There’s still time to order from Amazon through your friendly neighborhood neoneocon portal. But to everyone who already has ordered through neoneocon, I extend my deep and heartfelt thanks. It all helps, believe me.
(And of course, you can use this blog for Amazon orders all year round…although I probably won’t keep nagging you like this…)
The new non-Romney, Ron Paul, is in trouble—just like his non-Romney predecessors were before him. Here’s a summary of the already-aired “racist newsletter” charges against Paul which have resurfaced at an opportune time for his opponents.
It’s pretty obvious Paul’s not guilty of racism but of negligence in not policing his newsletter better, way back when. I would never support Paul for the nomination anyway, not because he’s a racist (he’s not) but because he’s an example of extremely extremist (is that redundant?) libertarianism. Also, his foreign policy is particularly ill-advised.
Now, if Paul were running against Obama in the general—well, that would be a tough one. But, fortunately, I doubt very much I’ll have to seriously consider what I’d do, because I don’t think Paul has a chance of getting the nomination, although he certainly could win the clueless Iowa caucuses.
…and lost, and…
A great story-song from the late Harry Chapin:
…and keeps on ticking.
Okay, all you techies out there, here’s a plea for help:
I want to customize my cell phone ringtone. I have a particular piece in mind, but not only can’t I find it on those “Free ringtones!!” sites, but I wouldn’t trust downloading something from those places anyway.
So, what do I do? I hear there’s a way.
I’d like this to be my ringtone: Handel’s Concerto Grossi opus 6 # 10 in D minor (allegro). I’ve already got it in my iTunes library and on my trusty ipod but so what? How do I transition it into a cell phone ring? My phone is a Samsung “Mesmerize” Android.
Here’s the music, by the way—and thanks in advance to everyone who tries to help this technically-challenged blogger, yours truly:
All news emanating from North Korea is automatically assigned an asterisk and/or question mark, but I’ll report this for what it’s worth: sort-of-trusted Korean sources have told Reuters that “North Korea will shift to collective [military] rule from a strongman dictatorship after last week’s death of Kim Jong-il, although his untested young son will be at the head of the ruling coterie.”
Sounds plausible to me. Kim Jong Il’s son Kim Jong Un is only in his late 20s. In contrast, the former took power when he was already in his mid-50s. Even grandpa Kim Il Sung was a very toughened 36 when he became premier and 60 when he became president.
[NOTE: Quickly skimming the now-deceased Kim Jong Il’s Wiki entry, I found some stuff that, if true, sheds a modicum of light on the making of a psychopathic dictator. These guys do not usually have Norman Rockwell childhoods, and Kim Jong Il was no exception:
[When Kim Jong Il was 3 or 4] the family moved into a former Japanese officer’s mansion in Pyongyang, with a garden and pool. Kim Jong-il’s brother, “Shura” Kim (the first Kim Pyong-il, but known by his Russian nickname), drowned there in 1948. Unconfirmed reports suggest that five-year-old Kim Jong-il might have caused the accident.
In 1949, his mother died in childbirth. Unconfirmed reports suggest that his mother might have been shot and left to bleed to death.
Ah, but Kim Jong Il was always a wonder child:
Official biographers claim that his birth at Baekdu Mountain was foretold by a swallow, and heralded by the appearance of a double rainbow over the mountain and a new star in the heavens.]
The winter solstice comes late tonight and I, for one, am cheering. It may not be a holiday exactly, but winter holidays cluster around it for a very good reason: the beginning of the end of the dark days.
Who wouldn’t drink to that? We who live up north are especially sensitive to the fact that the days that get dark almost as soon as they get light have finally peaked, and the lengthening of the days has begun. It’s no accident, no accident at all, that both of the winter holidays— Christmas and Chanuka (Happy Chanuka, by the way!)—are festivals that feature (literally) light in the darkness.
The WSJ wonders how it is that “GOP leaders have somehow managed the remarkable feat of being blamed for opposing a one-year extension of a tax holiday that they are surely going to pass.”
