All I want is the truth. If reality is "we goofed big-time folks, sorry", then I want to know that at roughly the same time the President does. Don't give me the voodoo-hoodoo dance and whitewash.

"Saddam himself was a weapon of mass destruction" and "The mobile labs are evidence that all the pre-war claims were true" or "Uday's dog ate the anthrax" are unacceptable. But the straight dope I will take whether I'm proud of it or not. Moreover, I cannot imagine what would make me conclude that the whole effort was anything less than a gift to humanity.

Survival Is A Harsh Teacher...

1. "Americans need to face the truth about themselves, no matter how pleasant it is." – Jeane Kirkpatrick

2. "Our enemies must be taught it is wrong and very dangerous to blow up three thousand American civilians in the streets of our cities." – Victor Davis Hanson

3. "Guys like you give me the blues Duck." – Joel Aguanno

4. "John Lennon was a dear man, even though he could be very difficult to please. He had a blithe expectation of immediate and unfailing technical excellence." – George Martin

5. "Survival is a harsh teacher, but not as harsh as some." – Ambassador Duck Nelson

Amber Fried

Do all women at some early adult age make it their business to pose without clothes as a matter of course? Does every woman want to be sure that her face will adorn at least a minimum quantity of salacious imagery when her fifteen minutes of fame rolls around?

Am I crazy? Or is Amber Fry just one more in a long series of once anonymous women who happen to suddenly stumble upon a momentary burst of celebrity only to discover that their new found notoriety mainly serves to tie them to a photographic record of past indiscretions?

Existential Poetry Of The Pentagon...

Pentagon Press Corp Reporter: General Schoomaker said the army needs to be bigger. He said, "I think we need more people. It's that simple." Is he right? Wrong? What's your reaction?

Secretary Rumsfeld: I don't think he said what you just said he said.

Reporter: Yes sir, he did.

Second Reporter: Yes, sir, he did.

Third Reporter: Yeah.

Rumsfeld: (Laughs)

First Reporter: He said, "I think we need more people; it's that simple."

Rumsfeld: Well, he specifically told me that quote doesn't represent his complete statement. I think he's going to be a terrific chief-of-staff.

I can tell you a few plain truths germane to calculating the proper size of the Federal government: One, it makes no sense for the states or businesses or individuals to defend the nation from jealous fanatical psychopathic religious kooks retail! That's for the Federal government. Two, it seems plain enough that only a central government of a major nation comes close to commanding the capital accumulation facilities necessary to sponsor space exploration. Three, no one but the Federal government can pull-off the construction of a network of interstate super-highways. This list goes on; it is long, but not endless...

There are many initiatives for which a central government is the provider/sponsor/procurer of choice; and an infinite number for which it is not! Most such judgments are black and white. The national discourse only needs to debate the big expenditures that fall into the gray area, like universal health insurance and tobacco farming subsidies for example.

But once those decisions are made, we must ask: "What would each expenditure category cost if it were obtained by the next most efficient alternative method?" The sum of all the next best methods had better be more than what the Federal government costs!

If those next best methods add up to less than our Federal budget in total, there is no further debate excusable. Either roll back taxes (and expenditures) into the realm of sanity, or dust off the firing squads and line-up the Congress straightaway!

But we must NEVER, EVER accept that taxes are in and of themselves "just too high" without pegging that judgment to the underlying economics. If we do, the only objective basis for suppressing the government budget will be: "At what point will one more dollar of taxation kill the whole economy and the nation along with it?"

The Luxury Of Candor...

1. "When you're rich and arrogant enough, you can buy the luxury of candor." – Prince Bandar, Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States

2. "When the institutions of religion and government are one, with the power to interpret and enforce God's law, then horrible abuses of power are perpetrated in God's name." – Dinesh D'Souza

3. "Yoko is the antidote to a suburban mentality, if ever there was one!" – George Martin

4. "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." – Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld

5. "The purpose of your life may be simply to serve warning to others." -- Anonymous

Eminem-Boom-Bam!

Could "Eminem" be a misspelled anagram for "I, Me, Mine"? That was my first thought.

Right now I'm listening to an Eminem CD that I bought to hear for myself what all the hoopla's about. I'm sorry to report it's boring.

