Holiday in Peru: John Peel passes away

There cannot be a better way to go out from this world than on holiday. Godspeed, Mr. Peel.

News can travel slow from Peru to the UK to Seattle. Influential British DJ John Peel passed away on Monday from a heart attack. I have never owned a "The Peel Sessions" album or disc of one band or many another but Peel was very much a part of my musical upbringing. The music industry has lost an important man. I've not much else to share. Read the BBC obit and go from there.

hair raid

according to the sacramento bee and our friends at clairol, brunettes are big. and by that i mean women are increasingly down with brown.

and by that i mean “bah.”

not that i have anything against brunettes. or blondes, for that matter. let’s face it, i love women of all stripes. but there can be no argument: redheads rule.

i know this, in part, because my wife and daughter are redheads. but that’s a digression.

the real reason there are so many artificial blondes and brunettes in the world is that no one has come up with a decent-looking red hair color. think about it: when have you ever seen an authentic looking red hair-color job? over the years you’ve seen naught but an array of bad examples; red dye jobs that are so ludicrous and awful that women don’t even seem to try any more. they go extreme red, or statement red, or i’m-too-dumb-to-know-any-better red. but never, “damn, that can’t be anything but your natural color” red.

i know this, in part, because i worked in the health and beauty business for several years. i’ve made a point to keep tabs on whether there have been any advances in red hair technology. i have a vested interest in the advancement of red-headedness. i love redheads.

julianne moore, for example. or nicole kidman. or kelly preston. or this lovely person. or this one.

i have great respect for blondes. and brunettes, for that matter. but, as previously noted, my allegiance has been cast in stone: redheads rule.

Justice on a Sliding Scale

Recently, I paid one of my many debts to society. Pray for my soul. I served jury duty.

Growing up on the mean streets of Mercer Island, Washington (an affluent, white, white suburban Seattle community) my thoughts on justice ran parallel to my thoughts on teenage sex. It was to be swift; if you delayed, it may be denied; if you wanted (a) piece/peace you must seek it first.

So much has changed. I now live in Bellaire, Texas (an affluent, white, white, suburban Houston community). Last month on my birthday, amongst the cards, bills, and offers of drowning at 0% interest, I received an unwrapped jury summons. Having served a few years previously I felt, as I had with the birth of my second child, twice blessed. This was due in no small part to the anticipated windfall coming in the form of the $6 juror pay I would receive.

On the appointed day, I arrived at the courthouse shackled by my feelings of civic duty. Without so much as a phone booth, I took on the identity of juror number two in a six member jury paneled to hear a case in which a young, black , male, unemployed, substitute teacher was accused of running a red light in our well known to racial profile suspected traffic violators little town. After trudging through the muck and the mire of the judge’s instructions, prosecutorial hubris and the arresting officer’s droopy eyed testimony, we were shown a video clearly capturing the defendant’s little car running through a red, red light.

Next the defendant took the stand (actually a raised seat). His disjointed testimony was not so much a defense against the charges as it was a plea of no lo have any money. After more yada, yada from the prosecutor and judge, we the jury were herded into a tiny, boxed filled room. Here we were to be sequestered until such time as we could determine whether or not we believed our own eyes and a video that was undisputed.

The rub here was that we actually had some thinking to do. We would be required to access a fine ranging from one dollar up to two hundred dollars. This fine would replace the $125 ticket the defendant was having his day in court to dispute before a jury of his lesser pigmented peers. As a jury we sifted through the reamlessness of evidence and debated the complex legal complexities while searching fellow juror’s prima facias. Finally, we handed down our verdict as solemnly as justices deciding a presidential election outcome.

The solitary figure of a black man rising in an otherwise all white occupied courtroom to hear his punishment stuck with me as I stood in line behind the defendant at the cashier’s window. I watched him hand over an array of five, five dollar bills to pay his fine. Moments later I exchanged my juror slip with the cashier. She handed me a crumpled five and a green, green one.

i ain't skeert

no, I’m not scared. but i am a little worried.





