City schools in Buffalo, New York, are not exactly a shining example of the bright America we wish we could be. But, the use of a boycott to protest, draw attention to, and ultimately pout against the city’s sad state is a microcosm of modern society. It’s a small group of people who are making a lot of noise because they’re angry, and their form of protest is hurting those whom it should help. [Read more →]
Spring is in the air and despite the fact that my allergies have me sneezin’, wheezin’, itchin’, and scratchin’, I couldn’t be happier. The changeover from winter to spring ushers in street festivals, spring flings, and best of all – it’s the start of carnival season! Yes, my life is that exciting now that I eagerly await the chance to get out of the house on a spring night and attend a local carnival. [Read more →]
Is it me, or did the soccer world rumble this weekend? Aficionados of the beautiful game have confirmed, that something strange and extraordinary did, indeed, rock their world this week, and have pinpointed the trembler’s epicenter to a large urban/industrial community in northwest England. [Read more →]
It’s hard to believe, but Donovan McNabb is under fire yet again. In an offseason dominated by labor strife and the question of whether or not there will even be an NFL season this year, we are somehow still talking about the supposed failings of McNabb. His antagonist this time is a familiar one: boxer and Philadelphia native Bernard Hopkins. [Read more →]
10. When he claimed on the Senate floor that abortion is “well over ninety percent of what Planned Parenthood does,” he was only off by eighty-seven percent.
9. When his spokesperson later clarified this by saying “His remark was not intended to be a factual statement,” he never said what it was intended to be.
8. At birth, Sen. Kyl’s doctors legally listed him as a hermaphrodite.
7. In his teens, he was a Junior Wizard with the Ku Klux Klan.
6. Once, in Reno, Sen. Kyl beat a man to death with a sockful of nickels, just to watch him die.
5. He was happy to become the Senate Minority Whip, owing to his extensive collection of whips and other S&M paraphernalia.
4. Sen. Kyl impregnated three of his former female Senate staffers, then made them have abortions financed by taxpayer dollars.
3. Sen. Kyl is a deep-cover mole in the Koch Brother’s covert plan to subvert the U.S. Constitution and create a plutocracy in this country.
2. Beyond this, Sen. Kyl is a deeper-cover mole working for the inhabitants of Klaxxor, a planet intending to harvest human beings for food.
1. None of the previous statements were intended to be factual.
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
The Zionist Entity is the Little Satan. The Great Satan? USA! USA! USA! No big surprises there. It’s pretty easy to laugh at this literal demonization. Okay, so we’re the debbil! That’s pretty cool, actually. We’re all red and smoky! What are you going to do about it? Send the Egyptian Navy? Kill us one by one when you get the chance? Practicality demands the latter and so does the koran. If, at this late date, you do not know that jihad is a required sacrament of all muslims and that it demands your conversion, submission or death, truly you don’t know much. I will dispense with pro-forma exclusions of “good muslims” who might box or rap, or “moderate muslims” who are simply not that devout and those even rarer creatures, the “reformist muslims” who do forthrightly declare adherence to something we modern Westerners would recognize as openness and tolerance. Because they are satans, too.
You have to admire the pure binary nature of the catechismic divide. This is the central enterprise of islam, functioning like a junior-high school clique the muslim scholars toil merely to decide who is in. And who is out. [Read more →]
I had a little notion for a video project during the primaries. It would be a montage of man-on-the-street questions about McCain with each person invited to call out his name in whatever expressive fashion would strike them. That was with the assumption that mostly, like myself, these Rep primary voters would harbor some desperate exasperation over the contradictions typifying his life, his statements and his long, long career. Think of young military types ruefully but respectfully moaning, “McCain.” Then would there be an agitated old woman in red, white and blue shaking her parasol while croaking, “McCain!” Hardhats would shake their heads in bewilderment, “McCain?” A whole, modest family would cry out plaintively, “McCa-a-a-ain….. ” And of course I would act all these folks out to whomever was willing to listen to my childish fantasy. Because the fact is, if you do ask the man on the street, and he is one of few who recognize the name and is one of the precious few with any inkling of his identity you will almost certainly find that they know him only as a military man of some past accomplishment who ran against Obama for twisted reasons best left obscure. McCain may get the historical berth he has long sought, however. He has proposed a bill that would grant the President the unreviewed power to hold citizens in custody without charge and without trial. Forever. This while he makes a weepy plea not to restore waterboarding, a proposition NO ONE has brought, because squirting market-bombers with the hose is against foundational American principles. [Read more →]
It’s April. Yeah, the cruelest month and all that. Football season is long gone. Frederick Exley is desperate for fame, so he needs to forget. But down at the bar, trying to take the edge off, no matter how tightly he ties one on, the thirst for recognition is unquenchable. The big book. That’s the one he’ll write. And, eventually, he did.
