Barney Frank:

Labels: Barney Frank

Even if you're not interested in parrots, Melina is fast becoming one of the most insightful commenters on Life in America as we Slouch Towards Armageddon. Like me, she has focused her attention to the Virginia Tech massacre on the mental health issue implications of a young man that his parents knew had problems since he was a small child, and what it says about us as a society that he was able to get to the point he did. Today she takes on the Big Questions that go far beyond whether NBC should have shown the killer's homemade videos.

Pierre Tristram has more on how engaging troubled students before they become killers accomplishes far more than turning schools and campuses into police states.

And ed_encho at My Left Wing on Cho Seung-Hui - The New American Idol, on how the carefully-constructed, made-for-television ravings of Cho Seung-Hui are the logical outcome of the American Idol culture.

And while we're on the subject, ModFab is the happiest guy in the world now that Sanjaya is history. I say it's a Sanjaya world, and we're just allowed to live in it.

Maginot Line anyone? West Bank? The Great Wall of Texas and Mexico? Cernig writes about the ridiculous proposal to construct a three-mile-long concrete wall dividing a Sunni district in Baghdad from its Shiite neighbors. Tristero thinks it's reminiscent of, well, another attempt to "protect" a despised group from the neighbors who despise it. Warsaw Ghetto, anyone?

Emily at Waiting for Dorothy on a gadget you simply can't live without, one that proves that George Carlin was right -- if you nail together two things that have never been nailed together before, some schmuck will buy it from you.

CE Petro on Mary Winkler, the pastor's wife who killed her husband after years of abuse.

And from the IOKYAR file, we have its corollary, Lawsuits Filed By Christian Conservatives Are Never Frivolous" as noted by Pam, who writes about the $20K in pain and suffering compensation a Bentonville, Arkansas man wants in compensation from his local public library because his sons were traumatized by the glimpse of a book on lesbian sex that they just happened to encounter while looking for books about military academies.

And if that doesn't keep you busy enough, perhaps you can give me some advice on how to get this song out of my head, where it has been lodged for the last three days:

Labels: bloggers

Things at Casa la Brilliant are begining to settle down into organized chaos, as opposed to OHMYGODWHEREDOISTART chaos. Yesterday Mr. Brilliant took the day off and spent the morning in performing carpetio destructo in the basement, while I wept at the tragedy of it all. I mean, after all, yes, the carpet WAS a 1970's rust-colored tweed, but it was also still in near-perfect condition and that lovely foam padding -- the padding that was the main culprit for the ever-worsening mildew odor, was SO nice and cushiony under the feet. Actually, I fib -- I wasn't weeping at all, because by that point all I wanted to do was get the stuff out of there. So now we have a patio full of moldy carpet and foam padding, and today we'll stuff as much of it as possible into plastic trash bags and take it over to the DPW yard. Hardly a "green" thing to do on a Saturday morning, but we don't have a whole lot of choice.

Then of course there's the matter of packing up the remaining four tons of books, DVDs, home-recorded VHS tapes, and half-empty liquor bottles from parties long forgotten that have been sitting behind the bar for between 10 and 20 years because we are not drinkers but it seems a shame to dump a perfectly good half-bottle of gin down the drain even if it is fifteen years old. Both Mr. B. and I tend towards packrattery, which gives me somewhat less moral authority when I try to say things like, "You haven't watched those few episodes of Alexei Sayles' STUFF since we moved in ten years ago, what makes you think you're going to ever watch it again?"

Then there's the what-to-do-with-the-vinyl-records problem. Obviously original monaural copies of Meet the Beatles must be kept for archival purposes, but we also have not one, not two, but THREE copies of Waiting for the Electrician Or Someone Like Him, and what about the vinyl copies of recordings we have since purchased on CDs? Do we keep them or toss them? The horror of vinyl records is that they tend to mean something to their owners, and while I dispensed with my copy of Joni Mitchell's Blue some time ago, because it was the album that most underscored what a wretchedly unhappy adolescent I was, Mr. Brilliant remembers his own youth far more fondly than I do, so his collection is a reminder of fun. And so these mass-produced mileposts of our lives either remain snugly ensconced in our house, to be picked through and discarded after our demise as if we were some kind of downmarket Charles Foster Kane.

And then there's the books. I used to work for a major book publisher, so I had a fairly large assortment of books I never wanted to read, and a few that I have to keep only because my name appears in the acknowledgments. And I have a very dear friend who buys books, reads them, and then passes them on to me. Her house, I might point out, is immaculate. I've discarded many books already, but it was definitely time to get rid of the kind of 1960's crap that we know we'll never read again -- books like The Greening of America and the collected works of Richard Brautigan. Still, this leaves a few hundred books to be packed up, because yes, I probably WILL read The Stand again at some point.

The rest is just sort of general household effluvia -- clothes waiting to be ironed, springform pans purchased at Dollar Days at the A&P, the extra Paint Stick I keep around for the next big painting job I do, old photographs of seventeen trips worth of Jamaican sunsets and the 1986 Mets tickertape parade, tools, and other assorted Stuff That I Might Yet Use.

But the carpet is mostly gone now, so the basement smells merely damp instead of like something rotting down there. Yesterday the new vanity for the upstairs bathroom was delivered in two manageable boxes as expected, rather than the 250 pound skid that UPS Overnight had told me it would be. And to further add to the day's productivity, the awesome shop-at-home flooring guy I'd found on Angie's List showed up right on time, and I ordered some lovely taupe tweed glue-down commercial carpet for a very fair price.

Today the sun is shining, and temperatures of 75 degrees are predicted, and the dryout continues.

Labels: homeownership

This is the so-called Straight Talk Express:



Any questions?

Labels: John McCain

Now the pet food recalls have extended to rice protein, which has also been contaminated with melamine:

April 19, 2007

Dear Royal Canin USA Customer,

It is with sincere regret that I inform you of a new and unfortunate development with some of our pet food products.

Although we have no confirmed cases of illness in pets, we have decided to voluntarily remove the following dry pet food products that contain rice protein concentrate due to the presence of a melamine derivative.

ROYAL CANIN SENSIBLE CHOICE® (available in pet specialty stores nationwide)

Dry Dog Food
- Chicken Meal & Rice Formula Senior
- Lamb Meal & Rice Formula Puppy
- Lamb Meal & Rice Formula Adult
- Lamb Meal & Rice Formula Senior
- Rice & Catfish Meal Formula Adult

ROYAL CANIN VETERINARY DIET™ (available only in veterinary clinics)

Dry Dog Food
- Canine Early Cardiac EC 22™
- Canine Skin Support SS21™

Dry Cat Food
- Feline Hypoallergenic HP23™

We are taking this proactive stance to voluntarily recall these products to avoid any confusion for our customers about which Royal Canin USA products are safe and which products may be affected.

Pet owners should immediately stop feeding their pets the Royal Canin USA dry pet food products listed above. Pet owners should consult with a veterinarian if they are concerned about the health of their pet. No other Royal Canin diets are affected by this recall and CONTINUE TO BE safe for pets to eat.

In addition, Royal Canin USA will no longer use any Chinese suppliers for any of our vegetable proteins.

This decision to recall some of our dry pet food products is driven by our philosophy that the “Pet Comes First”. The safety and nutritional quality of our pet food is Royal Canin USA’s top priority. Pet owners who have questions about this recall and other Royal Canin USA products should call 1-800-592-6687.

