volcano

It's The Torture, Stupid

The Rude Pundit: “The problem with Gitmo isn't its existence. The problem with Gitmo is that the Bush administration ever allowed Gitmo in the first place. The problem is that Gitmo is a walk in the park on a sunny goddamn day compared with what happens when the prisoners are ‘rendered’ to Egypt or Uzbekistan.”

Begin by speaking. Begin by giving voice. Say anything.

Bite It Twice

...you know what, on second thought, this post didn't make any sense. so i took it down. you ain't missing a thing.

Blowin'

Maybe it was a straw in the wind that, instead of going away quietly, Pat Tillman's parents let rip this week about their disgust with the rewritten, Photoshopped story of how their son really met his death in Afghanistan.

What really happened . . . has this funny way . . . of not shutting up.



Link: originally from Washington Post

My Kind of Guy

Lately, it's love that cuts me like a knife.

It's still a slice. Its sudden launch, from within the body—from the stores of memory, from the firings of both heart and brain—is still as much of a surprise. Love hurts, in surprisingly grief-like ways. How to discern, when the heart pores over. When experience (this is my theory) is just too large to bear. The psyche sorts—so Psyche-like—by discarding, expressing, overflowing. I just don't know how you men decide what to keep. I don't know how you manage to live so without living, but I suspect this is at once what it is to be a woman, and the reason that you hate us. The reason, for example, that feminism has become just an increasingly real-seeming imitation of what we're not: invulnerable. Able to carry on. No matter what.

No, correct that: we carry on like hellfire. We just show our pain. Not a stiff upper lip in the house, and what you don't get is that this is endurance, this is our living of this life. I don't care if you do it your way, I depend on your doing it your way. What I would like to dispense with is the idea that when you are dealing with someone, anyone, like me, you are dealing with someone weak.

Check this out: the notion that it is weak to be weak. When did this utter crap-thought arrive? When did testosterone get so out of hand that it became the only thing? It's a boy's game. I point this out ot to condemn, but to redeem what has been trashed. To simply tell the truth. 'Cause I sure as hell know what happened to me, and I do invite anyone to step right up and tell me I deserved it. Earned it. Was karmically due.

It's all your bloody fear of death, and for what. You're going to die anyway, wouldn't it make the most sense to behave with kindness and sense now?

He who owns the most toys, wins—the presidency, no doubt, and a great many other things that ultimately control the winner's life.

I swear I am going to single-handedly bring about the return of Jesus, the guy who stood up for, honored saw the whole point of weak, and he—excuse me, He—fuck it, he—oooh, is he going to kick some ass.

What We Owe

Tish writes: “I worry about my Dad. I've seen aspects of him that I haven't before. He has tics. Times where he shouts out for no reason. He fights the tics and the shouts. I feel bad for him that he is alone. But I can't change him nor can I save him, nor can I cure his loneliness by sacrificing myself. His loneliness goes so deep that it can't be cured. And I am not a god nor a saint.”

I don't know, I think this realization might be more upsetting than just about anything.

All Of The Above

Karpinski said she removed a bottle of facial cream from her purse then returned it while rummaging for her cell phone.

Though a security guard mistakenly believed the bottle belonged to the shop, store personnel later concluded it was her property and had been ‘clearly partially used.’

“They had nothing about Abu Ghraib to use against me,” Karpinski told The Signal, “so they pull this flaky allegation out and use it to demote me? ... To save face? To mislead the American public yet again?”

Honey. Only a pawn in their game.

I Don't Know About You

Last September, a London-to-Washington flight carrying the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens was diverted to Bangor. Security officials later said a gap in the airline passenger-check system permitted Yusuf Islam—the name the singer took after converting to Islam—to board the flight to the United States, despite being on a no-fly list for suspected ties to terrorists.

... but I have felt so tidy-comfy safe in my own little home, ever since. As who would not, free of the threat of surface-to-air Moon Shadows.

Is this a great country or what.

Link, to news.yahoo.com: rotted

If Women Knew

Marc Maron “What little working free psychic space I have goes into, God, I want to fuck her, and Man, I'm an asshole.”

