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  • “Gorey” Dreams

    No, the Oscars had nothing to do with it – that just solidified in people’s minds what many were thinking already.  I have said it before and I am saying it now – Al Gore is the best candidate for a Democratic victory in 2008. (Billary is going nowhere, no matter what the power behind the Clinton Machine). It is somewhat ironic that a veteran of an eight year presidential term and the bitter and protracted campaign of 2000, should he decide to run, Gore’s will be the freshest face in a group of candidates that has already begun to look stale. David Remnick writes in  The New Yorker:

    It is worse than painful to reflect on how much better off the United States and the world would be today if the outcome of the 2000 election had been permitted to correspond with the wishes of the electorate.

    Can anyone seriously doubt that a Gore Administration would have meant, well, an alternate universe, in which, say, American troops were sent on a necessary mission in Afghanistan but not on a mistaken and misbegotten one in Iraq; the fate of the earth, not the fate of oil-company executives, was the priority of the Environmental Protection Agency; civil liberties and diplomacy were subjects of attention rather than of derision; torture found no place or rationale?

    In increasing numbers, poll results imply, Americans are disheartened by the real and existing Presidency, and no small number also feel regret that Gore—the winner in 2000 of the popular vote by more than half a million ballots, the almost certain winner of any reasonable or consistent count in the state of Florida—ended up the target of what it is not an exaggeration to call a judicial coup d’état. Justice Antonin Scalia routinely instructs those who question his vote in Bush v. Gore to stop their ceaseless whinging. “It’s water over the deck,” he told an audience at Iona College last month. “Get over it.” But it is neither possible nor wise to “get over it.” The historical damage is too profound.

    And yet, despite the burden of injury and injustice, Gore, more than any other major Democratic Party figure, including the many candidates assembled for next year’s Presidential nomination, has demonstrated in opposition precisely the quality of judgment that Bush has lacked in office. Gore’s critiques of the Administration’s rush to war in Iraq and of the deceptions used to justify it were early, brave, and correct. On the issue of climate change, of course, he has exercised visionary leadership. With humor and intelligence, and negligible self-pity, he dispensed with the temptations of political martyrdom and became a global Jeremiah. Beginning in the nineteen-eighties, he waged what was at first a fairly lonely campaign to draw attention to the problem; now, as a popularizing propagandist, he has succeeded in registering it as a crisis with nearly everyone, from field-tripping schoolchildren to reality-dubious members of the Administration.

    Remnick is kinder to the current slate of Democratic candidates than I am willing to be.  Taken separately on single issues, all of them have something going for them. But none of them strikes me as a total package, good enough to take on Giuliani or even McCain, on the national stage. Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton the current front runner, may be worse than the others. She is everything that Gore was in 2000 and more: Too eager, fiercely ambitious, calculating, pandering, condescending, stage managed, gets on your nerves with her sanctimonious ways, no display of spontaneity and above all, joined at the hip to Bill Clinton.

    Once Gore conceded defeat, he shed his eagerness and disappointment and gave one of the most gracious and lyrical political concession speeches I have ever heard. His two appearances on Saturday Night Live were among the best in SNL’s history. The man was comfortable in his skin and devastatingly funny, mostly at his own expense. His public speeches on issues ranging from the Iraq war, domestic spying, torture of detainees and of course, global warming have been unfalilingly intellingent, inspiring and eloquent. Gore now looks a bit portly, professorial and completely at ease – like a man who has nothing to prove to anyone. For him the presidency of the United States which he came so close to winning, is no longer the ultimate prize. He has other things to do – a quality that sits attractively on a candidate’s persona. He looks like his own man, not the product of a gaggle of advisors’ and handlers’ collective imagination.

    When the writers at “Saturday Night Live” suggested that he take part in a sketch featuring some scatological themes, Gore demurred with a combination of ironic self-preservation and his customary good judgment. “I’m sure this is funny,” he said, “but at the end of this I want to have some bread crumbs left leading back to my dignity.”

    That strikes me as the attitude of a grown up – a person who has had time to mature and master equilibrium, away from political horse trading. Come to think of it, his sage and relaxed ways can be balanced with a bit of youthful exuberance and charisma. How does Gore-Obama sound to you?  To me it sounds good and it has the ring of victory.

