Nobody 708
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Nobody # 708
Nobody Asked Me But:
Did you know: that more ice cream is sold on Sunday than any other
day of the week? This probably explains the almost-out-the-door line when we stopped at Fos
selman’s last Sunday for our malts.<<<
James Lee Burke is incredible. In his new book, “The Tin Roof Blowdown,” the greatest of modern mystery writers looks at crimes committed in and on New Orleans during and after Katrina. He finds villains and rogues from the top down and from the bottom up - from the indifferent George Bush to the corruption of renegades w
ithin the NOPD, from inept government at almost every level, to gangbangers who looted and killed without discrimination. But not all were bad. In the following paragraph, Burke describes a group of heroes.
"The United States Coast Guard flew nonstop, coming in low with the sun at their backs, tak
ing sniper fire, swinging from cables, the downdraft of their choppers cutting a trough through the water. They took the children, the elderly and the sick first and tried to come back for the others later. They chopped holes in roofs and strapped hoists on terrified people who had never flown in an airplane. They held infants against their breasts and fat women who weighed 300 pounds, and carried them above the water with a grace we associate with angels. They rescued more than thirty-three thousand souls, and no matter what else happens in our history, no group will ever exceed the level of courage and devotion they demonstrated following Katrina’s landfall.
Burke also has his characters point out that while LBJ Johnson had his Vietnam and Bush his Iraq where both failed miserably, it was a different story when natural disaster struck.
Clete Purcell to Dave Robicheaux: “Did you see that big plane that flew over?”
Dave: “No I didn’t.”
Clete: “It was Air Force One. After three days the shrubster did a fly-over. Gee, I feel better now.”
Later in the book, Helen Soileau, Dave’s boss, compares Bush-Katrina with LBJ-Betsy.
Sileau:
“When Hurricane Betsy hit New Orleans in ’65, Johnson flew into town and went to a shelter full of people who had been evacuated from Algiers. It was dark inside and people were scared and didn’t know what was going to happen to them. He shined a flashlight in his face and said, ‘My name is Lyndon Baines Johnson. I’m your goddamn president and I’m here to tell you my office and the people of the United States are behind you.’”<<<
We received a letter from Kaiser last week. They are again having a sale on cosmetic surgery. I think our health provider is on dangerous ethical ground here. Sometimes there is a fine line between cosmetic and necessary. If cosmetic is pure profit, will they not be tempted to urge their physicians, in borderline cases, to opt for it over care covered by insurance?
A provider should not also be a seller.<<<
756, and the record belongs to Bonds. It is too bad that the Commissioner and many sports writers around the country couldn’t have dropped the negative for a day and followed the example of the LA Times baseball columnist Bill Shaikin who wrote:
"This was not the day for those issues, as Aaron understood and Selig did not. This was the day for remembering what my mother told me, and your mother told you: If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.”
JIM’S WISDOM (a name, not a claim)
UP: School days, school days, dear old golden rule days. (see picture – The girl in black is a friend, Lily, in red, is too young. As for the rest, Arianna is on her way to day 1, Emily to day 1 in middle school and the man of the bunch – Ryan – is a top-dog 8th grader.)
UP: Emily, again, for getting her 6th-gr
ade locker open on her second try.
DOWN: The naysayers who discount global warning just because NASA has learned that 1934, not 1998, was the hottest year of the century. Any reasonable person knows that the heat spike in ’34 was due to my birth.
DOWN: Congressional Democrats for once again blowing their chance. With much public fanfare they should have delayed the legislative summer vacation until either more was accomplished or their Republican colleagues were seen as the obstructionists they are.
DOWN: Congressional Democrats again, at least those gutless ones who joined Bush last week in his newest attempt to weaken the Bill of Rights. Have they all forgotten these words of Ben Franklin?
"The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either."
DOWN: Paternalism and hypocrisy. In her fascinating column in last week’s Newsweek, Ann Quindlan writes about a “curious little mini-documentary” that showed up recently on YouTube. It was shot in front of an abortion clinic where a man asked demonstrators how long the prison sentence should be for women who have an abortion. Apparently the main answers he received were a dropped jaw and glazed eyes. The few who found their voices came up with such responses as: “It's murder, but she'll get her punishment from God.” “It's murder, but it depends on her state of mind.” “It's murder, but the penalty should be ... counseling?”
The anti-abortion crowd wants to criminalize the act but not the actor, not wanting to face either a prison system filled with women who make the choice or to answer for the tremendous national upheaval this would cause.