"Bam bam, Bam bam, Bam bam" is this song. The song before: "Boom Boom Bam, Boom Boom Bam, Boom Boom Bam." And now it's "Boom Boom Snap, Boom Boom Snap, Boom Boom Snap" – only a thin variation on "Boom Boom Bam." The opener, "White America", went "Ba Boom Bang Boom Bang, Ba Boom Bang Boom Bang," very etc.

Tangled, Wrangled & All Star Spangled...

1. "I'd rather a guy tell me my dress makes my butt look big than to be called a liberal." -- A Lady From Texas

2. "Pecunia non olet: Money has no smell." – Vladimir Lenin

3. "Hillary Clinton is a wonderful role model for women like us." – Mrs. Carmela Soprano (to her mobster-wives luncheon clutch).

4. "The 1968 assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy was the single most influential, history impacting event to occur in our Yuppie, baby-boomer lifetimes until the 9/11 al Qaeda attack on New York and Washington." – Ambassador Duck Nelson, V.I.P.

More Bullshit Excuses (Part III)...

1. It's above my paid grade.
2. I don't think in black and white.
3. This is normal behavior for an extremist.
4. It was within an acceptable margin of error.

5. Psychics lie to me.
6. Instinct.
7. You're a perfectionist.
8. I'm a perfectionist.

9. Lack of road rage.
10. I thought you were a psycho.
11. Oprah!
12. You don't get it.

13. Rap music.
14. It was a cry for help.
15. You're prejudiced against people who screw up.
16. The line between right and wrong is very thin.

17. I thought you wanted me to.
18. Backward masking.
19. Because I love you.
20. Everyone's entitled to one more mistake.

Best Of All!

Mrs. Martha West of Weston High School, Weston, CT taught my junior year high school English class 1970/71. Good ol' Mrs. West said "persuasive writing comes naturally to you", and she encouraged me (actually she hammered at me) to explore it. I remember writing a litany of essays for her in which I argued the case for any position on anything you could imagine; the more seemingly ludicrous the thesis the better. My favorites were "Why Murder Should Be Legal", "We Should All Become Heroin Addicts", "Abbie Hoffman For President!" and "The War In Vietnam Is Essential".

Bloody Stupid Time-Wasting Rigmarole!

George Martin: You hornplayers, please, hit a C sharp there, not an E.

John Lennon: You're giving them the wrong notes, George!

Martin: No I'm not, John; I'm really not.

Lennon: I just heard you say play C sharp; that's not the key we're in.

Martin: Horns play a different note from your note. When the baritone sax plays a C sharp it's really the same thing as your playing an E on the guitar.

Lennon: But that's bloody stupid!

Martin: It's just a fact of life, John.

Lennon: Time-wasting rigmarole is what it is.

We wrote a rap song in the Eighties called "The Third World Anthem" -- meticulously crafted as the most offensive, disturbing, censor-provoking quasi-musical calamity imaginable. We planned to send it to Tipper Gore during her lyric gentrification and parental warning sticker crusade. She was making big headlines putting her ugly stickers (a.k.a. "bulls-eyes") on CDs containing "the impure thoughts".

We even wrote Tipper a letter explaining how contemptible our song was; and how we hoped she would hate it, get all offended, indignant, and make a real big stink! A stink loud enough to launch two ignominious songwriting careers in infamy!

Your Only Last Best Hope...

1. "We need to be really focused, really serious, and just a little bit crazy." – Thomas L. Friedman

2. "We need to be seriously focused and whack-straight out of our festering gourds!" – Ambassador Duck Nelson, V.I.P.

3. "America is the greatest, freest, and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. The United States of America, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the world's last best and only hope." – Dinesh D'Souza

4. "Staying awake while genius sorts itself out can be a major challenge." – George Martin

Big Chain Records

Are there any Ludacris fans out there who can point to something worthwhile on his "Disturbing The Peace" CD? I bought it to get a firsthand taste of the reputed "brain poison", but for the most part it is even more dull than the Eminem recording I got for the same purpose. In fact, it's hard to keep my mind on the lyrics long enough to make heads or tails of anything.

