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By Zeus

It occurred to me from my last post, that I (and other commentators), were starting from differing cultural and philosophical premises. A short historical summary of these premises is in order.

First there is the older, conservative notion of a society organized around hierarchical hereditary or “divinely-appointed” leadership. Here a society’s individuals vest their wills in a collective guided or managed by charismatic supernaturally “chosen” authorities and transmitted through, for instance, monarchies and institutions like the Catholic Church. Tending toward autocratic rule by its very nature (and possibly theocracy if the autocrat is “speaking for God”) this notion responds to threats to survival and fears of change by replying, “If only you listen to me, I will lead you, I will protect you from physical harm, I will give you meaning.” An excellent example is the Grand Inquisitor narrative in Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamozov.
No one in the WAAGNFNP conversation really seems to support this premise, though I think that some aspects of conservative and/or classical thought ought to be preserved and taken up—honor, tradition, antiquity, ritual, virtue, etc.—in order to acknowledge our accountability to our own history and those who have gone before. In this sense, I am part “old school” conservative. However, I realize the danger of the conservative premise is real. It is a surprisingly small and fatal set of steps that may lead one from speaking WITH God, to speaking FOR God, to finally simply believing one IS God, infallible, chosen, and superior to the humanity.

Second, there is the innovative liberal Enlightenment response.
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Q: What’s worse than the death of your child?

• A: Your child dying in an unjust faux-patriotic charade of a “war” founded on fear-mongering lies and calculated deception.

Q: What can make your grief over this unbearable loss even worse?

• A: Having the perpetrators of the tragedy use your child’s death as an excuse and justification for the deaths of countless more people’s children.

• A: Being told that by demanding accountability from the people who caused your child’s death, you are dishonoring his life and everything for which he stood.

• A: Having your fitness as a parent and spouse questioned, flayed, dissected, and ultimately dismissed before a national television audience.

There are of course a lot more answers to that second question, and Cindy Sheehan endured all of them with strength and dignity and an unshakable courage. She did not start the anti-Iraq War movement, but she certainly lit a fire under it by forcing it into the pages of newspapers across the country and onto prime-time TV network news. Her stance in Crawford, Texas heightened the visibility (and therefore increased the support) of groups such as Military Families Speak Out, Gold Star Families for Peace (of which Sheehan is a founding member), and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (formerly Operation Truth).What happened there in Crawford gave people across the country a nucleus around which to rally. It finally forced the beginning of a real national discussion (if not a debate, exactly) about the US invasion of Iraq: Why did we go there in the first place, and why the hell are we still there now? Prior to Sheehan being in Crawford, the pundits, the corporate media, and with a few notable exceptions, the politicians, had been successful in seeing to it that this discussion never took place on a national scale.

For all the good that came out of the protest in Crawford, I feel that strategically a golden opportunity was lost.
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Welcome to the Party! Please allow me to invite you for a walk down nostalgia lane.

My family was living in California (Palo Alto, to be precise) when the first Star Wars movie came out. Somehow my younger brother, who was five then, cajoled my parents into taking him to see it about twice as many times as I did. (I shouldn’t have been surprised: this is the kid who as a pre-schooler talked dozens of drunk college students into giving him “just one sip” of their warm, cheap beer during a faculty-student intramural softball game at my dad’s college.) Before my family made the cross-country trip back to our hometown in central New York, my bro and I saw Star Wars more times than the sum total of our years on the planet. I have an excuse for a kindergarten baby beating me in the viewings race: I had a seven-year-old’s crush on my second grade teacher, which is to say, I had other priorities. Still, losing to my brother in that and losing out to some other kid who was able to impress Ms. Buntin with his knowledge of the fancy word for “spit” were no fun to experience and just slightly less not-fun to remember (note to Party leaders: a great topic for a future Open Thread would be confessing — and ranking — the worst of your life’s trivial disappointments).

To tell you the truth, I have a terrible memory, so bad that I don’t have anything that specific to share about my reactions to Star Wars, at least anything that everybody else who saw it for the first time at that age isn’t likely to say, too (Darth Vader: scary! Luke Skywalker: cool! Princess Leia: hot! C3PO and R2D2: funny! Special effects: awesome!). Many things from that CA interlude stand out far more vividly still today than those movie-watching experiences:
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Harmonic Convergence of the Geeks - By Oaktown Girl

The Star Wars geeks are all a-twitter over some big 30 year anniversary celebration happening this weekend. It will be all Star Wars, all the time, all weekend.

