Buffy v. Edward

Twilight New Moon has premiered in LA.

Are you an Edward or a Jacob? A Twi-Mom?

More importantly...
Don't you believe BUFFY would KICK EDWARD'S ASS?

Open Twilight Thread. Plus Buffy.

Spoilers okay. At this point everyone is assumed to have read ALL Twilight books. By all accounts New Moon (the movie) follows the book closely. If you don't want to be spoiled, don't read/comment.

H/T Salon: "Twilight" of our youth.

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GNB Reading Room; What Are You Reading Now?

I know some of us are still slogging through Nixonland. (a worthy but weighty read) What else are folks reading. AND what is on your TBR pile? (To-be-read)

What do you recommend for a leisurely day on the beach or by the pool (hooshing it up or not as the case may be)?

What do you recommend for my gazillion hour flight next week to Netroots Nation?

What do you recommend to view this year's election in an historical perspective?

also- Anything we should avoid? Read any disappointments lately that are a "can/should be passed by?"

P.S. those going to Austin, I went to a good bookstore there when I was last in town, BOOKPEOPLE. I''ll be stopping in there for sure again next week.

P.P.S anyone from the area? I hear there are great used bookstores too-- any recommendations complete with addresses please?

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LOST: Books, TV and Popular Culture

In full disclosure I am pretty anti-tv. Happily, I don’t really watch. A bit on vacation in hotel rooms and some stuff that I can watch via the internet. But I am really not a TV person- gave it up more than 15 years ago. I love books, movies, music, podcasts and lots of other media—but not tv. Watched more as a kid but the older I get the less interested I am.

When I was working for 8 weeks in Hawaii last year I watched a lot of TLC stuff, including my guilty addiction, What Not To Wear. But I am not a big, famous, series fan. I don’t get caught up in that kind of thing. There are simply not enough hours in the day, and not enough good writing for television. And besides I always wonder how many great inventions will not be invented, how many problems will not be solved as we sit and vegetate in front of the blue flickering light of the devil.

Having said all that though, I was impressed this week by a TV-BOOK crossover phenomenon. The extremely popular show LOST has spawned a new interest in reading! Really.

Apparently, though I have not seen it myself, there are people in the blogosphere, and in libraries and book groups who have documented the books that appear on the desert island show and are writing about, reading and discussing those books. The premise is that the stranded members of the cast go through the luggage on the crashed airplane for reading material to pass the time. The collection of books is quite eclectic.

Some from the list so far…

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
by Lewis Carroll

Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret
by Judy Blume

A Brief History of Time
by Stephen Hawking [523.1 Haw]

The Brothers Karamazov
by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Carrie
by Stephen King

Catch-22
by Joseph Heller

The Epic of Gilgamesh
by Anonymous

Evil Under the Sun
by Agatha Christie

The Fountainhead
by Ayn Rand

Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad

Lancelot
by Walker Percy

Laughter in the Dark
by Vladimir Nabakov

Lord of the Flies
by William Golding

Of Mice and Men
by John Steinbeck

Our Mutual Friend
by Charles Dickens

The Stand
by Stephen King

Stranger in a Strange Land
by Robert Heinlein

A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens

The Third Policeman
by Flann O'Brien

The Turn of the Screw
by Henry James

Watership Down
by Richard Adams

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
by L. Frank Baum

A Wrinkle in Time
by Madeleine L'Engle

This book-tv phenomenon was pointed out to me last week at my regular monthly book group. (we were reading The Book Thief, which I enjoyed tremendously even though it is a young-adult novel) And I did some follow up research today yielding these web results;

http://lostbooks.blogspot.com/

http://www.lincolnlibraries.org/depts/bookguide/lists/booktalks/getlost.htm

This led me to muse on my own desert island lists—what 10 books would I want with me if I were lost? (will post mine later) How about your list?

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What Should They Read?

The New York Times Book Review this week has an interesting segment; Truth To Power. They asked famous writers to recommend some summer reading for our 3 presidential candidates. One of the best, I thought, was the first one from Junot Díaz.

I believe in books as only a deep reader can, but even I cannot imagine that any book would change any of our candidates. But just in case:

McCain: War Hero needs to read his fellow Vietnam vet Joe Haldeman’s novel “The Forever War.” McCain’s willingness to keep the nation in Iraq for, say, 100 years is a sign that for all his war hero posturing McCain has truly forgotten the young people we’ve damned to this folly we call Iraq. Perhaps Haldeman’s marvelous novel will crack Pharaoh’s heart. But don’t bet on it.

Hillary: What to recommend to a driven, brilliant, flawed woman who has no problem threatening to obliterate Iran, should they attack Israel? I recommend Peter Balakian’s “Black Dog of Fate,” in an attempt to cure her of her genocidal impulses. Armenians know all about being “obliterated,” and perhaps that nation’s suffering and miraculous survival will crack Pharaoh’s heart. But don’t bet on it.

Obama: A warrior-hearted black man running for president in a country that bends over backward to deny its white supremacist tendencies? Now here’s a cat who truly is an optimist, who really believes. For the honorable senator I recommend Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony,” a) because it’s a perfect novel about our country and b) because “Ceremony” is all about love and hope, and Senator Obama is going to need a ton of both to get through this one with his warrior-heart intact.

There are a bunch of other interesting people who weigh in, Scott Turow, Barabara Kingsolver and John Irving (and more.)

So GNB readers, I put the same question to you. If you could speak some truth to power and give our candidates each one book to read what would it be and why?

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The Fall Of The House Of Bush

Even The Dour Poe Looks Happy Beside The Besieged Bush.

“And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate.
(Ah, let us mourn!–for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.”

“The Haunted Palace” poem from Edgar Allen Poe's “The Fall Of The House Of Usher”

Patience is a virtue. So too can one's being incredibly busy. Both of those factors figure into this story, as I'd actually begun to write this tale two weeks ago . The main “arc”? Merely the brutally obvious unraveling of the world around President George W. Bush like it was a stray thread-yanked whirlwind of revelation to even his staunchest defenders that his presidency was not the lovely burnt sienna toned painting they'd deluded themselves into believing it was,...but rather, the earthy, brown bed-shit of a two-term disaster.

The bullet points of the tale?

T'was to begin with the embarrassing, five-hour FBI raid on the home and Office of Special Counsel, Scott Bloch, whose “job” was to investigate federal whistle-blower complaints, and other deeply internal Federal probes of in-house wrong-doing. Issues like digging about for “Hatch Act” (of 1939) violations by one Karl Rove, who in his possible (and patently obvious) law-breaking was using federal monies and employees as a taxpayer financed, campaign workforce—patently illegal under the “Hatch Act”.

And then some...via TPM:

Federal Bureau of Investigation agents raided the Office of Special Counsel here, seizing computers and documents belonging to the agency chief Scott Bloch and staff.

More than a dozen FBI agents served grand jury subpoenas shortly after 10 a.m., shutting down the agency's computer network and searching its offices, as well as Mr. Bloch's home. Employees said the searches appeared focused on alleged obstruction of justice by Mr. Bloch during the course of an 2006 inquiry into his conduct in office.

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Bloch's agency is a little known one that is charged with investigating whistleblower complaints, Hatch Act violations, and the like -- but who is himself being investigated for retaliating against whistleblowers and politiciang his office. The Office of Personnel Management's inspector general has been conducting that investigation since 2005. The feds are apparently investigating whether Bloch tried to obstruct that investigation by deleting his hard drive, among other things.

To give you an idea how fraught this investigation is with unique issues. Bloch is not only busily investigating the White House for political briefings Karl Rove and his aides made to various agencies, but he's also conducting an investigation of the politicization at the Department of Justice and issues related to the U.S. Attorney firings -- a probe that he complained was being blocked by the DoJ. Of course, he can't do much to block the DoJ investigation of him.

When Eliot Ness and his G-Men roll up into a Bush appointee's office, shut down the in-office network, knock out the e-mail system, and grab everybody's computer and the file server, then hit his house and grab his shitty Dell Inspiron with every piece of porn and Pure Prarie League music in it because they caught wind that he'd been clumsily calling “Geek Squad” guys to purge files from all of his and his staff's computers—that is a big-ass deal. This is the kind of stuff that was dealt with in the heady “We are the grown-ups!” years, in the dead of night, by shady people called in on the Red Cheney-Devilphone™ to bring the shredders and lead-lined safes to clean up a messy situation.

Those days are long gone, as months are short, scores left unsettled are coming a' cropper, and fewer and fewer seem to fear the hoarse, feeble quack of our crutch-wielding duck of a president.

Feds bustin' in the door and snatchin' ever'thang from a Bush appointee?

Could that have possibly gone down in 2003? '04? '05, '06, or even early '07?.

