Click Me

 
Panther Kicks Arse
Part 1 - introduction

Pardon my, um, Anglo, but there just isn't a better way to describe the latest release of Apple's Macintosh OS X operating system. This is version 10.3, a "mere incremental upgrade", but don't let that fool you - there are easily enough new features in this release to justify the cost. And for those of you who, like me, are among the few Mac users in your otherwise Windows-dominated environment, this release is a godsend.

It is my hope that I will be able to offer a somewhat uncommon perspective on this product. You see, I am a "switcher". My Titanium PowerBook G4 is the first Macintosh I have ever owned, and practically the only Mac I've ever used, and I have worked with technology for almost 20 years now. At sixteen, I brought home my first computer (a Kaypro 4, running CP/M before IBM and Microsoft conquered the desktop), and I've never had a job that was not in the technology field. Currently, I am a partner in a consulting firm that specializes in systems management, chiefly of mobile and remote systems. We're Microsoft Partners and we know the MS server and desktop technologies inside and out. Before drinking the Microsoft Kool-Aid, I was a die-hard OS/2 booster.

Because of my experiences, it took me awhile to get used to the Macintosh. The way I described it during the first three months was, "using the Force", or "turning off my brain and embracing the Zen of my Mac." More accurately, I was "un-learning" Windows. Everything in Windows (and even OS/2, for that matter) was encumbered by the legacy of MS-DOS, and how that base operating system accomplished things. If you are a Windows "power user", you are always thinking about the underlying file system, the "foreground" and "background" processes, the different subsystems. Since the underlying OS on the Mac is BSD Unix, all of those systems were different, and I assumed I needed to understand them thoroughly in order to use my Mac effectively. But I was missing out on something that lifelong Mac users had long enjoyed - a GUI and application development model that truly shields the end-user from the underlying "machine" and still lets that user accomplish just about anything they want. In a certain way, I had to ask myself, "If I had never used a computer before in my life, what would I try?"

The most straightforward example I gave to people was burning a CD. Historically, if you wanted to burn a CD with Windows you used a "CD Burning Application" such as Roxio's Easy CD Creator (the PC counterpart to Toast). You started a project, selected your files, arranged them in the directory structure you desired, inserted a blank CD, and committed the project to disc. When I first desired to burn a data CD on my Mac, I started scouring the Applications folder for the CD composition application, without success. "If I had never used a computer...what would I try?" I inserted a blank disc into the drive slot, it appeared on the desktop, and I started dragging files to it as if it were any other disc, removing and renaming files as I desired. When I went to eject the disc, it asked me if I wanted to "burn" the disc and commit the changes. Nothing more to it.

I didn't need to understand that my Mac was storing pending changes in a cache and not actually writing them to the disc, the OS just took care of that for me. Now, before you start sending me e-mail about this, I know that WIndows XP does this, finally. But Windows 2000 didn't. Windows NT didn't. Windows 95/98/Me didn't. Microsoft, after years of forcing users to rely on third-party applications and understand the underlying file system and restrictions associated with CD composition, finally deigned to shield the user from all of that.

Last December, I bought my PowerBook. My father-in-law had purchased one earlier in the year, and I played with it during visits to their house and family vacations with some curiosity. My only previous, and very limited, experiences with a Mac had been with the original "tan box" Macs and, later, OS 7. I didn't care for the older Mac OS, and I still don't, although I've grown somewhat more patient when I have to boot into OS 9 to allow my daughters to play some older games and educational programs. In the last ten months, I have grown to love my Mac, and I have also grown intimately familiar with many of its failings. In this series of articles, I will try to share both my love and my perspective on these weaknesses, in the (perhaps vain) hope that some of this will both reach and resonate with the folks at Apple, and future releases of the OS will be even better than the one I already love.

Continued in the following post(s):
Part Two
Part Three

posted by Monkey RobbL at 8:35 PM

 
A hearty belly-laugh goes out to Greg Knauss's "Devil's Dictionary". A particularly appropriate entry:

Slashdot, verb

To test, experimentally, what an infinite number of typing monkeys will produce. See also USENET.

posted by Monkey RobbL at 11:53 AM

 
An unbelievable number of close calls with the fire--but my friends are all safe.

My friends Terri and Allison were sure their home in the back part of Poway (near Rock Haven) was gone, but they got back and the fire had jumped Highway 67 but was stopped at their road, Coyote Creek Trail--it burned down to the road and no further. Another friend, Russell (who's promotion to Chief Petty Officer I swear I'm going to blog about soon) had a close call in Poway, but his house was OK. My friend Tom lives in University City near the 805, and had the fire get within a 1000 feet of his house. Ben had an even closer call and will blog on it here soon. My friend Magnus the blacksmith, who is on the 67 just south of Scripps Poway Road, had his home/workshop survive (thankfully--he's not insured and all the tools of his livelihood were there) but the wrecking yard and recycle center next to him burned. Another friend in Valley Center fled flames in the fields all around his house, but returned to find it intact (but all the fences around it burnt, and scorched earth inches from his back deck). (I literally just changed this sentence from "he lost his house" because I just got the e-mail.)

