An aide to Senator Clinton today slagged the John Kerry campaign for running an inconsistent campaign (duh!). Sen. John Edwards's and Sen. Kerry's aides have been trading potshots.
I expect tomorrow someone from the Kerry camp will slag Sen. Clinton for failing to bring about national health care.
Earlier this week, a New York Times report claimed unidentified Kerry associates said Edwards had privately promised the Massachusetts senator to hold off on a 2008 White House run -- if Kerry runs.
"Personal, confidential conversations between Sen. Kerry and myself are going to stay personal and confidential,'' Edwards said in an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle following a Thursday speech to the San Francisco Bar Association.
And so it begins. . .
---o0o---
Friday, March 18, 2005
Thursday, March 17, 2005
A New Army
click to enlarge - This is a prototype for the new soldier. We replace our soldiers around the globe with 'Bots. . .we could have friendly ones, and ugly ones, depending on the war zone. Think of all the money we'd save in Japan, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Germany, and Somalia. No more complaining about the bad G.I. chow, no more rapes and civilian atrocities, no more barracks or uniforms, no conscientious objectors or deserters. No flag draped draped coffins or uncomfortable calls to the bereaved relatives. If they get blown away, you just melt 'em down and crank out another one. If an entire batallion is destroyed, there's more work for the robot factory in Kenosha, WI.
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Bigfoot
click to enlarge
Many Bigfoot sightings over the last 50 years occur close to Mount Rainier, not far from where I used to go fishing (See "Fishing With The Old Man" in the January All This Is That archives). As far as we know, this map shows the approximate range of the North American Bigfoot, which may well be a cousin to the Yeti (The Yeti presumably crossed into North America over the land bridge between Russia and Alaska).
This is also the location of Kenneth Arnold's highly publicized flying saucer sighting in 1947, which many believe triggered the whole flying saucer phenomena. Maybe there's something in the water up there?
---o0o---
China parks to curb throwing horses to the lions
Tue Mar 15,10:24 PM ET - BEIJING (Reuters) - Safari parks in China have agreed to stop feeding their lions and tigers large live animals such as horses -- at least in public.
The gory eating habits could lead visitors to believe that animals, both hunter and prey, were only human playthings, Xinhua news agency on Wednesday quoted Xie Youxin, the deputy general manager of the Wild Animal World in Chengdu, as saying.
"The bloody scene could also have implanted violent tendencies in youngsters," he said. Chengdu is the capital of southwestern Sichuan province.
Managers of 22 of 30 safari parks nationwide who signed an agreement last week said they acknowledged that wild animals had the same sense of "agony, terror and annoyance" as human beings.
Animal rights activists have criticised the state of China's zoos and the mistreatment of wild animals captured for their fur, or in the case of bears, for the healing power of their bile.
But the safari park agreement only restricts the release of large domestic animals, such as oxen and horses, during the presence of visitors, the agency said.
"Feeding when the park is not open is permitted. Parks are allowed to continue to sell small birds for visitors to feed the wild beasts."
The gory eating habits could lead visitors to believe that animals, both hunter and prey, were only human playthings, Xinhua news agency on Wednesday quoted Xie Youxin, the deputy general manager of the Wild Animal World in Chengdu, as saying.
"The bloody scene could also have implanted violent tendencies in youngsters," he said. Chengdu is the capital of southwestern Sichuan province.
Managers of 22 of 30 safari parks nationwide who signed an agreement last week said they acknowledged that wild animals had the same sense of "agony, terror and annoyance" as human beings.
Animal rights activists have criticised the state of China's zoos and the mistreatment of wild animals captured for their fur, or in the case of bears, for the healing power of their bile.
But the safari park agreement only restricts the release of large domestic animals, such as oxen and horses, during the presence of visitors, the agency said.
"Feeding when the park is not open is permitted. Parks are allowed to continue to sell small birds for visitors to feed the wild beasts."
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
"The Defense Of Marriage" Is A Steaming Pile!
Click to enlarge.
