Blogito, Ergo Sum
by Gregg Calkins
November 28, 2006, a Tuesday
Who knew things were going to be this difficult? We have had all sorts of problems getting the various Microsoft programs to work together smoothly, Carol alternates between fighting them and her migraines, which might be more than merely coincidentally related, and then suddenly, last night, out of the blue…my Dell Logitech cordless keyboard started acting strangely. Some keys wouldn’t function at all, others came up with an entirely different character…whacko time.
So we managed to get to the Norton on-line site and ran their a/v program all night long. I woke up this morning to the message that one virus had been detected, something called HDPlugin1015.dll Adware.GAIN, with no advice offered but the address. Still, it isn’t to be found at the address given. I found some other known viruses tucked away in Norton quarantine that I thought had been deleted long ago, so I finished that, but nothing I did, try as I might, made my keyboard work.
So I swapped keyboards with Carol. Hey, what do you know? My keyboard works fine…it’s hers that has the problem. Oh, well…
Costa Rica is a focal point for UFO occupants because it holds important
resources to slow global warming, according to a Peruvian investigator
who will be giving a talk Thursday.
He is Renato Longato, who also links the appearances of unidentified
flying objects to the last days predictions of the biblical Book of
Revelations
According to Longato, a writer and investigator of these phenomena since
1979 when he saw his first UFO in his native Lima, Peru, there are
serious reasons to relate biblical prophecies to current world events.
He claims that UFO occupants have been trying for thousands of years to
send messages and information to warn the human race of coming
disasters.
The difference in intelligences between humans and the UFO travelers is
vast, so they have a good idea what the abuses and destruction of
natural resources will bring, he said in a interview. However, he said
he believes the space travelers are under instructions not to intervene
directly.
In prior civilizations, the UFO occupants used the form of an angel to
carry the message, he said, and the angels influenced the Book of
Revelations, which is now included in the western Bible.
This is Longato's third visit to Costa Rica. He said that the political
stability here and the social life attracts the UFO occupants.
This from our local on-line newspaper. I’m not sure what social life he means, but I used to like to go to the Key Largo nightclub in San Jose, where one could observe some heavenly bodies on display, and I’d be willing to swear some of them were absolute angels, too!
I always liked going to the Key Largo, even took Carol there once, it was a great place to watch people. Prostitution is legal in Costa Rica and the KL is a well-known downtown location for American tourists, so there are a lot of girls there. It is (or was, it’s been a while for me) also a sports bar, so all of the tv sets all over the place show this or that football game or soccer game or baseball game, you name it, with guys often paying more attention to them than to the girls. It’s true, I tell you, why would I lie?
I was interested in the protocol observed. The girls were there, on display, but they sat around the fringes of the room and did not invade your space until you indicated some interest, either by a steady glance or a nod or a gesture, something. If you wished, you could sit and watch baseball all night long without being, ah, bothered. So to speak.
I thought it was all remarkably civilized and regretted that I was unable to follow my journalistic instincts to investigate further, so all I know is what happened to some of my friends. We are still negotiating on the price for their stories, however, I’ll have to get back to you on that.
I’m very much afraid that my friend Red Dog might have died, I haven’t heard from him in some time. We met him on our first Costa Rica trip, in 1993. And older bachelor, he made a ‘friend’ with one of the girls at the Key Largo and later presented us with Polaroid photos of (down, you nasty-minded people) the girl and her teen-age children at their home, in the front yard, with friends, just like ordinary people on a date. Since the business is legal there wasn’t that much approbation attached. She was a nice woman, I bumped into her again on another trip, years later, and she remembered me and asked how Red Dog was, with real interest. He was a nice guy, too, and I hope I’m wrong in using the past tense.
But how many times do you expect to go into a place like the Key Largo, find a girl who not only remembers you but also your friend, and ask about his welfare? And she wasn’t coming on to me, either, that wasn’t it at all.
We get too judgmental about what people do, I think. People are either nice, with good hearts and a good attitude, or they aren’t. Prostitutes or politicians, they’re all the same…probably WE are all the same, when it comes right down to it, trying to all get along as best we can.
This culled from Howard Kurz’ Media Notes:
Marty Kaplan gives the "civil" news outlets a standing O:
"Now that NBC, Newsweek, CNN and the Los Angeles Times have decided that the civil war in Iraq should actually be called a civil war, the way is open for the MSM to call more things by their true names, rather than their Orwell names. What's the worst that could happen to the media -- Tony Snow has a hissy fit?
