...it's not dark yet, but it's gettin' there...
Well this is the final post of Annika's Journal. Thank you to all you faithful readers, from those who were here in the days I used to not capitalize the "I" to those of you who recently discovered this blog. Thank you to every single one of you, the commenters, lurkers, stalkers, trolls and even you Lindsay Logan fans. You all made it fun, and you were the reason I checked my e-mail ten million times a day for the last four years.
Now it's time to close up shop. Will asked whether I think I have grown from the experience of blogging. It's a difficult question to answer, and not only because I haven't given it much thought. You see my blog persona is so different from the real Annika, it's almost like Jekyll and Hyde (confession: Annika isn't even my real name!). The Annika you know is so much funnier, sexier, friendlier, smarter and cooler than I could ever hope to be in real life. If anything, what I take away from this experience is a desire to be more like her.
Before I go, I want to especially thank everybody who purchased things off my wishlist. I used to send thank you cards, until I realized that a cryptic perfume scented note from a strange Scandinavian girl might not be the easiest thing to explain to someone's wife or girlfriend. "I swear, she's just a blogger." And to those of you who never got a thank you, it might also be because somebody stole the gift off of my front porch, as often happens. I still appreciate your thoughtfulness. I'm truly amazed at people's generosity to someone they don't know, whose only public virtues seem to be a wide array of interests and a fair ability to string words together.
For those of you who will suffer withdrawal for the various rubrics I've written under, here are some suggestions for future reading:
American Skankwomen and Celebrity Watch: Your best source for celebrity gossip and snark will always be Agent Bedhead, my Cotillion sister.
annik-dotes: I stopped writing personal anecdotes the way I used to in the beginning. Mainly because they were never as interesting or brilliantly written as the stuff Dawn Summers writes. Someday she's going to write a book that will outsell David Sedaris, because she's funnier.
annikapunditry: You're on your own for political stuff. So much of the conservative blogosphere fails in the "keeping it real" department, I don't know what to tell you. But you can always rely on Michael Yon to be honest with you regarding Iraq and Afghanistan, and he knows what he's talking about. Another guy who knows his shit is Wretchard, but I suspect you've already heard of him. And the geniuses at Gates of Vienna never disappoint when it comes to the Global War on Terror. And Sarah has a great eye for what's important, whether in the world of politics, policy or purling. In addition, I may do more stuff for A Western Heart in the future.
Arts, Let's Go To Hollywood and Poetry: The amazing and prolific Sheila O'Malley is the first place you need to go. When she writes about poetry it makes my old Poetry Day posts seem like they were written by a third grader. Sheila has so much God-honest love for the movies, theater, and all the arts it's infectuous. Plus, in addition to his great blogging on feminism, life, chinchillas and a host of other subjects, Thursday poetry continues as always at Hugo Schwyzer's blog. Thank you, Hugo for all your support and love. Ccwbass is the blogger I once called "the Mark Russell of the blogosphere" for his poetry. And for food and wine, I dubbed Pursuit the unofficial sommelier of Annika's Journal.
C.T.O.T.I.O.T.D.: I always count on Beth to find the strangest, funniest, and coolest shit on the internets before anyone else does. And she's absolutely fearless, too.
Dumb-Ass Quizzes: The funnest things I ever did on this blog were the Jeopardy tournaments and the haiku contests. I don't know of anyone who wants to put in the work to organize those things, as they were time intensive. But if anyone does, I'd love to try participating as a contestant someday.
Faith: I could suggest The American Princess for half a dozen of these rubrics. But everytime the Pope speaks, I want to know what E.M. has to say about it. And from the non-Catholic perspective, the Midwest Conservative Journal is your best source. MCJ is also the very first blog to put Annika's Journal on its blogroll!
Fash-ism: When Candied Ginger went away, so did the best fashion blogging. I'm a big fan of Shoewawa instead of the other more annoying pajama-wearing shoe blogger. And although it's not a blog, Diva Village has everything you need to know in one fun place. I can't tell you how many fashion ideas I've gotten from them.
History: Obviously, Llama Butchers. Okay, not so obvious. But despite the name, Robert does a lot of excellent history related posts, and his interests are very similar to mine. Good sci-fi blogging too.
Hot Tub Friends and Peter Pumpkin Comics: Peter Pumpkin will return, after my hiatus, at Six Meat Buffet. I recently reviewed some of my HTF posts and decided that their comedy to amount of time it takes to make them ratio was not very high. Thus HTF may or may not return when I do.
Legal Mumbo Jumbo: E.M. being an expert in constitutional law among many other things, The American Princess wins again.
New Gun Nut Stuff: Publicola, who else? He's also one of the oldest and dearest supporters of Annika's Journal. Plus, he's smarter than a boatload of appellate judges, which ain't much of a compliment but trust me. The guy has forgotten more history and conlaw than most lawyers and journalists will ever know.
photoshopaholic: Rodger of Curmudgeonly & Skeptical puts out more photoshopped comedy than anyone in the blogosphere, and he's always spot-on. And "ROTFL" is normally just a figure of speech, but Jim Treacher has done some photoshopped shit that had me literally crying with laughter. Jim just might be the very first person ever to comment at my blog so he'll always have a special place in my heart, no matter where he's blogging.
Pithy and/or Lame Thoughts and The Huh? Files: For these Rubrics, it's Dawn Summers again. Mistress of the one-liner. Dawn, I bequeath to you my flashing Drudge style gif. Use it in good health.
Science & Technology: I like TechEBlog for product reviews, robot blogging and/or weird inventions. You never know what you'll find there.
Sex Please: No one did it better than Wegglywoo, and now that she's gone, nobody else is worth reading.
Sports: Humbug is my baseball muse, and the only blogger ever to give Annika's Journal a square on the periodic table. Besides having his picture in the dictionary under the entry for "blogger," Tony Pierce deserves to be hired by the L.A. Times sports desk, and sit in Jim Murray's chair. Ontario Emperor is the coach I wished I'd had when I was a kid. And Greg Cotharn won the A's J Fantasy Baseball league a few years ago. I owe Greg an apology for never giving him the trophy I promised. I think he's got one of my coffee mugs though!
I'd also like to thank my wonderful co-bloggers throughout the years: my oldest friend Franci; the lovely Ginger working hard at some fancy law firm I'm sure; James Finch and Coyote, wherever you guys are; the late Lynn Carrier; my smoking buddy Matt Scofield, a real man of genius; and especially Victor who is a dear friend, a fellow Seventies movie and Eighties music junkie, and who carried the tradition of Poetry Day so long and faithfully.
And to those who hooked me up to Munuviana: the aforementioned Victor; Susie who's still blogging strong; Ted, the Elder Statesman of Munuviana; and especially to Pixy Misa, the wizard behind our Oz, to whom I am indebted forever for this great platform to spout off and make nonsense, a very very sincere thank you.
I actually didn't plan to mention anybody by name in this final post because I didn't want to leave anyone out. I said it before, so forgive me if it's starting to sound trite. But I do have the best commenters in the blogosphere. My fellow Sacramentan Blu and Reagan80 and ElMondoHummus who each had my back always; the incredible Col. Steve who is way too smart to have been reading this thing; Strawman, who taught me the virtue of civility; and Will who's also got too much brains to come here; Radical Redneck, who kept me laughing and on my toes with all his NSFW shit; not to mention Kevin Kim; and Kyle and Amy and Mark Nicodemo and Joules and Spanky and Roach and Robbie and Calvin and Physics Geek and Otto and Matt Rustler and Law Fairy, and D-Rod and Mike C and Spork and Dave J and Zomby whose great comments were never often enough for my tastes.
Well now I've named lots of names, and no doubt I've left somebody out. But I can't not acknowledge the friendship and love of my two greatest blog benefactors, Casca and Shelly. Your friendship and encouragement has meant the world to me, even though we've never met. I may someday meet Shelly in a courtroom, and truth be told, I may meet Casca there too either as a client or a defendant — who knows? What else can I say about the two of you, except God bless you both — because He has blessed me with your friendship.
Well, if this were the Oscars, the music would be playing by now, so I better go because I'm getting all ferklempt.
The final post is coming later. No "blaze of glory" or anything like that. I won't have time to do it until later today though.
Meanwhile, watch Phil Stacey show how it's done:
1. c.a. Marks of Alabama Improper asks: "Farewell tour? Wha?" Yes, Farewell Tour is what I'm calling this series of posts, which are intended to tie up the loose ends of blogging before I quit. Also blogging about blogging is as easy as pie.
2. Beth of My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy asks: "So why are you quitting, dammit?!!!" The short answer is that I need to take two months off to study for the bar exam. The long answer is that I've been thinking about quitting for some time now and this two month break seems like the best time to do it. I suspect that living life without constantly judging every waking thought as blogworthy/unblogworthy might be incredibly refreshing for me. Also I haven't been really proud of anything I've written here since the Pepys post, and even that was derivative. Finally, I might quote Woody Allen, who said "A relationship, I think, is like a shark. . . . It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark." Blogs are not dissimilar.
3. Maximum Leader of Naked Villainy asks: "So after six months of inactivity I should de-link Annika's Journal? Is that what you are saying?" No one must ever de-link Annika's Journal lest bad karma erupt. See my related post here. Regarding the supernatural power of this blog, see also here and here.
4. Why don't you just take a temporary leave of absence. You won't be able to stay away permanently. On the contrary, I have committed to quitting Annika's Journal, which I think has achieved all I set out for it, and more.
5. So does that mean you will blog again someday, just not at this place? The plan is that after the California Bar Exam (on July 24, 25 and 26) I might occasionally post at the two other blogs where I have privileges, which are Six Meat Buffet, and A Western Heart.
6. What will happen to Peter Pumpkin The Spectacular Pumpkin? Preston has agreed, quite recklessly, to give Peter Pumpkin a new home at 6MB.
7. Why won't you blog about the Bar Exam experience? I know of some excellent bar exam bloggers, who have passed. I also know my own limitations. The California Bar is the hardest one in the country, so I plan to follow a strict study schedule. Most people take one review course, but I've signed up for three. I don't want to have any excuses for not passing. The cost of failing is enormous. I already spend countless hours each week blogging, and so I know the only way to avoid the distraction is to quit cold-turkey.
8. Ed asks: "Can you dedicate your last days by writing a LOT about the democrats running for POTUS?" I would, but the Republicans running are so much more interesting right now.
9. Radical Redneck wonders why I didn't call one of his e-mails my favorite. The answer is that most of the time I was too afraid to open his e-mails.
10. ElMondoHummus asks "Where are the Lindsay fans gonna post when you're gone?" I would suggest they go here!
11. SkippyStalin is too polite to ask, but I know he's thinking: "Hey what the hell happened to that interview you said you were going to post?" I interviewed SkippyStalin back in August and never posted it. I suck, I know. It was a really fun interview, but long. Maybe I'll at least post the highlights before I go.
12. Publicola asks: "Which Stacy Adams would go best with a retro 1911?" This is not technically an end of the blog question, but I'm happy to answer. I'm not too familiar with Stacy Adams, so I perused the website. If you're talking retro, I'd line the contemporary shoes right out. Now when I think retro guns, I think film noir, and that means snubnosed .38. But Publicola wants to know about which shoe to match with a 1911, so that's a totally different look. After much thought, the answer is obvious. The Madison, in black or cognac, would be perfect for Publicola's needs.
I would be happy to answer any other questions anyone might have in the few days left, just ask.
Not that it really matters now, but I wondered: what would cause someone to de-link Annika's Journal? I mean, if someone blogrolled me at one time, then decided to remove me years later, it must have been something I said right? Because it costs you nothing to keep me on there for old time's sake.
What have I ever done that might possibly be considered de-link-worthy?
Answer: nothink.
My policy regarding de-linking on my own blogroll has always been six months of inactivity. Although for Ginger, I stretched it out longer and a part of me still thinks/hopes she'll return someday.
When this blog is long gone, its lasting legacy to the world will be enshrined at the Urban Dictionary.
For those who followed the various sidebar polls, and others who are merely curious, here are some results that I never got around to mentioning, due to a lack of interest on my part.
You can watch the Milblog Conference video feed here. I think they're on lunch now, but the schedule says they start up again at 1:00 eastern time.
The President spoke earlier today, but I missed it.
Update: Here's the video.
December 9, 2004: I post a poem I wrote about Jerry Orbach.
December 28, 2004: Jerry Orbach dies.
Coincidence? You tell me.
March 4, 2006: I post a review of Butterflies Are Free, starring Edward Albert.
September 22, 2006: Edward Albert dies.
Coincidence? Who knows?
November 18, 2005: I call Steve Irwin a goofball in a post about turtles.
September 4, 2006: Steve Irwin is killed by a stingray, which is a distant relative of the turtle.
Coincidence? Is this starting to freak you out?
September 27, 2006: I write a post about Screech from Saved By The Bell.
November 15, 2006: Slater from Saved By The Bell is eliminated from Dancing With The Stars.
Coincidence? Maybe. But maybe it's not. Did you ever think about that?
These are the sidebar agitprops I created during the course of this blog's run.
Number one was my first attempt, using a picture of Kerry doing the "raise the roof" gesture. Pretty self-explanatory.
Number two was a little more sophisticated, and the first time I did the whole top and bottom bar thingie. I like the long face distortion, which is useful anytime one wants to depict the french-looking candidate.
Number three was created soon after Byrd gave his freakish meandering oration against the Authorization for the Use of Force. I'm particularly fond of the vampirish pallor of his skin, which was created by manipulating the hue and brightness settings in photoshop. Great pose too. The caption is a subtle hint at his Klan history. Grand Wizard becomes Grand Poobah.
Number four is Nancy Pelosi at her most strident. For effect I manipulated the size of her eyes and mouth. Not enough to look photoshopped, but just enough to be weird.
Number five is connected to my infamous EJ for Sec Gen post, which got such wide exposure thanks to a mention by Jeff Jarvis on tv. I totally lucked out when I found that picture of EJ with the blue hair wig. It was perfect.
And number six utilizes the gif animation function, which has given me hours of fun since I discovered how to do it back in January of '05. For those who don't know the references, this was based on the promotional photograph of Kiki Couric, which had been photoshopped by CBS to make her look younger and thinner. Tiffany is a reference to CBS's old nickname, "the tiffany network." I can't deny that I was also inspired by Violet from the old Willie Wonka movie.
So much for the agitprop. Someday, when the time is right, I'm planning to make a "Hillary: the female Nixon" sticker and plaster it all over California. Watch for it.
I've seen lots of bloggers post their search terms for a laugh, but I've never done it. Until now.
Here are some of the most recent Google searches that brought people here, according to my Sitemeter.
I treasure all the correspondence I've had with y'all over the last four years, and I really mean it. I know not all readers participate in the comments section and it's nice to get e-mails from those whom we bloggers affectionately call "lurkers." You're like Nixon's "silent majority." I know you're there, and I'm glad.
I often suspect there are some famous lurkers who occasionally cruise my blog. At the beginning, before his Townhall re-design, Hugh Hewitt had me on his blogroll. That was an honor which I knew I did not deserve, but which gave me a lot of pride while it lasted. Anyways, even if Professor Hewitt didn't read me regularly, I'm pretty sure Duane did, which still qualifies as a "brush-with-fame" in my book.
Another big name who came here once, after reading my most infamous blog entry, was New York Post columnist John Podhoretz. He wrote me a very short e-mail that said simply "You crack me up." That was way cool.
Casca once told me he thinks Laura Ingraham reads me, but I'm not yet convinced. Michelle Malkin routinely ignores me, and has never deigned to put me on her blogroll (which for the life of me I can't understand, since that freak Schlussel is on there), but that's okay. I love Malkin anyway.
And to this day, I suspect that Wonkette stole one of my rubrics.
But of all the lurkers and quasi-lurkers that have come here to read my nonsense, there is one whose email makes me most proud.
To set the scene. It's the afternoon of November 2nd, 2004. Faulty (and I believe fraudulent) exit polls have just been leaked and posted by Drudge, which show John Kerry leading George W. Bush in several must-win states. For weeks, the MSM has been predicting a Kerry victory. Now it seems true and conservatives are panicked. It looks like that jackass is going to be president.
In that atmosphere, I wrote this post.
A week later I got the following e-mail:
you and hugh hewitt are the only two who helped keep my anxiety in check during pre election days. i'm embarrassed at my lack of confidence. the urge to find drudge and bitch slap him still burns in me. thenks for the encouraging words. . . . there's enough smart pretty cynical woman pundits, your writing is honest and funny w/out trying to sound clever or too sarcastic. keep it nice and realThat's the best e-mail I've ever gotten. I'm so gratified that I could have contributed in some small way on that fateful day, when we all needed to keep our wits about us. Despite the post election disappointments, and there have been many, I'm still proud of that post and happy that we all showed up and won.
best,
Mike
So as I prepare to join the ranks of lurkers in about 24 days, may I say to all the lurkers at this blog, thank you for visiting!
I'm doing some email account housecleaning, and here's something I wrote a long time ago in response to a question from someone who was just starting a blog. It may have been Ted's daughter Mookie, actually. Although she's so smart she never really needed my advice.
This may not be terribly interesting for most of you, but rather than just delete it forever, here it is:
My advice to new bloggers is this: use blogger (aka blogspot). Like most people, I started out there. It sucks but it's free and they keep improving it all the time. It's relatively user friendly and you don't have to know HTML, but it is customizable if you decide to start tinkering with the template later on. Also it's easy for two or more people to group blog on, so you and your friend can do it together. That's actually a good idea, because it takes the pressure off when someone else blogs with you.If I had to add anything else to that advice it would be the following:Sign up at https://www2.blogger.com/start
Pick a blog name that starts with a letter high up in the alphabet, because when people blogroll you, you'll want to be near the top of their list.
Sign up for Sitemeter, and Blogrolling, they are great, and both free.
