Category: Uncategorized

This doesn’t surprise me in the least:

The very outrageousness of “Rant” is supposedly part of its appeal. But Mr. Palahniuk has been walking a thin line lately. In this book and its unpalatable predecessor, “Haunted,” his outrages feel perfunctory, and his new tricks are old tricks, executed by a writer recycling his best gambits for less and less coherent reasons.

So “Rant” is a mash-up of earlier, better Palahniuk sucker punches, with elements of his “Fight Club” especially conspicuous this time. This book, like that one, has a violent, ritualistic secret society and a shocking identity switcheroo at its finale.

This cracked me up, after having spent a fair amount of time delving into Fight Club over the last two weeks. Never get excited about a writer who has early success with a novel or even a work of non-fiction that is largely self-referential. Palahniuk is following the same path previously trod by McInerney and Eggers, and to a certain lamentable extent, Camille Paglia.

The ability to write about yourself and your life is very, very different than the ability to write about your ideas. Switching to non-fiction for the time being has turned out to be a really productive move for me, as it’s enabled me to see how my fiction has been stuck in a bit of a thematic rut.

By the way, someone asked what Paglia book is worth reading. She has only written one book, really, Sexual Personae. And it is very worth reading; after reading it for the second time, it definitely gave me some ideas that found their way into Wrath. The various collections of essays and selections of her favorite poems are basically fluff that you can either read if it amuses you or ignore without missing anything.

Oh, sorry, I guess it was illegal aliens again:

Six men from New Jersey have been arrested in an alleged terror plot against soldiers at Fort Dix, according to law enforcement sources.

Investigators said the men planned to use automatic rifles to enter Fort Dix and kill as many soldiers as they could at the New Jersey military base. Fort Dix was just one of several military and security locations allegedly scouted by this group, authorities said.

The suspects, identified as Dritan Duka, Eljvir Duka, Shain Duka, Mohamad Shnewer, Derdar Tatar and Agron Abdullahu, have been charged with conspiring to kill U.S. government employees. Separately, the Duka brothers have been charged with being illegal aliens in possession of firearms.

The Dukas, believed to be Islamic radicals, are in the United States illegally, while Shnewer is a U.S. citizen born in Jordan, according to the Justice Department.

Good thing we’ve got all those soldiers in Iraq, so this sort of thing can’t happen here. You know, they were probably just angry about Congress holding up the President’s immigration reform plan, I’m sure they never would have planned something like this if we’d only made them citizens….

As Rudy Giuliani is already in the process of learning, the Republican base is not going to turn out for anyone who is pro-abortion, even if they loudly declaim their personal hate, hate, hate for the slaughter of unborn children:

Under abortion: He [Thompson] checked the box for: “Abortions should be legal in all circumstances as long as the procedure is completed within the first trimester of the pregnancy.” He did, however, support a number of restrictions on abortion: requiring parental notification, allowing states to impose waiting periods, and eliminating all federal funding of abortion. Lastly, he said Congress should leave legislation on abortion to the states.

No doubt Thompson will pull a Kerry-Romney double-reverse gainer should he decide to throw his hat in the ring. I wouldn’t be surprised if he stays out, though. Most of the “enthusiasm” for him isn’t genuine, it’s merely the predicted dissatisfaction with the party’s chosen frontrunners.

If a liberal Massachusetts governor wearing a poorly-fitting Ronald Reagan mask is the most convincing thing on offer, no wonder the Republican base has been desperately casting about for something better. But Thompson is simply more of the same, only uglier.

As for the notion of him as some sort of Hillary-killer, that’s simply laughable. It’s as obviously baseless as the idea that Texans, Iowans and Montanans would be impressed by the Savior of New York City. Due to his unique stance that combines anti-war and anti-illegal alien positions, Ron Paul is the only Republican candidate who has even a snowball’s chance of beating the Lizard Queen, his relative anonymity notwithstanding.

“We have the duty to protect the life of an unborn child.”
– Ronald Reagan

UPDATE: Rudy should be dropping out any day now. “Federal tax returns made public by the former New York mayor show that he and his then-wife, Donna Hanover, made personal donations to national, state and city chapters of Planned Parenthood totaling $900 in 1993, 1994, 1998 and 1999.”

He can try to blame it on his ex-wife, but he’s toast anyhow. Good riddance.

Impeach President Bush. Now.

President Bush signed an agreement creating a “permanent body” that commits the U.S. to “deeper transatlantic economic integration,” without ratification by the Senate as a treaty or passage by Congress as a law.