Terrorists in the park?
Add Magnolia's Discovery Park to the locations of alleged terrorist surveillance efforts in the Puget Sound area. According to two women who refused to identify themselves to police, two Middle Eastern men on the afternoon of Oct. 11 were "definitely watching ferries through binoculars as the ferries crossed Puget Sound."

The two men had laid out prayer mats just west of the footpath between the southern bluff and West Emerson Street, the witnesses told police. It is an area near officers' quarters.

The women also said one man had a radio, that the other had binoculars, and that the man with the radio was writing in a notebook while the other watched the ferries through the binoculars.

The suspicious men quickly picked up the prayer mats about five minutes before police arrived and then ran south toward West Emerson Street, according to the police report. The report also includes a transcript of the dispatch calls, and they indicated the men "looked like they just got off horses." An area check proved to be negative.

***

keep in mind that the magnolia news is an unimpeachable source. if the new york times and the washington post combined their resources to form a magnolia bureau, they’d still run second to this fine publication.

no, not really.

but still, this bit of information, on the heels of several stories about the threat to washington state ferry service, atop the bush administration’s abysmal failure to secure our ports, not to mention the mere suggestion of a suitcase nuclear device…has me a little concerned.

i’ve found myself wondering if the topography of our neighborhood would provide any cover in the event of a water detonation.

like most americans, i’ve learned not to take seriously the “department of homeland propaganda” terror alerts. i am not paranoid.

but i am, now, officially uneasy.

An Empire Falls

Disappointing Yankees: Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter were part of the most expensive sports team ever assembled. (Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)

Last night the Boston Red Sox defied history and became the first baseball team to come from being down 3-0 to win a seven game playoff series. In their path was the dynastic team from New York.

Most everyone loves to hate the Yankees. Heck, Americans just plain love an underdog, especially when facing such a dominant power. The Yankees have had the Red Sox number since 1918, the last year Boston won the World Series. The Yankees, since obtaining Babe Ruth from the Sox in 1919 for a bucket of spit, have won 39 American League pennants and 26 World Series. For many fans, and I am not even talking baseball fans here, many sports fans simply wanted to see New York fall to the Sox.

Now, what I want of you fair reader, you the person cheering not so much the pennant won by the Sox but the demise of the Evil Empire, is to ask yourself why you are happy about last night's outcome.

Are you happy because the Yankees have the highest priced team? Are you happy because team owner George Steinbrenner gets what he deserves for investing over $200 million dollars on his roster? A total three times and more than many, many teams?

After all, Steinbrenner is applying pure American business strategy. He spends a lot because he makes a lot. He reinvests in his company. Surge forward, stomp out the competition. All that. He is about as American as it gets. Sorta like Kevin Costner who made it big and kept reinvesting in himself. Yet when it comes to sports and entertainment, Americans love to see teams and huge movie stars who have risen to the top fall. And fall hard. Remember how Costner rode his wave and captured two Oscars® in 1991 for Dances With Wolves? After that "every" movie-goer wanted to see him tank. And that they got with Waterworld. Much like sports fans, who this week wanted to see the Yankees fall hard in historical fashion, got with the Red Sox victory.

Losing four straight after being three outs from winning the pennant? The Empire is finished. Rejoice! yelled sports fans across America.

. . .

Now, I want you to consider why so many of these same Americans find it so hard to understand why America is so hated. Why so many want to see America crumble. Pretty easy to understand, isn't it?

sour krauthammer

i hate to keep picking on charles krauthammer, but the boy clearly is losing it.

in his most recent column he goes ballistic on john edwards. because edwards, in a forward-looking statement, said something hopeful about paralysis victims regaining the ability to walk.

for this scurrilous lie, chuck says, edwards is equivalent to the worst humanity has to offer. “loathsome” and “despicable” were his spitting words-of-choice.

for the record, edwards said, "if we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when john kerry is president, people like christopher reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."

hyperbole? maybe. the pace of progress in medical research is increasing exponentially. many things are possible in the next few years. so i’d say edwards’ statement was “ambitious” or “optimistic.”

worst case, he sounds like the evangelical healers that bush and company are so fond of.

but edwards, chuck says, is guilty of the worst kind of outrage.

