Infinite Monkeys

War Watch: What Kind of Defeatism Is This?

Pledge or no pledge, I find the Republicans' lack of faith disturbing. Declarations of defeat are not helpful. No. Not helpful at all. Emasculated at the polls, the Republicans seem to have extended their necks for the coup de grace. Well, the GOP can go to hell. It's the country I care about.

2008 Watch: What Kind of Lameness is This?

Remember when many Republicans thought George W. Bush was a conservative? Ah, innocence!

So our friends on the right are most impressed with Jeb Bush. Word is he gave a fine speech to the National Review crowd over the weekend. Ed Gillespie said the other day that if George W.'s little brother "were former two-term governor Jeb Smith, he might be in Des Moines today."

Maybe. Jeb Bush could change his name to Jesus Horatio Christ, for all I care. I'd sooner vote for John McCain. If nothing else, America could use a break from people named Bush and Clinton eviscerating the Bill of Rights. At least McCain's contempt for the Constitution is well known.

But what is it about these Bushes? Conservatives swallowed hard and voted for George Bush the elder, professing how his administration would be "Reagan's third term," knowing otherwise. Eight years later, conservatives closed their eyes, mumbled a silent prayer, and cast their lot with George W. and his "compassionate conservatism," hoping for the best but secretly fearing the worst.

Now bummed-out conservatives detect something magical, something redeeming, in Jeb. Good grief! Remember the wisdom of W.: "Fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again.' "

The Pledge?

Um. Ah. Um.

Okay, how about this pledge:

"I will not contribute to any Republican Senator. Or Congressman. Or candidate for any political office. Except maybe for Ron Paul."

Yes, much better.

Apple Doesn't "Get" Business

As an Apple fan and tech-obsessed freak, I'm really interested in the new Apple iPhone, but I think once again Apple has either failed to see or chosen to ignore a critical requirement for widespread adoption by mobile professionals, the sales target most able to foot the $500-600 bill: seamless integration with business e-mail, calendar, and contacts.

When you see a mobile professional (sales, consultants, etc.) running around, they are glued to one of three devices: a Blackberry, a Palm Treo, or a Windows Mobile device. All three devices have the same thing in common: Each has several options for sending and receiving BUSINESS e-mail (not Yahoo! mail) and synchronizing their calendar and contacts. Like it or not, the de facto standard for business messaging is Microsoft Exchange, followed distantly by Lotus Notes and Novell Groupwise. These platforms are where mobile professionals keep their mail, calendar, and contacts. When a device can synchronize these items transparently, its purchase will be rubber-stamped by management.

Now maybe Apple is working with vendors like Good to port their synchronization software to the iPhone, but so far nobody has given any indication that this is the case. Until this happens, Apple will be missing a lucrative opportunity to escape their niche and start selling their products where the bulk of technology dollars are spent.

Jesus H. Cruise!

Tom Cruise is the Christ of Scientology? Yeah, and I'm the Hidden Imam.

Sticks and Stones . . .

So this week is "National No Name-Calling Week", apparently sponsored by GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) and Simon & Schuster.

Are we becoming a nation of pussies and pansies?

Bunch a punks.

Is that funny?

Aren't TV promos supposed to make me want to watch a TV show? Comedy Central is currently running promos for "The Naked Trucker and T-Bone" (or some such nonsense) and "The Sarah Silverman Show" (who?)

I cannot imagine any sane person seeing the promos for this dreck and actually saying to themselves "I need to make sure I don't miss that show."

If you find yourself thinking you wanna watch "The Naked Trucker and T-Bone", find a tall building, climb to the top and jump. You'll be doing everyone a favor.

Oh, and don't have children. Ever.

Die, Bob Ezrin, Die

Is there any producer in rock and roll with a more screwed up "sense of the appropriate" than Bob Ezrin? He should be buried alive under a pile of reverb units, tape loop machines, and a full symphony orchestra. Jeez.

VJ Day?

The Chevy Silverado "Our Country" campaign is clearly aimed at the new aggression by Japanese automakers in the truck market (Toyota is even sponsoring bass fishing, for goodness sake). So why be coy in the current ad, which pans over Chevy trucks through the years, and has someone reading a paper in 1945 with the headline "WAR ENDS"?

I actually doubt that any paper ran such a headline, at least since the voice-over is saying that the war in Europe is over. The war wasn't over then--it wasn't over until the Japanese surrendered. Did Chevy shy away from looking like they were saying "don't buy a Japanese car you dirty traitors!"?

Given the cost structure of American automakers, they actually need a slogan like that...

Where's the news?

Last night, I was curious about the earthquake in Japan, and for the first time in, oh, 6 years, I went to the TV instead of the Internet. I was shocked to discover that for all the "news" channels, there's very little news available on TV anymore. When did CNN Headline News stop showing headline news? Isn't that kind of central to the point? It looks like the majority of the schedule is now Glenn Beck, Nancy Beck, Showbiz...gees, what a waste. CNN had Larry King, Fox had O'Reilly, and MSNBC had Olbermann (those three have a combined IQ still in double digits), and no one was actually talking about the news. It seems like the news channels have completely surrendered to the Internet and their own little ticker tapes at the bottom of the screen, and just try to fill the air with nonsense.

Oh, and when did Olbermann get so old looking? Must be all the crack he's smoking.

The President's Speech.

I watched the speech tonight. It was very good. My favorite part was this:

I've seen the horror. Horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that, but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face, and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and mortal terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies.
I remember when I was in Iraq--it seems a thousand centuries ago--we went into a camp to inoculate it. The children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us, and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile--a pile of little arms. And I remember...I...I...I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out, I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it, I never want to forget. And then I realized--like I was shot...like I was shot with a diamond...a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, "My God, the genius of that, the genius, the will to do that." Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they could stand that--these were not monsters, these were men, trained cadres, these men who fought with their hearts, who have families, who have children, who are filled with love--that they had this strength, the strength to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, then our troubles in Iraq would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral and at the same time were able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without passion, without judgment--without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us.

"That Damned Tune"

Forget Mitt Romney's record fundraising haul. And pay no mind to the absurd Donald vs. Rosie nonsense. The truly relevant stuff this week? Alfred Hitchcock and his music.

Well, maybe not. But read and learn...

Bernard Herrmann, for example, who created the scores for "Psycho," "North by Northwest" and some of Hitchcock's other masterpieces, said there were only "a handful of directors like Hitchcock who really know the score and fully realize the importance of its relationship to a film."

But it was more than that. For Hitchcock music was not merely an accompaniment. It was a focus. And it didn't just reveal something about the characters who sang the score's songs or moved under its canopy of sound; music could seem to be a character itself.

This might sound a bit grandiose, but take a look at Jack Sullivan's fascinating new book, "Hitchcock's Music." Sullivan, who is director of American studies at Rider University in New Jersey, shows that it isn't just that Hitchcock believed that sound should serve image; he believed that image should serve sound.

College Football

The best college football game I ever watched was the 1995 Orange Bowl, where Coach Osborne kept switching quarterbacks, doing whatever it took to win.

I can't say that tonight's Fiesta Bowl was a better game overall, but it was certainly the best 4th quarter (plus OT) of college football I've ever seen. Boise State wanted to win, and with determination and a little trickery, they did.