Corte Madera Chronicles

2007-04-29T12:18:00.000-07:00

crappy for some of you

Fuck Blogger, let's jump ship

2007-03-31T00:48:00.000-07:00

Corte Madera Chronicles is dead. Blogger's update killed it. Let's jump ship and keep the group blog going over at wordpress. You will need to create an account, but it's VERY easy.

It's all ready to go at:

http://obscurereference.wordpress.com

Email me the email address you use with WordPress and I'll add you as a user. Do it now.

speechless

2007-03-09T09:03:00.000-08:00

Link

To help celebrate the 30th anniversary of Star Wars this year the United States Postal Service will be rolling out mailboxes that have been completely wrapped in custom R2-D2 graphics.

They’re not going to fool anyone into thinking it’s an actual astromech droid ready to deliver your postcard to Obi-Wan but they get the idea across. And I think it’s a good idea these will only be appearing at US Post Offices since if they were installed on the streets something tells me they wouldn’t be around for long.

You might also notice that each mailbox has the website uspsjedimaster.com on the front. The site doesn’t appear to be live at the moment but it’s obvious the Post Office has even more Star Wars tie-ins planned. I don’t think a forthcoming line of stamps would be a bad guess.

TV

2007-02-14T00:06:00.000-08:00

So Mrs. Lorrimer and I never watch television, except that now we have Netflix, so when people highly, highly recommend certain TV shows we can get them on DVD. Several months ago we burned through Firefly, for example.

The new show that is like crack for us is this. The cast seems to be mostly Canadian stage actors from the big Shakespeare festival up there, and the show is about a big Canadian Shakespeare festival and all the backstage drama. And they get it. They get the backstage drama, and they also get the Shakespeare. Watch it so that we have people to talk about it with.

upgraded blogger

2007-02-14T00:05:00.000-08:00

Aw crap. Fucking Blogger is going to make all of us get gmail accounts to be able to post to this blog. It's fairly painless, and I use gmail anyway, but it's still fucking annoying. I hope you all go ahead and do it and keep this silly thing going.

stop escalation via fake war! (e.g. football)

2007-01-31T12:58:00.000-08:00

they're trying to run this commercial DURING the superbowl, which would be awesome.

Click here to contribute some dollaz to their efforts.

Holy Hannah

2007-01-17T21:49:00.000-08:00

Just when I thought nothing geekly could excite me anymore.

This.

2007-01-12T18:43:00.000-08:00

good one

2007-01-11T21:32:00.000-08:00

please... STOP THE LYING!

he may kill prostitutes, but

2007-01-09T17:42:00.001-08:00

but he still does cool stuff sometimes

Dead to me.

2007-01-01T19:36:00.000-08:00

And dead to all.

Cottage Diaries

2006-12-24T10:56:00.000-08:00

New post up here.

Who the hell is this Dan Fogler guy?

2006-12-16T14:29:00.000-08:00

So you fools went to BU with this dude? Saw the post about the Star Wars movie, and then just noticed this other movie online. It looks like he's the lead, and it looks pretty damn shitty:

Check it out.

this one is for...

2006-12-14T20:14:00.000-08:00

Lia

Yet another reason to hate the jews...

2006-12-13T13:37:00.000-08:00

or at least the Israelis: they hate us

More Craigslist Fun

2006-12-02T06:11:00.000-08:00

Dwarf needed for Dungeons and Dragons - w4m - 28

Reply to: pers-240846981@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-11-27, 6:29PM PST

Group of serious role-players seeks a sassy person of diminished stature (midget) for Dungeons and Dragons gaming sessions. Beard and Gaelic accent a plus.

Location: Yucca Valley
It's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

http://palmsprings.craigslist.org/stp/240846981.html

consent

2006-12-02T05:58:00.000-08:00

sexual consent just do it

form here

also, listen to the lyrics at the end credits

Does Neal Stephenson know about this?

2006-11-29T22:51:00.000-08:00

2000 year old computer

Pretty fucking cool.

Kramer vs (Black) Kramer

2006-11-21T10:12:00.000-08:00

Michael Richards' now infamous tirade.

What do you all think?

best craigslist missed connection ever...

2006-11-18T11:26:00.000-08:00

Has anyone seen my Tauntaun?

Reply to: pers-236266174@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-11-17, 11:22AM PST

I was out on patrol last night near the rebel base when something spooked him and he took off. :(

Location: Hoth

link

and i thought i was well traveled

2006-11-13T11:53:00.000-08:00

create your own visited countries map

if only they weren't in red

2006-11-13T11:49:00.000-08:00

sorry, can't figure out how to make the images smaller.

states that i have visited:

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

FUCK ME

2006-11-12T11:24:00.000-08:00

watch this trailer now

Um. I don't know what to say. And (for the BU folks reading this), as if the whole concept of this movie and the fact that it got made and what that says about our culture isn't enough:

THAT'S DAN FUCKING FOGLER.

It's dead to me

2006-11-11T18:11:00.000-08:00

But these guys are trying to keep it alive.

Watch it.

There's one moment that gave me gooesbumps. One of those moments you either wish you'd thought of, or thought of and never did anything with, or are just pissed someone else got to it first.

Rumsfeld on trial for torture?

2006-11-11T01:05:00.000-08:00

"Germany was chosen for the court filing because German law provides "universal jurisdiction" allowing for the prosecution of war crimes and related offenses that take place anywhere in the world."

Link

WE WIN!

2006-11-08T11:25:00.000-08:00

love these headlines!

Democrat wins Montana Senate seat, CNN projects

Democrats win House, promise new direction

Majority of states have Democratic governor

Bush takes responsiblity for GOP election loses (takes WHAT?)

AND OF COURSE.........

Rumsfeld quitting as defense secretary !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

yay for america

i heart sf

2006-11-06T12:22:00.000-08:00

Proposition J

Adopting a Policy Calling for the Impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney

City of San Francisco

Kill the Buggers

2006-11-06T06:43:00.000-08:00

What would Ender think?