chuck was silent when dick cheney equated a kerry victory with guaranteed terrorist attacks. ergo, we assume, cheney’s scary hyperbole—good. edwards’ hopeful hyperbole—bad.

did you know chuck is a physician? he is! his moving and inspirational advice to patients with spinal cord injuries? “get used to it.” actually, and i quote, “…to place the possibility of cure in abeyance.”

nice bedside manner chuck. clearly you believe in doctor-assisted suicide, too.

if all of this sounds like the ranting of a man on the hairy edge, it is only the beginning. because next chuck veers off into undiscovered country, somehow concluding that edwards’ statement was an attack on bush stem cell research policy.

i almost feel sorry for charles krauthammer. he is vehement that there is no hope for paralysis victims, that stem cell research is a deception, that anyone who says otherwise is selling lies to desperate people.

there is desperation in his rhetoric, certainly, but it is wretchedly misplaced. instead of excoriating the bush administration for its medieval views of science, he defends their “record” on stem cell research.

instead of enthusing about the myriad possibilities predicted by such research, he leads the cheers for its failure.

it’s clear that chuck is better suited to the comfortable distance of column-writing, over the actual practice of medicine. his future as a doctor is sadly proscribed by his tendency to make his patients sick.

one man, two votes

last week i received in the mail not one but two absentee ballots for the upcoming election.

and while this is not quite as thrilling as holding, say, two winning lottery tickets, it’s still very interesting.

the weight of my vote has just doubled. if this were florida, power brokers would be lining up at my door because suddenly my vote(s) matter.

conversely, i could just vote one way on one ballot, the opposite on the other. thus, by voting twice my vote would count not at all.

i could donate one ballot to someone less fortunate than i. or i could sell it on ebay, and retire on the proceeds. for about 15 seconds.

two votes. two votes! hey, waitaminute. the fact that i have two ballots implies the very real probability that other people out there received two ballots as well. this went from a hoot to a “hold on” in a hurry, didn’t it?

who the hell is responsible for this gaffe? is it yet another republican plot? i’m a democrat, so it seems unlikely—until you remember how egregiously republicans have screwed up in the past four years. it seems more plausible, now, doesn’t it?

two votes, multiplied…who knows how many times? it calls into question the integrity of the electoral process. not to mention my integrity. maybe this is some kind of candid camera skit. maybe i’m about to get punk’d.

”excuse me, sir, where were you going with those two ballots? you weren’t going to try to vote twice, were you?!?”

“me? no, i was just going to, uh, report this to my local registrar. yeah, that’s it…my local registrar, morgan fairchild.”

does anyone else know about this two vote thing? i think a web search might be in order. hang on, i’ll be right back…

hokay. turns out i’m not the only voter to hit the absentee ballot jackpot. it says here that lots of folks in my county were double-mailed. also, it goes on to say, ballots will be tracked to ensure no one tries to vote twice.

exsqueeze me? ballots will be tracked? if they know whether i voted twice, doesn’t that imply that they might know how i voted as well? i have to think it does. so the people who said “if you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists” could find out that i’m not with them?

suddenly this whole absentee ballot deal doesn’t sound so good. suddenly this whole double ballot thing doesn’t seem like so much fun. forget it. i’m not voting at all.

[pffft…psyche. i’m voting straight democratic, you ballot trackers. bite me.]

cheneys and kerry and lesbians—oy vey

my wife and i rarely discuss politics, mostly because we agree on just about everything. some people would see this as boring. i see it as marriage insurance.
anyhoo, we were driving a couple days ago, and the subject of mary cheney came up. actually, it was foisted upon us by npr—regardless, there it was, in the car with us.

mary cheney’s parents (and some other republicans) are outraged. if you can imagine such a thing. they are outraged because john kerry referred to mary as a lesbian in the last president-wanna-be debate.

mind you, mary is a lesbian. she is not uncomfortable with this fact. she is as out as a person can be, actively working for gay and lesbian causes. many thousands of people know that mary is a lesbian, despite the fact that they probably have no use for this information.

kerry, in describing his belief that gays and lesbians are born gay or lesbian, dropped mary’s name as a person who probably also believes she was born as such.