Yeah, I thought not.

The story's second bullet point was to be the odd, open-air bus-crushing of another Bush-picked toady-in-trouble, one Lurita Alexis Doan. You remember Doan, don't you? She was the Powerpoint-hypnotized head of the Governmant Services Administration busted for the aforementioned crime of using her office as a de-facto arm of the RNC as opposed to a free-standing government agency. When caught out there on her CLEAR violations of the “Hatch Act” she was reduced to a laughable, spluttering paranoid mess in front of Henry Waxman's congressional committee. She was a textbook case of Bush's “Heckuva Job” cronyism exposed at its worst. Unable to be defended. Rank in its stupidity. And of course...tolerated up until this month in spite of clear evidence of wrong-doing, even after being told to resign or face criminal charges. This is the kind of person Bush used to snigger at us all about as he backslapped them and told the world how Jonas Salk and MLK weren't fit to wipe these people's posteriors. No more.

It's the Bush administration's special approach to accountability: stand staunchly beside an administration official as the allegations pile up and his or her credibility dwindles to nothing, and then months later -- long after the administration could derive any credit for the deed, and it is widely assumed that they are content to let the official fester in office for the duration -- the official abruptly and inexplicably resigns. So it was with Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales. And yesterday General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan stepped down.

But Doan, who gained mucky prominence for her clueless cronyism, wants everybody to know that she's not stepping down voluntarily. She was fired. And not only was she fired, but she was fired because she refused to cave to political pressure. Or something.

“I would rather get fired for something I believe in, and a cause I was willing to fight for, rather than to believe in nothing worth being fired for.” That's what Doan told Government Executive Magazine in an email last night. It's far from clear precisely what this "something" she believes in is.

Under fear—and that's really all it was—of deeper, more embarrassing investigations as he fades into the post-power phase of his presidency, Bush canned Doan's ass like Aunt Luberta's syrupy peaches. What made the firing doubly damaging was its un-typically messy handling. Normally the members of Bush's “Losers Brigade” are eased out the door, borne aloft on a sedan chair with rose petals and florid lies strewn before the press eunuchs carrying them out. This was an ugly departure, missing only building security flanking her on the walk-out and a pat-down for filched Post-Its™ and boxes of Sharpies™ at the front door. Although, it wouldn't surprise me if there's a shitty Xerox of Doan's White House ID card photo with a hastily scrawled “Do Nott Let In Bildeng!” on it behind the security desk at 1600 Penn.

Those two recent incidents were my main bellwethers indicating the spreading cracks in the foundation of “The House Of Bush”. Then there was to be a window-rattling return to the newly smoldering potboiler of Karl Rove's legal troubles with the resurgent Don Siegelman case as handled by our own Hubris Sonic:

WASHINGTON -- The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday subpoenaed President Bush's former chief political adviser, Karl Rove, to testify about whether the White House improperly meddled with the Justice Department.

Accusations of politics influencing decisions at the department led to the resignation last year of Bush's attorney general, Alberto Gonzales.

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Let the 45 day countdown begin. It was a mistake for Rove to leave the White House, he has little protection now and can get no help from the president's lawyers. They didn't release Siegelman because they thought he was guilty, it must have been really obvious to the appellate judge that he was railroaded.

Rove has since tried to hide behind plans for a legalistic stall, and even been forced to do his favorite thing in the whole wide world—outside of skulking about maternity wards for wriggling, downy-haired snacks—which is to go back and re-tell a story when his web of lies tightens about his scrotum.

While watching him flinch and squirm from those constricting canards pinching at the short n' curlies, other Bushian roof tiles and siding have begun peeling from the edifice at an alarming rate.

We saw the brutal volleys from the Obama camp, and most shockingly—the press—after Bush's noodle-armed serve of the “appeasement issue”, idiotically injecting himself into the presidential campaign. Obama's verbal nad-kick crossed Bush's eyes something fierce, and then doubled over Dubya's reluctant pal McCain with the deft tying of ol' McGollum™ to his previous statement regarding diplomacy, and to the electoral boat-anchor that is Bush. Worse still, it even prompted a few reporters to go punch up “the Wiki” where they found out about Grampa Bush's “Charles Foster Kane”-ish craven cuddling up to history's murderous little paper-hanger. Accounatbility? Ow! Owwww! Owwwwweeeeeee!

I dashed out of the house yesterday morning, watching only the local all-news station for the weather, so I missed much of the morning's TV, although while walking east on 23rd street to an appointment, the big screen TVs in the appliance store had an interesting and additional depressing Bush news flash that made me laugh, and probably made Bush chuck a Moussy bottle at the ol' Philco.

Apparently John McCain was so deathly afraid of being seen by the wider public with the two-term tragedy Bush at a downgraded fundraiser in his home state! (moved to a private home in Arizona making it a gold-plated “Tupperware” party instead of the planned big-room event), that the only extant visual evidence evidence of it was blurry “Bigfoot”-grade video of Bush and McCain sitting in the back of a limousine at the Phoenix Airport.

About 15 seconds worth, thank you very much.

How embarrassing is that? It's “What's Eating Gilbert Grape” embarrassing, that's what. With McCain in the neurotic Johnny Depp role and Bush in the part of the house-bound, “Oh-my-God-we-can-not-be-seen-with-her-she's-a-mess!” mom. Minus mom's good-hearted-ness and any reason for sympathy, that is.

And then I stopped at a diner for a light breakfast and almost Danny Thomas-ed my coffee over what I saw on the large TV screen near the door.

Little Squatty McMelon's incendiary new book “What Happened” was being discussed—in grave tones as the tome evidently gives Mr. Bush the grand, slow tour of the chassis-view of a Greyhound Americruiser.

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the public with a “political propaganda campaign” led by President Bush, aimed at “manipulating sources of public opinion” and “downplaying the major reason for going to war.” McClellan said Vice President Cheney was “the magic man” who steered policy while leaving no fingerprints.

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News of McClellan’s tell-all book seems to have soured White House officials’ impression of him. Current Press Secretary Dana Perino said McClellan was obviously “disgruntled”, while Fleischer said he was “heartbroken”, and Bartlett called the book “total crap”.

MSNBC’s Kevin Corke reported this afternoon that White House officials, on background, went even further, calling McClellan a “traitor” and likening him to Benedict Arnold. He said the White House was “upset,” substituting that word for a word he said he could not repeat on television:

CORKE: I have heard on background they are upset. I’m using the word upset because that’s not the word they used, and it is not the word I can say on TV. Another person said they are flat out angry about what transpired here. I heard the word “traitor” and “Benedict.” I think another person said to me, not far from here, it was like a shot to the gut when you are not looking. […]

O’DONNEL: Quickly Kevin, a White House staffer said to you on background—they used the word “traitor”?

CORKE: “Traitor.” Absolutely. And I raised my eyebrows, and he said, It is what it is.

That sound you heard wasn't thunder. It was the fucking chimney on the house falling down. “Boom!”

Not the roof just yet—but a major part of “Manor Bush” is severely structurally compromised.

McLellan's rough Sacajawea-dollar dropping on his mouth-breathing boss, wasn't totally out of the blue. We caught wind of this last November and dealt with it when juicy details about the book leaked out.

What—if I may paraphrase Mr. McLellan—the fuck happened?

I think it was this:

McLellan was put out in front, every day for months without so much as a fly-swatter to fend off questions about the veracity of his boss and peers at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. His job was to beat the wolves back, and to change the tenor of the story around the leak and the subsequent lies about it.

I believe he knew he was lying for the boss, but that they were “good soldier” lies of necessity.

Unfortunately, the sordid mess he was tasked with smoothing over was impossible to finesse, and he became identified personally with the stumbling and bumbling in the cover-up. He was clearly frustrated with this particular project, and on several occasions pretty much threw his hands into the air in exasperation and resignation over what was a hopeless situation for him. He of course, left before the Libby trial and its negative verdict, but the damage had already been done. His inability to spin bug-eaten straw into 14-karat gold was held against him, I think. His being unable to stand and lie with the cool authority of Tony Snow—and thus take some heat off the White House—made some in the White House not like him. “How dare he not effortlessly play the 'true believer' role as we need him to!”

“Fuck him. He's dead to us.”

Note that McLellan got no hook-up at FOX, or at the Journal, or any other bastions of walk-in wingnut welfare.

And even before that, but it didn't take a genius to see it coming. Just a casual student of political history and human-fucking-nature:

(LM) I too, have come to if not a belief in "cyclical" patterns, a belief at least in "the law of averages". So much skullduggery -- and yes, patently evil acts have been perpetrated by this administration, particularly in the name of this war and all of the wrangling of people and facts involved in it that THEY'VE GOTTEN AWAY WITH, that the law of averages just seems to be coming into play now. They're the lean whip of a guy who had the fast metabolism seemingly forever, snarfing down burgers by the bagful -- shakes by the gallon, and now thirty-plus years old, BOOM!, the jello-shaking gut appears, he can't get up the steps anymore, and his chest is always hurting him now. Bad news is on the horizon for this "fella".