Sitemeter: http://www.sitemeter.com/default.asp?action=newaccount
Blogrolling: http://www.blogrolling.com/
With sitemeter you can see how many visitors you're getting and get an idea of where they're coming from. You want to know who's sending you hits so you can return the favor and network that way.
You need blogrolling because it's really easy to add people to your blogroll. Otherwise you'd have to know some basic HTML, and edit your template every time you add or delete someone. so Blogrolling makes life easy.
To build readership when no one knows you, it's very important to leave comments and emails wherever you go, and be nice. Link to other blogs you like whenever they post something that interests you. Bloggers have larger than normal egos, and they love it when people are talking about them.
Leave comments early at big blogs that allow comments. these would be blogs like Wizbang, IMAO, Moxie, and A Small Victory. If you seem interesting, people will click on you just to find out who you are. If they like what they see they will come back, and maybe even blogroll you.
One measure of your success is how many blogrolls you are on, because that is what the Ecosystem measures, and most bloggers view the Ecosystem as the arbiter of blog success. Although I've done relatively well on the Ecosystem, I don't think it's very accurate. Still, if you're serious about political blogging, it's important to move up the ecosystem. It's like the US News and World Report of the blogosphere.
The ecosystem is here: http://www.truthlaidbear.com/ecosystem.php
Most every politically oriented blog is listed. If you do good work, you might be invited to join some blog groups who will add you to their own lists and then you're really on a lot of blogrolls. As you can see, I'm on Munuviana's list, Blogs for Bush, and the Bear Flag League [and the Cotillion]. That gets annika's journal listed on a lot of blogs that I might normally not get blogrolled at.
Another way to see who's talking about your blog is to check Technorati. It's kind of the poor man's Trackback (which is a device that lets you know when someone has mentioned you in their blog) Trackback is not yet available to the basic blogger setup, but if you go to Technorati, you can find out who's linked you. There is usually a delay in their list, but it's still pretty useful to check every now and then.
Tecnorati is here: http://www.technorati.com/
You put your blog's URL in the search box at the top. You can put anything in that search box and it will find out which blogs mention whatever you're looking for. So for instance, if I want to find out what other bloggers think about Britney, I could just type that in there. Or if I'm thinking about doing a post on a NYT article I read, but I want to see what others have said about it first, I cut and paste the article's URL in there. It's great.
Otherwise, have fun, include some humor, and pictures are good too, every now and then. A blog that is pleasant to look at is very important. Never use a black or dark background, light colors are easier to read. Some people (myself included) are annoyed by a blog with a black background and usually don't return unless the writing is exceptional.
Try to stay with the larger fonts, they're easier to read. And very importantly, break up your paragraphs! Short paragraphs are much more inviting to the reader. I almost never bother reading blogs that have huge paragraphs. Thing is, most people are reading at work, when they're not supposed to be, and they want to do it quickly. If a blog post looks like it will take too long to read, they'll move on. Column width and font size are also important to readability, and many bloggers don't pay enough attention to that. But then again, changing the defaults involves some knowledge of HTML, and people don't wanna be bothered with that sometimes.
So I advise you to do this when you sign up for blogger. Pick a template when it asks you, during the sign up process. then finish signing up until you get your blog. Then go into the blog editor before you even start writing, and click on the template tab. Then click on "pick new" right underneath the tab. Then you should see a much wider selection of new format choices than they gave you at first. Pick from one of those, because they are much better than the original choices. stay away from the orange one though. There are actually some bugs in the orange template, which make it hard to scroll on some browsers.
Anyway, that's all I got. I gave you the baby steps version, because I'm not sure how much detail you wanted, but it was fun. Feel free to email me if you need any more help."
Be scrupulously honest when quoting anything. Perhaps I get this from having studied the Harvard Blue Book, but I think this is very important, especially for political bloggers. Credibility is your most important asset, and if you get the reputation for altering quotes, you're dead. If you take something out, insert elipses. If you change a word, put it in brackets. In short, follow conventional citation rules and you won't go wrong.
One of the things I've learned about blogging is that there are many different kinds of bloggers. Some bloggers are born great, some have greatness thrust upon them. Other bloggers find their niche and end up workin' it like a supermodel. Still others suck eggs and always will. And some are just freakin' scary. But the one thing all bloggers have in common is that they start small and hope to get big someday. Or so I thought.
"The day I killed a blog" happened early in my career, when I was young and altruistic. Thanks to the generosity of a few big bloggers, I'd achieved some moderate success moving up the Ecosystem, (which has since diminished) and I thought it would be nice to spread the love. Pay it forward, like the movie says.
So when I came across a brand new blog, down at the unicellular microbe level of the Ecosystem, I thought I'd give the blogger a boost by linking to one of her more interesting posts. She was new, seemed like a nice lady, and though not the best writer around, I thought she could improve with some exposure. I, in my benevolence, decided to give her that exposure. I chose to link to a post in which her thesis was, "I'm a liberal but I support the Iraq War." (This was back in the day when one could say that type of thing with a straight face.)
I sent the chick some traffic, that was true. But unfortunately she couldn't handle the attention. Being a liberal who supports the war is not a prescription for attracting friendly commenters. Apparently there was enough variety in her viewpoints to piss off everybody who went there. I didn't actually get a chance to read any of the constructive criticism that I funnelled to her comments section, because her site was taken down after about a day of abuse. In the words of Carl the gardener, she quit the game.
So that was how I killed a blog. I love my commenters. You're the only reason I kept this thing going for so long, and I look upon this blog experience as a four year conversation with some really neat people. But when I linked to that little blog, I felt a bit like Hernán Cortés meeting the Indians. You're all a pretty exuberant bunch and some folks just don't have the natural immunities necessary for blogging. Some folks get a readership and then realize they didn't really want to be read in the first place.
Do I feel bad about what happened? Probably not, because although lots of people can say they started a blog, I can say that I killed a blog too.
Go wish a happy blogiversary to Preston, Smantix and Cranky at Six Meat Buffet, who are three and even occasionally act like it.
And keep in mind that though annika's journal may will come to an end in 31 days, when the bar* is over you'll be able to find me again at the Buffet! (Thanks to the generosity and/or foolishness of Preston Taylor Holmes!)
_______________
* July 24th through 26th.
Is by Frank J, paraphrased by me:
[Al Gore] got Cs in Yale in political science -- a type of science -- [yet he's] angry at the world [for] not submitting unquestioningly to his wisdom.True and funny.
I have discovered amazing evidence that Global Warming is real, that it is caused by human activity, and that we are quickly approaching the end of the world.
I looked at my TTLB stats tonight, and the graph for average daily visits to my blog looked frighteningly familiar. By consulting my scientific sources (i.e. I googled it) I was able to find a graph showing the recent increase in average global temperatures.
Sure enough, when I superimposed the two graphs, an inconvenient truth emerged!
The debate is over, the science is in: My blog is at fault for global warming.
Well, as soon as I realized this, my first thought was, "how embarrassing." My second thought was, "If I am to blame, what can I do to save the planet?"
So now you know why, in sixty days time, I will retire this blog. Sorry about that.
If you are a member of the set (24 fans) ∩ (ATHF fans), this hilarious spoof is for you.
From Dawn:
I have figured out the meaning of life.That Ivy League degree is paying off, Dawn!
I would tell you, but it would blow your minds.
* Name changed so as not to look like I stole it or anything like that.
Please contact Annika at coolconnector20 @ yahoo.com. Monthly payment is negotiable.
Thanks to everyone who voted for me!
Check it out here.
They put mine at the top, and they even gave it a little picture. In the print version it's in the Forum section page E2.
Wow, I take back everything I ever said about the Sacramento Bee!
Here's something new. I got nominated for something or other. I don't know what happens if you vote for me, I didn't read the thing too carefully. Anyways, you should vote for me. It requires a login, but you can use "guest" as the ID and "guest" as the password, then look for my post called "The End Of The CD Era" and rate it as a "5."
Here's the link. If you love me you will do exactly as I say.
Update: Come on, I know I have more than 7 readers!
I'll be liveblogging the results with the boys at Six Meat Buffet tonight. Mix it in between your frantic checks of Drudge, The Corner and Hugh Hewitt, if you please.
Dean Barnett, at Hugh Hewitt's:
[I]f the lefty blogosphere is some sort of La Cosa Nostra, that can’t be good news for Oliver Willis because he’s obviously Fredo.LOL, except he'd capsize the rowboat before they ever got out on the lake.
It's been a while since the last Cotillion carnival, but Beth of Blue Star Chronicles has done a wonderful job of collecting the best recent posts from the premiere group of female bloggers. Go check out Cotillion Colloquy. I'm in there!
Project Valour-IT is fundraising again. Superblogger Beth of My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy is on the Marines team, though she's an Air Force veteran. And our very own A-List blogger Cassandra is leading the Marines team.
Every cent raised for Project Valour-IT goes directly to the purchase and shipment of voice-activated laptops for wounded servicemembers. As of October 2006, Valour-IT has distributed nearly 600 laptops to severely wounded Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines across the country.Click on one of the links and donate whatever you can for this great project.During its initial phase, Valour-IT created “libraries” of laptops equipped with voice-controlled software for the severely wounded staying at major military medical centers. In many cases a laptop was provided to a wounded hero for permanent use.
Art and jewelry collectors take note: Holly Aho (a huge supporter of Soldiers' Angels by the way) has opened a new online store with here original artwork and jewelry. Go send her some love.
Just for you, Will!
Five Arguments Against Conciliation by Baron Bodissey.
Whenever a concession is made to Islam, another waits in the wings, ready to be rolled out onto the stage to take its place. It’s like the Sudetenland in 1938, over and over again. Lop off one piece and give it Hitler, and then another, and another, but somehow it’s never quite enough.And, if you watch carefully, the Muslim negotiating partner never manages to carry through with his half of any compromise.
. . .
Every time we perform another act of abasement, every time we fall all over ourselves apologizing for insulting Muslims, every time we publicly pretend that Islam is the Religion of Peace, we are doing damage to our collective psyche. All these efforts fly in the face of the obvious truth: historically speaking, right up to the present moment, Islam has been the Religion of War.
The Demonic Convergence is drawing the Left and radical Islam into bed with each other, so that there are very strong forces in our public life which strive to convince us otherwise, that we are bad, bad people, racists and Islamophobes, for thinking such things. It produces a cognitive dissonance in the collective psyche of the West, because the average person, deep down, knows the truth.
As reported by Point Five:
On the heels of the Warner/ McCain/ Graham legislation passed out of Senate committee today, which offers expanded rights to terrorists over the bill proposed by President Bush, al Qaeda reportedly has considered changing its long- standing rules on prisoner treatment to include greater protections for Americans in custody.h/t PrestonThe new guidelines would set strict requirements for the type and quality of beheading blades, limit the time spent on- camera in execution videos, and place new rules on the use of burning alive, dismembering, and dragging through the streets.
. . .
Under the new al Qaeda guidelines, gasoline would be strongly discouraged as a fuel for blackening infidel corpses, favoring high-temperature, fast burning fuels such as acetylene or MAPP gas. The use of accelerants such as oxygen to more quickly extinguish the cries of agony from the infidels would be “greatly pleasing to Allah.â€
Update: Shameless recycling of an old post that is still apropriate.
Go and see them now, before the anti-free speech crazies find out and crash the site.
Update: Betsy Newmark explains why it matters.
Think for a moment about the concerted action by Democrats, their lawyers, former White House operatives, Bill Clinton, sympathetic historians, and lefty bloggers to stop this show. Remember that this was the same crowd that was full of praise of for Fahrenheit 9/11 for crystallizing their opposition to George Bush. Accuracy and versimilitude didn't bother them then. And they weren't saying a word about 60 Minutes "fake but accurate" story on Bush's National Guard service. Now, ask yourself. If this crowd were to control the White House, how many more of these attempts to stifle any criticism of them would we be seeing? Think of how much has been aired during Bush's tenure, even a movie depicting him being assassinated and more denials of civil liberties gets made without Bush's White House unleashing its lawyers. But, for this thing, the Democrats go to the mattresses. Are they perhaps modeling for us what their response would be to further criticism if they should gain control of the White House - or even of Congress? Don't forget those not-so-veiled threats to ABC's license. Ponder that chill wind.Exactly. These are the anti-free speech crazies I'm talking about.
h/t Michelle Malkin
Not only is this post at WuzzaDem brilliant and funny, it's also got many picturs...
h/t Cranky
Just so you'll be able to tell the difference between the two major parties on the big issues, Cranky Neocon at 6MB has prepared an informative and handy Election Issues Comparison Chart. It's suitable for printing, so you can take it into the voting booth with you on November 7th!
Tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall on the Gulf Coast. Lots of bloggers are remembering the event, and I just want to point to two ways it touched my life.
The first was definitely the proudest moment for me as a blogger. This whole exercise in semi-regular public writing is pretty ridiculous most of the time. But last September I can honestly say we made a difference. By we, I mean you, the very generous visitors to annika's journal who pledged $2,250 for hurricane relief.
You folks really deserve congratulations, because you showed how beautiful you are. We outdid some real big time blogs,* as you can see from the final list. Special thanks to Shelly who added a lot of cheerleading and cajoling to his characteristic generosity last year.
The second thing was that I bought a gun and started a disaster preparedness kit. Even though some of the horror stories turned out to be exagerrated, what did happen was still pretty horrible. And it could happen anywhere. I grew up in Oakland and have witnessed my share of natural disasters, so I have no excuse not to be prepared. The one lesson we should all take from Katrina is that each one if us is responsible for his or her own safety. Don't ever count on the government to do it for you, it's your job, and they're not very good at it.
_______________
* I didn't mention it at the time, because I thought it in bad taste (and maybe it still is) but I was really amazed at the sharp political division between the bloggers who joined in the fundraising and those who stood on the sidelines.
I did some informal research during the drive. I checked the biggies, like Kos etc, and they were on the ball. But I was curious about the smaller fish, so I started going down the list of the blogs listed as members of the League of Liberals. I actually went through the whole blogroll. Of those blogs that were still active, I was disappointed to see that the vast majority had absolutely no link to any charitable organization. That was despite the fact that most were not shy in hurling criticism at the administration (deserved) or at conservatives in general (undeserved). I seem to remember that there were only two blogs that had any charity hyperlinks. One of them put it up only after I left a scathing comment. And then it was to PETA or some sort of animal rescue org.
I acknowledge that my point is probably unfair. How do I know what these people donated in private? But the contrast between the left and right sides of the blogosphere back then really surprised me, and I think of it as kind of a watershed moment.
[I can't help but join in the huge Passey hatin' dogpile that's been going on in every corner of the blogosphere lately. She's too easy of a target.]
Every time I looked in the mirror, I cried a little. I'd see my own awful skin blemishes and they'd remind me of how inadequate I was next to Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey, the world's most perfect female.
Then I imagine Terrence out with her. And I remember the cruel questions he used to ask me before he dumped me for Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey, the world's most perfect female.
"Why can't you be slim like Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey, instead of being one of the 62% of women who are fat according to Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey?"After hearing those hurtful questions for months on end from Terrence, and poor me unable to answer them, is it any wonder that he left me for her - Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey, the world's most all around perfectest female?"Why can't you be more attractive than 86% of the women whose pictures have been rated by visitors to the website Hot or Not, like Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey is?"
"Why can't you be relatively young like Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey, instead of being one of the 82% of American adult women who are old according to Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey?"
"Why can't you be smarter than 97.5% of the population, like Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey, the world's most smartest and perfectest female?"
"Why can't you have your financial shit together like Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey the world's most financially shit-togetheringest female?"
"Why can't you have a strong libido and love to have sex like Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey, the world's most horniest female, whose lovers never have to beg, except when they have to beg to be allowed to go to sleep?"
"Why can't you have interests that tend to be more popular with men, like science fiction, libertarianism, blogging, politics, economics, guns, gambling, scratching, picking, sniffing, and eating of one's own boogers, like Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey, the world's most masculine female?"
How I wished I could win Terrence back. I cried and cried and cried, boo hoo hoo. Then my best friend told me about the secret of Dr. Passey's Super Stick Treatment!
Dr. Passey's Super Stick Treatment was such a quick, easy way to attain just the tiniest fraction of the perfection that Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey, the world's most perfect female was born with!
And since the whole country is littered with low quality men who've been cast off by Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey like so many squamous cells after a nightly exfoliation of her perfectly unblemished and taut ass, I realized that all I needed to have was a tiny fraction of Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey's perfect perfection in order to hook me a fine low quality man!
Why, if Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey can boast of receiving 50 to 100 (sometimes more) responses whenever she trolls for high quality men in the personal ads of her local free newspaper, I was sure I could find at least one medium quality man and perhaps several low quality men by utilizing Dr. Passey's Super Stick Treatment!
And when I heard that Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey (who knows how to make money blogging, ask her how) had kicked Terrence to the curb, because he turned out to be just another low quality man (and she being quality, only dates quality), I resolved to give Dr. Passey's Super Stick Treatment a try!
What did I have to lose? I asked. And after only a week of Dr. Passey's Super Stick Treatment, what I gained was Terrence, who became mine again . . . completely!
The secret is in the special patented Super Stick, invented by Dr. Passey. The treatment only takes three minutes a day and the results can be felt instantaneously!
After you wake up in the morning, all you do is take Dr. Passey's Super Stick, apply the special patented Super Stick lubricating ointment to the outside of the Super Stick, apply some more to the outer rim of your anal sphincter, and then shove the Super Stick in as far as it will go!
Walk around like that all day, and I gaurantee you will begin talking, acting, and looking just like Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey in no time. She's the world's most perfectest female of them all!
Try Dr. Passey's Super Stick Treatment in the privacy of your own home for a free ten day trial and watch the results on your own face, when you first administer the treatment. I think you'll agree, there's no feeling in the world like the Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey feeling. It's absolutely gauranteed to take your breath away!