A lot of close calls. Here's my favorite story, from a guy I know named Mark, who's wife Sandy's brother left his house Sunday:

Sandy's brother, the one who lost his house Sunday morning, spent Monday evening driving one of his company's fuel trucks around to give diesel to the fire crews. At the end of the night they agreed to take him up the closed El Monte Road to see what was left of his place. They had run out at 4:30 in the morning when the fire came without warning. The last they saw of the place, the whole property was in flames, including the grove of oaks in which the house was nestled--a burning canopy around the house. Today, the property is scorched and black and the trees are burned and stark, as they stand with naked fingers surrounding and protecting his unscratched house.

posted by David at 11:10 AM

 
Doh! Time to improve my outlook:


You are Lamentations.


Which book of the Bible are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
posted by Monkey RobbL at 9:02 AM

 
The who of the what?

I should like to add this: Age of Chance's "1000 Years of Trouble" was the, uh, "record you were embarrassed to admit you liked, but you didn't need to be embarrassed, because nobody heard of the damn thing anyway" of hip-hop.

Here's a challenge for those of you who can even listen to hip-hop long enough to compare it to real music. Name the hip-hop equivalent of these records:

1. The Velvet Underground - "Loaded" (i.e. the "commercial" album by a critically acclaimed band that you really liked the best, but told everybody you liked "The Velvet Underground and Nico" because it was cooler to like that record)
2. The Clash - "London Calling" (i.e. album by a previously good and critically acclaimed group that was now "firing on all cylinders")
3. R.E.M. - "Murmur" (i.e. debut album that caught everyone off-guard and effectively started a completely new "scene")
4. The Beatles - "Let It Be" (i.e. absolutely wretched excess that effectively ended the career of a previously magnificent group)
5. Joy Division - "Closer" (i.e. album by a group that everybody pretended to like, but were actually complete crap, unless you were one of the five people on earth like Paul Morley who had some kind of gnostic experience causing them to worship Ian Curtis as the new messiah of rock)

Bonus: Name the hip-hop equivalent of the "Xanadu" soundtrack, and explain why.
posted by Monkey RobbL at 1:28 AM

 
On CNN, Larry King is talking about Lady Di.

If this were a trashcan fire in Manhattan, they'd be on high alert, total coverage.
posted by David at 9:03 PM

 
Someone I know through the San Diego Burning Man community just lost his house in Valley Center...he was having a huge party there next weekend; I imagine the energies of the community now will be focused on helping him clean up.

Update: I was supposed to fly to Houston today, but flights out of San Diego were delayed or cancelled because the Mirimar air traffic control center had to be evacuated. So I'm going tomorrow. But at least I still have my house.

Another update: The local news is calling in "FIRESTORM 2003." Man, I don't like local news. At least this time no reporter has made this mistake.

Yet.
posted by David at 9:14 AM

 
Gregg Easterbrook has lost his mind.

That's too harsh, really, but he's certainly lost his way. I loved reading his Tuesday Morning Quarterback column (no link, as ESPN made it disappear completely--Soviet-style--when they fired him for his ill-advised remarks on Jewish Hollywood executives--no link for that either, as the whole thing is tiresome and easy to find on The New Republic website).

I loved reading TMQ because it was fascinating to see a detail-oriented policy wonk apply his amazing mind to football. He always had a fresh take on things, and many, many nuances.

But maybe blogging isn't his metier, or the anti-Semitic accusations put the zap on his head, but now he's lost all his nuance and is going for quick hits. Take a look at this nonsense about Iraq. Let me get this straight--we should abandon Iraq?

This is actually the position of a lot of Congressional Democrats, even those who voted for the Iraq resolution, and it's frankly disgusting. Surely even if (perhaps even especially if) the reasons for the war were wrong, we have a strong responsibility to see that the vacuum left by the removal of the fascist Baathist party is not filled with something equally as bad. In fact, we have a responsibility to ensure that a democratic government is put in place, and we had that responsibility from the moment we took military action (that was in 1991, if I remember correctly).

Coming from the "loyal opposition" in Congress, it's transparently demagogic. But coming from Easterbrook, who is smart enough to know better, it's horribly sad, and possibly the death rattle of a once promising career.
posted by David at 2:21 AM

 
I stopped by the Apple Store tonight at about 8:30 (the one in Newport Beach; we were up there to have dinner with friends), and there was a rope line, with a guy acting as bouncer and only letting people in slowly to buy Panther. I was wearing my Drew Carey-style glasses, and I wanted to walk up and say “man, look at me—I’m wearing the nerd glasses, I got my first Mac in 1985, if there were ever a line I should get to cut in front of, it’s this one! I'm on the list, I swear!”

But I didn't. I decided to take the advice of Ogden Nash: if you're called by a panther, don't anther.
posted by David at 2:15 AM

 
One Long Day, part three

(start here and work your way up)

15 minutes later, as I wait by the elevator, someone finally arrives with my keys. I move to the new room, check my e-mail, and wish I hadn't ever asked for a room with working Internet access. My company's new web hosting provider has responded to one of my technical support requests, and has added an additional note that they "noticed" that Moveable Type is installed in one of our subdirectories. This is "not supported" and "banned" from their servers, and I have 24 hours to remove the files before they delete them. WTF????? This account includes a specific amount of storage space AND a limited amount of bandwidth. What could they POSSIBLY object to about our having Moveable Type installed? I can't imagine. But I'm furious and I respond accordingly.