On behalf of the entire Royal Canin family, our hearts go out to the pet owners and everyone in the pet community who have been affected by all of the recent recalls. We are as passionate about the health and happiness of our customers’ pets as we are of our own, so we are committed to taking the steps necessary to ensure this never happens again.

Sincerely,

Olivier Amice
President and CEO
Royal Canin USA

The Royal Canin recall follows on the heels of the recent Natural Balance recall as a result of possibly contaminated rice protein concentrate.

The AVMA weighs in:

Natural Balance Pet Foods has announced a recall of all its Venison & Brown Rice Dry Dog Food and Venison & Green Pea Dry Cat Food in response to consumer complaints that animals were vomiting and experiencing kidney problems. The California-based pet food company has stated that testing has shown that these recalled foods contain melamine, the same chemical suspected in previous pet food recalls, but from a new source—rice protein concentrate imported from China by San Francisco-based Wilbur-Ellis. Previous recalls were associated with melamine-contaminated wheat gluten also imported from China but by ChemNutra Inc., which is based in Las Vegas.

Dr. Roger Mahr, president of the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), said pet owners should continue to use the AVMA Web site as a source of information during these ongoing pet food recalls.

"It's clear from this new information that all pet owners should remain vigilant regarding the ongoing pet food recalls and continue to check the AVMA recall list," Dr. Mahr said. "Information is power, and keeping current will help pet owners protect their pets from contaminated food."

There has been no U.S. recall by the third entry in the Holy Trinity of Pet Food Fillers, corn gluten, this product has sickened pets in South Africa. While I'm sure people like Debbie Schlussel will try to look for an Islamic terrorism connection, it's starting to look like the presence of melamine in these grain-based protein products is deliberate -- a way of bumping up the protein content of glutens and other derivatives on the cheap. This particular adulteration is being done in a country with little oversight over its food industry. The San Jose Mercury-News reports on the kind of crap that China is sending over here for human consumption:

Consider this list of Chinese products detained by the FDA just in the past month: frozen catfish tainted with illegal veterinary drugs, fresh ginger polluted with pesticides, melon seeds contaminated with a cancer-causing toxin and filthy dried dates.

It hardly takes a leap of faith to figure that pet food manufacturers are buying cheap grain proteins from China which are cheap largely because they are adulterated with toxic chemicals.

These are trying times for pet owners. It's easy for those who are not pet owners to shrug this off, saying "It's just animals." But forgetting for a moment about the relative worth of companion animals, are we sure that the glutens we find in the products we eat; products like breads, sauces, gravies, etc. aren't similarly tainted? Do you like sausage or bacon with your breakfast? Federal officials are investigating whether pork products are contaminated with melamine. How did this happen? Feeding pork hogs on the cheap:

The Trib learned yesterday that melamine-contaminated feed was fed to hogs.The FDA, U.S. Department of Agriculture and the California Department of Food and Agriculture are investigating.

Some animals that are believed to have eaten the contaminated food were slaughtered and sold as food before authorities learned their feed had been contaminated, said Nancy Lungren, spokeswoman for the California agriculture department.

The state quarantined the farm Wednesday, she said.

Yesterday, the urine of some pigs at the 1,500-animal American Hog Farm in Ceres, Calif., tested positive for melamine, although all appeared healthy, Lungren said. About half a dozen pigs were put down and researchers at the University of California-Davis are testing their kidneys, tissues, blood and other body parts for melamine contamination, she said.

The contaminated feed was bought April 3 and 13 as salvage pet food from Diamond Pet Foods Inc., which received contaminated rice protein concentrate used in some recalled Natural Balance pet food, Lungren said.

"Salvage pet food"? What the hell is "salvage pet food"? What are they putting into the animals that then become the shrink-wrapped packages in our supermarkets?

Americans have sold their liberty to George W. Bush so that they can "feel safer." The college administrators at Virginia Tech are being criticized for not locking down the campus when the first shots were fired on Monday. Talking heads everywhere are wondering what will make campuses safe. Parents are outfitting their kids in body armor before putting them on a bicycle. Kids have to be in car booster seats practically until they're sporting nose rings and goth T-shirts. But Americans seem curiously oblivious to the kind of swill being dished out to them in America's supermarkets in the name of bigger profits for the food industry.

American pets are just the canaries in the coal mine on this, folks. If we don't demand an end to the FDA protecting the food industry's profits instead of the American people, if we don't demand to know where the components of our food are coming from, soon it'll be American children hooked up to tubes and wires in hospitals, victim to organ failures for what seems to be no reason at all.

UPDATE: More at Shakesville, including -- yup -- a Bush family connection at ChemNutra.

Labels: corporatism, food industry, greed, pets

Executive privilege now is defined as "Anything that would get us into trouble if released." It's not surprising that the Bush Administration is now claiming executive privilege on the e-mails that Karl Rove sent through the Republican National Committee e-mail system to evade archiving requirements, but it's breathtakingly galling nonetheless:

A White House official today again raised the possibility of an executive-privilege claim on e-mails and other documents from private e-mail accounts used by senior White House officials but controlled by the Republican National Committee.

In a letter to Robert Kelner, the RNC's counsel, Emmet Flood, a special counsel to President Bush, reiterated the desire of the White House to review any materials it is considering turning over the House Judiciary Committee before doing so.

Flood said the Judiciary Committee is seeking "relating to communications authored by Executive Branch officials in which there exists a clear and indisputable Executive Branch interest," including e-mails from Karl Rove and other White House officials related to the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys last year.

Flood said the White House wants to review the documents to determine if "any materials implicating the Presidential Records Act are, in fact, involved," as well as whether "the Executive Branch may need t take measures necessary to protect its other legal interests in communications responsive" to the Judiciary Committee's request to the RNC.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, immediately criticized the Flood letter to the RNC as an attempt by the White House to delay his panel's investigation.

"The White House's position to clear all RNC emails before they can respond to our request is extreme and unnecessary," Conyers said. "This is a clear attempt, on the Administration's part, to delay this process and keep the wheels of Justice turning slowly."

22 current White House officials, including Karl Rove, deputy chief of staff and President Bush's top political advisor, have private e-mail accounts on RNC servers that are supposed to be used for political work. Democrats, in investigating the U.S. Attorney purge, as well as contacts between Bush administration officials and imprisoned former lobbyist Jack Abramoff and other incidents, found that some White House officials may be using the RNC accounts to avoid the Presidential Records Act, which requires the president and his top aides to retain records of all official actions.

The probe of the RNC accounts led to the further revelation that the White House may have lost as many as 5 million official e-mails thanks to a software malfunction, although the White House says is may be able to recover these messages and has told Democrats that it will consult them in appointing a forensic expert to handle the effort.

The fact that we've been waiting for them to try to pull a stunt like this is bad enough, but that they actually believe that executive privilege extends to attempts like this to avoid accountability ought to finally show Congressional Democrats that this is an administration that cares not one whit for the rule of law, for the U.S. Constitution, nor for any construct of good government as we know it. People like me have known since 2002 that this was the nature of the bunch of criminals who occupy the executive branch. It's taken far too long for Democrats (*cough* John Kerry *cough*) to understand that they are dealing not with an opposition party, but with a syndicate of criminals. If they don't get it now, they never will.

