"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

Dove vs Hawk II

As promised, I've posted some interesting emails I've recently gotten from a pro-war soul online. I think they rather handily show how misinformation and closemindedness probably correlate fairly highly with a desire to see a war in Iraq. Key quotes:

  • "I thought the whole Sept. 11th ordeal was enough reason to retaliate... Is that not enough provocation?? "
  • "Did you know that Pakastanian children are bred and born to hate all Americans?... Honestly I would say that we just send a bomb over there and kill everyone in the whole country.."
  • "Them.. they.. middle-eastern.. whatever.. its pretty much all the same.. you know what I mean.."
  • "I just feel so strongly about the whole middle east being our enemies. I guess I'm just a southern girl that has her mind set one way and I'm too stubborn to change it. =) "

You can read the whole thing here. Misinformation is everywhere these days, and a lot of it comes from official sources. It's a problem our nation is facing.

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Back in the Saddle

I'm back in the saddle for the most part, rolling on a new art project and having a ball reading Middlesex, which Christine, my beautiful and trusted Lit connection, dropped on me a couple weeks ago. I'll probably go to see the dentist tomorrow, but that's ok. I've got checks in the mail!

Perhaps this joviality in the face of all things tragic (see posts below) is related to the 50+ degree weather. Whatever. I'm going outside.

Also, I seems to be one of the fiew, the proud, the ones who has friends who like to troll his site. The first two comments I've gotten were from "Ann Coulter" (read all about her here and "Andrew W.K." who we all know and love. Though the former is almost certainly Slarz, I suspect the latter might be Frank based on the tone.

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Misinformed Americans

Did y'all hear about that dude getting arrested in a mall upstate for wearing a peace shirt? Well, just now there was a protest action, with lots of folks heading through there all wearing attire similar to that which got the man arrested in the first place. Now, this is great and cool, but I want to call your attention to a paragraph in the middle of the story:

The group also marched through the mall, and at one point there was a confrontation in the food court between one of the marchers and a man carrying a sign that read "9-11."

Now everyone repreat: there is no connection between Iraq and 9-11. The fact that most Americans still do not understand this is the principle reason there's anything more than 30% support for war. This reminds me of these emails I exchanged with someone recently, someone fond of using the vernacular of "them," as I recently discovered (to my distress) that Dennis Miller has fallen to doing as well. Gone all Hitchens and shit, spouting about how he loves what Bush is doing and "sacraficing civil liberties" is really just waiting longer in line at the airport.

Anyway, I'll post those emails soon. They're enlightening.

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Hardening

Well, it seems that lines are being drawn. Both France and Russia are both signalling that they'll veto the war resolution, if it even gets the required nine votes. Powell reiterates that we're going to go alone. War seems evident and the nation is divided. This is not the fault of Mr Hussein -- it is the fault of Mr Bush.

I for one am tense. While I sense that there's value to be had in the political awakening that is happening among people, especially people of my generation, all over the country, I'm sick to death that it's taking a war to do it. I'm also worried that more damage will be done than we can credibly repair in our lifetimes, and that there's nothing I can do to stop that damage from being done. Lately, I have odd urges to smash things, to paint giant anti-war slogans on the faces of buildings, to vent my frustration and anger and shame in highly visible and entropic ways. I don't think this is a good sign.

Where am I going and how did I get into this handbasket!
SAG is worried about balcklisting. A man is arrested for wearing pro-peace shirts (cnn files this under "offbeat"). Republicans are gleefully profiteering off of war.

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The Technology is Here

Well, I've made the leap. After tooling around the web in search of the right bundle of code for me, I've found that b2, classy blogware by a mad Corsican, is to my liking. It's in PHP, so I can hack it, and it includes all the trackback, rdf and rss godness my inner geek desires. You can now comment on my posts, issue trackbacks, and if you have a website of your own, link directly to them via the permalink. I know that Movable Type is what the real technorai use, but I'm not as good at hacking Perl as I am at PHP, and there were some issues with my otherwise benevolent hosting provider. This gives me just the right amount of automation, but still lets me noodle with things too. Huzzah!

If you encounter any problems or weirdness with the new frontpage or anything, please give me a shout out and let me know.

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March Forth

I feel an intense and stupifying frustration. Focus, Koenig! Focus! My face hurts and itches... the uncomfortable part of the healing process. It seems like there will be war in spite of it being a very bad idea. I have an unbelievable tension between my shoulders. I can't relax. I can't rest my eyes on anything. My neck is sore. I jangle. This is one of the bad mornings. In a few hours I'll be headed up to see Peter. Maybe getting out of the city for 18 hours will help. I don't know. I don't know what to do with myself. I've reached the end of a period of fairly active work and like a junky kicking I'm deep in the throes of sick.