The Only Issue This Election Day
Orson Scott Card
October 29, 2006

There is only one issue in this election that will matter five or ten years from now, and that's the War on Terror.

And the success of the War on Terror now teeters on the fulcrum of this election.

If control of the House passes into Democratic hands, there are enough withdraw-on-a-timetable Democrats in positions of prominence that it will not only seem to be a victory for our enemies, it will be one.

Unfortunately, the opposite is not the case -- if the Republican Party remains in control of both houses of Congress there is no guarantee that the outcome of the present war will be favorable for us or anyone else.

But at least there will be a chance.

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America's role as a light among nations.

But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war. And since the Democratic Party seems hellbent on losing it -- and in the most damaging possible way -- I have no choice but to advocate that my party be kept from getting its hands on the reins of national power, until it proves itself once again to be capable of recognizing our core national interests instead of its own temporary partisan advantages.

To all intents and purposes, when the Democratic Party jettisoned Joseph Lieberman over the issue of his support of this war, they kicked me out as well. The party of Harry Truman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- the party I joined back in the 1970s -- is dead. Of suicide.

The "War on Terror"

I recently read an opinion piece in which the author ridiculed the very concept of a "war on terror," saying that it makes as much sense as if, after Pearl Harbor, FDR had declared a "war on aviation."

Without belaboring the obvious shortcomings of the analogy, I will agree with the central premise. The name "war on terror" clearly conceals the fact that we are really at war with specific groups and specific nations; we can no more make war on a methodology than we can make war on nitrogen.

However, there are several excellent reasons why "War on Terror" is the only possible name for this war.

1. This is not a war that can be named for any particular nation or region. To call it "The Iraq War" or the "Afghanistan War" would lead to the horrible mistake of thinking that victory would consist of toppling certain governments and then going home.

In fact, it is precisely the name "War in Iraq" that is leading to the deep misconceptions that drive the Democratic position on the war. If this were in fact a war on Iraq, then in one sense we won precisely when President Bush declared victory right after we occupied Baghdad. And in another sense, we might not see victory for another five years, or even a decade -- a decade in which Americans will be dying alongside Iraqis. For a "War in Iraq" to linger this way is almost too painful to contemplate.

But we are not waging a "War in Iraq." We are waging a world war, in which the campaigns to topple the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan were brilliantly successful, and the current "lukewarm" war demands great patience and determination from the American people as we ready ourselves for the next phase.

2. We cannot name this war for our actual enemies, either, because there is no way to name them accurately without including some form of the word "Islam" or "Muslim."

It is our enemies who want to identify this as a war between Islam and the West. If we allow this to happen, we run the risk of achieving the worst of all possible outcomes: The unification of one or both of the great factions of worldwide Islam under a single banner.

President Bush and his administration have shown their grasp of our present danger by stoutly resisting all attempts to rename this war. We call it a "War on Terror" because that allows us to cast it, not as a war against the Muslim people, with all their frustrations and hopes, but a war in which most Muslims are not our enemies at all.

That can be galling for many Americans. When, after the fall of the towers on 9/11, Palestinians and others poured into the streets, rejoicing, it was tempting to say, A plague on all of them!

But it is precisely those people -- the common people of the Muslim world, most of whom hate us (or claim to hate us, when asked by pollsters in police states) -- whom we must treat as if they were not our enemies. They are the ones we must win over for us to have any hope of victory without a bloodbath poured out on most of the nations of the world.

Nation Building

Another charge against the Bush administration's conduct of the war is that they are engaged in the hopeless task of "nation-building." And this is true -- except for the word "hopeless."

But what is the alternative? I've heard several, each more disastrous and impossible and even shameful than the one before.

In the New Testament, Jesus once used the analogy of a person who was possessed by a devil. When you cast out the devil, don't you leave an empty house, swept clean, to which seven devils will now come to live, making things worse than ever?

No matter which miserable dictatorship we moved against after the Taliban -- and we had no choice but to keep moving on if we were to eradicate the grave danger we faced (and face) -- we would have faced the same problem in Syria or Iraq or Sudan that we had in Afghanistan: We had to establish order in a nation that had never actually become a nation.

The boundaries on the ground in the Middle East were not formed in the traditional way -- by compromise or war. Instead, European powers drew lines that pleased their fancy. The lines did not create the hatreds that plague the region, but they guaranteed that traditional enemies would have to face each other within these boundaries.

It is in part because of the resulting chaos and oppression that groups like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and the Shiite fundamentalists of Iran have been given an opportunity to offer the solution of returning to the core values of Islam -- as defined, of course, to their private advantage.

If we topple one government and then walk away, the result in any Middle Eastern nation would be civil war, and the probable winner would be the well-funded international terrorist groups that do not shrink from wholesale murder in pursuing their cause.

Just as Kerensky's attempt at a liberal government in revolutionary Russia was almost instantly snuffed out by Lenin's Bolshevik thugs in 1917, so also would any attempt at unified democratic government in Iraq, Iran, Syria, or Afghanistan be quickly converted into Islamo-fascism of one stripe or another.

And if that happened, Islamicist puritanism would be seen in every nation as the "wave of the future." Just as, when Nazi Germany was in the ascendant, the nations of southeastern Europe quickly made their accommodation with Hitler, since the alternative was to be swept away like Poland, France, or Yugoslavia, so also would nominally democratic nations adopt the trappings of Islamicism -- if they weren't already toppled by puritan revolutions from within.

Democracy -- the Other Hope

Wherever Islamicism has been tried, the result has been identical to Communism's miserable track record. The people are oppressed; the worst sort of vigilantes and thugs terrorize the population; the new power elite, regardless of their supposed piety and dedication to a holy cause, is quickly corrupted and comes to love the wealth and privileges of power.