So act quickly, supplies are limited, and so is the number of low to medium quality men. You may never hope to bag as much high quality man-flesh as Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey, the world's most perfectest female, but once you start using Dr. Passey's Super Stick Treatment like she does, you'll be sure to have your pick of the leftovers.
So be a hot chick . . . hop on the stick!
Dr. Passey's Super Stick, that is!
I'm gettin' Instalanched over at Six Meat Buffet. Why is it, the bigs never link to my blog? All my biggest 'lanches have been at other blogs. That's what I get for spreadin' the love!
... including the conclusion of Annika's Jeopardy. We're in the homestretch now.
Meanwhile, go visit Gates of Vienna.
Now they tell us that we need a new modem, which I doubt, but we have to go through the motions. I fully expect that when we exchange our brand new modem for another brand new modem, that we will have to call the ISP back and wait for them to figure out the real reason our internet is down.
I went through this a few years ago with the Sony computer. It proves the rule that computer geeks who know what they're doing are generally not going to be found behind the counter at Frye's or manning the phones in some Indian dungeon. They'll be out making money.
So what does this mean to you? It means you get more Victor sooner!
And we'll pick up with Jeopardy in August upon my return from Scandinavia.
Due to a local internet connection problem with the phone company, I have been unable to access the web from home today. I am posting this from my phone.
Therefore, no Jeopardy question today. Maybe tomorrow I can post one from work, but I will have to forego the graphics.
In the meantime, get your Wednesday poetry fix from Tony at LAist, who is celebrating Pablo Neruda's birthday with a really romantic one!
Update: Those bastards at my ISP still haven't fixed the problem.
Dr. Rusty has returned, MacArthur-like, from across the waves of Islamist DDOS attacks. Go welcome him back
For those who are interested, here are the results of last week's blog customer satisfaction survey.
Anyone who knows anything about statistics, feel free to provide your analysis.
Regarding methodology, the poll was set to allow only one vote per IP address. Voting was open from of Friday afternoon on June 23 to Tuesday afternoon, June 27th. Comments were shut off and voters were not able to see the results of the ongoing poll. The poll was at the top of the blog until Sunday morning, June 25th.
Please take this short customer satisfaction survey, to help me better serve you. I would appreciate your most honest answers, and your best estimates, so I have disabled the comment and the view results buttons. Please only vote once per question. This survey will remain at the top of the page until Sunday morning, so please scroll down for newer posts.
Poll closed. Look here for results.
Instead of just starting a blog, why not enter a contest?
Cotillion sister Greta at Hooah Wife is running "Blogging Contributor Idol," just like American Idol, only for bloggers not singers.
Romeocat recently visited the National Air & Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center recently. You can see pictures of her trip here. This annex, near Dulles Airport, houses the first Space Shuttle, the Enola Gay, the Concorde, and many other awesome sights, including an SR-71, the most kick-ass airplane ever built.
Holy stratosphere, is that Moxie with Ann Coulter at Cathy Seipp's party for her daughter Maia?
And Sandra Tsing Loh was there too? (She's totally a hero of mine.)
I didn't even get a puppet show for my grad party. wtf?
Oh, you'll note too that Moxie smokes my brand.
And that Ann Coulter's tits are bigger than I had realized.
Via Tony Pierce, who's now turned his benevolent gaze upon LAist, a blog about Los Angeles.
A good discussion of whether Denmark is the vanguard of resistance to Eurpoean dhimmitude, or not, may be found at Gates of Vienna here and especially here.
Danish leaders and public figures openly say what the rest of Europe dares not. In some of the stricter PC regimes, such as Belgium, they would likely be under legal sanction for what they say.RTWT (i.e. read the whole thing)It may be that Denmark will not withstand the Islamic onslaught. The Danes may well cave to anti-Semitism, or be cowed into submission. They may only hold out a year or a decade longer than Sweden before they are overrun.
But they hold up a mirror to us here in America, and remind us of the future that is careening towards us, and demonstrate a way to face it with dignity.
I couldn't recommend any Memorial Day post more highly than this one, from Cassandra of Villainous Company.
Also read this angry poem: "Who Cares if A Soldier Dies?" re-posted at I Love Jet noise.
Take a Memorial Day trip through the National Mall with Romeocat. There are plenty of great pictures and video from her recent visit.
And this video is unabashedly patriotic and fun. h/t Sanity's Bluff.
God bless America's heroes and defenders.
Check out Smallholder, layin' down a Ben Franklin rap over at Naked Villainy.
Web Loafer has uncovered a historical photograph showing Vice President John Nance Garner during a hunting trip in 1937. The vice president is the one with his gun pointed at another guy. Senator Truman is also among the party.
You may remember that Truman was famous for saying "the buck stops here." Well, this picture shows the origin of that phrase. Vice President Garner's most famous quote was when he described the vice presidency as "not worth a bucket of warm piss."
I encourage everyone to see United 93. There is a post at The Cotillion (it doesn't seem right to call it a carnival or link fest, with such a subject) where you can sample many of our reactions to the film. Whether you're planning to go to the movie or not, these are definitely worth reading, as they are all deeply felt.
Robert remembers Chancellorsville at the Llama Butchers.
Fans of the above might want to check out the Godsmack video on Pursuit's sidebar.
Forget Frontline. The inside stuff on the insurgency can be found at Iowahawk.
For instance, this fascinating account of a secret planning conversation between Zarkawi and Zawahiri, as recalled by Zarkawi himself:
I grabbed a pile of my project folders and headed for the conference room, and the crapstorm commenced before my ass hit the carpet.Via Blogger Ale, who wants your beer opinion.“Abu, as you know, AQI is all about creating a scalable paradigm for enabling global caliphate,†he says. “But lately, I have been concerned that we’ve had some performance leakage in our Total Quality Jihad plan.â€
Okay, maybe I don’t have a fancy ass Master of Martyr Administration from Damascus Tech, but I saw where this shit was going.
“Well, Ayman, sure, we’ve had a couple of tough quarters, but if you look at these clippings from the infidel press and TV, you can see we are still in a net positive PR situation, and... “
“How many associates did we lose in Q1?â€
Fuck. Since when does he start asking direct questions? I start fumbling around with my folders.
“I’ll tell you Abu. 1,256.†And then he’s off to the races, with a 45 minute firehose of PowerPoints and Excel pie charts detailing every mosque bombing screwup, every wipeout with Team Satan, every stupid Iraqi anti-Al Qaeda protest.
“At the end of the day, Abu, the AQ family needs to deploy our resources for maximum Return-on-Jihad,†he says. Then he drops the bomb: “It’s time we think about right-sizing the organization vis-à -vis the Baghdad Region.â€
Oh, dandy. He says we can accomplish it through attrition, but now it looks like I’m going to have to start emailing pink slips AND condolence letters. I’m not even sure how safe my own damn job is. I was gonna call Fatima and my other babies’ mamas and tell ‘em to cancel the family Mecca trip, but that’d just buy me a week of nonstop nagging.
Greg has some excellent and extensive hitting advice over at The End Zone.
Throughout my life, I believed I was an excellent hitter in tough situations. I believed my teams were lucky to have me at bat in those situations. I often believed, of everyone on the team, I had the best chance of succeeding against tough pitching in tough situations. I would often be really wanting to win, and I would think "Thank God I'm coming up - my coming to bat really gives us a good chance to win this game," or "My coming to bat is bad luck for those other guys - they are screwed," or "Those other guys have no idea how much trouble they are in with me coming to bat. I'm the last person they want up there - even if they don't know it." Was that true? It doesn't matter if it was true or not! The important thing is to believe it - to have confidence. My father used to say "If you think you cannot, you cannot." He was right about that.I wish I'd had a coach like him when I was nine. I might have done more than one embarrasing year in Little League.
Ultrablognetic, the book. By fellow Cal Bear, longtime blogroll denizen, comic lover, and one of the coolest practitioners of the art of free association: Alfred Pennyworth (or whatever name he's going by these days). Congratulations dude.
My plate's too full for this, but some of you youngsters out there might think about joining Bluto's Pirate Fleet. It sounds like a fun way to win friends and influence people. Aaarr!
Today is International Women's Day. Celebrate by visiting The Cotillion, where you'll find as many points of view as there are types of women. Unlike on the feminist left, where anyone who doesn't toe the party line gets the boot. (How's that for mixed metaphors?)
From The American Princess:
Were it not for Hollywood, these people would be serving your food, cleaning your homes and parking your cars, which is a main reason that we give thanks, every year, that someone has the intestinal fortitude to organize a meeting, serve them free booze and award them prizes for going three full months not wearing makeup, and working opposite Billy Bob Thornton.EM will be liveblogging the Academy Awards tonight at Wizbang Pop, so you might want to turn the sound down and read her while you watch.
I have been bad at reminding you all about the Cotillion Ball lately, but do check it out this week. Cassandra of Villianous Company did a great job. I love the 50's domestic goddess pictures.
Kevin Kim, an energetic advocate of free speech, provides a well reasoned argument against those pragmatists who say we should not provoke muslim outrage.
The pragmatic approach, which seems to have gained adherents even in our own State Department, can be summarized thusly:
[F]or the 'pragmatist,' it is abundantly clear that certain Muslims are prone to overreaction. Knowing this as we do, we Westerners would be at fault for provoking such people, because provocation in the awareness of Muslim oversensitivity is malicious. You know the angry dog will bite you if you keep prodding it with your foot, so it's your fault if you get bitten. What's more, provocation is impractical: how can we expect to change Muslim hearts and minds when we adopt a confrontational stance?Kevin responds:
The West and its allies occasionally shoot themselves in the foot: Kim Jong-il, for example, relies on Seoul's and Washington's indecision to get what he wants, like a child adept at 'playing' his parents. North Korea, in the role of the spoiled brat, knows it can sit back and make demands of its far more powerful interlocutors. In the end, Seoul and Washington gain nothing while Pyongyang continues its illegal nuclear program, its counterfeiting, its drug trafficking, and its systematic oppression of the North Korean people-- all while spewing outrageously self-righteous rhetoric whose crazed tone I often wish we matched, just for fun's sake.The whole thing is here.. . .
The pragmatic appeasers want to cut Western action off at the root: they would prefer that we stop openly acting outraged about Muslim outrage. Some . . . seem to feel that we should feel outrage but then do nothing-- that we should, in fact, compromise with oppression by reducing our own range of movement to accommodate the violent Other. This is a comfortable, lazy position that allows us to pretend we have the moral high ground even as that ground is rapidly eroding beneath us.
Others feel that dialogue with the wild-eyed Muslims is the best answer. While I'm a staunch advocate of dialogue (interreligious, intercultural, diplomatic, etc.), I'm under no illusions that the people out there destroying embassies and threatening infidels with death are going to sit down calmly and listen to rational discussion. As far as I'm concerned, most of those people are already beyond redemption. Dialogue is reserved, then, for moderates (in the Western sense of the word, not the Muslim sense). What's more, we need to be focusing on the next generation of Muslims-- the children, the ones who are impressionable. If we don't move to communicate with them directly, they'll grow up just as indoctrinated as the current generation of willful idiots.
. . .
I proudly advocate the right to offend [If you've seen Kevin's blog, you know he ain't kidding], and demand that offended parties unpucker their sphincters and relax. If you want to protest, fine. If you're planning to get violent, don't be surprised if someone shoots your stupid ass.
Last year i had this New Year's Eve message for you all:
What a year it's been. i almost hate to see 2004 go. But it's time to celebrate an even more exciting year to come. Wow, 2005 already!The same message is appropriate today, except for the part about hating to see this year go. 2004 was a tough year to top, and 2005 didn't do it, blog-wise.Have a great NYE everybody! Be safe. You know the drill: designate a driver and don't forget to bundle up when you're out in the weather. Don't want to start the year off with a nasty cold.
Thanks for all your many kindnesses this past year, and for just stopping by to read my nonsense. i love you all and i'll see you next year!
i think 2006 will be a lot more exciting, both personally and for current events to write about. Good luck to all of you in the new year too! i look forward to continuing this electronic relationship we got going.
Until next year!
XOXO
Today is a great day for freedom. i think it's entirely fitting that i have chosen this day to announce the biggest event in the blogosphere's short history. Today is the long awaited launch day for Nose In The Air Media.
What is Nose In The Air Media, you say? Perhaps you've noticed the new icon on my sidebar, under blogging affiliations. Go ahead and look. See it?
Nose In The Air Media is the brainchild of blogger annika, of annika's journal. That's me. i made the whole thing up. The editorial board consists of me. The graphics designer is me. i'm the CEO, CFO, COO, judge, jury and executioner. i do all the work and i get all the credit.
Here's what Nose In The Air Media is all about:
Nose In The Air Media is not a club.
You don't have to join Nose In The Air Media to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to be invited into Nose In The Air Media. Just like some other hoity-toity blogging cabals, you might find yourself waiting forever.
If you are reading this, and you want to be in, you're in.
And you'll want to be in. It's that cool.
You don't have to be a "big time" blogger to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to get linked by any "big time" bloggers to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to have been interviewed by Time Magazine to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to be remotely interesting to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't even have to have a blog to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to have a cool site design to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to be a conservative to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to be a liberal to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to be political to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to wear pajamas to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to wear anything.
Your front page can load in less than five minutes and you can still be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to like annika's journal to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to link to annika's journal to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't even have to de-link annika's journal to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to have been mentioned in Hugh Hewitt's book to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You can have a crappy template and be in Nose In The Air Media.
You can say fuck on your blog and be in Nose In The Air Media.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fucking fuck.
You don't have to be hot to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to pay dues to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to be high on the Ecosystem to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't even have to know what the Ecosystem is to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to care at all.
You can post about shit and still be in Nose In The Air Media.
No one is going to kick you out of Nose In The Air Media for hatin' on me.
You'll get no money for being in Nose In The Air Media.
In fact, there's absolutely no advantage to being in Nose In The Air Media.
We have no blogroll.
We have no bankroll.
You don't have to post any icons.
You don't have to link to any other members.
There aren't any other members anyway.
You don't have to take part in any carnivals.
You won't get bombarded by a kazillion spam emails.
You can post as much as you want, or as little as you want, if you join Nose In The Air Media.
You can join Nose In The Air Media, and then quit, and then join again, and then quit again, and then join again, and then quit again, as many times as you like.
There are no celebrities in Nose In The Air Media and being in Nose In The Air Media will not make you a celebrity.
In fact, you can be in Nose In The Air Media and still respond to e-mails from non-celebrities who read your blog. Your head won't even explode.
You don't have to have a clever name to be in Nose In The Air Media.
If you're in Nose In The Air Media, you won't be required to agree with everything that the famous big blogger of the week says.
On the other hand, the famous big blogger of the week won't ever link to you if you're in Nose In The Air Media, even though he or she reads you regularly. But then, they weren't linking to you anyway, so that's no big loss.
You don't have to be a member - of - a - discrete - interest - group - that's - usually - thought - of - as - left - leaning - whose - conservative - views - have - made - you - a - darling - of - the - big - bloggers, to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to be all overly serious and self-important to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to have a law degree to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to be a journalist to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to be any kind of jerk to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to be a nun or a minister to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You can smoke pot and be in Nose In The Air Media.
You can even blog about sex and be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to have a paypal button to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to solicit money for projects that you promise to do, then forget all about the project, but keep the money anyway, to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to use a fake name to be in Nose In The Air Media.
It's okay to correspond with your visitors when you're in Nose In The Air Media.
It's okay to be one of the little people when you're in Nose In The Air Media.
Even when your blog is ranked higher on the Ecosystem than many so-called "big time" don't-bother-me-I'm-so-serious blogs, not that you care about that shit anyway because it's all bullshit, and you're not competitive in that way, except for just a little bit.
It's okay to hit a paragraph break every once in a while when you're in Nose In The Air Media.
It's not necessary to have a blog ad with a grainy picture of a guy doing isometric push-ups on your sidebar if you want to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You can actually read and comment at other people's blogs when you are in Nose In The Air Media.
In fact there are almost no rules for being in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to be great.
You don't have to be more popular.
You don't have to be more interesting.
You don't have to be funnier.
You don't have to be better than any other blogger out there.
In fact there's only one prerequisite for being in Nose In The Air Media.
You have to THINK you're better than everyone else.
And if you can do that, welcome. You're in.
What the hell, i just found out that Clareified got nominated for Best Liberal Blog. i've been so busy with finals that i haven't even looked at the contest and i wasn't planning on voting for anybody this year. Sour grapes and all that.
But i'll make an exception for Dawn, and i urge every reader of annika's journal to go forth now and vote for Clareified!
More: As of this writing, my blog is #135 on the Ecosystem, just two places behind disgusting fatbody Oliver Wills. And i've done shit on this blog for the last year and a half, which should tell you something about fat Ollie, or the Ecosystem, or whatever.
Ok, so i joined the Frappr! bandwagon. Whatever, i'm a sheep. Put yourself on the map before this whole Frappr! craze blows over.
[The] irony in all these death-penalty stories: A media that typically sees Born-Again Christians as suspect suddenly finds the Born-Again Christian a nobel [sic?] figure. Listen, I have no truck with Born-Agains and I hold them suspect as well, but I find this odd: Having blood on your hands is a forgivable offense; trying to hang the Ten Commandments in a public school makes you a threat to society.
by annika b.
If i had a blog i would write about only shiny things
like my hair, or your nose
If i had a blog i would post naked pictures all the time
but of you
i would also post drink recipes,
and then drink them while blogging
If you had a blog you would name it after my cat, if i had a cat
If i had a blog i would write stupid free verse while listening
to my professor, and the boy with slightly wavy hair
who only raises his hand when he has something funny to say
Having a blog would be like being a superhero
but without the costume or the cool powers
i would wear boots and my underwear would be on the outside.
Congratulations are also in order for Law Fairy, The Angry Clam, Chris Cross, and GirlGoneMil, who passed the California Bar Exam. And i should also mention that my roommate Megan is the smartest, sexiest and most relieved new lawyer in the Golden State. And on Saturday, she was the most hungover too.
i know it's bad form to mention it, but good luck to those of you who didn't pass. i know you'll get em next time.