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3.) A major whistleblower who produces documents detailing Bush admin misdeeds. Call me an optimist, but there's always somebody who just...breaks under conscience's weight.

There is always somebody who gives it up. Always. If not necessarily for conscience, at the very least to cover one's ass. McLellan was pooh-poohed as hyping the book based on a juicy editor's pull-quote or two at the time. Now? Not so much. He's got people running around the West Wing with their faces a rich “Buchanan Purple” in rage. Got 'em tossin' around words like “Traitor!”, “Benedict!”, and “Shot in the gut!”. It severely damages Bush's desperate legacy rebuild as he staggers drunkenly into the political sunset—brass-knuckle-clad cock-punching the reasoning for his horrific war from the deep, deep inside, and it also pimp-slaps John McCain's campaign dead in the grille as he's running on the prosecution of this heinous, misbegotten conflict. It ties McCain to Bush as surely as if he were Slim Pickens' Major Kong lock-straddling that big, dumb bomb all the fucking way down to the white-hot heart of a doomsday mushroom cloud.

This is NOT the way Bush wanted this thing to end. He was hoping for a “skate”. He wanted to ride out on a sea of platitudes, shaded by an election involving personalities that would distract from him. Steve back in the day always spoke of how he expected Bush to go out spittin' and shittin' with teeth a' grittin' as the hounds tore at his ass. I never believed that. Now, I'm not so sure. I think the skatin' away ain't gonna happen. And while I don't think there'll be an episode of “Cops” featuring a sweaty, tank-topped Bush being dragged off to the hoosegow, he will almost certainly not leave 1600 Pennsylvania intact. There will be bruises and scars.

Picture the belligerent drunk stumbling out of the bar at closing time.

He's on his way out at least. Loud and stupid, yes. But thank God that son-of-a-bitch is almost out the Goddamned door.

Then you catch a whiff of something awful, and realize he's shit in a booth. Not the bathroom—but a booth in the bar proper. Some heinous shit—pardon the pun. So instead of letting him just walk out the door on his own, the bouncer kicks him dead in the middle of his back as he staggers out for good measure. “Boom!”

McLellan's book and its subsequent firestorm is a bouncer's swift Size 13 in the back. A vicious move by a one-time friend. A one-time right hand man. And a sure sign added onto the rest of the exiting drink-tosses, face-spits, and leg-out trips that the end won't be pretty. He'll leave with his popularity at Nixonian levels. Nix-fucking-onian. His original posse, gone—save for Dick, and who the hell knows where his ass is these days. I'll bet there's a layer of dust on the swivel chair in his White House office. It leaves only a lonely “Baron” in a tumbledown manor. With parapets leaning and stones pulled free—letting in a chill wind. Echoes in an empty house. “The centre cannot hold, and things fall apart”.

The Baron sits bolt upright—there's a dagger in his back. Who would do such a thing?

There are numerous “Poe”-isms from his works that'd cap that off. Stuff from “The Raven”, or “The Premature Burial” come to mind. I like to close things like this out with musical codas. The obvious musical punchline would be The O'Jays “Backstabbers”. But I think another tune from the “City Of Brotherly Love” seems more apt...

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Borders in Cash Crunch

Wrong Size To Thrive

Borders needs cash.

Guardian UK

The US high-street chain Borders is facing a cash crunch that may force it to put itself up for sale as music sales migrate to the internet and discount retailers muscle in on the books market.

Borders said yesterday that it was suffering a funding crisis as credit became "prohibitively expensive or entirely unavailable". It has borrowed $42.5m (£21.5m) from its biggest shareholder, Pershing Square Capital Management.

Operating profits at Borders' 515 superstores in the US dived from $111m to $56.9m last year. After taking into account exceptional items, the company made a $157m loss.

The firm has called in JP Morgan and Merrill Lynch to advise on strategic options, including the sale of the entire company or of individual divisions. Its shares dived by 25% to $5.34.

Borders' chief executive, George Jones, said: "The company determined that additional capital was required to execute our operating plan, and as a result we began to explore various financing options. The current credit crisis has made many of these alternatives prohibitively expensive or entirely unavailable."

In common with other US retailers, booksellers are struggling with a tough economic environment, which has prompted many shoppers to cut back on their discretionary spending.

The biggest US books chain, Barnes & Noble, revealed a 10% fall in annual profits yesterday to $135m. Its like-for-like sales fell by 0.5% in the final quarter and it warned that sales for the coming quarter were likely to be "slightly negative" - partly because of tough comparisons with last year's release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Borders ranks second in book sales to Barnes & Noble. It was founded in 1971 by two brothers, Tom and Louis Borders, who opened a second-hand bookshop in the university town of Ann Arbor, west of Detroit.

The company has traditionally stocked a mixture of books, CDs and DVDs. But it has been reassigning space in reaction to a steep fall in music sales, which were down by 14.2% on a like-for-like basis in the fourth quarter.

In an interview last year, Borders' chief executive blamed competition from cut-price megastores such as Wal-Mart and CostCo for eating into book sales.

I don't have a problem with this.

I hate to see any bookstore in trouble. I have shopped at Borders when I was in a hurry, however I avoid shopping there routinely. Their prices are ALWAYS too high. I can get stuff cheaper via Amazon, or at damn near any physical bookstore. The books Borders stocks, shows me they don't know what they're doing.

From their Science Fiction section to Buddhism, from Humor to Unix and Messaging (and DNS and NTP), from Biology to Screenwriting, Borders consistently fails -- I say three times, fails, Fails, FAILS -- to carry the authors and books I consider the best in their field.

They carry someone whom the whole world has known for 30-40 years is the best. But they fail to carry the person who actually leads the field. Barnes and Noble carries the best, because they carry everyone. And the small bookstore carries the best, because that's how the small bookstores survive, by specializing in only the best in particular fields, or by carrying everything in one or two fields.

Boarders tries to be a little bit of everything to everyone. MEGA-FAIL.

People want to know who you are. Take a position, dammit. Be a professional.

Stand for something.

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My Favorite (Living) Science Fiction Writer

Daniel Keys Moran is God

And he blogs.

If you're not lucky enough to have read the writings of Daniel Keys Moran, wow... lucky you.

As a serious science fiction reader since age seven or eight when I first figured out that the rocket ship on the end of the library book meant good reading, usually, and who grew up on Robert Heinlein and other greats, I'm here to tell you...

I believe Daniel Keys Moran is the greatest science fiction writer alive today.

Yes, I know some people will say it is John Varley, just on the strength of The Persistence of Vision with the novelette by the same name, which I at least feel is the greatest novelette I've read in my life, just as I think Of Mice and Men is the greatest novel, and The Sandman as a whole, is maybe the best literary work as a whole I've ever read. And I include all those great Russian novels and the boring English ones. And even Steinbeck whom I love so much, such as The Winter of our Discontent, and the brilliance of Shakespeare. (I'm talking here strictly about the written versions -- movies are a different deal.)

Daniel Keys Moran is something else.

Yes, I know you have your opinions. You should post them in comments.

I recommend you start with The Long Run, followed by The Last Dancer. Then go back and pick up The Armageddon Blues and the minor works, which I hesitate to call minor -- really I should say shorter -- as some of them haunt me to this day.

(Yes, I do mean Realtime.)

Who do you think is the best living science fiction writer? And why? What one or two books should people new to this author read to best learn to love her or him? What is a great short story by them on line we might read?

And yes, okay fine... you can include fantasy as well. Just so we don't get into that old argument. *grins*

Be polite to each other please. Even if they are obliviously (also obviously) dumber than dirt and know nothing about real science fiction, and you are showing them the greatest writer in history, if the dumb fools would only listen!

If they won't get it... move on.

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Karl Rove, Now Reduced! On Sale!

BWAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA...

Karl "Worthless Scumbag Oxygen Thief" Rove has finally managed to unload his "book". Remember all the talk about the upwards from 3 to 4 million dollars Karl was going to rake in for the ghostwritten piece of crap book? Well, after languishing in the book auction market for a long 3 months with no takers he managed to convince some sucker to take the loss for $1 million +. Bwahahahahahaha. This piece of shite will go right to the remainder bin and of course the National Review Book Corner for Morons.

One of the most divisive figures in American politics has to take the lowest book bid... I am peeing my pants from laughing. What is it the kids say. ROFL.

Ted Kennedy got $8 million for a book about Chappaquiddick last month, and honestly, who cares. Rove can't even pull in 1/8 of what Ted Kennedy can pull in.

