MSNBC.com: Breaking Yesterday’s Tragedies Today!

I’ve been reading a lot of complaints about ABC’s planned “documentary” about Sept. 11. Rumor has it that the film is not entirely committed to the facts.

We can’t live in fear, but we should be eternally vigilant. Osama is the greatest villain the world has seen since Hitler, but he really doesn’t matter. We don’t condone torture by the DOD, but whatever the CIA has to do to get information is okay. We’re winning the war in Iraq, but we need more troops.

It would be entirely appropriate to observe the anniversary of 9/11 by making an appointment with your chiropractor for that whiplash you’ve developed over the last five years.

As Bill the Cat used to say… ack!

Yeah, most Americans would love to go to that chiropractor…if they had health insurance.

MSNBC should have spent every day since January 20 recapping the day’s news out of Washington, D.C. from five years ago, to help us remember what the priorities were for the first 234 days of the Bush administration. I think they can be summarized as disposing of that pesky budget surplus that the Clinton administration left behind, establishing tax breaks for the wealthy, and solidifying an isolationistic foreign policy. MSNBC wouldn’t have had to spend any time on the Bush administration’s pre-9/11 concerns about terrorism, because except for that crazy hair-on-fire Clinton leftover Richard Clarke, there weren’t any of significance.

Before you get completely and totally sick of 9/11 stuff, take a moment to watch Ze Frank’s take on it.

(Someone from FA introduced me/us to Ze, and I just gotta say thanks once again.)

Off-topic: Pictures and stories from Day 2 of Felberpalooza (Part 1, Grouseland) are now on my blog - including more pictures of your fellow Felbernauts! See ‘em before I get served with a court order to take them down!

http://anothermonkey.blogspot.com/2006/09/felberpalooza-day-2-part-1-g rouseland.html

Thanks for the link to Michael Hirsh, whoever posted it. (I’m at work, using IE7, and it’s hopelessly scrambled posts from their authors.)

In his speech Tuesday, Bush called Iraq the “capital” of Al Qaeda’s would-be totalitarian caliphate and said it “is the central battlefield where the outcome of this struggle will be decided.” But military experts now say that the continuing violence since the killing of Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, the top foreign terrorist in Iraq, last June is evidence that the insurgency there is mainly indigenous, largely unconnected to the larger war on terror.

The reason this doesn’t make sense to the casual observer is that Bush is not talking about this earthly realm at all. He is talking about the cosmic battle of good v. evil as “foretold” in Revelation, for which the central battlefield is the ancient city of Babylon. At least, that’s what his mythology tells him.

mmmm…. limoncello…. I’m happier just thinking about it.

Sharon, of course you’re right about the “Vision Thing” with W and his Babylon fetish.

We missed seeing you at F*******looza. You would have been a good addition, plus I wouldn’t have had the weirdest accent there.

Sharon:
Good call on the Babylon thing!
I remember being totally baffled from the start of these Dark Years, having a sense that I was somehow missing something. How could he have so much adoration and praise from these “Christian” groups? It was like a cult. I told my husband at one point: “I don’t understand it. It’s as if he is saying one thing but secretly transmitting some secret message out to these evangelical wing-nuts that I am not getting”. Well, low and behold I was right. He was doing it all along. Speaking in code! And I was just not attending the right churches or subscribing to the same wacked-out theology, so I never got my decoder ring!
All:
love this blog and all the comments and your “blogwhoring”
…back to lurking.

That doesn’t seem logical, Ann.

Pardon my familiarity, Ann, but if some guy was actually emotional unavailable to you, he had to be an alien.