    Update: Maureen Dowd has pretty much the same opinion of Gore as I do.  The link to the NYT article is subscription only. Read it here.   

  • A Picture Book of Inept Leadership

    200702277_d06031515h No Bounce Left:  George W. Bush hosted the players and coach of the championship basketball team, the Miami Heat, at the White House yesterday.  The players presented him with a team jersey and a basketball. Always more comfortable in the company of athletes than with other world leaders,  Bush was his usual jovial self standing next to the towering figure of Shaquille O’Neil. Then he dropped the ball. Bush attempted to bounce the basketball and it landed with a thud – it was under inflated. Recovering quickly, he joined in the laughter of the onlookers. But for me, the moment was apt symbolism of a failed and deflated presidency with no bounce left in its vision or leadership, no matter how much of a brave face the administration puts on it. See the story and the video of the ball that didn’t bounce here.

    0_61_022307_peretz_binoculars Blind Man’s Bluff:  Half a world away, Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz, already under fire from Israeli voters for mishandling the war in Lebanon, solidified his image of clueless ineptitude by surveying military maneuvers on  the Golan Heights through binoculars with the lens caps on! He compounded the spectacle by doing so three times and nodding comprehendingly at General Gabi Ashkenazi who stood next to him and explained the exercise.  (Peretz on the right, with the opaque binoculars.)

    And0228blog Too Little, Too Late:  The Bush administration’s mishandling of the war of terrorism has endangered not just the US but the entire world. After having misled, misguided and bullied all critics and skeptics, the Bush administration diverted its efforts from the legitimate war against Al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan to the criminal invasion of Iraq. We are paying for that misadventure with the wanton loss of lives, resources and international goodwill. The administration seems to have belatedly (and grudgingly) acknowledged the unavoidable truth of resurgent terrorist activities in western Pakistan and Afghanistan.  So it sent its bravest member, Dick Cheney on a whirl wind tour of false propaganda of brave words and dire warnings around the world. In Japan and Australia, Cheney vowed to win the war on terror with honor. During a surprise visit to Pakistan, he issued a scolding ultimatum of "shape up or else" to the wily General Musharraf who must have choked on his gin and tonic, laughing with derision and mirth. Then Cheney hopped smartly over to Afghanistan to give a pep talk to President Hamid Karzai who is now in reality been reduced to the rank of the Mayor of Kabul. While visiting the Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan, Cheney survived a bomb blast set off by a suicide bomber. Although the VP was almost a third of a mile away from the site of the explosion and was swiftly transferred to a bomb shelter and later flown to Kabul, I bet that the incident will burnish Cheney’s super macho warrior image – at least in his own mind. The rest of us?  Our despair and cynicism are encapsulated in the accompanying cartoon.

    Note: Please click on thumbnails for enlarged image.

  • What Is the What (Joe)

    I can’t put this strongly enough: What Is the What is an absolute must-read.

    Reviews and such here.  The novel, written by Dave Eggers, is the fictionalized autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan.  As a six (or so) year old in Marial Bai, a small Dinka village in southern Sudan, Valentino’s life was forever changed with the the outbreak of the Sudanese civil war in 1983 (a peace treaty was signed in 2005 in Nairobi, which is– for now– holding, although of course there is now the situation in Darfur).  Marial Bai was destroyed; Achak and the other Lost Boys (those who survived; death was frequent) walked to Ethiopia; Ethiopia ceased to be hospitable and the Sudanese were forced to flee, first back into Sudan, then to Kakuma, a refugee camp in Kenya.  Finally he made it to Atlanta in 2001, where he took many courses at a community college.  This part is not in the book: finally this fall he was able to enroll in a four-year college (Allegheny College in Pennsylvania).

    All income from What Is the What is going to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, to aid the Sudanese in the United States and Sudan.  But that’s not why I’m saying "get the book"; it’s a powerful and well-told story, worth reading both because it’s true– roughly speaking– and on its merits as a novel.

    Related links: Ten Things You Can Do for Sudan; Valentino Achak Deng (official website / foundation).

  • The Permanent Cybertrail: Bloggers Beware Part II

    Columnist Ellen Goodman has weighed in on the plight of bloggers Amanda Marcotte and  Melissa McEwan whose swift exit from John Edwards’ presidential campaign was necessitated by what they had written on their respective blogs – Pandagon and Shakespeare’s Sister.

