Blogsday 2006

Shows, Aired | Brendan, June 12th, 2006

Click to Listen to the Show (24 MB MP3)

Blogsday was a great show from June 2005. Any interest in doing this again for 2006?

Jon, from a comment to Open Source May 16, 2006

Oh yes there is. Jon is referring to a show from a year ago — listen here — an idea of Chelsea’s that still one of our favorites. Taking as our model Bloomsday, Dublin’s very real June 16, 1904 in which James Joyce’s set his very fictional Ulysses, we took a look at one day of the blogosphere, in our case Tuesday, June 14, 2005. We gathered an hour’s worth of blog posts — about Britney Spears, buying a car, coming home from Iraq, about a night at a barbecue joint — and read them on air.

We’re doing it again.

We’ve started looking ourselves; we found a woman who misses Brooklyn and a man who kills lizards, but there are plenty more to find. We need your help. Think of the blogs you read (and not Andrew Sullivan, either, because we know about him already), the personal ones, the ones that tell stories, the ones that actually give you a little piece of someone’s life. We’re looking for a post, a sentence, anything time-stamped June 6, 2006.

Post a link in the thread below. Also, no fair posting your own blogs; that’s cheating. You have until Thursday.

Left a lot of great stuff on the cutting room floor. If you didn’t hear your blog post, we apologize; we ran out of time at the end of the hour. If it makes you feel any better, we had to cut off the producer credits at the end, too, so we didn’t hear our names, either.

Thank you, to all the blogs we read and loved. Happy Bloomsday!

The day the world ended, God sat quietly alone in a huge room, alternately dozing off and turning the pages of a fat scrapbook. God could remember everything, and this no doubt saddened Him.

Far below Him there were, here and there, people floating in boats and still –many of them, anyway– praying. There were also a number of people, those who had spent years planning and waiting for the end of the world, who were holed up in places where the water and the destruction had not yet arrived. Some of them were high up on mountains or hidden away in caves deep in the earth. Like the people in the boats, these others were given additional time to pray and puzzle over the position in which they found themselves.

It was more and more difficult for any of these survivors to think of this additional time as any kind of blessing, yet still the most desperate –and they were all, of course, desperate– prayed in their terror for survival. They still wanted to live.

The purest among them prayed for forgiveness.

One man, alone in a valley deep in the mountains somewhere, managed to live in ignorance, and then denial, for a number of days. When he finally recognized the seriousness of what had occurred, the man ventured out into the valley, where there was still green grass and patches of bright flowers. And there in the middle of this valley the man eased a kite up into what was left of the sky.

Seeing this — the man in the high grass, staring up with a smile of unmistakable joy on his face at the ragged kite rattling in the wind — God’s heart stirred.

Brad Zellar, This Day is Tuesday, Yo, Ivanhoe 5:57 AM

The waiter at the “Grecian Restaurant�? made my breakfast today. “You watched me,�? he said, when I told him that he had prepared the food even better than the cook who used to stand there in the early shift. “I used to have my own place. Then I had four places. Now I work here.�? I made some strange hand movement resembling my finger riding a roller coaster. “Yes, exactly.�?

The new ten-dollar bill he gave me has the “God�? in “In God We Trust�? completely blacked out. The numbers are also x-ed out. Somebody apparently trusted a marker more than anything else… and yet still accepted the new cash.

Witold Riedell, June 06, 2006 witoldriedel.com 6:06 AM

If I could change one part of my body, I would change my elbows. They’re surprisingly dry and shriveled and look like small brains when my arms are straight.

frangelita, …if Inside my head time unkown

On the ground was a young woodchuck not half the size of a full-grown one. It lay on its back, feet spread evenly as if for dissection, fur still lustrous, bright curving teeth. There was also a profound hole at the base of its neck and a collar of blood. The grass seemed to suspend the woodchuck. Behind me in a birch tree stood the vulture that had flushed when I came around the corner. It seemed to be trying to stand on one leg with its wings raised, tipping side to side almost the way a vulture does in flight. Sometimes it nearly lost its balance. A pair of crows complained from a higher branch. I had nothing to add.

What was interesting wasn’t the dead woodchuck. It would have eaten my beans later this summer. What was interesting was seeing the vulture come out of its column of flight and make a long, curving landing behind the barn. I knew there was something dead in the grass only because of the vulture’s hunching presence. It knew something was dead in the grass while it was high overhead. Death to me is still a curiosity, even after all this time here. To the vulture it is simply a way of getting a living. The vulture lifted its wings again, as if to feel the breeze under them. I took a step closer and it flew away.

