Happiest Day of My Life

Someone told me yesterday that I look like Joran Van Der Sloot!

Why?

This horrible incident that has happened to one of our own haunts me as I wake on this bleak hazy morning sure to be visited by the remnants of the dreadful Katrina.

I ask again WHY?????? WHY!!!!!!!!!!???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!????!!!?

Plague of Lethargy

My only excuse for the lack of recent posts. I'll be back on the horse soon, no fears. Keep refreshing.

#-5 Bill Murray

Bill Murray is one of my favorite actors. His recent acclaim for roles in such popular films as Lost in Translation and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is only just, considering the brilliant imaginative depth this man has continually brought to the world of film... Also, he once watched me whoop his son's ass in basketball when I was about 13. Elitist Connecticut private-day-school basketball was hard as shit. But I digress!

Bill captured my heart forever on account of his role in Groundhog Day, a brilliant, dare we say Derridean, film. It needs no IMDB link, for its brilliance is limitless.

Blogs for Natalee

There are, apparently, other bloggers even sicker than I am:

Observe!

Cindy Is Back!

Cindy Is Back!, originally uploaded by Anfernee Hardaway is God.

This AP Photo of Sheehan is demonstrative of a theory of mine. America is really interested in attractive white women. I hope the NAAWP doesn't get on my case about this...

I can't wait until someone makes a movie about Cindy Sheehan. And I don't mean an exploitative documentary. I mean a tell-all TV docu-drama!

Finally

A good movie on the horizon, one that will expose the sinister and evil sides of life.

Does Anybody Remember Right after 9/11...

...When their was a message released from Al-Quaida (I think by one of Bin Ladin's underlings) saying something like "the storm of planes will not cease"... I always thought there was something rather primally poetic about the description "storm of planes" but I don't want to get into Bill Maher territory quite yet... Obviously his prophecy has not come true.

Anyway, third plane crash in the last couple of weeks, this time in Peru.

Cindy Sheehan Explained

The logical explanation for Cindy Sheehan has, after many hours of fervid prayer, come to me.

Cindy Sheehan

Terri Schiavo

This remarkable similarity in phonetic sound made the Sheehan Crusade an easy to cover story, and it also made it easier for Americans to pay attention to her and automatically inflate her importance/significance... All part of filling the vacuum. Thank God for reporters and especially producers!

RIP Brock Peters

Best remembered as Jim in To Kill a Mockingbird. Brock Peters died today. Though relatively obscure, I have long admired Mr. Peters. May Terri Schiavo guard his soul.

Cindy Sheehan Natalee Holloway Six Feet Under

The title is just designed to draw in Technorati searchers. Pay it no mind.

I was thinking today about the pertinent facts of life I had learned in pre-school that I could still remember. Though noted for my memory, that power of memory, I'm afraid, is largely a rememberance of things to come, not of things past, as my mind is really rather cluttered with superabundant presentiments. Thus I could only remember two things.

One, the Chinese invented the fork, even though chop-sticks are their main eating utensils (that irony lies at the heart of my unrest).

The other fact was that the "London Bridge" of the song of that title is actually in Arizona. Apparently, this, at least, is true.

Oh yeah, and Pat Robertson, Pat Robertson! Take that!

Robertson

Looks like another bumbling moron masquerading as a "Christian" has appeared, and this time it's Pat Robertson... Well, I guess he was technically extant prior to this latest sanfu, but not in the eyes of our ever-loving media!

I really hope we go to war in Venezuela. What could be more absurd? Assassination openly suggested as a legitimate option for our "Christian" government? What is going on here?

Get Ready for War, Sheehan

I love this headline:

Bush Backers Amass to Counter "Peace Mom"

Maybe I've Been...

...A little hard on Pope Benedict after all. His comments on world youth day seem refreshingly free from didacticism.

Or maybe it's just a smokescreen. Either way it's nice to hear less blame.

Expansion

I have expanded the empire with an extended homage to the brothers Berger.

I unveil:

Not About Jose Offerman

This will be the blog on which I express my sports related opinions. It may not be as zany as D/M, but I can promise it will be a lot more fun than reading that repeating-piece-of-shit Bill Simmons... Well, maybe not, he is getting paid after all...

All bows of inspiration go to the Bergers. And to Tom.