I'm also late for my shuttle. I race downstairs and manage to barely make the bus. While on the bus, I sit in the back and try to make a couple of calls to take care of outstanding business. Each time I start talking, the coach driver gets on the intercom and decides to tell us something "interesting" about Anaheim. I am unable to carry on a conversation, so I give up, exasperated. When we pull into the parking lot at Disneyland, he reminds us to take our tickets. Tickets??? Doh!!! In my rush to make the bus, I have left my pass in my room. Not only am I going to have to ride back to get my pass, I am going to have to wait ANOTHER 30 minutes for the next bus, because they can't wait for me to run up to my room and come back.

While riding back, a plan is hatched: My hotel is the last of three hotels where this shuttle stops. If I get out at the first hotel, I can run across the parking lot, race up three flights of stairs to my room, and get back down to the lobby in time for the bus to arrive at my hotel. Despite my tremendous girth and generally poor physical condition, this plan actually works. I'm able to avoid the extra 30 minute wait, and somehow also avoid a fit of vomiting and/or a heart attack.

From here, things start going "my way" a little more. I am able to get three good rides in before DCA closes, and then I walk across the lot to Disneyland and enjoy the "Nightmare Before Christmas" version of the Haunted Mansion two times without a significant wait either time. This modified version of the classic ride is a surprising improvement. I really appreciated the amount of re-decoration they were able to do while preserving the basic ride. I loved the movie, and the "little touches" were lots of fun. My favorite part? The room with the "Christmas Lists". "Good little boys and girls" are indicated with a jack-o-lantern, and "bad little boys and girls" are indicated with a skull and crossbones. Who were the bad little boys? Tim (Burton), Danny (Elfman), Vincent (Price) and Johnny (Depp). Delightful touch.

When I got back to my hotel, I called home and talked to my girls. I've been coming to Orange County quite a bit recently, and every time I call home, Erika (my oldest at 6) asks me which rides I went on. I always seem to tell her that I had to work late and didn't get to go on any rides. She usually follows up by encouraging me to get up early and ride a couple of rides before I start work the next day. Sweet. Tonight, I tell her that I actually got to ride on FIVE rides, including some very exciting ones. "Good for you," she says, earnestly. No jealousy, nor any ambivalence because she wasn't able to participate - she is genuinely happy that her daddy got to take a break from work and enjoy himself. I almost cried. Super Fly wouldn't have cried, but I almost did.

This put the evening on track. After a generally frustrating day, my trip to the parks, followed by a call home and this martinis-and-steak outing have really taken the edge off. I'm now on my third giant martini, blogging unselfconsciously and thinking about the days to come: Tomorrow, after work, I will fly up to Oakland and enjoy a reunion show of one of my favorite bands (Monks of Doom - with Jonathan Segel opening!) in Berkeley, and follow that up with an easy day of work in San Francisco that will pay all of my expenses except for the liquor.

Things are pretty good. I may have to get up at 5:00am every now and then, and I may occasionally waste a trip, but I have a good job and two daughters who love the hell out of me. So what have I been bellyaching about?
posted by Monkey RobbL at 11:09 PM

 
One Long Day, part two

I receive a call at 9:30 - the plane is about to take off from Ontario. 45 minutes later, I'm sharing the squareness of my mini-van with someone else. No, wait. There will be no sharing here - she gets in the car and teases me, "Is this the best you could get? What happened to the convertible Mustang?" Grrrrrrr.

We're heading down to Chula Vista for our "second" meeting. My passenger has a hankerin' for something at Jack in the Box (no, she isn't pregnant - I can't explain it) so we find one and go in to kill some time. No skin off my nose - they have Coke products, and my 6:00am latte is starting to wear off. I'd better get some more caffeine in me before I hold up a liquor store just for kicks.

Meeting #2 goes as well as can be expected. We've been holding this customer's hand for about a year, and they have yet to make a commitment of any significance. On a recent account management call, we nominated them for "Biggest Financial Sinkhole 2003", and there is no serious competition at this point. This is not really anyone's "fault", per se. They've had a couple of notable organizational changes, and we've had to start over a couple of times. But it's still hard to get jazzed about flying to San Diego for a meeting that's not really going to go anywhere.

Also, Meeting #2 reminds us that Meeting #3, originally scheduled with other folks within the same organization, is not going to happen. The latest reorganization of responsibilities has rendered this meeting irrelevant, so I am reminded that I got up early to fly to San Diego for a meeting that could probably have been handled over the phone. [Sigh]

We finish up Meeting #2, and head back to the airport. I'm not flying home yet - I have an appointment in Orange County tomorrow, so I'm just going to drive up to Anaheim. We spend the drive moping about how we ever got into this position with this customer, and muse about how we might get things back on the right foot. I drop my salesperson off at Terminal One, and I get on I-5 and head north to Anaheim. It's early, and maybe I can squeeze a little something out of this trip.

I have a "Southern California" pass for Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure. It's "supposed" to only be available to people who reside in Southern California ZIP codes, but they'll sell the thing to anybody who asks. When I bought it, I asked for the SC pass, produced my Arizona driver's license, and they processed the payment, no questions asked. DCA closes at 6:00pm, and Disneyland at 8:00, so maybe I can squeeze in a ride or two.

The hotel is about a mile south of the park, and I stay there because they have complimentary high-speed Internet access in the room. You see, it's not enough to work 8-12 hours at the customer site, I need to be able to blog and/or work into the wee hours of the morning. I make great time driving up I-5, and arrive at my hotel at around 3:10pm. The next shuttle to the parks is at 3:35, so I've got plenty of time to unpack, check e-mail, and get back down to the lobby.