"Rove issues an access-fatwa?
"The reclaiming of honest English should include some criteria for calling something 'centrist' or 'fringe.' For example, if only 8 percent of the country believes that American troops should stay in Iraq for as long as Bush says they should, phased withdrawal must now be characterized as a mainstream position, rather than an extreme view.
"Believing that contraception should not be made available to American adults, as the Administration's latest family healthcare appointee does, or that homosexuality is a sinful lifestyle choice, as the Dobson brigade does, or that global warming is a hoax, as Sen. James Inhofe does, should from now on be called what it is, a radical stand, rather than a 'conservative' one."
What Kaplan means, of course, is that he gets to define his own Orwell-speak. He would rather call what would more-properly be described as a ‘minority’ opinion a “radical” one, because he prefers that term over “conservative”. That’s the way it is with most people arguing about the misuse of language, typically what they mean is that they want the language misused THEIR way rather than YOUR way.
For Kaplan, the word ‘conservative’ might conceivably describe a legitimate point of view, whether held by a majority or minority at the time doesn’t matter, whereas ‘radical’ is an opinion all of us nice, normal people can view with scorn all of the time. Therefore, don’t call it a conservative stand, call it a radical one!
I also love the slip-slide into the idea that now we are supposed to pay full attention to the mainstream opinion, all of a sudden, rather than pay proper attention to the minorities…
When Republicans are the minorities, screw ‘em!
Ah, well, on to my favorite confused and conflicted liberal, Richard Cohen:
I'd like to say a good word about Michael Richards. And before you jump to any conclusions, Mel Gibson, too. As long as I'm at it, why not throw in Sen. George Allen? I'm sure I've overlooked others who have recently waxed bigotedly, but these three will do. This is what I have to say: Thank you.
I say this not because I approve of what they've said but because their remarks have been so roundly condemned that I can see the responses only as signs of remarkable progress. This is particularly the case since the statements exist solely in the ether, largely disconnected from the actual harmful deeds that have often followed such words. In these cases, we have moved past ugly behavior to ugly words. We consider them deed enough.
The words are more important than the deeds, is really what he means, because even he admits that the deeds do not count.
…after Gibson's arrest, a funny thing happened: nothing. …no one accused Gibson of even a single other anti-Semitic incident. He had not said anything, fired or promoted anyone, refused to do business with someone, or done anything with or to anyone based on ethnicity. In other words, his drunken outburst does not seem related to his day-to-day behavior.
The same applies to Allen. … As a younger man, he could be racially insensitive, even offensive -- Confederate flag in his home and all of that … Even before he called someone "macaca," (he) single-handedly introducing a whole new racial epithet into an American lexicon already rich with them, he had co-sponsored the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act and appeared with Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a hero of the civil rights movement, to express remorse for slavery. This is odd behavior indeed for a bigot.
To Richard it matters not that some people consider the Confederate flag not to be as ‘insensitive’ as he does…to some it even represents a patriotic symbol, although of course he would sensitively trash that notion out of hand!
Now we get to Richards. The appalling heat of his outburst was taped and shown over and over again on TV. Just on that score, his rant has a power the others lack. And he used the "N-word," as it is ridiculously called, an epithet without peer in American history as a prelude to violence or, in the mouths of some blacks, a hearty sign of comradeship.
In Richards's mouth, the word was clearly no variation on hello. But here, too, the words seem uncoupled from any action. If he is a racist -- and I will not argue with those who insist he is -- he is a distinctly lethargic one.
When are we ever going to come to grips with the fact that it isn’t what you say but what you DO that counts? If it is acceptable for a black person to use the N-word as a hearty sign of comradeship, why is it bad for a white southerner to display the Confederate flag in the same manner?
Politicians thrive on the fact that people listen to what they say, not what they do, it’s one of the biggest unfortunate facts of life.
It is odd, I know, to see these remarks as signs of progress, but that's what they are. All of them were followed by a sharp societal rebuke and serial regurgitations of apology, sorrow, shame -- a groveling to a (self-appointed) higher authority (Rabbi Marvin Hier, Abe Foxman, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Al Sharpton) who can issue a Get Out of Jail card so that lives can be resumed. We have come so far that it is not the vilified group that's hurt by the insult but the person making it. Richards fights for his professional life, Gibson licks his wounds, Allen lost the election -- and a durable cliche is stood on its head: In America, injury gets added to insult.
