Gaze Theory

Five Years After

About a month after 9/11, when the fires in NYC were still burning and the dead could be not even begin to be counted, people started dying from poison delivered to them in small white envelopes.  Postmen were getting sick, some succumbed, killed randomly as they did their jobs.   Congress evacuated, it seemed, ever other day, and news organizations panicked with every mail delivery.  I was talking to a friend on the phone, and all of the sudden I felt it would never end, that some mysterious "they" were closing in on me, and I started crying. 

"I'm not brave enough for this," I blurted out. 

My friend, usually softspoken, almost shouted back at me,  "Yes, you are! You are brave enough!"  I don't remember anything else of the conversation, just the power of his faith in me.

Today, five years after, I feel that I am brave enough for this. Five years of bombings from Bali to Madrid to Iraq, five years of poring over history from books and pamphlets and blogs, five years of my eyes being opened.  I feel like a soldier must feel, when one day, steeled by hard training and the lore of courage in battle and the bonds of comradeship, a raw recruit realizes he has been changed, forever.   

The enemy has shown himself to us, over and over again. He is out of the shadows now, no longer a phantasm. And I know who I am and where I stand.  I know that this is how life really is; that the affluence and happiness and creativity we enjoyed this past several decades was fragile as a blossom, a brief interregnum between the neverending war between good and evil. 

I hope we all know these things now, that we are ready for the future.  I only wish our president could tell us, you must be soldiers now, steel.  Because we <i>are</i> brave enough.

ABC’s The Path to 9/11 - Watch It

Libertas gives it a rave review.   There hasn't been a movie that talks about the politics of the day, only the human suffering. 

I'll be watching.

Link: LIBERTAS � Blog Archive � Expanded Review: ABC’s The Path to 9/11.

Help Zeyad come to America

"Ny name is Zeyad. I'm 24. I work as a dentist." 

With these simple words, Healing Iraq's Zeyad introduced hmself, and Iraq, to the world.  It was October of 2003, six months after Saddam's statue was pulled to the ground and months before the insurgency threw the nascent democracy into chaos and bloodshed. Many of us soon became hooked on his blog--and later on his blogbabies like Iraqthemodel, The Messopotamian, and countless others--for their daily witness on the good, the bad and the ugly of the liberation.  It was a roller coaster of emotion.  Hopes were raised and then dashed. We felt impotent and learned viscerally and immediately through his posts what Rumsfeld meant by "a long hard slog." 

So now Zeyad has a chance to come to America to study New Journalism at CUNY and we have a chance to do something.  Zeyad IMO is already an accomplished journalist, but this looks to me like The Next Step in his journey, one that needs to be taken.

His name is Zeyad. He's 27.  He works as a journalist.  For anyone who has read his blog faithfully, it's a chance to give back.  For anyone ashamed of the Yale Taliban, it's a chance to right a wrong.
For anyone who has felt helpless and who wanted to do something, now is your chance.

For Tax Deductible Scholarship Information: BuzzMachine � Blog Archive � Help Zeyad come to America.

Sopranos

Excellent!

The voice over by William Burroughs, with an ancient Egyptian theory of the stages of death,
suggests that Tony will die this season.  Or has Uncle Junior's demented shot already done the job, and Chase is giving us the last episode first?

It's a rapid fire episode--and the product names are dropped like flies on honey, or is it that Carmella and Tony have made their marital pact with the Devil as intermediary and have nothing to left to love  except their $40 sushi and Porsche station wagons.

Hang on to your seats, Season Six is gonna be a bumpy ride.

Cartoon War Redux

Apparently today's iteration of the Cartoon Wars is not its first.  I'm now reading the autobiography of political cartoonist David Low, and he talks about his 1926 cartoon celebrating the batting record of famed cricketeer Jack Hobbs, aligning him with figures like Julius Caesar, Charlie Chaplin, Mohammed, and Columbus gazing up adoringly at him.

Much to his surprise, a local mosque leader wrote his in protest, and the editor of the paper apologized.  The matter was over--or was it?  Two weeks later, cables from India and Calcutta described a movement of local imams "exhorting Moslems to press for resolutions of protest against the Hobs cartoon which shows a prophet among lesser celebrities" in meetings at mosques.  Calcutta newspapers editorialized against the "serious offense" of the cartoon, warning how it would lead to bloodshed amongst Muslims "convulsed with rage."  Two weeks later, hmmm....shades of the radical Danish imam and his journey to the homeland with (phony) cartoons in hand! 