Labels: Administration B.S.

Talk about copycats....the whole world has gone off its rocker:

Germany's celebrity polar bear cub Knut has received an anonymous death threat, causing alarm at Berlin Zoo on Thursday and prompting heightened security.

Top-selling Bild newspaper said the zoo had received a hand-written fax from a suspected animal hater with the words: "Knut is dead! Thursday midday."

But that deadline came and went safely for media star Knut, who has been on newspaper front pages around Germany and the world for weeks. "He is safe and in good spirits," said zoo official Ragnar Kuehne after the time had passed.

Berlin police said they had investigated a letter containing a threat but did not believe it was serious.

Berlin Zoo's business manager Gerald Uhlich said: "They told us prominent figures often have things like this happen but in this instance we need not be too worried."

Nonetheless, Bild said the zoo had trebled the number of minders responsible for Knut's safety to 15.

As Knut appeared for one of his public appearance on Thursday, about twelve minders in orange jackets and carrying walkie-talkies patrolled the area around his enclosure to keep a close eye on the cub and the crowd of fans.

Just an hour before the death threat expired, an unperturbed Knut rolled around on the ground with his bearded keeper Thomas Doerflein and, as usual, chewed his fingers.

Labels: insanity, Knut

Yup, that's just what we need in a world where so-called Christians kill gynecologists for Jesus jihadists kill innocents for Allah: More superstition, more one-true-wayism, more proseletyzing and conversion in the classrooms of America.

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade

File under: More lazy ass blogging.

Headline: Spring Chickens and Roosting Time

Gonzales is another example of two trends: Bush’s obvious skill, no doubt something he’s honed over a lifetime, at diverting some of the responsibility for his own misdeeds; and his willingness to throw loyal supporters into the breach to buy Rove time to escape.

Bush, like his father, is willing to dump anyone he doesn’t depend on. It appears that list is limited to Cheney, Rove, and his Father, not the earthly sort. You know, the voice in his head or wherever.

(read more)

Yesterday Jane Hamsher declared war on one of the organizations standing in the way of retaining a woman's right to control her own body and her own medical care: NARAL.

Yes, NARAL -- the National Abortion Rights Action League.

Jane explains thusly:

I'm sure Nancy Keenan is licking her sweet chops over the latest SCOTUS decision.  It is, after all, probably going to be the biggest fundraising opportunity she's had during her tenure at NARAL.  Bigger even than Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement.  Remember that one?

"NARAL Pro-Choice America surpassed its fundraising goals in the hours following Justice O'Connor's announcement," said President Nancy Keenan. Donors "are deeply concerned that President Bush will choose to further divide this nation by nominating a radical right-wing conservative."

Moderation is not the tone of fundraising appeals in the nomination contest. "This is big, people. Huge," NARAL wrote to supporters. "It's true, there is no freedom without choice. Without choice, we are not free."

And what did they do with all that cash?  They sat it and didn't do a damn thing, didn't lift a finger to fight Samuel Alito.  Worse yet, when the Gang of 14 decided to vote in favor of cloture, they said that they did not consider cloture votes "significant" and would not be considering them in their scorecard. They then went on to add insult to injury by asking their membership to thank Lincoln Chafee and Joe Lieberman for the beatings they delivered with their "aye" cloture vote by pretending that their "nay" floor votes were significant.  They then poured salt into the wound by endorsing both "short ride" Lieberman and Chafee over their opponents who made it clear that they would not have voted for cloture for Alito, which gave us the 5-4 decision we have today.

Don't reward failure.  Tell your friends.  Don't give money to NARAL when they come knocking on your door to tell you that choice is going down the crapper unless you give them a lot of money, because what you'll be giving money for is Nancy Keenan's ability to point her little pinky over tea at Washington cocktail parties and tut-tut over the state of choice in this country at the hands of the fundamentalists.  She'll take no responsibility for the fact that NARAL will not fight, will not back those that fight, and worse yet, that NARAL sucks up all the pro-choice money so nobody else can mount a meaningful fight, either.

It's time to stop supporting Democrats that oppose a women's right to control her own body (*cough* Bob Casey *cough*) and those who vote for laws that result in yesterday's SCOTUS decision (and yes, I'm afraid that includes Patrick Leahy, who now has one hell of a lot to answer for). It's time to hold the feet of those Democrats who are squishy on the issue (like Hillary "reach out to the pro-lifers" Clinton) to the fire. It's time to demand that our leaders take a stand. Either you think American women are American citizens or you don't. Either you believe that we have the same right of bodily integrity as men do or you believe that when an egg becomes fertilized, the woman becomes just a vessel for "potential life" -- nothing more.

There is no middle ground on this. The pro-fetus position among right-wing activists is not about babies, it's about control and it's about punishing women who have sex for pleasure not procreation. Yes, there are pro-fetus people of conscience who also oppose the death penalty and war, but they are few and far between, and they do not represent the political activists. When you send people like Joe Lieberman or Joe Biden, who regard "collegiality" and the Washington consultants as being more important than the full citizenship of half of the American populations, you might as well join up with the Christofascist Zombie Brigade.

There is no middle ground. We know that now. It's time to choose up sides. Are women people, citizens, Americans -- or not?

Labels: reproductive rights

After three days of unsuccessful attempts to get a cleaning service out to deal with our soaked basement carpet, it's time to resort to desperate measures. So this morning before work it's going to be just me, a utility knife, and a strong back as I move furniture and hack up what used to be an old but still in excellent condition carpet into manageable pieces so that the mildew smell doesn't extend any more to the main floor of the house than it is already and turn into toxic mold.

Note to cleaning services: If you're not going to be able to come out in a reasonable period of time, at least have the decency to say so. One of them "put me on the list" and they're "working their way up" to my area but "can't say when" they'll get here, another "put me into the system and you'll get a call within 24-48 hours", a third and fourth don't even pick up the phone but instead have voice mail take the calls -- and then don't respond, and the fifth guy said he could come out on Friday but said I should just remove the carpet and get it out of the house.

And as the mildew smell gets stronger, I've come to the conclusion that this is the only thing to do. I have a local flooring guy coming out tomorrow who would remove it, but how many more days will it be till he gets here? And how much mold might develop in the meantime? So this morning my blogging time will be taken up hacking up this poor, defenseless wall-to-wall carpeting that has done nothing to me but cushion my feet during step aerobics for ten years and is guilty of nothing other than being a 1970's rust color and having the misfortune to have a foam pad underneath it during a storm that brought 9" of rain in 24 hours. And while doing it I shall cry at the injustice and futility of it all.

But meanwhile, if you don't have Times Select, go read Bob Herbert's column about Cho Seung-Hui today over at Welcome to Pottersville. As Republicans continue to insist that gay marriage somehow threatens them and solidify their control over women's bodies with the new conservative Supreme Court, Herbert's discussion of Cho's hostility towards women and psychosexual issues and how such issues are common threads in this sort of mass murderer is food for thought.

Labels: homeownership, weather

This is for all the young women who have regarded those of us who have fought for their right to control your own bodies and blithely ignored the threat to their right to their own bodily integrity: Happy now?

This is for all the so-called pro-choice Democratic Senators who were too frightened of George W. Bush to put up a fight against the likes of John Roberts and Samuel Alito: Happy now?