A Happy Veteran's Day thank you to all veterans! And a belated Happy Birthday to the U.S.M.C.!
Check out Blackfive today. Uncle Jimbo has a great post. And contribute to Project Valour IT.
i have been frustrated with the comments being down, too. For some reason, the whole of Munuviana has been hit hard recently. Pixy is on it, as he always is, but as you know he's only one man. Superhuman yes, but still only one man. Here's some interesting facts that might shed light on things or at least help us all to be patient:
We got 1.3 million trackbacks over the past 30 days, and 550,000 comments. About 99.8% of trackbacks and over 90% of comments were spam. Over 99% of the spam got blocked, but that still left a lot of cleaning up.. . .
Massive amounts of comment spam coming in right now - several thousand a minute. Busy upgrading Fluffy's armament. Back soon.
Ugh. Seriously ugh. We're talking over a hundred comments a second here.
Update: New super doom-Fluffy installed. We'll see how we go with that.
Update update: 75,000 80,000 85,000 spams from a single source in under 90 minutes. It would have been more than that except that the server ground to a halt under the load. It's sped up significantly now that it's all being blocked immediately.
Update update update: Out of 90,000 95,000 spams, four actually got through. Congrats to Ted, Linda, Daniel and Lawren, who won the prize.
Update^4: 100,000! It's now 104 minutes since the flood started
Update^5: Looks like it's leveled off at a steady 1500 spams a minute. I wonder how long they'll keep up this futile exercise?
Update^6: Just past the two hour mark and it seems to have stopped. 123,111 spam attempts, four of which got through, for a success rate of 0.00324%. I shall now delete those four spams... And done.
. . .
We have to move off Movable Type; we have no choice in the matter. However, no-one will be forced off MT before they're ready. The new servers will be able to cope with the existing users just fine; the problem is that further growth will bring serious problems. We're already the largest MT installation in the world, and worse, we are stuck on version 2.6 due to licensing issues.
Or, yesterday, rather:
For several years, these people have been testing the water, trying to gauge the size of the lies they can get away with. Unsurprisingly, they’ve come to realize that, if they all simply insist on the “truthfulness†of a given lie of their own creation and marketing, that little piece of the greater war narrative will, with the help of a compliant media, slowly ossify into “factâ€â€”or at the very least, will dig beneath the skin of settled history and fester there, constantly picked at by the conspiracy theorists and fantasists who stroke their own egos by pretending to know more than the surface reveals.Yes. Yessssss!
i know everybody's been pimping the 2002 Thomas Dalrymple article on the Parisian suburbs. i found it via A Nation Of Riflemen. If you haven't yet read it, believe the hype. It's one of the most interesting things i've read all year.
Kevin Kim links to it too. But Kevin has much more on the riots, including English translations of some French sources i had seen elsewhere. Not knowing French, i'm thankful to Kevin for doing the work. Just keep scrolling down on his blog. He'll like that.
Stacy at Not A Desperate Housewife did a beautiful job on today's Veteran's day theme Cotillion Ball. Please go check it out.
Allow me to quote Beth from My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy regarding this worthy fundraising effort:
I'm writing to ask for your support for a project sponsored by Soldiers' Angels (click for more information on SA, if you aren't familiar with them) called Project Valour-IT. This project is designed to provide voice-enabled laptops for severely wounded military members. From the Project Valour-IT website:i've selected the Army team. Please help out, for those who have given so much for us.
'Project Valour-IT, in memory of SFC William V. Ziegenfuss, provides voice-controlled software and laptop computers to wounded Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines recovering from hand and arm injuries or amputations at major military medical centers. Operating laptops by speaking into a microphone, our wounded heroes are able to send and receive messages from friends and loved ones, surf the 'Net, and communicate with buddies still in the field without having to press a key or move a mouse. The experience of CPT Charles "Chuck" Ziegenfuss, a partner in the project who suffered hand wounds while serving in Iraq, illustrates how important this voice-controlled software can be to a wounded servicemember's recovery.'
Right now there is a major fundraising effort ongoing among blogs, with certain blogs assigned to different service branches, to make it a sort of friendly competition. . . .
In previous generations and wars, all Americans were asked to sacrifice for the overall war effort, but during this war on terror where we are ALL affected, we haven't had to shoulder the burden that our military (active, reservists, and their families) have. May I ask you to sacrifice just a bit for the good of our troops?
Regarding this crazy secret CIA prison story, Varifrank reaches for the obscure "Village" reference first. Damn, i should have done that. [i'm such a sci-fi geek, i love that show. Best episode, The Schizoid Man.]
i've neglected to link the Cotillion Ball in a few weeks, so let me remedy that right now. This week's ball is over at Portia Rediscovered, a fellow Munuvian. i like all the pictures, way cool.
Any takers?
My blog is worth $305,980.68.
How much is your blog worth?
Via Old Skool at Stop the Bleating.
One of the central characteristics of the left is the ease with which they lie. A website whose purpose is to direct trolls to right wing blogs had this to say about me:
Annika’s Journal - This lovely lady says Al Gore is “fat†and “tacky†Possibly her body is thin, but her brain spews nothing but vile bile. I’m confident that she is as tacky as it gets.i once called Gore a "fashion disaster," but i never called him tacky. If you do a search using the search function at the bottom of my sidebar, you will easily find that the word "tacky" has never appeared on this blog before today.
Why lie, when the truth is so easy to find out? Because lefties know that most people won't go to the trouble to research things. This "tacky" lie is just a small example, but if you've been listening to the news lately you'll find many more examples of lefty lies that are much more disturbing.
It's also funny that my blog has been pigeonholed as a "right wing" blog. Sure i'm proudly conservative, but i don't blog about politics exclusively. Lately, i don't even think politics makes up half of what i write about. And how many right wing bloggers can say that they have turned over their blogs to left wing guest bloggers for a whole week, as i have. Twice.
You may also notice that it takes a heck of a lot for me to ban any troll, or to interfere in the comments section at all. Sometimes i think i should be more strict, but i truly believe in Ronald Reagan's precious ideal, "the marketplace of ideas." It's ironic that the one website which exhorts lefty trolls to go forth and comment, does not itself allow comments.
i like to think i do things differently here, but you wouldn't know it by reading what that lefty troll clearing-house blog says about me.
Hat tip to Six Meat Buffet.
... before somebody spoofed Bob Dylan's classic "Hurricane." Check out Mister Snitch's version. It's crazy good.
This week's Cotillion Ball is hosted by Beth at My VRWC, Sadie at Fistful of Fortnights, Soldier's Angel Holly Aho, SondraK at Knowledge Is Power and Jody at Steal the Bandwagon. There are many pictures, go to it!
When a blogger feels like she's down for the count, she should:
a) pick herself up, dust herself off, start all over again;
b) finally edit and post that Kill Bill 2 symposium she's been sitting on for-fucking-ever;
c) recycle old posts;
d) realize that she'll never be quite so charming, funny and cynical all at the same time as her idols Ginger, Candace or Dawn, then give up;
or
e) two words: sex blogging.
i took on a project at school that will me keep me very busy over the next several weeks, so posting will be sporadic. If you're hungry for poetry i'd suggest visiting the following fellow poetry lovers: Sarah or Sheila or Dymphna and the Baron (Get well soon, Dymphna) or CBass (The Mark Russell of the Blogosphere) or my buddy Matt or Jeff's Protein Wisdom, none of whom have any poetry posted today. However, you can always count on Hugo for great poems on Thursday. If you're coming here for a gun nut update, i should have one soon, but you might want to check out this gun quiz at Risawn's blog. (i recognized the BHP.)
Blogger has instituted a quasi-censorship program.
When a person visiting a blog clicks the "Flag?" button in the Blogger Navbar, it means they believe the content of the blog may be potentially offensive or illegal. We track the number of times a blog has been flagged as objectionable and use this information to determine what action is needed. This feature allows the blogging community as a whole to identify content they deem objectionable.This disturbing development is totally separate from their policy regarding spam blogs. This is much more big brotherish.
Blogger excuses this quasi-censorship by referring to the "Wisdom of Crowds" concept. That's complete bullshit. They might have an argument if they gave readers the option to designate a blog as "unobjectionable." But even that would be problematic, because it's always more likely that a offended person would be motivated to click on a flag than someone who's not offended by content. You're going to see a situation where hypersensitive people or those with intolerant political viewpoints will have a kind of "hecklers veto" on blog content.
This is a bad idea, and totally goes against what i thought was Blogger's most important asset, the total freedom it gave to its users. It's also an unnecessary idea. Blog readers have always had a remedy for objectionable content they might happen upon. It's called the back button. Blogger's "Flag Button" is the blogging equivalent of yelling "Mom!" everytime your brother calls you a ninny.
If someone doesn't like what i write for instance, they can always leave a comment, or email me, and then never visit again. If i want to post a picture of my left tit, i'm glad i have the freedom to do so without becoming some kind of second class blog-citizen.
We are up to $2,150 for hurricane relief, and the TTLB Board reads over 1.3 million dollars!
If you haven't contributed yet, jump on the bandwagon!
This week's Cotillion Ball is being held in four ballrooms at the very top of the Hotel Blogosphere. Besides this room, where i am your humble M.C., we have RightGirl, Merri Musings and Stacy, each of whom have wonderful festivities planned for today. As you stroll around the dance floor, i'd like you to imagine listening to the music of some great musicians from the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana. Foremost is of course Sachmo, whose version of "A Kiss To Build A Dream On" is one of the great classics of all time.
Crystal Clear deserves congratulations for having landed a dream job in Hawaii, not an easy state to make a living in. And she'll be doing good work, too.
[A]fter a great deal of soul-searching it really seemed to me that the consistent pattern and passion in my life has always been children and likely always will be serving the underserved children and watching out for the kids many people consider "throw aways".Yay Crystal!
Darleen has a provocatively titled post, "Jesus Was Not A Socialist."
No where in [Jesus'] teachings does one find a call that GOVERNMENT must use its power to redistribute property from the earners to the needers. Indeed, Jesus preached about the difference between the Government and individuals.Well said, Darleen.. . .
Socialism is not about individuals giving of their own earned property. It's about self-selected people of power deciding to fulfill their own desires with someone else's property taken by force.
Morality assumes choice. Socialism is a matter of, at best, amorality, because it robs people of choice.
Dr. Sanity discusses a common phenomenon many of us observe when trying to understand the leftist mind at work. It's called "denial."
When belief in any idea become a matter of faith--and one's own identity is defined by that faith--then the psyche will do anything necessary to distort or deny any truth that contradicts that belief.. . .
I fear that is the choice that those on the Left are making right now, although they like to imagine that those of us who are fighting against the new threats to human freedom and dignity are the ones suffering from delusion.
Claire has compiled a number of, let me say it, evil statements made by those on the left who like to trumpet their "compassion" so loudly. As i said in an earlier post of mine, tragedies like Katrina reveal character. In the aftermath of the hurricane, Claire addresses Jesse Jackson Jr's question, "Who are we to say what law and order should be in this unspeakable environment?"When all hell breaks loose, for some the niceties of self-disciplined social interaction disappear in a wash of mind-numbing fear and desperation. Others, realize that desperate times call for even more rigorous commitment to the principles of civilized behavior—that set of Values which makes a hellish situation infinitely more manageable.
Sadie: You believe that Joran Van der Sloot emailed you hours before he was arrested. What made these emails seem authentic?Dan: Joran or someone close to him - why else would someone go to the trouble? I thought maybe him and his Father together … the emails were written with some awareness of the law, as well as forming public opinion. That isn’t your average seventeen year old on his own.
Florida Cracker and her visitors raised an amazing $3,100 to help the animal victims of Hurricane Katrina. It's yet another example of the generous hearts out there in the blogosphere.
RightGirl has a beautiful post about the friends we make on-line, and the limitations of those friendships.
[E]very once in a while, you come across a person who touches you. You make a friend, and the boundaries of real life vs. internet blur a little at the edges. . . . You get caught up in their dramas: their joys and sorrows. Sometimes you prefer them to those real friends, because you don't know them well enough to know their ugly habits. . . . But when these people that you have come to hold as real suffer something large and devastating, you feel that pain, too. But because they are only 'imaginary,' there often isn't anything you can do. You can pray. You can try to reach out. But miles and boundaries get in the way. Sometimes, you just have to let them drop.
For the last time: You have a participatory form of government. PARTICIPATE. Or:"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are."
But then, the woman who wrote that was not a progressive, so we can ignore her.
And finally, KelliPundit, a Louisiana clinical pharmacist, tells of her frustrations dealing with various bureaucracies at the same time as she's trying to help hurricane refugees.Here's the largest, most profound problem recognized by all medical personnel yesterday: People needed to get prescriptions filled. Many are already in the system for state medicare or had private insurance - but didn't have 3 bucks for the co-pay. I see all of these corporations giving a million bucks in cash which is a good thing-but for at least one corporation out there I know of a great need that has not been met yet. But what we really, really needed was for a drug chain to step forward and volunteer to cover peoples co-pay for refugees. Can you imagine how many prescriptions could be filled with a one million dollar donation for co-pays?? Many, many of our problems would have been solved.
Just as Louisiana is a like a smorgasboard of great musicians, you can see that the Cotillion is a buffet of great blogging. Okay, that was a horribly lame analogy, but it's late and i think you get the picture.
P.S. i almost forgot everyone's favorite Louisiana musician/mom-to-be!
As a young Catholic School girl, i was taught that donations to charity should be made with humility. So, when i asked you all for help with the Blogathon for Hurricane Relief, i didn't put up a link to N.Z. Bear's Weblog Leader Board (which has tallied over $650,000 in contributions as of this writing.).
But, checking that leader board today, i was shocked to find that my name is on it, and that five of you have recorded your contributions with my blog as a reference! The total for annika's journal is $425!
It still amazes me that anyone even reads my bullshit, so i can't tell you how happy and grateful and proud i am, that in some small way this blog might be responsible for that kind of graciousness. Thank you so much! i think the Blogathon is clearly one of the true success stories to come out of this hurricane tragedy.
Let's keep it going!
Update: We're now up to $650!
Update 2: Wow, $1,150! You folks are incredible!
Remember that the crisis is not over. In fact, it's really just beginning. The population of a major city has picked up and scattered itself around the country. If you've ever lived on somebody's couch for an extended period, you know how unsettling that can be for all concerned. After a few weeks, these folks will really need the kind of help that charities like Catholic Relief can provide. So let's not forget about them, even if the media starts to lose interest.
"Poor Mike Myers. Look at his face. He looks like he's gonna hurl."Nice one, Michelle.
i wish i'd thought of that. The subtly obscure movie reference is supposed to be my bailiwick.
i'm reprinting the following request by Ken Wheaton in full. Please help if you can.
Understandably, sitting on the sidelines in New York and watching fellow Americans suffer is as frustrating as it is heart-breaking. Especially for those of us from Louisiana and living elsewhere, we want to do something more than just send money to the American Red Cross, with the vague sense of unease that it may get spent on a company car or a press release or a box of donuts at headquarters. And hopping in a rental car or on a plane is not only a direct violation of FEMA orders, but at this point, with gas as high as it is, it's prohibitively expensive, possibly dangerous and THAT money might be better spent on relief efforts.
So here's your chance to help one specific group of people. My friend Felicia, who you've read about in previous posts, is on a task force in St. Landry Parish, in Opelousas to be more precise. Opelousas, as many of you know, is my home town. There are currently a great deal of refugees who've ended up there--in the churches, in the shelters, in the Yambilee building, camping out in the parks--and they're going to need things.
For a closer look at what's going on in Opelousas and St. Landry Parish, check out The Opelousas Daily World.
So... Felicia is providing me and you with her home address. Care packages and checks specifically to help this group of people can be sent to her. Be sure to include a return address and your name.St. Landry Katrina Relief
c/o Felicia Mouton
1022 Eddins Avenue
Opelousas, LA 70570
Things that are needed
Felicia says that while you can send clothes and food, those things are generally accounted for. Instead, she says, sendbaby wipes, diapers, tampons, sanitary napkins, underwear, undershirts, Q-tips, cotton balls, dental floss, toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant, shampoos, soaps, etc....basically, anything you and I would by at Walgreen's for personal upkeep. These things are rarely thought of. The best way to purchase this kind of stuff is to actually in travel size so that individual packets can be given to people, and they don't have to share.
Also, anything for children, such as toys that don't necessarily have to be shared or want to be stolen, art paper, colors, coloring books, reading books...easy stuff. AND SCHOOL SUPPLIES! DON'T FORGET SCHOOL SUPPLIES!
In general, don't send anything worth money because in these type of shelters (well, in any that I've had to stay in/work in) things will be taken.
If you do want to send money, make checks payable to "Hurricane Katrina, St. Landry Parish Fund." From here on out, any money put into my PayPal account will go to this relief effort.
I would ask that anyone and everyone who reads my blog, who links to my blog, who has a home on my sidebar either contribute or at least provide a link to this post. Please. I'm begging here. Thank you all very much.
. . . Have a great Labor Day.
As you can see at the top of my sidebar, i have selected Catholic Charities for hurricane relief donation. Here's why i like them.
Louisiana is heavily Roman Catholic and i expect that many victims will rely on the Church for all sorts of help.
The Catholic Church is 2000 years old, it ain't going anywhere.
As i posted on Monday, Catholic Charities emphasizes long term recovery aid, and this disaster recovery will take a long time.
Catholic Charities is a separate entity from local archdioceses, and therefore there's no danger that my money might possibly be skimmed to pay for any scandal settlements. i would be uncomfortable donating through my own local parish's collection basket for that reason.
You don't have to donate to my chosen charity, but i'd encourage you not to wait if you haven't helped out yet. Pick a charity from N.Z. Bear's, Instapundit's, The Cotillion (Jody's), or The Bear Flag League's list and do what you can today.