Like lemmings to the sea. One big mass march. Utterly hopeless. Give it up.

Nice pants.

Thud

I'm still poring over the Huff-blog. What a fascinating mish-mosh. Everyone is somehow absolutely naked, being precisely who they are. Perhaps the general idea of blog is, like, not suited? To ponderousness? May we hope? In future? To not hear from major fucking talents of our time—yes, Mike Nichols, I'm talkin' to you—until they actually have something to say.

David Mamet? What a disgrace. The concept was not explained, I'm certain of that.

Jerry Brown. It would be an act of kindness to keep this man off the web:

Is it a post-modern nightmare or Dante's Inferno?

(Jesuits aren't allowed a sense of humor.)

But that Arianna is a pistol. Onward. Day two.

Slate Grows a Chin Hair

“Does Huffington keep enough air kisses in stock to mend all the owies?”

That remark is for shit. It really is. And this in a post that thinks it's being positive.

It isn't me against the guys. It's, who let the teens out.


later: What am I thinking? It's the layout, stupid. Fab. To die for. Slate-the-unreadable must be quivering with, um, CSS-envy.

Your Iraqi Heart

“ ‘insurgancy’ as the americanas call it, is the natural responce”

The trouble starts when you go looking to connect precisely what abuse and lies-in-power broke in the first place. Oh, the connections are healthy, as is the desire to make them; that drive is all that's best about us. I don't know if it's possible—but the work is worthy: to focus not upon what is destroyed, not even upon your own woundedness, your own death, but just wrench that glare loose. There's a way to reflect back suffering endured, tilt that lens just so ... just blind 'em. Simply by being—by being and remaining—good.



link: secrets in baghdad

Day 113 and Counting

Granted, Darfur defies easy solutions. But Mr. Bush was outspoken and active this spring in another complex case, that of Terry Schiavo.

The last time Mr. Bush let the word Darfur slip past his lips publicly (to offer a passing compliment to U.S. aid workers, rather than to denounce the killings) was Jan. 10. So today marks Day 113 of Mr. Bush's silence about the genocide unfolding on his watch.

Can you bloody imagine. It's things like this that threaten to split we less hardy souls asunder. Kudos, Nicolas Kristof.

Tick tick tick.

Men In Hats

The church considers gay relationships intrinsically disordered.

Well, that makes us just about even, then.

May 3: 24 hours later, and that dog don't bark. Fifty bucks to anyone who imagines they got the point. I don't think it's possible; meaning may be communicable (like chicken pox?) but first it has to make sense.

When you feel as rotten as did I, last night, the passion to set things right so outruns the ability make. The sentence fumbles. You have set meaning on its course but build nothing to contain it. Oh but that feeling alone, that sincerity carried the day. Perhaps there's some reason (the begrudging thought occurs) for the iron-bound formulae that so often seem to weigh down, to close upon the clamor of the heart.

Taking the Rap

Oh, Tony. Does the term Poor Sod mean anything. . .

“Meanwhile, British prime minister Tony Blair mounted an impassioned defence of his decision to take Britain to war in the face of fresh disclosures. A leaked memorandum drawn up after high level Downing Street talks suggested that planning for military action was already well under way eight months before the invasion.”

Why Why Why

11 held in Iraq over death of Irish-born aid worker US and Iraqi forces yesterday detained a group of men suspected of abducting and murdering Irish-born aid worker Margaret Hassan last year

no matter what you think of it nor how useless, nor that there aren't any answers, the question beats on and on and on and on

until i am quite sure what you hear is the exactly the beat of the human heart. no more, no less.

There You Go Again

No real reason. Just heard Ronald Reagan in my head. Don't you? Ever?

“Feminism, on the other hand, is dedicated to abolishing the myth of female inadequacy. It strives to smash beauty norms, it demands female equality in all spheres, it rejects sexual market value as the measure of female worth.”

What she means: Listen up. I'm sick and tired of me and my daughters being looked at as if we were meat, you can't relate to a human being cuz your brain is stuck in your pants? Do like everybody else and please, grow the hell up.

Or next time I won't ask so nice.