The perfect Liberal column. Now explain to me the injury that Jesse Jackson suffered for his “Hymietown” insult. To what higher moral authority did he appeal? (Remember, President Clinton came to him for moral counseling.) (No, I won’t even get into Sharpton, I’m not really trying to solve individual situations here but highlight the Liberal confusion about the moral issue.)
When we were young children who knew virtually nothing at all about life we chanted “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me”. Now I have a guy like Cohen telling me that he is happy that people like Gibson, et al, are suffering injury for their insults, their words, even though they didn’t actually perform any injurious actions.
Meanwhile, people who actually kill Jews and blacks, but don’t use any bad words while doing so, are just fine.
How sad. It’s a strange world.
Oh, well, let’s enjoy it as best we can. Here’s a big long article about
In a decision that could roil Democratic unity in the new House, Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi passed over Rep. Alcee Hastings Tuesday for the chairmanship of the Intelligence Committee.
It goes on and on, zigging from pillar to post, and mentions:
Hastings, who came to Congress in 1992, was charged in an FBI bribery sting but acquitted by a federal jury in 1983. Some judicial colleagues said Hastings fabricated his defense, and their allegations led to his impeachment by the U.S. House in 1988. He was removed from the bench by the Senate the following year.
What it never mentions, though, is that Pelosi voted to impeach him, back then. Not one word about that. It is like it never happened.
Okay, okay, so I’m weak, I can’t resist this item about Sharpton:
Born in Brooklyn in 1954, Alfred Sharpton Jr. was preaching by the time he was a preschooler and was ordained a Pentecostal minister by age 9. His father deserted the family after impregnating and later marrying his stepdaughter. Sharpton and the rest of his immediate family fell into poverty. But activism kept him focused while other children got into crime and drugs.
In the 1980s, he earned national prominence after ugly racial episodes in Howard Beach and Bensonhurst involving white gangs attacking and killing black males. Sharpton toured the press circuit, led large demonstrations and, in the Howard Beach case, helped force the appointment of a special prosecutor.
Over the years, Sharpton, who used to don velvet jumpsuits and gold medallions, has been accused of financial irregularities and blamed for inciting racial unrest. In what was perhaps his biggest blunder, he wrongly accused a prosecutor of rape in the 1980s case of Tawana Brawley, a teen whose claims of kidnapping and abuse were determined to be a hoax by authorities. The prosecutor later won a $65,000 defamation judgment against Sharpton.
I admit to a certain weakness of moral fiber when it comes to religion, but the thought of a preschool preacher ordained by the age of 9 just somehow doesn’t seem to really…well, I’m not trying to offend anyone, least of all my Pentecostal grandmother, a wonderful woman…but how can this person really relate to the rest of us?
In 1991, while leading a demonstration, Sharpton was stabbed in the chest by a white man. He said the incident moved him to be more careful with his rhetoric. In 1991, while leading a demonstration, Sharpton was stabbed in the chest by a white man. He said the incident moved him to be more careful with his rhetoric.
That would work for me.
It Is To Laugh, Dept:
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran would do whatever it could to help provide security to Iraq amid warnings the country was on the brink of civil war.
Whatever it takes, he vowed…we will send our army, our air force, our police, our mullahs…
Passengers and flight attendants told law-enforcement
officials the imams switched from their assigned seats to a pattern
associated with the September 11 terrorist attacks and also found in
probes of U.S. security since the attacks -- two in the front row
first-class, two in the middle of the plane on the exit aisle and two in
the rear of the cabin.
"That would alarm me," said a federal air marshal who asked to
remain anonymous. "They now control all of the entry and exit routes to
the plane."
A pilot from another airline said: "That behavior has been
identified as a terrorist probe in the airline industry."
But the imams who were escorted off the flight in handcuffs say they
were merely praying before the 6:30 p.m. flight on Nov. 20, and
yesterday led a protest by prayer with other religious leaders at the
airline's ticket counter at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society
Freedom Foundation, called removing the imams an act of Islamophobia and
compared it to racism against blacks.
