Don Rumsfeld also known as Fonzie!



Aaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyy! Or maybe we should call him Rummy?

From Nat Hentoff’s column:

“I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor with no chair, food, or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18 to 24 hours or more.” This, of course, was on Donald Rumsfeld's watch.

The American Civil Liberties Union has released copies of e-mails to FBI director Robert Mueller from appalled FBI agents protesting the unlawful, inhumane interrogations they had witnessed. Director Mueller himself has never joined their protests nor acknowledged any acts of torture at Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, or any of our other “detention” facilities.

The truth about cat people and dog people.

There are cat people and then there are dog people, we are all of us aware of this. So, today when I was doing another one of those aimless internet drives - it was emphasized yet again the differences between the two.

I am, unapologetically, a cat person. Always have been for as long as I can remember.

Even as I write this now, my furry little friend has found her way ontp my stomach in an attempt to get between me and the keyboard so some much needed attention can be lavished on her yet again. She’s warm, she’s purring and she looks up at me with a gaze that says, “You really want to scratch my neck and back now, don’t you?”

Today I was wandering around the electronic corridors of the internet, I came across an address book entry of one of the exes friends and lo and behold I just pasted it into a search and though I would see what appeared.

Now, the person in question is a real spark plug. plainly put this is a person who would be be pictured under the definition of human dynamo. Lots of energy, lots of people constantly around her, many social functions, lots of exercise, it‘s always just go, go, go.

Clearly, dog person.

Now, yesterday an old friend came to town. He hunts, fishes, golfs, very gregarious, outgoing, travels quite a bit for his job, truly a good guy.

Another dog person.

Then there‘s this other friend of mine, a former co-worker. He’s a busy guy as well, there always seems to be a slew of people up at his house, he’s loud, somewhat intimidating (not to me but, I have known a few others whose nerves he got on).

Yep. Dog person too - and with a dog the size of a small pony to boot.

Are we seeing a trend here?

This afternoon, after doing the days errands for the morning, I found myself at one point quite tired. I sat down in my TV chair (without the garish seat cushion, please) and shortly found myself awake a few hours later with my little furry pal nestled atop my chest like a living hot water bottle. She was quite happy, and I was quite comfortable.

I am sooooo, a cat person.

So, indulge me if you will - use the comments section. Cat or Dog. Why?

Just finished reading this:



Suburban Seattle, the mid-1970s. We learn from the out-set that a strange plague has descended upon the area’s teenagers, transmitted by sexual contact. The disease is manifested in any number of ways - from the hideously grotesque to the subtle (and concealable) - but once you've got it, that's it. There's not turning back.

It took Charles Burns 10 years to finish this book - each year there would be an issue that would come out and although I would pick them up, the lag between issues would make it hard to remember where you were in the story. Plus I think I missed one years’ issue so, it was even difficult to figure what I had missed. It’s great to be able to sit down and read the whole tale though and worth it for both comics and non comics fans alike.

A prolific and highly-sought magazine illustrator, Burns has done covers for such magazines as Time and The New Yorker, and is the regular cover artist for The Believer. He’s designed the sets for a New York production of The Nutcracker called The Hard Nut and produced album covers, including the spectacular fold-out that graced Iggy Pop’s “Brick by Brick.” His advertising gigs include the ill-fated O.K. Cola brand (alongside fellow Fantagraphics cartoonist Daniel Clowes) and a huge campaign for Altoids in 2003 which included several comics pages.

Every once in awhile...

I read a story like this and it gives me hope for our species.



The parents of a Palestinian boy killed by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank have donated his organs for use in Israel, in the hope of promoting peace. Twelve-year-old Ahmed Ismail Khatib was shot in the town of Jenin by troops who mistook his toy gun for a real one. His organs were transplanted into five Israeli children and a woman aged 58.

The sad thing is that a story like this one doesn’t get the kind of coverage all the really horrid stories do.

Bad actor?

This morning, flipping channels I passed something that caught my attention. There was Steve Phillips with a big Yankee backdrop, holding a press conference.

Over on ESPN, fans who watched “SportsCenter” Sunday and Monday may have done a double-take: There was Phillips, a former New York Mets general manager, sitting behind a bank of microphones and before a background with the Red Sox insignia, answering questions from ESPN reporters.

Was he the replacement for Theo Epstein, who quit last week?

No, Phillips was just playing one on television.