For Finnegan

In thanks for our one moment in the sun, being linked to by Hit and Run, we present:

Another Meth Story

Religion is Totally Bankrupt

At least Christianity is.

Amputation

Apparently cutting off your own arm can be rather exciting.

New Media Policy on Terror Attacks

Apparently, Television news has failed to take attacks on America seriously.

By the way, I had no idea Max Kellerman (formerly of PTI) was such a conservative douche bag... He's apparently the back-up for noted bitch, Tucker Carlson. Max pulled a total Nancy Grace tonight, referring to his brother's murder as a justification for his personal knowledge of what it was like to suffer. Nice.

That's enough for tonight.

Censorship without Borders

Pakistan is under scrutiny again because of its text books.

This brings up an important point. ACTUAL God, Jeremy and I were discussing the bizarre phenomenon of "women and blogs"... My girlfriend's hatred of the blog are well documented. Though there are a few notable female bloggers out there, on the more local level the majoritiy of my friends who blog are, well, men... A thesis:

Men's comfort-level with blogging is directly proportional to their comfort with internet porn. If one has seen the internet as a worthy telos for one's erotic fantasies, one has little trouble in seeing it as an equally worthy "recepticle" for one's written exertions... Not that I've ever looked at internet porn.

Cindy Sheehan

Though the leader is gone, the movement continues.

It's Rare...

...when I'm in agreement with anything Pope Benedict does, but at least he has shown some soul (earthly, not eternal) by speaking out against anti-semitism.

Death/Media Incarnate Made Real in Museum Form

Some people in Florida are okay after all. Let's just guess that the Florida board of Religious Fanatics (presided over by Jeb Bush) will shut this interesting and informative exhibit down very, very soon.

Webcam

Webcam, originally uploaded by Anfernee Hardaway is God.

Just to prove that the Webcam is not a "one trick pony", here is an even more revealing shot of the Blog Cave. Notice the bass guitar and vintage fender amplifier leaning up against the recently re-painted window sill (thanks Lucy!), and also, of course, pay close heed to the vinatge 1950's era sliding windows that open on, though you can't see it here, another, nearly identical 1950's era apartment building...

Webcam Excerpt

Nostradamus Blogs, originally uploaded by Anfernee Hardaway is God.

The only way I could possibly think of competing with the zany crew at DelinoDeShields.com, who now have a nigh-untoppable introductory video, would be to install a webcam, trained on my blogging efforts 24 hours a day (who am I kidding, 17 hours a day. Everyone has to go to the bathroom and sleep)... Here is the first image.

Close-examiners will notice that the space demarked by shadow on the right side of the lap-top screen is actually a profile of Art Garfunkle!

Closer readers will even notice the "apple" insignia, which of course signifies my undying allegiance to the fundamental revolutionary modalities of Newtonian Physics, and, by proxy, Darwinism.

Closer readers still (and they do exist) will notice that my quizical sneer is an homage to Charles Bronson's look of bewilderment after the fire-escape scene in Death Wish III (the nuanced sound-track done by Jimmy Page is also meant to be invoked by my facial expression).

Finally, the closest of close readers will recognize that my couch is horribly ugly. And, that my apartment has no air-conditioning. And that the shadow on my face is obviously being cast by a drunk Natalee Holloway.

Bill Frist

Bill Frist, who is an MD as I have pointed out once before, has come out in support of the legitimacy of "intelligent design". Wonderful.

Nostradamus

Nostradamus, originally uploaded by Anfernee Hardaway is God.

You guessed it. Unable to muster any legitimate response to the DelinoDeShields.com introductory video, I have resorted to finally posting my own maniacal visage in all its infamous glory.

ACTUAL God is back in town. Hanging out with him in reality was amazing last night, it was a stark reminder of what "life" used to be like before blogging... Hard to believe there ever was such a time!

Jungle Animals... In the midwest!!!

This could be awesome.

Hitler in the Crowd

Everyone has seen this image before, but I thought I'd post it again anyway... I wish there were some credible proof of authenticity, but then again the utter lack of proof makes it so much more compelling.

Skwik

Again, a plug for Skwik.com an extremely cool new Wikipedia style site designed for promoting independent music.

Shelley

"The delusions of Christianity are fatal to genius and originality; they limit thought." -Percy Bysshe Shelley

Adam Corolla

I feel like The Daily Show reruns probably did better than Corolla's sorry attempt at a show. I haven't been able to watch five minutes yet without having to, you guessed it, throw up a little in my mouth... What is the deal with Colbert's new show?