There was nothing mournful in any of this, and cruelty isn’t really a word worth using when talking about nature. The death of that woodchuck seemed surprisingly economical, considering what was happening on the rest of the place. The forest tent caterpillars—who knows how many of them?—have made their way up into the canopy of the trees, and they have simply erased May. Where there were young leaves there are now nearly empty branches. The roses are bare and so are the blueberries. So is the paper-bark maple. The walk down to the barn is littered with precisely scissored leaf-fragments, like a jigsaw-puzzle waiting to be assembled. A strange light makes its way down through the trees—not spring, not summer. I can’t quite capture the mood the light causes because I’ve never seen its kind before.

And yet some plants have gone untouched—the hydrangeas and a striped-bark maple. Perhaps there’s something unpalatable in their leaves, just as there seems to be something unpalatable in the caterpillars themselves. Nothing wants to eat them or to bother them in any way. Their destruction lies in their own numbers, I suppose. I heard the electric fence snapping clear across the pasture the other night—grounding itself on a fallen tree limb, I thought. But no. The caterpillars had crawled up a neutral brace wire at the fence corner, so many caterpillars that the current leaped from the hot wire into the gob of them, sparking.

Verlyn Klinkenborg, Tempest and Plague, The Rural Life 7:32 AM

Mrs B. announced this morning that she’s fed up with people on radio mispronouncing the word ‘obviously’ as ‘oviously’. I oviously hadn’t noticed overwise I would ov commented on it b4. I blame the bloody schools.

Milt Bog, Obviously, Milt’s Place 8:51 AM

I went outside to check the mail. When I came back in, I heard a semi-scream from my wife: “Get it, get it!” I’m like, “Get what”? She says, “The lizard that is over here terrorizing me!” So I go and chase this little guy around. Carefully keeping my body between him and my dogs, who would love a snack. I finally catch him and take him outside. He was so grateful.

Milt Bog, …Bored on a Tuesday, Guppyman 9:02 AM

And what, friends, is called a ship? If there is, friends, any kind of large vessel, subject to be steered for the purposes of moving a range of items over seawater, this vessel being composed of various materials—-whether metal or wood, concrete or fiberglass-—such that it floats, carrying objects one wishes to keep dry-—this, friends, is called a ship.

And what, friends, is called a sea? If there is, friends, any expanse of seawater, positioned between continents or amid various nations, such that it may be coated by pointy waves, supportive of various kinds of wind—whether gusts or light breeze, whether slight breeze or gentle breeze, whether moderate breeze or fresh breeze, strong breeze or gale, whether moderate gale or fresh gale, strong gale or whole gale, or whether wind storm or hooricane—this wind usually being clear or grey, resembling an invisible rack from which various birds may be suspended—whether frigate-birds or kelp petrels, storm petrels or awks, whether pelicans or the arctic tern—any such expanse of seawater, providing a relatively frictionless surface for the purposes of sea travel, a surface one may study but not understand, at which one may stare but not comprehend, and whose bottom is constituted by shells, muds, corals, sands, trenches or volcanic elements—being thus a more or less gargantuan body of seawater, such that it is inclined to induce humility in those adjacent to it or poised upon it, which humility may itself come in the guise of awe, vomiting, or tourism— this, friends, is called a sea.__

And what, friends, is called a cruise? If there is an activity, friends, constituted by the unilateral movement of several hundred people en masse across the surface of seawater, aboard a ship engaged in the approximation of a hotel, in which one may find the selling of jewelry, clothing, alcohol, and a diversity of commemorative objects, and upon which the days are divided by a person called a “cruise director,�? whose name may be Dave, and whose voice piercingly comes unbidden through the various ceilings of the ship, the days thus being divided by the cruise director into group activities whose purpose is to render controlled approximations of joy, which are called “fun�?—this, friends, is called a cruise. _

And what, friends, is called a friend? If there are, friends, any kind of companions, with whom one shares this joy or that joy, and who at times can aid one in the often difficult task of retaining the capacity to be surprised by this life, and with whom one feels fortunate to have spent time, even a little time, whether eating dinner or writing poetry, whether talking of Tristan Tzara or staring at the wake of a ship—even a little time talking of frigate-birds or chatting with the children of these companions or engaging in small talks by a street bench on a tiny island —any such person toward whom one is inclined to feel gratitude for having shared, even briefly, the endless humility of this life—this, friends, is called a friend.