The “Transatlantic Economic Integration” between the U.S. and the European Union was signed April 30 at the White House by Bush, German Chancellor Angela Merkel – the current president of the European Council – and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso.

I knew Bush was a lying, treasonous weasel from the moment I heard the words “compassionate conservative”. But I had no idea that he’d surpass Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter as one of America’s worst presidents. He already ranks down there with Lincoln and FDR in my book. In the eighteen months preceding his passing the baton to Hillary, he may yet reach the utter depths of Woodrow Wilson.

James Lileks’ column gets canned by the Star Tribune:

As it happens, they’ve killed my column, and assigned me to write straight local news stories….I don’t want to write about the Internet. I want to write on the Internet. I’d rather develop content than report about content developers. It’s that simple, and it’s also a matter of recognizing my failings: I am not Biff Deadline, Ace Reporter. I can do long stories with lots of color, all aslosh with subjective opinions, but writing straight news – clearly, simply, briskly – is a skill I lack, and I take off my hat to those who’ve mastered that discipline.

My column will end a week from this Friday.

The Strib’s reader’s representative can be contacted here. It’s not likely to make any difference, you understand, but at least it will annoy them.

I grew up reading the Star Tribune, mostly by default. The only thing I really remember about it was the way it would make the same wildly errant predictions about the next year’s tax revenues based on tax increases or tax cuts. Every single year… they never figured out that a static revenue model doesn’t work because people adjust their economic activity depending upon the price of things. Nothing like possessing an economic understanding that’s only 200+ years out of date.

I’ve never really been a Lileks fan, but over the last 20 years, he, Sid Hartman and Steve Aschenburner have been the only writers who contributed anything worthy of note there. Readers won’t miss CJ or Kersten, but if there was any literary justice in this world, Nick Coleman wouldn’t just be demoted to metro reporter, he’d be taken outside, stripped, whipped, covered with asphalt and utilized as a human speed bump on Washington Avenue for his countless crimes against Minneapolis newspaper readers.

The Red Star has always been a paper run by clueless individuals stumbling blindly about. I contacted them back in 1991 about writing an electronic game review column, but they were quite confident that no one was interested in reading about games. So I went to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, who immediately decided to publish the column. It ran for years and was nationally syndicated, first by Chronicle Features and then by Universal Press Syndicate. To put this in perspective, you can probably count the number of Star Tribune writers who have ever been syndicated on the fingers of one hand.

Good luck, Mr. Lileks. Here’s hoping you find a different situation more suitable to your talents soon.

Speaking of newspapers, this history of the Quint State Claxon-Ledger is more than a little amusing. And the dedication is certainly fitting.

The backpack just spontaneously decided that it didn’t want to be there anymore:

A backpack exploded in a parking garage attached to a Las Vegas hotel early Monday, killing a man who had picked it up and injuring another person, authorities said. The man had removed the backpack from atop his car when it exploded shortly after 4 a.m. on the second floor of a parking behind the Luxor hotel-casino, said Officer Bill Cassell, a police spokesman….

The Luxor is a pyramid-shaped hotel at the south end of the Las Vegas Strip.

It’s a good thing we’re fighting the terrorists in Iraq, so we don’t have to fight them here. Because once the decision is made to bring the game to our home field – a decision that doesn’t depend on what’s happening in Iraq – it’s going to be uglier than most people now imagine.

I rather expect Me So will go from denying up and down that she was calling for internment in that silly little book to claiming that she was the first to see the need for it.

It’s so unfair that men won’t clean to a woman’s standard:

We’ve had this fight about a dozen times in the three years we’ve been together. Sometimes the fight ends because I just get sick of talking about it, sometimes he pushes hard to do a little extra and I feel better. Once, we chocked it up to having “different levels of cleanliness.” Sure we do but that shouldn’t mean one of us gets stuck doing most of the work.

Right now, it’s ticking me off because I spend almost an entire day of my weekend doing stuff for the house. (Note: We have two completely separate days off from each other). I complained last week and this weekend he actually took out the recycling and trash but that was ALL.

IF YOU WANT IT DONE TO YOUR SPECIFICATIONS, DO IT YOURSELF. This doesn’t just apply to housework, but nearly everything in life. The sooner you accept this, the happier and more successful you will be.

But regarding a clean house or whatever, I suspect that if women were more willing to meet men halfway on what they want, men might be a lot more open to meeting women halfway on their desires. Instead of nagging the guy every time he doesn’t do something you want, or do it the way you want it, why not try using positive reinforcement temporally tied to the task at hand?

