jamie lawrence-howard • highly absorbent redundant and superfluous verbiage • clogging tubes since 9.1.98
walkscore.com — great idea for a google maps mashup site. you type in your address, and it gives an overall ranking of your living quarters on a scale from 1 to 100, in terms of walking distance to types of businesses.
here’s my walk score:
love it. i guess my distance from a movie theater drags my score down.
more accurately, it’s time for her to be made to go.
these latest remarks, citing robert kennedy’s assassination as a reason to stay in the race, are beyond the pale. you can’t tell me this was just a slip. nothing the clintons do is without purpose.
the superdelegates need to step up and end this thing officially, now. and that means i don’t want her on the ticket as vice-president. i say that partly because i don’t want her around, but mainly because i don’t want bill clinton anywhere near the white house again. my main problem with her isn’t what she does, but that she can’t seem to control what he does. he has undue influence over her. i don’t want the clintons tag-teaming and triangulating obama out of his presidency, or if he wins, out of his governance. which is exactly what they’d do, led by bill clinton. jeebus — to think i worked for his 1992 campaign.
i want them both out in the political wilderness for the duration of the presidential campaign, where they can do no harm. obama can win without her or her support. enough of her vaunted supporters will vote democratic in november anyway, with or without her. and especially without bill clinton around. and at this point, i’m not sure i want her as my senator, either. she’s frigging toxic.
peggy noonan had a great column about hillary clinton yesterday. it may be behind a paywall for you (come on, wall street journal!) so i’ll summarize: golda meir, indira gandhi, and margaret thatcher, three women who knew how to play tough politically, would be outraged at clinton’s week of claiming sexism as a principal reason for her loss. what a sorry endgame clinton has — blame society and the media. never once did you hear that from obama, even when he was far behind in the polls.
here’s my favorite quote from the noonan column:
It is prissy. Mrs. Clinton’s supporters are now complaining about the Hillary nutcrackers sold at every airport shop. Boo hoo. If Golda Meir, a woman of not only proclaimed but actual toughness, heard about Golda nutcrackers, she would have bought them by the case and given them away as party favors.
It is sissy. It is blame-gaming, whining, a way of not taking responsibility, of not seeing your flaws and addressing them. You want to say “Girl, butch up, you are playing in the leagues, they get bruised in the leagues, they break each other’s bones, they like to hit you low and hear the crack, it’s like that for the boys and for the girls.”
and this:
Meir and Gandhi and Mrs. Thatcher suffered through the political downside of their sex and made the most of the upside. Fair enough. As for this week’s Clinton complaints, I imagine Mrs. Thatcher would bop her on the head with her purse. Mrs. Gandhi would say “That is no way to play it.” Mrs. Meir? “They said I was the only woman in the cabinet and the only one with — well, you know. I loved it.”
got that right.
it’s going away, like mchales, cbgb’s, le madeleine, and any other of the long list of victims of gentrification and skyrocketing rents. much of what makes the city “new york” are these individual places, and each time we lose one we’re a step closer to being cleveland. i’ve been to florent a few times, and always enjoyed myself and had a great meal. the man, a true pioneer among restauranteurs, deserves better.
think about that the next time you hit a starbucks. and i’m sure cleveland is a wonderful place.
but it ain’t new york. at least not yet.
this is a must-watch video clip — ellen hands john mccain his head on a plate, logic-wise.
here’s my favorite part:
“Blacks and women did not have the right to vote. I mean, women just got the right to vote in 1920. Blacks didn’t have the right to vote until 1870. And it just feels like there is this old way of thinking that we are not all the same. We are all the same people, all of us. You’re no different than I am. Our love is the same. To me — to me, what it feels like — just, you know, I will speak for myself — it feels — when someone says, ‘You can have a contract, and you’ll still have insurance, and you’ll get all that,’ it sounds to me like saying, ‘Well, you can sit there; you just can’t sit there.’ That’s what it sounds like to me. It feels like — it doesn’t feel inclusive…It feels — it feels isolated. It feels like we are not — you know, we aren’t owed the same things and the same wording.”