When there is no hope of deliverance, the people have no choice but to bow under the tyrant's lash, pretending to be true believers while yearning for relief. In Russia it came ... after more than seventy years. China and Cuba are still waiting -- but then, they started later.

So it would be in the Muslim world -- if Islamicism were ever able to come to seem inevitable and irresistible.

You know: If America withdrew from Iraq and Afghanistan and exposed everyone who had cooperated with us to reprisals.

As happened in South Vietnam. The negotiated peace was more or less holding after American withdrawal. But then a Democratic Congress refused to authorize any further support for the South Vietnamese government. No more armaments. No more budget.

In other words, we forcibly disarmed our allies, while their enemies continued to be supplied by the great Communist powers. The message was clear: Those who rely on America are fools. We didn't even have the decency to arrange for the evacuation of the people who had trusted us and risked the most in supporting what they thought was our mutual cause.

We did it again, this time in the Muslim world, in 1991, when Bush Senior encouraged a revolt against Saddam. He meant for the senior military officers to get rid of him in a coup; instead, the common people in the Shiite south rose up against Saddam.

Bush Senior did nothing as Saddam moved in and slaughtered them. The tragedy is that all it would have taken is a show of force on our part in support of the rebels, and Saddam's officers would have toppled him. Only when it became clear that we would do nothing did it become impossible for any high-ranking officials to take action. For the price of the relatively easy military action that would have made Saddam turn his troops around and leave the Shiite south, we could have gotten rid of him then -- and had grateful friends, perhaps, in the Shiite south.

That is part of our track record: Two times we persuaded people to commit themselves to action against oppressive enemies, only to abandon them. Do you think that would-be rebels in Iran and Syria and North Korea don't remember those lessons?

Fortunately, there are other lessons as well: West Germany and Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, where liberated nations were protected. In the first two, we took on the task of nation building and transformed both political cultures into democracies. In the latter two, we tolerated strongman dictatorships for many years, but eventually we made it clear that it was time for democracy, and under our protective umbrella, the governments were transformed and oppression ended.

So ... which America is operating now in the Muslim world?

In Iraq and Afghanistan -- but especially Iraq -- President Bush is behaving according to America's best and most honorable tradition. We did not come to destroy, we came to liberate and rescue, he says -- by word and deed. We bring freedom and opportunity. Our money will help rebuild your devastated (or never built-up) economies; our expertise will help train your most talented people to be ready for prosperity and self-government; and our military will keep enemies from overwhelming you as you reinvent yourselves.

Instead of leaving an empty house, swept clean but unprotected, waiting for the devils of Islamic puritanism to come take over, President Bush has sworn that America will bring democracy, and that American soldiers will do their best to protect the decent, ordinary people until they are able to protect themselves.

The Competing Stories

Here's the story the Islamic puritans are telling: The West is full of terrible evils -- atheism, sexual filth of all kinds -- in defiance of God's will. So seductive are the wiles of Shaitan that many Muslims aspire to dress, act, and live like westerners. Only by turning to full enforcement of ancient Muslim law can Islam purify itself and resist the blandishments of the west. It's evil on one side, God on the other.

If all we had to answer them was Hollywood movies, politically correct anti-religious dogmas, and the other trappings of a West that is almost as decadent as the Islamicists claim, then we would only prove their point.

Instead, President Bush has offered something quite different. We don't want to turn you into mini-Americas, he says. We offer you, instead, democracy, in which you can choose for yourselves what parts of western culture to adopt. You will govern yourselves. It isn't a choice between wickedness and righteousness, it's a choice between freedom and oppression.

In other words, through nation-building, through the promise of democracy, Bush has created a rallying point with far stronger resonance than anything the Islamic puritans have to offer.

What is their program, after all? We'll take your sons and get them to blow themselves up in order to murder westerners! Forget the rhetoric -- Muslim parents are human beings, and there is nothing more devastating than to lose a child. The only consolation is when it seems to be in a noble cause. But because of President Bush's promise of democracy, the Muslim puritan cause does not seem noble to more and more Muslims.

Even if they live in countries (or neighborhoods) where they dare not speak up -- yet -- they do not want any of their children to die just so that the rest of them can live and suffer in slavery to a privileged, selfish class of elitist tyrants.

President Bush's story offers the common people hope of living decent lives and seeing their children live to adulthood, to grow old surrounded by grandchildren.

The Al-Qaeda, Ayatollah story promises them dead children and the lash.

There are, of course, fanatics who will embrace Islamic terrorism because they choose to blind themselves to the truth and embrace the noble-seeming lies of the tyrants. Al-Qaeda does not lack for recruits.

But it also does not lack for people who fear and hate them. There are few pro-Al-Qaeda demonstrations on the Arab street. The people remember the images of liberated Iraqis tearing down the images of Saddam. And they know -- because they have relatives and friends, they hear from merchants and travelers -- that in most of Iraq, there is freedom and prosperity like never before.

They're getting the story, at the level of gossip and personal anecdote, that the anti-American media -- you know, Al-Jazirah and the New York Times -- never report: The Americans really mean to give the Iraqis self-government.

You hear about the power outages in Iraq and it's always somehow Bush's fault. What nobody points out is that these outages come in places where Saddam barely offered electricity at all. The reason the new power systems can't cope is because the newly prosperous Iraqi people are buying -- and plugging in -- vast quantities of electrical appliances they could never afford to buy before! When a town that used to have two dozen refrigerators and washing machines now has two thousand of each, the old power supply is never going to do the job.

"Americans Won't Stay"

How do the Islamicist tyrants answer the obvious success and growing appeal of Bush's democracy program?

They kill people, of course.

But they also tell the story, over and over: "America will never stick it out. We'll keep killing Americans till they give up and go away, and then you will answer to us!"

Until they believe that the Islamofascists are never coming into power, many people will remain afraid to commit themselves to democracy.