well. you would think that kerry had outed mary on international tv and called her a hell-bound dyke. soon after, mary’s mom said kerry is a “not a good man.” she may be confusing him with saddam hussein, but we cannot confirm this. mary’s dad said he was “an angry father.” other republicans piled on with additional vilification.

it was scandalous, quite obviously.

members of the gay and lesbian community said so. but not in the way the elder cheneys would have liked. see, to profess righteous anger that someone was referred to as “gay” or “lesbian” it is necessary to view this label as libel. you must regard it as defamatory and malicious.

in short, you must find the idea of being gay or lesbian vile and unacceptable.

by their reaction, my wife and i concurred, that’s what these republicans have declared.

curiously, we saw little to corroborate our consensus in the mainstream media. not that it matters. once again, we were in agreement on a political issue. our drive and our marriage rolled merrily along.

The Apple PC

A Hawaiian company specializing in streaming video claims to have developed a $50 software emulator that allows a Windows PC to run Apple Computer's Mac OS X.

Maui X-Stream on Tuesday announced CherryOS, a virtual PC that mimics the hardware of a G4 Mac.

The company said it is already working on a stand-alone version that cuts out Windows XP. A stand-alone version of CherryOS would allow OS X to run on a cheap commodity PC without the added expense of Microsoft's operating system -- provided the emulator works and Apple's lawyers ever allow it to see the light of day.

Many Apple lovers out there love to bitch about Microsoft, but many of us COMPUTER lovers out here have longed for the day when a PC could run the Mac OS just as the Mac has been able to run a PC OS for years. Here's hoping Apple pulls its head out of its ass and allows this to go through.

Of course, as an Apple lawyer I would go after the small Hawai'ian company but with a licensing ploy. Let CherryOS live. Get users to shell out the $179 ($50 Cherry + $129 OS X) for a trial, wait until the G7/OS XI combo hits the shelves, and watch as large PC users make the switch. Or not. Even if only 25 million users (Apple's equivalent of its all-time high share) were to not switch but buy the OS, that's $3.3 billion. Regardless, it's win-win for both companies in the near present. What better way to get the Apple-shy PC users to take a bite?

Apple really has no option but to cash-in now. Its cult will have no more ground on which to stand in their Microsoft rant. Besides, the proverbial cat is out of the bag (or toilet given the recent e-mail making the rounds), its OS will run on a PC and somebody will always be willing to keep a CherryOS derivative available in the underground. So, here's really hoping that Apple with its near 30 years of selfish business practices spent the time wisely preparing for this day.

[ASIDE: This has nothing to do with the above post but I smell bubblegum. Lots of it. What is with Seattle's air quality?! One day its nose-turning flotsam, the next it is sugary jetsam.]

contemptible credibility

poor judith miller

******

frick.

remember my recent diatribe about the injustices being heaped on brave little judith miller? the new york times reporter is full of integrity and ethics and other virtuous virtues, said i. she’s being trampled by the jack-booted bush justice department, i blathered.

well. in the words of emily litella: never. mind.

and it’s not because judith’s not getting hosed by the feds: she is.

it’s just that upon further review, looking at the instant replay from several different angles, judith’s plucky bravery looks less like courage and more like a clinic in being played for a chump.

judith, you been punk’d.

had i been keeping up with my reading of the new york times, i would’ve known that judith was one of the bush administration’s favorite reporters in “the run-up to the iraq war.”

yes, as it turns out, judith was pimping war in iraq like there was no osama, er, tomorrow. jenna jameson would have been proud of her fervent mouthing of administration epistles.

and while her editor has defended her fallacious reporting practices, other media reviewers have not been as kind. slate, editor and publisher, and american journalism review, for examples, all dumped haterade down judith’s back in the past few months.

the point i seem to be getting around to here is this: after being a good and loyal stooge for bush and his fellow belly-crawlers, miller apparently outwore her usefulness. and instead of being rewarded for her canine-like fealty, she’s been prosecuted for failing to go all benedict arnold on her administration sources.