So some would punish the doctor, as if he or she went door-to-door selling abortions. That doesn’t compute. It is neither fair nor just.
At some point, the pro-life people are going to have to face the choice that their movement demands. Either they must punish the criminal or eliminate the crime.
UP: Tiger, yes, 62 ½ is all right.
UP: Gail Collins of the NY Times for this quote of the week:
“Most of the candidates from both parties have pets. In fact, so many of them have golden retrievers or labradors you can’t help but wonder if they rent them.”
DOWN: Democracy for the Middle East. The President has announced a new-old policy of sending arms and aid to prop up “friendly” authoritarian governments in the region. This policy is as stupid now as it has always been:
(1) We cannot hope to win any support from the people by reinforcing their masters.
(2) The region’s two main autocratic recipients, Suadi Arabia and Egypt, continue to take our money while giving aid and comfort to our terrorist enemies.
UP: Tucson, for setting a new record when their high reached only 80 degrees last Monday. The previous lowest high temperature for the date was 86, recorded in 1918. Of course the 2 inches of monsoon rain caused some problems. Maybe they could send an inch or so to us.
UP: Larry Hart, for being in the Tucson sports Hall of Fame. In my first teaching job in Ajo, Larry was the head football and baseball coach and the AD. I was his baseball assistant. Later he moved to Tucson where he won a state football championship at Flowing Wells.
I had coffee with Larry a couple of years ago while visiting Elizabeth. He is still a super person.
Down: Kiara Ashanti, a freelance writer (blogger really) who at the National Association of Black Journalists Presidential Forum Thursday asked Hillary why she was pushing for “socialized medicine.”
UP: Hillary for answering that she wasn’t and then asking Ashanti whether he thought Medicare was socialized medicine.
DOWN: Ashanti, for saying that “To a degree it is.” (When are people going to stop trying to resurrect the socialism scare that, in America, has never been more than a myth used to scare children and centrist voters?)
UP: Hillary, for her defense of Medicare, while, at the same time, pointing out that it is inadequate and that the U.S. as the only “advanced country” to have “so many of its citizens without health care.”
DOWN: Emily Dickenson, for this line I recently discovered from her poem, “The Day Came Slow Until Five O’Clock.”
“The orchard sparkled like a Jew.”
You, too, Emily?
LOWER THAN DOWN: The Weekly Standard and The New York Post, for claiming that the war’s critics hate the troops.<<<
Here’s novelist Mary Gordan (Final Payments, The Company of Women, Men and Angels, ) with interesting takes on Hillary and on life.
NY Times: Are you a Hillary Clinton supporter?
Gordon: I think no woman is electable in America, and particularly not Hillary, because she is married to this guy whom everyone is libidinally attached to. I think there is unconscious sexual jealousy of her among women.
NY Times: There’s one word in your new book that you use excessively — abashed. What do you feel so ashamed about?
Gordon: Not doing enough. I don’t help the poor. I don’t create political change. I could be tidier.<<<
I finished the second and last season of Rome this past week. It was incredibly good; although the last two episodes had so much nudity and sex that I had to avert my eyes.
Anyway, as I was saying, Rome most certainly deserves an honored place in television’s hall of fame. And did anyone notice that in the last few episodes James Purefoy, who played Anthony, looked like Brando’s Anthony?
And I like this line spoken by Anthony to his great love, Atia: (Polly Walker)
“I would go to Hades for you, Britain even.”<<<
A tornado grows in Brooklyn – last week.
Did you know that a spot in New York City is likely to be struck by an F-2 tornado just once every 20,000 to 50,000 years.<<<
I read this: There is a “strong probability” that the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain was caused by viruses that escaped somehow from a pair of veterinary laboratories.
And I see:
B-movie creatures making a midnight get-away so that they can carry out their nefarious plan to destroy humanity.<<<
In last Sunday’s Parade there was a short piece on the hottest on-screen chemistry of all time. They chose the following five:
Bogart and Bergman – “Casablanca”
Taylor and Burton – “Cleopatra”
Turner and Hurt – “Body Heat”
Lancaster and Kerr – “From Here To Eternity”
DiCaprio and Winslet –
“Titanic”
DiCaprio and Winslet? There is NO way that these two belong with the others. They barely created a spark. I would substitute John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara in “The Quiet Man.” The screen caught fire in every scene they shared.
Any other nominations?
