Linger on, your palin blue eyes (apologies, Mr. Reed - Ed Wood, all is forgiven)

I figure we're in the early stages of the Empire Strikes Back if one were to apply 'Lucas'-onian ('Lucas'que?) principles to current American political reality. The election last year was the attack on the death star, the climax if you will of 'A new (Audacity of) Hope'. But we're a couple of years yet away from Obama losing his hand to Dick Cheney and finding out the uncomfortable truth about his lineage. (Kenya is not Wyoming? They have similar forms of democracy, I've heard.)

Rom Emanuel is Han Solo - David Axelrod, Yoda - Hillary, Leia
Joe Biden is Chewbacca (or maybe he's Jar Jar, arriving appropriately inappropriate into the wrong movie)

Or maybe I have it all wrong and Cheney is the emperor.

The appendage, perhaps then, is due to be lopped off by Darth Palin ("Barack, I am your Mother").

Perhaps, too, I also have wrong the particular appendage that is in peril.

It sort of fits, though.

Think about it. Okay, don't think so much - feel about it - the truthiness can't be denied.

They both apparently enjoy basketball (or, in the latter case, at least basketball analogies and how apparently all the great basketball players like to leave the game in the 4th quarter). She can see Russia from her house - he just saw Russia from his mobile home (Air Force One).

You'd think that her youth would rule such a thing out, but I always thought that she had a little 'Highlander' in her ('There can be only one - please God').

This would all imply that he got his literacy, poise, and sanity from his father's side of the family.

But the opening credits have barely trailed off the screen - we have a long way to go before we have to worry about Ewoks roaming the planet, Hip waders drying in the east room, book burnings and literature lynchings, and Michelle's garden giving way to a smelt pond. A while to enjoy things before Mrs. Maverick and her Alaskan Geese (apologies to Dr. Green) go to Washington while Jimmy Stewart does cartwheels in his casket.

And that's another movie for another time.

"I found America hiding in the corner of my wallet
It's a well kept secret, thought that I had better swallow it
Before they make me spit out the truth
Before they find you're lying about your youth

B movie, that's all you are to me
Just a soft soap story
Don't want the woman to adore me
You can't stand it when it goes from real to reel
Too real too real
You can't stand it when I throw punch lines you can feel" - Declan Patrick MacManus, 1979


Time to focus on the tasks at hand this morning: code reviews, finishing the software documentation presentation, continuing the java concurrency presentation and wondering where this all leads. Does the falling tree make a sound in the forest if no one is there to hear it?

Judge not lest ye be Judged? Ha! Here come tha Judge! Here come tha Judge!

Boy the Peacocks were struttin' their stuff in the Senate Cambers today, technicolor plumage at full staff. An entire day essentially wasted - the nominee not asked a single question - in other words, a normal first day of the Supreme Court Confirmation Hearing.

Filled to the brim with rich, delicious exhibitionism from Senator Foghorn, Senator Leghorn, the Gentleman from the Great Expanding State of Gasbag Blowhard, and the Lady from the Show-off State of Ego Unbounded. And this with Joe Biden safely tucked away now in the Executive Branch. We miss you in the Legislative Branch, Joe, but I only have so much space on my DVR hard drive and have to work during the day. (I say this with all love for our VP - I voted for him and love his unchecked honesty, if not his unchecked verbosity.)

Lindsey Graham, whose opinions I usually agree with about as frequently as I did with George Bush (which is to say, 'never'), actually got it about right today:
'... this is mostly about liberal and conservative politics more than it is about anything else'

Despite all that, I think today was the highlight. I think these things are more enjoyable when it's a Republican nominee in the hot seat: the Dems are much more entertainingly comical than their GOP counterparts when they're being indignant.

The Elephants are usually only more amusing off-duty when they're toe-tapping in mid-western airport men's rooms or hiking the Appalachian trail with Evita ('Don't Cry for me South Carolina'). There are always exceptions, but usually that happens when the off-duty buffoonery can't contain itself there (The Queen of Hip waders, for instance). In general, though, the Right are pretty consistently dull in their idiocy.


I'm a bleeding heart commie pinko liberal but even from my vantage point teetering as I am out on the left wing, I can see that the super villains are never nearly as buffoonish as the good guys are. The Joker, who is a clown for crying out loud, is the least comical character in the 'Dark Knight'. Remember: Obama's cool and relatively gaff-free maneuvering is an aberration and generally not the rule.