So let’s talk about Star Trek instead. (Don’t worry, Lucas fans. The WAAGNFNP’s leading Star Wars geek, TC, will give us all a full report on Star Wars next week, including facts, memoirs, free appraisals of your Star Wars memorabilia, and Lord Astaroth knows what-all else).

WAAGNFNP MOOAD Tribunus Laticlavius christian h. has a good Open Thread idea: program 6-8 hours of Star Trek television, from any of the TV series. Tell us which episodes would you choose, in which order, and why. Remember, this is not merely a “favorites” list, so put on your “Spock’s Brain” helmet and get to thinkin’. Yes, you may post as you ruminate, so we can all do some thinking together.

But the MOJ is ever-merciful, and is willing to share this space with all sci-fi/fantasy fans seeking refuge from the Star Wars onslaught. You are welcome to discuss Babylon 5, Buffy, Lord of the Rings (movies), or whatever your little hearts desire - TV and movies only - any topic. Please visit the Readers Anonymous thread for book chat.

Mirror Universe Spock….mmmmm…sexy. DS9’s Captain Sisko once they let him drop the dweeb look and be his natural hot, hunky self…very sexy indeed. So here’s another idea: tell us your secret (or not so secret) Sci fi/Fantasy TV/movie crushes. Go ahead, ‘fess up. The truth will set you free.

Now please enjoy the following nifty edit of “Mirror Mirror”. Definitely worth a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcMCNucDzDQ

I have a problem. I am addicted to reading. Normally, I got things under control. I have policies: never order books - if I don’t find them in a store, they’ll have to wait. No libraries. Don’t read more than three books at once. Get enough sleep (together with work, this cuts down on reading a lot). But sometimes, I lose it. I become a binge reader. I’ll read one or more books a day. I won’t sleep much, I’ll forget about eating and I’m late in answering my email (seriously, when I was an undergraduate I sometimes didn’t eat anything but chocolate until I felt too weak to walk up the stairs, at which point I realized that was a bad idea). I discard all discretion - I won’t distinguish anymore between good books and bad, those worth reading and those only good to while away the hours on a transatlantic flight. Do you have similar problems? Then join me in Readers Anonymous. The last couple weeks, I have had an attack.
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By James Killus

Several years ago, I was walking up Folger Avenue towards San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley. The University of California owns a building that sits between Folger and 67 St. on San Pablo Avenue, or at least they did. They’ve been trying to sell it recently, and I’m not current on its status, but they still occupy a lot of it. The building itself is huge, and, as I understand it, actually straddles the boundaries of not just Berkeley and Oakland, but also Emeryville.
I was headed toward the offices of a non-profit that I was involved with at the time (that backstory is ‘way too complicated), but my path took me by the U.C. Berkeley surplus and overstock sales area, at 1000 Folger St., where they have auctions every Tuesday and Thursday. So there are often people loading stuff into trucks, vans, and whatever, starting at about 9 A.M. on those two days each week. There’s a lot of old surplus computer stuff that gets sold that way.
I was carrying a briefcase, which isn’t important to the story, but it’s part of the “sense memory.” I was passing by a guy who was loading a lot of surplus computer stuff into a panel truck, just as the pile of stuff he’d loaded shifted and began to topple towards him.
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By jimmyraybob

My humblest apologies for not getting this posted sooner. We here at the Ministry of Geology and Glitter (MOGG) have had a rather busy last few weeks (not that everyone else hasn’t). On top of that there were three deaths rather close to home, and the Virginia Tech shootings, and the death a Cardinal’s pitcher, and the on-going death and destruction in Iraq. Every time our travelogue subcommittee got together for a production meeting there seemed to be a smothering glum and a sense that what we were doing seemed too irrelevant in the face of issues of such magnitude – and nothing happened. However, after reviewing the report of the last closed door emergency strategy meeting of the MOGG General Commission for Figuring Things Out we seem to be feeling mo better. The report, entitled Sure Things Seem Sucky but How Do You Make Things Un-Sucky by Sitting on Your Lazy Can? Now Get Back to It and Show the Members of the Glorious WAAGNFNP Some More Pictures of the Great Fact Finding Mission to the Southwest Before We Come Down the Hall and Kick Some Major MOGG Butt!, was very well received by the travelogue subcommittee. So, without further ado……

Dateline STL (April 28 May 11, 2007): Continuing the report from the field, the MOGG entourage was able to find a very satisfactory camp on the east side of the Santa Catalina Mountainswithin the Coronado National Forest. It was a tad after dark when we rolled in so we just threw out the sleeping bag – on top of our extra thick wimpo model Thermarest pad.