and the end of the clip is wonderful as well. go ellen…you rock. i don’t want a frigging contract either.
kirk sent me an email that purported to give the schedule that the irs will follow when mailing out the stimulus checks this spring.
did i say spring? i did. more on that later.
so the email said that they would mail on a schedule according to the last two digits in your social security number. which would mean that, according to the provided schedule, that my check would be mailed on july 11th.
july frigging 11th! that’s not spring! that’s half the summer gone! some frigging stimulus. what a crock.
but wait. maybe it’s just an email hoax. so, off to check snopes.com. and you know what? it’s frigging true! i couldn’t believe it.
now, to be sure, i think that the entire stimulus check nonsense is, well, nonsense. i don’t think it will do a bit of good for the economy. but on the off chance it might do some good, perhaps it would make sense to, oh, i don’t know, have it enter the economy in a relative lump sum. at least then it would have a chance of having some effect.
jeebus. this is the best our government can do? if you are going to pander to me, at least halfway deliver on your promise. i can hardly wait for obama to get into the white house, and hopefully bring at least a bit of sanity to washington.
…so i can vote for steve novick, who opens a beer with his hook hand in his campaign commercial. now there’s a politician i can get excited about.
plus oregon has great weather, lots of organic vegetables, and is a great place as long as you don’t leave portland or eugene.
it’s been a while, so here are a few short takes:
» kirk was in the hospital overnight on wednesday for some tests. he’s had dizziness, general fatigue, and chest tightness for a few weeks now, and our doctor wanted to rule out the big stuff — heart problems, blood clots, lung problems, etc. thankfully all that big stuff checked out, but the symptoms remain. next stop — the inner ear. at least we have a baseline of good health for him. our doctor is good and persistent, so i’m hopeful that we’ll sort it all out.
» happy mother’s day, to my mom, kirk’s mom, and mothers in general. i sent a neck pillow/comforter thingy to my mom in florida, via red envelope. she loves the red box and the grosgrain ribbon. good thing — i can’t stand the company. she’s the only reason i still patronize them, and the only person i use them for. i think they have terrible customer service. the latest in a long line of gripes — a month ago they sent me an email reminder to buy something for mother’s day, with a 10% discount code. but when i used the code and made a purchase, they wouldn’t delay the shipping. so i could either send my mother’s day present directly to my mother a month in advance, or have it shipped to me and pay twice to have it shipped to arrive in a timely fashion. i chose the latter. what a crock. if you are going to ask me to buy early for mother’s day, then have the back office capabilities to ship the purchase to arrive on mother’s day. idiots.
» obama seems to have wrapped things up, defeating hillary clinton for the nomination. all the talk now is to have her for vice-president, but i think that’s a bad idea and i don’t think it will happen. two “liberal senators” on one ticket? the republicans would have a field day. we need to move on from the clintons. he needs to pick someone with foreign policy experience. sam nunn? too old — he would negate the mccain age argument. gen. wesley clark or gen. jim jones? we don’t need an inexperienced admiral stockdale type. joe biden? great choice but two senators isn’t a good idea. jim webb? perfect choice, but do you want to give up the senate seat in virginia? and he isn’t the best campaigner. bill richardson? sounds good to me. what sounds even better? wait out mccain and make him pick first.
» congratulations to the writers of iron man, one of whom is the husband of a good friend and former co-worker of mine. he struggled for years, has enormous talent, and is deserving of every bit of success he’s getting.
[flv:/movies/fiftypercent.flv 320 240]
the genesius theatre in reading, pa., where kirk first learned stagecraft, had a benefit at the end of february 2008. it was called “he sang…she sang” — men sang songs usually associated with women, and vice-versa. kirk performed in a few numbers, but this was his solo performance.
chills, i tell ya. i get chills.