I don't have a particular axe to grind with marriage per se. I've been with the same wonderful wife for 30 years. In my capacity as a cleric, I have performed numerous marriages.
The Defense of Marriage people are becoming more organized, or they are all reading from the same hymnal (authored by Hannity, O'Reilly, Rush, and Coulter). Someone is feeding The Hive "talking points" because over and over in the last few weeks, I have heard several people on radio and television say that gay and lesbian marriage will lead to:
Incest
&
Bestiality!
The Ann Coulter brigade takes the slippery slope argument to an extreme. Allowing gays and lesbians to marry will ineluctably lead to people marrying their mothers and their goats, with polygamy not far behind. "This won't happen right now," they say, "but twenty years from now..." They believe this flawed argument will play well in the boondicks, with the religious right, and in flyover states.
Everyone in the Defense of Marriage hive brings up the twisted notion that same-sex marriage weakens The Institution Of Marriage. This is harder to swallow than the argument that people will marry their llamas. What weakens marriage is, presumably, divorce (see photo, above). Statistics tell us that between 43% and 50% (believe it or not, no one actually knows for sure!) of all marriages fail--that is, end in divorce. What weakens marriage more than the institution collapsing on its heterosexual own, with no help at all from same-sex marriage? Maybe same-sex marriages will turn the tide! I doubt they will do any worse than we heteros have done.
---o0o---
Heroes And Villains, Concluded
A poem never actually ends; eventually the poet abandons it. Likewise, I am abandoning the Heroes And Villains. This could go on forever::::::::::::I have left out so many heroes--Marianne Moore, Frank O'Hara, Ken Kesey, Marilyn Robinson, Orson Welles, Edmund Wilson, James Wright, T.S. Eliot, directors, actors, painters, poets, Robert Lowell (although I did include his two students Plath and Sexton), Gandhi, The Buddha, even some members of the Beatles and Grateful Dead. Miles, Sarah Vaughn, Clifford Brown, and Herbie Hancock, are missing, as is Mingus, Duke, Ella, Charles Lloyd, Branford Marsalis, Chet Baker, Bill Evans, Elvin Jones, all comedians, Lord Buckley, Jean Shepherd, and untold numbers of villains and despots. I missed Neil Young, and Brian Wilson, Buddy Holly, Bird, Nat King Cole, McCoy Tyner, The Kinks, Weezer, Bruce Springsteen, Phillip Glass, Wagner, Bartok, Bernstein, Bach, Mozart, Charles Ives, Simon and Garfunkel, Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, Talking Heads, and The Ramones, among others. I left out most novelists and dramatists, except Shakespeare. Melville, Twain, Homer, both Fieldings, Proust, Joyce, Conrad, Wharton, and Austen are all missing. I missed dozens of painters I love like Rembrandt, Mark Ryden, Bruegel, Motherwell, Keith Haring, Basquait, Miro, Klee, Frieda Kahlo, Picasso, Borofsky, Lichtenstein, Michelangelo, the Dutch Masters, the Flemish painters, the New York School, and on and on. I missed the Beats entirely. I missed many rock, bluegrass, blues, jazz and blues bands. I missed all 18th and 19th century poets and novelists. Where was Big Star, The Byrds, The Posies, (did I do Zappa?), Nirvana, The Sonics, Paul Revere, Old And In The Way, Johnny Cash, Bob Wills, and Hank Williams? How could I miss my great heroes Dolly Parton and Bob Dylan?
I struggled to find enough women villains. Sometimes I would research female villains and find they weren't villains after all.
I always have a bit of a struggle between writing and art. I am going to attempt to go back to the old format of All This Is That, where I actually do some writing, with some art every day or so...I must admit, 'though, I am already tempted to start work on a different series of digital art. We'll see what happens! For now, I want to get back to My Worst Jobs, the stories about Mel, my childhood, and Fifteen Years Of Vacationing With The Hokits.
