Down with Lawnatics!

Ok, so it's warm out for a change and I'm sitting outside on the balcony sipping a Celis White and doing my blog thing.

Nice, right?

Well, yes and no. It is very nice to be able to sit outside and take the Internet with me, yes, of course. But the trouble is that every time I sit out here, peacefully publishing crap to the Web, some asshole invariably comes along to deafen me with his maniacal lawn obsession.

I understand that one cannot reasonably expect quiet solitude all the time when one is sitting outside near a suburban neighborhood. But the ongoing cacophony is caused by the same damn guy. He spends what seems like hours making a near-constant racket with various obnoxious lawn implements -- so much racket I can't hear the radio six feet away from me over the din -- and he does this every f*@#ing day.

Right now he is running my favorite, what I call the lawn vacuum. It's actually some kind of leaf blower thing that he uses -- I think, but I'm not sure -- to blow away blades left on the sidewalk after he's done using his loud-ass edger. But it sounds like a vacuum cleaner and he runs it for what seems like 45 minutes to an hour. To no apparent real purpose. (As I write this, he is just wandering around the middle of the street with it, scrutinizing the grass near the curb.)

And it doesn't matter if he made tons of noise all yesterday evening mowing his lawn. He'll still come out today and spend several clangorous hours using gasoline powered nail clippers to trim the occasional blade the mower missed. And the next day, more commotion with some other infernal and superfluous grass manicuring item.

Because a lawnatic's work is never done.

God save me from these noise-polluting bastards.

So Close...

So The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues had all the right elements for a classic piece of crap in the tradition of Ed Wood's swell films: bad acting, horrible dialogue, an incomprehensible plot, and, of course, a cheesy monster. So what went wrong? Not enough cheesy monster. The scenes with the cheesy monster were great -- but I guess the filmmakers only rented the monster suit for a single day of filming because the ol' atomic mutant's screen time was probably about two minutes total. And even though the dialogue was dopey enough to rival Ed's, it still gets yawn-inducing without some monster action to break it up. Still, not a bad $4 investment, and I'll probably still have to make some of you watch it, too.

Maybe There IS Some Hope

"More than 100 cities and one state have passed resolutions condemning the USA Patriot Act, saying it gives the federal government too much snooping power," according to this AP story. Maybe ordinary Davids out in the hinterlands will take on the federal Goliath without going gentle into that goodnight of the garrison state.

Cui bono?

An interesting piece by Chris Floyd on war profiteers in, of all places, The Moscow Times. A sample: "Today, in the new America, leaders are paid millions by corporations who are then given the fruits of aggressive wars launched by those same leaders."

What's a Neocon?

If there's at least one good thing to come out of the Bush administration's maniacal assault on the longsuffering people of Iraq, it's that the blame for a disastrous, homicidal government policy (but I repeat myself) is for once being fixed squarely where it belongs. In this case, it's on the loose group of policy wonks (AKA sofa samurais, keyboard commandoes, and Attila the Hens, as the indispensable Taki calls them) known collectively as neoconservatives.

So for those of you who have asked me about what neoconservatism is all about (Greg), here's another article on the subject by Lew Rockwell, a reliable commentator in my view because he consistently rejects statism in every situation.

Survey This

So the folks at Arbitron have been leaving messages on my answering machine telling me I've been selected to help rate radio stations in my area or something. I should probably just save them some time by calling back and telling them my opinion of modern commercial radio: "IT ALL SUCKS ASS AND ISN'T WORTH 30 SECONDS OF MY TIME." Thank God for CD players and, especially, mp3s. Commercial radio as it exists now can drop dead and go straight to hell. Twice.

Movie Watch

I've had the last three days off, so of course I got nothing productive done. But I did watch some movies, so I thought I'd share my infallible opinion about what I've seen.

First, The Bourne Identity. Pretty good mindless entertainment; it was actually much better than I expected (I expected it to suck ass). Matt Damon as action hero wasn't as unbelievable as I thought either. At least he wasn't friggin' Keanu Reeves or Mark Wahlberg, speaking of sucking ass.

Then, Darkness Falls. Total crap. It's about a killer tooth fairy. Need I say more?

Next up were Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show. Two more Christopher Guest "mockumentaries," both pretty funny if this is your sort of thing. I have a feeling, however, that Guest will never again equal the genius of This Is Spinal Tap.

Now I'm debating staying up to watch The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues, a DVD I plunked down four good dollars for at Meijer the other day. The box promises that a "Hideous atomic mutant strikes from the depths!" ATOMIC mutant? Them's the best kind!

George Orwell, Call Your Office

For a look at the powers Big Brother of the near future will have at his disposal, check out this scary subdermal GPS tracking thingamajig in development. How many years before all humans will be required (for our own good) to have these things implanted immediately after birth? Far-fetched? Well, let's just say I would much rather be a raving paranoid wacko than a prophet here. But you do have to ask yourself just what the hell the point of developing this technology really is. (Thanks to Mark for the link.)

Told You So?

Oops, I guess all those right-wing wackos warning about the federal government being a powerful threat to our freedoms weren't so "paranoid" after all. So comes a belated admission from a liberal columnist writing in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Well, better late than never, I guess. Now maybe some of you can rethink your kneejerk support of gun control and other state-enhancing policies.

