Monthly Archives: May 2009

Mark Steyn has an excellent column up this weekend and I cannot write in depth about it until sometime tomorrow evening, as I am going to cheer on a friend of mine as she runs in the Rock’n'Roll marathon in the wee small hours of the morning. The rest of my day will be devoted to church and napping, as I am not a morning person.

Steyn’s column is fantastic, and I so want to write about it, but I will wait until I can do it justice. Read it.

[To add insult to injury, one of my favorite not-so-great movie adaptations of a Crichton novel--Sphere--has just begun on Starz. I love Liev Schreiber in anything; I'd even watch the abysmal Phantoms again. Also, Sharon Stone's got great hair in this particular film. Anyway, I'll have to miss it. It's past my bedtime.]

I remember the Tiananmen Square massacre. It was a horrible, horrible thing. I was probably in the sixth grade at the time, and I remember being so excited by the sight of young people making a difference, far off in a closed, oppressive land. I also remember when we heard of the slaughter perpetrated for the good of the collective. Even at an age when all I was concerned about was cute boys and books, I understood the absolute inhumanity of Communism. It filled me with a revulsion that I still feel every time I hear useful idiots singing the praises of communism. The Che tees, the Castro worship, the excuses made for the inhuman acts of Stalin, the Cultural Revolution and so on–all of these stupid, ignorant gestures made by those buy the bullshit shoveled by the beret-wearing university crowd and their Hollywood toadies are extremely disrespectful of the millions who have died for simple things like the freedom to gather in public or worship their god of choice.

Hundreds–most likely thousands of people–died on that June night in Tiananmen Square. Let’s remember them, honor them and the ideas they died for.

I don’t want to sound like a complete cougar (I’m only 32!), but Prince Harry is so damn cute. He is by far the most interesting royal since Prince Edward.

Lucky NYC.

Dude.

Where’s the outrage?

I’m sorry I don’t visit the comments section more. I read your comments on my phone and mean to reply, but I’ve been getting very busy lately. Anyway, my “like new” Blackberry kicked the bucket today and I’m in a bind. It would be less expensive to switch cell carriers than it would be to buy a new phone, but I really don’t want to spend any money at all. But I need a phone. I think I may forgo the Craigslist option this time, since there are no warranties on purchases made in a parking lot.

I hadn’t realized how dependent I’d become on my phone to keep me up to date until it decided to stop working. Now I’m completely cut off. The horror!

Oh well, I’ll stop whining now. I’ll sort it out tomorrow.

I love The People’s Cube. I just spent entirely too long on the site, chuckling to myself. I really, really like the Che tshirts.

No. Way. I don’t believe it. Ridiculous.

Are all Russian writers intense? Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn? I’ve been reading Sergei Lukyanenko (technically, he’s from Kazakhstan) in my spare time, and even Russian scifi is heavy! The fantasy/scifi genre (I tend to lump them together) can is rather serious by nature, but add Russian analytical tendencies and the results are devastating. I use the word devastating in the most loving way, for I am quite impressed with Lukyanenko’s work. Intricate plotlines lace together in the most delicate manner, the dialogue is peppered with intriguing cultural references, not unlike those in Murakami’s best works. I am, of course, reading a translation–Russian is one of those languages I’d love to learn and suspect I would find fascinating, but I find the Cyrillic alphabet daunting.

How a writer can create a complicated world in a spare and concise way is always amazing to me. Lukyanenko also switches between perspectives seamlessly, not a small feat. I’m looking forward to reading the second of his Watch trilogy (or tetralogy?), even though I picked up the first book on a whim. Oh, how I love smart scifi.

Stanislaw Lem, the writer of the haunting Solaris, is another author I can count on for smart, thought-provoking scifi. If you’ve never read him, you should pick one of his novels up when you’re buying Night Watch.

[As far as languages go, I think I stall out in my studies because I can never fully commit to just one language. I'm a language whore, I suppose. The only language I've found difficult so far was French, of all things. Italian is by far the easiest, with Hebrew being the most difficult. The first couple lessons of Romanian came very naturally, prompting me to wonder yet again about my secret DNA.]

So I spent three hours trying to track down an audio clip heard in passing as I flipped through the radio stations this evening. Didn’t find it, but I wasted a whole lot of time. Woo!

I did come across the text of Obama’s presser with Abbas, which was a bit depressing. One thing that has always confused me about the Palestinian sympathizers is the insistence on holding Israel to standards not applicable to their “partners” in peace. If Obama does not get his treaty before the end of his first term, be assured that it will be the fault of a handful of Israeli settlers, not the seething mass of hate-filled humanity that elected Hamas to power.

Believe me, getting a thumbs up from Michael Goldfarb or Mark Steyn is not the sort of thing that brightens your day.

Oh, I beg to differ. My day is always brightened when I get the thumbs up from Steyn. In fact, my whole week is brightened. (I suppose that means my life is very uneventful, perhaps boring.)

Any way, I’m not going to be getting the thumbs up from anyone if i keep giving into my hope-n-change ennui. I must buckle down, give myself a good talking to, and get on with it.

Whatcha gonna do about it, lady?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said North Korea must face consequences for its “belligerent and provocative behavior” after Kim Jong Il’s regime threatened military action against South Korea.

Clinton spoke in Washington after North Korea’s official news agency said Kim’s government would no longer abide by the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War and may respond militarily to South Korea’s participation in a U.S.-led program that would block ships suspected of carrying nuclear weapons or material for export.

It’s going to be interesting to see what this administration, with its fearless, hippie-bred leader, will do when faced with reality. The world is waiting, Mr. President. North Korea is throwing nukes around and threatening to attack US warships, Iran is sending out its navy in a show of force. And I’m not sure we’re going to anything about it, other than talk tough and apologize for western imperialism, hoping to understand the root cause of North Korean aggression.

I’m sure that will work out well.

So, that’s what this climate change business is all about! I knew it wasn’t about “saving the earth.”

“A lot of men in one place means more work for prostitutes. At the same time we have a government that will not ban prostitution, so in fact we invite visitors to avail themselves of prostitutes,” Otzen says.

Sweet. No wonder this climate change racket is so popular.

Perhaps I’m being unfair, but what is it about men that makes it so easy for them to rationalize infidelity? Women are no less sexual than men (in my opinion), but culturally it is still more acceptable for men to seek professional “help” when out of town on business or whatever. The imbalance is annoying, but I’m not quite sure of my motivation. Do I dislike the hypocrisy for moral reasons, or for other reasons altogether? This deserves pondering.

In case you were wondering, my favorite animal is the wolf (and, therefore, the dog). My favorite bird is the crow, (or its cousin, the rook). The crows in my neighborhood like to convene their morning crow caucus on the roof of my Bronco every day, and I’ve just known that they were the smartest birds around. This study proves it.

Perhaps Poe’s raven was actually talking to him.

I have had a splitting headache for three days, so I’m going to have to cut things short tonight. I think the cause of my near-migraine is either a crappy pillow or a desperate need for new contacts. Or both. Or it’s a brain tumor, which is completely unfunny as I am a hypochondriac.

Be back in the morning.