Cindy Sheehan

Cindy moves things closer to the man, though sadly those drive-by encounters will now be a thing of the past...

Madonna

Get well beautiful! That time you walked by me in Paris was the most exciting, religious experience of my life. I hope your injuries heal soon.

Another Reason...

...Why privatization of Social Security is a terrible idea... And yes, I know Bush's reforms would have only changed things for those under 55, but hey, are things really going to be different in fifty years? I don't think so!

#-4 LeVar Burton

Levar Burton

His role as a blind black man in the future is the perfect compliment to his other most notable role, the sighted black host of one of the longest running shows ever, Reading Rainbow. The ultimate paradigm for race-relations in America, LeVar, you need no further gloss!

A Triumph for Blog-Kind

These gentlemen have really outdone themselves. All I can say is bravo.

The Start of Something Logical

San Francisco has decided to take a real stab at making the whole city a wireless zone. With the advent of wireless technology in the last few years, this kind of an idea has always seemed the logical endgame for the whole idea of paying for internet service. I'm sure Comcast is thrilled with this development. Thank God no one owns the airwaves!

Thank You

For disproving my non-point.

Interview

Several years ago, our fearless Nostradamus too became "fed up" with the current President, and for far more dubious reasons than Cindy Sheehan. He was offended by the unimaginative lingo-fluctuo-verbo-jingo-tonguewaggery of the "freedom fries" affair and resolved to do something about it.

Happily, he was in New Haven then too and thus camped out underneath Barbara Bush's dorm room window for three weeks until her Secret Service Handlers finally agreed to grant him an audience with her father, if only to silence his shrill day and night singing of early Rod Stewart, accompanied of course by his best friend, that Asian violin plucking woman from Spider-Man 2. The following is an excerpt from a detailed two-hour long interview (it was more of a lost Beckett play crossed with a staring contest, really) Nostradamus (me) did with our illustrious leader:

Excerpt from Nostradaman Interview with George W. “Burning” Bush

Nostradamus: Thank you, first of all, for sitting down with me, your honor. It is a distinct pleasure.

Bush: Pleasure’s all mine.

Nostradamus: Okay. Let’s smoke some issues out of their holes. Do you believe in God?

Bush: Course. I sure do. God almighty created me sure as he created oil.

Nostradamus: What are your views on evolution?

Bush: It’s wrong.

Nostradamus: Why then did God create the theory of evolution?

Bush: He didn’t. Satan did.

Nostradamus: Interesting. I have to disagree. I believe God created the theory of evolution so that it could be later disproved by the theory of intelligent design, thus making intelligent design a tougher, more battle-tested theory. What would you say to that?

Bush: It’s wrong.

Nostradamus: Did you pray in school?

Bush: No. I hadn’t yet found the Lord.

Nostradamus: But more importantly, did you inhale the prayers of others in school?

Bush: I believe so. And you know, Nos, I'm a better Christian because of it.

Nostradamus: Do you hate America’s youth?

Bush: The children of today are tomorrow’s best effort at overcoming the mistakes of the yesterday's tomorrow.

Nostradamus: If Terri Schiavo were a float at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, would you be more or less likely to attend?

Bush: More. I feel a special kinship with that woman's plight. I just wish we could have done more to save her.

Nostradamus: Could you sign one of your books for me while I’m here?

Bush: I haven’t written any yet, but I’m working on a rotisserie barbecue sauce recipe book for my Presidential Library. Boy do I wish the Ranger's had pulled the plug--I mean trigger--on that Rodriguez for Ramirez trade... That goof-ball Manny is some kind of a symbol of leadership, not like that ungrateful Rodriguez.

More of this interview may or may not be posted later--eds.

Justice Sunday

Looks like those zany Evangelical Christians are up to their usual antics. Yesterday was that age old Christian Holiday "Justice Sunday II"... You'll remember the chapter in the Book of DeLay, I forget which verses exactly so I'll paraphrase, where Jesus addresses the evils of Roman-backed abortion laws and warns all future generations against the insidious practice of "Praetor Activism" and tells his followers to mark off the second Sunday in August (at that time still July) for the express purpose of holding public rallies against all Prators, Quaestors, and Aediles who have supported laws that are not exactly rooted in the Ten Commandments.