News That's Fit to Punt

Well, what else is big in the news these days? The New York Times has found that one of its reporters was pretty much inventing out of whole cloth the parts of his stories that he wasn't plagiarizing from other news sources. The Times described young Jayson Blair's journalistic perfidy as "a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper."

Well, admittedly it looks bad, even in a paper whose daily ratio of lies to actual facts is fairly high. But if this is the low point, then what about all that fibbing that a certain Walter Duranty did back in the 1930s about a certain totalitarian regime that deliberately starved millions of Ukrainians? The fibbing that won him a Pulitzer Prize that his employer, the New York Times, to this day still proudly includes in its count of awards given to Timesmen?

Weapons of Mass Delusion

Pat Buchanan asks "Where are they, Mr. President?" of Saddam's alleged weapons o' mass destruction. Of course, it seems pretty obvious that if Saddam had any sort of weapon that was capable of threatening the United States or its "interests" (however defined by neocon interventionists) he would have whipped them out once his country was invaded. I remember during the war the "A-ha!" stories about stuff the military was finding "that may suggest Saddam is stockpiling Really Horrible Weapons And Stuff." Oh good, I thought. Then maybe the U.S. government should invade Iraq! Oh, wait. That already happened. Of course, the stuff found turned out to be nothing of the sort of the war propagandists and courtier press were making it out to be. Wasn't that about the time when it suddenly became all about "liberating" the poor, longsuffering Iraqis?

I'm Back!

I am finally going to start updating again. Thrilling, I know. I went on a brief vacation to North Carolina, as some of you know (because some of you were with me) and discovered that stereotypes about Southerners exist for a reason. Bubba's Tiki Bar (I forget the real name), which was less tiki than my apartment, was for me the highlight of the trip. $1.50 for a pint of Yeungling's, and $5.50 for a pitcher. When is the last time you paid $5.50 for a pitcher of semi-real beer? It might even cost more than that for urine like Budweiser now, but since I don't often buy a pitcher of anything these days I'm not sure.

Needless to say, we had about 7 pitchers of this stuff or something, and then I felt I had the unmistakable urge to get up and "sing" Day-O at Bubba's, er Butch's (that's so much better) karaoke machine. Of course, I wasn't as good a singer as other members of our party, but let me tell you I had FLAIR. That's right, and all those mullet-headed Earls and JoLenes KNEW it, baby.

Eat your heart out, Belafonte.

Life Is Good

At least at this point in time. It's quite warm today, having climbed into the 70s while the sun was still up, and I'm loafing in my pseudo-European bistro set while surfing the 'net and generally being irresponsible. Jazz is playing on the boombox and the table tiki torch is burning. Meanwhile, the rope lights I hung earlier today are smiling down at me and the beer at my elbow. (Those who have been in my old apartment will remember the rope lights from above the bar -- I've finally found a use for them in the new place.)

So what's missing? Apart from the obvious thing of having someone to share my slackerness with, I suppose speakers out here would be sort of cool. And also some classical statuary. But no worries on that latter score. I'm already scouring the Internet for statues of topless women and other things to accentuate the balcony with. Then I suppose I'll need some plants of some sort, provided they are something that I can keep alive, i.e., deal well with a lot of neglect.

And I still need to get the apartment management to arrange to paint the place so I can go without "the plywood look." Cafe Plywood? Naaa....

Not About the War

The last (or almost last) piece of the puzzle is in place for my fiendish plot, hatched back in early March. What plot, you ask? The plot to move my lazy slobness outside when it got warmer. It started with a laptop computer, then a wireless router so I could surf the 'net on the laptop, and then cool furniture to sit on outside while surfing. I got the bistro set yesterday -- two wrought iron chairs and a table -- and it looks pretty cool. Now, when it gets warm and stays warm, I will be able to be a couch potato on the balcony, gaining even more weight in a place where yellow jackets can fall into my beer. Cool, huh?

This Is Supposed to Make Us Safer?

Another interesting story from the front lines of the "war on terror," sent to me by a friend (thanks Steve), who calls this development "Miracle Grow for terrorists."

The Beer Is Back

That's right. After weeks of Lenten abstinence, I am back on my diet of beer. In fact, I already have a bottle in hand as I type this. Or at least sitting next to me, since it's hard to type with a beer in your hand. So maybe my postings will become more interesting. Or maybe not.

Feeeelings, Whoa-whoa-whoa

Here is an important new column from Joe Sobran. It's sort of about the war -- but really it goes beyond that to raise the issue of our modern worship of "feelings" above everything else. American sentimentalism, for me, reached a low point immediately following September 11, 2001. I remarked to a friend that if nothing else, the tragedy revealed what a nation of sappy bad taste we've become. Sobran is talking more about the war hysteria here, but the Oprahization of everything is so far advanced it's hard to imagine we'll ever retreat from Bathos and return to Right Reason.

Today Iraq, Tomorrow... the Vatican!

Check out this amusing satire from Antiwar.com columnist Matt Barganier (a good Louisianian).

The War Explained

I can't upload images to this blog (yet), so follow this link to my other site for an illustrated explanation of why the Bush administration is so eager to rain death and destruction down on a country that never did anything to us.

Why We Fight

Follow this link for a satirical look at the reasons for the attack on Iraq. Actually, I'm not sure it can be accurately called "satirical" since it pretty much encapsulates the ridiculous, reed-thin justifications for the war. (Yo, props to my homeboy Greg for the link. Word.)