I was really struck by this photo , which graced the cover of Tuesday's New York Times, showing Ariel Sharon, Condoleeza Rice and James Baker attending a memorial of the late Yitzhak Rabin in Israel. There's something in that picture...in Rice's face, jaw set, eyes hidden behind rockstar sunglasses...and how she is flanked on either side by two men who've played hard-ball power politics for decades: Ariel Sharon, peering beneath his furrowed brow and, always conscious he is being observed, gesturing and thinking...and James Baker, completely hidden behind a permanent dimplomatic mask, an impenetrable sphinx. Of course, that photo sends a powerful message to the world. Rice was in Israel to do serious business . The fact that she brought Baker with her meant that the full weight of the U.S. military-industrial complex... the old guard ...was with her. That trip to Israel was important; and I would guess that U.S. plans and actions regarding Syria were part of that
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So I'm going to trust in the old folk wisdom that the way to get a song out of your head is to get it stuck in someone else's head. Here's hoping one of your readers knows the song and is ...suggestible...
I don't care if it rains or freezes
Long as I've got my Plastic (Baby Meta) Jesus
Ridin' on the dashboard of my car.
Through my trials and tribulations
And my travels through the nation
With my Plastic (Baby Meta) Jesus I'll go far
Plastic (Baby Meta) Jesus!
Plastic (Baby Meta) Jesus!
Ridin' on the dashboard of my car
etc...
I don't think I would have written that piece anywhere else...lol.
But..yeah..sadly, I think that'll be my last thing there for awhile....time to let it go.
There's much good work done there. But so much bad blood...aieeeeee!!!
Must learn to write well...here.
To be honest, if feels like I'm in a lonely room sometimes here. I wish folks would just flood this place with comments.
What should I do?...do I need a gimmick with a human touch?
Say....photographs of cats? Or pictures of my lunch?....hmmmm.
And the Jesus song that shall now remain unnamed has left my head. Whew.
Since starting grad school, I've completely lost touch with new music. Now that things are winding down, I'm realizing how sad it is that only about 5% of the albums I own were released within the last five years. And a good chunk of them were released before I was born.
Kid Oakland's pointed me in some good directions, and I'll try out that "Off the Radar" show.
In other words, you all aren't posting links into a vacuum. There's at least one person out here who needs them.
My main problem with blogger, other than the aestheitcs and fuctionality of it...ie. lack of threading...is that it's not really possible to easily link to comments or individual pieces here.
I feel pretty strongly that your words are your words...and that you should have access to them, and be able to find your way back to them.
Funny thing about scoop....having written for free for two years on what I now learn was "Kos Media LLC"...I am loathe to aggregate people under my brand, or name. I will participate in a group blog someday. But only one that is not in the shadow of something else, or some other entity.
(I've been on the board of non-profits off line. Maybe that is possible on-line someday, or some version of that.)
As for traffic. It is good but has declined since Katrina...and, to be honest, I want this site to serve as a link to other interesting sites as well...specifically, ones that have been ignored by the "scoop centric" folks.
That's hard to do with the traffic levels I'm getting now. If I could get more readership...(perhaps even a link from sites I've written on)...I honestly think that not only would folks find the writing here worthwhile...but they would be able to get to so many other, interesting, relevant places.
As it stands, I continue to be thankful for y'all, every last one.
You are the best readers in the blogosphere. Period. I can see that, and read it...and I do look at the stats, and it shows. Readers here follow links from here and impact other deserving sites...that is so cool.
Thanks for reading! I won't let you down.
Re: Kid Oakland's comment about Blogger
it's not really possible to easily link to comments or individual pieces here
The only way I've found to "link" to comments is by typing "Re:..." as I just did.
And as far as linking to individual pieces goes, it's possible but I must say that finding the individual pieces can be a nightmare. It's the Blogger archive--it makes me crazy. I've hacked my template to make the sasetc archive just slightly less of a hassle, but it's still both ridiculous and not even funny.
Not having a way to do Teaser + Extended Copy is also a nuisance if you're a wordy babbler like I am.
And, since we can't create pages that aren't "posts" generated by the Blogger database, we must resort to kludgy workarounds like the Cartel's memory hole pages (pretty clever as workarounds go... just set up another blog for themed archives) and my prehistory meta posts. Someday I'll get around to setting up hosting space so I can do this sort of stuff with less kludging. And so I can post my fantabulous crossword puzzles. First things first, though.
Ending minirant now. Blogger's free and, despite limited functionality, pretty easy. WG could never have tricked me into starting my blog if I'd poked around in the Cartel "dashboard" and discovered that Blogger is a major pain in the ass. So I thank them for making it possible, even if it is sorta lame.
Thanks for the current clicks. Much love!
Dean