As much contempt as I may have for the Yankees (and it’s not so much directed at the team or players, as much as it is Steinbrenner and a select group of the more obnoxious and rabid Yankee fans), even I wouldn’t wish such a thing on them - Phillips becoming Yankee GM that is.

After watching Phillips as Mets GM for several years, I can honestly say he is no better as a pretend GM on these SportsCenter segments than he was when he was a real GM. Yes, Steve blamed Bobby Valentine for the shortcomings of the Mets but since then, Bobby has gone on to win the Japanese World Series, only the second time a foreign manager has done so in that country. In the meantime with all the GM openings since his firing, nobody seems to be altogether anxious to give Stevie P another shot at GM.

Pretend or not, Steve Phillips can’t cut it is a GM and as a TV announcer he’s not a star either.

That’s where the trouble began...

There are about two or three comic books I remember vividly from the recesses of my childhood. This is one:



I remember the two or three individual issues vividly, because those are the issues where I first became aware of comics.

I know I remember the day I got this comic, we were out visiting a distant relative in Hastings. Some cousin or other I don’t think I’ve seen since. I had to be around 7 at the time and I also remember it was a sunny, pleasant day when I also had my very first chocolate egg cream. I can recall being very apprehensive when my father suggested to me I have one (eggs! in a drink! ewwwwwwww!).

The day was a real two-fer, I still like egg creams and still have a fondness for comics.

While we’re talking about these things, check out the Spiderfan site which is where the cover image resides - lots of cool Spider Man stuff. Oh, and that happens to be a great cover too!

Where the day takes you.

Life has taken on a surreal flavor these days. Ever since the EYOC wound up in the hospital back in early September, any semblance of a regular day has gone out the window. It’s not that it’s bad, it isn’t. I don’t mind the kind of free form structure the day takes on, as a matter of fact, it’s more akin to the way I like to live.

So, since the day doesn’t really have structure, there’s more a running list of things needing to get done. Sure, you have the ordinary, sundry things that are just part of life maintenance, the cleaning, the laundry, the things which must be fit in each week but, there’s also the “fireman” aspect of getting a call in the middle of the night alerting you to the fact the EYOC has been moved to a hospital ER or even worse to a hospital ICU.

It’s happened twice in the last two weeks, the trips to the hospital.

Just when it looked like he was getting better and I was beginning to think he’d be coming home sometime soon, I went to bring him something at the rehab (read nursing home) facility and arrived to see a fire truck sitting in front of the facility with its lights going. Sure enough when I got back to his room he had quite the small audience in attendance as they were preparing to wheel him out to an ambulance for a trip to the ER.

There was a strange coincidence in my arrival. My timing couldn’t have been more opportune as I walked in and he was being treated - imagine the eye of a hurricane and you get a sense of the moment. A big storm is passing and there is the momentary lull, in this case the pause between the EYOC having a bad day and getting progressively worse and arriving at the ER itself.

The night in question, I was hemming and hawing over going up for a visit thinking I would put it off to the following morning when suddenly I just felt this overwhelming pull telling me I had to go that evening and immediately at that - strange how these things work.

Well, that was a two weeks ago and we‘ve since been to the hospital and back and then back to the hospital again. Last week was probably the worst of it since the whole ordeal began. There were moments when it looked like EYOC making it to the morning was a long shot.

Still, here we are a few days later and I’ll be damned if he hasn’t improved a bit. It’s amazing, really, to watch someone become so fragile that you sense their life could slip away with a strong breeze. I am not overstating things in this case either, there have been times in the last few days when I’ve walked out of the hospital wondering if I would get a phonecall.

So, back and forth we go. In the interim, in the gaps besides the life maintenance, there are the phone calls to make to family and friends, the benefits two step - a dance between insurance companies, Medicare, hospitals, doctors, the nursing home, billing departments, managing his finances (not pretty) and taking care of my own - sorting through the accumulation of clutter and crud which has built up over the years, it’s quite a bit to keep track of. Every time I start to think I have a handle on things, I get another curve thrown at me, his condition worsens and the focus shifts back to the crisis of his immediate state of health.

Now, I’m trying to explore funeral options. I don’t mean to be morbid and it certainly isn’t meant to convey some diabolical design on the situation as a whole, it’s just I had been warned by some family members to prepare, ‘just in case’ because it really is a lot harder to have to organize all these things after the fact and under the gun.

