Presidential Penis Proportions

“Well hung, eh? Hmm…

According to two people who are familiar with Jones’s affidavit on the subject, Jones lists three “distinguishing characteristics” of the President’s erect penis: it is about five inches long; it has the circumference of a quarter; and it angles to one side."

— “Casting Stones,” by Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker, Nov. 3, 1997”

Via – Gawker

So, is it even possible for the Presidential penis to have these proportions, or was Paula Jones being a snarky bitch? Yet, why would she be? She made a tidy profit of $850,000 from her glimpse of Presidential penis moment.

Yours

“World’s Best Ever Blogsitter”

Caz

Alcohol and You – Schematic

Birth Control

For most intelligent people, this would be a natural and 100% effective conception preventative.

Not so for Britney Spears, allegedly pregnant – again – to the guy with the corn row hair.

Mumps, Pumps and Yelps

In the World Stupidity Awards for 2005, the Canadian Government was honored with the “Dumbest Government of the Year” award, beating out stiff competition from Iran, the US of A, North Korea, and even the United Nations, which, though not a government per se, has been known to be remarkably dumb.

In more awards, who knew that the plucky little Denver Post was voted “best breaking news website”, by the Associated Press, no less. And who knew that Denver was the heartland of editors with a jaunty sense of humor?

In the edition of 26 April there were mumps, pumps, and yelps in the headlines – a feat few newspapers ever achieve.

Indeed, the headlining article for the day was Mumps Confirmed in Colorado.

The leading piece in the business section was Bush tries to ease pump woes.

Token illustrative pump pictorial.

Under community news items, a delightful piece – Broken glass lands in toddler’s boot, yelps follow – which commences with potty training (keeping the reader in much suspense), before we finally get to hear about the yelps and the happy ending. This riveting piece also reveals that there are real people in the real world who are still entirely comfortable in using the word “hip” in a normal everyday sentence.

“Now, toddlers in general aren't hip to the whole "I have to hurt you to help you"-routine."

See how easy it is? Perhaps you can integrate “hip” into your conversation sometime today? Go ahead, give it a try!

Poor Scotty, of “Dear Scotty” fame, seems to be up a creek without enough people wanting “advice like your best friend would give”. Jeeze wouldn’t you think that at least five people per week in Denver would be bereft of friends and in need of advice?

Well, Scotty’s going to have to start inventing advice questions – which would be highly unethical and no self respecting newspaper or magazine would tolerate such a shocking deception – so, for goodness sake, even if you have lots of real life friends, help Scotty by letting him help you with advice that you don’t really need – send in your questions, and try to incorporate the word “hip” into you problem.

If you can also incorporate the word trumpery into your Dear Scotty question, kudos to you! Trumpery is a mass noun (no plural) meaning:

1. Deception, fraud, or trickery. 2. Rubbish, junk. 3. Flashy but trashy finery in the home or on the body.

In a sentence you might wittily observe, for example:

"Maurice came to the party in such trumpery we all had a good laugh."

I think Scotty would be thrilled to receive a question in relation to something both hip and trumpery.

After that effort, you might just want to relax and remember your youth by reading all about how a Senior found his rhythm at Niwot High's prom!

Oh yes, the community news in Denver has a little bit of something for everyone.

Yours

“World’s Best Ever Blogsitter”

Caz

Cross Pollination Blog Experiment

Okay, we all know this can only end in tears, but have mercy – for my sake, if not for the sake of the happiness and harmony in the home and hearth of Mr & Mrs Drunka.

Yes, he is gone, he is gone, he is gone!

Drunka has abandoned his blog to spend two entire weeks in the real world – and up a creek, with a paddle.

Drunka himself foretold of this event way back on 20 April of this very year.

Drunka left yesterday, or today, or tomorrow, depending on your time zone, or when you read this post. He and his friends looked joyful as they tried on their matching safety outfits. [Drunka on the far left.]

What – you thought you could slack-off for two weeks? Aye, aye? Is that what you thought? Went out and hired a pile of DVDs; bought a dozen good novels to read; did you? Well, nooooooo, there is no interruption to services, so tear up that “to do list”.

For the better behaved commenters (meaning: anyone who comments – please, please, please spend two weeks visiting and commenting; but I’m not going to beg, okay, just do it of your own volition) refreshments and finger foods will be served in the foyer. And no making a mess! Just because it’s “open day” at Drunka’s place doesn’t mean we should run-amok – no running and no amoking!

