up as his chum.

Monkey Mascot Made Mayor!

A monkey mascot,
elected! And Churchill seen
spinning, in casket.

Honor Among Thieves.

As Morgenthau said
"Millions gone." A good way to
dishonor our dead.

To the Dolphins, With Love

Sit here and revolve.
You'll keep playing bad football
until you evolve.

What a Jerk That Must Have Been

Hey mister, that's mine?
You were scared into coming?
Now that's asinine.

Not a Small World After All.

Move along, buddy.
Mickey don't like it, he's an
old fuddy-duddy.

Over a Rock and a Hard Place

A safe-sex Giant!
Perhaps he's awaiting a
giantess client?

Ballpark Economics

Get your cookies here?
Kids, better profits are made
in selling cold beer.

Fire in the Hole!

Admire fire?
This tunnel's no place for that
kind of desire.

Hi! Who Are You?

Dividing the twins--
letting them see, at last, how
the other half grins.

Here Comes The King.

The saviour drank wine.
Perhaps that is why someone
defaced your big sign.

A Contortionist's Lament.

Dodge Neon trunk sex,
Losing a pound of good pot.
My mom will be vexed.

All links via Fark


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Postscript: First time visitor to House Hraka? Wondering if everything we produce could possibly be as brilliant/stupid/evil/pedantic/insipid/inspired as the post you just read? Check out the Hraka Essentials, the (mostly) reader-selected guide to Hraka's best posts, and decide for yourself. Also, you're currently at the old site. Fresh Hraka is posted every day at our current location.

Postscript: First time visitor to House Hraka? Wondering if everything we produce could possibly be as brilliant/stupid/evil/pedantic/insipid/inspired as the post you just read? Check out the Hraka Essentials, the (mostly) reader-selected guide to Hraka's best posts, and decide for yourself. Also, you're currently at the old site. Fresh Hraka is posted every day at our current location.




The truth is over...here?


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8/05/2002





The Soundtrack of My Life

The first part of the Soundtrack is here.

Welcome to the Jingle.

Not all of my soundtrack comes from the record industry. A lot of it comes from the beer industry. I was nowhere near the drinking age for the entire decade, but demon alcohol already had me firmly in its musical grasp.

Colt 45 Malt Liquor - I was late learning to whistle. My younger brother learned before I did, which was galling enough that I forced myself to learn, practicing in the bathroom to get away from the family, because it just would not do to let them know that I, the eldest son, had to struggle to do anything. My whistling, when it appeared, would be fully toned and mature, with no lost notes or sudden dry lip conditions. I would present it to the world nonchalantly, as a skill I had always had but had not deigned to share. "This little thing? Oh, it's just something I picked up a while back. Don't even remember, actually. Fancy a bit more of the Rimsky-Korsakov?" Colt 45 was my first idea of what the epitome of cool was. James Bond drank Colt 45--I was sure of it.

The Colt 45 theme was the first thing I learned to whistle, and I whistled it again and again, until it was note perfect. It became such an integral part of my concentration process that I was apt to find myself whisting it while reading, or pulling the legs off crickets and feeding them to the ants, or taking an exam. Now, 25 years later, the malt liquor ad still slids occasionally past my lips without a second thought.

Here Comes The King - Budweiser

I don't drink Bud. We used to crawl around in the bushes outside the Louisburg college dormitories to gather up the beer cans the college students dropped out the windows when they were done with them, and nothing puts you off beer faster than a Bud that has baked cigarette butts, the occasional condom and a cup or so of stale alcohol in the southern heat for a week or two. I'd dump the resultant brown, half-solid mixture onto the ground, gagging all the while, and toss the can into a plastic bag holding 20 or 30 others. Eventually the entire lot would be lugged home for a little Daisy Red Ryder target practice. The end of spring semester was bonanza time, when the student body cast off the surly bonds of Methodism and drank like Baptists. The yield was enormous, enough to fill each of the 30 gallon plastic trash bags carried by our group of 5 or 6 pre-adolescents. We looked, and smelled, like the town's smallest, dirtiest drunks, dragging enormous leaking bags of aluminum cans down the street from the college to our backyard, singing all the while;

Here comes the king,
Here comes the big Number One,
Bom Bom Bom Bom Bom
Budweiser Beer the king is second to none.
Bom Bom Bom Bom Bom
The king is coming, let it be known;
When you've said Bud, you've said it all,
When you've said Bud, you've said it all.
da da da da da da da da da da da