Gabriel Gudding, And What, Friends, is the Sea?, Conchology 9:59 AM

A little poem called Sacrament by the Canadian poet Alden Nowlan, in its entirety:

God, I have sought you as a fox seeks chickens,
curbing my hunger with cunning.
The times I have tasted your flesh
there was no bread and wine between us,
only night and the wind beating the grass.

Night, wind, grass. And, yes, bread and wine too, although not as symbols of something otherworldly and divine, but as themselves. Bread, wine, candlelight, convivial conversation, rain on window glass, thunder somewhere afar off. The early morning coo of the mourning dove. A stone picked up along the path, hard and cool in the hand.

I want to know the stories of things. Concrete, sensual, particular things. This drop of rain on glass. This stone. But to know the particular in its fullness, it helps to know the general. Every molecule of H2O is identical to every other molecule of H2O. The stone in the path was carried here, like every other stone in the path, by glaciers. That’s why I have studied science for half a century.

I call it cunning.

Chet Raymo, Communion, Science Musings10:44 am

Goodness, it’s hard to breathe all of a sudden. It’s like an instant shock to my system, just the concept of things being over, things beginning, school, love, life, ups and downs are taking over, but for once in my life I feel like I’m able to separate myself from it. While people fall apart around me, calling apocalypse at the end of the school year, I’m just sitting by while I get everything in order. There is no need to make the end of high school into a big deal, I’ve been wanting to leave for years.

But then… why do I feel a tiny bit scared all of a sudden?

I read my speech to Stuelke, the vice principal, today. He started crying. He said it was the best Valedictorian speech he had heard in all of his teaching years. Now, him breaking down is nothing short of a complete disregard of natural law. This man, to most — all right, to all — is more or less dead inside.

Alison Jones, Instant Shock, Common Sense time unknown

My next opponent was quick. As we got started, out of nowhere he landed a right roundhouse kick to the side of my head with ample force. I’m a big guy, and it moved my head a bit on impact. It must have been an instep and not a ball, because the impact was evenly spread against the entire side of my head. The judge called no point because it was too much contact, and warned the opponent. We resume, and the next thing I know my eyes are closed and there is this stinging pressure on my nose. I open my eyes and jump back and keep my hands on guard, and regain my focus. The guy nailed me right in the nose. I think it was either a right-front two-knuckle or reverse-front two-knuckle. Honestly, I never saw it coming. I may have been looking away or blinking when the strike came in. He was very fast.

The judge immediately called “up�? and had me turn around. I could feel the blood dripping down my nose and into my throat. I kept sniffing in through my nose to keep the blood up, but that wasn’t enough. I had to wipe the blood on my gi and my gloves. I could feel the warm liquid running down onto my upper lip. He asked if I was ok and I said yes, and he asked if I was ready to go, and I said yes enthusiastically. It took a couple of minutes for the blood to subside. While we were waiting for the bleeding to stop, the judge told me that he would issue a warning to the opponent for striking the face and lack of control, but that I also need to block. I agreed with him and said “Absolutely�?. I should have blocked. It would have hurt less. To be honest, I never saw the punch coming. Shame on me for not being more aware.

Big Kiai, Irvine Summer Tournament 2006, Big Kiai: the Karate Adventures of a 365 Pound Guy 10:57 am

The most popular feature of the self-proclaimed World’s Largest Laundromat is not the massive machines that wash eight loads at a time. It is the aviary. The 12 finches, two miniature doves and a yellow canary flirt and flitter in a cheerful glass-encased pen next to the coin machines. Some of the older women in this suburb of Chicago will stop by to watch them even when they have no laundry to do.

World’s Largest Laundromat runs on Solar Power!, The STEEL DEAL time unknown

The anniversary is American — and a little arbitrary. It was 25 years ago yesterday that the CDC reported two deaths from a form of pneumocystis that turned out to be a consequence of HIV.