    We are living now in both the blogosphere and the mainstream. One is ironic and edgy, challenging and partisan. The other is cautious and modulated. Ms. Marcotte’s and Ms. McEwan’s fate raises the question about whether it’s possible to move from the world of AnkleBitingPundits to presidential politics without every word sticking to your shoe.

    We already know that in the digital world, the past is never past. As Simon Rosenberg of NDN, a progressive advocacy group bridging these two worlds, says, "All of us are going to be living every moment of our past lives. People are living with things they did and said in their youths in a way they never did before."

    President Bush once famously said, "When I was young, I did a lot of foolish things." Bill Clinton said he smoked marijuana but didn’t inhale. Barack Obama admitted doing "a little blow." But we didn’t have postings of the partying George, the smoking Bill or the snorting Barack.

    These days politicians are one "macaca" away from videotaped disaster. If you don’t believe it, see Rudy Giuliani as a drag queen flirting with Donald Trump on YouTube.

    According to Goodman, with the advent of blogs, My Space and other e- bulletin boards, bloggers have assumed the role of freewheeling, strident town criers, a role they may find difficult to live down in the buttoned down environs of traditional public forums. We know that already. The next question is: Will society gradually learn to take in stride the off-the-cuff and somewhat exaggerated performative nature of discourse that the cyberspace has spawned?  I think it will. Because the genie is not going back in the bottle. But it may take some time. There are going to be some  hiccups on the way like the short lived  real life political activism of Marcotte and McEwan, the embarrassing shutting down of blogs in India, the sinister censorship in China and now the latest extreme reaction to a blogger’s exercise of free speech in Egypt.

    _42601113_nabil203 An Egyptian court has sentenced a blogger to four years’ prison for insulting Islam and the president.

    Abdel Kareem Soliman’s trial was the first time that a blogger had been prosecuted in Egypt. He had used his web log to criticise the country’s top Islamic institution, al-Azhar university and President Hosni Mubarak, whom he called a dictator.

    A human rights group called the verdict "very tough" and a "strong message" to Egypt’s thousands of bloggers.

    Soliman, 22, was tried in his native city of Alexandria. He blogs under the name Kareem Amer. A former student at al-Azhar, he called the institution "the university of terrorism" and accused it of suppressing free thought. The university expelled him in 2006 and pressed prosecutors to put him on trial.

    During the five-minute court session the judge said Soliman was guilty and would serve three years for insulting Islam and inciting sedition, and one year for insulting Mr Mubarak.

    (Thanks to my co-blogger Dean for the link to the Egyptian blogger’s story)

    Update: Lindsay Beyerstein of the popular liberal blog Majikthise explains in Salon why she refused to join John Edwards’ blogging team.

       

  • Killer Moms

    Contrary to the conventional wisdom about the male of the species acting as hunter-gatherers, female chimpanzees in Senegal have been found not just hunting other primates for food but also fashioning the tools to do the killing. Use of tools by large apes, particularly chimpanzees, has been observed before, usually for poking anthills with slender twigs. In those cases, the chimps choose a tool – selecting a thin twig over a thicker branch.  But this is the first time that they have been observed making a tool to kill a prey.

    070222155719 Chimpanzees in Senegal are regularly making and using spears to hunt other primates — without human assistance — according to research led by an Iowa State University anthropologist. That study, funded by the National Geographic Society, is the first to report habitual tool use by non-humans while hunting other vertebrates.

    ISU Assistant Professor of Anthropology Jill Pruetz and Paco Bertolani — a graduate student with the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, Department of Biological Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in England — documented 22 cases of the chimps fashioning tools to use in hunting smaller primates in cavities of hollow branches or tree trunks. They made the discovery at their research site in Fongoli, Senegal between March 2005 and July 2006.

    Chimpanzees forcibly jabbed tools into hollow trunks or branches multiple times and smelled and/or licked them upon extraction. Only two of the 22 reported cases were seen as playful — in the case of an infant male — or exploratory in nature. In all other cases, chimps were judged by the researchers to use such force in inserting the tool that prey within the tree could have been injured. They witnessed just one case in which a chimpanzee extracted a bushbaby — a smaller primate — through use of the spear.

