Blog Master G

From January 30, 2003 IM conversation with Ben:

benjaminfry: Hmm, that sounds kinda interesting… maybe I should
rule. i will have a crown, and scepter… Ooh, and a purple hooded Robe,
with one of those really big hoods, so you could see my face, but you
could see my eyes blazing, proper lighting
benjaminfry: I think it would work.
GabeVC99: heh heh. with a bottle of crown royal in your hand (the other
one- not the scepter hand)
benjaminfry: That may work, or I could have a sword in it!
benjaminfry: Oooh that would be cool, a sword.
GabeVC99: swords rule, too.
GabeVC99: i have a wooden sword (heh heh. i know that sounds dirty, but
i’m serious. acutally, it’s my brother’s from a samurai skit he did back
in the day; now it’s with a bunch of stuff from my grandma’s house.)
benjaminfry: Hmm, that could work.
GabeVC99: mind if i use this exchange on my blog? it’s cracking me up.
GabeVC99: (i would anonymize your email address.)
benjaminfry: if you really want to.
GabeVC99: you don’t want me to? you don’t think it’s funny? maybe i’m
sleep-deprived (we were up until 1 packing and awake at 630 for work) so
everything seems funny this afternoon.
benjaminfry: Hehe… No it’s funny, but its just me rambling…
GabeVC99: your rambling is funny today. not that it’s not funny other
days, of course.
benjaminfry: Fun with septors, but if you put it online you have
to promise that you will correct my spelling, i.e. scepter…
GabeVC99: heh heh. ok, it’s a deal.

Today‘s San Francisco Chronicle contains the following apology in the A section:

APOLOGY
The Chronicle apologizes for the objectionable illustration on the cover of today’s Book Review. Editors noticed it too late to stop the presses and remake the page.

This did, of course, pique my curiosity, so I went promptly to the Book section to find this illustration:

I laughed my ass of when I saw why they had issued the apology (it was hard to see, even in the large, print version). Unfortunately, you can’t really see it in this scaled-down online version of the illustration, but the man on the tractor is flipping off the man in the car; his “fuck you” finger is prominently on display. I wouldn’t have noticed this, and I doubt many of the Chronicle’s readers would have, had the apology not been printed.

Mark Morford has another excellent commentary today: The Lie Of Liberation / Cheering Iraqis are just a diversion, folks. BushCo’s real goal is only just beginning. Here’s a snippet:

Ah, but what are Bush’s spoils? Let’s look: His copious corporate pals get to rush in and install a nice puppet government to help the baffled Iraqis rebuild their hovels and “manage” their precious oil. There, there, now, Iraq, your brutal dictator is gone. Welcome to rampant capitalism. See if you can tell the difference.

But, more than that, Bush’s regime gets a vital, strategic piece of the oil-rich power puzzle with which to strong-arm all Mideast comers. Our iron foot is now in the door. This was the point all along.

Also, look at all those people (or lack thereof) and the tank-guarded perimeter in Baghdad Square (as Jon Stewart has referred to the area) the day the Saddam statue came down.

Few people realize that I am an international kickboxing champion. Meet my team: Wayne, Marlowe, and Selwin. Together, we are Team M. Don’t mess with us.

George McGovern has an excellent commentary in the new issue of The Nation. Here’s a snippet:

He (Bush) treads carelessly on the Bill of Rights, the United Nations and international law while creating a costly but largely useless new federal bureaucracy loosely called “Homeland Security.” Meanwhile, such fundamental building blocks of national security as full employment and a strong labor movement are of no concern. The nearly $1.5 trillion tax giveaway, largely for the further enrichment of those already rich, will have to be made up by cutting government services and shifting a larger share of the tax burden to workers and the elderly. This President and his advisers know well how to get us involved in imperial crusades abroad while pillaging the ordinary American at home. The same families who are exploited by a rich man’s government find their sons and daughters being called to war, as they were in Vietnam–but not the sons of the rich and well connected.

Sure, Iraqis are cheering in the streets now and Americans who are playing along with the war at home are all smiles now, but what happens next? And how many more people have to die while the rich get richer and people continue to lose jobs at home? There’s still a country to rebuild and govern, and there are still two more axes on the axis of evil still standing. World domination here we come!

I fear the dangerous precedent this war has set.

(Thanks, Dad, via Uncle Michael, for passing along.)

On Tuesday I was in a big meeting in a video conferencing room. There are clocks in the room with the time set for various time zones around the world. Someone pointed out that Bangalore, India’s time was 12-and-a-half hours ahead of Pacific Time. Many of us thought it must have been a mistake. A couple of my Indian coworkers in the room confirmed that no, that was correct. I thought they were pulling my chain.

Alas, they were not. The time in India is offset from the rest of the world by a half-hour. I wonder what the logic in that is? You learn something new every day.

As the statue of Saddam Hussein was symbolically pulled down yesterday, the mainstream media didn’t seem to pick up on the historic significance of the date, April 9. On the same day in 1865, Robert E. Lee surrended to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia to end the Civil War, in which 140,000 men died in battle.

My Dad and I were at the Giants game last night, the second home game of the season and the first in-person game of the season for me. Even though the Giants lost 9-4, we got to see Barry Bonds hit a homer in the bottom of the 3rd. Here he is heading toward home plate:

In a move to try to compete with its partner Google, Yahoo has released a preview of its new search engine and design, which, of course, is mostly powered by Google anyway. And it just looks weird.

The U.S. has begun to brag about the Saddam regime being over as Iraqis cheer in the streets and Saddam statues are symbolically torn down by marines.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military is being accused of deliberately attacking Arab journalists, including Tariq Ayoub, a cameraman for the controversial Arab television station Al-Jazeera. Did they? Al-Jazeera thinks so. And although I believe that our soldiers are doing their best to fight for…uh, to oust Saddam since he has weapons of mass destruction that are a direct threat to the American people? …oh wait, that was before the war started… now our troops are fighting to free the Iraqi people, which is certainly a noble cause… and it looks like we’ve freed them… but I still question our leaders and don’t have a lot of trust in them, especially since the U.S. wants to be the occupying power in the post-war rebuil$ing of Iraq… but I digress. All that goes to say that I think it’s entirely possible that the journalists were targeted by top U.S. brass (I’m not saying I’m totally convinced; I just think it’s possible). After all, Al-Jazeera is the Arab version of FOX. If we weren’t the super power and an invading (I mean “liberating”) nation rolled into our cities, I think the first thing they’d do is take out all the FOX reporters. Wouldn’t that make the world a better place?

In other developments, there was madness at the Port of Oakland Monday as the Oakland Police joined in the war on terror, doing target practice on not just the protesters as they turned and ran away from the rubber bullets and wooden “sting balls,” but also on the longshoremen who got caught in the crossfire. The reason for protesting? The shipping companies have military contracts and were sending supplies off to support the war.

Ahh… gotta love that freedom of speech and getting shot in the ass while you run away from the cops for expressing your beliefs.