Technorati tags: flood aid, Hurricane Katrina
Update: My Cotillion sister Sadie at Fistful of Fortnights is auctioning off two blog designs from Apothegm Designs, to benefit the American Red Cross or the Hurricane oriented charity of your choice.
Just scooting around the blogosphere this morning i have seen quite a contrast in approaches to the Hurricane tragedy. One group of bloggers, a large one, led by Hugh Hewitt among others, is concentrating on helping those in need. Another group of bloggers is holding another less organized blogburst, which can only be described as a "Blame Bush" blogburst.
Why am i not surprised.
Could this map provide a clue as to why certain bloggers don't seem to care about the victims of Hurricane Katrina?
Like they say, adversity reveals character. If the blogosphere is any indication, i think we're seeing a distinct revelation of character in the response to this disaster, and lack thereof.
It's all about priorities. Some see people in need, and their first thought is to ask "Who can I blame?" Others see a tragedy and immediately ask "How can I help."
The wonderful American Princess took it upon herself to do the whole Cotillion Ball this week. Having done one fourth of the hosting myself, i have to tip my hat to her, it is quite a task, and she did a great job. Go take a look at the best work from the members of the Cotillion here. And if i may highlight one selection, please don't miss Beth's retelling of her visit to Camp Reality in Crawford, Texas.
Some of you have emailed me with rejected comments. i don't know why they're being rejected, but it's not my doing and i have no control over the filter. It may have something to do with the recent mu.nu server problem and hopefully it will only be temporary. Feel free to email me with your compliments or vitriol, in the meantime.
Many thanks to Beth, Michelle and Basil for allowing the free trackbacks and links while Mu.nu was down.
Since the blog was unavailable for most of Tuesday, i will extend the Final Jeopardy deadline until 11:59 p.m. Pacific time, Thursday night. Or until all players have submitted their responses. Right now, we're still waiting for Charlie, Skippy and Jasen.
For future reference, my old Blogspot blog will be my backup blog. You can find it at http://annikagyrl.blogspot.com/ or just google "blogspot annika."
This Week's Cotillion Ball is hosted by the following ladies: Cassandra, who asks "what is it about boots?;" The American Princess, a hot chick with some hot cars; Soldiers' Angel - Holly Aho, who spotlights America's fighting women, and the lovely Fausta, of Bad Hair Blog, who never has a bad hair day, blogwise. As always, i encourage you to read these best posts of the last week from the top women bloggers around.
i took the California Handgun Safety Certificate written test last weekend and passed with flying colors. That means that the State of California has deemed me worthy to purchase a handgun within the next five years if i so choose.
The test is so easy even one of Victor's rats could pass it (assuming that Victor has taught them how to read, as i'm sure he has). But the State of California still got 25 bucks out of me for the privilege of taking the test.
Publicola fisked the test's review booklet and showed how, despite the simplicity of the questions, even an expert can have trouble. This sample question seems to have tripped him up:
Hmmm. They have a self test.Very funny.'Safety Rule Number Two is keep
the gun pointed:A. To the north.
B. In the safest possible direction.
C. Up.
D. Down.'Well being a Southerner I gotta go with A. . . . we never really trusted those damn yankees . . .
Publicola was also nice enough to answer two questions i posed to him:
if Cali does not have the worst gun laws in the country, who does? and on a related note . . . Are there any decently industrialized nations that recognize the rights of gun owners similar to or better than the US?You can read his answers here.
i discovered an interesting niche blog this morning, Boomer Deathwatch. It's about that old Gen X - Boomer antipathy. i consider myself a Gen Xer, so i can relate to a lot of it. Here's an excerpt from the top post:
In the meantime, I worked minimum wage jobs and buffed up my political and social paranoia, built out of bits and pieces of leftover 60s radical rhetoric. Reagan was evil; Thatcher was a witch; the CIA pulled the strings; the Joint Chiefs of Staff and their counterparts at the Kremlin were glaring at each other over some future battlefield, wracked with nervous ticks and drenched with booze-soaked flopsweat, and one day they'd go too far and blow us all to kingdom come. There was no good or evil, or it was all evil, or we all had the potential for good. I don't know, it changed all the time, depending on what I was reading.i was born later than the authors of this blog, so i don't have the same reference point they do on Carter, Punk, Disco, etc. (i read Douglas Coupland one night, yawned and promptly dismissed it.) But i get the whole "Boomers ruined it for us" meme.Then the 80s boom ended and the Wall fell and I finally got tired of being afraid and confused. More to the point, I got tired of letting fear and ignorance dictate how I saw the world, so I started reading books, some of which I didn't agree with at first. I stopped reading music magazines and started reading about economics, if only to find out just why all of the magazines I'd worked for as a freelance writer and photographer came and went in such regular cycles.
I was 'empowering myself'. Sure. Basically I was trying to peek my head up over the surging boomer crest ahead of me before the building echo wave behind me swept me down again. There had to be more to be seen or heard than the surging spectacle of sex, drugs and rock and roll that had been the backdrop for my whole life. If it looked like I'd never afford a house or a family, at least I wanted to know why I didn't die in a nuclear holocaust, or live in the Orwellian 'security state' of total surveillance and mind control that so many of my peers seemed to think was inevitable - indeed, already here, if you listened to many of them.
i remember when Time ran that cover story about Gen X back in the eighties and it wasn't too flattering. And this whole shit storm erupted about whether Gen Xers were slackers, and why the Boomers were so bitter about the next generation.
Then the conflict seemed to die down, sometime in the late nineties perhaps. Boomers started to realize with their mortality staring them in the face, that their entire life could not be the big self-indulgent youth movement they thought it would be. And that Gen-Xers weren't all lazy cynics, and they didn't necessarily want or need to follow in the Boomers' footsteps either.
By the way, i recently saw The Big Chill for the first time on DVD. i'd heard so much about that movie that i figured i was missing out for having never seen it. i was wrong. i didn't miss a darn thing.
Two years ago last Monday, i joined the Alliance of Free Blogs by posting a rousing call to arms which i'm reprinting below. Just cuz i like it.
To set the stage for those of you who don't remember the Great Blog War, it was Frank J of IMAO who whipped up a tongue-in-cheek battle* between him and Glenn Reynolds over something. i don't remember exactly what. But Frank came up with the idea for the Alliance and Susie and Harvey took it from there. After much hemming and hawing, i joined up in the following spectacularly pompous way.
Iacta Alea Est!
i don't like war. i hate war. Wars in general are bad for children and flowers and other living things. Therefore it is with great sorrow and great hand wringing and with pensive biting of lower lip that i must make the following announcement.
But before i do, let me just tell you that my friend Betty and i decided on an apartment and we signed a lease today! So i'll be moving into a place on the west side next month. It seems like a nice neighborhood and we got a pretty 2+2 with a balcony and lots of closet space.
But back to the grave decision, which has been made.
Like i said, i hate war. War is hell. All peace loving creatures hate war. My dog hates war. But i love dogs. Especially puppies. Which is one reason why i have made the following decision.
i ruminated long over this decision because, as i said, war is a bad thing. It's messy. One can get hurt if one gets involved in a war. And why get involved in one if one doesn't want to be one of the casualties?
But sometimes, one must stand up for principles and ideals, which transcend pure self interest or personal comfort.
i believe in certain undying principles of life. Undying principles that govern our universe. Certain principles that live on and should always live on. And God willing, these principles will live on. The principles of which i speak are those which all men and women of honor and righteousness believe and which, down throughout history, great nations have fought to uphold and have forgotten at their own peril.
i believe in principles such as this: that grammatical rules are not rules, but only guidelines. For instance, in the preceding paragraph, i twice failed to place a comma directly after the word "which." Does that make me a bad person? No, i think it does not.
i believe in other principles and ideals too. None jump out at me right now, but believe me, i do. i consider myself a person who lives by the principle of being principled. But those other principles really don't have anything to do with my big decision. Neither does the principle i just enumerated, for that matter.
Which brings me to the decision i have just decided on. Which is that, despite my aforementioned loathing for war, i have decided to move from a state of neutrality to a state of other-than-neutrality with respect to the darkening storm clouds of war and conflict that have recently been gathering over the horizon of this great blogosphere of ours.
As a humble footsoldier in this new war, i know not where Our Leader will send me. But i am willing to serve. After reading Our Great Leader's Call To Arms, i am ready -- more than ready -- to serve and to do what is necessary in order to secure for ourselves, and for our posteriors, those things that should be our birthright, whatever those things may be. And i am sure -- more than sure -- that Our Leader will tell us all about those things that we are fighting for in greater detail as this war commences.
Make no mistake. We are dauntless! Dauntless i say! We shall not be daunted. Nor shall we be vanquished. In fact, we are un-daunted and it is we who shall be doing the vanquishing, if any. And in time we shall win this conflict. The Enemy shall be daunted. He is the one who will be daunted and vanquished, or whatever. That i know.
For it is our cause, and our mission, and our victory that will drive us onward! Onward and upward onto ultimate glory and victory. A just and righteous victory, etc. etc. And to this sacred goal i pledge my honor, my wealth and my precious blog in so far as is necessary to acheive our most certain goal, as it may be demanded and directed or determined by Our Leader, within reason of course.
So, there you have it. i, annika, who value my independence and neutrality so highly. i who, like i said up there, hate war with an unmitigated passion (except for that little bit of time in grad school when i took those military history courses), have declared a side in this great upcoming and destructive conflict. No one can remain neutral for long. You are either with us or against us. i urge everyone reading this to join in this transcendent, noble cause.
And so it begins. i hereby cross the Rubicon by editing my blogroll!
Iacta alea est!
________________
* i just re-read a few of the comments to Frank J's initial blog war post. It's funny, Blackfive saying he joined because he only got 111 readers per day. Wow. Those were the old days, though it doesn't seem that long ago.
This week's Cotillion Ball is a lot of fun. RightGirl celebrates Elvis Presley, A Mom And Her Blog stirs up a hurricane, Mary Katharine Ham, who's been all over the place lately, presents some Hollywood leading ladies, and Not A Desperate Housewife shares some beauty tips, not that she needs any herself.
And finally, don't forget to check out the Bonfire Of The Vanities. i'm in it this "weak."
The Cotillion dance is being hosted this week by Baldilocks, Darleen's Place, Maxed Out Mama and Small Dead Animals. Always great stuff!
i have been remiss in not alerting you to Scorebard's Jeopardy game with a baseball/poetry theme over at Humbug Journal. The game is ongoing right now, and while Scorebard was inspired by the game here, his clues are much harder. i haven't gotten one yet.
This is my 1000th post as a Munuvian. Let's celebrate!
Don't forget to check out the Cotillion Ball, hosted this week by Sissy Willis, Portia Rediscovered, Ilyka Damen and KelliPundit.
Right Wing News had a poll of conservative bloggers to select the "Least Favorite People On The Right." the results were:
18) Tom Tancredo (4)i voted for Pat, and i'm glad to see he's number one. That guy is so anti-semitic, i can't believe they ever allow him on tv. Savage is an annoying freak. When he rants, he makes Buchanan seem reasonable. But while Savage is still a bigot, at least on the subject of Israel we see eye-to-eye.
18) Ralph Reed (4)
18) Newt Gingrich (4)
18) Lincoln Chafee (4)
18) James Dobson (4)
18) George Pataki (4)
18) Arnold Schwarzenegger (4)
14) Tom DeLay (5)
14) Rush Limbaugh (5)
14) George Voinovich (5)
14) Chuck Hagel (5)
13) Andrew Sullivan (6)
11) Tucker Carlson (7)
11) Bob Novak (7)
9) Sean Hannity (8)
9) Rick Santorum (8)
8) Arlen Specter (10)
7) Jerry Falwell (15.5)
6) Bill O'Reilly (16)
5) Michael Savage (17)
4) Pat Robertson (19.5)
3) Ann Coulter (20)
2) John McCain (21)
1) Pat Buchanan (28)
i don't understand why so many people voted for McCain, Specter, Hagel, Voinovich, Chafee and Andy Sullivan. i thought the question was to vote for your least favorite person on the right. i didn't vote for them because it never crossed my mind that they were conservatives. McCain has his moments, but the rest of those people are to the left of Hillary Clinton. The new Hillary, that is.
My submissions were these guys:
The aforementioned Michael Savage and Pat Buchanan.
Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson who've done more to empower the ACLU than anyone in America. i added Dr. Dobson, who is the new Jerry Fallwell. He bugs the crap out of me. i heard him talk about the fillibuster controversy, and he really shouldn't ever talk politics. His grasp of constitutional history is at about eight grade level. i was like, "thanks for the effort doc, but we'll take it from here."
Rick Santorum. Bigot. Stuck his foot in his mouth too many times, and he'll continue to do so. If he get's nominated, say hello to America's first woman president.
Tucker Carlson, milquetoast. He's mis-labeled as a conservative, but he's an empty shell; the Alan Colmes of the right. Like Pat Buchanan he's a media darling because he's anti-war. Otherwise, nobody'd ever let him near a tv studio because he's un-watchable. Un-watchable.
Bob Novak, never liked him. Yah, i know he's a legend, but his best days ended before i was born. And i'm saying this totally exclusive of the whole Plamegate involvement thing. He pretty much mails it in nowadays. Much like i do on this here blog.
My last choice was kind of mean, but what the hell: Paul Harvey. He's like that old crotchety grampa that you love to death, but somebody should really take the keys away; you know what i mean? Don't get me wrong, i'm glad Paul Harvey's out there because a lot of people get their politics solely from his little blurbs. But i started changing the channel when i hear him on the radio. Too many times i got pissed at myself for wasting three minutes of my precious radio listening time with that bs.
And now you know the rest of the story.
Good day.
Check this out. lol!
a natural reaction to the self induced and largely imaginary pressures of blogging . . . an undertaking which was totally voluntary and which does not directly contribute to his or her continued survival, on this, our planet earth.Via Dawn.
[That's a Cole Porter reference, by the way.]
i'll be busy again today, so look for poetry tonight.
In the meantime, read this fantastic post from Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna.
What an honor it is to host this week's Cotillion Ball, along with Dr. Sanity, RightGirl, and Beth of My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
Week in and week out, i am amazed at the talent to be found in the links of the Cotillion Ball, and this week is no different.
At my corner of the Ball, a costume theme in honor of our friends and allies, the people of Great Britain. And in honor of these grand ladies of the blogosphere, enjoy a little bit of British fashion history while you peruse the links.
While we're talking fashion, Holly of Soldiers' Angel is providing cute barefoot sandals and her original artwork out of the generosity of her heart to members of the military. She's given away over 200 miniature paintings so far, and has received many gracious thank-yous from servicewomen who appreciate a gift of somthing girlie.
In the "great minds think alike department," i was happy to find a kindred spirit in Jody of Steal the Bandwagon on the subject of the death penalty. Jody explains her change of heart regarding that touchy subject thusly:
At first it sounds great. Sure, you have so little regard to human life to take someone else’s life? Fine. Say hello to Mr. Sparky. And for most of my life this is how I have regarded the death penalty.Like Jody, it was also the Groningen Protocol story, along with Terri Schiavo's death that made me seriously question my support for the death penalty. i just don't know anymore if human beings and human institutions can be trusted with the power to decide who lives and who should die.But I am beginning to wonder if putting to death anyone can fit into my personal ideology. I am adamantly against abortion and euthanasia. The act of willfully taking another’s life devalues human life. The story last [year] regarding the newborns being euthanized in a Dutch hospital made me shudder. Imagine where life is so unvalued that a doctor is allowed to take it?
Zendo Deb of TFS Magnum found a site that has some very interesting and provocative information about self-defense, along with some cool graphics. Check out "Two ways to shield yourself from a violent attack." It's an effective way to get across a very simple yet important message. Go visit Deb and follow her link to A-Human-Right.com. Ladies especially should pay close attention to the page entitled "Stay Safe."
Michigander E. M. Zanotti of The American Princess thinks a man named Ted might be a good choice to replace governor Jennifer Granholm. No, not Kennedy... Ted Nugent.
No. I am not kidding.And let's not forget how he warned America about the dangers of Cat Scratch Fever, so many years ago. i'd vote for him.Yes, sir. The Nuge, the Motor City Madman, may be throwing his camouflage cowboy hat with the real 'coon tail into the ring to take on the Moled Wonder.
. . .Not that the Nuge isn't qualified, he's written for more than 40 publications and is author of 'God, Guns and Rock n’ Roll,' 'Kill It and Grill It' and the newly released 'BloodTrails II.' He’s serving his fourth term on the National Rifle Association’s board of directors, and is president of the Ted Nugent United Sportsmen of America. And if that wasn’t enough, his No. 1 voted hunting show 'Spirit of the Wild' on the Outdoor Channel. He's the national spokesman for D.A.R.E. and he's got a solid political outlook . . .
i already alerted you to The Anchoress's blog post about the 1999 ABC News report that, quite beyond belief, completely contradicts the standard MSM line about any pre-war connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq. This post is the type of stuff that makes The Anchoress one of those blogs you should check daily as you're taking that first sip of coffee.
The same is true for Fausta's Bad Hair Blog. She implores us to focus like a laser beam on the real scandal confronting us all:
There is ONE, and I repeat, ONE pressing issue of our times: we are at war. Not a 'little' war in a far-away place, but an assault on all civilisation The Democrats simply don't have a clue as to what to do about that.Absolutely. Fausta also forsees a change in France. Who is this man Nicholas Sarkozy, and can he save the Republic?And that's the real scandal.
Denita of Who Tends The Fires describes what it's like to live along the Gulf Coast during hurricane season.
All along the Coast a person can see the legacy of numberless hurricanes. No structure is without its scars and replaced siding, with holes pocking the window frames where plywood was hastily thrown up to protect the glass. Only those houses that were built during the more peaceable Winter are pristine and untouched--and it's a sure bet that they'll no longer be virginal within a couple years.Also (if we can talk fashion again for a moment) do go over to Denita's friend Sandra's eBay shop. Mention Denita and get a $3 discount!