This is for all the physicians who refused to get involved in this issue for the last 20 years and allowed the Supreme Court, not you, to decide what is and is not appropriate medical procedure: Happy now?

I feed badly for those women whom the Supreme Court today told today that their life isn't worth shit. But let this be a lesson to all of us: There is a price to letting our guard down. There is a price for taking our rights for granted. There is a price to saying "Oh, they'll never [fill in the blank]...." Today women whose lives are threatened by pregnancies that can never result in healthy babies were told that even the few hours of life that their damaged babies may have are worth more than their own lives. Indeed, ALL women of childbearing age were told today that their lives have no value when weighed against a terminally ill or damaged fetus.

Conservatives have wanted this for years, and craven Democrats allowed them to have it. I'm past menopause now and this is no longer my issue. But the implications of allowing the Supreme Court to decide what is appropriate medical care for women extend far beyond abortion -- and we had damn well better get a grip on what we're dealing with. Because this is not about Teh Babies. It's about Teh Control.

Labels: reproductive rights, self-determination.

The sheer and utter cluelessness that accompanies the coverage of the mind of Cho Seung-Hui, who has been identified as the Virginia Tech shooter, just boggles the mind. That authorities are looking for "what triggered the rampage" is just ridiculous. Who says there has to be a trigger? There were many, many indications that this was an extremely troubled young man, even one with violent tendencies -- and it's astonishing that even after the Columbine massacre, the signs that this kid was a danger to himself and others were right there:

Cho Seung-Hui rarely spoke to his own dormitory roommate. His teachers were so disturbed by some of his writing that they referred him to counseling. And when Mr. Cho finally and horrifyingly came to the world’s attention on Monday, he did so after writing a note that bitterly lashed out at his fellow students for what he deemed their moral decay.

[snip]

Joe Aust, who shared Room 2121 at Harper Hall with him, said he had spoken to Mr. Cho often but had received only one-word replies. Later, Mr. Aust said, Mr. Cho stopped talking to him entirely. Mr. Aust would sometimes enter the room and find Mr. Cho sitting at his desk, staring into nothingness.

[snip]

Lucinda Roy said that in October of 2005 she was contacted as head of the English Department by a professor who was disturbed by a piece of his writing. Ms. Roy, rebuffed by Mr. Cho, contacted the campus police, counseling services, student affairs and officials in her department. Ms. Roy described the writing as a “veiled threat rather than something explicit.”

University officials told her that she could drop Mr. Cho from the class. Or, they said, she could tutor him individually, and she agreed to do so three times from October to December 2005. During those sessions, she said in an interview, he always wore sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled low.

“He seemed to be crying behind his sunglasses,” she said.

[snip]

In another writing class, Mr. Cho submitted two profoundly violent and profane plays. Ian MacFarlane, a classmate who now works for America Online, posted the plays on the company’s Web site Tuesday, saying they had horrified the rest of the students.

“When we read Cho’s plays, it was like something out of a nightmare,” Mr. MacFarlane wrote. “The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn’t have even thought of.”

As a result of them, Mr. MacFarlane added, “we students were talking to each other with serious worry about whether he could be a school shooter.”

In one play, called “Richard McBeef,” Mr. Cho wrote of a teenage boy who accuses his stepfather of murdering the boy’s father and of trying to molest the boy himself.

“I hate him,” the boy says of the stepfather in a copy of the play on the Web site. “Must kill Dick. Must kill Dick. Dick must die.”

Now I've been interested in psychology from childhood, and I was a depressed, lonely adolescent, covering myself up with a poncho and wearing my hair in my eyes, sitting alone in the schoolyard at lunchtime writing moody poetry into a blank book. I went to a small, very provincial college in Pennsylvania where from the day I got there I was shunned because I was short, chubby, not a prom queen, too Jewish, and just too weird. I called home in tears the first night I was there. So I know a bit about what it's like to be a troubled kid. I also work in mental health research, turning psychological assessment forms into data entry screens, so perhaps I'm just more attuned to this than most people.

But how on earth can you have a kid on campus who sits in his room staring into nothingness and writes violent plays containing revenge fantasies about child molesters, and decide that the way to handle it is to let an English teacher drop the kid from the class? And when the teacher agrees to tutor the kid and he seems to be crying all the time, how on earth can anyone, after the kid decides he can't take anymore and he'll get back at the teachers who ignored him, the kids who perhaps snubbed him because he was foreign, because he was Asian, maybe they thought him "geeky", buys some easily-accessible guns and decides to go out in a blaze of glory, taking a few of those he imagines were his tormentors with him, how can anyone say, as a federal law enforcement official did:

“What was this kid thinking about? There are no indications.”

What the fuck??? No indications? The kid practically had a big, red, Tex Avery-style neon sign pointing at his head screaming HELP ME!!

Over the next few days, we're going to see a great deal of hue and cry in the media about the "monster" who did this. Already, yesterday, a school official was using the Bush-tested "Nobody could have predicted..." line. I'm sorry, but this was a very troubled kid, not a monster. I would also like to know more about the "prescription medications related to the treatment of psychological problems" found in Cho's belongings -- what they were, who prescribed them, and what kind of ongoing monitoring of the drug's effects was going on. Given Cho's status as a loner, it's unlikely he was one of those kids passing their prescription drugs around to their friends. And while 23 years old is hardly an adolescent, it's not that far out of adolescence, and we know that the use of antidepressants can increase the likelihood of suicidal ideation in children and adolescents.

I'm not trying to excuse what Cho Seung-Hui did, although the simplistic-minded wingnuts who occasionally visit this blog are likely to brand me as a bleeding-heart, root-causes liberal. Already we have morons like Debbie Schlussel trying desperately to create a Muslim connection out of the name "Ismail Ax" written in red ink on Cho's arm and calling for stricter controls on the admission of foreign students (even though Cho had come to the U.S. with his parents at the age of 8); and Michelle Malkin, of all people, trying to allude to this sort of massacre being an Asian thing by noting the 1991 University of Iowa shootings by a Chinese doctoral student. Is it any wonder that Korean students are already fleeing the Virginia Tech campus in response to and in anticipation of sweeping generalizations about Korean males? Funny how no one talked about white kids' propensity to violence after the Columbine massacres.

It seems to me that by now we have enough information about this kid and the other school shooters that have preceded him; shooters that include plenty of white guys, to realize that while yes, there may be issues of a violent culture, and yes, there is an issue of too-easy accessibility to guns in this society, the troubled college life and death of Cho Seung-Hui -- and those other depressed high school and college students who may be ticking time bombs even as we speak -- is first and foremost a mental health issue. So can we please start paying attention when a kid like this cries out for help but doesn't know how to ask for it?

Labels: mental illness

OK, it's heavy on the tubthumping, but it's funny and makes its point well.



It would be funnier if we saw the reaction of bystanders to two guys dressed up in polar bear pajamas.

Labels: activism, polar bears

Well, after about 14 hours of nearly continuous ritual of either vacuuming up water from the laundry room floor or tap dancing on towels in the family room in what I fear is a vain attempt to save the carpet, we finally collapsed in utter exhaustion last night as water continued to seep into the house.

Today more rain is predicted.