    Females lead tool-assisted hunting

    Despite the fact that hunting is predominantly an adult male chimpanzee activity, only one adult male (of 11 males in the community) was observed in the tool-assisted hunting. The reported incidents included one adult female, one adult male, three adolescent females, two adolescent males, one juvenile female, one juvenile male, and one infant male.

    "In the chimp literature, there is a lot of discussion about hunting by adult males, because basically, they’re the only ones that do it — and they don’t use tools," said Pruetz. "Females are rarely involved. And so this was just kind of astounding on a number of different levels. It’s not only chimps hunting with tools, but females — and the ones who hunted the most with them were adolescent females.

    The rest of the fascinating story here.

  • Pawns In A Sick (and Sickening) Diplomatic Game

    Since 9/11/2001, those wishing to obtain a US visa for travel, business, education or immigration have to go through a stringent (some say humiliating) screening process.  The US Department of Homeland Security adopts a uniformly ham handed approach to ensuring security that does not distinguish between a visiting professor from an Arab /Asian country and a prospective terrorist . Consequently, US is no longer the most desirable destination for foreign students, tourists, scholars and business travelers, reports Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek magazine.

    "We seem to have lost the ability to think rationally about security," says Stephen Flynn, among the foremost U.S. experts on homeland security and the author of the new book "The Edge of Disaster." "We’ve created an incentive system for border checks in which all the emphasis is on stopping, screening, double-checking. There’s little scope for common sense, discretion and judgment." The result is an extremely expensive system that ties up Americans, wastes resources and is making the United States a place people try to avoid.

    However, certain foreign nationals are being allowed to jump to the head of the immigration line purely for the purpose of political gamesmanship against a couple of despised world leaders whom the US has tried for decades to depose through coups, economic sanctions and even attempted assassinations – one of them, for more than forty long years!  The US government has devised an ingenious plan to strike at the popularity and political capital of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez – two major thorns in its side. By promising political asylum, the US is enticing Cuban doctors away from the mutually beneficial Cuban-Venezuelan "Oil for Doctors" program – a clever and effective ploy for killing two pesky birds with one cynical diplomatic stone!

    It’s a symptom of Cuba’s claustrophobia — both political and economical — that thousands of its health workers leapt at the chance to work in Venezuela’s most frightening slums.

    These professionals saw little choice. For decades, President Fidel Castro has dispatched physicians to poorer countries as a form of diplomacy. If the political pressure to go weren’t enough, the need to earn more than $15 monthly in Cuba often sufficed.

    In Venezuela, however, Cuba’s "doctor diplomacy" looks more like horse-trading than ever. As a swap for about 93,000 barrels of oil daily, Castro sent more than 15,000 doctors, therapists and physical trainers to Venezuela’s slums.

    For Castro, it’s a way to keep the lights on. For Chavez, it’s a wildly popular way to provide round-the-clock health care to a population that until recently received none. Without question, the doctor trade serves both leaders’ political needs beautifully.

    But it’s also been a historic benefit for Venezuela’s poor. As with so many of Chavez’ social programs, it has two profound effects. It makes life more livable for Venezuela’s most neglected citizens — who are also its majority. And it gives them a sense of dignity and worth that few pre-Chavez leaders saw fit to grant.

    That’s why the United States’ perverse form of "doctor diplomacy" is so destructive of U.S. interests. In August, in an effort to thwart Chavez, the Homeland Security Department launched the Cuban Medical Professional Parole program, meant to speed processing of doctors’ petitions for asylum.

    About 360 Cuban doctors, dentists and physical therapists sent to Venezuela have applied, according to a Chronicle story by John Otis. Roughly 160 of the doctors have been accepted, while other petitioners — who had to leave Venezuela illegally to apply — are still waiting for their visas.

    If they’re rejected, they have 30 days to leave Colombia, where most fled in order to make their petitions. Since they can’t return to Cuba, the rejected applicants essentially are stateless.

