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Saturday, November 20, 2004
Because I am, and because it's one of my favorite stores.
posted by jeev |
6:05 PM |
 
Friday, November 19, 2004
So I'm pulling up to my house tonight; it's already dark; winter. There's a rental car on the curb in front of my house, a bronzed Ford Focus, lights on, driver just sitting there. I come up next to it, getting ready to back into my regular space. I look over, curious, a little wary, but trying not to be intrusive, in that urban way. The driver's got a map out, and he's puzzling over it.
I park and start to go in. He calls out. "I'm lost," he says. "I'm from Indiana." He's a middle-aged guy, a little paunchy, a definite Red Stater, but with that midwestern sweetness I recognize. "Me, too," I say. "Carmel". "Warren Central," he replies. We identify by the high schools we graduated from over a generation ago, but only a year apart. We shake hands and chat for a moment. Then back to business. "Am I somewhere around here?" he gestures at the map. "No, closer to here." I have to look over my glasses to make out the tiny print in the low light. "You can take 980 to get downtown, but if you go by Lakeshore, you can drive along the lake, and see the lights. It's pretty." "Thanks, I'll try it. Get lost and get a bonus. Lucky." He's smiling now. "P, he was in your class, no?" he asks. I nod, a name I haven't thought of since then, but which is still, somehow, retrieveable, right there at the top of my brain. Except that the picture that pops up is of a rangy 17 year-old, not the middle-aged man he undoubtedly is now. "We were in a Youth for Christ group together," he says. Yeah, that makes sense. That's who that guy was. That's who this guy is. "Take good care, Ellen" he yells as he drives away. "Good luck," I call back.
And for a moment this small, unexpected intersection with a world that often seems impossibly strange to me now, almost foreign, makes me unreasonably happy. Because it, too, is also my world.
posted by jeev |
10:23 PM |
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
This is pretty much everyone's reaction to Condi Rice's appointment, albeit not always couched in such, uh, energetic prose:So here's the penalty for incompetence in the Bush administration: You get promoted.
Rice was arguably the most feckless, ineffectual, and powerless National Security Advisor in modern history. Under her watch, America suffered the worst terrorist attack in our history. Did she work to find out why, root out the problem, and make sure that it never happened again? She did not. Under her watch, America went to war under false pretenses, costing more than $200 billion of our national treasure and wasting almost 1,500 American lives to date, with 10,000 more horribly wounded. Did Rice object during the run-up to this war, or object to the incompetent way it has been run? She did not. When the 9/11 Commission was investigating her inexcusable failure to help prevent that tragedy, did she go up to Capitol Hill and face the American people with courage, proudly making her case? She did not. Instead, she cowered behind the skirts of executive privilege for weeks, and her bosses only pushed her out into the sunlight to be the sacrificial lamb when public outcry became too much for the GOP to bear. Her testimony, when it finally came, was a sickening, malodorous stew of excuses, ass-covering, and finger-pointing, spiced by a pungent whiff of outright lies. Speaking of which, if you missed that testimony, you can view a Quicktime copy here.
posted by jeev |
1:36 PM |
Monday, November 15, 2004
And now for something completely different:
See a review of the Chocolate Show. It even sounds wonderful.
posted by jeev |
10:54 AM |
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