Now, everyone behave and enjoy yourselves for the duration. What choice do you have? I’ve already locked the gates.


[Blogging is a strange little business isn’t it? Some people just can’t keep away from it. Notice how Drunka couldn't resist having “one last post”, and then another, and then another – his chubby little fingers refusing to surrender the keyboard.]

Yours

“World’s Best Ever Blogsitter”

Caz

Lookism; or, Hey, this pc stuff really comes in handy sometimes

Think there's any reason the News posted this picture on their front page:



Instead of, say, this one:



to illustrate a small but creepy story about CU police offering a $50 reward for the identification of people photographed smoking pot at a "420" rally last week?

Didn't think so. (The News also links to the cops' website, "CU's Great Smokeout Photo Gallery," which so far has posted 150 pictures, with many more promised. My libertarian instincts prohibit linking.)

Sorry, no more blogging, I promise. My mind is going.

Cliff notes

These are along the San Juan River in Utah.

The Buffalo is very different from the southwestern rivers the Drunkablog is used to, which tend to run through deserts. The Buffalo, in north central Arkansas, runs through wooded land. Fortunately the Drunkablog is an all 'rounder who knows how to thrive in any environment. For this trip he'll be sure to have his woollen spiral puttees:



And his multipurpose wilderness neckerchief:


Drunkablog (r., with pointed head) looking cool in camping hankie.

And of course he wouldn't be caught dead without his official U.S.A Dispatch Case:


It'll carry only one dispatch: "More brains."

But the Drunkablog really needs to brush up on his bark utensil-making:


A bark berry pail! How clever! Oh, the D-blog and his chums simply must go berrying! (The folding bark cup is from a dimension so alien the Drunkablog either ignores it or goes mad).

(Images from my falling-apart copy of the amazing Horace Kephart's Camping and Woodcraft (1917, and still in print--though, oddly, only in the U.K.), in which Horace taught his early 20th-century readers how to camp with style in a world without nylon.)

Update: The Drunkablog is signing off with this post so that his tiny peanut-shaped brain can concentrate on being sane and ready for this trip--a stretch under any circumstances, impossible if he's blogging. Luckily Caz is on hand to whip all you freaks into shape. Read her! Obey her! Kill for her!

Back in a couple of weeks.

Like flowers that bloom in the springtime

Rocky Mountain News editor John Temple boasted Sunday about all the blogs "blossoming" on the paper's website:

We were late to the game, but it's exciting to see how many different approaches we've taken since I started this blog [the Rocky's first, begun in April, 2005]. Monday we launch "Homefield Advantage," a new sports blog by Fed Pietila. It will be our 14th regular blog.

Let's break that number down.

There's Mark Wolf's blog, RockyTalkLive, which, not surprisingly, discusses "everything from politics to pop culture." Very safe.

And film critic Robert Denerstein's Film clips, which he started only in March but which already manages (faint praise alert) to look like a real blog. Denerstein updates fairly often, links well to others, and knows movies. Unfortunately his posts have lots of typos and other crud. He also gets hardly any comments, which seems strange in a cultcha-hungry town like Denver.

Including editor Temple's, that's about it as far as "substantive" blogs at the Rocky.

Huge potfuls of "lifestyle" blogs, though. Let's see: on shopping, videogaming, pack-ratting ("The Stuff Exchange"), fashion crap and (by the same blogger) American Idol. Nasty.

But that's only eight blogs. What about the other six? Need you ask? Sports blogs, every one. Basketball, baseball, football, hockey, one on what other sportswriters around the country are babbling about, Sam Adam's The A-List (a blog improbably offering "a different slant on a variety of sports topics") and, finally, a potentially neat one, sports cartoonist Drew Litton's blog Toons and Talk, which I'm willing to bet is the only blog by a sports cartoonist in the country.

Overall they're not exactly innovatin' the hell out of things at the Rocky. I'll look at the Post later, but I know without looking that they have a blog the Rocky should let "blossom" (that sounds so Maoist) as soon as possible: a business blog. Surely the Rocky could deploy somebody to compete with unamusingly full-of-himself Post business columnist and faux blogger (he links only to his own column) Al Lewis, couldn't they?

Here's the News' blogs page if you want to check them out.

Update: Faux. I hate that word.

Now it can be told

Drunkablogistas! The Drunkablog interrupts your syncope to make an important announcement (drumroll, please): While he braves the wilderness in his birchbark canoe, the Drunkablog will, for the first time ever, host a guest blogger at this site! (Well, a guest cross-blogger, anyhow.)