And yet AIDS exhaustion is also real. The first words of my book are the following: “First, the resistance to memory.” I knew I would one day want to block it out, that one day, I would forget most of it, especially the terror of it, and so I made myself write it out at the time. Now I find myself with little new to say, or, rather, nothing to say, except the obvious. I survived. Others I loved didn’t. There was no fairness in this. None. Countless more are dying — and surviving — with the same senseless randomness. In this sense, AIDS and HIV are just more intense experiences of life itself. Except death, once encountered, becomes always more real; and life never again resumes the ease and oblivion it once contained. HIV is a crash-course in being human. And everyone passes.

Andrew Sullivan, AIDS at 25, Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish 11:14 am

Tuesday morning brings lots and lots of daydreams.

I cannot stay focused on my work here at the church. I want to write all damn day in my blog and stare out the storefront window.

I watch the dandelion fuzz swirl in the parking lot and think poetic thoughts about life and the tiny bugs that we all really are.

The organist is here and this just doesn’t help the daydream…it lends to it. Now I have a soundtrack to go with the movie in my mind. Of course “Holy, Holy, Holy�? isn’t always the theme of MY life but it makes me want to be.

Holy.

Impossible. Sinful pride gets in the way every time.

At any rate, this particular day is absolutely perfect. The weather is just right and the sky is perfect. I watch out the window of the storefront as the town people pass — most of whom I know — and wonder what the hell I am still doing here and what for.

Better start that living soon, Liz, or you will be sorry…

Daydream Believer, Tuesday, Making Use of Muse 10:58 am

Do you ever get those evenings that never quite fall into an activity, or a rhythm?

The hours drift by, unfulfilled. The rain falls in rich curtains of fertility. Everything is bathing, the trees, shrubs, flowers, birds, earthworms. But your mind strays, unfocussed.

I wouldn’t call it boredom, but it sort of is.

When nothing you can think of is enough to rouse you from your couch of comfort. The hours aren’t weaving or unweaving anything. You’re just wasting them.

You feel spent, uninspired, worked over, at odds, suspended.

I don’t feel like drawing
or walking the dog.

I don’t feel like being alive
or dead.

Or creating art out of my life.

I don’t feel like being alone,
or with anyone.

The lush Spring rain
simply falls
without metaphor.

You want to eat something
to nourish and fulfill
but all the multi-grain breads and cereals, the fruits, oranges, apples, strawberries, grapes, and almonds and raisons and cheeses, the fresh vegetables, carrots, green beans, cauliflower, broccoli, and herbal tea of cranberries and vanilla that sits steaming in your hand
doesn’t satisfy.

And you ask questions of the moist fresh air all evening
about what was, is, or will be
asking about intention
knowing that’s it,
the intent to be
is everything.

And you write it,
this mundane
enfolded mystery.

Brenda Clews, On Saturday Night, Rubies in Crystal 11:28 am

Jason Zengerle wonders if “those voters who think that Hillary has no prayer of winning a general election and be inclined not to vote for her in the primaries” will “still feel so pragmatic and rational after watching Bill introduce his wife at campaign events?”

Who knows. I can tell you that Clinton’s speeches can warp reality. We all remember the DNC convention, where he made John Kerry sound better than he had ever looked. I was there, and the repetition of “Send Me” sent shivers up my spine — Kerry really did have the raw material for inspiration, it was Clinton’s gift to be so skilled at molding it.

But I also saw Clinton introduce Gray Davis at a 2002 rally. Davis was a slimeball who’d just polished off a grotesquely negative campaign. The room was relieved that we’d won but slightly revolted by whose banner we’d triumphed under. Then Clinton stepped up and, for 20 extraordinary minutes, wrapped Davis in a shimmering coat of ideals, dreams, hopes, and promise. I fell in love with the man. Until, that is, he began speaking. But my esteem for Clinton as an introducer was set, and I’ll never underestimate the power of his speeches. Hillary is a far easier and more inspiring subject than Davis. And Bill, by all reports, actually loves her. By the time he finishes, she’ll be an incandescent goddess, watched by a crowd wearing those solar eclipse sunglasses, as Bill will have convinced them she’s too luminescent to view with the human eye.

Ezra Klein, The Bill Effect, Ezra Klein: Tomorrow’s Media Conspiracy Today time unknown

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s wife will join him in death at last. Her body has been shipped to Concord from the London cemetery where she’s been buried since 1871.

Apparently the Hawthornes were deeply committed to each other. “I once thought that no power on earth should ever induce me to live without thee, and especially thought an ocean should never roll between us,” Sophia wrote to her husband.

