...more recent posts
heres a bit of mindless clinton bashing or shrub fluffing, depending on your point of view, from us news.
"There must be some kind of high to working for the first family, because it sure ain't the money. White House salary figures obtained by Washington Whispers show that for most posts–except the very top–annual pay is equal to or less than former President Clinton's rate of three years ago. In fact, President Bush's $23 million payroll is $84,000 less annually than Clinton's in June 1998, although he's employing about the same number of staffers. And that's despite hiking the top rate from $125,000 to $140,000 for close aides including Chief of Staff Andrew Card, spokesman Ari Fleisher, aides Karen Hughes and Karl Rove, legal chief Alberto Gonzales, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, lobbyist Nick Calio, economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey, and faith-based guru John DiIulio. Office heads paid more by Clinton than Bush: personal secretary, communications, political affairs, and even some on the first lady's staff, including Laura Bush's press secretary and chief of staff. Lowest paid: $25,000 for mail openers. New to Bush: six ethics advisers making an average of $84,900 each."
so essentially, if bush hired one more ethics adviser, and god knows he can use them, then the white house payroll would be exactly the same. i would hardly call that a notable difference. heres a complete list of salaries for the white house staff. or you could look at it this way, bush pays his executives more and his peons less, just like every other CEO.
"When soft
rock hit in the early 1970's, I think people just thought the [Boomer]
generation was taking a nap," he said. "In reality, we were going to sleep.
We never woke up again."
Just waiting on some kids to wake up--I don't know who it is I'm stepping over to get to my computer--so they can assist in the loading of a U-Haul which will be loaded with "stuff" to take to a storage shed so M's workers can finish the back two rooms of her house. It's funny how there doesn't seem to be as many kids sleeping over this weekend. Isn't that funny? I've popped a handful of Ibuprofen and although I don't see "handful" in the prescribed dosage I'm sure like so many things it is an area open to interpretation.
Surf Shack
the cia headquarters in langley va is now called The George Bush Center for Intelligence.
song of the common loon
song of a humpback whale
Broadcast TV is all but hopeless. I figured Muslims in Appalachia had to be the most fascinating subject around, but it turned out to be utterly boring. It was on Ch25, the public service channel that shows lots of ethnic programming, along with PBS stuff that didn’t make the cut at Ch13. They do have one good show: Classic Arts Showcase. It’s a clip show, but without the frenzied presentation we’re used to. There’s no host, just a stately sequence of videos, with long dissolves between them, and titles superimposed at intro and exit. Like MTV, but very slow. Everything is public domain or donated. Mostly it’s classical music, but a wide range of performances from different times, including a lot of historically notable footage. It’s interesting to see how the conventions of performance and presentation have changed over the course of the last century. They also have dance, bits from theater and movies, and once in a while they come up with some weird gem, like an obscure quasi-futurist animation, a vaudeville routine, or an architecture documentary. Beats “reality” programming, and it’s easy to ignore while you’re trying to write a post.
i guess this isnt a new story but as a result of the cloning decision in congress yesterday it resurfaced as an aside. i remember a raelians story from last year but i didnt remember the cloning angle.
have to say i am in joying my afternoons drinking rum at the bar des palmistes, watching the people, the old colonial buildings, this was once a hotel, one of the only hotels, where many an explorer stayed, now its bar, cyber cafe, video rental etc (staying with the times??)....
MB was asking about the medieval Cathars, relative to a wine label she's working on. Conveniently, along comes the New Yorker with a review of several books about them. They inhabited the Languedoc, a rich and independent area of southern France, stretching into northern Italy and Spain. They considered themselves Christians, but their dualism (similar to neo-platonic Gnosticism) marked them as heretics in the eyes of the Catholic Church, and they were mostly wiped out in intra-European crusades during the 13th century. The famous line, "kill them all; god will recognize his own" comes from one of these massacres. As practitioners of an "alternative lifestyle", the Cathars have been adopted as spiritual ancestors by mystics, French nativists, vegetarians, conspiracy theorists, and would-be heretics of all sorts. Not much is really know about them, beyond what we are told by their enemies, so it's been easy for latecomers to speculate, casting them in whatever light is convenient. Languedoc still produces fine wine, and it appears that heresy has enough cachet in some circles to provide a marketing rubric. There certainly seems to be good tourist trade built on the legends. As far as images go, this page from Google shows that, beyond their cross (a Greek cross encircled) the most persistent image is of a ruined castle on a crag, a romantic evocation of their promise and persecution, not to mention a great photo-op before the vineyard tour. Keep digging if you want to get into the really nutty stuff. This guy may know the secrets, but he wants $9.99 first. Disinfo has a treatment of the source I'm familiar with. This fairly levelheaded capsule comes from an interesting aristocratic site, which also contains a good collection of heraldic crosses. These may be of interest to Bill regarding the "surfer's cross" (see #86 & 102 ). But if you want to know what they did with the Ark of the Covenant (or was that the Holy Grail?), I'll never tell!
Tired of hearing the late conservative media honcho Katharine Graham described as a cross between Mother Teresa and Rosa Luxembourg? Read CounterPunch's anti-eulogy.
greetings from french guiana, this is a truely grand place, in the capital now (cayenne), just left the museč departmental which was full of stuffed animal's inc a giant caimen that washed a shore one day near by, the place was layed out beautiful and you get a real outback feel, yesterday when the plane pulled off the caribean and went inland a 100 miles my jaw allmost dropped, nothing but jungle and rivers cutting throught it--AWESOME--hope my luggage shows up (it was found in haiti) and my tour guide (he has my interior flights lodgeing info...)