At least the morning paper offered an explanation as to why, with five inches less rain than was dumped on us in 1999 when Tropical Storm Floyd paid its unwanted visit, the flooding was so much worse. Back then, we were in a drought summer, the ground was parched, and reservoirs were nowhere near full. Last week we had 1.5 inches of rain on top of the big ice storm six weeks ago. So when an average of eight inches of rain fell on Sunday (9.3 inches the highest recorded total, in River Vale), there was nowhere for it to go except as unwanted guests in people's houses.

This morning I am hoping to go downstairs and find that perhaps the seepage by some miracle stopped during the night. I am not optimistic, given the wet sidewalks and driveways this morning indicating more rain during the night (and more predicted today and tomorrow). We do not have flood insurance because we do not live in a flood plain, not that it would have helped because flood insurance covers only structural damage and damage to operational things like furnaces and water heaters. My water heater is in a 2" deep tray, an overpriced-but-worth-it $60 add-on when we last had it replaced, along with a battery-operated alarm that goes off when there is water in the tray, thus giving us advance notice when it gives up the ghost. And my furnace, with barely 1/4" of water around it, was chugging along merrily last night.

But now some decisions have to be made and some money spent. Because the seepage is largely at the front of the house, it seems more productive to attack the source of the problem, however intermittent, and enhance the drainage, rather than paying some charlatan tens of thousands of dollars to dig up the basement and install God-knows what. So that means calling out a landscaper who does this sort of thing. It also means calling someone in to either extract the water from the carpet and de-mildew it or pull it up entirely and de-mildew it and then decide what to do about flooring. At any rate, it's going to be expensive, and while I had planned to put money into the house this year, it's not where I'd planned to put it.

It could have been worse. The Bergen Record has a photo this morning of a house in River Vale submerged nearly to the top of the garage. Yesterday people in New Milford were being rescued in boats. With a brook and two reservoirs on my way to work, and my route going through the aforementioned River Vale, it remains to be seen if I could have even gotten through. Today I'll head in, if only because there doesn't seem to be a point to be one of Mickey Mouse's brooms with buckets for a second day as water contineus to seep in.

And this is why I really don't have much to say about yesterday's shooting at Virginia Tech. I did have MSNBC on during my towel dancing on the carpet yesterday, but the "If it bleeds, it leads" coverage excluding all else seemed like just more Atrocity Droning, not unlike the nonstop coverage of last year's shooting at an Amish school. What stood out most frighteningly were the calls by talking heads for so-called bulletproof security on college campuses. Look, folks, this is a tragedy by any measure. But when the network that continually tries to pump up a failed president's ratings by casting him as a strong, resolute leader in the face of The Terrorism Of Which We Must Be Afraid All The Time calls the shooting "an act of evil on a scale that we've never seen in this country before", I think we've entered the realm of tabloid journalism hyperbole, and I'm not going to pay any more attention to that than I am to the continued attempts to flog the corpse of Anna Nicole Smith.

This sort of thing is nothing new. In 1966, ex-Marine Charles Whitman killed 15 people and wounded 31 before he was shot by police. In 1984, James Huberty killed 21 people and wounded 19 others in a McDonald's in San Ysidro, California. In 1991, George Hennard shot and killed 22 people in Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people and wounded 24 before committing suicide in the 1999 Columbine shootings that politicians are still flogging. When something like this happens, whether on a college campus or not, I don't think the relative body counts are what's important. Whitman was clearly nuts. Harris and Klebold were certainly extremely disturbed young men. And it's interesting how eight years later, the talk of the "bully culture" that spawned the Columbine massacre has fallen silent. I guess it's hard to rail against bully culture in the schools when a 67-year-old radio personality is calling a women's college basketball team "whores".

But what's most disheartening is the implication by the tablonews networks that the fact that the shooter, apparently a student at the University, may have been "a 24- year-old Chinese national who arrived in San Francisco on a United Airlines flight Aug. 7 last year on a student visa issued in Shanghai" is somehow significant. I suppose if we can chalk this up to some "damn fur'ner" we won't have to look at either the pressures on college students or accept the fact that there will always be people who go nuts and act out.

I'm not trying to belittle the horror and the loss for Virginia Tech students and the families of the dead and wounded. But the frenzy surrounding this incident seems to be more about cable news wanting to deliver eyeballs to advertisers than about any need to cover developments in the case.

By all means, let's ask questions about the response of campus security, and whether students should have been warned earlier. But it would be tragic if college campuses were turned into police states as a result of one tragic, horrific incident.

UPDATE: Perhaps the same cable news-bots who are flogging the Virginia Tech massacre might want to consider, as Larry Johnson has, that what happened in Virginia would be just another day in Iraq under the U.S. occupation.

Labels: tabloid journalism, weather

Sometimes its a PITA (pain in the ass) to be a cynic, but this stinks to high heaven.

President Bush and first lady Laura Bush will attend Tuesday's convocation at Virginia Tech to remember those affected by the deadliest campus violence ever in this country.

This is a damn photo op for Bush. It isn't like he really cares about the 33 dead students any more than he cares about the 3200 dead troops in the Mid-East.

This is a tragedy, but so were the hurricanes in the southern US. So are the horrors in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush is as sympathetic as your average house cat.

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Labels: Afghanistan, Bush, Iraq, Mid-East, PITA, VA Tech

Surprise! Surprise! The Bush administration just doesn't give a damn about oversight and certainly won't have anything to do with it.

Today, U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) issued the following statement in response to the Justice Department’s failure to comply with the Committee’s subpoena response deadline of 2 p.m. today. The subpoena seeks information the Department has continued to refuse to provide or has provided only in redacted (read conspiratorial) form.

“We are disappointed that the Justice Department failed to produce the documents and other materials for which we issued a subpoena last week. While we understand that the Department considers this effort a priority and we plan to continue working with them, we will review all available legal options to secure compliance with the subpoena.” [emphasis mine or Eli's]

I guess they forget who's holding the reins now.

Each day it seems the Democrats are becoming more like stallions than geldings. They seem to be capable of growing balls.

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H/T Eli

Labels: Bush, House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, Justice Department

I wasn't gonna post about this, but I have several questions.

A gunman massacred 32 people at Virginia Tech in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history Monday, cutting down his victims in two attacks two hours apart before the university could grasp what was happening and warn students.

The bloodbath ended with the gunman committing suicide, bringing the death toll to 33 and stamping the campus in the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains with unspeakable tragedy, perhaps forever.

Investigators gave no motive for the attack. The gunman's name was not immediately released, and it was not known if he was a student.

"Today the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions," Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said. "The university is shocked and indeed horrified."

But he was also faced with difficult questions about the university's handling of the emergency and whether it did enough to warn students and protect them after the first burst of gunfire. Some students bitterly complained they got no warning from the university until an e-mail that arrived more than two hours after the first shots rang out.

They say it is the worst massacre in modern US history. There have been worse ones earlier?

What idiots are in charge who couldn't realize what was happening after the first attack which was followed by a second two hours later?

And how could anyone in their right mind decide email was the best way to warn students? They have no fucking campus wide public address system? If they don't, then someone did a piss poor job of setting up campus security.

This is a horrific tragedy made worse by the authorities in charge.

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Labels: massacre, Virginia Tech

Its been a while since I had a "Must read IMHO" entry, but this one qualifies for sure.

We don't get it. We ... just ... don't ... get it.

By "we," I mean the policy wonks in Washington, the entire administration, military leaders and the population of this country in general.

