Unfocused Snapshots

With the anxiously awaited second installment of Words Are Swords forthcoming, but still to be written, I present the following fuzzy thoughts and scattered links:

• Dude, You Can’t Be Serious! A linguist from the University of Pittsburgh has published a scholarly paper deconstructing and deciphering the word "dude," contending it is much more than a catchall for lazy, inarticulate surfers, skaters, slackers and teenagers.



• DOZENS of seats on the world's most luxurious cruise liner have collapsed under the weight of obese American passengers and the company who has to fix the chairs is French! If that’s not some sort of vague metaphor, I don’t know what is.



• Load up on Terence McKenna mp3s: mckenna.psychedelic-library.org



• MSNBC’s point man in Washington, Howard Fineman, surveys the political landscape thru the lens of the just-passed intelligence bill and offers a preview of GOP turmoil to come.



• Tivo for your iPod. A new technology allows listeners to subscribe to homemade radio shows and listen to them on their digital music players. It’s called PODCASTING, and it was invented by none other than former MTV VJ and proud mullet-bearer Adam Curry!



• Check out this September post on G-Word, a blog out of New Zealand, for a brief history of vinyl.



• The Best Little Record Fair in Texas. Perhaps I can time a visit to my sister in Dallas for one of these twice-annual events.



• Does anyone else find it amusing that Dubya was in the audience at an event honoring mad-libs Elton John and Warren Beatty?



• Blogging from the front lines. How soldiers are using the Internet to share their stories. Go to optruth.org and read some of these soldiers’ stories.



• Go here, here, or here for more dirt on Dr. Henry Kissinger. This guy is an absolute slimeball who should probably go to prison for the rest of his life.



• Ever since the neoconservatives hijacked this administration, I have at times been shocked to find myself in mild agreement with Pat Buchanan of all people, if only vis-à-vis the wisdom of this Iraq War and Bush’s misguided Middle East strategy. At times, his realist/isolationist stance has been a useful counterweight to the absurdity of the neocons. But I couldn’t disagree more with his defeatist attitude on Israel/Palestine (The Mirage of Mideast Peace). Sure, this could very well be the single most intractable problem in the history of humankind, but treating it as such gets us nowhere. Besides, there have been numerous post-Arafat signs that a new reality could be forged. Don’t we owe it to ourselves to try? Sometimes politics makes for strange bedfellows, but when the fellow next to you starts stinkin’, you gotta kick him out of the bed.

N/P Pharaoh Overlord – s/t