Month: October 2001
Is the noise of the political chatter somehow comforting?
“What breed of idiots would voluntarily reduce government income at the start of a war? Beats me, but they bred enough of ’em to populate the executive and legislative branches and have some left over to publish newspapers: walking around yesterday I saw no less than five front pages that called new tax cuts an…
You go, frat boy. So easy, just like high school, right?
“It’s a sorry man that would sit still during a hijacking now. It would be a bad idea for someone to try to hijack a plane while I’m on it, I’ll tell you that. I think the American citizenry as a whole, especially males, are pretty pumped about this now.”
The West, having scored a ‘victory,’ will turn a blind eye to the mess it left
“Last year, in an effort to cement Pak-Afghan friendship, Pakistan dispatched a football team to play a friendly against Afghanistan. As the two teams faced each other in the stadium at Kabul with the referee about to blow the opening whistle, bearded security forces entered and announced that the Pakistani footballers were indecently attired. They…
Far be it from me to wish anyone a ‘Happy Columbus Day’
“Three Thanksgivings ago I was at a friend’s house in San Francisco (who’d struggled mightily to accommodate two vegans, a dairy allergy, a wheat allergy (mine) and an allergy to nuts among her seven guests) One of the guests (vegan) went on for the entire meal about what a despicable holiday Thanksgiving was, a celebration…
Taliban authorities inexplicably failed to spot the 185 cm. tall cross-dressers
“What we’re seeing now is the lack of good leakers. You go to the Pentagon and you talk to your sources. They won’t talk to you on the phone any more. They want you to physically visit with them. They don’t want to sit and talk with you in their office, they want to walk…
Hysterical neo-McCarthyism does not equal security, never will
“In my case, the FBI visited The Weavers’ booking agent, the recording company, my neighbors, my dentist husband’s patients, my friends. In the waning of our career, the Weavers were followed down the street, accosted onstage by drunken ‘patriots,’ warned by friendly hotel employees to keep the door open if we rehearsed in anyone’s room…
An old Jamaican crooner: ‘I want a fat girl, I want a very fat girl tonight
“Inside the club, on the dance floor, a gal has all these different parts to move. I mean, here in Seattle, you can back that thang up, but there in Kingston you can wine your waist, swing that engine, wiggle like a milkshake and gyrate like a rattlesnake; you can ride the riddum, undulate, and…
Maybe some day I will be his boss. That’s the American dream
“The lens of public attention attracts a certain brand of person; and in America, at least, those people seem unusually good at finding their own lunch. Sometimes a subject will distort his story; sometimes the media does it for him. Often it’s a collaboration. We had a photographer who carried a woman’s high-heeled shoe in…
The High Roll: it itched, ached and burned like anything, but it was style
“The outcry against it proved equally swift and sharp. In 1767 the author of a letter to the editor of the New York Journal bemoaned the fashion that led women to double the size of their heads with the use of pomatum, artificial pads, and hair procured from corpses. But most distressing of all, the…
In this moment of truth, I confirmed the fear: deep down I am rotten
“I helped a guy shore up some 4-by-4s that were placed alongside a firehose laid across Church Street then joined a line of workers carrying empty, new 5-gallon buckets, some of which bore paint company labels. This led me right up a pile of wreckage along the southern edge of the property and straight into…