Writers Quiz

Nine out-of ten. Dang. That means this quiz is too easy.

[Courtesy of Harry Hutton, the prancing cavalryman]

The Song Remains the Same

Soldier Says He Asked Rumsfeld Armor Question Without Aid of Embed

By E&P Staff

Published: December 19, 2004 9:55 PM ET

NEW YORK In his first public account of last week’s controversy, Spc. Thomas Wilson says that he came up with the now famous armor question for Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld on his own, without the help of oft-criticized reporter Edward Lee Pitts. And he adds, "If this is my 15 minutes of fame, I hope it saves a life."

...

The reporter, far from being the protagonist, suggested that he find “a less brash way of asking the question," but Wilson “told him no, that I wanted to make my point very clear."

[Hat Tip: Mark Kleiman]

Airline Security

Penn Gilette's novel solution to airline security:

You know, we have the solution on how to do all the security: Have a man and woman at each gate leading to the airplane strip. They’re stripped from the waist down, and every passenger has to lean over and lightly kiss the genitals of the person of the same sex and then

Hmmm. It might just work, Capt'n...

Happy Holy Days.

Fidgety-arse

I'm so much more a consumer of blogs than producer. It's easier for one thing, and quicker: my workadays are filled with five-minute snippets where I've nothing better to do but twiddle my thumbs while the machines whirr and build. I use the time mostly to read blogs, rather than write them. I've tried writing five-minute composites, of course, but with embarassing results. When I do write it takes me forever, and when I publish it is almost always days late, by which time both you and I have forgotten what the post was about in the first place. I tried this week to write about electronic voting machines, and how they might be constructed and used in a way that gives us confidence that the results are not hacked? But that was days ago I started, and only two half-paragraphs to show. Too slow, too late: day late, buck short, insert own proverb here. It isn't just that my attention span is so slim and my rhetorical skills so poor, nor even that my attention is most definitely required elsewhere, lest I be sacked and kicked to the curb a pauper? It's that all my retentive abilities are lodged up my jacksie. I can be incredibly picky and obsessive about some things - utterly trivial, pointless things. My dinner often grows cold while I fidget about - up and down, here and there - making sure everything is set before me just so: that I have the favored silverware, the solid plate, the TV-tray stood the right way round and at the correct distance from the couch. The napkin - I always forget the napkin, being a Brit - the napkin I have to get up and fetch, and one for my beloved too, because I forgot hers also. Every night. The salt. The pepper. The tabasco. The same. Or, on going to bed, the sheet and the comforter, both have to be trimmed to the correct length all the way down, to the exact preferred width past my edge of the bed before I'll slide in. My wife finds this amusing, she says, be we all know that really means irritating as all hell, don't we? Writing is the same. There are rituals, sacraments, pre-conditions that have to be met. There has to be time, time before doing something better, like shopping, time to sit and write and re-write and tweak and corrupt. Time to think of something anything to write about. Or nuthin', like now. And nobody'd better be lookin' over my shoulder - just can't type like that.

So blogs, for me, are better read than written. And if there's time, like I have today, follow through the links in hope of serendipity. A few weeks back it went Normblog->Charlock's Shade->Outer Life->StephenEsque.

Today it runs: Yglesias->Unfogged->The Weblog.

I'll never get anything written, this rate?

Woe, woe, wah, waah...

Woe, woe, wah, wa-aah,
Rock and roll cain't ne-ver da-aah...

If there's one thing that gets my goat - one thing? kidding, right? - okay, rephrase: amongst the many things that get my goat are celebrities or otherwise who wring their hands about "selling-out", who worry about "keeping it reeeeeaaaaal!", or the self-appointed moral judiciary who accuse them of it. It reeks of phoney on the one hand, small-town reverse-snobbery on the other, and bullshit on both. Wa-wa-feching-waaaa.

Used to work for a company whose travel guy took delight in finagling outrageous deals for gumbies like me who had to travel on company business: especially if we were going someplace new, or at some godawful time of year like right now, close to christmas. Which is how, first time I ever visited Los Angeles, I flew Virgin Upper Class there and back, and lived two weeks at the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena. And a limo drove me to and from LAX as part of the deal. I was wholly unprepared for this - working-class laddie out of his depth in a foreign land within a foreign land - never flown on a Jumbo before, never been offered a massage on a plane before, never got drunk in the company of old-money ladies who threw parties for the entire hotel staff before. Never even brought a jacket, let alone a tie, so the maitre-d had to fit me up with one before I could eat. I sure felt a little uncomfortable first couple of days, but I quickly got over that. Talk about selling-out your roots? That was me. I loved it. I figured, how often is this going to happen? How likely is it I'll ever find myself here again? It's an adventure, for feck's sake, an escape from everyday torpored reality: probably once-in-a-lifetime, but who the hell wants to say that? Worse, who the hell wants - no, needs - their life to stay the same forever, won't admit of any kind of change? Not me. It doesn't matter what you do, who you are, anything out of the ordinary is a sell-out to someone. Somebody you don't even know.

Bob Dylan "sold-out" one time (first time, surely?) way, way back in the mid-sixties when he played the Newport Festival with an electric band! Oh, my good Gawd, did the arse not fall out of the world over that? Sold out his folksie fans, who demanded he recant, go back to acoustic where he belonged! Jeez, imagine if he'd listened? There'd have never been a Rolling Thunder tour or a Hard Rain? What would they think of Mickey the drummer, who nowadays does cheesy commercials for Paul's Italian Villa? Nobody sells-out like those who make commercials, right? Who knew that cool Billy Crudup can choose his acting roles to suit himself because he makes all his money voicing commercials? Sell-out? Really? What came first? Priceless.

