Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Friday, September 23, 2005
Re-runs, self-examination, and when hurricanes hit Texas
Great test, Mickey. I would have to say that at one point or another in my life I would answer yes to all of those questions.
I have an addition:
Are you now working on removing those defects of character?
[X] Hell yes!
Talking about reruns/reprints and things that deserve a second viewing:
http://wdthu.blogspot.com/2005/09/comedy-that-is-my-existence.html
And finally, Mudge, where the heck are ya?
Posted by JOS on from Puerto Rico 09/23 at 08:54 AMyou said the opposite of what i said about patriotism!!
Posted by michael on from scotland 09/23 at 09:21 AMdid I?
Posted by JOS on from Puerto Rico 09/23 at 09:40 AMGreat stuff this morning, Mickey. Thanks.
The WSWS article is an excellent review of the whole mess. In Houston, building codes don’t require that they build structures which can stand up to the blast from a major hurricane. I guess I didn’t know that they COULD build such structures - but, in Houston, they decided not even to try. Well, most of those building codes are written as a result of lobbying by real-estate developers and contracting groups. I assume we can conclude that higher standards = lower profits.The conclusion of “Isaac’s Storm,” is just dripping with irony. After long, detailed descriptions of the horror and death and devastation in Galveston, the author says (essentially): Now, just a few feet from the edge of the ocean, there is an absurdly inadequate see wall. Just inside the sea wall are condominiums and hotels and apartments. Thousands of people can now fall asleep while listening to the gentle sounds of the waves lapping against the shore…
( Back soon, for the exam. Man, I hate these “unannounced” tests. I didn’t study! )Posted by joe on from Oregon 09/23 at 10:54 AMI just spoke to my mom again. She and my Dad are headed to my sister’s house now. It’s chaos in the Houston area. If anyone ever again expresses faith in the U.S. government, I have three words for them: Katrina and Rita.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/23 at 11:45 AMHere’s something from Craig’s List in Houston:
Gas in Houston
Reply to:
Date: 2005-09-23, 4:32AM CDT
Could someone please reply via a post/ email of any gas stations in the Houston area (pref. in the SW area near Westheimer/ Bellaire) where I can still buy gas for my car? We don’t plan to evauate since we have two elderly disabled people at home with us, but would still like to fill up.
God Bless You!Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/23 at 11:48 AMNow, there’s an ominous post, Mickey.
It’s a plea for basic assistance, from one of the most affluent, sophisticated, oil-drenched areas - of the richest, most powerful nation in the entire history of the world.
This same person could go outside and whisper: “I have some loot for Bechtel and Halliburton.” A dozen limos filled with lawyers and bagmen would show up in just moments…
Meanwhile, the nation sleeps, and dreams of new products and the new fall lineup of must see TV. I don’t know whether to scream or cry.
Posted by joe on from Oregon 09/23 at 12:17 PMDid anyone see this?:
or this article on the Lord of War? “Hollywood just scooped the press on one of the best stories in Africa.”:
They forgot to mention that the press was scooped on the big secret that the US is the largest arms dealer in the world.
Posted by JOS on from Puerto Rico 09/23 at 12:28 PMMichael, who said what that was the opposite of what you said about patriotism? I’m a little slow sometimes…
Posted by JOS on from Puerto Rico 09/23 at 12:31 PMJOS has got the TinyURLs going on. That image of the burnt-out bus looks like a post-suicide bombing shot from Israel. it can’t happen here...yeah, right.
Joe, did you mention new products? What new products? Anything you think I should buy?
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/23 at 12:37 PMtinyurl’s rock, but democrats don’t:
something Rosemarie would enjoy:
Had an interesting comment to something I posted the other day with a picture of a dead Iraqi boy and a headline that read Warning: This is what we are doing in Iraq:
“Warning: This is what we are doing in Iraq sometimes on accident.
Warning: This is what Saddam Hussein did in Iraq on purpose.
Good News: The United States is opening up schools. Providing food to where the was none and even more than your liberal media wants to report.”
