...mutilatin' yer cattle.
That the impact of your army may be like a badger crushing a flute made of bird's eggs - this is effected by the science of weak points and strong. --- Sun Tzu
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...mutilatin' yer cattle.
That the impact of your army may be like a badger crushing a flute made of bird's eggs - this is effected by the science of weak points and strong. --- Sun Tzu
The man-eating badger rumor is sort of back, but this time, there are also cyber-squirrels in Iran:
"In recent weeks, intelligence operatives have arrested 14 squirrels within Iran's borders," IRNA, the Iranian state-sponsored news agency, reported. "The squirrels were carrying spy gear of foreign agencies, and were stopped before they could act, thanks to the alertness of our intelligence services."
The word of the day is "cryptogenic." So many of our problems are cryptogenic, but we didn't know such an impressive and reimbursable term for them existed:
'Based on news accounts, Miller said, Roberts's epilepsy would be categorized as "cryptogenic," meaning that there was presumably a cause but doctors could not identify it.'
My friend Rand Cooper suggests: wouldn't it be interesting if Roberts woke up from one of his seizures utterly convinced -- in an Oliver Sacksy twist -- of the rights of individuals vs. business and of the innate justice of providing equal public education to everyone and of the impropriety of government interference in reproductive decisions? (In other words, if Roberts woke up from one of his seizures feeling a lot more like the guy in the confirmation hearings and a lot less like the guy who has been leading the Court ever since?)
Note to Curry-watchers: Roberts's seizure happened within hailing distance of the spot where the Champion of Connecticut's Working People almost turned into a Pirates of the Caribbean extra in 2004 when a small boat capsized with him in it.
Wait. Maybe that's the movie version. Roberts is having a seizure while Curry is almost drowning, and they somehow exchange political orientations! David Thewlis is Roberts. 
No, no, wait!!!
Bill Pullman is Roberts!
(Below, he wakes up from seizure.)
Jim Belushi is Curry. Mother! Call agent!
Yesterday, I was simultaneously tired and eager to knock off the last 250 pp. of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."
The rain came -- off and on, exactly as I had predicted on Fox 61 Thursday night -- and I flopped on my living room sofa. I considered burning Elvis Costello's very interesting, Vince Mendoza-conducted Il Sogno Suite for background music on the Bose, but that seemed like too much work. I popped in John Tavener's less comforting, explicitly Christian "Lamentations and Praises." If I'm going to accompany Harry to Golgotha-at-Hogwarts, I thought, let me at least have the right music playing. (When that ran out out I switched to Elgar's Wand of Youth and, later, to some Debussy piano stuff.) I've got Elvis's thing on the computer speakers as I write this, and it really would have been the best choice. Elvis even looks like Harry Potter in middle age, when he's been hitting the butterbeer a little too hard.
OK, that's all I'm going to say here on the first page.
DO NOT READ THE REST OF THIS POST UNLESS YOU HAVE FINISHED THE BOOK OR NEVER INTEND TO AND THUS DON'T MIND HAVING THE ENDING DISCUSSED. 
A lion and a racoon might both be kind of happy there's a chicken farm, but one of these days, the lion is going to want the chicken farm all to himself.
I have puzzled, for years, over the odd alliance between fundamentalist end-times Christians and certain Zionist Jews. I keep wanting to say to the Jews: "You do understand, right, that ultimately they don't see Israel as just a really great place to practice Judaism? That they want it for something else? That they wouldn't be doing any of this stuff if they didn't basically believe that Jews are wrong about everything?""
Anyway, one of the guys who likes to swim in this sea is Joe Lieberman. And Max Blumenthal catches him at it here. And kind of explores those questions.
I don't know Max's work, but if this is what he does, I'm all for it. He's sort of halfway between Michael Moore and "The Daily Show." Some nights "The Daily Show" manages to serve up some real substance without alienating the part of the audience that comes only for the laughs. Other nights, there's a lot of Rob Riggle saying the same bad word over and over. Max serves a little stronger tea than TDS, but he's doing the stuff John Stewart would probably do if his audience would let him get away with it.
Inmates fight about Woody Allen.
Next week's Wisconsin prison fight: "If you continue to describe Resnais's L'année dernière à Marienbad as 'jejune' I'm gonna have to take you down, a-hole!"
Apparently, just watching him eat individual molecules of food might make you wizened and desiccated too. In a good way.
"Hmmm. Perhaps one-half of a sunflower seed would taste good, right about now. Mmmm. Yes, I could go for that."
This could have been you!
Last night's Lake Salhany Poetry Festival.
Beautiful evening, very few mosquitos, shimmering lake, spirited poets, musical guinea pigs.
It actually worked!
Now I'm worried that nobody will come tonight,
Jul7 25 -- Wednesday
at 6:30 p.m. for the Lake Salhany Poetry Festival. Free Avery soda!! 
I'm starting to realize the degree to which I don't know what I'm doing.
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