Under those circumstances, the remarkable thing is how courageously the Shiites of the south have embraced democracy, and how many of them are beginning to trust that we mean what they say.

But against Bush's promises and the actions of our brave and decent soldiers, the tyrants can set the behavior of Bush's political opponents, who are doing their best to promote the propaganda of the tyrants. Every Congressman who says "We must set a timetable for departure" is providing ammunition to the tyrants in their campaign of terror.

Because even more than they fear terrorist bombs, the pro-democracy forces within Iraq and Afghanistan fear American withdrawal. Every speech threatening withdrawal is a bomb going off in Baghdad, killing, not people, but the will to resist the tyrants.

Bin Laden predicted it. The Democratic Party in America is following his script exactly.

Can We Win?

That is certainly not what most who call for withdrawal intend. They see Americans dying and they have no hope of victory. The Iraq War (as they call it) is costing lives and shows no sign of ending. Meanwhile, Iran is getting nuclear weapons, North Korea already has them, Syria and Iran are sponsoring continuing and escalating attacks on Israel -- how can we possibly "win" a war that threatens constantly to widen? Let's cut our losses, retire to our shores, and ...

And will you please stop and think for a moment?

There is no withdrawal to our shores. American prosperity requires free trade throughout most of the world. Free trade has depended for decades on American might. If we withdraw now, we announce to the world that if you just kill enough Americans, the big boys will go home and let you do whatever you want.

Every American in the world then becomes a target. And, because we have announced that we will do nothing to protect them, we will soon be trading only with nations that have enough strength to protect their own shores and borders.

Only ... what nations are those? Not Taiwan. If they saw us abandon Iraq, what conclusion could they reach except this one: They'd better accommodate with China now, when they can still get decent terms, than wait for America to walk away from them the way we walked away from Vietnam and Iraq.

We cannot win by going home. In a short time, "home" would become a very different place, as our own prosperity and safety steadily diminished. Isolationism is a dead end. If we lose our will to protect the things that support our own prosperity, then what can we expect but the end of that prosperity -- and of any vestige of safety, as well?

The frustrating thing is that if people would just look, honestly, at the readily available data from the Muslim world, they would realize that we are winning and that the course President Bush is pursuing is, in fact, the wisest one.

Mistakes

Critics of Bush love to cite the many "mistakes" his administration has made. Most of these "mistakes" are arguable -- are they mistakes at all? -- and when you sum up the others, with any kind of rational understanding of military history, the only possible conclusion is that this is the best-run war in history, with the fewest mistakes. And most of the mistakes we've made are the kind that become clear to morning-after quarterbacks but were difficult to avoid in the fog of war.

Worse yet, Bush's opponents invariably depict these mistakes as being the result of deliberately chosen policies -- a ludicrous charge, but one that is taken seriously by an astonishing number of people who should know better. The game, you see, is blame. It's not enough to say, Bush made a mistake. You have to say, Bush deliberately did it wrong for evil purposes and he must be punished.

But let's accept the fairy tale that this war has been badly run. That still does not change the fact that on all of the biggest points, Bush has made exactly the right choice -- and he has been the only one who has even seen the need to make those choices!

Take North Korea, for instance. Bush recognized instantly that North Korea, with China as its sponsor and protector, is simply beyond the reach of American power at this time. This will not always be true, but his administration is pursuing a careful, quiet, firm policy of diplomatic pressure on China to do what must be done to curb North Korean insanity.

What about Iran? The idea of a ground war in Iran -- especially when we're still fighting in Iraq -- seems impossible.

But it is also probably unnecessary. Because Iran's present government is not just hated, it is also losing its grip on power.

Not on the trappings of power -- they control the "elections" to such a point that nobody can be nominated without the approval of the ayatollahs.

But government power -- even in democracies -- depends absolutely on the will of the people to obey. And when you rule by tyranny and oppression, the obedience of the people comes from the credibility of the threat of violence from the government.

The obvious examples are Red Square in Moscow and Tiananmen Square in Beijing. In Moscow, when Yeltsin and the pro-democracy demonstrators defied the tanks, the Russian Army did not open fire. Why not? Either they refused to obey the order to shoot, or the order was not given -- but if it was not given, it was almost certainly because the tyrants knew that it would not be obeyed.

In other words, the government had lost the ability to inflict deadly force on its own population.

In Tiananmen Square, however, the government gave the order and the troops did fire. As a result, the tyranny continued -- and continues to this day.

Tyrannies only continue in power when they can give the order to kill their own people and be obeyed.

In Iran, there have been several incidents in the past months and years where troops refused to fire on demonstrators. This is huge news (virtually unreported in the West, of course), because of what it means: The ayatollahs' days are numbered.

If President Bush invaded Iran on the ground, bombing Iranian cities and killing Iranian soldiers, he would accomplish only what Hitler did by invading Russia -- uniting an oppressed people in support of a hated tyrant.

But, as was pointed out in a pair of excellent analytical pieces in the most recent Commentary magazine, we don't have to do anything of the kind.

Oil Is Our Weapon, Too

Iran's ace-in-the-hole is not its nuclear weapon -- in their rational moments, even the most rabid of the ayatollahs must understand that if they ever used (or allowed someone else to use) a nuclear weapon, we would destroy them, period. That nuke is meant only as a deterrent -- it can't be used any other way -- and while there's a remote chance that Iran might allow their nukes to be put into the hands of some terrorist group, it would have to be a group they control absolutely. In other words, it would not be Al-Qaeda. (Though Hezbollah would be bad enough.)

The real threat from Iran is their ability to shut down the Persian Gulf and cut off the world's supply of oil from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and the Gulf nations.

That would not really bother the United States -- gas prices would shoot up on the open market, of course, but we can get by on oil provided by non-Gulf sources.

Not so for the rest of the world, though. And Iran is poised, with small boats and thousands of missiles, to shut down all oil production and transportation in the Persian Gulf.