Rhetorical gymnast Mike Miller expresses the extremely thoughtful philosophy around which this event was organized:

"Activist justices — we're trying to find out what we can do to stop that activity," he said. "Our laws are based on the Ten Commandments."

This is some classic Christian typological non-sense... Just as every tree in the Old Testament is read as a prefigurement of "the true cross" in the New, here all contemporary laws must be seen in the context of that mythologically articulated set of rules. These people think they are literally fulfilling the covenant (which as far as I can remember was made with the Jews) by attempting to recodify "our laws" as a contemporary mirror of ancient prophecy... For those whose minds are too perverted by relgion to know any history, Solon's Athenean Law Code is a more apt example of the kind of document our constiution is based on... And Solon, like Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, etc. was ONLY A MAN! Imagine, the audacity of God to speak only once, and so anciently!

I would admire these Christians' imaginative hubris if not for the blatant manipulation going on here. This is why faith and politics cannot be confused. Having faith in the truth of the old testament is an imaginative act. In order to believe the "burning bush" and "God's voice" to have had litereal reality, one has to believe in something beyond the scope of one's actual experience. When this kind of faith in truth is applied in the political sphere, you get the justifications for the Iraq War, the logic behind the tax-cuts... It all makes sense if you understand it as an act of transgressive faith that by its very nature is not rooted in ACTUAL existence. By this same logic, Christians can hold a telethon run by political leaders and not see it as corrupting the independence and freedom of their religion, and furthermore can see citing Christian morality as the only guide for the drafting of laws as being non-threatening to non-Christians... It is amazingly foolish, and dangerous for all the obvious reasons that need not be stated again.

Prediction

A prediction:

Johnn Damon and Roger Clemens will both be suspended for taking steroids.

So Guilty

...I've been reduced to a demographic... Damn. This is really the first time this has happened. Or not.

Tibby

Tibby, originally uploaded by Anfernee Hardaway is God.

Tibby is a cat with a consciousness exactly equivalent to that of Dr. Zaius from Planet of the Apes. Of all the animals I have ever met, Tibby has to be my favorite. He is even more beloved than Howard the Duck.

Stones vs. Bush

No, not some biblical parable... Rather, the Rolling Stones have a new song with distinctly anti-Bush lyrics...

Buddy

Let's not forget Buddy Holly.

Happiness

Now that a member of the military has been arrested for vandalizing cars with Bush bumper stickers (something I always feel compelled to do after gigs... Only after gigs, for some reason... There was this time outside of Caffe Adulis when I was so tempted to bash in this Lexus windshield whose bumper had not only a Bush sticker but some crazed "Family Values" message also... But I digress...) we can all finally understand that there is some real dissent, albeit perhaps slightly inappropriate, but real dissent from within the military...

Tibet

Sounds like China has an interesting conundrum regardin' their rule of Tibet. I guess religion is useful in some cases after all... I apologize for all of my anti-religious comments. Except for the anti-Christian statements, those were all dead on. Evangelicals in particular seem so intent on forcing their views on others, they ultimately have more in common with fascist Chinese communists than Tibetan Buddhists... Is religion the problem, or is it just dogmatism that flowers like a disease? Dogmatism... That is the trouble.

Amazing Coincidence

Lucy and I just finished eating at the newly opened Chow (next to Botega underneath the spiraling Crown Street Garage ramp) and as we were walking down the alley to check out the also newly opened Criterion Theatre (which drove York Square under at long last), why who should we see but our illustrious Senator Joseph Lieberman (sans Hadassah, alas) enjoying a meal at the afforementioned Botega... We definitely exchanged glances (he could tell I was a blogger of significance) before Lucy and I shuffled off, drunk on our ever so brief brush with fame. Senator Lieberman, we salute you, and your patronage of fine New Haven restaurants.

Stupidity in Action

The Kansas School board has come down with the most moronic choice regarding science education ever. Evolution is a theory... So is gravity, you idiots, and the apple still falls, whether God "intelligently designed" it to fall or whether it's the result of a random collision of molecules. So go fuck yourselves you mad zealots, and stay the fuck away from the classroom. You do nothing but harm.

Witness this statement of a Bush-like view of freedom:

"We think this is a great development ... for the academic freedom of students," said John West, senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, which supports intelligent design theory.