The gist of the piece is: Everyone doesn't want to be like US and hates being fucked by US just because they have OIL and we want it.

Admission: I'm chagrined I missed this in the original, but happy theBhc caught it.

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Labels: Mid-East, oil

Didn't realize Jill was up to her ass neck in water. I'll try to take up a little of the slack for her. Hope you and she don't mind.

I'm sorry, but I can't resist sticking it to Bush.

THE PRESIDENT: Our nation is shocked and saddened by the news of the shootings at Virginia Tech today. The exact total has not yet been confirmed, but it appears that more than 30 people were killed and many more were wounded.

I've spoken with Governor Tim Kaine and Virginia Tech President Charles Steger. I told them that Laura and I and many across our nation are praying for the victims and their families and all the members of the university community who have been devastated by this terrible tragedy. I told them that my administration would do everything possible to assist with the investigation, and that I pledged that we would stand ready to help local
law enforcement and the local community in any way we can during this time of sorrow. [emphasis mine]

Hello? Katrina? Rita? Yeah, we know about your "help".

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Labels: Bush, massacre, Virginia Tech

Does this not sound exactly like a Bush operation? Is anyone with competence in charge? Stoopid question I know.

After six billion dollars and over three years, the Pentagon is finally going to examine the office that is supposed to help solve the improvised bomb problem. More telling, one of the people tapped to head the review was a vocal war critic early on. Congress was already casting a suspicious eye towards the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO). Now, it seems, some in the Defense Department have grown frustrated, too.

Uh, I think we got us a problem with those fucking IEDs. Duh! Maybe its time we look into that.

And is it just me who finds it interesting four soldiers would be so nonchalant about an IED explosion near them?

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H/T 76003.1414

Labels: Bush, IEDs, JIEDDO, Pentagon

No blogging today, folks. I have a basement full of water and half of it is carpeted family room. Today it's just me, the basement, and a wet/dry vac. See y'all tomorrow.

Labels: weather

Link via Americablog:

Sen. John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) reopened the door to a possible 2008 presidential campaign during a book signing in Denver and then again, in an interview with 9NEWS.


The 2004 Democratic nominee told a crowd of more than 250 at the Tattered Cover bookstore in lower downtown Denver that he had no desire to endorse any candidate for the office right now, choosing to wait to see how they addressed the issue of global warming.

Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, are finishing up a nationwide tour to promote their book, "This Moment on Earth," which highlights successful efforts at the local level to better the environment.

Afterwards, while answering a question from a viewer on the program YOUR SHOW about why he chose not to run, Kerry said he had decided it wasn't the right time.

"Could that change?" Kerry said. "It might. It may change over years. It may change over months. I can't tell you, but I've said very clearly I don't consider myself out of it forever."

Perhaps not, John. But the rest of us do. We have not forgotten how you took your $14 million in leftover campaign cash and went home before the votes in Ohio were even counted yet; while your running mate was out there saying you would not give up until you were certain the votes were counted.

Al Gore didn't realize in 2000 that they would steal an election. By 2004 you should have known. Face it, John -- you're a shitty campaigner. You have a tin ear, you are unelectable, and yes, you're a wuss. You may be a war hero, but you crumpled in the fact of that chickenshit weasel George W. Bush and the equally chickenshit Swift Boat liars like a cheap car. Go represent Massachusetts in the Senate and trouble us no more.

What part of We Do Not Want You do you not understand?

Labels: idiocy, John Kerry

Jeff Fecke nails it.

Labels: bloggers

Hey, John McCain -- how's that "progress" thing going for you?

The political movement of fiery Iraqi Shi'ite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr said on Sunday it would withdraw from the government on Monday to press its demand for a timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal.

Officials from the movement, which holds six ministries and a quarter of the parliamentary seats in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite Alliance, said the formal announcement would be made on Monday at a news conference.

The move is unlikely to bring down the government, but it could create tensions in Maliki's fractious Shi'ite-led government of national unity at a time when it is trying to heal sectarian divisions that threaten to tip Iraq into civil war.

We are going to declare our withdrawal from government because the prime minister does not want to make a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq," said one official in Sadr's movement who declined to be identified.

There was no immediate comment from the government.

Maliki says he sees no need to set a timetable. He said last week his government was working to build up Iraq's security forces as quickly as possible so U.S.-led forces could leave.

Of course, the fact that al-Sadr wants the U.S. out of there is only going to strengthen the Administration's resolve to stay in.

Meanwhile, here's the wonderful progress the so-called "surge" is making:

Also Sunday morning, two car bombs exploded within minutes of each other in a shopping and dining area of southwest Baghdad, killing at least 18 people and wounding another 52 people, according to Baghdad police.

The first bomb hit a popular restaurant at about 10 a.m., while a second one exploded 10 minutes later and 100 yards away in an outdoor market in al-Shurta al-Rabeia district, police said.

Later, in northwestern Baghdad, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest on a small bus, killing six people and wounding 11, Baghdad police said. The bus was traveling between the predominantly Shiite neighborhoods of Autaifiya and Kadhimiya.

In central Baghdad's Karrada district, a minibus packed with explosives blew up on a commercial road, killing 11 people and wounding 15 others, a Baghdad police official said.

More U.S. soldiers dead

Also in the capital Sunday, small-arms fire killed an American soldier backing an Iraqi national police unit near a mosque, the U.S. military said. An Iraqi civilian also was wounded, the military said.

On Saturday, a U.S. soldier was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near troops conducting a foot patrol in southern Baghdad, the military said. Also Saturday a U.S. Marine died during combat operations in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, the military said.

Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, 3,301 U.S. military personnel have died in the war, including seven Defense Department civilians.

In Baiji, north of Baghdad, four Iraqi soldiers were killed and five others were wounded Sunday when a suicide car bomber slammed into an army checkpoint, a Tikrit police official said.

The city, about 125 miles (200 kilometers) north of the capital, is in Salaheddin province and is home to Iraq's largest oil refinery.

In a separate attack, gunmen wounded the commander of Iraq's border police in Salaheddin province and killed four border police officers in an ambush on the commander's convoy Sunday afternoon.

In the northern city of Mosul, four people were killed and 16 others were wounded Sunday when two suicide car bombs exploded in quick succession at an Iraqi army base, police said. Two Iraqi soldiers were among the dead, a police official said.

Also in Mosul, four Iraqi soldiers were critically wounded when a car bomb detonated near their patrol, the official said.

Sunday's violence comes on the heels of a car bomb blast Saturday in a crowded shopping area of Karbala, killing at least 44 people and wounding 224, according to an official with the city's health directorate.

Ten women and 10 children were among those killed by the blast near a bus station and just 200 yards from the Imam Hussein shrine, where the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed is buried. Karbala is a holy Shiite city about 70 miles (113 kilometers) southwest of Baghdad.

A short time later, a car bomb exploded on the Jadriya bridge, which spans the Tigris River in southern Baghdad, killing at least 10 people and wounding 15 others, Iraqi police said.

That bridge attack came two days after a suicide car bomb detonated on the Sarafiya bridge, which crosses the Tigris in northern Baghdad, also killing 10 people. Two large sections of the bridge collapsed into the river.

Also Saturday, Baghdad police reported finding 14 bullet-riddled bodies around the Iraqi capital.

So. If we leave Iraq, it will dissolve into chaos. What the fuck do you call this?