What few seem to realize (according to the article in Commentary) is that Iran is far more dependent on oil revenues than we are on getting their oil. When President Bush determines that he has given the Iranians ample chance to demonstrate to the few rational statesmen left in Europe that there is no possibility of meaningful negotiations with the tyrants of Tehran, his obvious course of action is to shut down Iranian power in the gulf and seize their oil assets.

If we strike first, we can eliminate their ability to do mischief in the gulf quite readily. Their forces, however numerous, are pathetically vulnerable. Unlike their dispersed and shielded nuclear development capability, their military forces in the gulf are in obvious and accessible positions.

So are their own oil assets. They are as dependent on the Gulf to reach the world oil market as any of their neighbors. If we seize their oil platforms, destroy their shipping, and impose an absolute blockade on Iranian shipping in the Gulf -- while eliminating their ability to damage anybody else's shipping -- how long do you think the tyranny would remain in power?

Here's a hint: They'd run out of money very, very quickly.

Here's another hint: Their military is already refusing to obey their most outrageous orders. When the military finds themselves saddled with a government that has brought the destruction of most of their oil revenues, all because of their insane determination to take on the United States, how long before the ayatollahs are arrested and sent home? Or else made irrelevant by placing a "committee of public safety" above them, to veto their decisions and make peace with the West?

Maybe it wouldn't turn out that way. But it's our best chance -- and that's the chance that Bush is obviously preparing for. He has made no attempt to prepare the American people for an invasion of Iran. But he has made it crystal clear that Iranian misbehavior will not be tolerated -- and that regime change is the desired outcome.

If Iran's ayatollahs were toppled, how long would Syria continue to misbehave? Answer: About fifteen minutes. Syria is a poor country. They are only able to make trouble because they have Iran's support.

Shiites and Sunnis

Here's the other asset we have that no one seems to take into account when judging Bush's conduct of the War on Terror: We are really caught up in an ancient civil war between Shiites and Sunnis.

Al-Qaeda on the Sunni side and Iran's ayatollahs on the Shiite side have both been playing the same game all along. They don't seriously think that they can conquer the United States (yet) -- so why have they been provoking us?

Because they're belling the cat. Or poking the bull with sticks. Why? Because they are performing on the stage of world Islam, putting on rival plays. Both plays have the same message: Look, we're the heroes who have God on our side, because we're the ones who have provoked the great Shaitan and gotten away with it!

Iran's Shiites had the upper hand for quite a while, bringing down one U.S. President (Carter) and getting another -- tough-guy Reagan -- to withdraw the Marines from Lebanon and then come begging to Iran's door in his stupid, cowardly arms-for-hostages deal.

Then Al-Qaeda had the upper hand in their play, showing the Muslim world that it was the Sunnis who were blowing up American boats and embassies and, finally, the twin towers in New York City itself.

It's all theatre. It's all an effort by Bin Laden to restore the Caliphate with himself, of course, as Caliph -- spiritual dictator of the Muslim world. The goal? Not just to unite Sunni Islam under a Caliph again, but to then make war on and crush Shiite resistance. That is the prize. Only when it is won would a united Islam be ready to conquer the rest of the world, finishing the task that was left unfinished by previous waves of Muslim conquest.

Meanwhile, Iran's ayatollahs are trying to show the Muslim world that it is they, the Shiite leaders, who have God on their side. That was what the recent campaign in Lebanon was all about -- to steal the glory back from Al-Qaeda.

But wait. It's even more complicated than that. Because there are other divisions within the Muslim world. Iraqi Shiites have no love for, and do not accept the authority of, the Persian clerics. Arabic-speaking Shiites have no desire to have Farsi-speaking Shiites rule over them.

So we have an amazingly convoluted situation in the middle east. Iran and its puppet, Syria, are cooperating support of the Sunni resistance in Iraq. Why? It's not because Syria's rulers are nominally Baathist as Saddam was -- Baathism is dead. Instead, it's the ancient tribalism that is at the fore. Syria's rulers are members of a tiny religious minority that is an offshoot of Shia, and thus they help Iran maintain access to its Shiite allies in Lebanon partly in order to shore up their own position vis-a-vis their own mostly-Sunni population.

So why are these Shiites and crypto-Shiites supporting the Sunnis in Baghdad?

Because anything that keeps America distracted is good for them. And if the Americans do pack up and go home, then the Shiites can claim the victory -- even though it's mostly Sunnis who are blowing themselves up in Israel and Baghdad.

Besides, the Sunni insurgents in Iraq are keeping the Iraqi Shiites off balance. The last thing the Iranian ayatollahs want is for Iraq to become a democratic nation with a Shiite majority, because at that moment it will be the Iraqi Shiite leaders who will have the most credibility as leaders of the Shiite wing of Islam.

So the leadership of the Iraqi Shiites are perceived as rivals by the ayatollahs of Iran. Thus the Iranians support the Iraqi Shiites' enemies -- providing the weapons that are used to murder Shiites in Iraq.

It's an astonishingly twisted game -- and as long as we don't do anything really, really stupid, like withdrawing from Iraq, all these various treacheries will inevitably lead to the fall of the tyrants in Iran, and therefore in Syria, and therefore the taming of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Bush's game is to keep from letting any of these faction unite, while preparing to deliver strategic blows that can bring down the ayatollahs at relatively little cost.

Every action has repercussions. Just as our withdrawal from Iraq would terrify and silence our allies everywhere, and embolden our enemies, so also would the fall of the ayatollahs -- particularly if it is as the result of an American intervention in the Gulf -- make waves everywhere. Democracy would be perceived as the wave of the future. Our friends in many countries would feel free to speak up for democracy and pro-American policies -- and their enemies would be afraid to silence them.