Here is the complete list of Heroes And Villains. The series is woefully incomplete, but probably an OK start. You can find these digital paintings here, and in the All This Is That Archives (just over there, on your right...). /jack
No. 1--> Adolph Hitler & Lyndon Johnson
No. 2--> Bishop Tutu & Il Duce
No. 3--> Jack Kennedy & Torquemada, Or, Two Catholic Boys
No. 4-->Jeffrey Dahmer & Daniel Boone
No. 5--> John Wilkes Booth & Emily Dickinson
No. 6--> Jerry Garcia & Tokyo Rose
No. 7---> Two Bald Guys--> Hideki Tojo & John Glenn
No. 8--> Mother Jones & Heinrich Himmler
No. 9-->Maria Mitchell & Idi Amin
No. 10--> Ma Barker & Elizabeth Gaskell
No. 11--> Gaius (Caligula) & Rachel Carson
No. 12 --> Maximilien Robespierre & Artemisia Gentileschi
No. 13--> Nero & Phil Lesh
No. 14--> Joan d'Arc And Ivan The Terrible
No. 15---> Gertrude Stein & Richard M. Nixon
No. 16 --> Josef Stalin & Calamity Jane
No. 17--> Erzsebet Bathory, & Mother Theresa
No. 18--> Joni Mitchell & Maier Suchowljansky
No. 19--> Born in 1903--> Zora Neale Hurston & John Dillinger
No. 20--> Two More Catholics--> Keelin Curran & Pope Alexander VI
No. 21--> Chrissie Hynde & Bruno Hauptmann
No. 22---> Elvis Costello & Billy The Kid
No. 23--> Pol Pot & Anne Sexton
No. 24--> Billie Holiday & J. Edgar Hoover
No. 25--> Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm & Senator Joseph McCarthy
No. 26--> Born in 1893--> Anita Loos & Joachim von Ribbentrop
No. 27--> Edith Piaf & Hermann Goering
No. 28--> President George W. Bush & Andy Warhol
No. 29--> Phyllis Schlafly & Peter Jackson
No. 30--> Nina Simone & Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme
No. 31--> Morris Dees & Queen Mary I
No. 32--> John Lennon & Carrie Nation
No. 33--> Congresswoman Bella Abzug & Pope Urban VI
No. 34--> Mata Hari & Dr. William Carlos Williams
No. 35--> Doris Lessing & Typhoid Mary
No. 36--> David Duke & Virginia Woolf
No. 37--> Bob Weir & Albert Anastasia
No. 38--> Eleanor Roosevelt & Lee Harvey Oswald
No. 39--> William Shakespeare & Queen Ranavalona I
No. 40--> Larry Rivers & Lucrezia Borgia
No. 41--> Brent Mydland & Mohammed Reza Pahlavi
No. 42--> Mickey Hart & Sirimavo Bandaranaike
No. 43--> Ron McKernan a/k/a Pigpen & Harry Robbins ("H.R.") Haldeman
No. 44--> Mohammed & John Wayne Gacy
No. 45--> Two Guys With Hands on Chin--> Senator Robert F. Kennedy & Rabbi Meir Kahane
No. 46--> John Coltrane & Mao Zedong
No. 47--> Harriet Tubman & Marie Louise of Orléans
No. 48--> General William Tecumseh Sherman & Louis Armstrong
No. 49--> Mario Cuomo & Ann Coulter
No. 50--> Vlad Dracolya a/k/a Vlad The Impaler & Jesus Christ
---o0o---
I struggled to find enough women villains. Sometimes I would research female villains and find they weren't villains after all.
I always have a bit of a struggle between writing and art. I am going to attempt to go back to the old format of All This Is That, where I actually do some writing, with some art every day or so...I must admit, 'though, I am already tempted to start work on a different series of digital art. We'll see what happens! For now, I want to get back to My Worst Jobs, the stories about Mel, my childhood, and Fifteen Years Of Vacationing With The Hokits.