I’ll help them out.
(1) Never forget that, as Gerard Vanderleun of American Digest has so aptly put it:
(2) McConnell and Boehner don’t seem to be on speaking terms with each other. Or, that is, according to the WSJ, they were on speaking terms when they mapped out the strategy (pass the 2-months extension and simultaneously wring some concessions from Obama on Keystone) but Boehner bailed when some House Republicans bolted. Leadership? Hardly.
The WSJ suggests that “Republicans would do best to cut their losses and find a way to extend the payroll holiday quickly. Then go home and return in January with a united House-Senate strategy that forces Democrats to make specific policy choices that highlight the differences between the parties on spending, taxes and regulation.”
Oh, those dreamers (the WSJ, that is, not the Republicans)! One consolation, although it’s a sad one, is that not so many people may be paying attention to the whole sorry business. Or, if they are, many of them might prefer Republican legislative disorganization to the greater ability of the legislative Democratic leaders to whip their underlings into shape and get things—like Obamacare—passed.
[ADDENDUM: More here.]
Yesterday I was on the telephone with my credit card company, waiting to discuss a bill, and I coughed. Once. Softly.
Immediately the electronic voice on the other end said, “Sorry, but I don’t understand that response.”
“Esplanade” is a work by modern dance choreographer Paul Taylor that highlights the difference between modern dance and ballet. Ballet dancers are sometimes drawn to Taylor’s more graceful pieces such as “Esplanade,” because at first glance seems it seems as though they’d be suited to a balletic style. But I’ve never seen the crossover work really well. The effect is something like an opera singer trying to perform jazz or pop: the technique is strong but the tone, the emphasis—and, in the modern-to-ballet transition, the weight—are so different as to be virtually nontransferable.
When I speak of “weight,” I’m not talking about poundage. Ballet dancers are almost always ultra-light, and modern dancers can either be very light too or a bit more muscular and solid. But that’s not the difference I mean. Ballet training is geared towards pulling the entire body upwards to create a lighter-than-air illusion, while modern dance works with gravity to make grounded shapes. Ballet fights to conquer gravity; gravity is modern dance’s friend.
In a traditional ballet corps the idea is to dance as one. Individuality can come out in the soloists, but for a classical corps member it’s ordinarily not a virtue. Modern dance has no corps, and the dancers are chosen specifically for individuality. Paul Taylor especially emphasizes this, preferring dancers at extremes either of physique (very tall or very short) or quality of movement (distinctive) or both. It is said that at every audition he requires the dancers to run and to walk, and if they don’t pass muster on those moves, they’re eliminated.
“Esplanade” was choreographed in 1975, and it’s a work of inventive genius. Although lengthy, it employs no recognizable dance steps, just walking and running and jumping, and falling to the floor quite regularly. “BOR-ing!” you might say, and I’d forgive you for saying so, but if you did you’d be wrong. You can see why when you watch Esplanade, which has been posted in its entirety (in five parts) on You Tube. Here’s the final segment:
Hey, if you expect me to know what’s going to happen in that bizarre and shrouded country, you’re weirder than the North Koreans:
But I will join in the speculation as to whether the above emotion is real or not and say that IMHO it is real on the part of many people and nervously exaggerated on the part of others. When people live in a totally controlled environment and believe that their country, their society, and their very existence depends on one person, the loss of that person is a blow that is more analogous to a young child’s loss of parents than to anything we would experience at the death of a leader, Dear or otherwise. What they are feeling is not just grief (although it is that) but also fear.
This is especially true of the children and young people in the country. Kim Jong Il has been in power since 1994. You do the math. Anyone below the age of 21 or so has never known anything else. Terrifying indeed.
And those of them who don’t feel the requisite intensity for real would make sure they “catch” it from those around them, and demonstrate the requisite depth of emotion in order to demonstrate the proper depth of devotion.
Wow. Just wow.