This is a blatant example of what Hegel would call "negative freedom". Need I say more? Actually, I probably should say more, because the fact is that none of these uneducated, bull-shit spewing idiots have read Hegel, because, well, people stupid enough to express these kind of insane notions (to call them "ideas" is to do thought a great disservice) are surely not intelligent enough to understand a single paragraph of The Phenomenology of Spirit.

"Intelligent design" is the most gross and wrong-headed use of the idea of intelligence of which I am aware.

Nature's Miracle

Hummingbirds are the most beautiful creatures of all.

Even the late Johnny Cochran was forced to admit (after several hours of Chinese water torture) that the hummingbird surely had to have been "God's special message to us all".

Jackson Trial

Do these Jackson jurors who are now expressing doubts about the verdict they arrived upon unanimously realize that by backtracking and questioning the verdict now they only serve to makes themselves look, at best, moronic, and at worst, absolutely evil? I mean really people, shut the fuck up. You acquitted him, your time in the spotlight is now over.

Another Reason...

...For the liberation of Iraq: to allow for female circumcision... God I love America, and so do Iraqi villagers!

Black Hawk Down II

This time, in New Mexico.

Scott Harper

I have a new hero, the kind of experimenting and enterprising youth we all should admire: Scott Harper. This kid has replaced Jeff Maier as my all-time favorite Yankee Stadium fan. Kudos to you Scott, I'm glad that the net behind home plate did, in fact, hold your weight.

An Ode on the Occasion of the Return of Bertuzzi

A piece of genius by Samuel Arkin:

An Ode on the Occasion of the Return of Bertuzzi
Composed in 2 Minutes

A soul on ice is better
preserved an eye for an eye,
because if ever there was a time
for the old testament, around the
horn of issac and abraham,
this is it.

But Bertuzzi was acting
in retaliation for a wound from other
ice, other games, tribal stuff yet
to be arbitrated, and on
behalf of another.

Cold pizza, interupt the pardon
with your truth.
Jesus was sucker punched too,
and he could walk on water
too.
I.N.R.I = E.S.P.N.

In Response to My Last Post

ACTUAL conversation with Lucy:

"Fuck Harry Potter? What are you talking about? Fuck blogging! I mean, I know you like blogging and all, but I mean, those other guys who you blog with, they're like doing it to procrastinate. They don't call it 'work'."

"I'm also doing it to procrastinate."

"But they have REAL jobs."

"You mean driving around an aged professor isn't a REAL job?"

"C'mon Stu, you do it like twice a week."

"Fair enough...."

"May I repeat, FUCK blogging... I mean, blogging is just like masturbation compared to the sex you have with real literature. What about Wordsworth?"

"Wordsworth...." (a drip of Homer Simpson-esque drool runs down Nostradamus's cheek)...

"You sicken me."

Fuck Harry Potter

If only the foolish detainees were reading Spenser, maybe they'd have a prayer... But no. They, like the rest of the cowed, illiterate masses, are reading the absolute trash known as Harry Potter. For all you Harry Potter defenders out there, fuck you. That shit is worthless. Read a fucking poem. Read Hart Crane. Read Robert Browning. Read Walt Whitman. Read Billy Collins, even he is a hundred times more intelligent than the banality ridden wordsmith Rowling. Oh, and yes, I am being deathly serious.

Favorite Song of All Time

Has got to be "Cop-killers" by the legendary Ice-T. I wonder if it is on iTunes? Nope... Sad. I'd give almost anything to blast that again. Back in the hey-day of Quayle, his moral tirades against Ice were second to none... I mean, really, it was idiotic censorship at its finest, the kind of pathetic pandering to an illusory idea of "the good" that Republicans have claimed as their all inclusive right and gateway to elected office.

And then, oh then, Ice-T turned the tables on us all by playing a cop on "Law and Order: SVU"... Awesome reversal. Fuck you Dan Quayle. Love it Ice-T, love it...



"I'm gonna knock some cops off..."

He Must Have Been A Maniac

He smoked herb, and the always trustworthy Texas police shot him during a raid... What does this prove? Nothing.

These imbeciles should save their bullets for the terrorists. Or better yet, for each other!

Charity

Donate generously, if you can, to a group of struggling artists, only one of whom has the "golden ticket"...