(Cut drumroll)

And not just any blogger. No, at GREAT personal expense and no little risk to life and limb, the Drunkablog has managed to secure the unique blogging talents of the smart, funny, beautiful, strong and antidisestablishmentarianistic Caz, of the great Avatar Briefs!

(Cut drumroll!)

Regular readers if any will recognize Caz from her frequent and hilarious (i.e., sick) comments on this blog. She's good, ye spalpeens.

She's also, oddly, Australian, a Melbournian (Melbournite? Melbourningian?). Doesn't the exoticness of this give you that old "bow down before the power of blog" feeling? Well, it does me. I'm old enough to have used carbon paper in a typewriter. Now here's Caz in Australia, and she's going to post her writing here, on this skank blog written in Denver, and do it almost instantaneously. That such a thing is possible is simply a miracle. Yes, the D-blog is a simp.

Anway, Caz will start posting here Friday, when the Drunkablog will be reasonably close to Final Packing Frenzy, and she'll post thereafter whenever the hell she feels like it, until the Drunkablog returns around the 13th, dead but triumphant.

(Cut the friggin' drumroll!)

Oh, here's the D-blog's birchbark canoe:

Still in drydock: The Drunkawife calls it the "Desert Storm" model. It's fiberglass, of course, and the Drunkablog just figured out today that it had, like, a bunch of leaks. So he got out the Bondo and "patched" them (now there's some goooood scare quotes) very carefully, meaning not very carefully at all, since he "inadvertently" (two-fer!) huffed some Bondo resin and ended up using most of the Bondo on his face. Pray for the Drunkablog.
Update: It's remotely possible that, besides Caz, the Drunkawife and people even stranger will post here too. Not likely, but possible. Many are called but few are krausened.

Beefalo River trip update

Sorry, Buffalo. E-mail received yesterday from trip member "Mingus Eye":

Gents,

It's raining like hell in Ponca as we speak. They have gotten an inch in the last 30 minutes. T-storms are predicted for several days in the next week, including our launch date. Let it pour mother***. YEAH!!!!!!!!

(Note: the Drunkablog does not condone cussing.) The river level on the Buffalo at Ponca bridge right now (10:08 p.m. MDT, April 25) is 2.85, .85 feet more than we need to launch, so things are still looking pretty good (though the river is dropping again).

The Drunkablog was doing pretty good too until just this minute, when he began to panic at how much he still has to do before he can cruise the river with an easy conscience. The D-blog manse is falling down; the tenants are revoltin'; there's blogging--sorry, serious blogging--to do; and I haven't even started packing or bought supplies (mainly freeze-dried farts) yet.

Mingus Eye will be here Sunday (he's driving the 1000 miles from Phoenix); we'll leave Monday morning for Gilbert, Arkansas (905 miles from Denver); arrive in Gilbert on Tuesday; put in on the Beef--sorry, Buffalo--Wednesday; take out the following Wednesday; drive THE SAME DAY 450 miles to Mason City, Illinois (can you imagine what it'll smell like in that car? We could die) so Mingus Eye can pick up his drum set; drive the next day from Mason City to Denver (1000 miles); and finally, Mingus will weave zombie-like back to Phoenix (1000 miles).

All that driving, of course, with gas over $3.00 a gallon. (Both my non-American and my un-American readers will scoff at this whining, but jeez, couldn't we for once hegemonize (de-hegemonize?) somebody and actually, you know, steal their oil?)

The "Beefalo" Story

Years ago my old friend Mingus Eye attended forestry school in Southern Illinois (a fair amount of the extreme southern tip of Illinois is covered by Shawnee National Forest). Southern Illinois (note capitalization) really is part of the South, closer to Kentucky (or Arkansas, for that matter) in feel and spirit than to the rest of Illinois. It's practically part of the Ozarks.

This means, naturally, that the people who live there are a little peculiar. No more so than people anywhere, of course. But it's impossible to talk about the area (or the Buffalo River area for that matter) without somebody bringing up how friendly such folks were in the movie Deliverance. Call it "you shore got a purty mouth" syndrome.

But honest, they're just normally weird down there. For example, in the tiny grocery store my friend patronized when he lived in Southern Illinois, he noticed a sign in the window one day. It read, simply: "Not baby beef!

Not baby beef?

What the hell did that mean? That they were out of "regular" beef but had scads of "baby beef?" That they had tons of regular beef but were fresh out of baby beef? Or did they mean that they didn't carry baby beef as a matter of conscience? Why, for that matter, did they express their attitude toward baby beef in such an unnecessarily cryptic, not to say oracular, manner?

