Jobs had been teaching us to say goodbye to all that for decades — we just didn’t know it.

… in these final years, when the auditorium lights in would go down and the crowd would go wild for Jobs, who increasingly greeted his followers and touted the latest neat, new thing even as he wore the look of a person who was not going into that future with us.

He would be getting off here; we were to proceed without him … Let it go and look ahead was the message all along.
Hank Stueval in the Washington Post

Okay, I’m going to cry some more. Read the rest of this entry »

Karl Eikenberry On Afghan Troop Increase In this grotesque carnival, the US militarys contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting.

Which means, then … that our government … is paying people … to kill our own troops. Read the rest of this entry »

AP – Wichita, Kan. The man accused of shooting a Kansas abortion provider to death as he handed out programs at a Sunday church service … said he appreciates the prayers said for him and his family in the wake of his arrest. “I haven’t been convicted of anything, and I am being treated as a criminal …”

“I want people to stop and think: It is not anti-government; it is anti-corrupt government … He said he was concerned about how the media attention was affecting his family … particularly his elderly mother.

“I appreciate your prayers,” said Roeder

How nice. How awful damn …

Wait, didn’t somebody die? At your hand? Killed?

Is there no end to pathological narcissism?

Whatever. Jesus loves you. Maybe.

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This anonymous comment on Secret Diary of Steve Jobs really faked me out … so cool, so coolly evil at the same time.

I’ve always wanted to ask Paul, So how do you feel about the fact that the Beatles are dying in order of coolness, and there’s only you and Ringo left?

You are genius-bad. Whoever you are.

This is from Yahoo News, so really, forget about a link.

“Il Manifesto said the shooting was ‘as American as apple pie.’ ”

Heartwarming.

The end of the report (probably Reuters—yes, damn, it is) you could write in your sleep:

“More than 30,000 people die from gunshot wounds every year in the United States.”

This is what passes for public discussion of gun control. Squeezing in a few remarks—which happen to be true, of course—at the end of a horribly relevant tragedy.

See them lefty-liberal Reuters editors at work?

Well, babe, that’s about all we can do. A few statements of appalling fact …

“… there are more guns in private hands than in any other country.”

Prolly Commies at that—what the hell kinda name is Rooters, Royters anyway. Sounds like furriners to me.

And, always, this wistful, terrible truth:

“A powerful gun lobby and grass-roots support for gun ownership rights have largely thwarted attempts to tighten controls.”

And you thought this was a democracy. The more fool you.

Lovely piece in the Washington Post the other day about Paul, his new oratio is it, and of course the writing trailed off into all else that has happened and is happening—then gathered on this marvellous ending note, this opening up into the night but also into what must be, still, a wonderful heart. An antic moment that seemed very much of the Beatles as they were, and perhaps part of McCartney’s genius is that this has never changed. I would imagine so. Read the rest of this entry »

You know what, fuck the word dysfunctional. It splatters the pages of Amazon reviews like so many deer turds, stripped of its meaning by vast and shallow overuse, primarily by people whose most loving descriptions are of themselves, deployed via the hidden (yeah, right) mechanics of projection.

Jesus. And the mind delivers itself of another little thought-packet of rage slash humor slash truth slash hell, something bigger than I ever knew. In fact, a whole lot of the sentences that languish in Blogger Drafts forever, going back, what, three, four years now—so shoot me, I cannot subtract in my head, there must be bigger human flaws but none that immediately come to mind …

Well, revenge is sweet. Living well is the best revenge—that and skewering fools like so many chunks of flank steak per kebab. Never pointless. Never empty calories. This is the good stuff, the stuff by which we live in this stinking sea of crassness, atop which float so many islands of beauty and grace … Floating islands, made of vegetation, of land and sea all richly matted together yet rooted nowhere, their own little worlds. And so is the soul is, if it is to live.

And the animal life, upon those islands, and the fish that swim beneath them, and all manner of good things … Isn’t that the most painful truth of all?

Well, which is it? Are you going to be among those who trash this life, in the face of its fragility—one stingray barb, two inches, three minutes away from death—or are you going to be a stand-up kind of guy?

Well? Are you?

Rest in Peace, Steve Irwin.

Yes, these children are dead.
Yes, Iraq. Yes, common scene.

Yes, Rumsfeld should be strung up ….

What else can one say. Words dissolve … a swirl of leaves, caught by a gust, spirals up and over our heads, into a sky so bright it hurts.

And I am so sorry.

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