I’m doing laundry the other day, a nice sunny afternoon and while the clothes are in the dryer, I’ve walked up to the post office to pick up the mail, I decide to check out a funeral home to see if I can get some idea of what is involved with the funeral thing. I don’t dress up to do the laundry so, it’s not as if I’m at my level best when I walk up to the place to speak to one of the funeral directors standing out front having a smoke.

The meeting takes about 45 minutes and I’m presented with a list of options - it seems very similar to the experience of buying a new car. You get a sense there is the funeral equivalent of rust proofing being added but, you are damned to know exactly what and where that is.

Then, there’s the discussion of caskets, which strikes me as funny because hearing a funeral director try and sell you on the finer points of a box is interesting, “Well, imagine you’re buying a piece of furniture... something made out of mahogany is of better quality and will last longer than something say of particle board with veneer over it.”

Suffice to say I can’t see digging up a casket on a regular basis to show off to friends and to sit upon so, I’m a bit oblivious to the hard sell.

Strangely enough, I had been surfing awhile back and came across a category of ‘vessels’ up on the CostCo website. My first thought was there would be some catchy alliteration going on: CostCo/Kirkland/Caskets - lots of heavy ‘K’ sounds. It may be an option but, just seeing that CostCo is also in the casket business only adds to the whole bizarre nature of this experience.



Oh, and by the way, I’m not really sure if this will come across in bad taste or not but, like the song goes, ‘what a long strange trip its been.’ If I do wind up offending a reader (family that is), you’ll excuse me I hope.

All in all, another brick in the wall?

This little jewel caught my attention today:

Issued by the FBI without review by a judge, the letters are used to obtain electronic records from “electronic communications service providers.” Such providers include Internet service companies but also universities, public interest organizations and almost all libraries, because most provide access to the Internet...

...The Patriot Act provision involving national security letters was enacted permanently in 2001, so it was not part of Congress’ debate last summer over extending some Patriot Act provisions.

As the Dec. 31 deadline has approached for Congress to renew provisions of the act, the House and Senate have voted to make noncompliance with a national security letter a criminal offense.

Mmmm... last time I checked, weren’t we the ones supposed to be fighting for the cause of freedom? So, explain to me how giving up our own civil liberties fits into the battle?

Reminds me of the story I heard about the different ways to cook a lobster - throwing the beasty in a pot of boiling water is a tremendous shock but, putting the animal in luke warm water and slowly brining up the heat isn’t quite as noticeable.

Bit by bit, I think we are witnessing the days of personal privacy and civil liberty fade away.

Those crazy French!

In case you hadn’t noticed, it seems as if there’s been a bit of a problem going on in France these days:

Arsonists burned 1,295 vehicles nationwide overnight Saturday, national police spokesman Patrick Hamon said, adding that police made 349 arrests.

For a second night, a helicopter equipped with spotlights and video cameras to track bands of marauding youths combed Paris suburbs, and small teams of police chased rioters speeding from attack to attack in cars and on motorbikes.

“What we notice is that the bands of youths are, little by little, getting more organized,” arranging attacks through cell phone text messages and learning how to make gasoline bombs, Hamon said.

Police also found a gasoline bomb-making factory in a derelict building in Evry south of Paris. They confiscated 50 devices, fuel stocks and hoods for hiding rioters’ faces, senior Justice Ministry official Jean-Marie Huet told The Associated Press. Police arrested six people, all under 18.

I surpress a certain amount of glee over the current predicament of the French, it seems even though they are often at odds with our nation’s foreign policy decisions, they still have managed to find themselves beset by many of the same problems our society encounters. How’s that superior attitude working for you guys now?

The new breed.

Yeah, I have my moments. I haven’t been able to write much lately because of how hectic things have been so, I mainly find myself surfing, leaving comments on blogs I frequent and just sleeping when I can.

One of the places I regularly check out is Audacia Ray’s Waking Vixen blog. I discovered quite by accident. I think it was one of those instances where you click on a link, arrive someplace and click on another link and so on. An experience somehow akin to getting in the car and setting off on a drive with no particular destination in mind - something I have been known to do on occasion.

I like what ’Dacia has to say.

Well, maybe I should qualify that, I find what she has to say interesting. It fascinates me in a way difficult to convey. I can’t say I’ve ever been truly comfortable with sexuality. I like sex but, having had that hard-core, blue-collar, east-coast urban catholic upbringing there’s always the lurking guilt of enjoying sinful copulation, of indulging oneself completely in hedonistic pursuits. Usually it’s not during the act itself but, more of an after-the-fact kind of guilt. It’s the remnants of upbringing leading to the use of the words sinful and pleasure in the same sentence too often.