I don't wanna work, I just wanna bang on the drum all day ...

Interesting new study on swearing and lessening of pain - doubtlessly true to a degree, though not nearly so much as I wish. It's certainly not a substitute for a steady diet of drugs, alcohol, television, and general waling and gnashing of teeth. These days I stick to guttural sobbing, caffeine and television (Nancy Botwin - see ya tonight! Betty Drapper, see ya soon!)

Speaking of high pitched obnoxious noises, apparently our corporate landlord installed a jet engine up in the air conditioning vent of my office over the weekend and left it running. Takes me back to my Navy days sleeping in the top rack just below the aft flight deck and attempting to ignore the F-14s when they began firing their afterburners, powerless to silence them (I couldn't just throw on a robe, walk up the outboard ladder, knock on the door of the cockpit and ask them to please keep it down and apparently am now just as powerless to stop the madness here in my corporate ship).

But I digress once again.

And actually, now that I think about it, this current noise is more reminiscent of a dentist's drill.

Where the fuck is the maintenance guy I called two hours ago?!? The written expletive does not dull the pain of little nails being hammered into my skull from on high - guess it has to be verbal and the study amended.

Thank God for headphones and for Sirius Internet (especially when the iPod's left at home). Hello, First Wave and Faction (I do miss the Punk Channel ...)

Seventeen Years Past Due for "Carousel"

iPod Random Shuffle - 8pm on a Sunday. Only a couple of songs recorded in the last 20 years and very few artists that debuted after 1985 (actually, very few after 1979). God I'm a fossil.

• Sulphur to Sugarcane - Elvis Costello
• Rain - Beatles
• London Calling - Clash
• 5ive Gears in Reverse - Elvis Costello
• I Love a man in Uniform - Gang of Four
• Live Through This (are we there yet?) - Groovelily
• Dancing Queen - ABBA
  
• Galileo - Indigo Girls
• Please Mister Postman - Beatles
• Sixty Eight Guns - The Alarm
• Los Angeles - X
  
• The Boys of Summer - Don Henley
• Sleeping with the Television On - Billy Joel
• Backstreets - Bruce Springsteen
• Fortunate Son - Creedence Clearwater Revival
• The Blower's Daughter - Damien Rice
• That's Entertainment - The Jam
• I Melt with You - Modern English
• Private Idaho - B-52s
  
• Dress Rehearsal Rag - Leonard Cohen
• Pale Blue Eyes - Velvet Underground
• Desolation Row - Bob Dylan
• Soul Corruption - Graham Parker
• You cannot Win (if you do not Play) - Steve Forbert
• New York, New York - Nina Hagen
• Gimme Shelter - Rolling Stones
• Gloomy Sunday - Billie Holiday
• God - John Lennon
  
• Parting Gift - Fiona Apple
• Heroin - Velvet Underground
• Suzanne - Leonard Cohen

I realized that I was getting very old after I strained my back into the second mile of what I thought would be a relaxing jog on a mild summer evening. Christ, my body is falling apart, I thought - just a few weeks shy of 47 years. It's the new 27, though, right? Right? Who I am kidding? I'm not jogging, I'm running from the sandmen. When I finally limped up the stairs into the house, I shuffled back through the songs I'd been listening to and it only confirmed what my body had been saying: dinosaur. I couldn't even tell you what passes as 21st century popular, or cutting edge or even shitty music these days.

Gosh - quarter to 9 - almost time to put my dentures in the glass for the evening and tuck into bed ...

And enough entries into this #!)# blog, for crying out loud. You won't have anything left to scream into your pillow.

Anyway, bedtime for bonzo,

Yours truly,
Dorian Gray

Ladies and Gentleman, Diana Ross and the ...

Oh, boy, here we come! Time to make room on the DVR hard drive and schedule up the CSPAN because tomorrow starts Supreme Court Confirmation Hearing time in our nation's capital! I for one am fascinated by the process. Kind of for me like the Olympics is for normal folks. Call me sick but you can keep your 'Lost's and '24's and whatnot - give me the cast of characters that make up the Senate Judiciary Committee and the twists and turns of the plot (er, proceedings) as their egos and agendas clash with the professional life of the wise Latina jurist extraordinaire Sonia Sotomayor. Oh and they'll likely drag in her personal life as well for a good soaking. But let's be clear: it's not about her. It's about them.