But my Internet connection doesn't work. I replace the cable with my own, and still no IP address. Gah!!! I just want to check my stupid e-mail. I call the front desk, and they say they'll send someone up to check the connection. I make a phone call or two, and still nobody arrives. I call down again, and they let me know that my room has some sort of problem, and they'll send someone up with keys to a room with working Internet access. Another 20 minutes pass - valuable ride time is being consumed! I call down, and ask if I can just come down to the front desk and get the keys myself. They insist that someone is "on their way" to deliver my keys.

[side note - I love the olives in my martini. I know this is sacrilege - the olive is for decoration, not for eating - but I always order an extra olive. Delicious!]
posted by Monkey RobbL at 11:09 PM

 
One Long Day, part one

I'm back at the Outback Steakhouse in Garden Grove, after one freaking long day where things took a LONG time to get on track. There is a giant Bombay Sapphire martini on the table, and I'm about to try to settle down.

It all started at 5:00am. I know a lot of people get up at 5:00am every day, but it usually takes an act of divine intervention to get me up that early. I stay up late, and I get up late, and I'm fortunate enough to have a job that lets me get away with that most of the time. But today I had to be at a "sales call" in La Jolla at 9:00am, so I had to drag my sorry self out of bed at 5:00. Oh, did I mention that I didn't go to bed until 1:00am the night before? Yeah, it's going to be quite a sales call. The customer will look into my bloodshot eyes, see my hands shaking from the recently ingested triple breve latte, turn to our salesperson, and say "why should I trust this drug addict to manage my remote and mobile systems?"

At 6:00am, I stop and pick up the aforementioned latte. My favorite coffee house, the Soma Cafe which serves Tully's Coffee, isn't open yet when I drive by, and neither is the backup (Hava Java), so I have to settle for Starbucks a little closer to the airport. Fortunately, the barista knows how to steam the half and half properly, and I don't get a cup full of foam. Things are looking up. I get to the airport, walk up to the Southwest Airlines electronic kiosk, and get my boarding pass. It's 6:30 and I'm still in the "A" group. This is good news - a fairly empty flight. We board on time, push back on time, and take off on time. As we're speeding down the runway, my head nods against the window, and I'm asleep.

When I wake up, things have gone horribly wrong. It's after 8:00, we're still in the air, and the captain has come on the intercom to tell us that there's a horrible fog over San Diego, and we're going to have to circle around for awhile until there's enough visibility to land. I nod back off, worried but too tired to care - nothing I can do about this, right? At 8:45, he wakes the plane up again and tells us we're going to be able to land. Again, I nod off until we're at the gate. 9:00. I'm supposed to already be at the meeting. My salesperson is flying down from Sacramento, and she's supposed to land about 10 minutes before my flight, but she's probably late, too.

I call her cell phone, and it rolls straight to voice mail - rats! I don't have the customer's phone number (or even the contact name) to call and tell them we're late and why. Seconds later, my phone rings. She's in Ontario - they couldn't land in San Diego, and had to put down there until the fog cleared. Our 9:00am meeting (the reason I got up at 5:00 - remember?) obviously wasn't going to happen, but hopefully we'd still be able to make our second meeting, with a different customer, at 11:30. Hopefully. I'll go get the car and wait for her at the park across the street from the San Diego Airport.

At the rental car place, they've decided that the perfect car for the perfect day is a Ford Windstar mini-van. When I fly in to Orange County, they seem to always give me a convertible Mustang, but in San Diego, I get a mini-van. I am reminded that Super Fly would never drive a mini-van, but today, I will not only be square, I will have my squareness on display for all to see.

[side note - Nik Kershaw's "Wouldn't It Be Good" is playing over the intercom at Outback. Ironic that I should be whining about my day as he sings "I've got it bad. You don't know how bad I've got it. You've got it easy. You don't know when you've got it good." Probably a lesson to be learned here, but the first martini is gone, and has started to kick in. No lessons will be learned tonight.]
posted by Monkey RobbL at 11:08 PM

 
"The Kid Stays in the Picture" is one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. Stylistically, it's wonderful, but it's also the amazing story of Robert Evan's life. So I'm intrigued (but a little horrified) that Comedy Central is turning his life into a TV show.

Tagline: "One man has seduced the hottest women in the business, broken every box office record, and brought Hollywood to its knees. And that was just this morning. Kid Notorious: a life so unbelievable it had to be animated."
posted by David at 8:21 PM

 
St. Paul's recent posts about Paul Westerberg and the Replacements reminds me of how much I used to wish I lived in Minneapolis. The Replacements, Hüsker Dü/Bob Mould/Sugar, Trip Shakespeare/Semisonic. How great would it have been to see those bands live and in their prime? I'm a complete Trip Shakespeare fanatic, and it kills me that I wasn't able to hear them perform "Toolmaster of Brainerd" in person, complete with all manner of extemporaneous lyrics.

One of my favorite TS songs is called "Lulu", a nostalgic song about a girl who loved Hüsker Dü even more than her man:

Lonely when I hear that band
That used to play when we were looking for music
Lonely when I hear that band
Do you remember, do you recall?
Remember when you held my hand,
You used to say "I love them so much."
Lonely when I hear that band
Do you remember, do you recall?

Hüsker Dü, for those who remember the band OR the board game, means something like "Do you remember", and to make things even more clear, the album sleeve for Lulu included the quote as, "Dü you remember, dü you recall?"