Children are not luggage. That may seem like an obvious point, but some folks apparently need to be reminded of the child/luggage dichotomy. Beth at Yeah, Right, Whatever has the details.
Imagine for a moment that you're a mom with a dilemma. You have to get your kids to their dad's home several states away. Your car will not fit them all. What do you do?Amazing what some people think is proper parenting these days.Here's a hint- you DON'T put your kids in the frickin' trunk!
2004 Weblog Award winner and Cotillion blogger Kate of Small Dead Animals is a great place to get a conservative's perspective on Canadian politics. Mary Katharine Ham of Townhall.com shares a great bit of family history involving the mighty 8th AAF. And pretty much everything at Villainous Company is always worth linking to; here she exhorts WaPo columnist Richard Cohen to stop lying.
i hope you enjoyed the Ball. Please go check out the rest of the links at Dr. Sanity's, RightGirl's, and Beth's
Want a laugh? Go check out the comments to what has become my most popular post ever: "My E-Mail To L!nds@y Loh@n."
Lately, every couple of days someone has been commenting to that post. i guess google searches for L!nds@y have increased since the Herbie movie came out, and my site pops up as the number seven result in a search for the sudden waif's e-mail address.
Most of the people who arrive and comment do not seem to have a clue, and think that i am either L!inds@y herself, or a close friend of hers. It's funny. For instance, this chick thinks L!nds@y is in the habit of giving her phone number out to random strangers:
Dear Lindsay or whoever is reading,Strange.
Hey, what's up? I would like to know more about Lindsay Lohan. If anyone know her phone no & e-mail or one of them pls give it to me.If this e-mail reads it lindsasy lohan ,can u give me your phone no & e-mail pls. Thanks . Bye
Here's someone who took my satirical post way too seriously.
u honestly think Lindsay would respond to that.. and wat makes u think tht by telling her u noe a cool guy shes gonna care.Well, my post may have been satire, but i wasn't lying when i said that L!nds@y would totally dig on Ken Wheaton, if she only met him.
My post has become a discussion board of sorts for a totally different audience, most likely international, and very obviously young. i am beginning to worry about the state of English language education in the world, now that i've seen a sampling of what passes for spelling and grammar.
well i thing lindsay is the best actris in the world .and herbie fully loaded is the greatest movoe i ever saw. all the movies of linsay i h ave saw but i just want to know if anybody has her email adress i will be great to have it thanks byeCrikey! i have to admire anyone with the intestinal fortitude to sit through the entire L!nds@y oeuvre. What fascinating conversations one might have. i imagine they might go like this, for instance:
"i love how the auteur combines editing and cinematography in idiosyncratic ways as a commentary on outmoded concepts of "reality" [here make the "quote" gesture with fingers] utilizing both the explicit and implicit narrative meanings in the film Freaky Friday."
"Oh yes, but the subtlety of The Parent Trap is at once delicious and painful as an expression of ambivalent attitudes toward the ideological issue of violence, drawing upon conventions of cinematic realism to characterize the plot structure and mise-en-scene exposition of theme and characters."
"Exactly. I wept."
But most of the comments contain the same question: "How can i get in touch with L!nds@y?" Since i have been silent on the matter, as i can't answer that question, other commenters have offered their advice.
I have several adresses thay all clame to be lindsays I emailed her about amillion times I have mary kate and ashleys but who knows if they are real.Now there's a question i can answer. They are not real. All four are fake. And spectacular, from what i hear.
i will be pretty busy today, so Poetry Wednesday will be posted later today.
Meanwhile, check out some of the great blogs on my sidebar. Like Little Miss Attila, who wrote something recently that i can totally relate to:
as I tick down the list of things I'm interested in: cars, trains, guns, military strategy. Motorcycles.i hear ya, girl. My list includes airplanes, military history, sports, action movies, and science fiction. i should have been a boy.I'm clearly not a middle-aged woman, but rather a 16-year-old boy trapped in a middle-aged female body.
This week's Cotillion Ball, highlighting the best women bloggers around (minus one), is being hosted at the following wonderful sites:
Feisty Repartee
Sisu
Villianous Company
Sissy Willis describes the Cotillion like this:
Then there are the Ladies of the Cotillion. Hold the door for one of them as a courtesy, and she'll flash you a dazzling smile. But sign her dance card, and you'd better have your wits about you. She adores a rousing debate at least as much as a fling around the dance floor and does not suffer fools gladly. The blogosphere is littered with the corpses of lesser word warriors' debating points.Get in on the Instalanche.
And speaking of -lanches, Hello to all Rodger fans!
Old media cartoonists should know better than to talk smack about the blogosphere. The consistently readable Varifrank delivers a well-deserved bitchslap to Gary Trudeau and a whole demographic.
that’s ok Gary. My generation will be here after yours is soon gone to write the legacy of your lives. That is our revenge. We get to be the ones to tell your tale. And I do admit your generation did do one thing right, it created the internet.i know a lot of people who stopped reading Doonesbury back in the eighties. i'm proud to say i never read that shit.Thanks man! You just gave the power of the press, once just reserved for people like yourself, to average wingnuts like me. "Power to the people" isn’t that how the song used to go? Well here it is baby!, only it seems that your generation really didn’t mean "power to the people" it really meant "power only to people who think just like us". Whoopsie Daisy! I guess that didn’t work out quite like you planned either. Is there anything your generation worked on that did work out? Well, yeah, The Internet. Now chock full of those people you and your cartoon now decry as 'unemployed losers'. Its funny the way you say it just like your parents called the people in your generation "in need of a haircut and a bath".
And my generation is now exploiting the internet. Did I say "Exploit"? Shall we call it what it is? Let's call it a revolution!( quick, get that Beatles record, where’s that "you say you want a revolution"- I so want to rip that to an MP3 and provide a link right here.) And since were throwing metaphors around, Those "barbarians at the gates" that you are hearing? Those "barbarians" are people like me, who can reach more people in an afternoon than you could do in the first 10 years of your underground 'fighting against the man' career. Only we aren’t underground, were that 'evil middle class' America you railed so much about when you still had hair on your head and not in your ears. Thanks to your generation, we don’t have to go through people you to talk to each other any more. We control the means of production comrade.
The 'silent majority' just got High Speed Wireless Broadband baby, and if you were part of my generation, you’d know what that meant.
Varifrank, on a roll now, continues:
We don’t think America is a bad place. We think its a pretty damn nice place. We cant help but notice the people that risk their lives to come here are all smiling when the arrive, almost as if they were happy to be here. Imagine that! Perhaps they haven’t been reading your cartoon or listening to Air America. Maybe if we put Al Franken on the Air in Tijuana, that might stop the illegal immigration problem( oh if only we could warn them Gary, if only...) We don’t need to translate Air America to Spanish, the language of the upper class yellow coward is universal around the world. The only people we see in this country who stagger around unhappily are ones with the Kerry/Edwards bumper stickers on their cars. Maybe the new car smell in Volvos isn’t quite as country fresh as it is in our hummers...Insert "not all baby-boomers are leftists" disclaimer here. Of course, the generation that gave us the "make love not war" slogan does have an unfortunate reputation to live down.We don’t think the military are baby killers. We honor our troops, We honor the past, We honor the dead. We respect the living. My generation didn’t need a draft, it volunteered! 'Greatest Generation'? Well, we think that gene skipped a generation. Your generation wants to lay prostrate at the feet of those who killed innocent people in Manhattan, wants to equate Mohammed Attas soldiers in Guantanmo to the likes of Martin Luther King in a Birmingham jail. This generation has given its life to go kill those who killed us and to help spread the liberty of democracy, yes - I said it, liberty , Democracy AND YES, FREEDOM to those who are enslaved. Your generation sneers at the very idea of such a thing. Your generation thinks the only thing the world needs to be liberated from is us. You think that because some of us don’t want to have our tax money go to 'piss christ' that we don’t have freedom, while women who were shot in the back of the head for kite flying in Afghanistan wonder just what the hell your generation is talking about.
i really believe that a lot of liberal mischief is the result of an ill-conceived nostalgia for the sixties. The press believes that their high water mark was toppling Nixon. When in fact, Nixon toppled himself. But they desparately want to do it again. And to the old media, if truth gets in the way, fuck the truth. They want another Nixon.
The anti-war left is the same way. Young activists, trained in the crucible of our universities by former hippies who think they "stopped the war, man," want nothing more than to do it again. Never mind that Nixon stopped the war, not the activists. (As Michael Medved is fond of pointing out, the giant anti-war demonstrations all but evaporated after Nixon ended the draft. Even as the war continued.)
Listen, i went to Berkeley. If there's one drumbeat that you hear all through undergrad there, it is this: Make a difference. Sounds great, but the thrust of that imperative is limited and obvious once you spend a few semesters there. "Making a difference" is narrowly defined not as "having a family," "raising good children," or "contributing to society in a constructive way." It's defined as a blind opposition to anything traditional. "Tear it all down, man."
Trouble is, that sentiment is in itself traditional. Yes, traditionally Marxist.
Link via Dymphna at Gates of Vienna.
From Moonbat Central:
Incredibly, the British press is actually using the 'T' word. Yes, they are referring to the London Underground perps as terrorists. Why is this so unusual? Because the British media have been religiously scrupulous in referring to all terrorists and mass murderers who attack Jews as 'activists' and 'militants'.Read the rest. Link thanks to Lonely Thinker.. . .
It was suddenly not a legitimate form of protest against occupation to mass-murder civilians. The British newspapers did not not issue special editions documenting the abuses of human rights by Britain, nor bemoan the 'grievances' of those angry at the UK. Not a single Euro-politician made a speech denouncing the illegal British occupations of the Channel Islands and Gibraltar.
. . .
And the BBC has not demanded that the Brits re-examine their own behavior, to discover which manifestation of their arrogance provoked the Al-Qaida savages.
. . .
There were no protests against British plans to implement 'profiling' at its airports and train stations. . . . Human rights groups did not demand that any captured subway terrorists be treated as prisoners of war with full Geneva Convention privileges and good lawyers.
Check out what the girls of the Cotillion are doing at this week's Ball.
Dance over to the following sites:
The Anchoress
Little Miss Attila
Charmaine at Reasoned Audacity
Jody at Steal The Bandwagon
We're a week away from the All-Star break, and i'm sure everybody's wondering how annika's A's are doing in annika's own fantasy baseball league, MLBloggers.
i suck.
Every other owner has been in first at least once. i've set a record for being in last place the most consecutive weeks.
Yep, pretty much all of them.
i drafted poorly. i built my team around Eric Gagné, who went on the DL almost immediately, came back briefly, and is out again. i got no runners except for Podsednik, with his sub-par offensive stats.
But that's only for starters.
i'm in the bottom three in the following stats: runs, home runs, runs batted in, stolen bases, batting average, on base percentage, wins, saves, strikeouts, earned run average and walk+hit ratio.
Yep, pretty much all of them.
i'm even behind Ted, who doesn't even like baseball. i'm way behind gcotharn, and he's never played fantasy baseball before. (In fact, gcotharn is in first place!)
Victor and Matt tried to help me out with some very generous trades, and yet i still suck. While Dawn and The Maximum Leader never make a roster change and they're beating me.
i'm losing to Paul, who apparently gave up his blog so he could devote more time to kicking my ass!
Even a Geek knows more about baseball than i do.
It's hard to believe, but i'm even losing to a bunch of Zombies and Rats.
Yes, as Charlie Brown said: Rats.
A salute to Milbloggers.
Throughout our nation's great history, patriotic ladies on the homefront have always stood behind our fighting men (and now women) 110%. From Betsy Ross and Clara Barton to Rosie the Riveter and the Gold Star Moms, American women have felt pride in each victory and grieved each tragic loss as our nation's military stood guard over our freedoms.
Here on the blogosphere, the ladies of The Cotillion are no different. For this year's July 4th celebration, we are highlighting some of the great Milbloggers, current and former military men and women, who have kept us all so well informed in this age of media bias.
euphoricReality
euphoricReality’s tagline is “Because truth is more important than popularity,†which is a fitting motto for any milblogger.
The four bloggers who run this site are Kit Jarrell, an Air Force veteran who served in Bosnia; Kit’s husband Corey "The Marine," who served three years in the USMC’s elite Marine Security Guard Battalion; former Army Airborne veteran and history buff Heidi Theiss; and finally guest writer Andi (who has her own blog), a veteran of the storied 2nd Armored Division.
euphoricReality does a great service by regularly highlighting some of our American Heroes like Gunnery Sergeant Nick Popaditch, for whom we should all give thanks.
Today, Heidi has posted a 4th of July Tribute featuring some beautiful songs of patriotism that mean a lot to her. They may bring a tear to your eye. And so may Kit Jarrell's update on the missing Recon team in Afghanistan. The media has reported their loss so matter-of-factly, that we tend to forget how much we owe to men like these. Kit names them, and reminds us not to forget them:
As you enjoy your holiday today, take a moment to remember these men and their sacrifice. Don’t just say you will and forget as soon as you get out to your patio. Really stop. Think about what they gave so you can throw some fat steaks on your grill, hoist a beer, and spend time with family and friends.When you’re done doing that, say a prayer for the families of these men. Their barbecues and family reunions will never be complete again.
Stryker Brigade News
The Stryker Brigade News blog is a site run by a group of volunteers, all of whom have friends or family serving in the Army's Stryker Brigade Combat Teams. As you all know, the Stryker is a wheeled armored combat vehicle, and this blog contains a great many Stryker related photographs, some very artistic.
Last October, one of Stryker Brigade News' contributors became personally acquainted with the price of war. Mike Oreskovic's son Michael was severely injured in a car bomb attack only a week before he was scheduled to come home. The blog has continued to update regularly on Mike's recovery since then. Most recently Mike was featured in a Washington Post article as one of several veterans who attended this weekend's reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg. The full article is very much worth reading.
Brain Shavings
Representing the United States Coast Guard in the ranks of Milbloggers is Puddle Pirate of Brain Shavings. The Pirate has a novel idea on how property owners can insulate themselves from eminent domain seizures in the post-Kelo era.
Let's say that you own some attractive real estate that your local government wants to take from you through eminent domain. To foil their plans you enter into a contract with the state government, where in exchange for a fee, the state automatically takes title to your property if your municipal or county government ever attempts to condemn it, and you get to live on the land. Perhaps it could be set up as a trust with the state as trustee.Interesting idea. Brain Shavings has been all over the Kelo story with insight and good humor.Anyway, since a local government doesn't have the authority to condemn state property, they lose all incentive to condemn your property once you tell them about your new arrangement. If the condemnation would be for a true public use (as we used to understand it) like building a highway or a bridge, you can always put a clause in the contract that exempts such true public uses from triggering the passage of title to the state.
doubleplusgood infotainment
doubleplusgood infotainment has been a long time fixture on my own blogroll. Its proprietor, JCrue, is a retired Marine who blogs from Reno, Nevada. i like his tagline: "Freedom of speech makes it much easier to spot the idiots."
Being from Nevada and all, JCrue has a special incentive to keep an eye on the disgrace that is our Senate Minority leader. He pulls no punches either.
Screw you, Harry. I saw what Carter did to our nation and I saw what Clinton refused to do for our country and I have to say, you and your fellow party members are at least dedicated to the same cowardice those two were.Also, JCrue reminds us to continue sending messages of thanks and support to our troops by clicking here.When the troops begin to believe the (D) party supports them and no longer hears your party's words on al-Jazerra as evidence of dissent and used as anti-American propaganda, then maybe, just maybe, I will start to believe what you have to say. But only when the men and women serving overseas believe without reservation and are confident in their daily tasks that you, the (D) party, and the entire nation stands behind them, your words sound hollow.
ARMOR GEDDON
ARMOR GEDDON is a fabulous blog, run by Neil Prakash who is currently stationed in Germany after a tour in Iraq commanding an M1 Abrams tank. It's a relatively new blog, which he started at the urging of his friend Sarah of Trying to Grok. (Sarah's husband served alongside Neil in Iraq.)
Neil's blog contains some of the best war writing of any Milblogger around. Seriously. He's funny, he explains things well, and he has a great eye for the details of a tanker's life. You really get an insight into both day-to-day life and the exhilaration of combat. Neil's posts about the battles of Fallujah and Baqubah are worth reading from beginning to end. He should think about contacting a literary agent someday.
Not to be missed are ARMOR GEDDON's collection of video clips from Iraq. His latest is a montage of footage related to a few IEDs his platoon found on Election Day in Iraq. It's a mini-movie, complete with explanatory footnotes in this post. Great stuff, if you have broadband. Even if you don't, it's totally worth waiting for on dial-up. Trust me. Turn up the volume and enjoy the fun.
So, from annika's journal a very special Thank You goes out to all Milbloggers and every member and veteran of our armed services: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard. Thank you for watching our backs on this Fourth of July and on every day of the year. We owe you a great debt, and we'll keep you all in our prayers.
Please also go check out the other Milblogger tributes filed by the wonderful ladies of the Cotillion.
Happy Fourth!
The purpose of this blog is to:
1. Bloviate.
2. Increase awareness and appreciation of good poetry.
3. Make fun of people, especially celebrities.
4. Interact with like-minded folks.
5. Promote my own ego-satisfaction.
It is not the purpose of this blog to:
1. Present ironclad arguments in favor of my stated positions, although i sometimes try to do that.
2. Regurgitate the party line, as all long-time visitors should know.
3. Sacrifice honesty to the god of consistency or slay the demon of fallacious reasoning, although i tend to favor those ideals.
4. Be nice, although i often am.
5. Promote your agenda; your website; your point of view; or your online gambling/porn/prescription drug scam.
i've successfully avoided posting a Statement of Blog's Purpose for over two years, but i think its time has come. i'm sick of people telling me what i should and shouldn't do with my own bandwidth. [Well... Pixy's bandwidth.] If i want to make fun of Lindsay Lohan, i will. If i want to do a non-religious post on Easter Sunday, i will. If i want to drop a subtle hint that i might not be celibate, i fucking will. If i want to run your ass out of the comments because i don't like you for no good reason at all, i will. Even though i almost never do that, i reserve any and all rights.