But I still keep thinking of the grim conclusion to Hawthorne’s creepiest Puritan tale.

“Often, waking suddenly at midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith; and at morning or eventide, when the family knelt down at prayer, he scowled and muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away. And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave a hoary corpse, followed by Faith, an aged woman, and children and grandchildren, a goodly procession, besides neighbors not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.”

Maud Newton, Hawthorne’s reunited in Death, Maud Newton Blog time unknown

I was gloomy all through the paella & the paella was beautiful: a vision of shellfish & chicken nestled on succulent rice. It tasted as good as it looked & looked as good as it tasted & there was texture too. You could have worn this paella as an Easter bonnet in Cannes or Antibes or even somewhere singular like Madrid. But I was thinking of racism, of poverty, of American cities & public schools. I tried to talk about it but just got gloomier & made everyone else gloomy too. It was one of those glooms like a shroud: you couldn’t see beyond it. I see a little girl crossing the street by herself. Gloom. I see a small boy walking very slowly to school. Gloom. I hear a teacher screeching & shaming. On & on & on & on. I see the little kids taking it. Gloom upon gloom. I see a bunch of white people at a meeting in a room saying what they want & how they deserve it & how they’re going to go about getting it. Are these my people? Who are my people? First I was confused & now this inarticulate yet communicable gloom. So I’m gloomy as I pick at nuts & little crunchy things that look like nuts… and other crunchy things that look like banana slices. Gloomy through excellent salad with shaved cheese. Gloomy through chocolate mousse surrounded by fat blackberries & sliced strawberries: another vision & explosion of texture & taste. Gloomy when I accept from Lisa’s hand — the same hand that laid a dish of shiny black olives on the burnished orange cloth & raised still furled roses around lilies in a tall vase on a low table in the other room in a fluted green cup — still gloomy when I accept coffee. It is rich, black & very strong. And my gloom is gone.

Mairead Byrne, Drinking My Poem, Heaven 12:50 pm

I was little more than conceived on D-Day (June 6, 1944), still considered a fibroid tumor by my mother’s doctor. That fact is significant of nothing except my orienting myself in history. Once upon a time there were leaders with imagination and compassion, and I had been conceived for birth into a different world altogether. I was pretty much born with the bomb. One of my first memories is of seeing a huge headline on the Courier-Journal’s front page. “H-Bomb�? is the only word I remember from the headline, but I remember it in something like 300-point type.

Sherry Chandler, D-Day, Sherry Chandler time unknown

Forget the “Omen�? crap. June 6th, no matter what year, will always be a special day.

D-Day Casualties:

British: 3000

Canadian: 946

U.S.: 6,603

German: c.6,500

“Casualties�? meaning a total of dead, wounded, and/or missing/captured.

June 6th, 1944, has so many lessons to be taught. So many perspectives which are at odds with the perspectives about the war we’re fighting now.

Beth, June 6th, 1944, My Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy time unknown

I was frustrated because I’d gained a pound. Only A Pound but that meant yet another month had ended with no progress, making three months with no significant loss.

These last 6 kilos are proving the most difficult and stressful of any of the other 70-something already gone.

I almost edited out that sentence, as I don’t want to insult people who have far more left to lose. Five years ago I would have killed to be where I am now. But as someone who has filled the shoes of Staggeringly Obese, Obese, Still Pretty Fat and Almost Healthy Weight all for extended periods of time, I can honestly say this stage is somehow the most overwhelming and frustrating of all.

Shauna “Dietgirl”, How To Let Go, The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirld time unknown

As expected, no peace deal for Karabagh. Well, whatever. The economic boom in Armenia will not wane until the Azeris start bombing. I doubt that much of the construction going on, which has been moving along at a snail’s pace, will be completed by the end of this year, which means that if war does break out again, part of Central Yerevan will resemble a war zone for quite some time. It already looks as if Yerevan has been bombed and is slowly reconstructing in some places. Investors will pull out funding from their projects overnight. The dram will loose its value again considerably, and the history of the early 1990s may repeat itself.

But who knows, perhaps by some miracle, another offer for peace will be laid on the table before the end of the year, with both countries being absolutely forced to agree to it. For now, I am staying put, and I hope there will not be a reason why I should desire to leave in the near future.