One track does crack me up though; "Big Chain Records", about a record label that pays its artists in "big-ass gold chains" rather than cash-on-the-barrelhead.

Most Existential Poetry I Know...

1. "North Vietnam's misfortune was winning the war against the U.S.A. If it had lost, it wouldn't be an impoverished country today; America would have rebuilt and modernized it." – Dinesh D'Souza

2. "The only songs I truly wrote were ‘Help!' and ‘Strawberry Fields'." – John Lennon

3. "My office used to be on the 104th floor of 1 World Trade Center (the "North Tower"). On 9/11, when the first plane hit, most of the people working on that floor were immediately incinerated – except, of course, for those who got to jump out the window ten minutes later." -- Duck

Basic Survival Tactics

Never put out money to a prospective employer for training, work materials, or out-of-town travel (for more than a reimbursement cycle -- usually two weeks), unless you are also a partner or substantial shareholder.

There are a few legitimate businesses with policies requiring new employees to buy portable computers, i.e., the big public accounting firms. But when a prospective employer wants money for training materials and the like, you know they will be shysters, so you don't and won't want to work there. Around the corner there will only be more horrifying and humiliating nightmares to be suffered.

Chappaquiddick Did It...

1. "Beginning sometime in the 1970s, Ted Kennedy became one of the most consistently wrong voices I still to this day find myself burdened to endure too frequently -- maybe he whacked his head on the dashboard going off that bridge with Mary Joe." – Duck

2. "I told The Beatles: ‘Think symphonically; think of themes you can bring back in different keys; think of counter-point; think of putting one song against another song so that each gives something extra to the other – there are all sorts of things you can do.' But John would have none of it." – George Martin

Non-Global Hyperbolic Static Spacetimes:

In a static, non-global-hyperbolic spacetime, a parametric scalar field dynamic can be defined. Doing so requires viewing the spatial derivative part of a wave operator as positive and self-adjointing. However, this leaves the possibility that nonequivalent prescriptions of a completely different nature might yield other definitions for a rotational scalar field. But if the dynamic agrees locally with the wave equation, and if it admits a suitable body of conserved energy, then it must correspond to the refined dynamic. Hence this is the only consistent way to define scalar field dynamics in any static, non-globally-hyperbolic spacetime.

Existential Poetry Of The Pentagram...

1. "By the time Revolver came along we were into an era of trying things out like mad in the studio, an era of almost continuous technological experimentation. This went so far that on one occasion the engineer, Geoff Emerick, put a Neumann microphone in a bowl of water to see what it would sound like when The Beatles sang into the bowl. Needless to say he only ruined an expensive mike and nearly got himself fired for it!" – George Martin

2. "Islamic thinkers cannot be counted in the ranks of the politically correct." – Dinesh D'Souza

It's our ability to take responsibility for ourselves, and to compromise, that make Western culture the most successful.

It's hard to imagine that some cannot say "My idea didn't work, so I'll try it differently next time" or "I'll call your garbage 'art', if you'll stop calling my music 'noise'," because those are traits we nearly take for granted. Yet many cultures condition their members from birth to forbid one or the other, or both! They rationalize that honor, God, tradition, manliness or some misguided loyalty to who-knows-what prohibits these critical tools for managing social, political, economic and scientific dynamics.

Foxy Legs & Troglodytes...

1. "Fox News ain't called The FOX News Channel for nothing! Hands down, Fox has the best all around presentation of feminine legs on television, bar none. Strange aesthetic with the lip-gloss however, I don't get the point of that. But why be distracted by glossy lips when you can eyeball a pair of alluring laptop-computer-cover framed (book-ended) gams in the morning!" – Duck

2. "The Beatles are primitive…having the same function as the war dances of savage and backward people…phoney…a ritual pep pill, a cheap, plastic, candyfloss substitute for culture." – Ted Willis, Member of Parliament, 1964

Ning Nong Necessaries...

Doppelganger: A ghostly double of a living person, especially one that haunts its fleshly counterpart.

Jingoism: Extreme nationalism characterized especially by a belligerent foreign policy; chauvinistic patriotism.

Mercurial: Quick and changeable in temperament, volatile.

Ostentatious Antimaterialism: Why God sent Mother Teresa to hell.

