Ground Zero

If I were President of the United States, I would declare eminent domain on Ground Zero. By executive order if necessary. Ground Zero would be declared a National Monument.

I’d cancel the Freedom Tower project. The World Trade Center’s foundation would be the site of a memorial with a museum and small park nearby. Nothing else.

I’d make the two lights pointed skyward a permanent feature of the memorial. They’d be lit every night.

Freedom Tower is a symbol of opportunism and profiteering. Bumper crops of heroin in Afghanistan and record profits for Exxon Mobil. Halliburton and planeloads of cash.

It dawned on me that Freedom Tower might be sold to financiers in Saudi Arabia someday.

The young mother serving in the National Guard doing a tour of duty in Iraq deserves a better memorial than that.

veepstakes

I would have chosen Rep. Loretta Sanchez instead of Joe Biden. She combines Hillary Clinton’s appeal to women and Latinos with Obama’s appeal to young voters. And, like Biden, she’s Catholic.

The recent Christian forum attended by McCain and Obama was held in her Congressional district. She won that district by beating longtime incumbent Robert “B-1 Bob” Dornan. I wouldn’t have dreamed it possible. Dornan fights so dirty that he makes Fox News look like a bunch of latte sipping wusses.

Her sister Rep. Linda Sanchez is a tough cookie, too. Linda Sanchez will be speaking at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday. She chairs a House Judiciary Committee subcommittee that’s currently going toe-to-toe with Karl Rove.

Harry’s right (of course)

“For the foreseeable future, New Orleans will be protected by levees unable to protect against another storm like Katrina.”

“When and if the Army Corps of Engineers finishes $14.8 billion in post-Katrina work, the city will have limited protection…”

New Orleans repeating deadly levee mistakes is the result of “a yearlong review” by The Associated Press.

These sad facts will come as no surprise if you’ve been following Harry Shearer’s HuffPo blog.

detach

This week’s theme at Illustration Friday is “detach.” I’m having a lot of fun with this word. Googling it was inevitable.

The “Solutions for Animal Care Automation” website at Detach.com is vaguely troubling. Phrases like “bedding system” make me wonder if “robot handling” will someday be used to care for humans. In nursing homes? Prisons?

On a cheerier note, Detach Records is based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Similarly, there’s a “powernoise industrial” band called Pneumatic Detach.

Coping.org asks an intriguing question. “What irrational thinking leads to an inability to detach?”

Moving from psychological jargon to warfare… There’s much info on the web about Col. George Armstrong Custer’s 7th Cavalry detachment at the Battle of Little Big Horn. Also known as Custer’s Last Stand.

Fast forward from 1876 to the Iraq War… Rumsfeld’s phrase “message force multipliers” has been on my mind lately. I’ll work this phrase into my IF entry somehow. I’m working on it now.

sail

“Sail” is this week’s theme at Illustration Friday.

Sail away and do some snorkeling. You never know what you’ll find in the ocean.

This is my entry. It’s part of the ongoing collaborative SITO Panic project. Elements have been taken from Second Life. Artist unknown. Photo borrowed from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife website. Used without permission.

More about this piece is here.

poof

“Poof!” is this week’s theme at Illustration Friday.

Here is an IF entry of mine from February.
Here is an IF entry of mine from March.

Both of these went “poof!” because I didn’t get around to submitting them. I made no mention of them before now.

The “poetry” is cut-and-pasted from transcripts of Thursday Nite Chat sessions.

did you feel it?

I did.

Also the 1994 Northridge and 1971 Sylmar earthquakes, and numerous aftershocks and lesser known quakes in Southern California.

Experienced one in the San Francisco Bay Area back in 1980. Missed the cruelest quake there, which hit just hours before a 1989 World Series game between the Giants and Oakland Athletics was to be played. Talk about a party pooper.

None of these can compare with the great Alaska earthquake of 1964. I’m glad I missed that. It was a Big One.

“The strong ground motion reported in the Anchorage area lasted about 4-5 minutes which triggered many avalanches and landslides [...]. Ground deformations were extensive with some areas east of Kodiak being raised by 30 feet and areas about Portage being dropped by 8 feet [...].”

“The 1964 earthquake caused 115 deaths in Alaska alone, with 106 of these due to tsunamis which were generated by tectonic uplift of the sea floor [...].”

If the population density had been greater, casualties would have been much higher.

Dare to prepare.

wasting time on usenet

The following is a grab bag of stuff posted by me to usenet in the doggie days of summer.

WHAT ABOUT “BOB?”
Posted to alt.slack

100% of the content in this image file has been used without permission.

Truth be told, the EFF says that you don’t have to ask them for permission… I don’t know the policy regarding Tux, but I suspect that it’s similarly lax. However, things may be different with “Bob.”

BOZO DEAD AT 83
Posted to alt.comedy.firesgn-thtre

“You might say, in a way, I was cloning BTC (Bozo the Clown) before anybody else out there got around to cloning DNA,” Harmon told the AP in a 1996 interview.

It never occurred to me before now that Larry Harmon might have known about the Firesign Theatre. Is it too much of a stretch to wonder if he was a fan?

AL SHARPTON AND PAT ROBERTSON TV AD
Posted to misc.writing

I’m linking to YouTube. Sorry!

BRAINWASHINGTON: SWIFTBOATING OBAMA
Posted to misc.writing

“Sen. Obama made time to go to the gym but canceled a visit with wounded troops.” A voice-over actually said that in a TV commercial approved by McCain?

That’s not how to do it. You need a group of sock puppets like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to do your dirty work for you. That way, your campaign can plausibly deny any association with the group of sock puppets. The candidate stays squeaky clean and above the mudslinging.

Of course, McCain could have chosen to actually take the high road. But I suppose that’s too much to expect, even from a Scotsman.

“Oh you’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road,
And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye;
But me and my true love will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.”

RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD SOCK
Posted to misc.writing

When he goes to bed at night, Elron Popgun wears a sock puppet named Sylvia on his left hand. He wears a sock puppet named Skippy on his right hand. He wears a reusable lambskin condom with the letters MWV scrawled on it.

Is the condom worn to avoid impregnating invisible aliens or just to avoid making a mess?

Out go the lights. Then…

“You broke the rules! I’ll delete MiscWritingVille! Hahahahaha!”

“Bastard! How I hate you!”

“Die, die, DIE!”

The greenish night vision photography may give you a headache.

BOILERPLATE

I’ve edited, condensed, abridged, re-written, re-arranged, and added material for the sake of continuity and to correct factual errors.

canned

This can of Spam Lite is on display at the Museum of New Mexico’s Museum of Indian Arts & Culture website. Artist unknown, donor anonymous.

I prefer canned crab.

Woody Allen had a nightmare about a monster with “the body of a crab and the head of a social worker.”

I’ll upload a graphic illustration of his nightmare. I’m presently working on it.

enough

My initial reaction was “Okay, I won’t submit an entry to Illustration Friday this week.”

So I didn’t.