Gore and the Peace Prize

Congratulations, Sen. Gore.

Nice going, U.S. media. If you had done your job properly, rather than licking the boots of ol' W and spreading the "invented the Internet" B.S., this man could have been president.

Zelda's new toy

This is a pic of Zelda with her George Bush chew toy. Nuff said. (Note that she just got the toy and already has chewed one of its legs off.)

Tom, You Never Write Me Anymore

I'm getting a bit worried about my relationship with Tom.

Tom became my friend when I joined MySpace.com. Actually, Tom works for MySpace, and everybody who joins MySpace automatically gets Tom as their friend. As a result, Tom has many, many friends -- 85,629,781, at last count. But according to MySpace, I have only one friend.

My one friend is Tom. He's all I've got.

So it would be nice to hear from him. I know how busy he is, and that he's got a lot of friends to keep track of. But I've always thought that we had something special going -- as he glanced winningly over his shoulder, alone in my otherwise cavernous, echoing, and entirely vacant Friend Space, casually attired in that clean white T-shirt, a crooked grin on his face, I sensed a bond between us. But since his initial communication, welcoming me to MySpace -- carefully phrased and discreet, I admit, but also somehow warm, and signaling a pecuilar intimacy between us -- I've heard nothing.

Mrs. Ahab tries to calm me on this, to make me take the long view. In any human relationship, she points out, the more popular of the two people involved always has the upper hand. I guess you could say I need Tom a lot more than he needs me. I even sometimes wonder if Tom would notice at all if I left MySpace tomorrow, if I suddenly disappeared from his bulging list of friends . . . No, too harsh, too harsh. We won't go there.

No, I'm not going to leave MySpace, and I certainly don't want to be a nuisance to Tom. But friendship is a two-way street. And if Tom is just going to ignore me, then by God, I'm just going to ignore him. We'll see how he likes it. Let him play with his other 85,629,780 friends.

Technorati Tags : MySpace

I'm Back (Maybe, at least)

Well, I think it might be time to dive back into this blog.  So behold my re-emergence!

The real reason for my putting this BS posting up at all, though, is to try out posting using Qumana, and also to note that I'm impressed as hell with the people at Qumana and Lektora, the RSS aggregator that I'm trying out.  Basically, Lektora has a feature that lets you open up the Qumana editor from within RSS entry for any given article or post and blog the article directly, posting it to your blog(s) through a single interface.  (Supposedly works on Blogger, Typepad, and a variety of others; we'll find out now.)

Anyway, I was having trouble making Qumana work from within Lektora, and couldn't find the answer within the Lektora FAQ, so I fired off a quick note to Lektora support on this sunny Sunday afternoon.  Then, literally a few minutes later, I decided to open up my e-mail for another purpose, and found the solution to my problem sitting in my inbox -- from the company's SVP of strategy and corporate development, no less, whom I'll call Jon (because that's his name).  Tech support verification came a few minutes later, from someone I'll call Frederick (because . . . well, that's his name).

Don't have enough experience to vouch for the product yet -- but let me tell you, that is some kind of responsiveness.  So Jon, here's to you, Qumana, and Lektora -- from one workaholic to another.

Technorati Tags : Lektora, Qumana

Out to Pasture for a While

As it's now been almost a month since my last posting, I think I need to admit to myself that this is, for the moment, not working out. Life and work have just gotten too hectic, and posting here is, for the moment, a luxury I can't afford. (I honestly don't understand how the other bloggers I admire manage to do it.)

So I'm putting this blog out to pasture for a while. I don't expect to do any new posting until after 1 January 2005, at which point I'll see if I can manage to wedge it back into my life. (Because I was enjoying the process.) For those who have been kind enough to read Personal Effects on and off, I hope you'll come back after the beginning of the New Year -- at which point I hope to have something to say, and the time to say it.

Faith-Based Lie

Not much time to post today, but for the sake of actually contributing something, I did want to point out a longish but very worthwhile article by Ayelish McGarvey posted a few days ago on the American Prospect Web site on Bush's so-called deep Christian faith. Frankly, notwithstanding the many testimonials to the sincerity of Bush's Christian vision, I've always suspected that the whole narrative of his Christian conversion has proved in reality simply a rather convenient excuse to wipe away, for political purposes, his aimless and reprehensible youthful activities. McGarvey points out that

The president’s storied faith journey began at the bottom of a bottle and led him all the way to the White House. But though these accounts ramble on for hundreds of pages about his steadfast leadership and prayerfulness, they all curiously rely on one single event to confirm that Bush is a man transformed by a deep Christian faith: He quit drinking and took up running instead . . . Judging him on his record, George W. Bush’s spiritual transformation seems to have consisted of little more than staying on the wagon, with Jesus as a sort of talismanic Alcoholics Anonymous counselor. . . .

There's much more in here worth reading -- but the bottom line, to McGarvey, is that, judging from his actions, "the available evidence raises serious questions about whether Bush is really a Christian at all."

Amen.

. . .

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Bush Fatigue

The New York Review of Books is running a feature, "The Election and America's Future," which asks some of the journal's regular contributors for their views on "what has been called 'the most consequential election in decades.'" The result is a set of very much on-target critiques, neatly organized in alphabetical order by author name, on the failings of the Bushites, crisply and lucidly written by luminaries ranging from Russell Baker and Anthony Lewis to Norman Mailer to Gary Wills and Brian Urquhart. The brief essays run down the list of Bush Administration crimes and misdemeanors -- the Iraq war looms largest, of course, but there is also ample coverage of the Administration's "accomplishments" in alienating most of the world, in the erosion of civil liberties, in redistributing wealth upwards, and in rolling back environmental protections, as well as riffs on the election's high stakes in the realm of jurisprudence, and the prospect that Bush will name as many as four Supreme Court justices to the bench should he snag (or steal) another term in office.

It's all sobering, of course, and these fine writers come up with many a trenchant turn of phrase. But it's also strangely exhausting. Reading through the NYRB pieces, you get the sense that it's all really been said before, and that no one who reads these essays (especially considering the subscriber base of this particular publication) is likely to be changed by them.

No one who knows me would doubt my bona fides in terms of raw contempt for the current Administration; my family now tiptoes around political topics at the dinner table for fear of the reaction any foray into that realm will stoke from me. I am the choir to whom these essays preach. So I wonder whether my reaction to them might be an early symptom of Bush Fatigue -- a sign that I have made the transition from outrage at the Administration's actions, through a jaded lack of surprise at anything it might do or try, to, finally, simply being sick and tired of Bush generally, and to a sense of waiting to see if we will finally start shaking free of him in two weeks. Exactly two weeks from today, in fact.

Interestingly, the NYRB issue that includes "The Election and America's Future" is dated 4 November 2004. That's two days after election day. At that point, will the body politic have heaved a massive, long sigh of relief, or will the reaction instead have been a sharp gasp at the prospect of four more years of chaos and inept government? Or will we (as many have darkly suggested) face yet another long endgame of litigation that steals any legitimacy the election itself might have offered?

Recall the well-known (and likely apocryphal) ancient Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."

. . .

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