"It's a shame that as an African-American and a Muslim I have the
double whammy of having to worry about driving while black and flying
while Muslim," Mr. Bray said.
I have a good idea to fix all that. Move somewhere you don’t have to worry about those things. What’s that…a better idea would be to send them there…
Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, Texas Democrat, said the September 11 terrorist attacks "cannot be permitted to be used to justify racial profiling, harassment and discrimination of Muslim and Arab Americans."
Well, either that or else maybe they can be.
William Tucker in the American Spectator about OJ and other things:
Since the Miranda ruling and other reforms of the Warren Era, criminal
trials have become increasingly arcane proceedings that only the lawyers
really understand -- which is probably the way they wanted it in the
first place. Any piece of evidence, no matter how real or damaging, can
be ruled "inadmissible" because of some obscure violation in police
procedures.
Confessions, for example, are now practically illegal. The Miranda
warning states so explicitly that you don't have to talk to the cops
that if a suspect does open his mouth and confess, it can only mean: a)
the cops beat the confession out of him; b) they used illegal coercion,
c) the suspect was too stupid to understand the warning, or d) there was
an incompetent attorney involved somewhere.
Yet people still confess all the time and that's what frustrates the
reformers. Police detectives will tell you suspects constantly come in
either wanting to match wits with the cops or wanting to get something
off their chest. That's the impulse toward confession that the Warren
Court overlooked -- the defendant's desire to clear his conscience.
Police detectives say suspects will often remain in a hyperactive state
for days, pacing their cells, talking with anyone, until they finally
blurt out their confession. Then they go back to their cell and sleep
like a baby for twelve hours. When you confess a crime, you rejoin the
human race. Confession is good for the soul. The Catholic Church has
known this for centuries.
This is the same sort of “justice” system the lawyers would now like you to make available for al Qaeda…as long as your system lasts. Oddly enough, there system does not include anything remotely like it…
Larry Thornberry in American Spectator on Tony Hillerman:
In his very readable 2001 memoir, Seldom Disappointed, Tony
describes an evening when he found himself at a large inter-tribal
meeting shortly after the language nags decided that American Indians
should henceforth be called Native Americans. He was curious about what
his friends, regular walking around Indians who'd never been to
Washington and had never felt compelled to join an indignation group,
thought of this label. So he just came out and asked.
The boys kicked the question around the room for a while, coming to the
consensus that as most Americans were born in America, and were
therefore native Americans themselves, it made little sense to apply
this name to American Indians. It was a category that didn't categorize.
Most in the room said they preferred to be called by their tribal
affiliation, i.e., they thought of themselves as Navahos, Apaches,
Kiowas, Arapahos, Zunis, etc. One guy -- can't remember which tribe
because I'm paraphrasing this from memory -- summed it up by saying, " I
don't mind being called an Indian because Christopher Columbus went
looking for India and got lost. I'm just glad he wasn't looking for
Turkey."
Funny enough, but how many people remember that that is where our Thanksgiving bird came from in the first place?
Anybody remember the time when President Clinton went through the reservation and found three girls standing on the corner, one evening, and stopped to, ah, poll them? Are you girls Navajos or Arapahos? he asked. They were puzzled. Nossir, they said, we’s reglahoes.
Well, George Will make me chuckle about Nancy:
There has been an admirable absence of chivalry in assessments of Nancy Pelosi's stumbling steps toward the speakership. She dismayed colleagues by saying that in order for her to be an effective leader she needed John Murtha as majority leader. Try to imagine Speaker Sam Rayburn confessing such dependency. And a columnist in The Economist says that "often she talks drivel" (the speaker's gavel "is in the hands of special interests, and now it will be in the hands of America's children") couched in "clumsy alliteration" (Democrats have "idealism, intellect and integrity.") Says the columnist, "It's like listening to a cross between a Stepford wife and Jesse Jackson." Or like listening to Rumpelstiltskin discuss economics: Pelosi sees increased taxes on oil companies as part of a program of "energy independence."
I’m a guy from the “old days” so it’s hard for me to recognize that the old days are gone. There really aren’t any “American” oil companies any more. In a fungible oil world, it isn’t easy to define what is meant by emergency independence, when an “American” company gets its oil from Country X, for instance, rather than a hole in the ground punched inside of the US territorial borders.
