The Sine Qua Non of Amarillo

Molly Ivins, Populist Texas Columnist, Dies at 62

After Patrick J. Buchanan, a conservative candidate for president, declared at the 1992 Republican National Convention that America was engaged in a cultural war, she said his speech “probably sounded better in the original German.”

“There are two kinds of humor,” she told People magazine. One was the kind “that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity,” she said. “The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule. That’s what I do.”

Oh Molly, I do think this is awful damn rude, leaving us like this. Can't be helped, I know, but I do bitch. Miss you already. But your lines are going have something like eternal life: you'll be quoted as long as politicians are fools.

“If his I.Q. slips any lower, we’ll have to water him twice a day.”

And with proper attribution, gladly, gratefully. You're the best, Molly Ivins. Rest In Peace.

Dear Readers Of This Feed

I don't know what halfwit* decided that with every republish, a new feed item would be sent out over the, you know, "wires" ... and where the fark that leaves anyone like me with hundreds of posts to import, most of which must be published again... but this note is going to stay here til the job is however half-assedly done.

Trust me, I know how to postpone finishing a book.

Isn't that what the Internet is for? Sir Tim had some work he felt he really must get to, so instead he invented the WWW?

Don't despair. Don't give up on me. Besides, some of that old stuff is funny. Some prescient. And anyway, don't you want to say, I knew her when?

Well then, keep reading. Send letters of heartfelt encouragement. And remember, don't get smart—I don't have a day job to not quit.

You'll be surprised—every other word in the book is not fuck.

If I finish.

*Blogger blames it on Atom 1.0. Don't believe 'em for a hot second ...

Real Killers Never Look Back

Or, The White Man Is Never Unburdened. Poor Thing. Norman Mailer wrote this. For the New York Review of Books. So it was hella hard just picking out one thing ... not least because the piece itself, or poor Norman, didn't know whether to shit or get bizzy, as the official White Man, intellectual-variety, otherwise known as He Who Could Explain It All for the rest of us. Instead of, for example, hurl inchoate blog insults, so full of patent falsehoods even on their way to whatever slanderous, racist, idiotic point ...

And if I may digress. Oh please do, this is your blog, after all. Thank you. I came across a New Hampshire newspaper with that lovely photo of Nancy with all the children in her lap, touching the precious gavel and all. NANNY STATE, it said. WELL THIS IS WHAT YOU WANTED, AMERICA, SNEER, THIS IS WHAT YOU GOT.

They shoot Nannies don't they?

Okay, funnies over. In point of fact, my roots are in New Hampshire; my grandmother was born in Rumney, in 1897. She was the first person to ever go to college from Plymouth Highschool (her little sister the second) and when she finished Colby, she promptly married her very handsome highschool English teacher. Then the First World War ended her chosen career, teaching German, when it was barely begun. They set up housekeeping in West Hartford, and she spent her life in Connecticut. Ostensibly editing the Connecticut Church Times, but mostly telling the Bishop of Connecticut what to do, and and I expect he is just now learning how to get along without her.

When everyone with half a brain leaves a state, that leaves the dregs and seriously inbred. I know and you know, if the mere photograph of an Important Woman, and her grandchildren crawling all over the podium in the capital of these here United States is enough to whip the Live Free or Die fringe into a Freudian lather, we got issues.

What bothers me is the hatred and fear behind such shows of disgust. These are the kind of men I, as a woman, fear most. Who are so full of hatred for the father, likely had the crap beaten out of them by Daddy, the only possible place they can express it is upon the body of the mother, the feminine. Upon women, girls, little girls, the vulnerable, the precious and the “weak”. These are the men for whom rape means rape, and in whom remorse was killed a long time ago.

Sure you have to be tough to survive a New Hampshire winter. Tough is no excuse. We ought to turn upon such contemptuous bullshitters the toughest black heavyweight and watch 'em piss themselves—whilst he then bestows a kiss upon his venerated mother.

And I will lead a little talk on Freud. Ri-ght. Oh she is filled with fantasy tonight. But the sad fact is, sometimes the biggest buffoons are just little quaking shits. And they are not going to slur Nancy Pelosi or the grandchildren that way, not as long as I am around.

Nor do I see where, like, the White Man has done so much better, hello?

No, Granite-Staters, we don't want to take care of everybody, not even you. We're just waiting til you guys get the hang of what it is to take care of somebody beside your granite selves.

My grandmother died in Connecticut, several weeks short of her 101st birthday. Sharp as a tack, in good health til that moment, funny as hell. Never did get the hang of being old.

I see I haven't gotten around to Norman. Next post.

To All The Little People

I just gotta be a smartass. Don't I. Why can't I just say, Thank you. Especially to the readers of my feed, for I have discovered—much to my horror—that New Blogger spits out a feed entry each time you republish, and republish one does, as one learns the ins and outs of steadfastly remaining Classic in a Semi-Beta world. Which probably makes no sense to anyone not on Blogger; suffice it to say, it's completely nuts here, yet return I did, and from the even nuttier world of WordPress and—I can hardly type the letters—the nightmare of HTML-wrapped PHP.

Where one missing apostrophe can and does bring your entire blog to a screeching halt, and which to my hungry eye was ugly on the page, that code, at least in its carefully bastardized WordPress form. I never absorbed, in what, two months peering at it, a single sense of pattern. No learning occurred.

Needles to say, I am glad to be back on Blogger, where the children are all above average ... and the staff appears to be trying. There is even a contact form. Viva la revolucion. To the staff, I say, You spawn it, you take care of it. This is not something that cool San Francisco web types ... shall we say, obsess upon. Fuck no. To be young is to be ... without certain clues, or at least cooly pretend. Pretend to skim—with style, nothing could more important than style—along the surface of life like fat, beautiful waterbugs. Who, while fast and magical, are still in their larval stages. As once was I, but I guess now I identify more with all the puzzled, pleading people in the Blogger Help Group. The people of the Lost Blogs, for whom it is rare to receive any response at all.

I see they have now have taken up obsequious pre-thanks, in the event a Blogger staff person does show; someone must have told them Americans like ego-strokes. “Oh the new Blogger is so beautiful, I am so grateful for your help.” No, the news from Google Groups, Blogger Help is not good. Politically or otherwise. It is a study in pain. Need it be? Hell no! Some actual documentation would dispense with at least 90% of this, one tech person could respond to the rest.

Clearly, A, Google doesn't give a damn what goes on at Blogger, or, B, Google doesn't give a damn what goes on at Blogger. It's terribly disheartening. Spam blogs, porn blogs, broken blogs, lost blogs, nowhere to report them, no procedures. It's interesting; this is what the Blogger-Buzz-Crew thinks is procedure: they fix an issue and post, “It's fixed!” and god help you if you still have trouble.

What is the interesting part? I'm not sure. Perhaps, the chaos in human lives that results from lack of care. Perhaps that existentially there cannot be lack of care, for we are, as Wittgenstein* says, thrown into the world from which it is both a falsehood, a lie, and automatically injurious to others to withdraw. Yes, the love you take is equal to the love you make (or is it vice versa ) but what the Beatles didn't say, (and what a boring song that would have been) is that You Must Tend.

This is a wonderful platform, Blogger is. You won't see the Third World embracing WordPress anytime soon. Let us hope Google gets a clue ...

And so, dear feed subscribers, I am sorry for post after old post showing up in your reader, your mailbox. It was only luck that I happened upon this knowledge at all, on someone's blog. Thank you for your patience, very much. I will try hard not to—this is so weird— revise.

*Or Heidegger. Same diff.