Said Matalin, a former adviser to Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and Threshold's editor in chief: Karl was always in a league of his own in the world of electoral politics and he now will literally create a unique genre for historians, policy makers, political junkies and serious readers. -- AP wire

Yeah, sure he will. Please, they don't really think Karl is going to be honest do they?

Unbelievable, these people really think they are going to be able to travel around the U.S. giving speeches and having book signings. They really don't have any idea how much people hate them.

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Penny For Your Books?

“Well I Never! How Insulting! My Book is Worth At Least Three Cents! Maybe FOUR! Harrumph! Harrumph! Harrumph!”

Sometimes, you have to just laugh your ass off at Ol' Man Coincidence. He can be as funny as watching Bush read “The Jabberwock”.

My most recent post dealt with the issues that WGA writers are facing in their work stoppage. Issues like proper compensation via “secondary distribution channels” and so on. Well...in my blogospheric wandering after putting the post up, I casually ventured over to one of the sites I hit several times a day—Crooks & Liars, and what do I see?

I see the “down the rabbit hole and out the other end”, alternate-universe version of the WGA's dispute, as played out by the Mighty Cheeto-Dusted Rage-A-Holic Wingnut Players. If you've ever wondered what the deal is with those annoying Flash ads for batshit winger books selling for a penny or so, wonder no more, oh skeptical progressive—it was the scam you always thought it was. Via the coolest crooks on the intertubes:

In a suit filed in United States District Court in Washington yesterday, the authors Jerome R. Corsi, Bill Gertz, Lt. Col. Robert (Buzz) Patterson, Joel Mowbray and Richard Miniter state that Eagle Publishing, which owns Regnery, “orchestrates and participates in a fraudulent, deceptively concealed and self-dealing scheme to divert book sales away from retail outlets and to wholly owned subsidiary organizations within the Eagle conglomerate.”

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(They charge) that the company deprives its writers of royalties by selling their books at a steep discount to book clubs and other organizations owned by the same parent company.

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[Richard] Miniter said, “It suddenly occurred to us that Regnery is making collectively jillions of dollars off of us and paying us a pittance.” He added: “Why is Regnery acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?”

Go get a paper towel and wipe the just-spit coffee off your monitor. I'll give you a second.

(Whistles Alanis Morrissette's “Isn't It Ironic”)

Did it? Good!

So now you get the deal. Those heavily Photoshop clone-stamped pics of the Wingnut-Du-Jour in those “penny book” ads hide angry, foundation-shedding faces twisted with rage in getting screwed like a goat at Kaus's house over their royalty money (their residuals) being pocketed by Big Daddy Wingnut Welfare The Third. It's a fucking shell game, for Eagle and Regnery—your typical “profits first” shell game involving the intense, internal back-scratching and kickbacks that drives so much of conglomerate business practice these days. And surprise, surprise, surprise!—The right's bigwig moneychangers have as little problem shitting on their literary “Pinkerton Men” as they do on the brown, and poor, and contrasting-viewed people they so happily hate.

I'm just laughing at seeing these crayon-crackin' clowns go all “Norma Rae” on the big boss man so publicly.

Did someone not get their check to get their white robes and pointy hats outta the cleaners before 180 days when they were sold to the ragman?

Or is someone strapped for cash to pay off the child psychologist's sessions with the kids to blot out all memory of mommy's flouncing about the yard in that...that cheerleader's skirt?

Who knows? All I do know is that they're plenty pissed. Pissed enough to get so discombobulated that a nutbar like Miniter can't seem to separate wingnut friend from moonbat foe anymore. “Why is Regnery acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?” Very “Manchurian Candidate”-ish—left manipulating right to manipulate the left...which is right—oh, fuck it!

Let's just sit back and watch this l'il 'ol freeper crab-fight play out, shall we? And see if anybody else decides to drop dime about this mini-Enron tale of scammery.

Hey! “drop dime”! Why, that's four Ann Coulters, two Malkins, a Hewitt, a Mary Cheney and uh...a Jerry Corsi right there.

Or...two pieces of chalky-ass bubble gum.

You make the call.

There's more...

Zombies Love New York

A Park. Yoga. The East River. 100 Zombies.

I LOVE NEW YORK!

Brooklyn. All the great stuff happens in Brooklyn.

Seriously, name me another American city where this could happen.

Okay, maybe San Francisco, but you know all the Clowns hanging out in Golden Gate Park would want to get in to it, and then you've got the big Red Noses and the big Clown Orange Floppy Feet getting in the way of the eternal quest for BRAINS.

Although clowns are slowed down by their big orange clown floppy feet, which would give the zombies a change to eat them. And probably get really really high, given they are San Francisco clowns and all probably have like, X and other stuff in their clown pockets, and that's a really terrifying thought -- zombies on X... "We love you. We want to eat your brains and we love you...dude and little dudette."

But no... No, this is pure.

A Park. The East River. Yoga. And 100 Zombies.

Also a book The Zen of Zombie: Better Living Through the Undead if you care, but really, if you're an actual zombie, all you need is BRAINS.

I think we need a new tagging category, er, Label, just for Zombie posts.

Done! *cracks up*

Oh... and h/t to Zombie Central, Boing Boing. You rule.

There's more...

Valerie Plame Wilson on The Daily Show

Jon Stewart Interviews Valerie Plame Wilson
About her book "Fair Game"

No kidding, the CIA redacted passages having to do with breast feeding.

Seriously.

Welcome to Alice in Wonderland.

Great interview. And nice to see she's doing well.

There's more...

Rowling Outs Dumbledore

Let The Fan Fiction Begin! Er, Let More Be Written.

It's true. No less an authority than J.K. Rowling herself, with a poke in the eye to Christian groups who allege her books promote witchcraft, outed Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster of Hogwarts, gay master wizard, and in love with...

Well, let's let Ms. Rowling tell you.

Associated Press

Harry Potter fans, the rumors are true: Albus Dumbledore, master wizard and Headmaster of Hogwarts, is gay. J.K. Rowling, author of the mega-selling fantasy series that ended last summer, outed the beloved character Friday night while appearing before a full house at Carnegie Hall.

After reading briefly from the final book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," she took questions from audience members.

She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds "true love."

"Dumbledore is gay," the author responded to gasps and applause.

She then explained that Dumbledore was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, whom he defeated long ago in a battle between good and bad wizards. "Falling in love can blind us to an extent," Rowling said of Dumbledore's feelings, adding that Dumbledore was "horribly, terribly let down."

Dumbledore's love, she observed, was his "great tragedy."

"Oh, my god," Rowling concluded with a laugh, "the fan fiction."

Rowling told the audience that while working on the planned sixth Potter film, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," she spotted a reference in the script to a girl who once was of interest to Dumbledore. A note was duly passed to director David Yates, revealing the truth about her character.

Rowling, finishing a brief "Open Book Tour" of the United States, her first tour here since 2000, also said that she regarded her Potter books as a "prolonged argument for tolerance" and urged her fans to "question authority."

Not everyone likes her work, Rowling said, likely referring to Christian groups that have alleged the books promote witchcraft. Her news about Dumbledore, she said, will give them one more reason.

Let the news go forth.

Someone call for my Owl.

There's more...

Secrets on Postcards

A Lifetime of Secrets: A PostSecret Book

How exciting for you if you're just discovering the PostSecret project.

Started originally as an art project by artist/author Frank Warren, still touring internationally as an art exhibit, an award winning web site, and now released in its fourth book, A Lifetime of Secrets, this is participatory, human art at its finest.

Highly, highly recommended.

What's your secret? Write it on one side of a postcard and send it here:

There's more...

Uncle Ruckus & The Rucketttes

“Yes it's the same...old song...”

Every once in a while, an odd, mystery stink descends on New York City. Sometimes it's the sickly sweet odor of maple syrup. Other times it's the acrid bite of burning hair. And then, there's the nauseating blanket of methane that comes from nowhere, haunts the place for a day and just as quickly is gone. But while those “mystery stinks” are here, they are pervasive. You can't hide from 'em. You duck into a bar—someone comes in with the smell hanging onto their clothing and plops down right next to you. Ugh. You're in your car, mind wandering as you drive, and a gust of the miasma shoots through the air vents—right into your face.

You can not escape it.