Hey Frank, what's up? I've been missing you around here.
its all most 20 years since my first travels abroad, sitting here sweating pro fusely, i never sweat this much 20 years ago, no did i post to my friends--i dont consider my self adventerous, i dont eat sea urchins, but now 20 years later i,m in my 50th country/territory, its a great caribean night here, i really like this country, cool blended unspoofed at least where i stay, the rum gave me good thoughts but this keyboard gives me trouble so i must quit, onward into adventurne i go, i` will get some DEET and go to the jungle just my tee shirt and my malaria pills::::pack light i said in the early daze (this is the wierdest keyboard i have ever seen-the french must all ways be different/cult)
greetings from Guadeloupe-my luggage is lost--so am i--off to French Guiana w/o anything--hope it arrives of i may be going to the jungle not well prepared
The day you've been waiting for is here: blogathon starts at 3:00 pm (noon pacific time.)
nbc said 40% of all tech jobs were lost this year.
goodbye everybody:>)
take care
love you
"I'm a white boy, but I can be bad too."
On Boogie on
"A DJ who was known as Mr. Mark on my college radio station recently passed away. He introduced me
to the art of freeform radio through his interesting selection of wacky music interspersed with bizzarre,
sarcastic, made-up stories that intermix subtle references to the Lehigh Valley with political satire and
general making-fun-of life." WMUH - Muhlenberg College's radio station is paying tribute. Go to here
to find the link to the internet feed."
"As close to verbatim as I can remember a Mr. Mark story (listened to so many times that it plays nearly
automatically in my head)":
On last week's show we showed you kids how to call up a demon for show-and-tell. This week, we're
going to teach you how to make a pumpkin-headed scarecrow wake up and come alive. Most of you
already have a large collection of pumpkin-headed scarecrows which you've stolen throughout the autumn.
Pick your favorite and lay him out on your examination table. At this point you'll have to wait for a bolt of
lightning to course through your mad-genius equipment. Let's check today's weather -- clear and sunny,
what a bad break. Plan B is to clip on a set of jumper cables, one to the pumpkin-head, and the other to
your own earlobe. When you step on the gas, your mind will go into the scarecrow's body, which is the
next best thing. Now, run amok, and terrorize your neighborhood. Remember to take your pumpkin head
off and throw it at people for a quick thrill. And remember to avoid fire, the living scarecrow's deadly
enemy. Listen to your local fire chief when he says: Attention arsonists. Keeping you people from burning
your own homes down out of sheer carelessness is like trying to stop the tides. They're cutting our budget
again, and you oily-rag-saving, cigarette-tossing barbeque chefs and trash-burners are breeding like
rabbits. Soon we'll be outnumbered, and the united planet of earth will go up like an origami paperweight.
---------------------------------
"OK, just one more. I had to go back to the tapes for this one (thanks, Bill) and transcribe. But realize also
that reading it and listening to Mr. Mark read it are two different things altogether."
---------------------------------
Hello, folks. I’m Mr. Mark, with a wintertime riddle: how many giant-sized cyclops vultures could hatch out
of a forty-foot egg, in your opinion. The answer can be found through a close examination of our nation’s
freeway system. Socrates observed more than two thousand years ago that snipers may kill passing
motorists in order to get their unborn babies through a crude cesarean section. But the motorist may then
behead the sniper and write REDRUM in blood all over the turnpike, making the roadway slippery, and
causing a 13-vehicle pileup at rush hour.
On the other hand, when a wealthy rock star choked on a hamburger in Philadelphia yesterday, a team of
medical experts arrived to take him, via helicopter, around the world on a sightseeing trip to take his mind
off it. Sure enough, somewhere over the Cayman Islands, the piece of burger in his throat dislodged, but he
died anyway of a broken heart when the engine died and they fell into a munitions factory.
I’m Mr. Mark, with a wintertime riddle: what do you get when you sneak into a discount drugstore, after
hours, dressed as a priest, and try to buy a prescription oriental slave girl over the counter without legal
I.D.?
If you know the answer, you could win a major Allentown dairy, lock stock and barrel. Or a dog food
cannery – the whole business, including all debts and liabilities. Listen and win.
* * *
Hey folks.
This is Mr. Mark with a public service announcement from the Department of Motor Vehicles in
Harrisburg. Once upon a time, there was a gun-packin’ maniac who had a crazy grudge against mooses.
Now this particular maniac had never seen automobiles before, because he stayed indoors, and didn’t have
a TV set. So when he saw a car for the first time, he thought it was a square blue moose and shot at it,
whereupon the gas tank exploded and knocked the maniac up into the sky, through the radiation belt, and
back down again.
Well, the radiation affected him, and after he landed he became a criminal genius and organized a gang of
juvenile delinquents. With hi-tech weaponry and computers, they sought the arrest and execution of all
mooses on earth. The FBI ambushed these crazy extremists after they blew up a plaster of Bullwinkle in a
miniature golf course, and placed them in suspended animation until a future age when there’d be enough
jail space to sentence them.
Well, when the maniac thawed out ten centuries later, he found intelligent grasshoppers had taken over the
world, and they sentenced him to go back in time to the twentieth century, as an Allentown dog food
executive for twenty years with no hope of parole. But when he arrived, the scent of moose meat in the
slaughterhouse sent him off on another one of his spells, and he killed three fourths of the stockholders,
after which the value of the shares skyrocketed, and the company gave him a bonus, and a percentage of
the gross.
Little did the maniac know that all the while a trap was being laid for him by a vengeful moose, who had
human hands grafted onto his front legs. The killer moose caught him in the booth of an adult bookstore,
and plugged all the holes to adjacent booths, and the maniac died of loneliness, and lack of air.
This has been a public service announcement from the State Department, and your local division of police
informants.
And there’s no factory.
No "Who Cares" Yet : GWB's own words
fulify your website. it says it makes pages ugly but nothing could ruin the elegant layout of df.