So now we’re back, talking Exley’s A Fan’s Notes, with a novelist who loves this book. He lives for it. He gets shitfaced on Friday nights and reads the first chapter again and again. Well, I haven’t checked my sources on that one, and with his workload, I doubt it’s true. [Read more →]
William F Buckley was a miraculous man in several regards. Born with a platinum trust and a silver tongue he invented the Public Intellectual as we know him today; the glib proprietor of some venue, inviting in those with similar ambitions but divergent opinions for a quick flensing before a hostile scrum. He was quite nearly the inventor of modern conservatism, the ungay marriage of dusty, rarely followed moral precepts and musty, never followed fiscal principles. An iconclast, he managed to be unpredictable enough to rise to be the ONE out and proud conservative to be grudgingly admitted a modest intelligence. Somewhat famously, later in life, he made libertarian-based drug legalization his personal hobbyhorse and the open editorial position of The National Review. Less famously this came after a rather sanguine philosophical failure.
When it came to drugs, Buckley was against them before he was for ’em. The internets only reveal evidence of Mr Buckley’s climb-down; a debate he engaged in with Charlie Rangel where he opposes Rangel’s nanny-state based expansion of the nation’s longest war by far, today’s War on Drugs. But I remembers it, oh yes I does. [Read more →]
John Yoo was a rather obscure fellow and perhaps he is still. But he is a creature from another age; an academic jurist. This used to be the sort of person who became Attorney General or a judge at some high level. Much like Kenneth Starr, he is a law geek like the armies of math geeks that launch and recover our rockets. Like Kenneth Starr, Mr Yoo found himself with a controversial task. Mr Starr’s commission would harm a sitting Democratic President. Mr Yoo’s would assist a sitting Republican President so neither controversy is surprising.
Yoo is the drafter of a series of memos from the Bush Justice Department that provided legal guidance for interrogating GWOT prisoners. Famously said memos found waterboarding was a-okay as well as a variety of other menacing actions that fell far short of anything from Hellraiser or even Shawshank. The usual quarters complained about this; the alliance of non-disbarred lawyers, media types with dreams of book deals and ambitious Democrats that always sees America as Snidely Whiplash, and everyone else as a chick tied to a railroad track. Or they do so until there is a Democrat in office. [Read more →]
The Civilized World: A Novel in Stories
The main characters in The Civilized World are all women; there are men that influence their lives, but the real driving force in the book is female. We start with the story of Adjoa. She is living in Abidjan, in the Ivory Coast, with her twin brother, Kojo, after leaving Ghana to find work. They are saving their money to return home and open a beauty salon, but Kojo is impatient, and his impatience leads to a lifetime of regret for Adjoa. One of Adjoa’s clients is Janice — in future stories, we learn more about Janice and the life she creates for herself. We learn about Comfort, her ties to Ghana and to her son in Washington, D.C. We meet Linda and Ophelia. Their lives intersect in happy and unhappy ways. [Read more →]
On Sunday, TLC ran two Christmas-themed episodes of the program “Sister Wives,” which follows the polygamist Brown family. The episodes were filmed four months after the Browns “came out,” and were being investigated by the Lehigh County sheriff’s department. It was this investigation that led to the Browns leaving Utah for Nevada, which is presumably less intolerant of polygamy, at least reality television polygamy.