And right now, we're going through the media equivalent of one of those super-permeating, fetid clouds of “Bleeeeeaaah!”, as everywhere I turn, I see the near-catatonic visage of one (in-)Justice Clarence Thomas, droning in that monotone of his as he flogs pimps shills sphincter-pushes his sad, little autobiography out; “My Grandfather's Son”—for all to...I guess, use to balance out that wobbly table in the back bedroom or something. He has been inescapable in the last few days, (as noted by Doc Wendel downpage) which is quite ironic, seeing as how he's spent the last 16 years of his unjustified elevation to power and prominence as a silent, chameleonic, gnome with nothing more to him than a rubber stamp in each hand—one reading “yes”, the other reading “no”. Seen only, like one of those European clock figures that emerges from a little door—on the hour—with his mallets to strike the chime, one mallet reading “yes”, the other reading “no”, and then toddling back into the clock behind a slamming door...as the world and time just goes on by.

Seeing Thomas rear his granite block-shaped (and countenanced) head everywhere all of a sudden is a peculiar thing. He's promoting this “book”, and is only now opening his mouth about anything worth a damn. The passages and his interviews smack of a certain triumphalism-cum-petulance. A great, big “Oh the hell progressives have put me through, but hey—it doesn't really bother me, because I'm a trailblazer, and look what I've accomplished.”

And when you look at what he's “accomplished”, you're there all day hunting...because in the end, what is there, really?

The book almost seems like a weird “alternate universe” item that appears from some sort of time/space wormhole where history turned out differently, like Hugh Hewitt's tome, “Painting The Map Red: The Fight To Create A Permanent Republican Majority”. It scans like a long-in-the-works, rah-rah piece gone sour, designed to celebrate the dedication of his latter-day followers along the path of Black neo-con idiocy. And just like Hewitt's onanistic tome, post-Thomas's contemporaries repeated self-immolations, it stands as an odd curio, like a dusty, prematurely-printed championship t-shirt for a team that would choke on it's incompetence.

See, Thomas was trotted out as one of the early, operational versions of the transistorized negro conserva-bot. His immediate forebear was the spark-sputtering prototype rolled out during the Reagan administration, Samuel Pierce. When his bigoted patrons tried to sell him as the sober-minded Black leader the “community” needed, said community clowned him so hard that the air filled with “Ha-has” like a Peanuts cartoon. Failing with him, the bosses went back to the dusky drawing board and crafted the Thomas iteration of said negro conserva-bot, wound his ass up, and set him stiffly walking among us.

The timing was perfect. We'd just lost Thurgood Marshall, and it was truly the “Age of the Buppie”, where post-college Blacks began to enter the corporate workforce in larger numbers than ever. Enough of that segment of the populace was blindered by the short-sighted, ”Black faces in high places” mindset, that opposition to Thomas on his considerable demerits by the rest of Black folks didn't take hold. That, and the backing by the disingenuous, hardest-right of the right on the committees in control of appointing him, snaked him on through.

And what a time that was!

White folks and Black folks will remember it differently from each other. Many Whites remember the political brinksmanship, and soap-opera-ish elements. Some focused on the tittilating sexual details of the brouhaha—while some racialized the sexual aspects along old-stereotypic lines. But Black folks for the most part, cringed all the way through—some wanting it to just end, and myopically saying “Just give it to the brother”, without wanting to look closely at whether Thomas wanted to be their brother in the first place. And a large number of us cringed for other reasons—namely for how the hearings “treated” us to a display of hot-house, conservative negritude. A parade of “Uncle Ruckuses” cultivated by GOP gardeners, who spliced seeds of greed, and cross-bred self-hatred, the lifetime hook-up, and “melanated” skin to give us those freaky negro hybrids we saw in those days. But these “Not Ready For Prime Time” negroes thought themselves to be natural occurences and reveled in their time in the spotlight of the hearings...unaware that they were wilting, shriveling, dropping leaves and practically composting before our very eyes.

Remember the laughable, self-important playa “John Doggett” who testified on Thomas's behalf, embarrassingly crowing about how he and his fellow Country-Clubbin' Yalie negroes were all that, and how they practically had to beat the “lay-tays” away with rolled-up Wall Street Journals, so it could only be the case that Anita was steppin' to his main man “C.T.”, right? Or the sweating, ill-wigged toady Phyllis Berry, who seemed to be crushing on her old boss Clarence pretty damned hard as she verbally fellated him during her catty, hissing testimony?

Urrrrrrrgh.

As Dave Chappelle said, “Ask a Black Dude”. He'll tell you what was goin' on then. Better yet, ask a group of Black folks about it, to really get a feel for the deal at that time. You'll hear minutiae on those hearings that the Koppels and Rathers simply couldn't grasp. Who was frontin'. Who got “caught out there’. You'll hear more than one say that those hearings were like the world having a picture-window view of the batshit wing of the family tree at a gathering, as they inappropriately flashed surgery scars, drank too damn much, and shook their asses while swinging from the chandelier.

It was...an embarrassment. For us—Black folks.

But for the conservative movement, Clarence's ascension was a watershed moment. He was the vanguard, the herald of the coming of the next evolutionary step in “Negrodom”. He was the ‘Professor Anti-Malcolm X” that would lead the new race of Black neo-con mutants into the future—“The Anti-Malcolm X-Men”, if you will. Gifted with special powers, they were—they fairly leaped at you, or rather, were thrown into our laps for us to figure out.

One hero was “The Bore”—a.k.a. Shelby Steele, blessed with the amazing power the render Black folks somnambulant with his droning tone and “Sigh! We do it to ourselves” tongue-clucking.

Then behold! “Corroso”, the acid-spitting creature—a.k.a. the late (as in career-dead), lamented Ken Hamblin, talk-radio's certifiable, self-hating, negro ranter. This clown may well have been the actual template for Aaron MacGruder's whacked-out “Uncle Ruckus”. That's how crazy he was.

And then there was the amazing “Press Clip Twins”—a.k.a. former GOP Reps. Gary Franks and J.C. Watts, whose powers were to inundate opponents with their considerable press clips about their being the lone Black GOP members of the House. Of course, their powers being paper-driven, like the same in a game of “rock-paper-scissors”, rendered them kind of one-dimensional and in the end, lame. They were the dogs you marveled at—not for walking on their hind legs well, but for doing so at all. What legacy they left rests at the bottom of history's dustbin. Under the bag.

But for a period of time there, you couldn't drop a biscuit off a table without hitting 10 Black conservatives on the floor waiting for crumbs from “the man”—and Clarence led the gobbling charge for the whole bunch. It was the first of many clarion-calls of “The Age of the Black Conservative!” Which was followed by “The New, Improved Age of the Black Conservative!”—which should not be confused with the “Supa-Dupa-Mega-Ultra Age of the Black Conservative!” that followed on it's oh-so sensible heels.

These ballyhooed “Ages of the Black Conservatives!” are the demographic equivalent of the “Age of the Jet Pack!” It's comin! It's comin! It's gonna be all the rage! And then, just like those haughty promises of the jet-pack—(we were all supposed to have 'em, right?) it never came. The dream fizzled. When you do see one—be it a jet-pack or an ascendant Black conservative, it's a rare thing indeed. But it's a show. A singular performance for a gathered few. It takes off, flies for a short distance, lands and then is done—with no practical application in the real world.

Clarence Thomas was the Republicans Black conservative “Jet-Pack”—a freaky contraption that seemed cool in practice, but in the end, led to nothing worth a damn.

He begat the reluctant, not-fully Kool-Aid pickled Colin Powell, and the wholly embarrassing Condoleeza Rice, whose trained expertise in Kremlinology left her as prepared for the future as a horse shoe-er opening shop just outside the Ford plant as the first Model T's started rolling off the line. I once called Rice “a joke” while with a group of well-to-do Black folks a couple of years back, and a woman took deep umbrage at my harsh opinion. I told her I could cite numerous things to buttress my statement, but opted to give her the singular example of how Rice allowed Israel's Ariel Sharon to diss and objectify her, by merely chuckling at his ogling her—the Secretary of State's—legs and his going on telling everybody who would listen about it. She let him diminish her stature with her willful consent. “Where was her self-respect? Her pride?” I asked. “That really happened?”, the woman asked sheepishly. “Maybe she...urrrgh! Wow. That really happened?”

Thomas then begat our Holy Trinity of negro electoral ineptitude from last year, too. “The Blather, the Dunce and the Unholy Boast”—Michael Steele, Lynn Swann and Ken Blackwell. They were the stars of the most recent sequel in the long running (but straight-to-VHS) series: “The Age of the Black Conservative IV—This Time IT'S PERSONAL!”, or Election '06, which bombed so God-awfully that it made “Meet The Deedles” look like “Titanic”.

Another launch pad failure, as Swann is probably ladling out water to Ben Roethlisberger and the squad during Wednesday drills, Steele one would assume is working at a Nabisco plant sweeping up Oreo crumbs, and Blackwell's on cart return at the Shaker Heights SteinMart.