Sigh. On the other hand, I've never had to dig my car out from under a snow drift in order to go hear my favorite local band, either.

Now, what song should I listen to...ah, yes. Here's one that will do double-duty:

Current Song: "Dead Set On Destruction" from the album Volt by Trip Shakespeare
posted by Monkey RobbL at 5:50 PM

 
Incompetent Government Agency Guidelines, page 6928:

When you are not accomplishing your goals, arrest someone who has drawn attention to your failure.
posted by Monkey RobbL at 10:38 AM

 
Sobran on the Pledge

Brad asked for less hyperbolic commentary on the Pledge, and former National Review editor Joseph Sobran is an excellent source. In this article, Sobran clearly and concisely explains how both "sides" in the Pledge controversy are missing the point.

On liberals' objection to "under God":

But the phrase wall of separation between church and state isn’t in the U.S. Constitution. It was coined by Thomas Jefferson, who also referred to “God” in such official state documents as the Declaration of Independence, the reading of which in public schools would presumably violate the Constitution too, by the logic of the San Francisco judges. So, in fact, would every oath of office taken on a Bible by public officials, including these judges themselves.

Once again the Constitution has been treated as a “living document” by the ineffable Federal judiciary, which keeps surprising us by discovering novel meanings in old texts. It always turns out that our ancestors didn’t realize what they were saying. We need modern liberals to explain their words to us

On conservatives attachment to the pledge:

But conservatives treat the Pledge itself as if it were a founding, authoritative, and virtually sacred document of the Republic. It is not. It was written late in the nineteenth century — by a socialist, if memory serves — and the words one nation, indivisible were meant to indoctrinate children with the idea that no state may withdraw from the Union.

What other purpose does the Pledge really serve? It teaches an unreflective loyalty to the government, rather than an intelligent attachment to the principles of the Constitution.

And the solution?

The solution is so obvious that it hardly occurs to anyone: the total separation of school and state. Tax-supported schools should not exist. The government should have no say at all in the formation of children’s minds. Education should be a purely private matter, left to parents and those who want to support them voluntarily. That way we could avoid endless and irresolvable quarrels about the Pledge, religion, sex education, phonics, the New Math, “values,” and all the rest.

Never mind that private schools outperform state schools and that home schooling beats them both. This is a matter of right and principle, not of what (according to the state) “works.”

Read the whole thing, and then spend some time perusing Sobran's archives. He's a refreshing, pleasant advocate of the ideals of freedom.

Oh, here's one more quote, from Sobran's light-hearted "speech" introducing his "candidacy for the presidency":

What about the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? I would delete them. Lest you suspect I’m pandering to the atheist vote, I would repeal the entire Pledge. Americans should not be taught that they owe their allegiance to the government; the government is supposed to be their servant, not their master. The Pledge has helped make Americans the submissive sheep they are today.

posted by Monkey RobbL at 9:40 AM

 
A big "Amen" to Jon Luker at Polemics for his take on the Pledge of Allegiance. Here's his post, and I'll pat myself on the back with a link to my own rant back in August.
posted by Monkey RobbL at 1:58 AM

 
Quick Clarifications

Just a quick response to Brad's response to my response to Ben and Brad's original posts:

Traveling from church to church: Hyperbole, perhaps, but the article does quote speeches from three different churches in a single year. This wasn't exactly a one-off.

"These people" are the people we are killing, and who we "need to kill" in order to "defend our faith". Not Muslims in general, but not just "radicals", either. For example, we killed thousands of soldiers in Iraq who, as far as we know, did little other than defend their country's borders. Seeing as King George the 41st pretty much carpet-bombed the soldiers who invaded Kuwait into oblivion, and ten years had passed since without an invasion of another country, we can't pin that crime on the people we killed. We pretty much killed a bunch of Iraqis who refused to overthrow their ruler when we asked them to. When are we going to invade Cuba? Are we going to send troops into Forsyth County, GA to flush out the KKK menace if the Georgia National Guard doesn't hurry up and take care of things? And don't forget the Chinese - they've got an ass-whoopin' coming, for sure. Of course, we took care of the Branch Davidians when they wouldn't revolt against their despot. Maybe we should have just send the BATF in to set fire to Baghdad.

Sorry, that was more of a rant than a clarification. The point is, he's connecting the killing to the defense of Christianity. It doesn't matter who "these people" are in that context.

"The General is talking about followers of Bin Laden" - Ah, so then why are we killing people in Iraq again?

"Back up the truck / back the truck up" - Actually, believe it or not, I was never aware of the "Nerf curses" angle there. I was just trying to get the "vehicle" of our conversation off of the "side road" of the L. A. Times' (significant journalistic) error (which Lileks addresses exquisitely - see the link in Ben's post) and back to the "crossroads" where we ask the right question: Is "Christian Jihad" a fair editorial characterization of General Boykin's position. Based on the MSNBC article we've been discussing, I think that answer is quite clearly, "Yes."

Current Song: "Let's Have A War" from the album Repo Man: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Fear

(sorry, too perfect - I also considered "Killing In The Name" by Rage Against The Machine)
posted by Monkey RobbL at 9:13 PM

 
I know I'm a little late weighing in on this, but I honestly hope the Rush Limbaugh pain pills "scandal" (if you want to call it that) teaches us all a little something about drugs:

Making drugs illegal doesn't help anybody. Mandatory minimums don't help anybody. Rush is addicted to painkillers, and has been for several years. And you know what? He was TOTALLY FUNCTIONAL on those pain killers. He is a remarkably successful talk radio host, "contributing to society" and all that. Let's say he doesn't kick the habit. Does he "deserve" to go to jail? Of course not.