We'd set the cans up in rank after serried rank on top of the 6 foot wooden telephone cable spools we had stolen from the town maintenance yard and plink at them until they were all shot down. Then we'd do it again. Full beers were gold beyond compare. Not because we drank them, but because a dead-on shot from a Daisy ten-pump rifle into a hot, shaken up Budweiser was a sight to behold. I swear I once saw one shoot 30 feet into the air, propelled upwards by expolding foam like a rocket. I'd like to know what the garbagemen said amongst themselves about the preacher's family that went through five cases of beer a week, then shot them all up for giggles.

Later it became a song of triumph. You can keep your "We are the Champions". I had "Here comes the King". The camp on the coast I went to every summer sent groups of us out in little sailboats for overnight trips. The competition to get to each night's campground was intense, and there were no rules. If you got there faster by paddling, then you paddled. We didn't sail around sandbars, we got out and dragged the boat over them. For two glorious weeks I was paired another kid, name of Jack. We were the outcasts in our 16 member group. Compared to the rest of the group, I was young, and underdeveloped, and geeky to boot. The rest of the guys had hair where I did not, so I took my showers in the wee hours, and I wore a bathing suit. They flexed and bragged and did the normal dumb-ass things boys do in front of girls their age at the beach. I did algebraic expressions in the sand. Jack...well if Jack wasn't retarded, he was within hailing distance. Nowadays he'd be on ritalin five minutes after he walked onto the school grounds. But he was big, and he took orders well, and he could lie on the front of a Sunfish and paddle like a metronome for hours as long as you kept him distracted. We won every race, so we'd sing for ourselves on the way in, beach our boat and sing triumphantly at the second and third place boats as they pulled in. That the summer Jack learned, for what I'm pretty sure was the first time in his life, what it felt like to be the king.

Next: The Clash

Update: The Fusilier Pundit has a soundtrack too.

What does the soundtrack of your life sound like?


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Iran might be cracking open like a rotten egg. And Glenn Frazier's scooped everyone.

Update: Not all the Iranians were out rioting. There was at least one fellow from 195.146.38.19 (tavana.net) who was looking for "arab woman with big udder sex photo" when he visited us. Undermine that system from within, boss. We're pulling for you.


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Mom wrote a thank you poem to the owners (Med and Louise) of the beach house we we stayed in at the end of July. Thanks, Madre!
Explanatory note: Taylor is Ngnat's real name. Ethan is her one-year-old cousin. Deck's Delight is the name of the cottage.

THE REAL DECKS DELIGHT

Nothing is quite like
sun and sand and surf
to sweep away stress and worry,
or to open up the windows of our minds
to breezes that refresh and renew.

Nothing is so satisfying as
to gather with our progeny
in a cut-throat game of wits,
to fish from the pier
and catch nothing but eels and stingrays,
to dig trenches and build sand castles
and wait for the waves to overcome them
before heading in for supper.

No pleasure is greater than passing time
with the babies of our own babies–
watching and enjoying from afar
those little things we could not appreciate so well before
because we were too close
and they were so constant.

Add to these pleasures a lovely space–
decks and porches and rooms
of green and yellow and gold
and plenty of bathrooms!
A space with just enough friendly rust and wear
that we don’t have to worry that
Taylor’s spaghetti-o’s will ruin the carpet
or that the weapon Ethan made of the Lazy Boy handle
will mar the decor,
nor be concerned–thanks to Med’s yellow rope–
that they will tumble to disaster
below the porch.

The heat did soar to one hundred
and the sea breezes just did not blow,.
but our Decks Delight
was not in weather.
It was in each other
and in you.

Thank you, Med and Louise, for the real Decks Delight.


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We're #1. For the Yahoo search on the words " ken lay is a crooked bastard"


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Found this today. Wish I'd found it earlier.