Which brings us back to Clarence. The pissy, bitter Clarence making the rounds these last few days. I couldn't help but notice in all the interviews something discomfiting about Ol' “C.T”. It was his eyes. Cold, dead eyes that spoke of an either snuffed, or never-lit internal fire. I'd never noticed his eyes before, as the horn-rimmed Urkels he wore back in day obscured them. But as surely as “the eyes are the window to the soul”, I could see, or rather, not see the depth of Thomas's damage within.

This is a man who traded it all...his self-respect..his family's good will via his lying and trashing them as welfare cheats in his paid speeches to the GOP faithful, and respect from his people for working like a devil against them—everything—for what? A pat on the fucking head and the ultimate, lifetime civil service job.

“Whoop-de-damn-doo.”

Oh yes, and to stand tall in his position as “HNIC” over all the little Clarence-clones like Steele, Blackwell, and Swann that would follow in his wake and validate his tremendous sacrifice“ in service to “the cause”.

Good God, the irony!

All of this head-bowing to wonderful Grandpa in his book, and Clarence himself was to be a Paterfamilia of sorts to a brood of world-changing children of a sold-out tomorrow.

And that brood failed. Miserably. Sixteen years. Four terms. The GOP futurists predictions of melanin-powered “jet-packs” all over the skies petered out. Leaving the show-model only. Rusting. Dated. Capable now of barely making the shortest of hops. Hardly a thing of wonder anymore.

Not even a spark anymore—only smoke. Those cold, dead eyes again. And that “anger”—no, that bitterness. At what? A life wasted proving what exactly? A philosophy bankrupted. At a decade and a half's worth of grandkids who just didn't measure up—and never will?.

Never mind Grandfather's words hollowly echoing in Thomas's increasingly lonely, golden tin years...it's the wild cackle of another “relative” that's gnawing at what's left of his soul. And if you listen closely, you can hear him—maniacally laughing in all of his pop-eyed, self-hating glory.

It's his inner “Uncle Ruckus”. And Clarence has finally realized that the joke—was on him all along.

There's more...

Justice Clarence Thomas: Victim, Liar, Crybaby

Still Crying After All These Years

We couldn't take our eyes off the television.

I lived in Amherst, New Hampshire. My wife, our three girls and I often climbed in the station wagon and drove to Kennebunkport, Maine, just below President Bush's massive estate out at the end of the long spit behind the fortified gates, the Coast Guard always patrolling off-shore.

The girls would play in the tidal pools and pick up sea shells, getting massively soaked and covered in sand. My wife and I ate lobster rolls and dreamed of ruling the world.

As the day drew old we'd wrap tired wet sandy girls in towels, pack them into their seats, buckle-up, and drive the several hours back home. Politics (well, sex & money first) were the usual topic. Who was going to win the next year (we hadn't even heard of Bill Clinton I don't think; well, I had of course, having lived in Arkansas, but not as a Presidential candidate). And now, this Clarence Thomas guy.

His nomination was tied 7-7 out of committee to the floor, till something strange happened. A woman named Anita Hill came forward and said she'd been harassed by Thomas. I stayed home and watched on television. No money coming in... but I had to know. Best soap opera since Watergate.

Thomas made it in. Barely.

Justice Thomas recently released his autobiography.

abc news

"The mob I now faced carried no ropes or guns," Thomas wrote. "Its weapons were smooth-tongued lies spoken into microphones and printed on the front pages of America's newspapers. It no longer sought to break the bodies of its victims. Instead it devastated their reputations and drained away their hope.

"But it was a mob all the same, and its purpose — to keep the black man in his place — was unchanged." Thomas wrote. "Strip away the fancy talk and you were left with the same old story: You can't trust black men around women. This one may be a big-city judge with a law degree from Yale, but when you get right down to it, he's just like the rest of them. They all do that sort of thing whenever they get the chance, and no woman would ever lie about it."

As he describes his emotions, his words of rage literally leap of the page. When he enters the hearing room and takes his seat, he levels his own assault.

"This is a circus. It is a national disgrace," his voice in tightly focused anger. "And from my standpoint, as a black American, as far as I am concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that, unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you, you will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree."

Four days later, the Senate voted to confirm Thomas to the Supreme Court, by the narrowest margin in history, 52-48. Thomas was home when the Senate voted, and Virginia asked if he wanted to listen to the roll call. "Absolutely not," he responded. "I don't care what they do."

He decided to take a long hot bath to relax, and he was in the tub when Virginia's assistant called. Virginia hung up the phone, went into the bathroom and told Thomas he had been confirmed.

"'Whoop-dee-damn-doo,' I said, sliding deeper into the comforting water," Thomas wrote of the conversation. "Mere confirmation, even to the Supreme Court, seemed pitifully small compensation for what had been done to me."

Oh yeah... That's what happened to him.

Bullllllll... Shit.

I'm forty-eight years old, this all happened sixteen years ago, but even I can remember it didn't go down that way.

Fortunately Professor Anita Hill of Brandeis University straightens us.

New York Times

I stand by my testimony.

Justice Thomas has every right to present himself as he wishes in his new memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.” He may even be entitled to feel abused by the confirmation process that led to his appointment to the Supreme Court.

But I will not stand by silently and allow him, in his anger, to reinvent me.

Justice Thomas offers a litany of unsubstantiated representations and outright smears ... A number of independent authors have shown those attacks to be baseless. What’s more, their reports draw on the experiences of others who were familiar with Mr. Thomas’s behavior, and who came forward after the hearings. It’s no longer my word against his.

Justice Thomas’s characterization of me is also hobbled by blatant inconsistencies. He claims, for instance, that I was a mediocre employee who had a job in the federal government only because he had “given it” to me. He ignores the reality: I was fully qualified to work in the government, having graduated from Yale Law School (his alma mater, which he calls one of the finest in the country), and passed the District of Columbia Bar exam, one of the toughest in the nation.

Fortunately, we have made progress since 1991. Today, when employees complain of abuse in the workplace, investigators and judges are more likely to examine all the evidence and less likely to simply accept as true the word of those in power. But that could change. Our legal system will suffer if a sitting justice’s vitriolic pursuit of personal vindication discourages others from standing up for their rights.

That's what I saw on television sixteen years ago. A dignified woman, laying everything she had on the line to battle a man who refused to tell the truth.

Justice Thomas -- Mr. Thomas then -- lied during his conformation also.

Washington Post

Stare decisis is a fancy Latin term that stands for a bedrock proposition of U.S. law: that the Supreme Court will uphold precedent and not disturb settled law without special justification. As Justice Thurgood Marshall explained for the court in 1986, stare decisis is the "means by which we ensure that the law will not merely change erratically, but will develop in a principled and intelligible fashion."

Four years ago, Rehnquist echoed Marshall in a case that reaffirmed the Miranda warning given before police interrogations, stating that stare decisis "carries such persuasive force that we have always required a departure from precedent to be supported by some 'special justification.' "

Stare decisis is not and should not be an ironclad rule -- otherwise Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld segregation, would still be on the books. But almost everyone agrees that respect for the doctrine is indispensable for a Supreme Court justice. As Thomas himself explained at his confirmation hearing, "stare decisis provides continuity to our system, it provides predictability, and in our process of case-by-case decision making, I think it is a very important and critical concept."

Huffington Post

It turns out, of course, that the alarming character traits Anita Hill observed in her boss Clarence Thomas were nothing compared to the nutcase judicial temperament he has since revealed. At his confirmation hearing, Thomas -- like Marshall before him, and Roberts and Alito after him -- paid tribute to stare decisis, the importance of precedent in guiding Supreme Court decisions. But no less an authority than arch-conservative fellow Associate Justice Antonin Scalia told Thomas' biographer, Ken Foskett, that Thomas "doesn't believe in stare decisis, period." If you think nutcase is too strong a word to summarize that view, listen again to Scalia, as quoted in this Terry Gross interview with Jeff Toobin about his new Supreme Court book, The Nine:

Mr. TOOBIN: Clarence Thomas is not just the most conservative member of the Rehnquist court or the Roberts court. He's the most conservative justice to serve on the court since the 1930s. If you take what Thomas says seriously, if you read his opinions, particularly about issues like the scope of the federal government, he basically thinks that the entire work of the New Deal is unconstitutional. He really believes in a conception of the federal government that hasn't been supported by the justices since Franklin Roosevelt made his appointments to the court. You know, I went to a speech that Justice Scalia gave at a synagogue here in New York a couple of years ago, and someone asked him, `What's the difference between your judicial philosophy and Justice Thomas?' I thought a very good question. And Scalia talked for a while and he said, `Look, I'm a conservative. I'm a texturalist. I'm an originalist. But I'm not a nut.' And I thought that...
GROSS: Meaning that he thinks Thomas is one.
Mr. TOOBIN: Well, that was certainly the implication.
GROSS: Mm-hmm.
Mr. TOOBIN: It was pretty amazing. I mean, Thomas is well outside the mainstream, even of the conservatives on the court.