The road that we were on is the Mount Lemmon Road out of Oracle, Arizona, and a nice trek that winds from desert grassland through dry woodlands and chaparral to boreal forest at over 9,000 feet above sea level. Later in the summer, when the road is open to the top, you might see wild horses & rattlesnakes along the way to a beer or a slice of homemade pie at the village of Summerhaven.

The next morning was a bit special for having painted clouds to the east across the San Pedro River valley:

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Well, the Bulls choked game six away yesterday in horrible fashion, the same day the Cubs’ bullpen coughed up the lead for the third time on a seven-game road-trip. The Warriors are already out. Only JP likes LeBron. {Note from the MOJ - I haven’t been following LeBron closely enough to know if he’s been being a pill lately or not, so no official WAAGNFNP opinion on LeBron at this time.} And the A’s are just at .500. {Waaaaahhhh! - MOJ.} So, what to do? What to blog about this weekend?

Well, if Street Sense wins the Preakness this weekend, we will have live blogging for the Belmont (which will surely derail all Triple Crown hopes). But that’s a few weeks away, and only if Street Sense wins the Preakness.

For something to do, drinking comes to mind. Followed by the inevitable hangover. So let’s all share our most embarrassing stories about hangovers, and flashbacks, and come-downs on this blog. {Please enjoy the following highly amusing Family Guy bit where Brian and Stewie are in an Amsterdam cafe and get a “contact high”! -MOJ}

Maybe you’re under 21. Or you are a teetotaler (you think I fashioned this whole post only so I could use that word? Maybe.) Then you have another choice: talk about the NCAA Softball regionals. Not only is Northwestern really good (ahem), it’s also a very interesting sport. No-hitters galore! Eileen Canney had 28 strikeouts in an 18 inning complete game in 2006.)

Or, talk about anything that comes to mind, even the LPGA - it’s an open thread, after all. Anyway, I’m off for some field studies regarding the first topic. Giving my sanity to science, as it were.

[Update: Thanks to JP for his topic-inspiring comment here. I know drunk/high stories are a little heavy on the intellectual side for a weekend Open Thread, but hey, we gotta stop fooling around and get serious every now and then, right? -MOJ]

[Dateline: February 8, 2007, 6:45pm. Oakland, CA.

Situation: It’s just after work; I’m moderately stressed because I just started a new job and have to learn a thousand new things. Plus, I’m trying to adjust to working days after a year on the graveyard shift, which is proving to be a surprisingly difficult transition both physically and mentally.

Scene: A small Mexican restaurant, primarily take-out, with just a few tables. The only other customers are a man sitting at one of the tables eating his food, and one woman standing who’s just finished placing her order at the counter. She’s White and appears to be in her early 30’s.]
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I place my food order with the young woman behind the counter and give her my money. She gives me my change, plus the little receipt with the all-important order number on it. Really just a formality of course, because there are only three customers in the place, and one is already eating. But the receipt pops up out of the cash register, and by golly, somebody’s got to hold on to it.

Now I need to find a place to put my body in this rather small space while I wait for my food. I’m getting it to go, and I don’t want to occupy one of the few tables while I wait even though I wouldn’t be putting anybody out at the moment. (I’m very conscientious that way). But before I can even turn away from the counter to look for a place to be, I overhear the two other customer behind me engaged in conversation. They are talking about candy.

Candy? Why the hell are they talking about candy? And rather passionately at that?

When I turn around I half expect to see one of them eating candy. How else would the subject have come up? But no, neither of them is eating any candy. And the man at the table isn’t even eating a dessert because this place doesn’t have dessert. He is just sitting there eating his regular ol’ Mexican food. Bizarre.
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No sympathy for the man at all when he lived, I won’t take the opportunity now that he’s dead to pile any more opprobrium on him than was due during his long public life, which due I will however continue to measure to my own satisfaction.

His death deflects words meant to sting, denies them proper target. He had that marvelous sunny ability when living to elude them then, as well.

Long I labored with care and craft one time to pen him a stern missive freighted with my harshest words for it. On the sad subject of El Salvador it was, if memory serves.

Great heavy hammerstrokes of rhetoric ringing down on the anvil of public discourse, that note. No lengthier than the subject required, though it took a final ruthless edit to bring its weight in under the cap on first class postage.

Jayz, did those paragraphs have at him!

In return, some weeks later, by post, the following, undated, by autopen.