Thousands of Palestinians are desperately trying to immigrate to the United States, and finding it difficult since their usual route of transit — the hated Tel Aviv airport — is now closed to them. Such would-be refugees may voice overwhelming support for Saddam Hussein, celebrate the news of September 11, and in polls attest their dislike of America. Yet, given the chance, thousands would gladly move to the country they profess to despise. And why not? Where else would they have freedom to say what they please, pursue their dreams of economic security — and protest that their newly adopted country is both amoral and shortsighted in its Middle Eastern policy. --Victor Davis Hanson


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Some people have been making gloom and doom predictions for years.
The religious have been making gloom and doom predictions for centuries.
Economists have been making bad predictions for years.
I've been making bad predictions for weeks.
Science fiction writers and technologists thought we'd have colonies on the moon by now.
The only prediction for the future that I ever saw that made any sense was Julian Simon's, and his was counter-intuitive at the time
Nearly all predictions turn out to be wrong.

So why is everyone all concerned about what John Derbyshire has to predict?
Link via harrumph!

Update: the Rat's Nest also talks about Derbyshire


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Mayflies


Two of the oldest zigzagged aimlessly over the waters of a trout stream, discussing history with some younger members of the evening hatching.
"You don't get the kind of sun now that you used to get, " said one of them.
"You're right there. We had proper sun in the good, old hours. It were all yellow, None of this red stuff."
"It was higher, too."
"It was. you're right"
"And nymphs and larvae showed you a bit of respect."
"They did. They did," said the other mayfly vehemently.
"I reckon, if mayflies these hours behaved a bit better, we'd still be having proper sun."
The younger mayflies listened politely.
"I remember," said one of the oldest mayflies, "when all this was fields, as far as you could see."
The younger mayflies looked around.
"It's still fields," one of them ventured, after a polite interval.
"I remember when it was better fields," said the old mayfly sharply.
"Yeah," said his colleague. "And there was a cow."
"That's right! You're right! I remeber that cow! Stood right over there for, oh, forty, fifty minutes. It was brown, as I recall."
"You don't get cows like that these hours."
"You don't get cows at all."
"What's a cow?" said one of the hatchlings.
"See?" said the oldest mayfly triumphantly.

From Reaper Man, By Terry Pratchett.


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8/04/2002




Sunday Night TV with the wife.

I can't watch Sex and the City anymore. Carrie is freaking hideous.

Anna Nicole Smith is drugged out of her skull and carrying 5000 extra pounds. U.g.l.y. she ain't got no alibi. She makes Carrie look like...like....someone who would be pretty if I could get her bird-excrement eyeshadow out of my mind. Plus, Anna is a complete and total idiot. Dumbass extraordinare. Went to to school on the short bus, her brain in a matchbox is like a bb in boxcar, President and Chief Executive of Moron Incorporated. My god that woman is stupid.

Update: A Small Victory knows her well.


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Soundtrack


Thursday was a good day. Provided the solution to a couple of things that weren't my responsibility, reached the bus-stop 30 seconds before the bus, saw a traffic jam just before the last-turn off on the way home and hit the two lane scenic route instead. The nice thing about the Triangle is that unless you are in the absolute heart of downtown Raleigh or Durham, you're 10 minutes from the country. The scenic route only adds about 5 minutes to the trip, a good chunk of which is determined by the line of cars on either side of the one lane bridge that I hit halfway there.

So the sun is shining, I'm speeding along without another vehicle in site, and John Hiatt's Slow Turning kicks in on the cd player. I crank it without thinking, even though the song had barely registered with me before. Thirty seconds later I'm experiencing the kind of inconsequential delight that Hollywood does so well. A director sticks 10 seconds of helicopter cam on the screen showing a couple of starlets in a convertible, burning rubber on the two-lane to Las Vegas, wind in their face and sun in their hair, with the chorus of "Walking on Sunshine" on the radio, and he's reproduced that feeling without a word. It's a moment of ineffable joy, evaporating away as soon as it is born. There are songs that have been able to do this to me all my life, songs that make me feel, just for an instant, like I'm in a movie. I keep a list in my head of those songs, ones that punctuate my life during moments of joy, or the ones of pain and sadness. Others immediately make me recall a certain event, or a person, or an attitude that I tried on during adolescence. I call them my soundtrack songs. If my life was filmed, though at present I see no reason why on earth anyone would want to do that, these are the songs on the soundtrack album. In case you're wondering, I'm played by Steve Buscemi.

Here's a list. It's roughly chronological, based on when the song hit me rather than when it came out. Some of the songs are recurrent themes, like the one that plays whenever Darth Vader appears. Others are incidental music, played to illuminate a single moment. Some are songs from another's soundtrack, songs that became part of mine because of their effect on my life. Not all of them are good, as you'll see rather quickly. The movie would have to run extremely long to fit them all in, as well. I'd like to link to each and let you hear them, but that bitch Hilary killed music on the web.