North Korea might go through a paroxysm of defiance -- but they would still understand the lesson. America will not be bullied by tyrants. We will stand for democracy, destroying our enemies at the "time and place of our choosing." Negotiations with North Korea would instantly take on a very different tone; and China's attitude, too, would become considerably more cooperative with us.

This is the victory that awaits us -- and it remains possible for two reasons only:

1. America's brilliant, brave, and well-trained military, which projects not just power but decency and compassion wherever our soldiers go, and

2. President George W. Bush, who, regardless of his critics and detractors, has steadfastly pursued the only course that holds the hope of victory without plunging us into a worldwide war with a united Islam or isolating America in a world torn by chaos.

Those are the scylla and charybdis that threaten us on either hand. If we do not win this containable war now, following the plan President Bush has set forth, we will surely end up fighting far bloodier wars for the next generation.

And the rhetoric of this election proves that we have precious few politicians in either party who have the brains, will, or courage to be taken seriously as alternatives to George W. Bush in the guidance of our nation through this dangerous, complicated world.

If we, the American people, are stupid enough to give control of either or both houses of Congress to the Democratic Party in this election, we will deserve the world we find ourselves in five years from now.

But Bush, being the wise and moderate politician that he is, may actually be able to continue his foreign policy despite the opposition of a Democratic Congress.

What really scares me is the 2008 election. The Democratic Party is hopeless -- only clowns seem to be able to rise to prominence there these days, while they boot out the only Democrats serious about keeping America's future safe. But the Republicans are almost equally foolish, trying to find somebody who is farther right than Bush -- somebody who will follow the conservative line far better than the moderate Bush has ever attempted -- and somebody who will "kick butt" in foreign policy.

So if we get one of the leading Democrats as our new President in 2009, we'll be on the road to pusillanimous withdrawal and the resulting chaos in the world.

While if we elect any of the Republicans who are extremist enough to please the Hannity wing of the party, our resulting belligerence will likely provoke Islam into unifying behind one of the tyrants, which is every bit as terrifying an outcome.

I hope somebody emerges in one of the parties, at least, who commits himself or herself to continuing Bush's careful, wise, moderate, and so-far-successful policies in the War on Terror.

Meanwhile, we have this election. You have your vote. For the sake of our children's future -- and for the sake of all good people in the world who don't get to vote in the only election that matters to their future, too -- vote for no Congressional candidate who even hints at withdrawing from Iraq or opposing Bush's leadership in the war. And vote for no candidate who will hand control of the House of Representatives to those who are sworn to undo Bush's

Evil Dead: The Musical

2006-10-27T22:39:00.000-07:00

AICN story

strange bedfellows

2006-10-26T18:14:00.000-07:00

link

I might be wrong...

2006-10-12T12:38:00.000-07:00

...but i think george lucas just dissed episode 1

Reuben on TV

2006-10-11T17:54:00.000-07:00

Crappy video of most of the segment that Reuben appeared in...

more hopes to be dashed

2006-10-07T23:35:00.000-07:00

Frank Miller is God.

tackyscary with death silver

2006-09-30T17:27:00.000-07:00

"The World Trade Center skyline is lavishly clad in gleaming silver miraculously recovered from a bank vault found under tons of debris at Ground Zero!"

link

Happy Birthday Josh (and Bilbo)

2006-09-22T07:35:00.000-07:00

Have a fantastic day, and try to stay awake old man.

our new apartment

2006-09-20T01:08:00.000-07:00

an upside of traveling

2006-09-17T22:14:00.000-07:00

vero beach,fl
9.15.06;6:45 am

A Chorus of Zombies

2006-09-17T10:29:00.000-07:00

From The Children

uh, Mr.Spock....?

2006-09-16T06:05:00.000-07:00

Always thought there was something funny between Spock and Kirk.....

Gordo not in the top 20?!?!?!

2006-09-13T15:14:00.000-07:00

Fuck this guy.

Bush admits the CIA runs secret prisons

2006-09-06T19:44:00.000-07:00

why is this acceptable again?

"Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that al-Qaida and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland." - GWB

oh yeah. what was i thinking?

New phone number

2006-08-25T14:14:00.000-07:00

Now that I am living in the Bay Area again, I thought it prudent to get a new phone number. I no longer have the 206 number and I can now be reached at (510) 965-3049.

fucking awesome!

2006-08-24T12:50:00.000-07:00

i never thought this would happen during the current administration. i wonder if W will declare executive power to override the fda for "national security reasons." i mean, who knows what al qaeda could do with plan b?

"The US Food and Drug Administration today announced approval of Plan B, a contraceptive drug, as an over-the-counter (OTC) option for women aged 18 and older. Plan B is often referred to as emergency contraception or the morning after pill," an FDA statement said.

Cottage Diaries

2006-08-22T23:06:00.000-07:00

dad
Originally uploaded by wjackalope.

Now that I'm back in the Bay Area the Cottage Diaries are back in action. Check it out.

history is cool

2006-08-22T19:13:00.000-07:00

Video from a Berkeley streetcar in 1906

Travelling north on Oxford from Berkeley Way, right turn on Hearst, ends after turning left onto Euclid toward what is now La Val's.

Library of Congress page where this came from.

Snakes on a motherfucking plane, Frenchie

2006-08-19T09:07:00.000-07:00

impressive to me...

2006-08-06T12:57:00.000-07:00

this is computer animation for a video game...imagine if they did a feature with it...

dr

2006-08-03T15:07:00.000-07:00

pictures are up from our trip to the dominican republic... there are other, secret, censored pictures i may show you if you ask nicely...

Comscan has detected an energy--

2006-08-03T10:59:00.000-07:00

I know it's stupid but I like it

had me going for a minute

2006-07-25T00:41:00.000-07:00

This once was cool.