Posted by JOS on from Puerto Rico 09/23 at 01:13 PMWarning: This is what Saddam Hussein did with U.S. support and funding.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/23 at 01:17 PMexactly.
Posted by JOS on from Puerto Rico 09/23 at 01:51 PM
Posted by JOS on from Puerto Rico 09/23 at 02:05 PMJust for levity
http://tinyurl.com/c9p2aPosted by suzanne on from joe's living room 09/23 at 02:41 PMWelcome, Suzanne...it’s a pleasure to meet you.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/23 at 03:08 PMHi Everyone....JOS, That is great that you posted a picture of a dead Iraqi boy. I keep telling everyone to look at the Fisk photos. BTW, today I received an e-mail saying that Fisk was just denied entry into the US. Have not had time to check that out yet. If that is true, it is outrageous, and happening at the same time as the trial of the St. Pat’s 4....the trial where the government upped the Charges AFTER a mistrial....Anyway, the only thing that I wanted to say was, HOW CAN ANYONE CALL THE SLAUGHTER OF THE IRAQI CIVILIANS AN ACCIDENT. If you, load a plane with bombs, fly it over a populated area, then drop the bombs, it is NO accident if people get killed !!!!!!!!! sorry, I am a little bit passionate on that point.
Posted by RMJ on from GUILLOTINE 09/23 at 03:22 PMHey RMJ...great to see you, as always.
I tried to post the image you sent me, but I think I couldn’t do it because it was a .bmp instead of a .jpg.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/23 at 03:24 PMGreat stuff, Mickey and great test! Too revealing by half, and thanks for your honesty!
Posted by Helga Fremlin on from Daylesford, Australia 09/23 at 03:43 PMAnd RMJ, Fisk has indeed been denied entry into the US: http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2005/09/us_bans_robert_.html
He is due in Australia next week btw ..Posted by Helga Fremlin on from Daylesford, Australia 09/23 at 03:49 PMSorry Mickey. I don’t know how to go from bmp to jpg in a graphic. I can do it it a photo. I am still experimenting with jpeg and gif. Where is tech support when you need it?
I hope that I did not hurt your feelings Jos. I will try to behave for the rest of the evening. I promise.Posted by RMJ on from GUILLOTINE 09/23 at 03:50 PMHelga, thanks for the link. Of course the U.S. has to keep Fisk out. He not only knows where the bodies are buried, but he has photographs of them.
Posted by RMJ on from GUILLOTINE 09/23 at 03:57 PMYes, thanks Helga. And Rosemarie, I’d expect Harry to stop in soon and explain the tech issue for us.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/23 at 04:07 PMRosemarie, no hurt feelings here...I’ve been trying to tell people that we are murdering innocent Iraqis since before this damn war started. Shoot, we’ve been killing for a decade and a half.
Posted by JOS on from The Island of Enchantment 09/23 at 04:14 PMChomsky once spoke of Fisk as being one of the finest journalists in the world.
His kind doesn’t belong here, obviously.Hi Rosemarie & Mickey & JOS & Helga -
Great to see you folks.My sense of US “bombing history” is that we’ve always placed the safety of our planes (and, perhaps, our pilots) ahead of the safety of civilians. We’ve been bombing from great altitudes since WWII. We justified it by bombing during the day, so we could at least “see” the target. (As long as the skies were clear.) The British bombed at night. Even in the sordid history of modern government and war, Churchill stands out as a particularly vicious and sadistic bastard.
Great links today, Expendables!
Posted by joe on from Oregon 09/23 at 04:15 PMHere’s a little something I wrote a while back, re: bombing:
http://tinyurl.com/8fwalIt must be comforting to believe America is the only nation in world history to not target civilians just as it’s comforting to believe our leaders (sic) have a plan shoudl disaster strike.