Christian Garbis
, As expected, no peace deal for Karabagh, Notes From Hairenik 12:55pm

I realize that most of the things that people fear never come to fruition to begin with. Yet, even with that knowledge and belief, I find that I am at least a bit scared about going to the Doctor’s Office tomorrow for tests. Things haven’t been “right�? with me for a couple months, and now they’ve reached a point where I don’t feel comfortable ignoring them any longer. My memory is failing, my thought process slowing down, I have a blurring of vision, and I’m stumbling more frequently when I walk.

I’ve tested my blood sugar so many times I feel like a damn pincushion, so I think it’s safe to rule out diabetes. But what else could be going on? My migraines have increased, but I don’t know if that’s due to stress, or a pinched nerve, back problems, inner-ear infections, or bird flu.

So tomorrow I go see a doctor (not my own) to be poked, prodded, and tested to find out what is going on. Knowing’s half the battle, and as long as I can have a name for it, maybe I’ll be ok.

In the meantime, however, my emotions are shot. I cry at the drop of a hat. My temper is extra-short. My patience: non-existent. Only a few people knew about this before I started writing this post. Add on top of this all the number of people from my past who are springing forth like a ghost-like fog from a cemetery in a horror movie, and you’ve got the recipe for sheer insanity.

Add in that with nerves on edge I’m not sleeping at all, and I think you can understand what shambles I’m in due to my health. Other than that, things appear to be normal.

What I would give for a full night’s restful sleep.

Silver Blue, Where do I begin?, The Ramblings of Silver Blue time unknown

When I was little, I had a security blanket. It was the standard crochet blue-pink-white blankie that old ladies like to make for the babies in their families.

It went everywhere with me. Grandma says I started crying LOUDLY when they took me to church and didn’t have my blankie. It took until the middle of the sermon for me to realize we’d left it behind, but there was no way I was going to spend another 20 minutes without it. (Don’t grandparents know that little kids won’t sit through church anyway?)

Eventually I decided it was time to leave it tucked under my pillow during the day. And then it found its way under my bed for many years. It’s somewhere in my parents’ basement now, I think.

I’d like to say that I’ve grown up and don’t need my blankie anymore. But the truth is that I’ve got an awesome fleece blanket that’s bigger, more durable and softer than the baby blanket. And as Quinton can testify, I spend most of my time with it wrapped around me. At night, it sits on top of my head to block the light from the bedroom window. And on the weekends when I’m either too lazy to get dressed or I need to do laundry, it becomes a completely-not-flattering wrap dress!

Anyway. Cuddly blankets make my life complete.

Katie Lohrenz, Big Girls Need Blankets Too, Here in Katie’s Head time unknown

Well, guess who got up very late this morning? It took me ages to get going again, but not wasted time: I read a load of the research material I brought with me. I’ve got an extra scene to write today, because I never did finish what I was doing last night. Still, I did write half of another random scene that took my fancy.

I spent ages today writing notes. I do a lot of that. Writing about what I’m supposed to be writing, instead of just getting on with it. And then I finally got stuck in, and now I’m going to walk the dog. As I backed everything up just now and prepared to leave, I kept getting little blips of euphoric delight at how good this book is going to be. And just as I struggle to allow myself feelings of happiness, I also have an innate slap-back-down reaction that kicks in instinctively when I’m tempted to think good things about this book.

It’s ridiculous, I know. I need to believe in it. It’s OK to like it. It’s not a crime. But there’s also an element of self protection. I daren’t hope that it’s any good. I need to be prepared for rejection. It might be crap. It might not be published. I have to be realistic.

But, but, but…

There’s a definite chance that this is going to be a very good book indeed.

Clare, Cottage Diary, Boob Pencil 2:54 pm

The sixth of june, ‘06
Biblical Number of the Beast: 666
Approximate Number of the Beast: 660
Roman Numeral of the Beast: DCLXVI
Special IRS Tax Forms for the Beast: Form 10666
Tax Rate of the Beast: 66.6%
6-Year CD Interest Rate at First Beast Bank of Hell: 6.66%
Billing Rate of the Beast’s Lawyer: $666 an hour.

Jeff Hess, Six…Six…Six…, Have Coffee, Will Write 4:06 pm

Megan Stack poignantly describes the scene where 50 Iraqis were brazenly kidnapped by men in camouflage uniforms at a bus station in Baghdad on Monday. The wealthy among them will be identified and held for ransom. Some persons kidnapped eventually are released, others are killed.

