Music of the Day: Gregg Karukas, Looking Up

Breathless questions: Did you watch the Oscars on television the other night? What did you think of Ellen's performance? Was Al Gore really going to announce another presidential run when he got played off stage?

Answers: No, I did not watch the Oscars on television the other night. Ellen--who decided to resuscitate her dead career? Al Gore--any politician who shows up at the Oscar ceremony cannot be a serious candidate for anything other than being a nuclear-site inspector for the IAEA.

I have watched less and less of the annual mush-fest called Oscar night over the last few years--I guess you could say my interest in wholly self-centered people has waned to the point of non-existence. This is not to say that the program isn't important in the family; my lovely and intelligent wife and her youngest son, a sweet and talented young man, watch assiduously (although this year, thanks to the DVR, my wife is watching 24 hours after the fact) and they talk about who won what and why and didn't Nicole-What's-Her-Name look hot?

Sadly, the whole Oscar-thing has spawned a seemingly endless proliferation of award shows--for country music and hip-hop and day-time TeeVee and independent films and commercials and best underwater lighting schemes in an amusement park ride, and so on and so forth. Doesn't everyone now get an award for something?

As for Ellen's dead-as-a-door-nail career having been resuscitated by both day-time television and the apparent dearth of offensive male hosts available this year on Oscar night, surely this means that at some point in the not-too-distant future Michael Richards will be back on the TeeVee (after, of course, he completes his mandatory sensitivity sessions at the re-education camp he's been assigned to after last year's melt-down). That doesn't bode well for the future of television, but it makes me think that the origin of the recycling movement was in the entertainment industry, where moldy-oldies pop up regularly in subsequent sit-coms and, lately, in "reality" shows (e.g., Erik Estrada, et.al.).

Recycling empty beer cans makes a helluva lot of sense; recycling Ellen doesn't. When you recycle a beer can, you can get a fresh beer, but when you recycle old not-so-funny Ellen, you just get old not-so-funny Ellen again, this time in different footwear.

AJ

Music of the Day: Eddie Daniels & Gary Burton, Benny Rides Again

I pulled out my 40-pound Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary today after recalling a snippet of news I heard the other day, something that had to do with the Iranian government and nuclear weapons.

Here's what I discovered:

Deadline: n.; 1. Originally in a military prison, a line beyond which a prisoner could go only at the risk of being shot by a guard; 2. Any line the crossing of which entails penalty or is forbidden; 3. A time limit, as for a payment, news story, etc.

Obviously I need to throw my damned dictionary away. The word "deadline," as defined in number two, above, in my big ol' Webster's has been rendered meaningless. The weasels (definition: 1. Any of a world wide group of cunning, agile, flesh eating mammals of the genus Mustela; 2. A person likened to this animal, as in cunning or slyness.") at the United Nations have decided that ol' Webster's definition is no longer operative.

The mad hatters in Teheran, like the dictator they emulate (Herr Hitler), have bluffed and blustered and intimidated again those who wish to restrain them and have, again, stated that they won't meet any UN-weenie-established "deadlines" for giving up their nuke project. I've lost track of how many such "deadlines" have come and gone and how many times the UN-weenies have threatened "sanctions," which threats the nuke-mad-mullahs simply ignore while continuing to plod along towards the day when they can either attempt to obliterate Israel or pass along a weapon, or weapons, to their trained goons in Hezbollah or Hamas. Remember--the Iranians have publicly and openly stated their desire to wipe Israel off the map. They've said it; I think we should pay attention.

And the UN-weenies dither and dance and write position papers and pass along strongly-worded statements of opprobrium, which I'm sure provides great amusement to the mullahs (is this what they do during happy hour, sit around and read scathing notes from the UN and the IAEA and giggle?).

Here's what I don't understand: The Iranians are out-gunned, out-manned, mostly isolated, and at this stage apparently still shy of having achieved the capability of killing huge numbers of infidels and Jews in one fell swoop. In the late 1930's, Herr Hitler was in similar circumstances, too--but he successfully bluffed and blustered and intimidated those who thought the worst thing in the world was to confront a militaristic dictator, which of course only emboldened the dictator and made WWII more lengthy and more costly in terms of human lives lost. Will any leader, nation, or coalition of nations take action before the Iranians achieve the capability to become the "destroyer of worlds"? Unlike Robert Oppenheimer, who uttered those words from the Bhagavad-Gita after the first successful nuclear test at Trinity Site, I don't think the Iranians have any qualms about becoming the "destroyer of worlds." To the contrary, them seem to relish the notion. . . .

Whatever happens, I just hope nobody uses the word "deadline" again without consulting Webster and then actually taking action to once again give the word some real meaning. Otherwise I'm afraid the word will come to mean that line crossed by evil men to make a bunch of infidel people dead.

AJ

You must read this: http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/4884201.html

See Sites I Like, this page, right hand side of the page, click on Must Read.

Do it!

AJ

Music of the Day: Cyrus Chestnut, Soul Food

Last evening's snowfall looks nice this morning, but it seems to have disrupted my sleep pattern--or at least that is what I'm attributing unsettling mid-sleep thoughts (see below) to: perhaps it was nothing more than worrying about having to shovel three feet of snow off two thousand yards of driveway before heading off to the sweatshop.

On the other hand, maybe this kind of stuff is worth thinking about. . . .

My mid-sleep worry has to do with the now-famous seventy seven virgins that Islamic martyrs get after blowing themselves up in the act of killing kids on a school bus. Is it really seventy seven virgins? I've heard other figures, some as low as seventy virgins, which, in comparison, hardly seems worth the sacrifice. Let's go with the bigger number, seventy seven. That's the payoff, I take it, for blowing a hole in the side of a US Navy vessel or decimating a US Marine barracks or knocking down the World Trade Center or exploding an Israeli disco or offing a bunch of kids in a Russian school.