Here is the complete list of Heroes And Villains. The series is woefully incomplete, but probably an OK start. You can find these digital paintings here, and in the All This Is That Archives (just over there, on your right...). /jack
No. 1--> Adolph Hitler & Lyndon Johnson
No. 2--> Bishop Tutu & Il Duce
No. 3--> Jack Kennedy & Torquemada, Or, Two Catholic Boys
No. 4-->Jeffrey Dahmer & Daniel Boone
No. 5--> John Wilkes Booth & Emily Dickinson
No. 6--> Jerry Garcia & Tokyo Rose
No. 7---> Two Bald Guys--> Hideki Tojo & John Glenn
No. 8--> Mother Jones & Heinrich Himmler
No. 9-->Maria Mitchell & Idi Amin
No. 10--> Ma Barker & Elizabeth Gaskell
No. 11--> Gaius (Caligula) & Rachel Carson
No. 12 --> Maximilien Robespierre & Artemisia Gentileschi
No. 13--> Nero & Phil Lesh
No. 14--> Joan d'Arc And Ivan The Terrible
No. 15---> Gertrude Stein & Richard M. Nixon
No. 16 --> Josef Stalin & Calamity Jane
No. 17--> Erzsebet Bathory, & Mother Theresa
No. 18--> Joni Mitchell & Maier Suchowljansky
No. 19--> Born in 1903--> Zora Neale Hurston & John Dillinger
No. 20--> Two More Catholics--> Keelin Curran & Pope Alexander VI
No. 21--> Chrissie Hynde & Bruno Hauptmann
No. 22---> Elvis Costello & Billy The Kid
No. 23--> Pol Pot & Anne Sexton
No. 24--> Billie Holiday & J. Edgar Hoover
No. 25--> Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm & Senator Joseph McCarthy
No. 26--> Born in 1893--> Anita Loos & Joachim von Ribbentrop
No. 27--> Edith Piaf & Hermann Goering
No. 28--> President George W. Bush & Andy Warhol
No. 29--> Phyllis Schlafly & Peter Jackson
No. 30--> Nina Simone & Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme
No. 31--> Morris Dees & Queen Mary I
No. 32--> John Lennon & Carrie Nation
No. 33--> Congresswoman Bella Abzug & Pope Urban VI
No. 34--> Mata Hari & Dr. William Carlos Williams
No. 35--> Doris Lessing & Typhoid Mary
No. 36--> David Duke & Virginia Woolf
No. 37--> Bob Weir & Albert Anastasia
No. 38--> Eleanor Roosevelt & Lee Harvey Oswald
No. 39--> William Shakespeare & Queen Ranavalona I
No. 40--> Larry Rivers & Lucrezia Borgia
No. 41--> Brent Mydland & Mohammed Reza Pahlavi
No. 42--> Mickey Hart & Sirimavo Bandaranaike
No. 43--> Ron McKernan a/k/a Pigpen & Harry Robbins ("H.R.") Haldeman
No. 44--> Mohammed & John Wayne Gacy
No. 45--> Two Guys With Hands on Chin--> Senator Robert F. Kennedy & Rabbi Meir Kahane
No. 46--> John Coltrane & Mao Zedong
No. 47--> Harriet Tubman & Marie Louise of Orléans
No. 48--> General William Tecumseh Sherman & Louis Armstrong
No. 49--> Mario Cuomo & Ann Coulter
No. 50--> Vlad Dracolya a/k/a Vlad The Impaler & Jesus Christ
---o0o---
Monday, March 14, 2005
Britney Spears Gives Michael Jackson advice to get his life back together -- get drunk and start a fight!!
from Teenhollywood.com:
Toxic star Spears believes Jackson - currently in the midst of a trial - needs to adopt a more masculine persona and get embroiled in a punch-up to help toughen him up, regardless of whether he is guilty or not of the allegations.
She tells American magazine Allure, "If he did those things, I feel sorry for him. I feel like he probably feels alone, and he needs some help."
"He needs someone to be like, 'ok, let's buck you up, let's give you a moustache, let's rough you up, let's go to a bar, let's get drunk and be a man.'
"And if he didn't do those things, I feel sorry for him. Either way, he needs to get in a fight."---o0o---
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