Nobody # 708
Nobody Asked Me But:
Did you know: that more ice cream is sold on Sunday than any other
day of the week? This probably explains the almost-out-the-door line when we stopped at Fos
selman’s last Sunday for our malts.<<< James Lee Burke is incredible. In his new book, “The Tin Roof Blowdown,” the greatest of modern mystery writers looks at crimes committed in and on New Orleans during and after Katrina. He finds villains and rogues from the top down and from the bottom up - from the indifferent George Bush to the corruption of renegades w
ithin the NOPD, from inept government at almost every level, to gangbangers who looted and killed without discrimination. But not all were bad. In the following paragraph, Burke describes a group of heroes."The United States Coast Guard flew nonstop, coming in low with the sun at their backs, tak
ing sniper fire, swinging from cables, the downdraft of their choppers cutting a trough through the water. They took the children, the elderly and the sick first and tried to come back for the others later. They chopped holes in roofs and strapped hoists on terrified people who had never flown in an airplane. They held infants against their breasts and fat women who weighed 300 pounds, and carried them above the water with a grace we associate with angels. They rescued more than thirty-three thousand souls, and no matter what else happens in our history, no group will ever exceed the level of courage and devotion they demonstrated following Katrina’s landfall. Burke also has his characters point out that while LBJ Johnson had his Vietnam and Bush his Iraq where both failed miserably, it was a different story when natural disaster struck.
Clete Purcell to Dave Robicheaux: “Did you see that big plane that flew over?”
Dave: “No I didn’t.”
Clete: “It was Air Force One. After three days the shrubster did a fly-over. Gee, I feel better now.”
Later in the book, Helen Soileau, Dave’s boss, compares Bush-Katrina with LBJ-Betsy.
Sileau:
“When Hurricane Betsy hit New Orleans in ’65, Johnson flew into town and went to a shelter full of people who had been evacuated from Algiers. It was dark inside and people were scared and didn’t know what was going to happen to them. He shined a flashlight in his face and said, ‘My name is Lyndon Baines Johnson. I’m your goddamn president and I’m here to tell you my office and the people of the United States are behind you.’”<<<
We received a letter from Kaiser last week. They are again having a sale on cosmetic surgery. I think our health provider is on dangerous ethical ground here. Sometimes there is a fine line between cosmetic and necessary. If cosmetic is pure profit, will they not be tempted to urge their physicians, in borderline cases, to opt for it over care covered by insurance?
A provider should not also be a seller.<<<
756, and the record belongs to Bonds. It is too bad that the Commissioner and many sports writers around the country couldn’t have dropped the negative for a day and followed the example of the LA Times baseball columnist Bill Shaikin who wrote:
"This was not the day for those issues, as Aaron understood and Selig did not. This was the day for remembering what my mother told me, and your mother told you: If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.”
JIM’S WISDOM (a name, not a claim)
UP: School days, school days, dear old golden rule days. (see picture – The girl in black is a friend, Lily, in red, is too young. As for the rest, Arianna is on her way to day 1, Emily to day 1 in middle school and the man of the bunch – Ryan – is a top-dog 8th grader.)
UP: Emily, again, for getting her 6th-gr
ade locker open on her second try. DOWN: The naysayers who discount global warning just because NASA has learned that 1934, not 1998, was the hottest year of the century. Any reasonable person knows that the heat spike in ’34 was due to my birth.
DOWN: Congressional Democrats for once again blowing their chance. With much public fanfare they should have delayed the legislative summer vacation until either more was accomplished or their Republican colleagues were seen as the obstructionists they are.
DOWN: Congressional Democrats again, at least those gutless ones who joined Bush last week in his newest attempt to weaken the Bill of Rights. Have they all forgotten these words of Ben Franklin?
"The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either."
DOWN: Paternalism and hypocrisy. In her fascinating column in last week’s Newsweek, Ann Quindlan writes about a “curious little mini-documentary” that showed up recently on YouTube. It was shot in front of an abortion clinic where a man asked demonstrators how long the prison sentence should be for women who have an abortion. Apparently the main answers he received were a dropped jaw and glazed eyes. The few who found their voices came up with such responses as: “It's murder, but she'll get her punishment from God.” “It's murder, but it depends on her state of mind.” “It's murder, but the penalty should be ... counseling?”
The anti-abortion crowd wants to criminalize the act but not the actor, not wanting to face either a prison system filled with women who make the choice or to answer for the tremendous national upheaval this would cause.