And neither do the thousands upon thousands of people arrested each year for possessing, consuming, or even growing their own drugs. Prosecuting drug users preemptively for what they MIGHT do while high is ridiculous (on par with arresting a drunk in a bar before he even has a chance to get behind the wheel of a car), and adding drug charges to another crime is no different from mandating stiffer sentences for "hate crimes".

Should heroin addicts have access to free government health care, welfare, and unemployment? Of course not. But neither should tee-totaling moral straight-arrows. The problem is with the government providing those services at all, not the fact that the system is abused.

If we completely legalized all drugs (including freeing up prescription drugs) tomorrow, we would be better off than we are now, with a huge percentage of our prisons filled with people who have been sucked into both the penal system and organized crime because of illegal drugs. We never should have started the "war on drugs", and we lost it before it ever started. Let us all learn from Rush Limbaugh: drugs don't turn people into resource-sucking criminals.
posted by Monkey RobbL at 8:20 PM

 
To end on a positive note, I did want to praise this quote from Brad:

"If you believe in the Lord's sovereignty, then you believe that He is in control of who occupies positions of leadership, from Pharaoh, to Nero, to Napoleon, to Lincoln, to Clinton. Sovereignty is sovereignty."

Brad, I am glad to see you are finally including George W. Bush in the list with the other tyrants that you list above. Well done!
posted by Monkey RobbL at 8:01 PM

 
Okay, let's back up the truck here. The L.A. Times "jihad" thing was plain wrong, but let's look at the Boykin quotes and see if we're not obscuring the truth ourselves here:

[excerpted from MSNBC story]

[PICTURE OF PRESIDENT BUSH] "And then this man stepped forward. A man that has acknowledged that he prays in the Oval Office. A man that's in the White House today because of a miracle. You think about how he got in the White House. You think about why he's there today. As Mordecai said to Esther, 'You have been put there for such a time and place.' And this man has been put in the White house to lead our nation in such a time as this.

General Boykin was NOT saying some thing that, as Brad put it, is a "non-radical, commonplace belief among Christians". He was saying God divinely intervened in our election process to place someone in the White House to accomplish a specific task. This is not "run-of-the-mill" sovereignty talk, and it is egregious equivocation to say that "a man that's in the White House today because of a miracle" means the same thing as "there is no authority except from God".

"But who is that enemy? It's not Osama bin Laden. Our enemy is a spiritual enemy because we are a nation of believers. You go back and look at our history, and you will find that we were founded on faith. Look at what the writers of our Constitution said. We are a nation of believers. We were founded on faith."

[PICTURE OF SATAN] "And the enemy that has come against our nation is a spiritual enemy. His name is Satan. And if you do not believe that Satan is real, you are ignoring the same Bible that tells you about God. Now I'm a warrior. One day I'm going to take off this uniform and I'm still going to be a warrior. And what I'm here to do today is to recruit you to be warriors of God's kingdom."

Again, Boykin is blurring (vigorously erasing, really) the line between the mission George Bush is on (to depose another country's ruler while killing thousands of soldiers and others who never attacked us) with God's mission of (eventually) destroying Satan and his kingdom. This language is inexcusable, and it's the same load of crap that they fed everyone to get them to fight the Crusades (on both sides). Sure, you can nit-pick the words and decide that he's not saying THAT, but this was a slide show in a church! Do you really think on the first listen, with the slides he's showing, that the congregation is going to understand that he's NOT using religion as a justification for this "war"?

One more, for the road:

"And we ask ourselves this question, 'Why do they hate us? Why do they hate us so much?'

Ladies and gentlemen, the answer to that is because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian. Did I say Judeo-Christian? Yes. Judeo-Christian.

"That means we've got a commitment to Israel. That means it's a commitment we're never going to abandon.

. . .

Our religion came from Judaism, and therefore these radicals will hate us forever."

This is simply crackpot dispensationalist hooey. First of all, the "party line" on why we are committed to Israel is because they're the only democracy in the region, not because they're God's chosen people. Ask a dozen congressmen from both parties why we're committed to Israel, and I'm guessing you might get ONE of them who says we need to be on Israel's side because God's on their side. Second, they don't hate us because "our religion came from Judaism", they hate us because we meddle in the region and support Israel. They didn't blow up the Vatican - their targets were symbols of American (and Western) economic and political power.

The more we trivialize hard-line Moslem objections to our presence in the region and reduce them to "they hate us because we're Christians", the more we will have to rely on endless displays of brute force to pacify the region. General Boykin does no service to the cause of peaceful co-existence on this planet by traveling from church to church, suggesting that we need to kill these people in order to defend our faith.

Take the Times to task for using an emotionally charged word and attributing it to Boykin, but don't forget to give Boykin the criticism he rightly deserves.
posted by Monkey RobbL at 4:45 PM

 
Ben, in talking about the strike, below, mentions a story his father told him:

my dad reminisced about a high school fieldtrip he took to a General Electric factory in the early '50s. The students were given a demonstration of a prototype called something like "Balls and Strikes." It used light beams to track pitches relative to the height of a batter. Of course, dad told me, the device could never be used in actual baseball games. The umpire's union wouldn't have stood still for it. And, in any event, it would have taken a crucial element of humanity out of the game. I guess that's right. I wonder how a new-and-improved version of that device would be treated now? Most of the humanity drained out of Major League Baseball a long time ago.