That is all.
More: Wow. i thought i was pissed off. Check out Beth. Right on girl!
At the risk of being accused as a mindless parroter of conservative talking points, let me quote Jeff Goldstien's deconstruction of the "chickenhawk meme," which is so clever i plan to adopt it and mindlessly parrot it all over fucking creation.
HOWS THAT ASSSHOLE?! THAT FUCKING PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE ENOUGH FOR YOU YOU PRETENTIIOUS HYPOCRITICAL DICK?!!
[N.B. The above flip-out was directed at a troll, not you, Jeff.]
But i digress. Here's the quote:
Sadly, the chickenhawk argument, though logically puerile, can prove quite rhetorically effective—in the same sense that charges of homophobia and racism have proven effective in debates over gay marriage and government funded affirmative action programs: such charges, cynically delivered, tend to stifle substantive discourse, forcing one side of the argument onto the defensive by changing the focus of the debate from the issues themselves to the character of certain professors of those issues—and in that regard, they help to sustain the status quo.Well put, indeed.The bottom line is, the chickenhawk argument is an impediment to legitimate discourse and debate—and legitimate discourse and debate over national security is a necessity in a free society; and for that reason, those who raise the chickenhawk argument should be treated by everyone—right and left—as intellectual pariahs.
. . .
The gist of most of the 'arguments' in support of the [chickenhawk] meme’s righteousness is that people so willing to speak vociferously in favor of the war should put their money where their mouths are—and merely advocating for the cause doesn’t count. Which means, of course, FDR should’ve strapped on a helmet, picked up a rifle, and had one of his aides wheel his crippled ass in front of a Panzer. BECAUSE OF THE HYPOCRISY!
Please check out this week's Cotillion Ball, hosted by the following lovely and talented ladies:
Rightwingsparkle
Not a Desperate Housewife
Maxed out Mama
Janette and Jody
This is some of the best stuff on the blogosphere, so don't miss it.
And while i'm at it, please go to fellow Munuvian Oddybobo's blog and read "I've Been Thinking, and That Is Bad!" Her thoughts on the Supreme Court are so close to mine, that i don't need to do that anti-establishment clause post i was going to do. Now i can take the night off, thanks Bobo!
i wanted to see what bloggers were saying about the death of 58 year old Wal-Mart heir and Silver Star awardee, John Walton. He died in Wyoming today, when his experimental ultra-light crashed.
i looked up "John Walton" on Technorati and saw a pretty disgusting LiveJournal entry by a "blogger" (LJ blogs aren't real blogs, as you all know.) whom i won't link to. This ignorant bitch requires registration to read her drivel, so i couldn't read the whole entry. But the Technorati robot pulled this quote, which was quite enough:
The 11th richest asshole in the world ($18 billion) was killed in some kind of plane crash in Wyomning. John Walton (of Walmart), 53, is plunging towards the bowels of hell at this very moment.John Walton, was more than just the world's eleventh richest man. He was a Green Beret medic in Vietnam, who received his Silver Star "for helping save the lives of several members of his unit while under intense enemy fire." i wonder if that LiveJournal bitch was aware of that.
Like most Americans with his kind of wealth, Mr. Walton was known as a philanthropist. The foundation he ran donated over 700 million dollars to education related causes over the last six years. i wonder how much LiveJournal bitch has contributed to charity.
Oh annika, you don't understand; the Waltons are rich, conservative, anti-union and Christian, so that makes them the embodiment of evil.
[As i continue to bang my head against the wall.]
Update: Zombyboy plumbs the depths of depravity known as the Democratic Underground, where many comments are in a similar, bigoted and hateful vein.
Doug Tennapel interviewed United States Air Force Major Steven A. Givler, who served during both Iraq wars as an intelligence officer.
Some highlights:
As far as ethics and rules of engagement are concerned, we take greater pains than any military in the world to safeguard civilian life. We actually incur a good deal of risk in order to avoid hurting people or damaging property. People don’t realize what a change this is from how war has been waged throughout history. Civilian populations have always born the brunt of war, and suffered from the after effects. Look at WWII.To destroy a single factory in Germany we might have had to destroy the entire city surrounding it, just because of the inaccuracy of our weapons. In Japan, we had to destroy even more because of Japan’s decentralized industries. In Iraq though, I stood on a bridge that had been destroyed with a single laser-guided bomb. The mosque next to the bridge was completely unscathed. We could have carpeted the entire area with a B-52 full of dumb bombs from a safe altitude, but instead we sent in a fighter that risked surface to air fire just so we could be precise and spare any unnecessary damage. This in spite of the fact that our enemy makes no distinction between military and civilian, and has time and time again, used mosques and churches for military purposes such as fighting positions or places for hiding weapons caches.
. . .
When I see those 'war is not the answer' bumper stickers, I always wonder 'what was the question?' Because maybe we’re talking different questions. Certainly, if the question is 'What do you do about a group of men who believe in slavery, who are completely dedicated to killing every one of us, and who cannot be negotiated with,' the war is definitely the answer.
People with those bumper stickers remind me of people who think meat comes from a grocery store. They have completely forgotten that something had to die in order for them to eat, and before it found its way to that sterile Styrofoam tray, that steak went through a very messy process. They have forgotten too, that our founding fathers said that occasionally the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots. It amazes me that they seem unaware that, were it not for war, their bumper stickers, if they were allowed to have them, would be printed in German, or Japanese, or Russian. War, and our success at it, is precisely what has earned them the freedom to be so naïve.
Unfortunately, the world is an imperfect place. Evil exists. Some people are so given over to it that there is nothing else that can be done with them other than to kill them. I know this is difficult for some people to believe. I wish I could show them what I’ve seen, like the Brothel Palace, outside of Baghdad, where Saddam and his friends imprisoned women they kidnapped off the streets. Or maybe I could introduce them to Iraqis who were forced to watch their family members fed feet-first (to prolong the suffering) through plastic shredders. Maybe that would change their minds, but probably not. That’s alright. I’ve been there. I know that 5 million Iraqis owe their freedom to a war fought for them by Americans. I know that for them, war has definitely been the answer.
Congratulations to the 250,000th visitor to my site. You found me via a google search for "sex poems." i'd call you a perv, except that my site comes up as the number two link for "sex poems," so what does that say about me?
Over at The Sheila Variations, there's a very interesting excerpt from the book Dot.Con: How America Lost Its Mind and Money in the Internet Era, by John Cassidy. Here's an excerpt from the excerpt:
On the morning of March 30, 10 million shares of Priceline.com opened on the Nasdaq National Market under the symbol PCLN. They were issued at $16 each, but the price immediately jumped to $85. At the close of trading, the stock stood at $68; it had risen 425 percent on the day. Priceline.com was valued at almost $10 billion -- more than United Airlines, Continental Airlines, and Northwest Airlines combined.Crazy stuff. Here's a graph of Priceline's wild fortunes.. . .
Priceline.com started operating on April 5, 1998. By the end of the year it had sold slightly more than $35 million worth of airline tickets, which cost it $36.5 million. That sentence bears rereading. Here was a firm looking for investors that was selling goods for less than it had paid for them -- and as a result had made a trading loss of more than a million dollars. This loss did not include any of the money Priceline.com had spent developing its Web site and marketing itself to consumers. When these expenditures were accounted for, it had lost more than $54 million. Even that figure wasn't what accountaints consider the bottom line. In order to persuade the airlines to supply it with tickets., Priceline.com had given them stock options worth almost $60 million. Putting all these costs together, the company had lost more than $114 million in 1998.
How could a start-up retailer that was losing three dollars for every dollar it earned come to be valued, on its first day as a public company, at more than United Airlines, Continental Airlines, and Northwest Airlines put together?
Big time Munuvian Rusty has an excellent post that examines three questions:
What exactly is a gulag and how widespread was the gulag system? What were the Soviet gulags like? And how do the worst and yet unproven allegations of abuse at Guantanomo Bay compare to what happened in Soviet gulags?It's amazing to me, how the Amnesty idiots could make such a comparison, and stand by it. No one who has read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich would say that. It's not like Solzhenitsyn's book is that long. It's only 142 pages. i read it on an airplane flight years ago.
Mark Nicodemo writes in the comments section to the preceding post, "She must be a law student with that arrogance." i figured Mark was talking about me, since Shelly is actually short for Sheldon, and also since i have been attracting well-meaning criticism like flies lately. Turns out he was probably referring to Shelly, but still, the attribution of "arrogance" to moi is not undeserved. Especially in regards to my writing style.
But, to be more accurate, it's not arrogance that you find in my writing, it's what i call a certain casual pedantry, or even more accurately, as the master E.B. White called it, "a breezy manner."
Truly, in this blog i continually, unjudiciously, perhaps annoyingly, although unconsciously violate Mr. White's rule number 12 from chapter five of the classic rulebook The Elements of Style by Strunk and White.
Does this ring any bells?
Do not affect a breezy manner.i plead guilty. Is my face red? Professor White would be so disappointed if he had lived to see the blogosphere. (The world wide web was in its infancy in 1985, when White died. Ironically, he was most famous for writing about a different web.) Anyways, the point of this post is not that i plan to change my style. In professional and academic writing i am sufficiently more phlegmatic, (and i did get the second highest grade in my writing class this last semester.) i just want you to know that i know, i know you know, and that's that. If that makes any sense?The volume of writing is enormous, these days, and much of it has a sort of windiness about it, almost as though the author were in a state of euphoria. "Spontaneous me," sang Whitman, and, in his innocence, let loose the hordes of uninspired scribblers who would one day confuse spontaneity with genius.
The breezy style is often the work of an egocentric, the person who imagines that everything that comes to mind is of general interest and that uninhibited prose creates high spirits and carries the day. Open any alumni magazine, turn to the class notes, and you are quite likely to encounter old Spontaneous Me at work--an aging collegian who writes something like this:
Well, chums, here I am again with my bagful of dirt about your disorderly classmates, after spending a helluva weekend ing N'Yawk trying to view the Columbia game from behind two bumbershoots and a glazed cornea. And speaking of news, howzabout tossing a few chirce nuggets my way?This is an extreme example, but the same wind blows, at lesser velocities, across vast expanses of journalistic prose. The author in this case has managed in two sentences to commit most of the unpardonable sins: he obviously has nothing to say, he is showing off and directing the attention of the reader to himself, he is using slang with neither provocation nor ingenuity, he adopts a patronizing air by throwing in the word chirce, he is humorless (though full of fun), dull, and empty. He has not done his work.
Oh hell, never mind. Tomorrow is poetry day and you can read someone else's writing then.
Right Wing News has a new poll of bloggers' favorite columnists. i participated, and my list included:
Ann Coulter
Charles Krauthammer
Dick Morris
John Podhoretz
Victor Davis Hanson
Jonah Goldberg
Peggy Noonan
Rich Lowry
The winner was Mark Steyn, deservedly, even though i forgot to put him on my list.
Doug TenNapel analogizes a recent VDH column about the War on Terror with the current Senate filibuster fight.
Check it out. i think it's pretty brilliant.
And was that Doug's voice i heard on Friday's Hugh Hewitt show? If so, Doug, why didn't you use that opportunity to plug my blog? i thought we were friends.
Note to anyone calling any talk radio show in the future: plug my blog!
More: Re: the filibuster fight, i think the best pithy argument i've heard to date came from Zell Miller last night on Hannity and Colmes. i can't remember his exact words, so i'll re-state the argument in my own.
Question: How many votes does it take to confirm a judicial nominee in the Senate? Answer fifty-one.
Question: How many votes does it take to defeat a judicial nominee in the Senate? Answer forty-one.
Does that make any sense at all?
If you ask me, the filibuster rule is stupid and should be done away with in toto.
Dawn thinks Oprah should invite a blogger on her show.
i think Oprah should invite Dawn.
It almost seems as though Ken Wheaton has gazed into my own soul (a la Bush & Putin) with his latest column on The Non-Dating Life. i know he was describing someone else, but this quote could just as eerily apply to yours truly:
She claims to despise 'suits' but is destined to mate with one and produced baby suits. Still, she hangs out in Lower East Side and Williamsburg bars, trolling for too-skinny, geeky musicians who never fail to disappoint because, well, they're musicians, hipster-wannabes and she, deep down inside, is only now realizing she's not exactly compatible with those people. That's not to say she has to end up with a frat boy. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. She needs someone sort of in the middle. But, for now, like a lot of us out there, she's frustrated by running into the same type of guy over and over and over again.Go read the rest.
i urge all bloggers and those who care about the new media to read this post by Kevin at Wizbang, regarding our right to Freedom of Speech as bloggers, and to sign the Online Coalition letter to Federal Election Commission chairman Scott E. Thomas.
Mine is the 1,531st signature.
More: Here's the Democracy Project's comprehensive summary of the threat facing us.
And liberal blogger Markos, of Daily Kos, notes that a number of Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have also added their welcome voice to the cause of internet freedom. Where are the Republicans on this?
How'd you like to start a blog, write two paragraphs, and get a hundred and one comments in your first forty-eight hours on the blogosphere. And not spam comments either, i'm talking very nice comments of encouragement from all over the world.
Well, go say hi to Waheed, Afghanistan's first blogger.
Bloggers as spies now?
Could the American spy community improve its intelligence activities through blogging? A captain in the U.S. Army Reserve thinks so and says as much in the March issue of Wired magazine.Ain't it enough that we got rid of Rather and Jordan?Capt. Kris Alexander, a millitary intelligence officer, argues in an essay that blogs should be incorporated into the intelligence community's classified computer network , Intelink, and that the community should cultivate bloggers outside itself to gain additional insights and analysis.
. . .
'Why not tap the brainpower of the blogosphere as well?' he asks. 'The intelligence community does a terrible job of looking outside itself for information. From journalists to academics and even educated amateurs -- there are thousands of people who would be interested and willing to help.'
'It seems to me,' he said, 'that the government is faced with some stark choices. They can 'get with the program' -- realize they have lost control and try to capitalize on that -- or they can pretend they still control the flow of information and enact all sorts of Draconian regulations that aren't going to work anyway.'Picture it. The blogosphere, ready and willing to save the world once again.Stephenson admitted that working with bloggers can be challenging. 'It's a headache,' he confessed.
'You get a lot of these obsteperous guys who don't defer to hierarchy, but smart executives all over the place now are trying to figure out ways to capitalize on people like me and others,' he continued. 'It's just dumb to filter out that potential information just because the people who are offering it are not like you.'
[cross posted at A Western Heart]
Come and check out annika's Blogversary Poker Party on Yahoo! Poker. Everyone is invited. Sit down and play a few hands, or just stop by to say hi. No money is involved, just bragging rights.
You have to have a Yahoo! id first. Then log on to Yahoo!, go to the Games page and click on Hold 'Em Poker in the Card Games menu. Then look for me in the room called "Angel." Sorry, i fucked up. i'll be in the room called "Social Lounge 2," at table 26, and i'll be using the Yahoo! id annikagyrl.
Hope to see you there!
Update: It's pretty busy in there. Social Lounge 2 is full. We're going to Beginner Lounge 2 now.
Update 2: Okay, it's full now too. Use this backdoor site, if you haven't given up yet. Click on Beginner Lounge 2.
Update 3: Well, that was pretty much a bust. Only Casca and Lawguy were able to get into the room before it closed. i got booted a few times, and even the backdoor was screwy. i never seen Yahoo! Games be so difficult. Oh well, sorry to everyone who tried but were unable to log on. Maybe next year.
Oh, i broke even, too.
Our peach tree is in bloom. It's beautiful. i thought it was dead. Shows how much i know about trees.
Today is the two year blogversary of annika's journal. A Yahoo! Poker party celebration will be held tonight at 7:00 p.m. California time. Stop by if you can. Just say hi, or sit down and play a few hands. i will post the name of the room just before it starts. BYOB.
Today is also poetry day. Who's your favorite poet? i haven't picked a poem yet, so why not suggest someone?
Have you pushed Elton John for UN Sec Gen to your friends and co-workers yet? People are talking.
And there are still two more spots open in MLBloggers, my fantasy baseball league. Email me if you're interested.
i'm a big milblog fan. i have my favorites: Blackfive of course, and fellow Munuvians Trying to Grok (Go share Sarah's joy at her husband's safe return. i'm so happy for them.) and SlagleRock. Also some newer faves like Armor Geddon (who's an amazing diarist) and Risawn.
Now check out a new milblogger, Danjel, who's in Iraq right now. The site is appropriately named 365 and a Wakeup, which is a phrase that i believe dates back to the Vietnam War. (But you already knew that.)
i thought this bit from a February post called "The Ride North" was interesting:
Southern Iraq completely surprised me if for no other reason then the people. All along our route of march children would come running up to the vehicles waving and laughing. They were poorly dressed, and several of them alternated between waving and pointing to their mouth to ask for food. As heartwrenching as it was to ignore their request we were under strict orders not to throw food out so we responded with smiles and waves of our own. I questioned the order later and found that several children had been run over because they would run in front of a vehicle to get food. It was a far cry from what we had been briefed we would see and I resolved to do my level best to not break the trust our nation had made with the people of Iraq. I wish I could have taken a film crew with me on that leg of the trip, it would go a long way towards dispelling the skewed viewpoints that America sees on the news.And don't miss Danjel's description of a VBIED going off, and his explanation of why checkpoints have become necessary in the first place:
There are mornings where the steady throb of traffic pulses through the streets like a metal river and others where the hum of people and commerce is torn apart by the earsplitting roar of a VBIED. These wheeled bombs exist for the sole purpose of rending equipment and shredding flesh with impunity. In their wake they leave physical scars on the survivors and mental scars on the community.That's an excellent way to put the incident in perspective.Rather then let the insurgents continue to inflict casualties whenever and wherever they want there are checkpoints scattered across Baghdad’s highways to intercept VBIEDs. In most cases these checkpoints are actually two distinct checkpoints, the first manned by the Iraqi Army and the second manned by US soldiers. The Iraqis have shown their mettle in the last few weeks and they have absorbed the bulk of the casualties when VBIEDs attempt to hit a checkpoint. But they aren’t perfect, and so the US troops manning the second checkpoint are always at the ready.