So, one of those guilty pleasures is Audacia’s blog as she fumbles around trying to come to grips with her own likes and dislikes. It makes for interesting reading, that and the fact I’m a sucker for a woman that looks good in frilly lingerie.

Fugue state.

The pace of life is such lately I find myself floating through it for lack of a better word. I don’t keep to any kind of regimented schedule, life has become an unstructured series of events - there are things to do, things that are done and that is pretty much about it.

It’s not a bad thing, certainly I’ve found myself in much worse straits through the years, it’s just I find myself drawing a blank when asked if I’ve been working lately or if I’ve been busy. I haven’t been working but, there seems to be an abundance of things to do.

A few things fall by the wayside (the blog for one), not because I lack things to write about but, because I find myself so easily distracted. I imagine putting together some kind of pie chart displaying where the day goes but, I can’t find it in myself to even exert the effort in that direction.

It makes me think about how people deal with crisis. What happens when a person is confronted with an event that is life altering, dangerous or both?

I’ve had a few of those through the course of my life - people putting guns to my head, seeing some violent things reminding me of how fragile we are, all kinds of myriad strangeness. Whenever this has happened, everything slows down. I don’t have the grasp of physics of an Einstein or Hawking but, I can’t ever remember seeing anyone touch on our own subjective view of time.

You’re a kid and each and every day crawls by, weeks take forever to pass and a month is an eternity. Of course, measured by your time on the planet, it truly is a bigger number, a bigger fractional value. You get older and time begins speeding up, days pass in an instant and you are amazed at how quickly the seasons change. The only time everything slows down is when something bad happens, and then we go into life’s equivalent of slo-mo replay.

I’m not in slo-mo replay but, that surreal aspect is there. Between the frantic journeys to hospital ERs, the other loose ends I find myself handling it is a somewhat unusual way to be living.

In the meantime, I came across this on the This American Life website which is an interesting listen:

In the hospital, we give up our normal schedule and sleep patterns; we give up our normal food and clothing; we’re in a place that has its own rules and its own language and its own customs. And in the midst of all this, there’s this complicated human interaction we have to negotiate: we have to deal with doctors and nurses to get the care we need. In this show we hear stories of those delicate and sometimes-not-so-delicate negotiations.

By the way, if you’ve ever listened to the FREE real audio feed of This American Life, you might want to consider making an online donation here. Imagine for just $15 you can get a cool piece by Chris Ware!

I can’t believe this picture of Scarlett Johansson naked!

I came across this amazing picture...

It’s of Scarlett Johansson’s sister actually. As much as I’ve had a thing for Scarlett Johansson since I saw her in Ghost World - I still thought of her as being that obscure object of desire - the age thing and all that. Then, I saw this picture of her older sister Vanessa and you can see that good looks just run in the family. So, I can pine away for another of the Johannson family ladies (another hopeless crush).



Anyway, the closest thing I ever did see to nude picture of the aforementioned Scarlett (letch that I am) was seeing A Love Song for Bobby Long. Never really got such a good view of her though. I did want to try a little experiment though and see how many hits I could generate with an entry titled like this one is. Just curious after looking through referral stats after I wrote a brief snyppet about Evangeline Lilly. I guess sex does drive the internet (or at least we’ll see).

Perspective.

Today or yesterday, I’m watching TV and there’s some news show or something on, your basic talking head kind of thing. The interviewee is one of those pseudo religious bozos who is commenting on how people should be sitting up and taking notice of the horrible shape the world has managed to tumble into. The increasing number of natural disasters, the breakdown of society, you get the drift. All these incredible horrors which signal (cue the clap of thunder, please)... THE END OF DAYS!

(we should immediately grip our heads in both hands and run around the room screaming at the top of our lungs in horror)

Yes, life is horrible, horrible, horrible according to our pious friend!

Then, I stop for a second and I wonder to myself, mmmmmm. So, the days when Europeans were shipping Africans across the ocean by the boatload, these were our salad days?

The nazis, rounding up people towards the middle of the last century, our sunshine years?

The middle ages, full of plague, the inquistion and all kinds of other suffering, blue skies?