We now know that this president and his vice president took us into this war not based on bad intelligence, but on lies -- lies ginned up to implement a policy that this bunch had in mind even before taking office. Is the so-called loyal opposition going to do something about it? Is the so-called opposition going to hold this bunch accountable? Or is Dick Cheney right, that the Democrats will ultimately cave in and vote to continue to fund this madness?

Of course, defunding the war is no panacea either, because this president will not hesitate to leave soldiers in Iraq without uniforms, without food, without water, and without ammunition if he has to -- just so he can blame the Democrats for his own folly. The only answer to the Iraq problem is to remove this president and his vice president from office. The case is there. Rep. Pelosi, it is time to not just put impeachment back on the table, but start it rolling. The young men and women being sent to die in Iraq for George W. Bush's ego require it.

Labels: Iraq

I'm sure this will be the talk radio meme in the coming week, as Alberto Gonzales prepares to lie through his teeth testify on Capitol Hill. But as the evidence trickles out, the more it looks like the Administration did, in fact, plan to skirt document retention requirements as part of their efforts to use so-called voter fraud prosecutions to game the 2006 AND 2008 elections -- and that George W. Bush was in on it up to his bleary, drunken eyeballs.

Friday's document dump shows that the amount of wingnut activism in which U.S. prosecutors played a role in how they were evaluated by the Justice Department, demonstrating that under George W. Bush, even the Justice Department has become lousy with Mayberry Machiavellis:

The Justice Department weighed political activism and membership in a conservative law group in evaluating the nation's federal prosecutors, documents released in the probe of fired U.S. attorneys show.

The political credentials were listed on a chart of 124 U.S. attorneys nominated since 2001, a document that could bolster Democrats' claims that the traditionally independent Justice Department has become more partisan during the Bush administration.

[snip]

The chart underscores the weight that conservative credentials carried with the Justice Department.

The three-page spreadsheet notes the "political experience" of each prosecutor, which was defined as work at the Justice Department's headquarters in Washington, on Capitol Hill, for state or local officials, and on campaigns or for political parties.

Several of the 124 prosecutors on the list were also members of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. The group was founded by conservative law students and now claims 35,000 members, including prominent members of the Bush administration, the federal judiciary and Congress.

Josh Marshall has more.

Labels: Prosecutorgate

I'm not trying to turn this blog into a "Save Air America!" vehicle. Truly, I'm not. But you have to understand where it comes from.

I was never much of a talk radio listener. Yes, I used to listen to Don Imus many, many years ago, back in the Billy Sol Hargis days, when he was still funny and didn't feel he had to be cruel and sophomoric in order to try to out-Stern Stern. Then for a number of years there was some decent music to listen to in the New York area on stations like WNEW, and AM radio was just a place to get news, traffic and weather. After the right-wing echo chamber took hold, I would listen to WABC very occasionally, for about ten minutes at a time, just under the Know Your Enemy doctrine. One day I stumbled on the drive-time show The Buzz, with Richard Bey and Steve Malzberg, and somehow became a regular listener. I'm still not sure why. Steve Malzberg is one of those screaming AIPAC wingnuts, but Richard Bey, yes, he of trash TV fame, had somehow metamorphosed into the kind of sane, thoughtful, intelligent somewhat left-of-center radio personality who who made for interesting listening. As the rush to war in Iraq accelerated in late 2002 and 2003, Bey became a more vocal opponent of the war, for reasons we all know now to be true, and was summarily fired by WABC management after the war started. He hasn't worked steadily on-air since.

After that, radio for me became largely limited to the college and jazz stations, until Air America went on the air on March 31, 2004.

I don't think anyone at Air America ever really understood what a lifeline the kind of entertaining, progressive talk radio they put on the air in the early days was for those of us who were growing more appalled daily by what we saw. Yes, the early product was raw and unpolished, other than the veteran Randi Rhodes. But we stayed with it as people like Marc Maron and Sam Seder and Rachel Maddow grew into their roles and matured as radio talent. And for a few brief months, listening to most of Air America's lineup was like listening to fine improvisational jazz, but in the kind of intimate club where the band breaks down the wall between performer and audience and lets you jam with the band.

It wasn't just the fact that shows like Morning Sedition and The Majority Report took calls. Morning Sedition in particular broke down the wall by providing glimpses into the odd, twisted place that is the mind of Marc Maron, and even into his life as he shared his adventures in trapping and taming a litter of feral kittens that were born in the yard of his Astoria apartment building. Then the show took itself on the road, with live broadcasts at local venues that were the best damn free concerts I've ever attended.

I needn't go into the litany of disastrous Air America management decisions made by an ever-changing cast of characters, from the cancellation of Morning Sedition and Marty Kaplan's weekend news magazine to the syndication of Jerry Springer's radio show to the addition of progressive utopians with no sense of humor like Dr. James Forbes and Rev. Wilton Gaddy, who while well-meaning, don't exactly provide entertaining programming.

But while Air America's revolving door management marched the network towards oblivion, a community of listeners was building, one which clung to each other like freezing passengers in a lifeboat as we watched our beloved ship slowly and inexorably sink. As Air America gradually de-linked its interactive web sites for its cancelled and endangered shows, off-site links sprung up, such as Morning Seditionists, where Marc Maron's listeners still congregate daily, almost a year and a half after the show's cancellation and Seditionist Radio, where you can go back in time and stream teh Smart and teh Funny 24 hours a day. When the Majority Report blog stopped working, Sam Seder himself set up a blog as an offsite coffee bar where his listeners can congregate.

What Mark Green doesn't understand is that when radio personalities make themselves this accessible to their audience, that audience's loyalty is not to Air America; not to the business model or the suits that run it, but to the people at the microphones like Marc and Sam, and the behind-the-scenes people like Lauren and Joel and Justin and Dan "Canary in the Coal Mine" Pashman and Brendan McDonald. And you can't push those people off the air and put washed-up hacks like "Lionel" in there and expect us to just go along.

So appropriately, this past Friday, which just happened to be the 13th of the month, saw the bittersweet confluence of the final Sam Seder show and the middle of the run of Marc Maron, Janeane Garofalo, and Henry Rollins in a show informally titled "It's Not a Play and There's No Music" at the Gramercy Theatre. Mr. Brilliant and I went to this show, where we met up with Melina and her incredibly precocious, cool and deeply twisted son (and I mean that in the best possible way) Will, who will now forevermore be known to me as Egg Boy.

The Gramercy is a conversion of one of those old New York art theatres that used to show only movies appealing to the most geeky of film geeks and trash culture mutants -- such as Robert Flaherty retrospectives and obscure documentaries like Comic Book Confidential. They've pulled out all the orchestra seats and left the stadium-seating in the back, so they can either put folding chairs in the front for spoken word shows like this one, or leave it open as a dance floor for the neopunks and headbangers. I planted the Brilliant at Breakfast flag in the 4-seat second row of the balcony that boasted an aisle seat with lots of legroom into which Mr. B. could unfold himself.