The 60's

Snoopy's Christmas - The Royal Guardsmen - Until Ngnat was born, I had forgotten this song. Something about having a child triggered a memory of it. I knew it by heart at three, according to my parents. Dad took me to the rest home in Louisburg to sing it for the old folks one Christmas. I couldn't have been older than 5. I've always wondered what the WWI vets thought of the performance. Here they are, having coughed for fifty years because of the Kraut's mustard gas, and this all this little bastard knows of their pains is a song about a cartoon dog. Napster let me track it down. Thanks to Napster, I have almost the entire soundtrack of my life stored on my hard drive. That was impossible before, and the RIAA wants to make it impossible again. Which is why I buy all my compact discs on the secondhand market. They will never, ever, get a another penny of mine.

The 70's


Convoy - C.W.McCall - I had a cheap walkie-talkie that would sometimes pick up CB transmissions from truckers as the took the bypass (such as it was) around Louisburg. I'd put the 45 in the record player, spout some DJ babble into it, and hold the transmission button down for the whole song. Then I'd do it again.

Pilot of the Airwaves - Charlie Dore I've always been a sucker for a-cappella rock intros.

Love is Like Oxygen - Sweet

In America - Charlie Daniels Band - Man, was this sucker jingoistic. I'm pretty sure it was in response to the Iranian hostage crisis, or maybe the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. I played it again and again and again. I sang it out loud. I also played The Devil Went Down to Georgia, probably even more, but the memory of this just makes me cringe.

The Streak - Ray Stevens - We had a three songs for a quarter jukebox at the summer pool/country club dad managed for a few years. One crowded Saturday in July, I put two dollars into it and played that song 24 times in a row. My, was that popular.

Other summer pool songs from that era. The older teenagers would play Rook for hours at a time on the deck beside the clubhouse. We'd crowd in around them to watch the strategy, to stare at Annie Tully and Sonya in their bikinis and listen to John McDonald and Robert crack wise. Eventually, they would let us play a hand as they went to cool off in the pool, or to get a Coke and some Nabs. Oh, the joy of hanging with the cool kids. These songs all feel to me like the sun on the back of my neck, and smell like chlorine and coconut tanning oil.

Only The Good Die Young - Billy Joel
The Night Chicago Died - Paper Lace
Blackwater - The Doobie Brothers Oh blackwater, keep on rolling, Mississippi moon won't you keep on shining on me.
Cheeseburger in Paradise - Jimmy Buffett
Heartbreaker - Nantucket - I hated Pat Benatar for taking this title and making a more popular song with it.
Gold - John Stewart

Dj Music - Our church group would occasionally pool all our music, open up the fellowship hall in the basement of the church, and dance the night away. We were Methodists, so it was ok. The Baptist kids couldn't do the same, but they were allowed to come to our dances. I would DJ and occasionally dance. Mostly, as is the lot of the AV kid, I dj'ed. Not that I had a lot to choose from.

Play that Funky Music - Wild Cherry - Without question the absolute #1 disco hit of all time at the Louisburg United Methodist Church
Carwash - Rose Royce
Instant Replay - Dan Hartman - A girl once forced me to play this 8 times in a two hour period. Or her breasts did. It was a confusing time.
Radio Radio - Evis Costello - A buzzsaw. This song, this one song, killed disco at the church forever. It also killed the dances. Why we never had one again I don't recall, but it was the last song of the last dance ever. I danced with a girl who was later Miss Congeniality at the state pageant. None of the other girls danced, so it was me and Martha, and five other guys dancing alone on the cracked checkerboard tile, while the cream of Louisburg teen society looked at us as if we had all grown second heads. Thanks Martha.

I was going to do all the decades up to now, but I haven't even finished the 70's yet. So I'll continue tomorrow.

Update: Part Two is here.

What does the soundtrack of your life sound like?


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Postscript: First time visitor to House Hraka? Wondering if everything we produce could possibly be as brilliant/stupid/evil/pedantic/insipid/inspired as the post you just read? Check out the Hraka Essentials, the (mostly) reader-selected guide to Hraka's best posts, and decide for yourself. Also, you're currently at the old site. Fresh Hraka is posted every day at our current location.

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