the irony is perfect and beautiful and delicious. it’s like a flawlessly polished apple, gleaming in dewy sunlight…except that for poor judith miller, that selfsame apple is ridden and writhing with writs and nits.

so. the takeaway…judith willingly was wallowing in bush white house slime, and now finds it hard to hose herself off. if she talks, she’s a rat. if she doesn’t talk, she’s a fool. either way, she’s lost all credibility as a responsible journalist, and her pulitzer is gone mouldy.

judith…are you geraldo rivera?

ball-peen krauthammer

charles krauthammer has lost his mind.

this occurence is unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected. it must be "hard work," after all, to be the unofficial sycophant for the bush administration for four long years.

today, however, in his zeal to slather drool upon the feet of his masters, he showed just how frayed ('fraid?) around the edges he has become.

"It is perfectly true," he says in his most recent column, "...that many millions around the world dislike Bush and want to see him defeated. It is ridiculous to pretend that Osama, Zarqawi and the other barbarians are not among them."

uh, hold up, chuck.

osama and friends dislike bush? well, okay, that's probably true. let's face it, bush is manifestly unlikeable. but why, chuck, would they want to see him defeated?

osama, for example, clearly is not all that important to the bush administration. sure, he and his minions killed 3,000 people on american soil in 2001, but as we all know by now, it's saddam who is a bad man.

and as dick cheney will tell you, should you ask him during a televised debate, there is no connection between osama and saddam.

osama, in fact, is probably pretty peeved right about now. he's probably wondering how many americans he'd have to kill to get some attention from the bush white house.

since 9/11, for all you and the administration know, osama has been serving slurpees at tysons corner mall. as far as y'all know, he's frequenting the vip rooms in south beach. in fact, as far as you know, chuck, osama is polishing the chrome on your wheels this very second.

so let's not go too far, speculation-wise, about who the al qaeda king would like to see sitting in the oval office for the next four years.

because, chuck, i'd bet your next paycheck that as president, john kerry will do more than "keep his eye on the ball." i'd bet that he'll put a laser-guided missile right between osama's eyeballs.

tsk. nah, forget it. a gentleman's wager will probably have to do. because it wouldn't be sporting to take real cash-money from a man who's taken leave of his senses.

christopher reeve

a super man has died.

i was surprised this morning to discover that i believe in heroes. i had previously thought those days were gone, stamped out by years of watching icons turn to clay.

then i read that christopher reeve had died, and that news has made me unexpectedly sad.

when i saw the first trailer for 'superman' in 1978 i was 17 years old. i distinctly remember the moment...i thought, "that is the best-looking man i have ever seen."

in bizarre fashion, i didn't become a fan until reeve broke his neck in 1995. from then on, though he was physically diminished, he truly became larger than life.

reeve set a high standard for personal and professional accomplishment...and for quiet dignity. he continued to act and to tirelessly advocate for spinal cord and stem cell research. his efforts gave new momentum to that research, and gave real hope to paralysis patients and their families.

he was in real life much more heroic than any character he ever played.

i wish he would be remembered as such.

credible contemptibility

Reporter Held in Contempt in CIA Probe

By Curt Anderson
The Associated Press
Thursday, October 7, 2004; 4:00 PM

WASHINGTON -- A reporter for the New York Times was held in contempt Thursday by a federal judge and faces possible jail time for refusing to divulge confidential sources to prosecutors investigating the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity.

******

osama bin laden is walking around free, but our government is throwing american reporters in jail.

the reporter in this case, judith miller, is being threatened with jail for doing background research. research that says the bush administration ratted out a cia operative.

the facts in this case are not in dispute: last year former ambassador joseph wilson authored an op-ed piece in the new york times. in it wilson declared that the bush administration had grotesquely overstated iraqi pursuit of uranium—a claim that since has proven true.

wilson's wife, valerie plame, was working undercover for the cia at the time.
two weeks after wilson's piece was published, conservative mouthpiece robert novak revealed plame's identity in his nationally syndicated column.

we all know from our spy movies what happens when an agent's cover is blown: she ends up face down in a stream while her fellow officers wonder what happened. plame was lucky in that regard, but we know exactly what happened.