Remember all of the confusion when some of the newly-discovered Alaska oil back then went to Japan while we “imported” compensating oil from somewhere else, but that’s how the economics of transportation worked out best for both?
evening
Kids’ and friends’ time. Rainy day here, most of the day. Carol and I slipped out for lunch briefly, both of us needing breaks from mundane life. These lunches fall into the category of something we can’t afford to do and at the same time can’t afford not to do. Therapy…preventive maintenance…whatever you want to call them. SRP…Sanity Restoration Periods.
Sabrina just came over for a stroke and a kind word. She’s such a good dog, and we got her when she was really almost an adult, I’m overwhelmed sometimes when I think how good she has turned out to be, and yet I find myself too busy sometimes to pay her enough attention, it seems. I give her a pet, tell her she is adorable and beautiful, all true, do the same for the other two dogs who show up out of nowhere when attention is being given…makes me feel guilty, somehow, that I don’t do more.
I think if we didn’t need to sleep then the day would be about right, maybe only 6 hours short.
What else have I learned today? A perfectly-fine keyboard suddenly went galley-west and I haven’t been able to fix it, have already spent more hours taking it apart and wrestling with it than it was worth except that it caught my fancy to try, and I feel bad that such a nice high-tech instrument is suddenly not worth the effort of fixing. (Just the same, I am saving the screws. Could you, if the modern world broke down today, make a small screw?)
The dilemma of the modern world. I grew up in a time when you fixed everything, because replacements cost a LOT more than the original. Today you repair very little, it’s cheaper to buy a replacement from scratch than it is to try to find someone who can fix it.
We have some favorite experiences in our lives, don’t we? One of mine was with a Standard Oil friend, Mort Polugar, one of my roommates and buddies who will always be special to me, Mort was a particular favorite of mine, I loved the guy. I had an expensive Bulova watch at the time when watches were in the process of changing from either VERY expensive or dirt CHEAP, and my $200 watch in those days represented about 25% of a month’s salary but a new Timex with multi-functions represented only a small fraction of that.
I was very proud of my Bulova, but it didn’t work well. I had just had it cleaned, for $39.95, which HURT, and it worked for only a little while before it stopped again. One morning, at work. Mort was sitting at his table, working away quietly. I looked at my watch, decided I’d rather have a new Timex for ¼ of the cleaning cost, stripped it off of my wrist and exclaimed loudly, getting Mort’s attention, to HELL with this watch. I threw it the length of the room, it smashed up against the far well and fell to the floor. Mort looked at me in astonishment, but I had already gone back to work, ignoring him.
I’ve always loved that moment. Mort did, too. He told the story for years afterwards.
And I’ve worn inexpensive watches ever since. Well, with one exception. I bought a VERY expensive gold dive watch back in my scuba diving days. I lost it on one of my first dives…but I can’t tell you that story right now.
Keyboards are cheap compared to tech time, although sometimes that’s hard to fathom. Do you know how much work by how many people was involved in building this keyboard? No matter, semi-literates in southeast Asia are turning out millions like it, even as we speak, and they all have to be sold in order for the workers to eat. My keyboard is built in Thailand, which used to be a wonderful country called Annaandthekingof, a place where people sang and danced all the time. I wrote an adaptation of a play about it, a real estate version called The Broker And I. It wasn’t, frankly, all that good, the joke was a little bit too far inside even for me, but I had a wonderful time playing the lead, just the same.
Hey…you know the rules. The kid who owns the baseball is the pitcher, the kid who owns the football is the quarterback, and the kid who wrote the play gets to be the lead. I did the full Yul Brynner treatment, even shaved my head for the role.
In fact, before the last rehearsal I had my local barber cut my hair down to mere stubble. Then I took my electric razor to the rehearsal and had every girl in the play take a couple of strokes removing the remaining stubble down to the bare skin. They were puzzled, but went along with my wishes.
I explained, afterwards, that I wanted to boast of having gotten bald by every girl in the cast.
Huh, what’s that? Do I have any idea where I am going when I start out with any of this? Of course not, what kind of idiot would that make me? (Include your answers in your letters to Santa, please.) In some ways this is the story of my life told to myself and my kids…I had a 1950 Jeep, a 1952 Chev, a 1960 Jeep, a 1962 Pontiac, a…
…what’s that? Why it’s my auto-biography, what else?