Seems like just moments ago that we were gathering in anticipation of the fine times that were to be that “thing that should not be called…, well, you know”. dee was in her room at the Day’s Inn, after enjoying a full body massage at the Vista Spa across the street (nobody believed you went “shopping”); Ann was experiencing the nuisanced pleasures of spending a week in Central Florida in August; and me, I was camping out in the remnants of Ernesto - by myself - in the field, but not yet wet; George was swimming to his car in Virginia Beach: George’s Sister was, well we can only speculate what she was up to; Harold was ordering the doughnuts and assorted pastries he would bring and share the next day. Adam, after a day’s work, was soon to be boarding a plane, destined to sit beside the chatty girlfriend of an unnamed wide receiver for the Baltimore Ravens, and wing his way to the east coast, not to sleep for another 26 - 30 hours. What fun!

Ah, Cooper, you make me nostalgic for five days ago!

cooper, my birthday was a few years, and some months, before 9/8/66! But I wouldn’t wish the years away, not now, because then I would not have been old enough to really appreciate Star Trek.

I’ll take a t-shirt.

Who could have predicted that a thread about 9/11 fatigue would end up as “How old were you when Star Trek began”?

George, when you’ve got 9/11 fatigue, the thread has got to end up just about anywhere but 9/11.

If the answer is 42. But that’s a different series.

Who could have predicted that a thread about 9/11 fatigue would end up as “How old were you when Star Trek began”?

If Chris hadn’t brought it up, I’m sure I would have.

Sharon, First Generation Trekkie

Murray, I think my super-signed book is coming from you? If it hasn’t already been sent, add a t-shirt and tell me how much money.

Jeez, you work in a bookstore and you get to meet all these famous people? Marty Allen, Robert Crais, *THE Scotty*. I’m a mere printer and who do I meet? The sweaty UPS man at the end of the day. Oh wait, I did get to meet George’s Sister. Never mind.

OK, gang,

I was born in 42, turned 42 in 84, celebrated by watching Hitchhiker’s Guide, went berserk when the meaning of the universe was revealed, and obviously never recovered, having thought as the question was uttered, What does that mean? One of the characters in Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat,” answered the question, of course, when he gave the ultimate answer to a specific question, “It don’t mean nothin’.”

Remember saying to some friends a while back that W is our first actual cult president. Kind of hard at times to distinguish him from oh, I don’t know, say Father Coughlin on ignorance meds and meth.

I’m a secular humanist, Jim, not a myth adherent.

“On the Media” did a piece on Star Trek’s 40th anniversary. You can hear it here:

http://www.onthemedia.org/stream/ram.py?file=otm/otm090806g.mp3

(if that link doesn’t work, go to onthemedia.org and find the show for Sept 8th, 2006. This is the last story on that day’s show.)

Lest anyone forget why we really went to war in Iraq, grinding away on our reservoir of healthy young people and pissing billions upon billions of dollars down a rat hole…

http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blsaddamdaddy.htm

Thanks for the link, Cooper. I spent some time looking backwards through the pictures there and it is clear that those who forget their propaganda are doomed to repeat it.

This one really hurts - http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/bliraqrealinspectors.ht m

Dale, next time slip the cop a fin, they’ll get rid of the problem, chop chop; slip them a twenty and they’ll break knee caps. Urban Life 101.

If buttheads with bullhorns make your teeth itch, don’t move to the South. We have our own problems with these morons.

Dale, how close under your window were they? Because back in the day, when my sister lived on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley (1966 or so), she had a similar problem with the Hare Krishnas, who chose her window under which to stand and chant, for hours. She went down and asked them politely to move, and they said, “We bring you joy!” “You drive me crazy!” she replied, to no avail. Repeat conversation 3-4 times.

After the 3rd or 4th useless conversation she went back up to her apartment. I lived in this apartment building too, in the sixties, and I clearly remember the central steam heat (a Brooklynite should understand this). All the rooms had a steam radiator under the window, driven by a boiler in the basement, and all the radiator valves leaked. My sister’s radiator valve leaked even more than mine, so she had quite a large pan of drip water on the floor. Next to the window. Under which the Hare Krishnas were chanting. She thought for a minute, opened the window, picked up the drip pan, and emptied it out the window.