So I don't want to hear it, cringe when I do. If life somehow puts a limo at your door, then sprawl yourself across the back seat and laugh your ass off at the irony, even if it comes back every day. If you're gonna be a rock star, or a blog star, then be a goddamned rock star. Don't moan about selling-out until you're soaked in corporate bribes and changing The Law to suit. Or unless you're the Scottish Rugby Union and you tore-down the terracing and re-built the national stadium, but made the new seats too expensive for us real fans. I'll never forgive them. Sell-out bastards.

Lower than low?

Powerless, toothless, utterly useless and denied any meaningful power they may be: but elected Democrats will always have we smokers to fall upon.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- The major pieces of legislation approved by U.S. lawmakers this week highlight how there is typically a host of unadvertised and surprising provisions in laws approved by Congress, particularly in the large, must-pass pieces of legislation.

...

Another unadvertised provision in the intelligence-reform bill would ban butane lighters from being carried into the passenger section of commercial aircraft.

Lighters would join the existing list of banned items in flights on airlines, including scissors, box cutters and penknives. Such items can only be checked on airplanes.

Democratic Sens. Wyden and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota pushed for the provision, which takes effect 60 days after President Bush signs the legislation.

I'll smoke and extra pack today in their honor. Maybe they'd even like to join me - they clearly have nothing better to do?

[Hat tip: Steve Clemons]

Our Scientist's Brain is Missing

You've got to figure, though, that with your F-22 Raptor fighter jets piloted by rat brains their survivability is going to be ginormous? But do you really think its a good idea to put all your hi-tech air-to-ground weaponry under the control of a robo-rodent? Think of all the collateral damage: mazes, A-rated restauraunts, old Mrs Westcott next door and her paranoid traps, cat shelters and snake houses, Dale Gribbles and Old MacDonalds, and role-playing gamers everywhere...

Strategic counter-measures are already being configured, and so far include so-called psy-ops - playing penny whistle tunes over the radio - and surface-to-air cheese missiles.

Brrrr.

Quiz for southern Californians from LA Blogs, via TP, 111:

1. Do you own a winter jacket?
No: but I do own a jacket I brought from Scotland. Keeps the chill out, but with none of that poncy Michelin Man padding you all like to wear when it gets cloudy round here.

2. Do you like the winter mountain sports? Skiing, boarding, sledding, snowshoe, etc...
No, but I like the snow, and arse-sledding.

3. Big Bear, Mammoth or other?
Mammoth. Except for the bored Highway Patrol who haunt the long empty road that takes you there.

4. Favorite hot drink?
Irish coffee. With cream from a carton, not a spray-can.

5. Heater setting?
66^o

6. At night, more blankets, more pajamas, more heater are all of the above?
No, not me: but my wife keeps the heater running. I like jumping into a freezing cold bed and warming up.

7. Do you go out and enjoy the cold or bundle up and stay inside?
Hell no. Stay in, where it's warm.

8. Cold temps. Stay for a while or bring back the 70s?
70s, 80s, 90s - any one will do.

For the first couple of years me and my pals were all "Hah! Call this cold? Youse don't know cold until the North Sea has gently kissed your goolies!" In those days I could stand outside in the chill wind and pishing rain, smokin' in shorts and a wife-beater. But cold is relative. Nowadays we're all, "Jings, but its freezin ma f*ckin tits off!", and wear sweaters and long pants and sometimes even socks.

Bunch of big girls' blouses. But grateful that we never ever have to face a dreich scottish summer again, let alone a winter.

Maggoty Sandwich

Smugwit. What an ugly site.

Funny, isn't it, how you often cannot help yourself being drawn to things you know you ought to hate? Like Fox reality shows: try to avoid them you might, but there will always be that one time you get snared? Happened the other night, trapped watching an awful lady, a fervent, evangelical, tub-thumping Vegan, wife-swapped to an unfortunate cajun family who farm gators on the bayou for a living. <aside type="curious">I'm pretty sure that the uncle who turned-up for the disastrous tofu barbecue features on a great wee documentary that runs on Sundance, the one about people who live in odd homes? He's the one lives on a houseboat in the middle of a swamp...</aside> She really was obnoxious, on so many levels - zero-tolerant, preachy, utterly condescending, and ultimately utterly selfish too - that I'm sure she was chosen to give Californians a bad name? She embodied the worst of those know-best tree-hugging vegan liberal California sterotypes. Ugh. Her Lousiana counterpart, on the other hand, at least tried to adapt to circumstance by cooking her faux-family a vegetarian gumbo. They were, naturally, disgusted by it. They spent the remainder of the week trying to convert her to Vegianity, but to no effect thank God.

Made me want to eat goat more than anything? I almost did couple of weeks ago while vacationing in New York - but the prospect of a really fine vindaloo proved too powerful - just can't find a decent curry round here, and I miss them. I've wanted to try goat since early boyhood, a consequence of watching "The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" on Saturday mornings, but until that restauraunt in NYC, had never found it anywhere? If the market is growing, as Drezner claims, then maybe it'll find its way into Vons at some point, and from there to the barbecue grill?