Modern Drunkard claims to be mainly serious with the goal of returning “drinking to the glorious Rat Pack/Jackie Gleason Era.” It celebrates the fun of drinking and rails against what it thinks of as Puritanical forces of repression (including MADD). The latest, and perhaps last, printed issue was published last August. [Thanks to my brother Andy, who is not any sort of drunkard, for the link.]

And with this post, I am now the record holder for the shortest cognitive-emotional distance. Yes! But, heck, it’s a blog. We’re supposed to have short cognitive-emotional spans.

4 Comments »

Susan Crawford did not have a good time at a Bach concert yesterday. I wouldn’t mention it except she writes about it so amusingly.

I’m reminded of a conversation my friend Joe Mahoney had with another friend of mine, Tim Anderson. According to Joe, who is an amazing musician, it went like this:

Joe: Can you imagine? Bach had to write a cantata every week!

Tim: Not only that. He had to write a Bach cantata.

(Joe has a great post from November about the joy of growing up with a son and his son Quentin’s manic performance in “Cinderella.” Unfortunately, I can’t find the permalink…)

2 Comments »

Dan Gillmor is off on his journey. His new blog is here. This should be fascinating to watch…

Be the first to comment »

Banda Aceh before

Banda Aceh after

More at DigitalGlobe.

3 Comments »

From Reuters:

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) – President Bush, under pressure over the pace and scale of American aid to Asian tsunami victims, abruptly raised the U.S. contribution to $350 million on Friday, 10 times the amount pledged just two days ago.

Good. That’s up a lot from the ludicrous $4M we offered five days ago, the boost to a shameful $15M, and the upping of that to the merely disgraceful $35M. It’s still not nearly enough from a country that claims to be the world’s economic, military and moral leader; before the election, Congress allotted $13.6 billion to rebuild states after the horrendous hurricane season. I understand that no other countries were contributing to the Help Florida fund, and that countries have a first responsibility to their own, but how about a little proportionality here?

And why the hell did it take pressure to get Bush to begin to do the right thing? It took Bush three days to announce the $35M. He is addressing this catastrophe through press releases. What does it take to make George W. Bush’s heart hurt?

When Bush was first elected he had been out of the country once or maybe twice, to Mexico and Canada. He was the son of an ambassador and a man of enormous personal wealth, yet he never bothered to leave the continent. (The rumor is that when he was elected, he didn’t have a passport.) This is usually taken as an indication of his utter lack of curiosity, definitive of his own special brand of stupidity. But it is also a sign of his lack of caring, his lack of a sense of connection to those unlike him.

This is just further confirmation that whatever a person declares himself in public to be is exactly what he is not. As W likes to say, he’s a “compassionate conservative.”

I don’t claim to know W’s soul. I could be dead wrong about him. Maybe he’s crying himself to sleep. But his actions suggest not.

I’d like to see him get on a plane for Sri Lanka.

15 Comments »