I was working as a consultant in late 2005/early 2006 and between gigs the last two times the circus rolled into town with the Roberts and Alito confirmations, so I got to watch them both 'live'. I was rooting against them and will be rooting for Sotomayor, but that doesn't matter because the entertainment factor is the same and so in general is the outcome: ya gotta be a pretty extreme wack-job to not get confirmed at this point in the process. The handlers have already ensured you are a citizen, have no illegal help working for you or any unpaid taxes, the obvious stuff.

You're generally pretty assured of confirmation at this point, short of demonstrated habitual bestiality ('hiking the Appalachian Trail' with farm animals on more than one occasion, for instance), or proof of current status as a grand wizard in the KKK (the past is the past and being a mere 'member' can be forgiven, though there might be hard questions as to why you never got promoted to wizard). Christ, look at Clarence Thomas with his porn addiction and ass-pitching compulsion and Scalia, who's so far to the right that he probably struggles mightily to control himself from goose stepping and 'sig heil'ing in public (though he probably does both under the robe).

So it's the preening and prancing and dancing of the Senators that provides the kicks and I'll be enjoying every last minute of the experience. Let the games begin!

Burbing Bubbles, Freeing Willy and Resting in Peace (Ben, the two of us need look no more)

Holy Having-Fun-With-Elvis-Onstage, Batman - Has it really come to this?

I joked a couple of days ago that perhaps Michael Jackson would go on with his London Shows despite coming down with a bad case of death. I guess there's no joke as funny/sad as real life because as it turns out, 'he' is planning to do just that. The vultures are currently working overtime picking his bones clean while the name value is at its peak earning power (it tends to start to decay for celebs, much like the body, not all that long after death). But it takes massive balls to say that video footage of rehearsals for what would have been the London concerts are his 'Last Masterpiece' and to build some circus around this, charging real concert prices.

Sure, with Elvis they were picking clean his corpse many years before he actually died ('having fun' having come out a few years prior to the King keeling over on the john), but this was only because he mostly died after his 1968 television special (the last great thing he did). Say what you will about him, at least 'the Colonel' had the decorum to wait a couple of month before letting the feeding frenzy of shit flow forth. No such luck with MJ.

Somewhere, even Ben's descendants are scurrying through the gutter rolling their eyes and saying 'enough' already.

What we've got here is failure to communicate

There's a line from a novel or a book or something that I (and apparently Google) can't recall which goes something like "Typical WASP - loves animals but hates people."

That's me on a Sunday morning (well, on many mornings but especially 'the day of our lord').

I'm out early getting my usual coffee and am invariably stuck behind gaggle of 'hatbrakes' - more on this later - that only seem to drive when going to church on Sunday. That old used car salesman line apparently must sometimes be true. I'm left crawling along block after block, cornered with no way past them (they proceed in swarms like a Hell's Angels chapter out on a run).

After 10 minutes or so, I swear I see floats ahead of me, circus music fills my ears and big balloons in the sky blot out the sun. I have the urge to roll down the window and wave to the invisible crowds along my route - perhaps I should throw them candy. I must, after all, be in a parade for otherwise why would we be going so mother*!@! slow?!?

I'm not a bat-shit crazy driver - I obey(ish) the speed limits and traffic laws. And it's not like there are sights to see - it's the same boring neighborhood - no Christmas lights up (and its daytime anyway). Move! Don't keep God waiting - Bad enough you make him get up early on his Day Of Rest and haul his ass into some cramped building you constructed so you can feel less guilty the other six days of the week. I feel bad for him. And I'm an agnostic.

• Term: hatbrake
• Definition: See a brimmed 'hat' poking up from the driver's seat (but no head), prepare to brake.
• Origin: My sister and her friends circa early 70s. Stereotype that only older people wear brimmed hats that were popular during the earlier part of the 20th century and that they get shorter as they age. Also stereotypes them as driving slower.

I'm not fond of stereotypes as a rule - in fact I have seen plenty of tall, hatless older drivers that have laid on the horn because I was moving too slow for them - but I always liked the name and when you do see a brimmed hat popping up ahead of you, like as not you'll have to brake.