Today I'm going to try to put myself in the shoes of a guy who is thinking about blowing himself up, in the name of Allah of course, at a nearby middle school.

First question: Does a guy who is thinking about blowing himself up at a local middle school have shoes?

Second question: What's a middle school?

Okay, sorry, those are cheap shots.

Here are some other questions that arise: Why doesn't a guy who is thinking about blowing himself up at a local middle school instead think that it might be possible to go to medical school and become a doctor and help people instead of killing them?

Maybe the guy's school (Suicide Bomber's Academy: Our Motto--After Graduation, Life's A Blast!) was too busy teaching the art of bomb-making instead of, say, anatomy and physiology, and chemistry, and biology, and literature, so it never occurred to him that becoming a doctor was a possibility. That's too bad really, but perhaps that's the way it's supposed to be--I'm not sure I want to spend a lot of time around a doctor who attended the Suicide Bomber's Academy before heading off to medical school at the University of Yemen (does Yemen have a university?).

So, if becoming a doctor wasn't a possibility, maybe the guy thinking about blowing himself up at the local middle school could have considered becoming a rap musician specializing in jihad hip-hop. Now that sounds like a viable alternative to becoming a suicide bomber because if you become a successful jihad-hip-hopper you might be able to get a whole lot more than seventy seven virgins (or reasonable facsimiles thereof). Why limit yourself to seventy seven virgins? Plus, you get big cars, and scads of money, and get to go on awards shows and insult the people who buy your music and, if you're lucky, you get invited to be the entertainment at the Democratic national convention closing ball.

Bonus for us: No Fleetwood Mac tunes replaying on the radio for four years if they win. . . .

It seems to me that as a guy thinking about blowing himself up at the local middle school, I might be a little disappointed with only seventy seven virgins in the afterlife. I figure that after a couple of days, I might find myself asking the guy in charge (it has to be a guy in charge--I have a difficult time imagining the person in charge being a woman) for a few more virgins, having run through the first seventy seven fairly quickly. Even if I doled out the seventy seven virgins in a rational, thoughtful manner (not that suicide bombers are ever rational or thoughtful), de-flowering only one a day (which hardly seems like enough--just one virgin a day?!?!), I would run through my original allotment in a couple of months.

But the afterlife is a long freakin' time--like forever, baby--and I'm fairly convinced that having gotten used to a daily virgin, I'd be a little hacked off after a couple of months to discover that there weren't any more left in my virgin-storage-area and that the new jihad-suicide guys were getting all the virgin-deflowering action and I was relegated to sitting around watching re-runs of the Daniel Pearl beheading video for the rest of forever.

Here's another thought: Let's say I'm working my way through my virgins (the daily grind, if you will) and I've just finished off Number 26 (it's early, I've only been after-living for a few weeks, I'm tired, my back hurts, and I outta' my purple pills) when I hear a big ruckus coming from the used-virgin-area, where I keep the discarded, deflowered former virgins. I go in there and Numbers 1 through 25 are really upset; they've been talking (as they are wont to do), comparing notes and such, and the angst is palpable. They're not getting any attention from me, busy as I am with a new daily virgin, so the mood is bad, the vibrations are ugly, and the remainder of the afterlife is starting to look pretty grim. What started out as a happy virgin-deflowering-afterlife is beginning to turn into an eternal-hellish-endless-bitching afterlife. Not a good scenario. . . .

So, as a jihad recruiting tool, I think the seventy seven virgins thing is probably insufficient and if I'm thinking about strapping on my exploding belt (the color of the belt does NOT have to match your pants or shoes [what shoes?]), and thinking about heading over to the local middle school, I'm probably going to stop at Jihad Central and ask to revise the contract a bit more in my favor. Endless virgins, for instance, rather than the puny, seventy seven figure which, as noted above, seems rather paltry. The other thing I'm gonna' stipulate is the particular type of virgin at my disposal--no Calista-What's-Her-Name stick-girl virgins for me; I'd prefer my virgins with a little more. . .ah. . .heft than that. Not Rosie O'Donnell heft or Oprah heft, just something more substantial than she-disappeared-in-a-strong-afterlife-wind kind of heft.

Are there other afterlife enticements for suicide bombers that I don't know about other than the seventy seven virgins? Possibly, but the cats at Jihad Central aren't publicly talking about other emoluments for self-destruction.

What all this boils down to, I guess, is that seventy seven virgins just doesn't seem like a fair trade for my life, even if I did get the chance to blow up some infidel children as another weird form of compensation; I think I'd probably pass on the whole jihad-thing until the terms were a little more favorable.

And now I have to go outside and shovel that three feet of snow off the two thousand yard long driveway; that's an honest way to get the lower back hurting and it doesn't require any purple pills or exploding belts.

AJ

. . .have you said "I love you" to your family/wife/husband/kids lately?

. . .have you brushed the ol' dog this week?

. . .have you said a prayer for someone in need?

. . .have you been polite to the tele-marketer who called during dinner?

. . .have you said "thanks" to a young man or woman in a military uniform?

. . .have you recently read the preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America?

. . .have you called an old friend just to say hello and chat?

. . .have you checked out my favorite sites, such as Commentary, Mark Steyn, Christopher Hitchens, et.al.?

. . .have you gotten any exercise this week?

. . .have you had a good, cold beer this week?

. . .can you remember the last time you listened to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony?

. . .can you imagine why anyone would pay money to see the NBA All Star game?

. . .can you remember the last time you left a few bucks in the front seat of the spouse's car so that he/she could have it washed?

AJ

Music of the Day: Krosfyah, Pump Me Up