Of course, very few women in a relationship are ever going to sign up for any sort of quid pro quo, because then they might actually be accountable for performing once they get what they want. I’ve never understand why women’s desires are supposed to be, at a minimum, regarded seriously at all times, (and ideally catered to), while men are supposed to be grateful if a woman makes the occasional half-hearted gesture in their direction every so often.

Anyhow, few women understand the incredible male capacity for ignoring negative reinforcement. The more she yaps, the less he’ll listen. Turning the volume up to eleven isn’t going to accomplish anything either, unless the goal is to drive him away. I’ve seen it happen to couples again and again, and no one ever seems to learn anything.

Seriously, what are women thinking? I know he really likes to have sex with me hanging on the chandelier…. and I really want the fence painted… I know! I’ll make indirect and passive-aggressive comments about how I wish the fence wasn’t peeling… and if that doesn’t work then I’ll act like a complete bitch and wait for him to ask me why! Surely then he’ll give me what I want!

No wonder so many women are socialists. Forget capitalism, they can’t even figure out the basic principles of barter.

Pajamas Media poll from the week of the Republican debate:

TOTAL VOTES: 3012

1308 43.4% Fred Thompson
_640 21.2% Ron Paul
_317 10.5% Rudy Giuliani

And the weekly poll following the debate:

TOTAL VOTES: 3319

1160 35.0% Fred Thompson
1021 34.8% Ron Paul
_277 _8.3% Rudy Giuliani

These polls also underline the total lack of appeal Giuliani possesses for the most active part of the Republican base.

Pajamas Media is now claiming that there was “considerable cheating” by Ron Paul supporters, which is a very odd claim if one notes that the number of overall number of votes for all candidates is not only very close to that of the previous week but is barely more than half the number of votes from the first week of April.

Nor does Pajamas Media bother to explain how Ron Paul’s diabolically clever supporters managed to magically whisk away 90 percent of Rudy Giuliani’s support in reducing his votes from 2500 votes in the early Pajama polls to only 277 last week.

Sure, it’s possible that everything is the result of libertarian gremlins ruining the highly sensitive science of an Internet poll. Or maybe, the real story being revealed by the poll is that the sort of Republicans who pay attention to the election eighteen months out really aren’t all that interested in selecting a nasty, lisping, liberal New Yorker as their standard bearer.

What a stunning surprise that would be!

I am informed that contra my last week’s post, it’s no longer necessary to order The Wrath of Angels directly from K&B Booksellers:

The second print run is here and we shipped out all the backordered copies early [Saturday] afternoon. More to the point, we’ve made some upgrades to our Amazon dealer account, and we now have THE POWER TO CREATE *NEW* AMAZON LISTINGS!

Like this one:

So if you’ve got anybody in the queue who’s just dying to write as rave review of Wrath of Angels, this is the time and place to get ’em into action.

I haven’t heard from too many of you about whether you like the book or not, so I’ll be interested in knowing what you think about it. I’m not looking for cheerleading, I already know it’s no literary masterpiece, but even when a reader dislikes a book, it’s good to know why. And if you aren’t inclined to pay for it or aren’t sure you want to risk $12.95 sight unseen, there’s always the free ebook which you can download here.

Speaking of books, after a few week’s distraction, TIA is humming along again. It’s about one-quarter complete and I should be sending out another chapter for comment soon to another mixed pair of volunteers.

John Dvorak points out a way in which corporate lawyers’ mindless actions are often completely counterproductive:

Once something goes out on the Net, it gets copied and posted elsewhere. Even if the original is taken down, other versions appear immediately.

The legal profession has not adjusted to this new phenomenon, and as long as they are being paid by the billable hour, they figure the PR folks (also paid by the billable hour) can fix any problem.
The thinking seems to be a one-dimensional “we did our jobs,” CYA approach. Attorneys will claim that they were compelled to act to protect the client.

But if ruining a client’s image and reputation, and often turning it into a laughingstock is done in the name of “protecting,” then perhaps the legal profession should reconsider whether it’s being counterproductive.

I despise lawyers, with one or two exceptions possibly the most useless and treacherous creatures on the planet besides politicians. (It’s no accident that most politicans are lawyers.) What’s particularly annoying about them is how incredibly myopic most of them are; they blithely steam ahead in the confidence that a few years of law school indoctrination is a magic shield insulating them from having any need to pay attention to the real world.

They never seem to stop and think through the logic of what they constantly assert their sacred law, being mutable and wholly dependent upon whatever incantation is produced by the nearest priest-judge, must therefore be. Namely, that it is nothing but a protean fiction, a constantly morphing collective hallucination in which everyone feigns to believe.