Outstanding News

2006-07-19T08:48:00.000-07:00

I have been nominated for Outstanding Lighting Design for Cupid and Psyche by the Innovative Theatre Awards. My fellow designer on the show (and NYU alum) Michael Moore was also nominated for Outstanding Set Design. He is a fabulous designer and infinitely pleasant to work with. One of the most cheerful under pressure personalities I have ever encountered. His work was truly fantastic on the show. I sadly do not have any pictures of Cupid and Psyche yet, so if you did not see it you will have to imagine.

More in my LiveJournal

bush gone wild

2006-07-18T15:45:00.000-07:00

my favorite part of this whole thing is how astounded bush is upon learning that russia and china are BOTH big countries:

Bush : Gotta go home. Got something to do tonight. Go to the airport, get on the airplane and go home. How about you? Where are you going? Home? (to Chinese President Hu Jintao)

Bush : This is your neighborhood. It doesn't take you long to get home. How long does it take you to get home?

Reply is inaudible.

Bush : "Eight hours? Me too. Russia's a big country and you're a big country."

Bush : It takes him eight hours to fly home.

Bush : No, Diet Coke, Diet Coke.

Bush : It takes him eight hours to fly home. Eight hours. Russia's big and so is China.

Invasion

2006-07-15T09:43:00.000-07:00

Star Wars Everywhere!

remember childhood...

2006-07-09T21:34:00.000-07:00

you can watch this if you have cable with a mess-load of channels...

just too many jokes......

2006-07-03T09:09:00.000-07:00

Jesus plays sports too

also

2006-06-30T23:59:00.000-07:00

this

Spidey 3 trailer

2006-06-30T23:53:00.000-07:00

But without the Secret Wars, how will it make any sense?

hot damn.

quote of the day

2006-06-30T13:24:00.000-07:00

"honey, if it hurts that much you better learn to swallow!"

- my co-worker, in the middle of a crowded office

i just feel bad for the bear

2006-06-29T17:23:00.000-07:00

A nude Britney Spears on a bearskin rug while giving birth to her firstborn marks a ‘first’ for Pro-Life. Pop-star Britney Spears is the “ideal” model for Pro-Life... dedication of the life-sized statue celebrates the recent birth of Spears’ baby boy, Sean, and applauds her decision of placing family before career.

The monument also acknowledges the pop-diva’s pin-up past by showing Spears seductively posed on all fours atop a bearskin rug with back arched, pelvis thrust upward, as she clutches the bear’s ears with ‘water-retentive’ hands.

Moonlighting as a sports blogger

2006-06-21T18:33:00.000-07:00

My friend has a sports blog that he created last year, and as he is gone on Kee Tov staff training, he had me write a piece for today. It can be found here. It's kind of neat. Check it out if you're in the mood.

Lighting Design Journal

2006-06-15T11:23:00.000-07:00

For those of you who do not know, I have a Lighting Design Journal that I post to regularly. Some of you might find it interesting.

I am not postinig this

2006-06-14T08:49:00.000-07:00

from Warren Ellis:

Post 1:

I picked up an odd piece of information the other day.

I’ve long been interested in the chambara form, the Japanese stories of wandering heroic swordsmen. Chambara is a subset of what the Japanese called jidai geki, period drama. I bet you’ve all seen one of them — YOJIMBO, SEVEN SAMURAI, RAN. And you’ve all seen THE HIDDEN FORTRESS, though you know it better as the first STAR WARS film. George Lucas was, of course, a huge fan of Kurosawa.

It didn’t occur to me until I read this tidbit the other day that Lucas, famously struggling with the writing of STAR WARS in San Francisco — neurotically slicing off bits of his hair, getting OCD about his writing materials and forgetting how to spell Chewbacca every day — would of course have been reading books and articles on Kurosawa, and, in looking for his faded knights of dynasty, would have coughed and California-mispronounced jidai into Jedi…

Just struck me as curious and funny, is all, and I wanted to note the thought before it left.

Post 2:

After the other post which shall not be named as it does not exist no really, several people from Hollyweird emailed me with variations on the following story. As one of them said to me, it may well be apocryphal, but it’s too good a story not to tell:

In the weeks after STAR WARS ate the box office alive and made George Lucas instantly richer than God, the man himself could be found in his shiny new offices, stroking the high-tech goods on his beautiful wooden desk. His top-of-the-range intercom system burped, his secretary announcing that she’d received a visitor without an appointment. A Mr Kurosawa.

Lucas leapt up and gushingly welcomed Akira Kurosawa, his cinematic hero, who, as the story has it, was in town to sort out some foreign-rights business.

Kurosawa is ushered into Lucas’ office, placed in a seat opposite him, they sit, and… silence.

And the silence stretches for a minute.

At which point, so the story goes, George Lucas nods once, slowly. Opens the drawer on his beautiful new desk. Extracts his personal chequebook. And, the tale alleges, he drafts an extraordinarily large cheque to the name of A. Kurosawa.

Kurosawa takes the cheque from Lucas’ fingers. They stand, they bow, and Kurosawa leaves, never having said a word the entire time.

Now leave me alone, Internet Ewoks.

Bryan Singer doth protest too much

2006-06-10T11:14:00.000-07:00

actual news story

please make the swedish cheerleaders stop.....

2006-06-08T07:32:00.000-07:00

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8610362188397291938&q=worst

My new credo

2006-06-04T17:39:00.000-07:00

DBDTS
Originally uploaded by wjackalope.

Saw this in the bathroom at Golden Gardens. I laughed.

X-Men 3

2006-05-26T23:01:00.000-07:00

Spoilers in the comments.

Adam, I stole your friends

2006-05-23T20:32:00.000-07:00

with Mark and Dave
Originally uploaded by wjackalope.

maybe YOU should come to Seattle some day

Ten things I hate about commandments

2006-05-20T23:30:00.000-07:00

Just watch it!