Physiognomy: Discovering temperament, character, or other qualities from outward appearances, especially facial features.

Post Traumatic Slavery Syndrome: A deluded rationalization for personal failure; a ticket punch to The Loser's Lounge.

Schadenfreude: A malicious satisfaction in the misfortunes of others.

Sycophant: A servile self-seeker who attempts to win favor by flattering influential people.

;-) <-- Preemptive disambiguation!

A Scourge Upon Humanity...

1. "Racial preferences are a way to appease black discontent and reduce white embarrassment. They have nothing to do with fighting racism." – Dinesh D'Souza

2. "I felt Paul was mixing-out with a dangerous crowd, but he was a very cautious and conventional guy himself. Whereas John was very unconventional and daring, but he was a stay at home guy, which was safe – safe was good." – Ringo Starr

3. "There are many laws governing the consumer credit reporting industry, but the accusers are still the adjudicators – this grotesque inequity is yet to be remedied." – Ambassador Duck Nelson

New York Mayors

Koch and Giuliani were both competent. Dinkins was pitiful. Bloomberg is a mistake so far -- I don't anticipate any improvement.

Koch and Giuliani both irritated me enough at times that I have no special adoration for either. But there's a clear difference between the dissatisfaction that stems from taking issue with a real mayor espousing errant points of view, versus the frustration of watching lame-brain amateur nitwits flounder around ala Dinkins and Bloomberg.

I was too green in the days of John Lindsay and Abe Beam to think much of anything about anything.

Third World Snoozers...

1. "The difference between Congressmen and drunken sailors is that sailors spend their own money." – A Republican Congressman

2. "For Third World intellectuals, it is unbearable to acknowledge how good America is because then they are forced to admit how bad their own countries are." – Dinesh D'Souza

3. "In 1967 the process of hitting the same exact musical start-point on two separate recording machines was still a matter of trial and error. It required a great deal of patience and understanding. I kept The Beatles well away from the scene of the action while that was going on!" – George Martin

Mayor Clinton???

How much worse could a Mayor Bill Clinton be compared to, say, Mayor Dinkins, who I somehow did manage to survive?

Yet those Dinkins years were awful! Even I, a 6'2", 200+ lb guy, couldn't walk up and down Columbus Avenue without being accosted by "The United Negro Pizza Fund" and drunks begging for cash to retrieve their yachts from the 79th Street Boat Basin; or Penelope the crack ho who tried squatting in the lobby of our flat.

We were absolutely swimming in the evil id-born manifestations of bleeding heart saps who thought squeegee-men were Good Samaritans.

Urban Physiognomy...

1. "I'll never lie to you but I might not always tell you the whole story." – Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld

2. "Apparently, a fundamental of homicide investigating is that multiple firearm discharges are inconsistent with accidental deaths and suicides. Hence the LAPD showed Mr. Spector their handcuffs. Then Phil showed them his. That's what I heard anyway." – Ambassador Duck Nelson, V.I.P.

3. "I wouldn't have minded being George Harrison the invisible man, and learning what he learned. Maybe it was hard for him sometimes, because Paul and I are such egomaniacs, but that's the game." – John Lennon

I don't care about President Clinton's various nefarious affairs! Monica Lewinsky was just a stupid human blunder that, as an ultra-visible and publicly accountable big shot, Bill Clinton was especially vulnerable to being scandalized for -- and perhaps rightly so. But I still don't care.

I can even imagine how one little fib about sex seemed justified as he anticipated the hyper-hysterical tirades some American demographics would gyrate through upon almost any mention of naughty sex -- and if their uncelebrated leader were to get caught dirty, watch out! "Prepare the tar and feathers boys!" And I still don't care.

THE BEAST IN ME
Is caged by frail, fragile bonds.
Restless by day and by night,
Rants and rages at the stars.

THE BEAST IN ME
Has had to learn to live with pain,
And how to shelter from the rain.
And in the twinkling of an eye,
Might have to be restrained.

Sometimes it tries to kid me
That it's just a teddy bear,
Or somehow vanish in the air.
So I must beware...

Of THE BEAST IN ME
That everybody knows.
They've seen him out dressed in my clothes.
God help THE BEAST IN ME.

-- Nick Lowe