Monthly Archives: May 2004

May142004

Frasier Has Left The Building

As a rule, I really don’t care for television comedies. Most of them are too dumb, too snarky, too loud, or I find that I simply can’t identify with their premises or characters. But every once in a blue moon, a sit-com emerges that has charm and wit enough to draw my interest. One of those rare gems has just ended its long run, and I’m not talking about Friends. (Full disclosure: I never understood the fuss over Friends. I know that show has its fans — one of whom is my own Anne — but I just never could get over the fact that these supposedly-struggling twentysomethings lived in apartments as large as my parents’ house, in Manhattan no less. And I just never thought it was that funny. No accounting for taste, I guess.)

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May142004

One Step Closer to the Stars

One of my earliest ambitions was to be a Starship Captain. At some point, however, I realized that the human race was still a helluva long way from building anything like James T. Kirk’s USS Enterprise, so I lowered my sights a bit and decided instead that I would become an astronaut. This was around the time that NASA was glide-testing its newest toy, the space shuttle Enterprise (which was named after the fictional Star Trek vessel), by taking it aloft on the back of a 747 and releasing it to fly, unpowered, back to the ground. It was an exciting time for a young boy who was interested in space, but too young to remember the Apollo missions. It seemed like we — the human race in general and Americans in particular — were on the verge of Great Things. I used to imagine myself piloting (or at least working aboard) a second-generation space shuttle, commuting between a busy spaceport on Earth and a wheel-shaped station in Earth orbit. I didn’t think this was a mere daydream. I was convinced that it would happen. It seemed inevitable that human beings would one day answer the same siren song that has always compelled us to see what was over the next hill, the same call that caused us to walk out of Africa and go sailing across the uncharted oceans. I used to believe that humans would go to the stars simply because they’re there, and that it would happen in my lifetime.

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May122004

Abu Ghraib Watch

I think I may have found a new hero in the unlikeliest of places (or, more accurately, the unlikeliest party). Yesterday, during the Congressional hearings on this this Iraqi prison mess, Republican sentator Lindsey Graham, a former Air Force JAG, rose above the partisan horseshit and spoke volumes with but a single sentence. He said what I have been thinking ever since this scandal first broke: “When you are the good guys, you’ve got to act like the good guys.”

(If you’re masochistic enough to want to see the complete transcript of those hearings, click here.)

Josh Marshall‘s comment on Graham’s statement was, “Another way to put this might be to say that being the good guys is about what you do, not who you are. That’s a truth that the architects of this war, in subtler but I suspect more damaging ways, frequently failed to understand.”

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May112004

The Blogosphere Speaks

I know I said I wasn’t going to keep hammering at this Abu Ghraib thing, but the Internet is awash in commentary on the subject and I’m finding a lot of thought-provoking material out there. If you’re interested in this subject, please read on for some quotes and links; otherwise, I invite you to come back later.

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May112004

“I Don’t Like Spam.”

Read the title of this post in the appropriate Monty Python-esque voice, then behold this news: Simple Tricks and Nonsense has just endured its first legitimate spamming incident. For some reason, my review of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind attracted the attention of a penis-enlarging snake-oil salesman. Interesting…

The offending comments (which consisted of a dozen or so links to various unsavory websites) were easily deleted, but I really hope this doesn’t become a common occurence.

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May092004

Another Perspective on Abu Ghraib

I don’t want to continue flailing away at this Iraqi prison scandal — I figure the professional journalists will do a more-than-adequate job of that over the next few weeks. Nevertheless, there’s an op-ed that I’d like to bring to the attention of my loyal readers. Its author is Thomas Friedman, the Foreign Affairs correspondant for The New York Times.

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May082004

Other People’s Milestones

A number of friends have achieved or will be achieving some significant goals this month, so a round of congratulatory back-slappings is in order for the following individuals:

  • My good buddy and the official Web guru of this very site, Jack Hattaway, who has finally completed his undergraduate degree. Specifically, he has been awarded a BFA in ceramics, which provides him with formal validation to pursue a hobby and passion he’s been playing with for several years anyhow.

  • Jack’s lovely Mrs. Jack, a.k.a. Natalie Hattaway, who has received her Master’s degree in education. She is now even better prepared to mold the minds of the next generation than she has been for the last several years of mind-molding.

  • My old Cambridge drinking companion and Evil Twin, Robert Ellenson, who has successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on obscure English literature (specifically, religious texts that no one outside of academe will have heard of, including myself) and must now be addressed as “The Doctor.” Unlike Jack and Natalie, who have now received sanctioning for things they’ve been doing anyhow, The Doctor’s degree has virtually nothing to do with the career path he has somehow stumbled into. Imagine that.

  • Finally, my “little brother” Jeremy Brooks, who makes artificial limbs and others prosthetics for a living, will be completing his one-year residency shortly and will then become eligible to be certified as a fully-qualified prosthetician. Jer is himself a user of prosthetics and understands the needs of his patient-clients in a way that I imagine few other people in his field do. I fully expect him to someday open his own shop…
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May052004

Have We Lost the War?

I was planning to write a Light ‘n’ Fluffy™ piece about my TV viewing habits today, but the news about American soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners keeps intruding into my thoughts. I have to admit that this story took me by surprise, partly because I’ve kind of tuned out the war news over the past couple of weeks and this has forcibly reclaimed my attention, but also because this sort of thing just isn’t supposed to be how Americans behave. I am disappointed by my countrymen and I am gravely concerned about what this incident will mean in the long-term.

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