Christopher Morrison charged with public drunkenness

2006-05-06T12:27:00.000-07:00

Police Blotter

(scroll down almost to the bottom)

Job Offers

2006-05-05T13:22:00.000-07:00

So as some of you may know I am currently in the process of looking for a job as a speech pathologist in one of the many bay area school districts. Last time I was home I had some interviews and now I'm starting to get some offers. Yesterday I was formally given an offer by Piedmont Unified which could have a starting salary of around 45,000. I also received a message from Albany Unified telling me they want to make me an offer, but after I returned their call, I haven't heard back in two weeks. So the news is good! And it sounds like after about 75 years of paying off student loans, I might be able to make a comfortable living. Yeah! Pays to get an M.S.!

Its here, finally...

2006-05-04T08:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=23212
Seriously...everyone go there NOW you will all, universally, be happy. And how many time can I say that?
Trust me.

Sheesh, alright...its about the original trilogy and something we've all screamed about for YEARS now.

Where's the trust?

-Morrison

i'm not gay...but

2006-05-03T12:50:00.001-07:00

i'd marry stephen colbert

From Overheard in New York

2006-04-25T11:08:00.000-07:00

Girl: Are you a conservative or a liberal?
Guy: I know all teenagers are supposed to be liberal, but I'm pretty conservative.
Girl: Oh my god, I know exactly what you mean. I was conservative until last week when I saw V for Vendetta. How hot is Natalie Portman?

--Bronx High School of Science

i am an island.

2006-04-24T13:48:00.000-07:00

i had nothing else worth blogging.

Review of my latest show

2006-04-18T17:09:00.000-07:00

Cupid and Psyche.

Routh's Mouth

2006-04-18T10:12:00.000-07:00

Thank you, Mr. Singer, may I have another?

Are you kidding me?

2006-04-13T17:37:00.000-07:00

This really scares me.

ah, google

2006-04-13T16:01:00.000-07:00

Over at wordpress where the Hamlet blog is, you can see what search terms people typed in that led them to your blog. Usually it's pretty mundane. But somebody searching for "wife fucking great dane" ended up reading about Shakespeare instead.

reality check

2006-04-13T10:20:00.000-07:00

According to a recent poll, 48% of Americans favor military action against Iran if Iran doesn't halt its nuclear program (against 40% opposed). According to THE SAME FUCKING POLL, only 12% of Americans think that military action would succeed in stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Am I reading this correctly? 36% of Americans -- a hundred million people -- favor using military action even though they themselves believe it wouldn't do any good?

Do advertisers dream of advertising sheep?

2006-04-12T09:31:00.000-07:00

Yeah. Next time you drive down I-5, just wait for the very, very happy California cows.

Do yourself a favor and read this...

2006-04-11T15:02:00.000-07:00

http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/3502
if you haven't already. Its Ronny Yu's AshvFreddyvJason treatment and its a fuckin' a blast. Click on the 'poster' and it will take you to the treatment...good times.

PS: I'm a dork and don't know how you groovy kids make the text into the link...how you do that them there trickola?

How would you be marketed?

2006-04-11T12:20:00.000-07:00

zachary makes everything better

bang, bang you're wet.

2006-04-10T13:39:00.000-07:00

if we were all geekier and more inclined to social endeavor we might have come up with this

I passed comps!

2006-04-08T14:01:00.000-07:00

Comps
Originally uploaded by wjackalope.

yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes!

new website design

2006-04-03T09:48:00.000-07:00

I'm playing with a new design. Beta version is here. Feedback appreciated.

I'm done with comps!

2006-04-01T11:58:00.000-08:00

Wild Turkey
Originally uploaded by wjackalope.

So yesterday I took my comprehensive exam. 5 questions - 1 audiology, 4 speech pathology. I think I passed. Needless to say, last night I celebrated.

Macbeth video

2006-04-01T03:27:00.000-08:00

here

Fights by Christopher.

Back when I was young and innocent...

2006-03-31T18:03:00.000-08:00

...before everything went to shit, I would have thought this was cool.

Got a spare 6 million?

2006-03-30T11:25:00.000-08:00

A complete First Folio could be yours.

Get your very own Landspeeder

2006-03-29T14:11:00.000-08:00

I want one.

Go here, enjoy and sign the petition...

2006-03-27T13:46:00.000-08:00

http://www.snakesonablog.com/2006/03/13/snakes-on-a-petition/

After signing go to snakesonablog.com...fantastic...but sign the bloody petition he deserves it...

photos from Julius Caesar

2006-03-25T19:17:00.000-08:00

Caesar Photos 044
Originally uploaded by joshcostello.

here or here

How did I not know about this . . .

2006-03-25T06:02:00.000-08:00

Oh Dear God, what is that THING ? ! ? ! ? !

break up with me

2006-03-22T18:38:00.000-08:00

you know you want too

random literary gripe...

2006-03-22T18:02:00.000-08:00

does anyone else find the over-use of simile in literature trite, frustrating and unimaginative.

don't just tell me that "her hand opened like a rose petal in bloom" show me that in the goddamned prose, or just say "her hand openned"

simile is for the S.A.T.s

"Simile is to Literature like a XXX is to Zachary's Brain-case"

1) flower
2) rose
3) Bullet
4) none of the above

V for Verisimilitude

2006-03-22T15:01:00.000-08:00

opinions can go to the comments section

SNAKES ON A PLANE!!!

2006-03-21T19:12:00.000-08:00

best movie title ever.

fake trailer here.

Gilliam's best movie?

2006-03-21T12:16:00.000-08:00

I think in High School I would have said "Brazil," but today I'm going to say "Time Bandits."

Discuss.

I don't think I posted this here yet...

2006-03-18T13:20:00.000-08:00

Blogging the Dane

Damn stoners

2006-03-13T15:20:00.000-08:00

Figures.

Vodka, on the other hand, leaves you lithe, brilliant, and virile. And makes you live long. And makes your liver into a parasitic super-being capable of predicting the future and the secretion of mind-altering substances for art-making.