     

     

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  • Dogged Soldiers of Futile Wars

    When it comes to the disastrous Iraq war and its aftermath, Vice President Dick Cheney and perhaps Australian P.M. John Howard remain the last two aggressively optimistic voices among world leaders.  Even George Bush has admitted on a couple of occasions that things have not gone well in Iraq or that he is too well protected in his beautiful White House to know the real situation.  Cheney on the other hand, with his cold eyes and clenched jaw, stubbornly and shamelessly insists that nothing ever went wrong in Iraq, things are proceeding as planned and the US will not retreat dishonorably. Cheney’s unrelenting braggadocio is not shocking or even surprising any more. Although still dangerous, he is becoming a bit of a comical figure. On his recent trip to Japan, Cheney’s official schedule pointedly left out meetings with the Japanese cabinet ministers of Defence and Foreign Affairs who have respectively called starting the Iraq war a "mistake" and the current occupation "immature." But that did not put a damper on Cheney’s bluster.  He managed to put a winning spin on the upcoming troop withdrawal by Britain while promising US soldiers, “We want to complete the mission, we want to get it done right, and we want to return with honor.” 

    6a00bf76c6db6b954a00c2252be00c549d500pi TOKYO (Reuters) – Vice President Dick Cheney said on Wednesday the United States wants to finish its mission in Iraq and "return with honor", despite the war’s growing unpopularity at home and doubts among U.S. allies.

    Cheney’s visit to Tokyo comes just weeks after Japan’s defense minister said starting the Iraq war was a mistake and its foreign minister called the U.S. occupation strategy "immature".

    The remarks forced Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whom Cheney meets later in Wednesday, to scurry to reassure Washington that Tokyo’s backing for U.S. policy in Iraq was unchanged.

    But a survey released on Tuesday showed most Japanese voters agreed with Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma when he said President Bush was wrong to start the war.

    In a speech delivered aboard the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier at Yokosuka Navy Base near Tokyo, Cheny said: "We know that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength, they are invited by the perception of weakness."

    "We know that if we leave Iraq before the mission is completed, the enemy is going to come after us. And I want you to know that the American people will not support a policy of retreat," he added.

    So divorced is Cheney from reality, that his delusional utterances and misguided grit reminded me of another war story, several decades old, of some hapless and clueless soldiers who continued fighting a war that had long ago ended in defeat for their side.

    Onodayoung On December 17, 1944, the Japanese army sent a twenty-three year old soldier named Hiroo Onoda to the Philippines to join the Sugi Brigade. He was stationed on the small island of Lubang, approximately seventy-five miles southwest of Manila in the Philippines, and his orders were to lead the Lubang Garrison in guerrilla warfare.

    As Onoda was departing to begin his mission, his division commander told him, "You are absolutely forbidden to die by your own hand. It may take three years, it may take five, but whatever happens, we’ll come back for you. Until then, so long as you have one soldier, you are to continue to lead him. You may have to live on coconuts. If that’s the case, live on coconuts! Under no circumstances are you to give up your life voluntarily." It turns out that Onoda was exceptionally good at following orders, and it would be 29 years before he finally laid down his arms and surrendered  ….

    By the time he formally surrendered to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos in 1974, Onoda had spent twenty nine of his fifty two years hiding in the jungle, fighting a war that had long been over for the rest of the world. He and his guerrilla soldiers had killed some thirty people unnecessarily, and wounded about a hundred others. But they had done so under the belief that they were at war, and consequently President Marcos granted him a full pardon for the crimes he had committed while in hiding.

    Lieutenant Onoda and his cohorts continued fighting an imaginary war while they remained secluded in the remote jungle on an island, without the means to communicate with the outside world. What is Dick Cheney’s excuse?  Are his frequent retreats to mysterious "undisclosed locations" enough to explain his hollow words and bogus leadership?

  • What Was She Thinking?

    It is more than 21 months before the 2008 presidential election. But the campaigns are in full swing and the gloves are coming off. As I had predicted, the long shadow of Bill Clinton is following Hillary Rodham Clinton everywhere she goes. H. Clinton is having to deflect criticism directed not just at herself but her larger than life husband. She is quick to share in the credit for the success of the Clinton years but when critics point to the flaws of her husband’s presidential stint, she calls it "politics of personal destruction." The barbs are now being thrown by her Democratic primary opponents. I shudder to think what the Republicans will have in store for her if she is the eventual nominee of her party. We will go through some serious and sordid muck. Between Bill Clinton and her unapologetic vote for authorizing the war in Iraq, Hillary will be playing defense much of the time. Not a winning strategy for a political campaign. (Having endured the excruciating pain of the Bush years, do we deserve this?)