Cheer up, Charlie. Just be glad you're you. And be glad that in 2005 the term "Charlie" no longer has the pernicious resonances with the Viet cong and with some kind of racial epithet (apparently the title "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" was considered in VERY bad taste in 1971... Who knew?)...

I once saw the star of "Willy Wonka" on a "where are they now show" on one of the interchangeably vapid "culture" networks, E! or VH1, and the kid, Peter Ostrum, is now a vet, a vet of farm life that is! He's been reaching up cow's asses for the last thirty years.

Everything, eventually makes sense, even Don Cheadle's acting career. Were any of you aware that he was on the Golden Girl's spin-off "Golden Palace" in 1992? I wasn't until yesterday, when I tuned in to Lifetime only to see Betty White and Rue McLanahan trying to set up his character, appropriately named "Roland Wilson", on a date. This is far from the best part though... Cheech Marin plays the chef! Ah, the joys of the past...



And with our mighty axe-handles raised to the roof, blood on our saddles, and a post-it notes tatooed into our asses, we rise, glittering and golden as the sun on Terri Schiavo's resting place. Ciao!

Changing Times

Break out your vcr, coffee maker, and electronic calendar manuals, Bush is literally going to change time. Apparently, it's going to be an electronic disaster reminiscent of Y2K.... We as Americans are more likely to suffer at the hands of gadgets than people of other countries. Will this be exploited by terrorists? I move to counteract this possibility and rename Daylight Savings to "Freedom Hour". (Sure, I know it hardly makes little literal sense)

Check this:

But while other countries have coped, Americans have largely become complacent and expect many clocks to change automatically because dates have been set for two decades, said Lauren Weinstein, a veteran technologist.

"Missiles won't be launching but it's still going to cause a lot of hassle,"

I, for one, am worried.

Vigil for a Military Death

This is a pretty interesting situation. Cindy Sheehan lost her son in Iraq on April 4, 2004, and now she wants answers from President Bush. So she is following in the time-tested tradition of using a death to catapault one's perspective into the media spotlight by holding a vigil near his Crawford ranch. I, for one, am totally opposed to this sort of behavior... Not!

Money quote:

If he doesn't come out and talk to me in Crawford, I'll follow him to D.C.," she said. "I'll camp on his lawn in D.C. until he has the courtesy and the integrity and the compassion to talk to somebody whose life he has ruined.

Damn. It's a good thing that guy had such detailed knowledge of Mr. Big's travel plans. I hate you Bill Simmons. You have brought me to this.

Donna Martin Graduates!

Why?

Barbituates... Maybe?

Justice

John Paul Stevens comes through with an actually accurate description of the insane and barbaric and incredibly-vengeance-laden phenomenon that is Capital Punishment.

To kill as punishment for killing is the stupidest, most essentially hypocritical action a government is capable of taking.

Canoe Clubbing

Playing tonight in Hanover at The Canoe Club... All my New Hampshire readers, please, please, make an effort and come on out!

Death/Media At Its Finest

There is really nothing better than a controversy caused by an obituary, especially not when it is the obituary of the "alleged" inventor of the TV Dinner. How's that for irony, the inventor of the TV Dinner's reputation is being, in a sense, eaten by the television coverage of his death!

Lessons

My favorite aspect of Media Crazes (Schiavo, Peterson, Bryant, Jackson, Holloway, etc.) has to be the rampant and repugnant finger wagging that most commentators find it necessary to engage in... That or the somber, stoic effort at "having some good come out of this terrible tragedy"-style moralizing they get into, Springer-esque, in their few, vacant moments of personality (this of course excludes Nancy Grace, who, if nothing else, makes her personal feelings very clear).

Take Bryant. What is the lesson learned here? Don't believe in the Media/advertisers/PR-reps idealized picture of a celebrity? Didn't we already know that?

I guess it depends on who you are. If you're a nineteen-year old female hotel employee looking to hook up with an NBA star, perhaps you'll think twice, and if you're an amazingly overpaid NBA star, well, I guess you should also think twice... Point is clear and the overall ethical message sent by the situation is simple: if you are a celebrity, it will only help your defense, perhaps by overwhelming your accuser. Is this something people really need/want to be reminded of? Ah, the culture of celebrity.