Who knows. But it was that very opaqueness, that layering of meaning, that multiplicity of transgressive interpretations that intrigued us. "Not baby beef!" became a catchphrase, and "Beefalo" was just a natural extension--

Hey! Pay attention!

Speaking of English usage, have you ever heard the Australian term for an American, "seppo?" I've read Australian blogs for years and seen the term many times but only recently got around to googling it. It's rhyming slang: yank rhymes with septic tank which is shortened to "seppo." Quite creative. By the way, most Australians don't hate us. (Man, I almost forgot: Happy ANZAC Day, y'all!)

(Credits: Editor from fromoldbooks.org; friendly fellow paying you a compliment on your oral hygiene from freepressed.com.)

Update: We used to camp on Lusk Creek in Shawnee forest. Here's (somebody else's) picture of "Indian Kitchen" on Lusk Creek. (Don't tell Vern Bellecourt it's called that.)

Movieness

A few gems from The Film Snob's Dictionary:

Apparatus

"Comically obtuse blather-term used in semiotics-driven film studies to denote both the camera and the 'cinematic system of meaning'; stubbornly used by semioticions as if in fear that they'll be reamed with a cattle prod if the words camera or narrative pass through their lips."

Howard, Clint

"Cult actor with squeaky voice and enormous cranium, best known for his brief appearances in the movies of A-list older brother Ron." The authors also note that Clint appeared in the weird Star Trek episode 'The Corbomite Maneuver" as the deep-voiced little alien you want to crush with your shoe, Balok.

Siegel, Don

Director of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the Clint Eastwood masterworks Dirty Harry and Escape from Alcatraz. "Siegel elicits strong public endorsements from wannabe-toughster Snobs trying to make up for dermatological and penile shortcomings."

What a racket these guys have. The first in their developing series, The Rock Snob's Dictionary, is probably just as funny as Film Snobs; the last, The Spelunking Snob's Dictionary (to be published in November, 2065), probably won't be.

Panel finds problems in CU tenure process

The panel studying the tenure-granting process at CU will a issue a report that finds, among other things, that "some professors received the job protection without a full review of their work, that post-tenure evaluations aren’t rigorous enough, and that it’s too difficult to fire professors, even if their performance is so poor that students are adversely affected," the Rocky Mountain News says.

Where's Wardo?

The report also claims, according to the Rocky, that "The majority of the 95 randomly selected tenure cases reviewed by the committee . . . showed the university followed processes to the letter, said Howell Estes III, the retired Air Force general who led the investigation."

The majority? Retired Air Force General Howell Estes III? Not reassuring. The Rocky says the 180-page report contains 39 recommendations for changes to CU's tenure-granting process. No link yet, so no idea if the report names any of the professors granted tenure without "full review."

Update: The Post links to the tenure panel's report.

Update II: A CU provost calls the recommended changes "sweeping," but they ain't. Ward Churchill's case was not examined, by the way, and no names are named in the report.

Update III: Churchill comments on new charges of scholarly malfeasance: "Yo. Shutup." (via reader Keziah at Pirate Ballerina.)

Saturday Evening Post, September 23, 1967

Check out the hippie from central casting.


The subhead's great: "Why they act that way." Drunkablog
makes a guess: Could it be--Ell. Ess. Deeeeee?
An ad for The National Observer:


Marvelously patronizing. And do Cubans still think Fidel "is about the only bit of gaiety we have left?" (Trivia: Hunter Thompson wrote for NO.)

A letter to the editor about a piece the week before on (surely coincidentally) the dangers of LSD begins:

Although I am not privy to the "acid" experience, my mind was partially blown by your sensationalistic approach to LSD.

Partially blown.

Stewart Alsop begins a Speaking Out column titled "Why Juanita enjoyed the riot," about the recent unrest in Los Angeles and other cities (dubbed by the MSM of the time and known to this day as the "the long, hot summer"):

Reporter: What were you doing during the riot?

Juanita (a cheerful, rather charming 16-year-old Negro girl): That wasn't no riot. That was a rebellion.

OK, what were you doing during the rebellion?

Juanita (grinning with delight): I was out lootin'.