Michael Ruppert is saying Hurricane Rita will be another nail in the U.S. economy’s coffin and that reminds me that America is a land founded on myth. The greatest myth of all is that the land of the free will last forever.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/23 at 04:22 PMAll of you are giving the government a free pass. Joe, I think that it is even worse than you describe. There is evidence that the policy has been to have Rules of Engagement that encourage using civilian deaths to an advantage. How else can you explain the prosecution of the VITW people who were prosecuted for taking medicine to Iraq.....and the Friends (Quakers) who were denied permission to take chlorination equipment to Iraq when people were dying because of contaminated water.....Chomsky beat me, I was just going to say that I think that Fisk is the best journalist of our generation.....Suzanne, I can’t view your post because I am on slow dial-up. Somthin tells me that I’m missin something good.
Posted by RMJ on from GUILLOTINE 09/23 at 04:28 PMI hope I’m not giving them anything, Rosemarie, except a headache. You’re quite right, of course, we kill innocents in order to create terror and disorientation and generalized mahem.
I had further thoughts to post, here, but Mickey’s link, above, and the article to which it leads, say it all far better than I can.
A fine article, Mickey. Thorough, clear, devastating…Posted by joe on from Oregon 09/23 at 04:39 PMHey, Mickey, my first post here. Great site, I’m a fan, but have a question that you might be able to answer since you probably have more experience with this. I’m not sure if you heard about this, but here in LA, a girl, Shay Clark, got expelled from her school. A letter from Superintendent Leonard Stob to her parents said it was done because they (the parents) are lesbian. Now I posted this news story on my blog, but was wondering if it is legal to include other’s email contact info as reference. I ended the entry with : ‘If you’d like to let the school know what you think about this, here is their link: http://www.ocschools.org/hs/, or for Mr. Stob’s address (according to classifieds on http://www.thebanner.org/), and finally for their general info.’ You can see the entry here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/lexybeast/60885.html. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!
Posted by Lexybeast on from Southern CA 09/23 at 04:44 PMHi Joe! Great to see you!
And Mickey, not only are your links great but your quotes ROCK as well!!Posted by Helga Fremlin on from Daylesford, Australia 09/23 at 04:53 PMWelcome to the site, Lexy. I’m certainly no expert on the issue but if a website publishes an e-mail address in its “contact us” section, it’s clealry meant for public consumption.
If anyone else here knows differently, please speak up ASAP.
Hope to see you here again, Lexy. Keep up the great work out there in SoCal.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/23 at 04:57 PMHey Lexy: I just perused your blog. Very cool...and excellent images.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/23 at 05:04 PMWasn’t quite on a contact us section. There really was no contact us section on their site, so instead I googled Mr. Stobs name, and found he had included contact information on a classified section for another site. Heh heh, is my ground getting a little shakey here?
Posted by Lexybeast on from Southern CA 09/23 at 05:06 PMLexy: If you go to the school’s site and click around to find this page: http://www.ocschools.org/directory/index.cfm, you’ll see that same e-mail address right there for public use.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/23 at 05:08 PMHeh heh, thanks for the compliments!
Posted by Lexybeast on from Southern CA 09/23 at 05:09 PMI guess I’m not as good a detective as I thought, but I can breath a sigh of relief now. Thanks for the help!
Posted by Lexybeast on from Southern CA 09/23 at 05:12 PMNo problem, Lex. Glad I could help.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/23 at 05:13 PMLex, one of my friends in VFP wrote a letter to that school this morning. I think that they will know that they have gotten the attention of a lot of people.
Posted by RMJ on from GUILLOTINE 09/23 at 06:06 PMtaken from the book of questions by that guy Gregory Stock. Were you able to wake up in the body of someone else, would you do so? Whom would you pick?
hurricane katrina, what would clinton do? some articles on hurricane mitch:
http://tinyurl.com/btrtmhttp://www.counterpunch.org/mitch.html
Posted by tm on from the enchanted garden of Kastchei 09/23 at 06:16 PMGreat links, TM. The beat, as they say, goes on.
As for your question, are you sure that’s not a straight line?
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/23 at 06:41 PMi’m sloooooooooooow, straight line? do you mean like a pick-up line?
Posted by tm on from same place 09/23 at 08:03 PMNah, I mean a line that sets up a joke.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/23 at 08:16 PMMickey, about that “straight line.” Yup, that was my first thought, too…
Hey, I just stopped in to take the test.