The British Government ignored their pleas for censorship (a lesson for our media and government elite) and jawboning the offending newspapers, and the affair fizzled out. 

Until now, 81 years later.

Alas, a copy of the 'offensive' cartoon is not available--or I just haven't been able to find it.  Anyone?

 

Cartoons, Lies, and Newspaper Ink

By today, Sunday, it's apparent that US newspapers and media outlets have failed to support the free speech stand of their European brethren: by choosing not to publish the offensive cartoons of Mohammed, by playing up the "spontaneous" nature of the protests themselves--even though all the placards seemed to be written in the same hand, and Danish flags were immediately available to all the faithful--and eliding altogether the fact that the Danish imam who traveled to the ME to disseminate the cartoons included three intensely more offensive cartoons of his own, namely, cartoons of the prophet sporting a pig snout, having sex with a dog, and lusting after children (here at MarkfromMexico).  The  whole episode would make some investigative reporter the new Woodward or Bernstein--if they had the guts to investigate.  The whole episode smacks of an organized "propaganda of the deed" designed to test the resolve of the West.  So far we have failed the test.

A local Muslim writes in to the Orange County Register today, thanking the paper for not printing the cartoons, finally invoking local mythical figure Walt Disney and his jingle that plays over and over on the ride: "There's so much we share that it's time we're aware, It's a Small World after all."  How surreal and how strangely fitting.  The Register every day gives us a false Orange County, constructed by an ideology as fake and as comforting as Disneyland and propagated by the likes of CAIR and by academe and pious media, who won't show the cartoons "out of respect for Islam."  I can't believe it's merely to troll for subscribers-- although the Register's giveaways to any new subscribers are now almost as desperate as the LA Times. 

Employees at The Park are not allowed to stop smiling--that's entertainment.  Disney wants to make you happy. Reporters at the Register are bound by a much more sinister devotion to multi-culti notions of victimhood and sensitivity.  What possible rationale can they claim?

Yes, it's a small world, indeed.  And without free speech--and especially free inquiry--it's about to get much, much smaller.

Update:  Ibn Warraq urges the West to stand firm.

First They Came...

It's the 1930s in Germany all over again...

An excellent short by Michelle Malkin on the current Islamic furor over the Muhammed cartoons.

Do you honestly think that the events of the last few days are just a spontaneous protest?  Check out her website: All the placards in London appear to be written in the same hand; "protestors" burn two embassies in Damascus, Syria, capital of a regime that is feeling a little squeezed by the Americans at this point in time; a Danish imam admits to faking a additional and more inflammatory cartoons he brought to when he flew to the ME to incite a revolution publish them there.
It's the 1930s in Germany all over again...

Tony!

It's the new year, and my thoughts turn naturally to that Sunday night gap and the return of The Sopranos.  The show is like sex:  even when it's bad, it's really, really good!

Three months!  But who's counting?

The New Year and Plan B

Oh, jeez, not another one. 

I was trying to think of some resolutions but could only come up with wishes:  that my neighbor with the barking dogs will suddenly get rid of them in favor of some much quieter goldfish; that I get a 500% raise from my part-time job so I can fix my house--or, that the funny bulges in the stucco suddenly go away; that the local handyman will decide to stop by once a week and fix all my broken stuff; that Roman Polanski decides he wants to direct my film.

Blinding insight!

Now that we have such a long life span, we need to toughen up.  FDR set up a retirement age for Social Security at 65--when the life expectancy was 63!  Who says Democrats aren't good at math? 

But 63 just ain't 63 anymore. Now that 80 or 90 is the norm, we have got to take this into account.   Plan A often goes the way of the dinosaur precisely because it is upstaged by the inevitable forward march of life.  It's happening all the time--we just don't notice it until it moves in next to you, like my machismo neighbor, part of a wave of immigrants, and his hounds from hell. 