One Italian soldier was killed and 3 wounded, one very seriously, when their vehicle was bombed in southern Iraq. Italian withdrawal from Iraq is top on the agenda of a meeting of PM Prodi with British PM Blair.

Reuters reports 10 Iraqis killed around the country, some of them guerrillas, in the ongoing war.

It does not mention another 10, reported by al-Zaman. These were university students shot down in the Dora district of Baghdad.

Al-Zaman also reports the assassination of a municipal council member in Mansur, a district of Baghdad.

I count 26 or so dead in political violence on Monday.

Juan Cole, 50 Kidnapped Violently; AMS Pulls out of Reconciliation Conference, Informed Comment time unknown

It’s been a horrible day. We woke up to unbearable heat. Our area averages about 4 hours electricity daily and the rest is generator electricity, which means we can use our ceiling fans, but there’s no way we can use air conditioners.

We woke up to an ominous silence — an indicator that the generator isn’t working. E. went next door to check and got a confirmation. It might not work all day. The neighbor responsible for it was going to bring by the ‘generator doctor’ as soon as he was free.

The electricity came at 6 pm for only twenty minutes, as if to taunt us. The moment the lights flickered on, we were gathered in the kitchen and we could hear the neighborhood children began to hoot and holler with joy.

Before that, we heard the news about the dozens abducted from the Salhiya area in Baghdad. Salhiya is a busy area where many travel agencies have offices. It has been particularly busy since the war because people who want to leave to Jordan and Syria all make their reservations from one office or another in that area.

According to people working and living in the area, around 15 police cars pulled up to the area and uniformed men began pulling civilians off the streets and from cars, throwing bags over their heads and herding them into the cars. Anyone who tried to object was either beaten or pulled into a car. The total number of people taken away is estimated to be around 50.

This has been happening all over Iraq: mysterious men from the Ministry of Interior rounding up civilians and taking them away. It just hasn’t happened with this many people at once. The disturbing thing is that the Iraqi Ministry of Interior has denied that it had anything to do with this latest mass detention (which is the new trend with them: why get tangled up with human rights organizations about mass detentions, torture and assassinations. Just deny it happened!). That isn’t a good sign. It means these people will probably be discovered dead in a matter of days. We pray they’ll be returned alive…

Another piece of particularly bad news came later during the day. Several students riding a bus to school were assassinated in Dora area. No one knows why- it isn’t clear. Were they Sunni? Were they Shia? Most likely they were a mix… Heading off for their end-of-year examination — having stayed up the night before to study in the heat. When they left their houses, they were probably only worried about whether they’d pass or fail — their parents sending them off with words of encouragement and prayer. Now they’ll never come home.

There’s an ethnic cleansing in progress and it’s impossible to deny. People are being killed according to their ID card. Extremists on both sides are making life impossible. Some of them work for ‘Zarqawi’, and the others work for the Iraqi Ministry of Interior. We hear about Shia being killed in the ‘Sunni triangle’ and corpses of Sunnis named ‘Omar’ (a Sunni name) arriving by the dozen at the Baghdad morgue. I never thought I’d actually miss the car bombs. At least a car bomb is indiscriminate. It doesn’t seek you out because you’re Sunni or Shia.

We still don’t have ministers in the key ministries- defense and interior. Iraq is falling apart and Maliki and his team are still bickering over who should get more power: who is more qualified to oppress Iraqis with the help of foreign occupiers? On top of all of this, rumor has it that the Iraqi parliament have a ‘vacation’ coming up during July and August. They’re so exhausted with the arguing, and struggling for power, they need to take a couple of months off to rest. They’ll leave their well-guarded homes behind for a couple of months, and spend some time abroad with their families (who can’t live in Iraq anymore- they’re too precious for that).

Where does one go to avoid the death and destruction? Are the Americans happy with this progress? Does Bush still insist we’re progressing?

Emily Dickinson wrote, “hope is a thing with feathers�?. If what she wrote is true, then hope has flown far — very far — from Iraq…

Riverbend, Bad Day…, Baghdad Burning time unknown

Bravo, BBC Governors!

The BBC has dismissed complaints about Chris Moyles’ use of the word “gay” as an insult, because its use as a term to mean “lame” or “rubbish” is “a widespread current usage of the word amongst young people.”