the administration that says, "you're either with us or you're with the terrorists" got their panties in a twist after being caught in another lie. they didn't care to have mr. wilson undermine their case against iraqi WMDs, so they sent him an unmistakable message: get crossways with us and people you care about will get hurt.

according to a new york times story, reporters who testified before a grand jury linked their administration sources on plames’ identity to vice president dick cheney’s office. try to imagine my surprise.

novak has offered no explanation, expressed no regret for his actions. the administration has offered no apology, nor admitted any mistakes in this or any other matter.

and yet now the same "senior administration officials" who used novak to double-cross plame are hiding behind a journalist's code of ethics—betting their survival on judith miller’s integrity.

if she talks, somebody or somebodies in the bush white house could (and should) go to jail. if she doesn’t talk, administration criminals get off scot-free, and miller spends time in the hole.

my feeling is that miller won’t betray her sources—though perhaps in this case she should. the people she’s covering for don’t deserve her protection. they deserve to twist in the wind the way plame and wilson did.

it’s ironic that george w. bush, the self-proclaimed devout christian, is point man for this administration’s craven lack of ethics, character, or responsibility. given his actions the past four years, adding ‘hypocrite’ to his list of failings is no revelation.

thousands of americans have been killed during four years of the bush/cheney watch. by that standard, judith miller is getting off easy. she’s only facing jail time…the price of doing her job, apparently.

just another american paying for bush administration duplicity, while real criminals go free.

mount st. (what the) helens

Mount St. Helens spews more steam
By GENE JOHNSON ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

MOUNT ST. HELENS NATIONAL MONUMENT, Wash. -- Mount St. Helens blew off more steam Monday, shooting a billowing white plume several hundred feet above the volcano and thrilling hundreds of visitors who had gathered below the rumbling mountain.

******
this was so predictable.

as you may recall from a previous episode, natural disasters follow me and my wife wherever we move. earthquakes, fires, tornadoes, hurricanes. and now we can add volcanic eruptions to our portfolio.

and don’t think it’s not an awesome responsibility to be, uh, responsible for all these acts of god. if it were just us, that’d be one thing. we’d adapt, or duck, or batten down the hatches. or something.

but no. these things generally affect lots of other people. and we feel bad about that. but what the helens can we do about it? we didn’t ask to be disaster magnets. and even if we warned our new neighbors each time, do you think they’d have believed us?

helens, no. they’d have branded us “the crazy couple with delusions of godhood.” we’d have been ostracized. shunned. snubbed. we’re friendly, sociable people, we don’t take well to snubbing.

but let’s say for a moment that our warnings were believed, were we inclined to make them…which we weren’t. we’d have been ostracized. shunned. snubbed. and run out of town by an angry mob wielding torches and pitch forks. we’re sensitive, flesh and blood people, we don’t take well to pitch forks.

so far the st. helens cataclysm hasn’t been very cataclysmic, disaster-wise. for that we are grateful. but that’s hardly the point. the volcano hadn’t gotten any attention for 24 years, and suddenly it’s party time. “woo hoo, the spaceneedls are in town. heat up the magma!”

years ago we stopped asking each other, “what else could happen?” and sarcastically saying “i can’t wait to see what happens next.” we can think of plenty of what-elses that could happen—and we don’t want to think about it. quite frankly we can wait to see what happens next. we’ve seen plenty of examples, and we don’t need to be hit over the head.

look, when it comes to being granted divine powers, i’m as appreciative as the next guy. but y’know, we feel like we’ve done our time. met our quota. fulfilled our duty. we’d be pleased as heck to hand this little gift off to another lucky couple.

so we’re looking for volunteers.

applicants must recognize the gift, but not attempt to exploit it. religious zealots and power mongers need not apply. applicants must be prepared to live far away from us, as we don’t care to get caught up in the disaster du jour upon the transfer of power. residents of the pacific northwest need not apply. applicants must be resilient counterpunchers. folks with glass psyches need not apply.

all righty then. that ought to about do it. we’ll be waiting here, standing by, as the applications start rolling in.

inevitable as the high tide.

any minute now.