Well, for those Monkeys and Monkey aficionados who haven't heard, that day has come.
posted by Monkey RobbL at 10:06 AM

 
My friend Robert e-mails to say that "Monkeys and alcohol do mix," which readers of this blog have known for a long time. I say, give these monkeys some of those robotic arms and let them provide security.

Yes, you heard me, I'm advocating monkey bouncers. I know those words may haunt me someday.
posted by David at 3:23 PM

 
The saddest Cub's fan.
posted by David at 3:19 PM

 
Deeper meaning behind the New York Times Red Sox gaffe? You be the judge.

(Thanks to my friend Guy for pointing me to this.)
posted by David at 12:38 PM

 
Sometimes a baseball team and its 95-year-old curse are not enough to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Sometimes you need a little help from your fans.
posted by Monkey RobbL at 10:48 AM

 
Oh, I think if you're going to descend to "the wife", you need to go all the way. (cf. the Miller High Life commercial that refers to "the little lady"). I hear "the old ball and chain" is one that'll really endear her to you. And, if MTV has taught me anything, there may be a couple of additional terms that you honorary brothas can use, as well.
posted by Monkey RobbL at 3:14 PM

 
What I Like About the Recall

I don't care for direct democracy. I won't go into the depth of my disdain in this post, but to give you an idea of "where I'm at", I don't believe the President or any other national office holder should be elected directly (even with the imaginary buffer that is the electoral college). Instead, I think the legislative representatives should be selected by the individual state legislatures, and the chief executive should be selected by the state governors. Dang! I said I wasn't going to go down this road...

But I enjoyed watching the California recall process, because if there's anything I enjoy less than direct democracy, it's party politics. Party politics give the electorate yet another excuse to not think about their actual responsibilities and blindly vote for their party. As if we Americans NEED another excuse not to think. Don't get me wrong, I think the existence of political parties COULD be valuable in helping people sort out the beliefs of candidates and their own positions, just as denominations help (in some small way) people distinguish between the myriad variations of Protestantism. But there should be no recognition of the parties in the electoral process. If parties want to go off and hold primary elections (at THEIR OWN EXPENSE), then more power to 'em, but it should not affect whose names appear on the ballot, merely the official endorsement of the party and the direction of campaign funds.

In California, the parties had to do just that. Arguably, the Democratic party was slightly more "successful" - they were able to get a single candidate on the ballot. He lost, but they could have been absolutely crushed if they had multiple candidates. The Republicans did not have the pure success of selecting a single candidate, but Arnold used the party affiliation in an appropriate way - "this party most closely represents my viewpoint".

All ballots should be non-partisan. I'm not saying anyone who gets 65 signatures should be able to get on any ballot, but any candidate that meets the criteria (whatever they are) should appear on the ballot, with no party affiliation next to their name. If people are too stupid to find out what a candidate stands for before going to the polls, and have not at least bothered to pick up their party's list of recommended candidates and positions, then they shouldn't get the crutch of being able to vote for whoever has the "R" or "D" next to their name.
posted by Monkey RobbL at 8:57 AM

 
Fellow monkey Robb asks about ordering martinis in restaurants, and the meaning of the inevitable question from the waitress (after "vodka or gin?"): "up?"

Yes, "up"? means "no ice."? "Neat"? also means that, but (correct me if I'm wrong here, Ben) I don't think you'd use that for a mixed drink.

I have no idea why someone would drink a martini with ice, but I;ve seen it.

If you're sitting at the bar, you can discuss vermouth ratios with the bartender. Usually you'll just get a hint of vermouth (I've seen bartenders pour a little in with the ice they are using to chill the glass, then dump the whole thing and add the shaken gin).

I don't really object to that, though, because as Ben taught me, freshness is the key to good vermouth (and probably one of the reasons it has a bad name). Like wine (which is what it is) vermouth will oxidize quickly, so buy the small bottles, keep them in the refrigerator, and replace them every month of two.

So unless you trust your bar to be a) taking care of their vermouth or b) using enough to be going through it quickly (for example, some steak houses do use a lot of vermouth, probably to save money on expensive gin) then you should just drink your cold gin and be happy.

I need some links, so here is an article on vermouth from FoodTV (FoodTV is notorious for changing links, so click quickly). It praises Vya, which is my favorite.

And on the subject of manhattans, I'm fond of Tipsy Cherries, which are cherries in whiskey.?I've also seen cherries in sweet vermouth (the link, by the way, is just for the picture;?you should be able to find them at a store near you).
posted by David at 2:19 AM

 
Arnold Conservative Betrayal Countdown

OK, it's time to start the "Arnold Conservative Betrayal Countdown." (Yes, I'll take suggestions for a better name).

How long before Arnold betrays a core conservative principle? I'm not talking about making nice with Willie Brown; I mean a substantive policy betrayal (or what will be perceived as a betrayal, even if it's consistent with Arnold's former publicly held positions), like endorsing gay marriage legislation, enacting draconian gun control laws, or banning Hummers in California. Or, God forbid, raising taxes. I'm talking about an actual policy initiative, not just an off-the-cuff statement by Warren Buffet.