That’s OK, then. Next time I call someone a “spastic” or a “wog”, it’s OK and it’s not offensive, because eight year-olds say it all the time!

What a fantastic decision…

James Mack, Bravo, BBC governors!, Slap Him, he’s Scottish! time unknown

Tonight we ate a special heirloom rice, Forbidden rice. Supposedly it was so good and so special that it was reserved exclusively for the Emperor of China. Commoners were forbidden to eat it, thus I had to try it. It’s black, which seemed interesting, until I opened the package and smelled it. I never knew rice could smell bad. Overall I have to give it two thumbs down and think I’ll stick with my brown tex-mati rice in the future. I shouldn’t be surprised. Though most people are tempted by the forbidden, I’ve always been a good girl. Bad boys don’t appeal and apparently neither does living on the edge and stealing food from the Emperor’s table.

Carrie, Yucky, Queen of Rambles 7:26 pm

Barcode stickers. Scads and scads of them at work, sheet after sheet, all being thrown out. A senseless waste.

I grabbed a stack of sheets and headed home.

It was imperative, of course, to blanket my roommates’ rooms in barcodes, but first I opted for subtlety: two stickers, in highly visible yet natural locations. Wait a few days. Four more stickers, in slightly less-noticeable locations. Wait a few days. Eight more stickers.

One morning Reuben trudged downstairs scratching his head. “You know that poster of mine, the one with the figures dancing in a circle?”

“Yeah?” I said.

“I’ve had that poster since I was in middle school, and I just noticed yesterday that I never took the barcode sticker off. It was right in the bottom corner, plain as day. And then this morning I found a barcode on my alarm clock, just beneath the buttons. And there’s one on the case of my graphing calculator. You know,” he said, leaning forward and dropping his voice in a tone better suited for the revelation of a great mystery, “I think these things are everywhere. They’re plain, they’re colorless, and we’ve gotten so used to them that we don’t even see them anymore.”

Somehow, between restrained giggles that had since erupted into full-out, tear-streaming guffaws, I managed to squeak out the truth. The only way to escape the consequential beating was to enlist Reuben’s support in pranking our other roommate.

Rich still hadn’t noticed the sporadic placements. It was time to fix that. I brought out the full stack of sticker sheets, and we barcoded every single item in his room.

With close to a thousand stickers, our determination to use them all forced us into creativity. Bed frame. Ball of his computer mouse. Door knob, plus the thin edge of his door. Each window pane. Manila folders in his file cabinet. Japanese ball-and-cup toys. Every tool in his toolbox. Pencils. Shoes, ties, the seats of his pants. The resulting spectacle was truly a sight to behold.

True to his punctilious nature, upon discovery Rich spent over an hour negating the fruit of our labor — yet even he was no match for our compulsive thoroughness. For days afterwards we’d chuckle to hear him suddenly yelp at finding the earpiece of his phone, sticker-gagged; his ping pong paddle, each face festooned; the barcode-laden staple chain in his stapler. The best was his favorite poster, a simple black and white line drawing of a woman’s face large enough to hold a barcode sticker snugly between her lips. Dead center though it was, Rich didn’t see that one for a week (and accused us of placing it after the first invasion).

The fun continued into the following months as he discovered that we’d hit the batteries in his flashlight; the spare light bulbs in his closet; random index cards within a stack; extra bars of soap within their boxes. Every barcode became our signature — even ones that weren’t ours.

That went on all the way to graduation.

And then a few years later I got a long-distance call. Rich and his wife were replacing the photos in some of their old picture frames, and wouldn’t you know it? The back of every photo had a barcode sticker on it.

Years after that I got another call, this time about a barcode sticker on the inside cover of the battery compartment in his calculator. “I still find one or two a year in some insanely ridiculous place,” he said, “and I just know it’s you guys.”

But there was one sticker I was sure would outlast them all, one hid so ingeniously he might never find it. Sure enough, I’ve never heard him mention it.

I’m pretty confident that Rich doesn’t read this blog, so letting you in on the secret is probably safe: it’s on the bottom of his red metal toolbox. Think about it: who ever lifts a toolbox above eye level, or empties it out and flips it over?

Shh — don’t tell him! That one’s lasted fifteen years so far — let’s see how much longer it can hold out …

Michael W. Hobson, Barcode Attack!, SEEDLINGS7:48 pm

That’s all of them. Thanks so much to everyone who contributed.
-Till Blogsday ‘07