Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
On the Ground
A fascinating report by Patrick Cockburn on Baghdad today.
Cockburn was one of the best reporters on the scene during the American/British invasion and Iraq's subsequent sectarian war. He remains one of the few reporters interested in what has recently transpired in Iraq.
The corporate media have moved on to Beyonce and beyond.
A lot has been written about the U.S. involvement in Iraq, but a deep history of it will not emerge for years. Somehow I get the feeling that history will not be kind.
TS
Monday, February 4, 2013
Paul Attacked for Christian Thought!
The tweets link to some very droll (and dull) stuff. Here is one of my favorites, an open letter to Paul from Florida.
TS
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Finally
Congrats are in order!
Watch this to see the tie-in with CD.
TS
Super Bowl Sunday
A friend called this week and said we should go watch the Super Bowl somewhere.
I agreed.
Best part, he says he's buying, which means I can save all of my pennies toward the gas-guzzling motor home I'll need to pull off this number-one item on my bucket list.
Ah, the lure of the road! I view it as a way to finish what Kerouac started--in style.
My friend, the serious artist, is one of those guys who eschews football all year only to recover in time to watch the Super Bowl annually.
He's like the teetotaler on St. Patrick's Day, being suddenly more Irish than thou. Pure amateur. ( He could not tell you that Jack played football at Columbia and hated communists.)
Watch him become an instant expert! He won't know which Harbaugh is which, but it won't matter because both of them will botch every play call. Or so he will proclaim because, after all, he has boned up on football for one day.
My friend will curse the television screen and scream, "Harbaugh, you idiot!" He has a one-hundred percent chance of being right this year.
A Harbaugh will make an apparent horrendous coaching error and my friend will notice and curse him. He will lament modernity and proclaim that football was best when Joe Montana quarterbacked the 49ers, a solid point and homage to our younger years.
He will also seize the opportunity to mock the new ads at every commercial break, which will be too frequently.
I'll listen to him and cast my own aspersions.
And when the game is over I shall return to my daydream, my mad plot to escape all of this and find another way to live without the menace of society as I unfortunately see it.
Who knows, maybe I'll be at next year's Super Bowl tailgating out of my new motor home with Philadelphia Eagles fans.
Fat chance...
TS
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Friday, February 1, 2013
Sports Revolution?
I don't hear it, but I won't quibble with his optimism. Zirin is a thought-provoking writer and these essays are welcomed.
Is there a new Jim Brown or Curt Flood out there? I don't see one.
I'm just not certain professional athletes these days, with a few exceptions, are hearing the message to the degree Jacobs claims.
Baseball particularly is jammed with right-wingers. Few places are as sullied by homophobia as a sports team's locker room. Many pro football players are simply too dumb to think independently.
It is awfully hard to bite the hand that feeds you millions; pro athletes have a harder time than most unless they are engaged in something that exponentially effects their own wealth.
TS
Life and Art
In Deemer's novel Sodom, Gomorrah & Jones his protagonist, the retired history professor CJ, opts for a life on the road. In this final chapter CJ narrowly avoids a collision with a semi somewhere in Mississippi.
Life and Death
CJ TOOK THE southern route to Florida, trying to drive 300
miles a day before his back started bothering him, often
making it. He planned to meet his new friends from Boston at
a campground in Cape Coral. They could spend the rest of the
winter there staying warm, said the Smarts, which suited CJ
just fine.
He was driving across Mississippi, listening to The
Canterbury Tales on earphones. “The Miller's Tale” had him
in stitches, laughing aloud as he drove down a country road
with fields on each side, the traffic light.
By the time he reached the part where an unwanted
suitor stands outside a maiden's window, begging for a kiss,
and she mischievously sticks her bare butt out the window:
Dark was the night as pitch, aye dark as coal,
And through the window she put out her hole.
And Absalom no better felt nor worse,
But with his mouth he kissed her naked arse.
CJ was laughing so hard, his eyes welling, that he didn't notice
the stop sign at a crossroads ahead, which seemed to come
from nowhere in the country landscape; and if a dog had not
darted out of a field in chase of a critter, getting CJ's attention
as the animal crossed the road in front of him, with the result
that CJ's reflexive breaking slowed his approach just enough
for the van to skid through the intersection a hair behind a
semi, barely missing it as the truck roared legally by at high
speed, left to right: the semi surely would have creamed him
had CJ not braked.
He pulled to the shoulder of the road, stopped and pulled
out the earplugs; and he felt his heart racing and his body
shaking; and he understood correctly that he had missed
death by a whisker.
Later in the day CJ was in a coffee shop, writing in his
blog for the first time. He had changed its title to “An Old
Fogey On The Road.”
Earlier today, he began, driving solo across the country,
I got to laughing so hard that I almost killed myself. Let me
explain.
END
TS
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