Yes, life has ruined my Plan A.  My town now is full of gangs; the good schools are at a tipping point (downward); middle class people are moving out. I need to get a full time job and move to a better neighborhood or doom myself to the role of the curmudgeonly Old Lady with a Rifle, chasing little kids off my lawn. 

My Dad lived to 78, in spite of his daily diet of Camel cigarettes and gin martinis, so I ought to live to be 90.  So today I'm thinking: every decade or so we need to reinvent ourselves just like the new year, to review, and perhaps bid adieu, our Plan A, and embrace a Plan B.  If you're not up to that, what can I say?  Got a light?

Gimme My Eight Macadamia Nuts!

Hello, again, my faithful readers, I have returned.  The semester is over, the holidays are winding down: stockings hung and emptied, gift cards redeemed, holiday feasts lovingly prepared and hoovered down by appreciative extended family.  My own personal holiday lust having been now adequately slaked, my thoughts, and yours, too, turn naturally to the new year and ... DIETING! 

If you recoil in horror at the idea of the South Beach Smoked Salmon Fritatta (it's as bad as it sounds), are a lazy cook like me, and lactose intolerant (again, like me) the actual and quite rigid South Beach Diet presents significant problems.  So, in the spirit of sharing, I attach my version of the South Beach Diet which I have been on since approximately Thanksgiving.   Even with massive holiday cheating, I have lost eight pounds!  I'm only 5', 3" so I'm a happy camper.

Help yourself to the Lazy Girl, Lactose Intolerant, Sort of South Beach Diet:

Download planner.txt

Walk the Line

Not bad.   

Phoenix sings pretty well but is a bit jejune to portray Cash.  He--or maybe it's the script--just doesn't have Cash's gravitas.

Reese Witherspoon was a bit, um, squeaky as June Carter, but kudos to her for plucking it out. 

The real problem is the cliched script which digs into the stereotype bag for the Big White Bigot Dad who always has a sarcastic put down for poor Johnny, thereby causing him to take drugs and tear up a bunch of hotel rooms; the Shrewish, Non-Artistic Wife who just doesn't understand Johnny and his music and why he has to take drugs, tear up a bunch of hotel rooms, and fall in love with June; and, finally, the requisite swipe at Christians, who are blamed for Johnny's difficulties in getting a record contract for the Folsom gig, but, strangely, not for taking drugs, tearing up hotel rooms, or falling in love with June.

Biopics are tough; we all know the story but some movies, like Ray, do it superlatively well. 

Verdict:  Rent Walk the Line with a bunch of friends over so you don't pay too much attention to it and get all insulted, like I did.

Joy

Tis the season of joy and all, and maybe that's why I'm thinking of it.

I was in the movies the other day and saw the Nike (I think) commercial, you know, the Lebron guy ad, all of them eating, then playing basketball and dancing and laughing at each other, and then the other ad with the guy jumping up to dance all by himself in his loft.   I don't quite get how these commercials sell sneakers, but they do advertise what could loosely be called the American Way of Life to the world.  And what a life it is!  America is emblematic of, well, joy.  Joy to the world.  The Lebrons in the ads were all in their spare time, relaxing, making fun of each other, enjoying the goofy warmth of their homies or bursting into a spontaneous dance at home, just because.  No worries about revolution in the streets, marauding goons from the Dear Leader, or finding a morsel of food to carry one through another day.    Just joy.

Pursuit of happiness, capitalism, whiskey, sexy !

Brought to you tonight by the US of A.

Michael Moore Wants You!

...he's asking for you to speak out to honor the courage of Rosa Parks.

What risk can you take to move the ball forward?  What is that one thing that you've been wanting to say to your co-workers or classmates that you've been afraid to say--but in your heart of hearts you know needs to be said?

I'm would recite my Thanksgiving message but then I'd be out of my university job.  How about you?

Where do you go...

...when you type in your url wrong?

"We Are All Cavemen"

Best line of the post-prandial Good Natured Political Argument.

Meaning, we are in a bubble of civilized discourse, human rights, economic prosperity and artistic expression.  It may be the beginning of the Age of Aquarius and, then again, it might just be a brief interregnum in the nasty, brutish paradigm of human life.  The veneer of civilization is thin, indeed, and when cave men from less evolved pockets of humanity start killing us we pretty much have to respond in kind.  It's who we really are.