Intercut with a montage of the numerous Brown children dressing their Christmas tree (at a treacherously placed cabin the middle of a forbidding area of snow-covered Utah), father Kody Brown tearfully explains that families convicted of committing the “crime” of polygamy are broken up. Third wife Christine tells us that her grandparents were jailed for polygamy, with the wives separated and children sent off to various foster families, with all contact broken off.
It was about as moving a scene as you can expect from a reality show, but imagine if the Browns lived in Broward County? [Read more →]
There are those who say that there are those who say that blogging is dying out. I put it this way, because I have never read an article explaining what, exactly, is meant by this, but the impression I get is that people think Twitter and the quicker (and, in my opinion, more anemic) forms of Internet communication are stealing all of the intellectual traffic from the good, old-fashioned (hey, it only takes a couple of months these days) blog. But the reason I can’t accept this is because I don’t know what the hell a blog is. Do you? [Read more →]
The former Speaker of the House and longtime Georgia celebritician Newt Gingrich has announced that he will run for the Presidency in ’12. Well, he hasn’t actually announced it, he has announced that he will announce it in a few days. This is classic Gingrich, for those too fortunate to remember much about Bill Clinton’s famous antagonist. Even long out of office he routinely conducts himself as if he had the media footprint of Justin Bieber, or back in da day, Clinton himself. Newt is always certain that we have been waiting for word from him, on our politics and economics or on his plans for either a new novel or a national campaign. Once he has his tie snugged up, then we may all begin. And he certainly has some claim to a swelled opinion of his own importance. He is (as his suspiciously friendly wiki reflects) a college professor, author and historian which does at least set him apart from other Legislators who are almost 100% attorneys. [Read more →]
Another Mother’s Day has come and gone. While I’m sure the mothers appreciated the recognition, it’s back to reality today. Let’s face it — the flowers are wilting, the homemade card is in the trash, and the huevos rancheros from brunch didn’t really agree with mom’s touchy stomach. Now, we’re back to doing what we do best: criticizing our mothers.
When it comes to family, mothers get the absolute worst part of the deal. They give their blood, sweat, tears, sanity, personal hygiene, friends, hobbies (just to name a few) for the sake of their kids, and then get blamed for everything. It’s the natural order of things; your mommy is responsible for a few of the good things and all of the bad things that happen to you. Ask any therapist and she’ll tell you the truth — if it’s not one thing, it’s your mother. [Read more →]
Ladies and gentlemen, this week’s blog comes to you from a tired, unshaven, physically exhausted, and drowsy Marty O’Connor. Exactly like every Monday after a weekend in my 20’s. Except instead of partying and carrying on, I had my three year old son Jack, aka “The Jackal”, all weekend by myself as Cailin was up in Vermont participating in a race. I had a weekend full of running after Jack, entertaining Jack, not getting much sleep because of Jack, and trying to clean a house that is home to a three year old blond tornado named Jack. [Read more →]
After several years in which bigger and bigger penalties were being handed out for a variety of infractions, NASCAR decided that they were going to be a looser bunch in 2011. The sport’s governing body stated that it would allow the drivers to essentially police themselves, hoping that things would be kept under control without NASCAR having to play the heavy all the time. It is pretty clear to me that this new philosophy is not working. I know the crowds go crazy when they see one driver go after another, but it is totally unacceptable, from my perspective, and someone is going to get killed if it’s not brought under control. [Read more →]
10. Instead of 72 virgins, he was greeted by 12 goats
9. Hell’s only movie theater is showing The Love Guru on a continuous loop
8. The constant whine of smoke alarms really gets on your nerves
7. The road there was actually paved with bad intentions
6. Evidently, none of the suicide bombers made it to Heaven
5. Hitler knows some great ethnic jokes
4. While it’s unbearably hot, there’s no humidity!
3. Hell TV airs nothing but reality shows 24–7
2. They’re expecting a cold snap if Sarah Palin gets elected President
1. It turns out “the Great Satan” isn’t the United States after all
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
In less than a month, we will observe the birthday of Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, OM, GCVO and Master of the King’s Musick, who was born June 2, 1857. I rather like how it happens that his birthday coincides with that time of year when one of his works, Pomp and Circumstance March #1 (“Land of Hope and Glory”) has been heard so much, in so many places.
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