Iconoclast

George Carlin, anti-establishment comedian and one of my personal heroes, is dead at 71.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN2339172520080623

Home Birth

Docs to Women: Pay no attention to Ricki Lake's Home Birth

How come we hardly see info about this? There are no consipiracy theories, but somehow info like this slips through the cracks and unless you're really looking for it, it's easy to get carried away in the msm mentality (coming up after the break, what you don't know may kill you) that is really a corporate/ commercial mentality, sell sell sell.

Chic y bonito

"Obama es un buen tipo, chic y bonito".
- Caetano Veloso

I'm conducting an informal survey, and I need my three dear readers' help. Do you prefer posts in english, in spanish, or is it the same to you?

A world opened up by communications cannot remain closed up in a feudal vision of property

No country, not the US, not Europe, can stand in the way of it. It's a global trend. It's part of the very process of civilization. It's the semantic abundance of the modern world, of the postmodern world - and there's no use resisting it.
-Gilberto Gil

Librocara, and they don't make them like they used to

I couldn't help imagining a charming romcom situation for this ad. Although reality might turn out to be as charming as a Cameron Diaz & Ashton Kutcher movie, I wish Charlie Tibshirani a happy ending. A real one, not the ones in those soul deadening chick flicks of late.

Whatever happened to Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks, George Cukor? You know, His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby, Some Like it Hot, The Philadelphia Story, Woman of the Year? Yeah, that was a George Stevens picture, but you get the idea. Competent directors with range. Blake Edwards directed Breakfast at Tiffany's and Days of Wine and Roses.

These movies used to potray love as a grand enterprise, a risk worth taking. It sounds counterintuitive, but sometimes I think the female characters in movies like Adam's Rib were more emancipated than those insipid Cosmo girls in modern romcoms. They certainly weren't afraid to be mean at times.

27 Dresses, btw, sucks. Avoid it, unless you can watch it on pay per view for free, like we did, and even then consider that you can't get those two hours back. Katherine Hiegl's character is pathological, Ed Burns is bland (isn't he always, though?), Heigl's sister is a monster, but please, in what universe will Izzie be the "plain" sister? James Marsden was funny in Enchanted, and here he gets to quip "Love is patient, love is kind, love is slowly going out of your mind." Ehhh. His backstory is boring though.

And although I like B-b-b-b-benny and the Jets, that whole scene was, hmmm, trite. I did like it when he said, " I cried like a baby at the Keller wedding". Heigl has some good deadpan, see "hot hate sex", "real good caulker", and "I'm Jesus". But the story, the story!! Silly premise, no growth, one dimensional characters, no tension, completely stupid ending.

I remain a sucker for happy endings (not this one, though). Despite the fact that I believe monogamy is a social/cultural construction and happiness is mostly an illusion (not one of my better days, I see). Does this prove that I can hold two contrasting, conflicting ideas in my mind at the same time without going nuts? Or does this just prove I'm nuts?

Btw, I'm listening to Portishead's new album right now, so maybe I'm just incredibly malleable and excellent creepy music can creep me out and just put me in this frame of mind. Or not.

Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead!...sorry!

Obama is in! No time to post about that right now, sorry, much work to be done.

On the fence

What do you think about the military?

There's this pervasive idea that only desperate people volunteer, that these are poor and not-too-bright young men and women. When I really think about it, it smacks of an easy exit and rings untrue, one of those conventional wisdom things which aren't wise at all.

But it's hard to support all these demographics that keep voting Republican, for all these christian-right reasons.

(We) hipster poseurs laugh at patriotism and scorn national pride, too embarrassed and self-aware to belong whole heartedly to something.

I see images like these, and they break my heart.

Feature Photo 1st Place. John Moore, Getty Images. Mary McHugh mourns her slain fiance, Sgt. James Regan, a US Army Ranger killed in Iraq, at Arlington National Cemetery May 27, 2007. Mary
=> 2007 Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar Contest Winners-Single Category Images

Freedom isn't free, is it? But would you join if you knew you'd be sent to fight not for freedom, but so Bush and his cronies can have more cheap oil? (Which has been a total fiasco, btw) So he could "avenge" Desert Storm?

So, which one do you agree with? Thomas Jefferson, who said "From time to time, the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots"? Or Albert Einstein, who thought that "The pioneers of a warless world are the young men who refuse military service"?

Is it true, as George Orwell said, that people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf? But in what way is the U.S. safer since they invaded Iraq?

So THAT'S why she got down with Belkis and Altagracia

Mike Madden over @ Salon notes that if Hillary thought she still had a chance, she "wouldn't have spent six hours dancing to Willie Colón on the back of a pickup truck" in Puelto Lico. The island trip was more of a "working vacation" for soon-to-be-unemployed campaign staffers.


Viva Hillary Clinton!
Although she won Puerto Rico easily, Clinton seemed to be campaigning in an alternate reality, as hopes for the nomination slipped away.
==> http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/06/02/pr_primary/

People addressed her as "President Clinton", and loudspeakers announced her as the "next and certain president!"


"I have four words for you," said Clinton.

"Te quiero Puerto Rico!"


Maybe they'll make her president of the island? Who wouldn't want to rule Ponce, Mayaguez and San Juan?