I mean, what the f is this idiot talking about? Or any of these other people trying to foist off this load of turd on the public, intending to scare them somehow. Are we talking about a bunch of glass half empty pessimists or what? Man, all I can say is nothing makes me dive for the remote faster than seeing one of these guys with the beautific if vacant smile equating crappy weather and natural disasters with some kind of divine retribution out of the old testament.

I keep waiting for a divine sign in some kind of boom or light rigging to fall on one of these idiots during their pronouncements. At the very least if not a divine sign the workings of a lazy stagehand.

Gotta love Bobby V and Matt Franco!

The Chiba Lotte Marines crushed the Hanshin Tigers 10-0 yesterday in Game 2 of the Japan Series, that country’s baseball championship. Chiba won Saturday's Game 1 by 10-1.



Being a Mets fan, while I was happy with the way the team performed this season under Willy Randolph, I still think Bobby Valentine got the short end of the stick for Steve Phillips’ goofs when he got canned. Regardless of how the media might have portrayed him, Bobby V was certainly a favorite of mine and I think he got the most out of his players as a shrewd manager and a good motivator. So, it’s no surprise to hear the recent news:

The Marines, once a Pacific League doormat, have excelled since Valentine returned for his second stint with the club.

When they face the Central League champion Hanshin Tigers in the best-of-seven championship starting Saturday, the Marines will be bidding for their first title since 1974, when they were known as the Lotte Orions.

It will be Valentine’s first trip to a championship since he went to the World Series in 2000 as manager of the Mets. They lost to the New York Yankees in five games.

“The Marines and the Mets of 2000 are quite similar,” Valentine said. “If it came down to a question of bullpens, I would say the Marines are better.”

Former Mets Benny Agbayani and Matt Franco, who were with Valentine in 2000, had productive season and are expected to play a key role in the Japan Series.

Valentine, very popular among Lotte’s fans, is the first foreign manager to reach the Japan Series since Hawaiian-born Wally Yonamine in 1974.

Fresh from the pages of Ooh Laa La magazine:

The Kanye West video for Gold Digger, simply awesome - Real Player and fast connection required. Alternatives at the Kanye West website.

Take drugs with an open mind.*

People always wonder what designers do. I came across this article in New York magazine awhile back and clipped it out to save. Designers impact our lives in ways we can’t begin to imagine and when they do their job well, it benefits all of us.



By the time an object, or an apartment, or a company hits the half-century mark, it’s usually been through a redesign or two. Yet the standard-issue amber-cast pharmacy pill bottle has remained virtually unchanged since it was pressed into service after the second World War. (A child-safety cap was added in the seventies.) An overhaul is finally coming, courtesy of Deborah Adler, a 29-year-old graphic designer whose ClearRx prescription-packaging system debuts at Target pharmacies May 1.

* – As spoken by an ex of mine. Copy she had written for a PSA she taped while going to broadcasting school. Needless to say it was one of those things which looked better on the page than when it was spoken into a mike.

In praise of Gentleman Gene.

Nice column, worth the read by Eric Larsen on the work of Gene Colan whose work I have loved and admired for years.



One of the many things we don’t have in comics is motion. Motion, sound, smell, taste — most of the big ones — we don’t do. In movies, characters move. In comics, we can only approximate it, at best. Gene comes about as close as we’re likely to get. Gene’s characters are often a blur of motion. I’ve heard he’s a big movie buff and it shows on every page. While most of us struggle to make a guy in a suit look like anything other than a mannequin standing in a store window, Gene pulls it off with ease. His characters live and breathe.

More signs I need to start dating again.

Taking pictures like this, just not pretty.



Yes this is actually in my office.

The sky is falling, the sky is falling!

I’ve heard a bunch of babble lately about all the calamity affecting the world - psunamis and hurricanes and diseases, OH MY! Well, I just ascribe it to our world being a much smaller place then it used to be and the fact we can now watch cable news 24/7 and become disaster junkies. I did find this article a bit interesting though and thought I would pass it along.

It is the virus’s tendency to make mistakes when replicating itself that makes it so dangerous and unpredictable. Here are some facts about H5N1 avian influenza.

New York poster?

I want to make a poster out of this! When I saw it it had me laughing my ass off (ouch)!



I came across the thing looking through the referral logs for the blog. It was up on what I thought was a german language blog, awholedifferentstory (but which didn’t seem to translate through Babblefish) but the image is actually hosted on the Jeepster’s webpages.