The chanting stopped. She looked down - the Hare Krishnas were milling around, puzzled. After a few minutes they began to chant again. She filled the pan at the sink, went back to the window, emptied the pan out the window. The Hare Krishnas moved down the street a block or so and never chanted under her window again.

Oh, sorry - I just realized these yo-yos were across the street from you. Won’t work. You might pass the suggestion on to the neighbors. With any luck, a little water will short out their amps. Or is this something you can’t get away with in these politically correct days??

And in case nobody but me remembers cooper’s slang, a fin is five bucks. The twenty would be a double sawbuck. I love thirties currency slang.

Dale, that’s why God invented Shotguns. Oh, I’m sorry, I live in South Central PA, that kind of thing would just be understood.

You live long enough and you get to run into several celebrities.

Adam. (The rest of you had your chance, suckers!)
Billy Joel, (I built his solarium on his Central Park South penthouse, and met with Christy several times.)
Carl Kastle, Peter Segal, Charlie, Roxanne, Tom, and the gang at WWDTM. (Some 2X).

I shook Bill Clinton and Mo Udall’s hands, along with Governor Rendell, Carl Levin, and numerous other political types. The future US congressman Tony Barr is a close friend.

True story.

Memorial Day several years ago, a woman calls up and asks if we have bikes for rent. Sure. She comes with her husband, mother, and father. The parents aren’t out of the ordinary but she is very short, very cute and has enormous breasts. Her husband is as homely as she is good looking. His nose is pushed to one side, he is missing several teeth, and he sounds like a Hill Billy caricature. They rent 4 bikes; I give them a map of a good route, and tell them if they get lost to call. Several hours later, I figure that I’ll give them another half hour and I go looking for them. At that point a neighbor with a pickup pulls in with them and the bikes, and the neighbor has this really silly grin on his face. They pile out, I take care of the bikes, the parents head off to the car, the woman takes a shower, and the husband asks me, “Have you ever had a celebrity here?” “No.” “Well now you have.” “OH?” “The woman taking a shower is Miss Penthouse Pet for April (It’s May).” “That’s interesting.” “I asked the driver of the pickup if he had ever had a celebrity in his truck and he said no, so I told him that he had Miss Penthouse Pet for April in the back.” That explained the stupid grin. He went on to tell how they had worked hard for this and finally everything had started to fall in place. At that point she came out of the bathroom and he turned to her saying, “I asked if he (me) had ever had a celebrity in his shop and he said no, so I said he did now, that you were Miss Penthouse Pet for April, I also asked the pickup driver.” All of a sudden a dark cloud appeared over her head and in a very strong and sharp voice she said, “Not everyone wants to know that.” I said it was OK, didn’t mean anything one way or the other for me, but I knew what she was thinking. Now I wasn’t seeing her as a customer but as a naked sex symbol. (Well, actually she was probably right, even if I was trying not to convey it.) A normal conversation was no longer possible, and hubby wasn’t catching on. They left, and I was left wondering what she saw in him. She could have her pick of men and what kind of guy would find a boost of social ranking by parading his wife’s Penthouse status in front of strangers. I felt sorry for her. They had some real issues to work through.

I was sort of curious, and went on line to Penthouse.com but they wanted $10 to check through the archives and I never did it.

Another celebrity.

Thanks for all the ideas! If the Apocalypse Road Show shows up again, I will certainly try them all. Using the cop’s own logic, I think that as long as I mention God while I am doing it, I am free to do whatever I like.

I hate spam comments.

I keep reading that spam comment as “cure for incompetence.” THAT would be something I would buy.

Fanny, there are spam comments inundating some of the older posts. Help!

Fanny is trying to distract us from her own incompetence. Instead of going after the real spam terrorists, she’s attacking commenters such as myself who are no immediate threat to the blog. I expect this place to descend into chaos any day now.

Then maybe Adam can apply to Halliburton for a grant to repair the infrastructure. Or increase his bandwidth.