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Aches

Still on the mend. Still not pretty. The tooth thing has me a little paranoid... but from what I read there's not much to be done now unless I have nerve damage, which seems unlikely since my gums are not swollen. Last night I made a strange but somehow true connection. Jeremy and Wes and I were looking at andrewwk.com, and after they got done making fun of me for my similar (if somewhat less extreme) facial condition. I said, "this reminds me of reading a doctor bronners soap bottle." Compare the sites and see.

Here are two quick politix links: The Observer breaks a story about the NSA bugging UNSC member's phones in an attempt to help win the next war-resolution vote. That don't help Team Bush's credibility problem. Let's see if this makes any US media. Also, if you're tired of hearing people hawk about Kenneth Pollack and The Threatening Storm, here's a little dissection of his position.

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We're Rich!

I'm a mess
I'm a mess
I'm a mess

I still have pain. Not as much as yesterday, but still more than I would like. The swelling has gone down some, but my tooth remains somewhat more tender than I'd like it to. Really not relishing the prospect of trying to find a dentist... it's not that I fear or loath the medical establishment, just that a certain part of me always wonders how monkey-man hunter-gatherers dealt with this kind of thing. There's an impulse to let nature take its course, but I suppose that's why not many primitive humans lived past 35.

Worst of all, I have to go out in public today, and I'm really especially not relishing the prospect of having to explain what happened to everyone I see. Maybe I'll stick with the marine fight story; when he first saw my face, I duped Kevin into thinking I got into a rumble with some Jarheads after mouthing off in a bar. I just feel like an idiot telling people that a simple pothole busted me up.

Rambling among the moderately exhibitionist and fair-to-poorly written blogosphere of the more or less beautiful people, I come across this true gem: The New York City Anti-Hipster Forum. True comic life-recording at its best.

Talking about the rent, Frank and I have decided to take a page from the Team Bush playbook and simply repeat the phrase, "we're rich!" until it becomes true. Wealth is a massively concurrent consensual hallucination anyway, so why couldn't the power of suggestion have some effect. It's a faith-based initiative, after all.

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I Have Pain

Hmmm... a little less swelling, and a lot more visible brusing than last night. I have a morbid desire to photograph the whole affair. Catch biology in the bits. It's been a slow day in front of the television. I'm finding Irish Whisky to be about as effective as an icepack at reducing the swelling in my lip, which is to say not very. I need to jot down some non-injury notes from last night, but my will is failing.

My soul is consumed with discovering the thing -- the purpose, the cause, the means of bringing the essense of me into contact with the world that surrounds -- that will make me proud to be myslef, and with wondering in languishing uncertainty when Love will come by and lift my spirit into fields of unconscious glee as I know it one day will. I just hope I don't have to wait until I'm in my late '20s or even my '30s to get there. Partly impatience, but also a desire to direct my energies to more substantial things than this sophomoric search for mates. I know part of the key to this equation is my attitude, but part of it is also uncovering the right someone. More on that another time.

Right now on blessed and free IFC is way of the gun, a neat little existential experiment in violence with lots of surprising characters but a dissappointingly ambivalent ending. Choice line: in the dicy beginnings of the climactic gun battle, Benicio del Toro asks Ryan Phillipe "what do you think?" His response, "I think a plan is a list of things that don't happen." Calls to mind the good moments of Hal Hartley. Also worth seeing are the two Young Consultant Killers; kind of like dot-com kids of the murder-for-hire biz. Really a brilliant formal exercise, just lacking total follow through on substence. Nice scoring also.

I'm a mess

He ain't pretty no more
That's right, I'm a fucking mess. This is what you get when your city can't afford to fix potholes. Riding home on Astor Place last night after going to the Free Eddie show, a mighty crevase in the street escaped my attention, swallowed my front wheel and agganged quite defttly to acquaint my face with the loving caress of pavement. It took a minute for what happened to hit home. I was on the sidewalk in front of k-mart collecting myself when I realized I was bleeding. Some kind soul offered me some napkins and they came away red. My first bloody nose! I didn't quite get the full impact until I got to a mirror. It's ugly, but after three accident-free years of NYC biking, I could have done a lot worse.

It's ironic that this happens now, what with the little trip I've got on the left and the poll that's running on the right.

So don't worry, I think I'm fine. One of my front teeth is very sore and a little loose, but not as loose as it was, which I take to be a good sign. Assuming my lip un-swells in due course and the tooth returns to normal, everything else is just urban rug burn. Happens to be on my face, but hey: I needed to take some time off from all this reckless makeout anyway.

So I'm taking it easy tonight. A little reading. A little porrage. Maybe some ice cream later on. I'll peruse the web some more. I've been getting in on some of the technorati stuff -- kind of an ofshoot of my praxis idea -- and I'm strangely attracted to this blog by some chick in my 'hood... full of hikou-esque words, good photos and neat uses of technology. Planned architectural site updates have been shelved for today.

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