E-mail me with your predictions, at the address on the top of the page. Ben will be the primary barometer of dismay, but I reserve the right to be the final arbriter of this admittedly subjective contest. Prize will be an old 1964 Barry Goldwater for President button I have lying here on my desk.

(By the way, I'm an Arnold supporter, and I'll place a side bet that the betrayal won't bother me all that much, either because it's consistent with my own libertarian/free market beliefs, or it's part of a larger compromise with--and outmanuevering of--the wacko legislature.)
posted by David at 12:28 PM

 
I'm sure I'm one of the last to hear about this, but I like this idea.

I'm not sure of the point they are making (it's certainly not a violation of the Constitution to be searched at the airport). But it's cool to carry around the Bill of Rights...
posted by David at 11:08 AM

 
Hugh Hewitt rightly condemns LA Times columnist Steve Lopez's editor for allowing him to call Arnold "Gropenfuhrer." Of course, it's spelled "Gruppenfuehrer," but get it? It's a joke--a combination of "grope" and...well, try typing "Gruppenfuehrer" into Google to see a list of sites detailing the horrors of the Nazi S.S.

Man, I wish I subscribed to the L.A. Times so I could cancel my subscription.
posted by David at 12:43 AM

 
Yesterday, I turned on my local public radio station, and caught a great report on Chinese reaction to Arnold's election. Yes, that's right. Even though the official news service in China didn't report it, word was out--and they were excited. The gist of the report was that the Chinese yearned for the kind of direct democracy we have here in California. I bet they do.

But wait--did you say this was on NPR? Aren't they the ones who called Hugh a "schock jock," and apologize for left wing nonsense around the world? That doesn't seem right.

Well, it's not. It was on PRI's "The World," and you can listen to it here. Scroll down to "Chinese Reaction Report."
posted by David at 2:52 PM

 
I noticed James used the F-word today, and wanted to point out he didn't use it indecently, according to the FCC.
posted by David at 12:39 PM

 
John J. Miller at NRO's The Corner has this to say about McClintock:

My guess is we've heard the last of him, except as an occasional speaker at right-wing confabs. This saddens me. Is anybody more optimistic?

posted by David at 4:17 AM

 
I'm hearing the Democratic spin everywhere (usually posed as a question by a reporter): if the Arnold vote is less than than "No on Recall" vote, he's not "legitimate."

Pshaw!
posted by David at 8:50 PM

 
I disagree with my co-monkey Ben. I think the history of a minority candidate trying to use a small poll result as a power base is poor; it's not as if McClintock could claim that he could "deliver" that block to another candidate. George W. Bush, for example, won't be coming to McClintock, hat in hand, begging him to campaign for him in 2004. McClintock is far more likely to be blamed for the Republican party's failure to "coalesce behind a single candidate," especially if he doesn't completely get behind Governor Schwarzenegger.

Now, the cheap shot: 12% is lousy, when you consider that he failed to even reach the percentage of people (21%) who believe in alien abductions. Or, even more implausibly, that he failed to even reach the percentage of people who think Bustamante would be a good governor.
posted by David at 4:55 PM

 
I wonder if Arnold had trouble sleeping last night? After today, he'll either be Governor-elect...or still just a multi-millionaire movie star.
posted by David at 11:26 AM

 
Well, I WAS going to go to sleep, but now I can't, because I have this image burned into my brain.

The QuickTime movie that you'll see is the "daytime" version. The version I just saw on Adult Swim replaced the words "ordinary untoasted sub" with "processed piece of crap." No kidding!

So, for those of you keeping score, the rule is this:

1. You may not have the phrase "processed piece of crap" in your commercial before 9:00pm
2. You MAY show a grown man actively sucking the teat of a real live wolf before 9:00pm

posted by Monkey RobbL at 12:21 AM

 
Woohoo! I am surname #6094 in the United States! Woohoo!
posted by Monkey RobbL at 10:43 PM

 
An article in this week's Onion is funny.

This is not funny. Really. It's not. He has serious injuries. I'm not smiling.

I mean, I'm thinking of a joke I heard earlier.
posted by David at 10:55 PM

 
This morning on NPR, Hugh Hewitt was described as an "AM radio shock jock."

What the...? Now, I have to admit that I don't get to catch Hugh's show every day. In fact, I almost always miss Mondays. Maybe that's the day he does the fart jokes and has strippers as guests. I know James Lileks is on Mondays, and that seems like something in which he'd want to participate.

Or maybe they mean shock jock in the sense that clear, reasoned center right thinking is shocking to the NPR reporter's ear. That kind of makes sense, actually.

I'm going to start calling Nina Totenberg a shock jock.

You can hear the reference here. Scroll down to "On the Campaign Bus with Arnold Schwarzenegger." It's 2 minutes and 9 seconds into the piece...
posted by David at 10:06 AM

 
Ben Stein definitely needs to host the Trivia event. My two cents.
posted by Monkey RobbL at 9:52 PM

 
The Big Time

Patrick at Patterico's Pontifications was kind to link to my post asking why folks are voting for Arnold, and has also posted feedback he's received on the subject. There are some interesting pieces of feedback, including one that bestows on me the coveted title of "lackey". Specifically, I am referred to as "that lackey you cite." I couldn't be more proud.

Patrick was also kind enough to come to my defense. Pay him a visit, won't you?
posted by Monkey RobbL at 1:21 PM

 
I guess it's time to move to New Hampshire.
posted by David at 12:00 PM