The most important thing to understand about US checkpoints is that soldiers manning them have specific ramp up procedures when they feel threatened. Soldiers don’t just blithely take aim at traffic and fill the air with lead. The procedure drilled into every soldier’s head is to meet the threat with an increasingly forceful response. As the threat escalates so too does the response.
Which brings us back to the threat of VBIEDs. The only warning of a VBIED is a vehicle attempting to rapidly close with the checkpoint – which is exactly what Giuliana Sgrena’s vehicle did. Put yourself in the boots of the soldier manning that checkpoint. You see a vehicle approaching that seems to be gaining speed as it nears. You signal the driver to stop but the car plummets on. You fire a warning shot, and then another into the engine block but the car doesn’t slow. What would you do? Don’t just give a cursory response – think about it for a moment. If you are at work imagine having your life, and the fate of all your coworkers tied to your decision. Would you gamble all those lives by giving the vehicle the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you would, but I’d be willing to bet after seeing the bloody wake of a VBIED you would have pulled the trigger too.
Here are some thoughts that occurred to me while watching last night's Nighline special on bloggers, which was very well done, in my opinion.
One might get the impression that bloggers are all frustrated journalists. In fact, many bloggers probably think of themselves that way. Speaking only for myself however, i am most definitely not a frustrated journalist.* To me, the very word "journalist" would be an insult if i ever heard it applied to me.
Don't get me started on journalists. A journalism degree is nothing more than a four year general education degree plus a couple of courses on how to meet a deadline. The vast majority of journalists are complete idiots. Trouble is, they don't realize it.
Bloggers are modern pamphleteers. One of the bloggers in the Nightline report expressed a hope that the blogosphere might mature as time goes on. Nonsense. That's not only an impossibility, it's antithetical to the nature of the medium.
We're supposed to rant. We're supposed to shoot from the hip. The blogosphere is the essence of free speech. That Virginia politician who got upset because some liberal blogger didn't follow journalistic standards by contacting him before publication needs to get his head out of his ass. The politician wrote a stupid bill, and that particular blogger called him on it. Good for her. The politician didn't like the strong language in the emails he got, but guess what? He pulled the bill, didn't he? Welcome to Dan Rather's world.
No we're not journalists, we are activists. Unpredictable, uncontrollable anarchists. May we always be.
_______________
* Frustrated comedienne, maybe.
Yesterday they mentioned my idea on MSNBC, and now today they're talking about me on Fox News! Click on the picture to see the clip.
Fame! i wanna live forever!
Remember the annika's Blogversary Poker Party is Wednesday night at 7:00 p.m. California time.
remember... remember... remember...
This is big.
i thought he was joking when James Ozark, who runs A Western Heart, alerted me to the fact that Jeff Jarvis had mentioned my Elton John for U.N. Secretary General idea on tv today.
But it's true! Here's the Quicktime video to prove it.
i'm so jazzed, i'm gonna have that .mpg file bronzed and hang it on the fucking wall!
i told you my idea would catch on like wildfire. Dinitellyou? i sure did! And you know why? Because it's a great idea, that's why. Singers and international politics go together like liver and onions.
Check it out. Now they want Bono for president of the World Bank, and Bush just named Michael Bolton as Ambassador to the U.N.
Ha ha, and i started the whole ball rolling! Me, me, me, me, me!
Tip of the hat to Jackson's Junction.
i've started a fantasy baseball league for bloggers on Yahoo! The League is called MLBloggers (Major League Bloggers, get it?).
It's a rotisserie league with a non-live draft. Rotisserie is cool because it's less time consuming than head-to-head leagues. You can tinker with your line-up as much or as little as you want.
So far ten bloggers have signed up:
Dawn Summers' of Clareified has the East Coco Beach Metropolitans;
Victor the Rat-Boy of Publius and Company has the Rats of Chaos;
Ted of Rocket Jones has the Rockets;
Paul of Sanity's Edge has the Sanity's Edge... ers;
Matt of Irreverent Probity has the Biloxi Turds (eeew);
Greg of The End Zone has Hank's Homey's, and explains the name thusly;
Zombyboy of Resurrection Song has the Zombyesque Zombies;
The Maximum Leader of Nakedvillainy has the Bashers;
Physics Geek of Physics Geek has the Physics Geeks;
And then there's my own annika's A's.
There's room for two more bloggers in the league. If you wanna join Major League Bloggers just shoot me an email and i'll send you the password. You have to have a Yahoo! id to sign up.
Fantasy baseball is a grat way to follow the season, and it's fun to get interested in different players that you wouldn't normally care about if they're not on your hometown team.
Oh, and as an added inducement, i'll award a championship stein from cafepress to the winner at the end of the season. As if bragging rights weren't enough!
On a related note, don't forget this Wednesday is the annie's journal blogversary poker party. Details will be posted later on.
i was one of those who thought that Martha got railroaded. But still, i am sad to see her get out of prison for the sole reason that Jeff's hilarious series of blog posts must now come to an end.
And, he's a Prufrock fan!
Jake is the annika's journal Man of the Year!
Congratulations, Jake on this great honor!
: )
Next Wednesday is my two year blogversary! i never thought i'd make it past one year, but here i am. i'd like to celebrate with a party for you all as my way of saying thanks. It don't matter if you're a new or old visitor, or even if you've never left a comment before. Everyone is invited. Once in the distant past, i held a Yahoo! pool party that was really fun, although only sparsely attended because i didn't give much notice. Now with the popularity of online poker, i'm considering the idea of an annika-versary poker party on Yahoo! Either that or pool. The advantage to a poker party is that everyone can participate at the same time, instead of one-on-one competition while everybody else chats. Of course, no money changes hands in Yahoo! poker, but that's okay, since i suck at poker anyways. It's all about the bragging rights, and the chance to socialize in cyberspace with my blog pals. And of course, since the money isn't real, drinking a large quantity of alcohol while playing shouldn't be a problem. Let me know what you think.
Update: Poker it is.
Owing to the fact that i have a big project due Monday, it is highly unlikely that i will be blogging this weekend. i'm mostly done with the assignment, but i need to meet with my partner and go over it with a fine toothed comb, then make sure all the cites are correctly formatted, which takes forever.
Therefore, i think we'll have to say goodbye to Robot Week one day early.
And if anyone leaves a "thank God" comment, i will retaliate by designating next week otorhinolaryngology week.
As a final farewell to Robot Week, 2005, please go check out this cute illustrated story i found, by a teacher named Jeanette Kachkowski. It will bring a smile to your Friday afternoon, i promise.
Shelly alerted me to Peggy Noonan's column about the blogosphere from last week, which i missed. In it she discusses the advantages political bloggers have over the MSM. Much of her column is stuff we've heard others say before, but i like this paragraph:
Bloggers have an institutional advantage in terms of technology and form. They can post immediately. The items they post can be as long or short as they judge to be necessary. Breaking news can be one sentence long: 'Malkin gets Barney Frank earwitness report.' In newspapers you have to go to the editor, explain to him why the paper should have another piece on the Eason Jordan affair, spend a day reporting it, only to find that all that's new today is that reporter Michelle Malkin got an interview with Barney Frank. That's not enough to merit 10 inches of newspaper space, so the Times doesn't carry what the blogosphere had 24 hours ago. In the old days a lot of interesting information fell off the editing desk in this way. Now it doesn't. This is a public service.i actually hadn't thought of that point, but it's obvious. Similarly, i suppose if i worked at a newspaper and wanted to publish a poll about robots fucking, the answer would probably be a no.
Sacramento blogger Digger has the inside scoop on that idiot lawyer named Pearcy who keeps hanging up the soldier's effigy, then scurrying back to Berkeley.
Look at the sign he displays on the back of his Boxster. What a piece of work.
Update: You simply must see what Rodger did to the Pearcy's Boxter. What a freakin' riot!
Now i know there's a flaw in The Ecosystem. But i quickly captured a screenprint of the phenomenon, before NZ Bear fixes whatever bug caused annika's journal to enter the top 100!
From Candace:
I could write back to every single one of those desperate webcam guys with 'You are a complete and total loser,' because seriously, when a blogger tells you that you have no life outside the internet, it's for real, dudes.Ouch.
Read at Candied Ginger.
Voting in the Jewish and Israeli Blog Awards begins tomorrow. (No. i'm not in it, i think you have to be Jewish.) But some very good blogs have been nominated. If you vote, don't forget to support Munuvans Rishon Rishon* and D. F. Moore** and Simon World. i also plan to vote for Ari Goes Down and Protein Wisdom, both great blogs.
_______________
* Nominated in several categories, including Best Post and Best Series.
** Also nominated in multiple categories.
Here's an interesting communication theory i never really thought about before, which i think has a lot of merit. i can think of examples of it among some of my acquaintances and i'm going to watch for it in the future.
i tend to speak in the "was" mode a lot of the time, but that's understandable. i gotta get some use out of my history degrees.
. . . Generalissimo Duane forsees a bigger fight over Alberto Gonzales than we saw over Dr. Rice. Let's hope his math is worse than mine.
. . . RatherBiased reports that CBS's "expert" Marcel Matley is accusing the network of harming his professional reputation as a forensic expert. i'd say he has a case. No lie. If i were a lawyer, i'd sign him up in a heartbeat.
. . . Jordana posts a recipe for Salmon Chowder that looks so yummy, i may try it this weekend.
. . . David writes about my favorite Kipling story of all. Read the classic short story here.
. . . Gennie (who's awesome at this sorta thing - did you check out her Xmas list?) has a load of great suggestions for Valentine's day giftgiving.
. . . Jennifer takes a look at men's couture this time, and the runway pictures are freaking hilarious!
. . . Over at Blackfive, Matt posts the results of his discussions with a few dozen soldiers he served with and their thoughts on the war, Rumsfeld, and troop strength. Some of it is surprising.
. . . Ted, aka Munuviana's elder statesman, alerts us that tomorrow is the one year blogversary of The Gantry Launchpad, and urges us to rocket over there and wish Casey a happy blogversary.
. . . Which reminds me. Tomorrow happens to be my one year Munuversary! Yes, it's been one year since i blogged my first authentic post as a Munuvian. Mucho thanks again to Pixy, Susie, Joe Don and everyone else who helped me move over here. Mu.nu totally rocks!
. . . And speaking of Pixy, he asks a real fun question: "When they make MuNu: The Movie, who will play you?" hmmm. i think it has to be Brittany, who else?
"Right Wing News emailed more than 200 right-of-center bloggers and asked them to send us a ranked list 1-5 of the candidates that they would most like to take the Republican nomination for President in 2008 and the 1-5 candidates they'd least like to see as the Republican nominee in 2008."
Bill Clinton paid a visit to Moxie this weekend. Pool hijinx ensued, followed by drinks and a little spooning.
Happy belated birthday, Madison. You're the best!
Young Pundit has a rundown of the arguments against Social Security privatization.
i get hate mail every once in a while. Not too often, thankfully, since i'm a relatively little known blogger. But Michelle Malkin, because she's a published author, television pundit and columnist, who also happens to be beautiful and a filipina American, must get a ton of it. i was shocked to see the number of haters who defaulted to the "w" word, which seems to be the insult of choice whenever an attractive woman gets "uppity." The letters are pretty disgusting, and i don't know how Michelle deals with all that abuse, but God bless her, she does.
And (if i may be allowed a bit of hypocrisy by doing some name calling of my own): Disgusting Lard Ass Ollie Wills shows his true colors yet again by condoning these racist and mysogynist attacks and even adding a racist slant of his own. i won't link to the fatbody because he is probably the biggest asshole in the blogosphere.
There's a culture of hatred on the fringes of the left that is seldom recognized or denounced. It exists on the right too, but today most conservatives reject that type of extremism vehemently when it appears in our own ranks. i know of examples of such rejection in the blogosphere in the form of public "de-linking." Kevin's criticism of Michael Savage, with which i agree, is another example. But on the left, where Bush hatred and anti-Christian bigotry are so encouraged and mainstream, it must be hard for some people to avoid giving in completely to their own hatred. In the end, the rhetoric of these types becomes as vile as the worst Nazi or Klansman.
B. Preston of JunkYardBlog summarizes the problem best, i think:
It's clear to me that the left has a problem. It is a political movement full of bigots. Anti-Americans at the core, anti-Christians over here, race bludgeons and hucksters over there, leftists who hate everything that isn't absolutely sterilized of all traces of faith over there, a death cult that pushes what amounts to eugenics through unfettered abortion over there, and all ably led by a bunch of potty-mouthed Hollywood elites who wouldn't give a nickel for the country that made them rich. The rank-and-file, the types who send Michelle Malkin racist emails her way on a daily basis and they types who never lift a finger to purge the movement of the racists, are just as bad as the elites. If you weren't, they wouldn't be elites, would they? You make them 'elite' by listening to them and voting for them.While it's certainly unfair to paint everyone on the left of the political spectrum as a hater, i do wish there were more opprobrium directed at this type of bigotry and hatred from within the left.
Shakespeare I ain't (a rebellion against talented writing) by Ginger of Candied Ginger, complete with mysterious picture.
Celebrate the King's birthday with The Thing About Elvis Movies by gcotharn of The End Zone.
Scorebard of Humbug comments on the recent blockbuster baseball moves with I Read the News Today, Oh Boy.
Blog O'DOB lyricizes the CBS fiasco in Joe Lockhart to Barnes to Mapes.
And from a blogger whose every post is like poetry anyway, Tony Pierce, we have "no one home but the stove and thats fixin to go out." Cool.
Anyone know of some others?
This and this is not just an example of masterful blogging, it's an entire year's worth of masterful blogging. And i'm not just saying that because i hate the L.A. Times.
Bravo Patterico.
Don't believe chicks dig tanks? Go read Redsix's latest installment of his Fallujah experience. It's all about firing that bad boy called the 120mm smoothbore. There's quite a few chicks in the comments section. i find myself looking forward to every new post by Lt. Prakash. Call it penis envy if you want, but chicks dig tanks.
Powerline has been named Time Magazine's Blog of the Year, to go along with their Wizbang Weblog Award. Both well deserved, in my opinion. Congratulations guys, you have done us all proud!
Via Serenity:
If you're going to keep eating them, the least you could do is say you're sorry.
Damn. Of course i'm hungry for bar-b-cue now.
Just when i think CBS can't get any farther off the deep end of partisanship, they amaze me even further.
The owner of Nonviolence.org, Martin Kelley, said he got an interesting phone call yesterday from a CBS News publicist for—you guessed it—Dan Rather's 60 Minutes Wednesday, the same program that carried the infamous bogus memos.i'm waiting for my call from CBS, the next time they do a story that highlights a conservative point of view. Think i should hold my breath?'Yesterday I got a call from a publicist for CBS News’s 60 Minutes. They’re running a story tonight on "Deserters," U.S. military personnel who have fled to Canada rather than serve in Iraq. She was requesting that I talk up the program on Nonviolence. In nine years of publishing the peace site, I can’t remember ever getting a call from a publicist before. I’ve talked to reporters from major news networks and papers, and I’ve talked a booking agent or two to arranging appearances on radio shows, but never a publicist.'
'So now CBS News publicists are courting bloggers. That’s great: hey, if y’all want to buy me that new Treo Smartphone or a gift certificate to Gohn Bros I’ll say Dan Rather is hotter than an armadillo sunning himself between the yellow lines on the interstate'
. . .
Other liberal/anti-war bloggers who have talked about the upcoming story in preparation for tonight's broadcast include No Capital, Daily War News, Bankrupt Artist v.3
These blogs link to the same CBS News story that Kelley linked to after being contacted. [links omitted]
That's just outrageous. CBS is not a news organization; it's op-ed on TV. They should stop lying and admit it.
Via RatherBiased.
Right Wing News has posted the results for its Third Annual Warblogger Awards.
Wegglywoo reminds us girls that it is indeed that time of year again?!
Here's my schedule. Last day of class is this Friday. The following week is reading week, then from the eighth through the twenty-third is finals. My last final is actually earlier than the twenty-third though, which will give me a chance to party up here and then make it home for Christmas. Then it's back up north again for the second semester in mid January.
Blogging should be light, but you all know how i am. i'm addicted. So i'll probably post stupid shit once in a while during study breaks or whatever. i've got a few blogger interviews in the works which you'll want to stay tuned for as well. Actually, i'm gonna post a fun interview with Ginger of Candied Ginger on Thursday, so be sure to check that out. Then another really special annie-conversation later on in the month, just to keep you visitors visiting.
P.S. Speaking of interviews, Matt Rustler did mine a couple of weeks ago and i know the whole blogosphere is awaiting that posting with feverish anticipation.
Sure, the Detroit basketball brawl was a travesty, but i think the real travesty is that the L.A. Times hasn't hired Tony Pierce as a sports columnist yet.
In honor of the opening of Clinton's Little Rock library, i'd like to reprint a few stanzas from a dirty limerick by Cameron of Way Off Bass.
. . .While Bill on the podium dropped trou,
Making sounds like an amorous cow,
A fat intern walked by
Catching Clinton’s glazed eye;
“I’m the piglet, and there goes my sow!â€So the Horn Dog rolled off of the stage
(For his belt did his ankles engage).
As he crawled on the floor,
Up came Al “Mad Dog†Gore,
And the stick up his ass he called Rage.. . .
i got the strangest hate mail yesterday. From someone named Annika in the UK, who wants me to either kill myself or change my name. She was vague about her reasons. Here's the complete email thread (start at the bottom and read up):