Shortly before the show, a small, frighteningly thin woman in a worn and seemingly unclean shearling coat that we used to call an "afghan coat", sporting uncombed, matted hair, who bore a frightening resemblance to that homeless woman, Sharon, who used to live in the World Trade Center and always had a sleek, well-fed cat or rabbit with her, climbed up into the balcony. Now, I'm one of those people who never recognizes "celebrities" when I see them, unless they're so distinctive looking that they have big, Tex Avery-style neon arrows that flash FAMOUS PERSON over their heads. I worked in New York for thirteen years, and the only FAMOUS PEOPLE I can recall seeing in passing were Bryant Gumbel, who is impossible to miss because he's about nine feet tall and as big as a linebacker, and Paul Shaffer, who is impossible to miss because he's about my height. Usually what happens is somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind there is a glimmer of recognition, but it doesn't usually take hold in my conscious mind. Once I saw Kate Hudson walking down 56th Street between 7th and 8th, but I was at Carnegie Hall before I realized who it was. And so it was on Friday night, when it wasn't until the small, frighteningly thin woman in a worn and seemingly unclean shearling coat that we used to call an "afghan coat", sporting uncombed, matted hair, who bore a frightening resemblance to that homeless woman, Sharon, who used to live in the World Trade Center and always had a sleek, well-fed cat or rabbit with her, began her Renfield-like crawl through the audience and onto the state that I realized it was Janeane Garofalo.

I've said for years that if they made a movie of my life, Janeane Garofalo would play me. Like me, Janeane Garofalo is the short, smart, funny girl who battles continuously with her weight and whose humor masks self-esteem problems as she tries to navigate a world in which none of this means anything, that the only currency that matters for women is conformation to a certain standard of beauty. For some of us, the film The Truth about Cats and Dogs wasn't a light romantic comedy, a reimagining of Cyrano de Bergerac, but True Life, except we knew that in True Life, Ben Chaplin doesn't wake up and realize that while we may not be tall and blonde and willowy, we're the one with whom he really connected. Well, sometimes he does; Mr. Brilliant did, though I wasn't competing with Uma Thurman at the time. The cruel irony of ...Cats and Dogs is Janeane was every bit as attractive as Uma Thurman, though in a very different way. It's grieved me to watch Janeane over the years since them, as she's tried mightily to make herself as unattractive as possible. She'd appear one night on the early Daily Show with uncombed hair, ratty jeans, and thick glasses, looking at that dimwitted golden fratboy Craig Kilborn as if he were the male equivalent of Uma Thurman, and then the next night show up on MSNBC with lustrous hair and a neat turtleneck and blazer, looking like a smart and sexy college English professor. Janeane is like those really draining friends you have, who never really appreciate just how fabulous they are, and you get tired after a while of telling them.

In her waning days on The Majority Report, when it was clear that the nightly grind of having to actually show up for work and do a radio show was more than she could deal with, it was easy to forget just how funny she can be. Friday night, with no acknowledgment of the incongruity of an attractive woman who has dieted herself into emaciation and hides behind an ugly coat being addicted to the false promises of Sephora, she went off on the Beauty Problem, Rome, spending life stuck at the corner of 13th Street and University Place while chronically late for something, and about the need to decompress from thinking about the horror that is life in the Bush years by taking a liberal dose of Teh Cuteness. I look at videos of Knut Das Eisbärbaby, Janeane whips out books containing pictures of puppies doing adorable things. But as annoying as Janeane can be, there's something incredibly brave about getting up in front of a roomful of people and exposing your most raw psychological wounds. It's one thing to sit in a house in a bathrobe in the morning before work and expound for a bunch of people who will never see you. But to put it all out there for the world to see is either incredibly brave or incredibly self-indulgent. At any rate, she makes it incredibly touching and incredibly funny.

Next up was Marc Maron, who seemed like a paragon of mental health by comparison. Maron is the kind of comic that you either get what he's doing or you don't; you either find his work sidesplittingly hilarious or he leaves you cold. But for those of us for whom his work resonates perhaps a bit too much, hearing for the fifth or sixth time about the mindset of fundamentalist Christians or talk about the virus-ridden dirty whore of a PC in his garage that he uses only for porn, or about how we don't even know who we are anymore if we lose our cellphones is like listening to the Allman Bros. Band riff through an extended version of In Memory of Elizabeth Reed -- you've heard it a million times, but you get something new from it every time. Sometimes Maron reminds me of a smarter and far funnier version of the kind of Jewish guys I used to date in an attempt to do my Jewish Girl duty of marrying a Nice Jewish Boy -- the guys who were maybe cuter than the parade of prematurely bald guys named Mel who had bad combovers in their twenties, but who were every bit as neurotic; the guys who wore those neuroses on their sleeve, guys who would wear you out just dealing with them. As Conan O'Brien once told Maron, "It must be hard being you."

But what Marc Maron does is reach down into that scared, vulnerable place inside all of us, the part of us that does self-destructive shit and then wonders what the hell we were doing, and forces us to look at it. But he's not a whiner, he's not the kind of scared, sniveling little weasel who gets stuck at the "this is why" phase of therapy and then demands that the world make allowances for the fact that his parents belittled him his entire life. Instead, Marc takes the pain and the anxiety and the low self-esteem and the other baggage of being raised by angry Jewish parents and turns it into raw, real, commentary on the human condition. Spitting the words out one by one like a staccato fusillade of verbal bullets, he doesn't ask you to indulge him because he's neurotic, he forces you to face the scared child, the believer in magic, the little fat kid, the little gay man, that you both know and fear lives inside you too.

When the tattooed, coiled ball of testosterone-fueled energy that is Henry Rollins follows these two onto the stage, it's as if the captain of the Rugby team were crashing the Chess Club mixer. But while Rollins exudes more sheer Badass than anyone this side of Samuel L. Jackson, there is nothing cynical at all about Henry Rollins. While Marc and Janeane are the sad clowns trying valiantly to infuse these most hopeless of times with humor as we go slouching towards the apocalypse, Rollins is there with his fists raised, saying "Fuck you, Apocalypse! You want a piece of me? Go ahead...I dare you!" And for the next 45 minutes, he goes on about why New York women are great because they don't give a shit what you think, about how global warming resulting in more predatory animals is cool, why scientists should clone dinosaurs, and about his trip to Iran, the first stop on his "Axis of Evil" tour. He's incredibly hot in that Leader of the Pack bad-boy motorcycle guy kind of way -- and an overgrown seven-year-old at the same time. What Rollins does isn't stand-up in the conventional sense. He's more of a monologuist -- he's Spalding Gray on crack. But where Garofalo and Maron are fundamentally pessimistic, Rollins is exuberant. And it isn't the kind of dark, nihilistic exuberance of Slim Pickens riding the bomb at the end of Dr. Strangelove. Rollins really does still believe that people can make a difference, and he sends a by now exhausted audience out into the New York night ordering them to do so.

Despite the fact that we left the theatre utterly spent and exhausted, as if Rollins had just spent 45 minutes drawing the energy reserves from our souls to fuel his manic rant, we were also exhilarated at having just spent two and a half hours listening to intelligent crafters of words into something important. These days, when we have a president who can't speak the language, when the crawl on news channels is always rife with errors, and when most stand-up comedy consists of zhlubby guys on Comedy Central opening with a fat chick joke, a gay joke, and a fart joke, it's a wonderful and rare thing to spend an evening in the company of like-minded souls, all appreciating that brilliant people can still turn words into art.

For another take, go visit Egg Boy's mom.

Labels: Air America, Henry Rollins, Janeane Garofalo, Marc Maron