There’s been excitement galore around the office today – a huge new shopping center opened up nearby and the parking lot is visible from our windows, high over a typical vista of mid-American stripmalls. We’d gotten used to seeing a giant empty lot, then a giant empty hole, then a giant empty store, and so on. This went on for almost 2 1/2 years, owing to some zoning hangup or other. Then it seemed that loading up the store and getting it stocked took forever – we got used to seeing a vast expanse of parking lot, with freshly painted…
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This is the infamous House O’ Big Inflatables. The people that live here apparently subscribe to the More is Better mentality when it comes to cheap plastic crap and tasteless seasonal decor. This is a tiny image of the giant bunny inflatable they had up after Valentines Day. It stayed up for about a month and a half; all the way through Lent everything. At Christmess, they had 11 (eleven) large inflatables. Last year, they had 10. The year before, they had 8 or 9. This is all on a normal sized front lawn. There’s very little lawn visible (or…
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A couple of major news organizations have picked up the “Iraqi prison rape” story – The Seattle Times and The Guardian (UK). And if the U.S. military has no jurisdiction over these freelance cowboys, you can be sure no one else in Iraq does. So I guess they can do anything they like. This is a prescription for further trouble. That’s actually a blog entry from my old hometown paper – bloggers are go! It’s a commentary on the item in the Guardian, which seems to be the first “major” running the story. One civilian contractor was accused of raping…
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One of the biographical panels from Maggie Moo’s Ice Cream in Sugar House, Salt Lake. It depicts Maggie driving off to seek fame and fortune, fabulously accesorized. Despite the cartnoonyness, the ice cream really was good there.
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It’s Catsmas at Get Fuzzy. I’m in a partying mood – all I need is a stupid hat (oh, wait…).
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David needs to see this site – I need to look at it in more depth after a little shut-eye: Roadtrip
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We bought a lot of books in Mesa Verde National Park, partly because there’s not much to do after nightfall, and partly because the ruins are so interesting that you feel compelled to learn as much as you can about them. It’s a strange park, Mesa Verde; it’s the only one in the National Park Service that’s organized around ruins rather than natural scenery. At first glance from your “hotel” (translation: motel) room at Farview Lodge there’s just a long expanse down the mesa toward the canyons, and on a clear day you can see Shiprock, 65 miles away. The…
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Statistics for the current poll: STATISTICS What do you think of gay marriage? All your drag bridesmaid are belong to us. 0 % (0 votes) It doesn’t affect me, but it’s kind of icky. 0 % (0 votes) Congratulations, where are you registered? 85 % (6 votes) It’s against God’s law and threatens my family. 0 % (0 votes) Who is this God person, anyway? 14 % (1 votes) Total votes 7 Thanks for your participation! I’ll leave it up for a while yet.
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This chonology probably couldn’t be more damning. And how strange that the phrase “rape rooms” is used repeatedly, yet it doesn’t seem to have entered the public consciousness – although it has entered the blogosphere. Maybe it’s entered the public subconsciousness (or unconsciousness, in the case of the fr33pers), and that’s all that’s needed. There couldn’t possibly be rape rooms in Iraq anymore (and of course there were before, right?) because we’ve been repeatedly told there aren’t. A fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba listed some of the wrongdoing: ‘Breaking chemical lights…
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Adam Felbers has a solution to our problem in Iraq: The latest revelations out of Abu Ghraib are so mind-bogglingly horrifying that we need to act now, and act hard. What’s notable about this is that if we have any intention of getting the hearts and minds of the Arab world while said organs are still in their hosts’ bodies, we’re going to have to use Bush administration tactics. We have to go into Commando Apology mode. Give it a neat-sounding mission name like “Operation Iron Contrition,” or “Operation Enduring Oops.” Excellent gambit! We could also drop thousands of personalized…