    An increasingly acrimonious competition between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton to enlist the Democratic Party’s leading fundraisers and operatives burst into the open yesterday, overshadowing what was billed as the presidential campaign’s first gathering of candidates in Nevada.

    The back-and-forth between the two campaigns has largely been fodder for political insiders. Yesterday, however, David Geffen, the music and film producer who is one of the party’s most prominent donors, made the fight more public. In an interview with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, Geffen said that Clinton is "the easiest to beat" of the Democratic field and skewered her unwillingness to apologize for her 2002 vote to use force in Iraq. "It’s not a very big thing to say ‘I made a mistake’ on the war, and typical of Hillary Clinton that she can’t," Geffen said.

    Geffen, who was a co-host of an Obama fundraiser Tuesday night in Los Angeles, saved even sharper criticism for former president Bill Clinton, to whom he was close before a falling-out over the pardoning of financier Marc Rich at the end of Clinton’s second term. "I don’t think anybody believes that in the last six years, all of a sudden Bill Clinton has become a different person," Geffen said in an oblique reference to questions surrounding the former president’s private life.

    After seeing the comments yesterday morning, the Clinton campaign immediately issued a call for Obama to disavow Geffen’s remarks and return his $2,300 donation, arguing that they were contrary to Obama’s pledge to run a positive campaign.

    "A day after Barack Obama goes out and eschews the politics of slash-and-burn, his campaign embraces the politics of trash," said Phil Singer, Clinton’s deputy communications director, referring to a speech Obama made Tuesday in Las Vegas.

    Obama communications director Robert Gibbs took a markedly different course. After refusing to get in the "middle of a disagreement between the Clintons and someone who was once one of their biggest supporters," Gibbs pointed out that Hillary Clinton had recently praised Robert Ford, another South Carolina state senator who endorsed her and said the Democratic ticket would be in serious trouble if Obama was the nominee because of the color of his skin. Clinton distanced herself from that remark, and Ford later apologized for it.

    Obama weighed in later. "It’s not clear to me why I would be apologizing for someone else’s remarks," he said in Iowa, where he had gone instead of the candidates forum because of a prior commitment. "My sense is that Mr. Geffen may have differences with the Clintons, but that doesn’t really have anything to do with our campaign."

    At the forum in Carson City, Nev., ABC’s George Stephanopoulosthe moderator, asked Clinton whether she agreed with her campaign spokesman that Obama should disavow Geffen’s comments.

    Clinton did not answer directly. "I want to run a very positive campaign, and I sure don’t want Democrats or supporters of Democrats to be engaging in the politics of personal destruction," she said. "I think we should stay focused on what we’re going to do for America." She then added, to applause: "And, you know, I believe Bill Clinton was a good president. I’m very proud of the record of his two terms."

  • Lead Stories and Hazards(Sujatha)

    A couple of days ago, headlines from the usual news websites surprisingly led with the accusation that the US government had hidden data on the levels of lead in vinyl backpacks, toys and other articles from the consumers.

    "In 2005, when government scientists tested 60 soft, vinyl lunch boxes, they found that one in five contained amounts of lead that medical experts consider unsafe — and several had more than 10 times hazardous levels. But that’s not what they told the public. Instead, the Consumer Product Safety Commission released a statement that they found "no instances of hazardous levels."

    And they refused to release their actual test results, citing regulations that protect manufacturers from having their information released to the public. That data was not made public until The Associated Press received a box of about 1,500 pages of lab reports, in-house e-mails and other records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed a year ago."

    Hmmmm. Not made public until the FOIA request. AP to the rescue of the unwary consumer, gallant knights to fair ladies indeed.

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  • Matt goes fishing … and knitting

    Our friend Matt has had another children’s rhyme published in comic form.  This one is about knitted fish.  Shannon Wheeler is the artist. See the comic and the poem at Too Much Coffee. If that is too much effort, click on the pictorial link here.