So some would punish the doctor, as if he or she went door-to-door selling abortions. That doesn’t compute. It is neither fair nor just.
At some point, the pro-life people are going to have to face the choice that their movement demands. Either they must punish the criminal or eliminate the crime.
UP: Tiger, yes, 62 ½ is all right.
UP: Gail Collins of the NY Times for this quote of the week:
“Most of the candidates from both parties have pets. In fact, so many of them have golden retrievers or labradors you can’t help but wonder if they rent them.”
DOWN: Democracy for the Middle East. The President has announced a new-old policy of sending arms and aid to prop up “friendly” authoritarian governments in the region. This policy is as stupid now as it has always been:
(1) We cannot hope to win any support from the people by reinforcing their masters.
(2) The region’s two main autocratic recipients, Suadi Arabia and Egypt, continue to take our money while giving aid and comfort to our terrorist enemies.
UP: Tucson, for setting a new record when their high reached only 80 degrees last Monday. The previous lowest high temperature for the date was 86, recorded in 1918. Of course the 2 inches of monsoon rain caused some problems. Maybe they could send an inch or so to us.
UP: Larry Hart, for being in the Tucson sports Hall of Fame. In my first teaching job in Ajo, Larry was the head football and baseball coach and the AD. I was his baseball assistant. Later he moved to Tucson where he won a state football championship at Flowing Wells.
I had coffee with Larry a couple of years ago while visiting Elizabeth. He is still a super person.
Down: Kiara Ashanti, a freelance writer (blogger really) who at the National Association of Black Journalists Presidential Forum Thursday asked Hillary why she was pushing for “socialized medicine.”
UP: Hillary for answering that she wasn’t and then asking Ashanti whether he thought Medicare was socialized medicine.
DOWN: Ashanti, for saying that “To a degree it is.” (When are people going to stop trying to resurrect the socialism scare that, in America, has never been more than a myth used to scare children and centrist voters?)
UP: Hillary, for her defense of Medicare, while, at the same time, pointing out that it is inadequate and that the U.S. as the only “advanced country” to have “so many of its citizens without health care.”
DOWN: Emily Dickenson, for this line I recently discovered from her poem, “The Day Came Slow Until Five O’Clock.”
“The orchard sparkled like a Jew.”
You, too, Emily?
LOWER THAN DOWN: The Weekly Standard and The New York Post, for claiming that the war’s critics hate the troops.<<<
Here’s novelist Mary Gordan (Final Payments, The Company of Women, Men and Angels, ) with interesting takes on Hillary and on life.
NY Times: Are you a Hillary Clinton supporter?
Gordon: I think no woman is electable in America, and particularly not Hillary, because she is married to this guy whom everyone is libidinally attached to. I think there is unconscious sexual jealousy of her among women.
NY Times: There’s one word in your new book that you use excessively — abashed. What do you feel so ashamed about?
Gordon: Not doing enough. I don’t help the poor. I don’t create political change. I could be tidier.<<<
I finished the second and last season of Rome this past week. It was incredibly good; although the last two episodes had so much nudity and sex that I had to avert my eyes.
Anyway, as I was saying, Rome most certainly deserves an honored place in television’s hall of fame. And did anyone notice that in the last few episodes James Purefoy, who played Anthony, looked like Brando’s Anthony?
And I like this line spoken by Anthony to his great love, Atia: (Polly Walker)
“I would go to Hades for you, Britain even.”<<<
A tornado grows in Brooklyn – last week.
Did you know that a spot in New York City is likely to be struck by an F-2 tornado just once every 20,000 to 50,000 years.<<<
I read this: There is a “strong probability” that the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain was caused by viruses that escaped somehow from a pair of veterinary laboratories.
And I see:
B-movie creatures making a midnight get-away so that they can carry out their nefarious plan to destroy humanity.<<<
In last Sunday’s Parade there was a short piece on the hottest on-screen chemistry of all time. They chose the following five:
Bogart and Bergman – “Casablanca”
Taylor and Burton – “Cleopatra”
Turner and Hurt – “Body Heat”
Lancaster and Kerr – “From Here To Eternity”
DiCaprio and Winslet –
“Titanic” DiCaprio and Winslet? There is NO way that these two belong with the others. They barely created a spark. I would substitute John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara in “The Quiet Man.” The screen caught fire in every scene they shared.
Any other nominations?
posted by jmt | 9:02 AM
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