While I’ve not had all of the experiences listed, I’m certainly guilty of almost every sort of racism and sexism and generalized condescension. I’ve had many heroes, but, except for a few fleeting moments now and again, I’ve never been one of them.It might be a good idea to remember that we’ve all spent most of our lives as prisoners of war, so to speak. We, as a population, have been imprisoned, held against our will, and brainwashed by the Ruling Class. We’ve been taught to be racists. We’ve been taught to be sexist. We’ve been taught to be homophobic. We’ve been taught that it’s OK to kill and eat animals, and to leave them behind when the storm surge threatens. We’ve been taught to fear and condescend and place our faith in violence.
And, we’ve been taught to lie about it. If we’re asked: “Are you a racist?,” the correct answer is: “Oh, no! Absolutely not!”
But, no one here is lying about such things. This constitutes a tiny victory.Here’s a brief, simplified definition of Stockholm Syndrome: “Captives begin to identify with their captors, initially as a defensive mechanism, out of fear of violence. Small acts of kindness by the captor are magnified, since finding perspective in a hostage situation is by definition impossible. Rescue attempts are also seen as a threat, since it’s likely the captive would be injured during such attempts. …these symptoms occur under tremendous emotional and often physical duress. The behavior is considered a common survival strategy for victims of interpersonal abuse, and has been observed in battered spouses, abused children, prisoners of war, and concentration camp survivors.”
If this isn’t a generally accurate picture of our situation, I don’t know what is! We were born into prison camps, to parents born into prison camps. ALL of our lives have been lived in prison camps. We can’t necessarily study our own lives and conclude that we know who we really are.
It’s not that we have so much to learn; We have an enormous amount of UNlearning to do…
It’s not that we’re naturally sick - we just have to vomit up the filth and disease we’ve been force-fed all of our lives, and our natural good health will shine right through…Posted by joe on from Oregon 09/23 at 09:40 PMProvocative post, Joe. It’s as if we need to subtract—not add—in order to find our humanity. Like a sculptor chipping away the clay or stone to discover the creation under it all.
Thanks for spending so much time here.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/23 at 10:01 PMThanks for providing the “here,” for me to spend time in.
We’re keeping an eye on the storm, Mickey. So far, so good, it seems, for your family down there. I imagine it will be a long night for a lot of anxious people.
I hope they all take better care of their “critters.”
See ya tamarra…
Posted by joe on from Oregon 09/23 at 10:43 PMJoe, as is his habit, provides the distilled aphorism that cuts to the heart of the problem:
“We’ve been taught to fear and condescend and place our faith in violence.”Rita’s sucked up every drop of gas in my area...250 miles from Houston, 295 from Galveston, and not on the way to anywhere...so prices are up to $3.19 for regular (from $2.19) which is QUITE a hike. No drops of rain, though, since I am on the west/dry side...and we’re 4” behind on rain this year. That’s a good fraction of the 33” we get.
JOS, thanks for wondering where I am! MZ told me I was missed. I am spending so much time looking for ways to survive and am in so much pain that I spend at most an hour in front of the ‘puter. This isn’t the worst the arthur has been...there was that 8-week bed stay in 1994....
Storytelling Saturday tomorrow! Everybody got their stories ready? This is my first stop tomorrow, Rita willin’ an’ the crick don’t rise.
Posted by Mudge the Expendable on from The Dry Side 09/24 at 12:21 AMBTW...I got a “perfect” score on the test. I can also check yes on the eradication program statement, though.
Posted by Mudge on from Texas, blast it 09/24 at 12:23 AMWelcome back, Mudge.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/24 at 07:38 AMVery, very good to hear from you, Mr. Mudge.
I’m sorry to hear that you’ve been off battling troubles and debilities. We’ve missed your sparkling good humor and repeated squeals of delight! If there’s some way - any way, those of us who stop into this strange, wonderful place, can be of some help, please don’t hesitate to ask. We’re poor but capable folks… Hey, you never know.
We’ll look forward to hearing from you when you’re up to it…
Take care, young feller
- joePosted by joe on from Oregon 09/24 at 03:16 PM
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