Using Bees To Effect Vengeance

I get to be as self-indulgent as I want without wasting anyone's time. Guilt-free solipsism -- excellent!

Looking for that particular entry? Search Using Bees....




This page is powered by Blogger. Why isn't yours?

Weblog Commenting by HaloScan.com



Archives:


Email the Proprietor

Tuesday, June 29, 2004
 
Saw the vaunted Farenheit 9/11 over the weekend, and as I expected, it really pissed me off. Not because it made me angry at George W.Bush, although occasionally it did that. But because:

a) I don't like watching propaganda, and this was an egregious example of it. Not just "an op/ed", as Moore tries to argue -- op/eds take positions supported by coherent arguments. This film was just a mass of undifferentiated innuendo, juxtaposing high impact images with de-contextualized facts and moving just fast enough to ensure you don't have time to analyze the plausibility of the implications Moore's asking you to draw. Some it was truly fatuous when you thought about it for more than even a split-second (c.f the happy Iraqi kids smiling and playing pre-invasion juxtaposed with a bomb hitting Baghdad. What are we supposed to conclude from that scene? That the US invaded a population perfectly happy with their government? How can anyone of conscience try to get away with that crap?)

Not to mention the cheap shots -- you show Kerry or Howard Dean or Moore himself having make up put on before a TV appearance and they'll look stupid too.

b) It wasn't very *good* propaganda. I don't think it's going to win any votes for Democrats, primarily because Moore focuses on the Bush/oil/Carlyle Group thing -- which requires viewers to accept that the Bush administration is not just incompetent (which it is) but that it makes momentous policy decisions purely to secure financial gains for itself and its friends. In other words, you have to believe Bush is *evil*. Voters like Bush, even when they dislike his administration, and only people too blinkered by their own hatred of him would take that tack in a movie so clearly aimed at affecting public opinion in an election year. Better to have focused on the ample evidence for rigid adherence to ideology despite opposition from experts and the facts on the ground; for the debasing of the U.S's good name among world governments, the Arab street, etc., which makes prosecuting the war on Terror harder; for focusing on Iraq in the first place, instead of al-Qaeda and the true terrorist threats. Ideology, not personal financial gain. Instead, the reasonably successful invasion of Afghanistan gets dismissed with "they mostly got away" and the legitimately-elected Hamid Karzai is implied to be a Bush stooge for signing a deal representing significant foreign investment in his devastated country a few days after taking power. If you can't even concede that there have been obvious successes, how can you have any credibility with an audience when attempting to point out failures?

The end does not justify the means. It doesn't when Defense authorizes torture in Iraqi jails, it doesn't when the office of the VP blows the cover of undercover CIA personnel, and it doesn't when Michael Moore insults our intelligence with this misleading pile of bad faith. I expect more from liberals.

That said, as my mother-in-law pointed out, Moore did a good job of showing how the poor inevitably bear the burden of fighting these wars (although that's true of the legitimate wars as well...so as sad as seeing all that is, it doesn't really further the point Moore is ostensibly trying to make). He also did a good job of showing how threadbare our homeland security is, although I don't recall him making the obvious connection with Bush's economic policies and the bankrupting of states and municipalities.

Others who seem to have had similar takes, only with less spittle: Kevin @ Washington Monthly, and uggabugga. Kevin dismisses the cheap shots by essentially saying "turnabout is fair play", but that's not enough for me. We all deserve better.

|

Wednesday, June 23, 2004
 
So you've all heard about Gmail, Google's new web-based email offering. It offers 1000MB of storage, enough so supposedly you'll never have to delete an email again (we'll see about that).

Anyway, for me the big deal is that 1000MB is enough space to make trading MP3s by email a viable option. I know some of you already have Gmail accounts -- if you do, ping my gmail address (it's tinyplace@) and let's fire it up. If you don't have one already and you're a Friend of Bees, let me know and I'll use one of my precious invites to get you one. And then I can start sending you BeeMail.


|

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

Monday, June 07, 2004
 
R.I.P Robert Quine. I've come to the conclusion that he and Richard Lloyd are the real reason Matthew Sweet's early-90's LPs are so good.

|

Sunday, June 06, 2004
 
This morning the mrs. went to yoga and then had to strike a show, so I took myself to Austin Diner (formerly Laura's Bluebonnet Cafe) for a nice Sunday brunch. A seat at the bar, some good coffee, a flirty waitress, and an uncracked copy of David Foster Wallace's meditation on infinity, Everything and More.

Halfway through the meal, I was enjoying Wallace's digression on the cognitive dissonance between what we "know" intellectually and what our everyday experience tells us is true in the real world. We "know" that "space is curved, that colors do not inhere in objects themselves", etc. And then, in the midst of a bacon bite, I came across the following sentence -- well, fragment -- that stopped me in my tracks. We "know" that:

our thoughts and feelings are really just chemical transfers in 2.8 pounds of electrified pate.

(Many of my favorite artists get a lot of mileage out of a juxtaposition of the profound and the mundane...c.f Woody Allen, Robyn Hitchcock).

After brunch, I took my electrified pate to a few record shops to while away some time looking for cheap vinyl. Lots of listening, and then finally, a $4 copy of Duke Ellington at the Bal Masque (not on CD! cool cover! lots of tunes he never did anywhere else!).


|

Friday, June 04, 2004
 
Stuck at home on a Friday night doing some boring repetitive work that came up at 4:45 on Friday afternoon and *has* to get done this weekend.

Here's what I'm listening to while slaving away:

The In Crowd: The Story of Northern Soul
Mighty Like A Rose bonus disc -- Elvis Costello
eitzelsuperhitsinternational tour cd -- Mark Eitzel
The Great Ellington Units -- Duke Ellington
Invisible Hitchcock -- Robyn Hitchcock

"Messages of Dark" by Robyn Hitchcock...what a fantastic song! How have I gone so long without hearing it?

|

 
Josh Marshall brings the snark in reference to the CIA and the fall of the house of Tenet:

"Having said all that, beside the possibility that the White House's favored Iraqi exile was an Iranian agent, that the spy chief just got canned, that the OSD is wired to polygraphs, and that the president has had to retain outside counsel in the investigation into which members of his staff burned one of the country's own spies, I'd say the place is being run like a pretty well-oiled machine."

|