The Roberts-Scalia-Thomas-Alito-and-sometimes-Kennedy fivesome on the Court today is the closest the country has come to the domination of the third branch of government by the same ideology that gave us the Bush administration and its Congressional and Fourth Estate enablers.

And so we have a man in the highest court of the land who abused a woman and refused to tell the truth, is willing to twist the Constitution he's sworn to protect every direction the law be damned, and lied about that as well.

And now he comes out with a whiny, complaining, moaning, sorry excuse of an autobiography which says, "I'm an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court and all of these bad things... You're making me do them." No wonder he gets along so goddamn well with the Bush administration.

The abuser becomes the, well, a bigger abuser. Victim. Liar. Crybaby.

And oh yeah... Loser.

There's more...

Reflections On Being Happy

Scientists aboard U.S. NASA Shuttle Discovery on Mission S116 to the ISS.

“As I've gone through life, I've found that your chances for happiness are increased if you wind up doing something that is a reflection of what you loved most when you were somewhere between nine and eleven years old.”

• Three-time Academy Award winner Walter Murch interviewed in The Conversations - Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film
• by Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient

For me it was music.

From age eight through thirteen, I sang in the Tucson Arizona Boys Chorus. Under the baton of Jeff Haskell we were world-class artists, touring throughout the United States & Canada, hitting the studio to record, then filming an Easter Special for CBS, touring England & Scotland, appearing on the BBC. We sang in the world's best concert halls and the critics opened their hearts and pens to our young pure voices.

We of course were anything but pure. But I loved music and I had a genuine world-class voice...as a first alto. My voice broke two days before I turned 14 and my one year of touring with the TABC Touring Group at 13 was my last. (I am now an adequate baritone, with delusions of singing second tenor. But I had the voice of an angel, if not the temperament.)

Starting at 12 there was sex and violence and by 14.5 it had swept me completely up into a different dangerous world. But before my life was swept up by testosterone, not to settle down into being anything more than a protracted teenager quite literally for 31 years, I was a choir boy and I loved music first before everything.

I didn't think this assignment had much for me. Just thought I could throw it together quickly, then get back to sleep, wake up tomorrow and surf the comment thread, dropping in bits of wisdom occasionally. I'm such a jackass.

Not only has it taken me four hours just to write (so far), the more I dwell in it, the more shit from my past comes up to be dealt with. Aaaargh! Stupid assignment.

I love writing for the Group News Blog. One might say (and I often do) my entire life has been training for this gig. Even two years ago I wouldn't have been ready. I know Lower Manhattanite and Hubris Sonic feel much the same way -- we've spent our entire lives, unknowingly, preparing ourselves for this opportunity.

Working with Fernando Flores, Ph.D. in my late 20s, early 30s was terrific, but I was still an arrogant fool (Yes, more than I sometimes am now. Really. Shut up.) Being on Staff for that LGAT in my mid 20s was amazing (even if they were & their successor company remains massively controversial) but I was screwing everyone who moved and got my ass fired, twice, a very smart move on their part. Still, I loved giving my heart over totally to something (someone), even though in retrospect my trust was naive & misplaced (not good) (and I betrayed my colleagues by screwing around; double not good.) The amount of affection the Staff had for each other, the results we produced inside that trust; astonishing. Like the love veterans have for each other.

Few of my paramedic experiences were joyous, except the moment of delivering babies. In the end I stopped being a medic because I was burned out and no longer competent (Accuracy of 80-85% in most fields is fine. Heh. But I'd lost my edge and just couldn't get it back, and the more we tried the worse I got.) The paramedics in Oakland recognized my symptoms and made me quit. Worked dispatch for a little over half a year (memory fades), then was gone. Took over ten, closer to twelve years for the memories to stop having command value when triggered, waking me up, stop moving for cover on certain noises. I still get crazy about certain drivers (which look like drive-bys in progress), and just hate being inside crowds, especially mall crowds at holidays. I don't watch television or movies which take me back to those long years of being a medic, and I don't stop to help hurt people unless it's serious and there simply is no one else. I'll do what I must when it must be done; otherwise I'm done.

Same with my military tours. I did my duty and that's that. I address military issues here at GNB because it's political and we're a political blog. I work with troubled vets because they're my brothers and sisters at heart.

Without question, the most joy in my life were the years I spent singing for Mr. Haskell. He didn't accept excuses. We either had what it took or we didn't. Credentials? At ten? Don't be silly. Yet he demanded competence of us which would be difficult -- I know now -- of experienced vocalists singing professionally as studio musicians day in and out, or in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or the Metropolitan Opera Chorus. Mr. Haskell believed in us and under his baton we flourished, growing from boys into young teens with confidence and poise quite literally able to take the world stage under spotlights and sing as though the Gods were lending us voice.

And for a few years, they did.

I was happy. I was thirteen years old, music permeated my heart, and I was happy.

Now, here at Group News Blog, thirty-five years later, I am happy. I am forty-eight years old and happy. Even more, I am a full-grown adult, full of joy and love, and have no anger towards anyone, not even those assholes in the Bush Administration. (I am past anger with them at the bottom of everything. I have compassion for the lost souls they are, and for all the souls they've taken with them. Read Maggie for more.)

This work challenges me every day. I'm running a media startup with partners I trust! We have readers I cherish who trust us. (And all but one child has moved out of the house. Heh. Now if they'd just stop bring home stray kittens. Grrr. Including the two-legged kind.) Our dreams for what GNB can become are enormous, yet day to day we are grounded solidly in the hard work of turning out quality journalism. This is joy unbounded. This is waking up happy in a way I long ago forgot was even possible.

GNB Media is the work each of us has spent our life preparing -- to be the kind of human being you trust to bring you truth through noise.

Yet creating this assignment which I though was, um, not for me (jackass; really, it's the only word which fits) I realize even here at GNB where I'm happy for the first time at best since I was in my mid-20s and on Staff (raising children is a different kind of happy; I love my children, but I wasn't ever personally happy in my life since a long long time ago), and at worst, since I was 13, a full 35 years ago... I realized in writing this post, that even now, I don't have music.

Wow.

I have writing. I have cycling with my children. I have movies which have music. I have photographs; almost every post depends in significant part on the photograph. We have videos we put up. I have books; I've always had books; air, water, books, food. In that order. I have over 700 DVD's here in my room alone, many of them a full year-long series, that is 22 episodes in one DVD case, and probably 50-75 musicals, including The Commitments, one of the best musicals ever made. But I don't have music. And even when I do listen to music -- I have iTunes on my computer with probably 500 songs -- that just isn't MUSIC to me.

Music for me is performing music. Making music, singing music and playing it on the piano, singing it with other people, standing at a microphone and hearing someone count down the beat. Getting a rhythm going off the drums which the piano picks up, the base player joins, then the clarinet comes in with a sweet, soft riff while the horns slide in behind as the backup singers smile sweetly schoolin' all the girls and more than one boy not to mention several stage hands and a assistant producer named Sam. Then the lead singer spins, growwwwls in the mic, tears down the house, and the place goes bug.freaking.wild. Music! What my mom used to do as the Assistant Concert Master in the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, practicing for days and days, then sitting down with 100 other people and bringing it together LIVE for 3,500 people. Or when Elton or George Harrison came to town, Mom playing her violin just off stage in the Tucson Arena, for 20,000.

Music happens at the piano in my living room, alone or in a duet, trio or quartet in the practice room at the Juilliard School, Berklee College of Music, a conservatory, with other people in a rehearsal hall or on stage. Music is something created, something actively listened to, not background listening distracting me from life. When I'm walking, in conversation or focused at work, I don't want music pulling me away. Music is too important for it ever to be background noise from a top-40 computer playlist. It can't be just part of life. Music is life. Before writing, music.

I don't have an answer to this. It's part of why I love Venna Teng SO much. She loves, simply loves playing live. For her, live shows make people happy. Making people happy is music. Music cuts emotionally straight to the bone.

The deeper I go, the more Walter Murch seems right on point. In the midst of everything else... music -- live music: music I perform and listen to -- suddenly occurs as missing.

Damn. Going to have to do something about that.

How about you?

• Are you happy?
• Does your work reflect your dreams and aspirations?
• Do your relationships, at home and in life, bring you joy?
• In your late childhood - early teens, what did you love most?
• Does anything in your life now presence what you gave your heart to as a young person?
• What do you imagine your life might be like if you had that present in your life again?
• What would it take? What's stopping you? (Chop away all the excuses; now chop away anything that wouldn't stop you if your life or someone you loves was at stake.)
• Now ask again: How much or how little would it truly take to give your heart away to that which you've always loved?