Ditto for the Jackson case. Would anyone be stupid enough to leave their kid with Michael to begin with if they weren't either desperate or crooked? Who cares? Seventy days of trial coverage later, death toll in Iraq rising.

Peterson... If all of the parties involved were less physically attractive, would anyone have cared? Of course not.

Schiavo... Well, we all know to have living wills now. Great. Let's go to war!

Lastly, Holloway... Please, young girls everywhere, whatever you do, avoid attractive Dutch boys in Aruba! They will be your undoing! Let's all learn this lesson now, together, by watching over fifty days of non-stop, no-new-information coverage from all of the major news outlets. Let's learn our lesson well.

Say it Ain't So

But what we all feared has apparently come to pass. Chappelle's Show is over, for ever, according to the grateful Charlie Murphy, who credits the show with his new-found stardom in the linked article. If this is the case, oh well. I'm done crying over dead media.

Beat the Heat

The heat from "the fuzz" that is (not the new-look Miami Heat, who with my boy 'Toine aboard should be able to win it all), by moving to Bahrain. I'm not up on my Bahraini Legal Code, but perhaps there is no extradition treaty, should future allegations arise in the US for our boy MJ... Or maybe he just wants to be around completely wealthy oil-barons who also have/had dark skin. Who can say for sure...

Im-Mediate Honesty

Funny how as soon as the entertainment media's depiction of forbidden cultural act, like smoking marijuana, becomes mildly realistic, they are attacked by cultural conservatives who obviously live in a cocoon.

Whatever Happened with...

...the anthrax terror attacks?

It has now been almost four years since 9/11, as we all know, and we likewise know the enormous political and social impact the 9/11 attacks have had in all the various arenas of significance across the broad spectrum of imagined and real discourses of physical and mental nature.

But wait... Am I wrong in saying that the truly terrifying events of 2001, terrifying and spectacular as the plane attacks were, were the series of anthrax mailings that followed on the wake of 9/11? I say this because of the truly randomized potential represented by the web of linking signifiers that is the postal service is rivaled in its potential for mass "Exposure" only by the, for now, only visual/auditory world wide web. The mail comes to all of us, and if there's poison in the mail, we all could be targets, even if we don't work in an office building or live in a city, and that is truly terrifying.

Strange as it is that there has been no resolution to this mysterious series of events, the tiny media profile of the hunt for the attackers is perhaps even stranger, especially when compared to the media profile of the search for Natalee Holloway. Some liberal-minded critics (perhaps biased and paranoid, and even, dare we say it, crazy?) have postulated about these events' connection to the consolidation of Neo-con philosophy and power, but more attention from less fringy sources seems like it could be warranted...

While we're at it, whatever happened with the Yale Law School bombing?

Wonderful News

Palmeiro has been suspended for using steroids!

Funny to think that all those who postulated that Palmeiro's status as a drug spokesperson (for Viagra) made him more likely to do other "performance enhancing" drugs were exactly right... I think this is one of the happy instances were the extremely obvious, superficial reading was completely correct. Sports writers everywhere pat themselves on the back, think for a second that they are capable of cutting interpretation, of course take their moralizing too far and end up looking like the fools they've been all along. Happy day, oh happy day... I'll guess that Raffy, even with the great numbers and the numerous hit children's albums, will never see Cooperstown after all.

But really, that Kobe rape story was some pretty dark shit (dare I say even darker than the steroids story), and the clumsiness with which it was covered, and used as a moral paradigm by my beloved sportswriters, has made it only darker. I guess it is easy to see the parallels with the Michael Jackson case, but remember, Kobe never even had a trial. The media insanity clearly took its toll on the victim, and she'd had enough... Great work you unsubtle butchers of "information"...

Anyway, sorry for the digressive Kobe content, but I must explain it in the following way for those of you stupid enough to accuse me of being "untrue" to the name of Nostradamus in focusing on stories that have already happened. Readers who have followed D/M for a long time will know that it began as a chronicle of Terri Schiavo about three weeks after she was dead. I chose the name Nostradamus in large part as a completely self-aware play on the fact that I was talking about a "dead issue". Another way of putting this would be to say I was being ironic, and am, even now, being more ironic than you who doubt could possibly imagine.

Rice

Condi Rice, according to this article is now completely in control of US foreign policy. I shudder to say it, but it might just be some improvement over Rumsfeld et al...