    Tmcm070219

  • The Dead Man and the Live Machine

    This story is tragic. It plays to the secret fear we all have of dying alone without anyone knowing. But that is not the reason why I am posting the story – not for the sad human angle of old age and loneliness. I don’t want to come across as heartless but what really caught my eye was the fact about the dead man’s television set:

    "An elderly man’s body was found in his home more than a year after his death, with the television still on and his features mummified thanks to the dry air inside the home, the medical examiner’s office said."

    What? The man was dead for more than a year and the TV was still on?  Do they make televisions this sturdy?  If the brand of the TV becomes known, will the manufacturer tout this as the evidence of its durability in commercials as a selling point? Something along the lines of the Energizer Bunny who keeps going and going and  going?

  • Shiny Objects of Hitchcock’s Dark Obsession

    311xinlinegallery_1 Alfred Hitchcock’s films are among my all time favorites.  I have seen quite a few.  Even with modern cinema’s technological advances and the modern mind’s ability to calmly process the gruesome, Hitchcock movies remain hypnotically chilling, rising above the unnecessary blood and gore commonly associated with the genre of horror and suspense films. Hitchcock’s magic did not rely on using fear as a blunt instrument but rather on shrewdly employing it as a vehicle for causing extreme anxiety in the minds of viewers. I rate Psycho as one of the best horror films. I have seen it several times at different stages of maturity, the first time as a teenager (and no, the shower scene was not what scared me the most) and it still gives me goosebumps.

    Hitchcock fans know about his fascination with a certain type of women – most of his leading ladies fit the prototype. Hitchcock liked blondes but he did not go for the overtly voluptuous, fun loving bombshells. His golden women were cool, crisp and reserved – almost aristocratic in their demeanor. They gave off an aura of slightly repressed but simmering passions. In his movies, Hitchcock would submit his ladies to unspeakable physical and psychological horrors that shattered their elegant equilibrium and exposed their vulnerability. It is also common knowledge that Hitchcock’s taste for the macabre spilled over from the silver screen into real life. In fact the slightly comical, egg shaped, harmless looking old man was a bit of a manipulative sadist in real life and he never got over Grace Kelly, the perfect blonde ice maiden whom he lost to her high profile royal matrimony. (I knew much of this already. The latest unsavory details didn’t change my opinion of his classic films.)

    Alfred Hitchcock had a thing for blondes — especially the cool, regal kind whose pristine exterior might mask startling depths of passion.

    "We’re after the drawing-room type," he told Francois Truffaut (in his interview book Hitchcock). ". . . An English girl, looking like a schoolteacher, is apt to get into a cab with you and, to your surprise, she’ll probably pull a man’s pants open."

    He relished placing his heroines in jeopardy. He broke them down emotionally, and even physically. Preoccupied with manipulating their screen images — dictating the tiniest details of costume, coiffure, makeup and shoes — Hitchcock eventually strove to control their private lives as well.

    "I always believe in following the advice of the playwright (Victorien) Sardou," Hitchcock once confessed. "He said, ‘Torture the women!’ The trouble today is that we don’t torture women enough."

    Renowned as the Master of Suspense, Hitchcock made 53 films — most of them thrillers, and many classics of the genre.

    First through sly cameos in his own films, then in his increasingly hammy introductions as the host of a popular TV anthology series, Hitchcock constructed the public persona he relished: the rotund eccentric with a macabre sense of humor. In this play-acting, his fascination with the dark side was a joke; terrifying audiences, a mischievous prank. He pretended to take it lightly, as in his oft-repeated declaration: "Some films are slices of life; mine are pieces of cake."

    But anyone who has experienced the dark depths of Hitchcock masterworks such as Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Shadow of a Doubt or Vertigo knows that their themes — fear, guilt, sex and death — were anything but light.

    Film fans easily recognize Hitchcock’s signatures: The "wrong man," falsely accused, fleeing both the law and the bad guys; Terror arising in places thought to be safe (a cornfield in North by Northwest, a motel shower in Psycho); Voyeurism (in Rear Window, it’s the whole movie); The oft-repeated advice to take a drink because "it’s just like medicine." And the sense that (as Truffaut noted) Hitchcock "filmed his love scenes like murders and his murders like love scenes." But of all the director’s trademarks, perhaps the most alluring and enduring — and the most disturbing in real life — is the Hitchcock Blonde.

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