This week's assignment:
Give your heart away to that which you love, that which brings you joy.

What does this conversation presence for you?

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Sunday Short Story

photo Emilie Wood

Our Lady's Juggler
By Anatole France

In the days of King Louis there lived a poor juggler by the name of Barnabas, a native of Compiègne, who wandered from city to city performing tricks of skill and prowess.

On fair days he would lay down in the public square a worn and aged carpet, and after having attracted a group of children and idlers by certain amusing remarks which he had learned from an old juggler, and which he invariably repeated in the same fashion without altering a word, he would assume the strangest postures, and balance a pewter plate on the tip of his nose. At first the crowd regarded him with indifference, but when, with his hands and head on the ground he threw into the air and caught with his feet six copper balls that glittered in the sunlight, or when, throwing himself back until his neck touched his heels, he assumed the form of a perfect wheel and in that position juggled with twelve knives, he elicited a murmur of admiration from his audience, and small coins rained on his carpet.

Still, Barnabas of Compiègne, like most of those who exist by their accomplishments, had a hard time making a living. Earning his bread by the sweat of his brow, he bore rather more than his share of those miseries we are all heir to through the fault of our Father Adam.

Besides, he was unable to work as much as he would have liked, for in order to exhibit his wonderful talents, he required—like the trees—the warmth of the sun and the heat of the day. In winter time he was no more than a tree stripped of its leaves, in fact, half-dead. The frozen earth was too hard for the juggler. Like the cicada mentioned by Marie de France, he suffered during the bad season from hunger and cold. But, since he had a simple heart, he suffered in silence.

He had never thought much about the origin of wealth nor about the inequality of human conditions. He firmly believed that if this world was evil the next could not but be good, and this faith upheld him. He was not like the clever fellows who sell their souls to the devil; he never took the name of God in vain; he lived the life of an honest man, and though he had no wife of his own, he did not covet his neighbor’s, for woman is the enemy of strong men, as we learn by the story of Samson which is written in the Scriptures.

Verily, his mind was not turned in the direction of carnal desire, and it caused him far greater pain to renounce drinking than to forego the pleasure of women. For, though he was not a drunkard, he enjoyed drinking when the weather was warm. He was a good man, fearing God, and devout in his adoration of the Holy Virgin. When he went into a church he never failed to kneel before the image of the Mother of God and to address her with this prayer:

“My Lady, watch over my life until it shall please God that I die, and when I am dead, see that I have the joys of Paradise.”

One evening, after a day of rain, as he walked sad and bent with his juggling balls under his arm and his knives wrapped up in his old carpet seeking some barn where he might go supperless to bed, he saw a monk going in his direction, and respectfully saluted him. As they were both walking at the same pace, they fell into conversation.

“Friend,” said the monk, “how does it happen that you are dressed all in green? Are you perchance going to play the part of the fool in some mystery?”

“No, indeed, father,” said Barnabas. “My name is Barnabas, and my business is that of juggler. It would be the finest calling in the world if I could eat every day.”

“Friend Barnabas,” answered the monk, “be careful what you say. There is no finer calling than the monastic. The priest celebrates the praise of God, the Virgin, and the saints; the life of a monk is a perpetual hymn to the Lord.”

And Barnabas replied: “Father, I confess I spoke like an ignorant man. My estate cannot be compared to yours, and though there may be some merit in dancing and balancing a stick with a denier on top of it on the end of your nose, it is in no wise comparable to your merit. Father, I wish I might, like you, sing the Office every day, especially the Office of the Very Holy Virgin, to whom I am specially and piously devoted. I would willingly give up the art by which I am known from Soissons to Beauvais, in more than six hundred cities and villages, in order to enter the monastic life.”

The monk was touched by the simplicity of the juggler, and as he was not lacking in discernment, he recognized in Barnabas one of those well-disposed men of whom Our Lord has said, “Let peace be with them on earth.” And he made answer therefore:

“Friend Barnabas, come with me and I will see that you enter the monastery of which I am the Prior. He who led Mary the Egyptian through the desert put me across your path in order that I might lead you to salvation.”

Thus did Barnabas become a monk. In the monastery which he entered, the monks celebrated most magnificently the cult of the Holy Virgin, each of them bringing to her service all the knowledge and skill which God had given him.

The Prior, for his part, wrote books, setting forth, according to the rules of scholasticism, all the virtues of the Mother of God. Brother Maurice copied these treatises with a cunning hand on pages of parchment, while Brother Alèsandre decorated them with delicate miniatures representing the Queen of Heaven seated on the throne of Solomon, with four lions on guard at the foot of it. Around her head, which was encircled by a halo, flew seven doves, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: fear, piety, knowledge, power, judgment, intelligence, and wisdom. With her were six golden-haired virgins: Humility, Prudence, Retirement, Respect, Virginity, and Obedience. At her feet two little figures, shining white and quite naked, stood in suppliant attitudes. They were souls imploring, not in vain, Her all-powerful intercession for their salvation. On another page Brother Aléxandre depicted Eve in the presence of Mary, that one might see at the same time sin and its redemption, woman humiliated, and the Virgin exalted. Among the other much-prized pictures in his book were the Well of Living Waters, the Fountain, the Lily, the Moon, the Sun, and the Closed Garden, of which much is said in the Canticle; the Gate of Heaven and the City of God. These were all images of the Virgin.

Brother Marbode, too, was one of the cherished children of Mary. He was ever busy cutting images of stone, so that his beard, his eyebrows and his hair were white with the dust, and his eyes perpetually swollen and full of tears. But he was a hardy and a happy man in his old age, and there was no doubt that the Queen of Paradise watched over the declining days of Her child. Marbode represented Her seated in a pulpit, Her forehead encircled by a halo, with an orb of pearls. He was at great pains to make the folds of Her robe cover the feet of Her of whom the prophet has said, “My beloved is like a closed garden.”

At times he represented Her as a graceful child, and Her image seemed to say, “Lord, Thou art My Lord!”

There were also in the Monastery poets who composed prose writings in Latin and hymns in honor of the Most Gracious Virgin Mary; there was, indeed, one among them—a Picard—who translated the Miracles of Our Lady into rimed verses in the vulgar tongue.

Perceiving so great a competition in praise and so fine a harvest of good works, Barnabas fell to lamenting his ignorance and simplicity.

“Alas!” he sighed as he walked by himself one day in the little garden shaded by the Monastery wall, “I am so unhappy because I cannot, like my brothers, give worthy praise to the Holy Mother of God to whom I have consecrated all the love in my heart. Alas, I am a stupid fellow, without art, and for your service, Madame, I have no edifying sermons, no fine treatises nicely prepared according to the rules, no beautiful paintings, no cunningly carved statues, and no verses counted off by feet and marching in measure! Alas, I have nothing!”

Thus did he lament and abandon himself to his misery.

One evening when the monks were talking together by way of diversion, he heard one of them tell of a monk who could not recite anything but the Ave Maria. He was scorned for his ignorance, but after he died there sprang from his mouth five roses, in honor of the five letters in the name Maria. Thus was his holiness made manifest.

In listening to this story, Barnabas was conscious once more of the Virgin’s beneficence, but he was not consoled by the example of the happy miracle, for his heart was full of zeal and he wanted to celebrate the glory of His Lady in Heaven.

He sought for a way in which to do this, but in vain, and each day brought him greater sorrow, until one morning he sprang joyously from his cot and ran to the chapel, where he remained alone for more than an hour. He returned thither again after dinner, and from that day onward he would go into the chapel every day the moment it was deserted, passing the greater part of the time which the other monks dedicated to the pursuit of the liberal arts and the sciences. He was no longer sad and he sighed no more. But such singular conduct aroused the curiosity of the other monks, and they asked themselves why Brother Barnabas retired alone so often, and the Prior, whose business it was to know everything that his monks were doing, determined to observe Barnabas. One day, therefore, when Barnabas was alone in the chapel, the Prior entered in company with two of the oldest brothers, in order to watch, through the bars of the door, what was going on within.

They saw Barnabas before the image of the Holy Virgin, his head on the floor and his feet in the air, juggling with six copper balls and twelve knives. In honor of the Holy Virgin he was performing the tricks which had in former days brought him the greatest fame. Not understanding that he was thus putting his best talents at the service of the Holy Virgin, the aged brothers cried out against such sacrilege. The Prior knew that Barnabas had a simple soul, but he believed that the man had lost his wits. All three set about to remove Barnabas from the chapel, when they saw the Virgin slowly descend from the altar and, with a fold of her blue mantle, wipe the sweat that streamed over the juggler’s forehead.

Then the Prior, bowing his head down to the marble floor, repeated these words:

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

“Amen,” echoed the brothers, bowing down to the floor.

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