Alsop concludes:

In the years ahead many sins of omission and commission by the white majority must be expiated, and much money spent. For the immediate future, jobs are essential--this immensely rich country ought to be able to guarantee a job at a living wage to any adult who wants to work. . . . But for the short run there is only one way to make sure that next summer and the summer after that will not be repetitions of the ghastly summer now ending. Force must be used immediately and selectively, as soon as trouble starts. . . . Juanita and her contemporaries must be persuaded right at the beginning, before the "carnival atmosphere" has time to spread, that this riot will not be fun.

In other words, shoot Juanita.

An Ogden Nash poem begins, "I offer one small bit of advice that Billy Graham could write a whole column on/Never ignore any bit of advice offered by King Solomon." It was a bit of all over for Ogden by 1967.

The article on the Smothers Brothers is pre-censorship problems, but here's one of the jokes excised by evil CBS homonculi:

Dick: Tommy, today is Easter Sunday. Do you know what Easter is actually all about?

Tom: Sure. It's the day Jesus Christ rose from his tomb--

Dick: That's right. I'm proud of you. I honestly didn't think you knew.

Tom--and if he sees his shadow, he has to go back in again for six weeks.

The submarine rescue piece is by Peter Maas, and recounts the story of Swede Momsen, inventor of the "Momsen Lung" and the diving bell, the latter of which he used in 1939 to rescue 33 sailors from their crippled submarine off the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Cynical, morose, whining--but what a writer!

Then I get to the actual article about the hippies, and it turns out to be Joan Didion's famous piece, "Slouching Toward Bethlehem." Of course, now I remember that most of the columns collected in the book of the same name were originally published in the Post. Typical passage:

We sit down and have some anise tea. "meditation turns us on," Sandy says. He has a shaved head and the kind of cherubic face usually seen in newpaper photographs of mass murderers. [One] middle-aged man, [George] . . . is making me uneasy because he is in a trance next to me and he stares at me without seeing me.

I feel that my mind is going--George is dead, or we all are--when the telephone suddenly rings.

I used to love Didion's depressive posturing; now it's kind of grating, though her new book, The year of magical thinking, about the death of her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, has gotten good reviews.

Finally, take Y.A. Tittle's advice:


First, put on a helmet to protect your tiny brain when you beat your head against the wall during withdrawal. Make sure it has the number 14 on it!

Fun fact: Y.A.'s full name was Yelberton Abraham Tittle.

Update: Yelberton. Abraham. Tittle.

Drunkablog finds long-lost twin brother

Case Report:

We report the case of a man who had an 11 year history of the delusional idea that he was transparent ("like a piece of glass"), associated with alcohol abuse. The intense fear he experienced when people seemed able to look right through him caused him to hurry along the streets, seeking shadows or darkness in order to hide his face as far as possible. He discovered that alcohol suppressed these symptoms and therefore, during episodes when his delusion was most manifest, he drank heavily.

Update: False alarm. Further down in the case: "He was never financially embarrassed, took pride in his independence and had built his own house." No way we're related.

(Case report from the very interesting Priory.com, a compendium of online medical journals, one of which, the impressively named International Journal of Veterinary Medicine, currently has an article on canine Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.)

PSA: Don't go near the water

For fear of jinxing it (I mentioned our Missouri River trip last year and we didn't go) I haven't said anything before now, but the Drunkablog and a few 'mates are doing a canoe trip in, now, less than two weeks. Eight days on the Buffalo River in Arkansas.

That's the plan anyway. At the landing where we want to put in (as the jargon has it), the Ponca low water bridge (do not attempt to go under bridge!), the river needs to be flowing at two feet. Less than that and it's dry in spots. Right now, the river's flowing at 1.59 feet. Not enough.

This matters because the upper stretch is the most spectacular, scenically speaking, and if we have to start farther downstream we'll miss sights like this:



Which would suck.

But I think we're pretty much committed to doing the trip; it's just a question of how far upriver we'll be able to put in. Rain, please.

(Credit: Waterfall on the Buffalo from the very nice site Ozark Backpacking.)

Update 3:50 p.m. Incredibly, this just in at Drunkablog World Headquarters (via e-mail):

Gents,

It's been raining in Ponca (about a 1/2 inch so far) and there is a 70% of T-storms for tomorrow and next Monday through Wednesday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Note: Exclamation points denote excitement.)

Debriefing

Utilizing his double-naught spy training as never before, the Drunkablog yesterday infiltrated a gathering of left-democrat bloggers, discovered their nefarious plans--and survived to tell the tale.

It was a coffee klatch of doom, a meet 'n' greet of terror, a grin 'n' chin of--well, you get the idea--bagels, orange juice, the brown acid, and free copies of The complete infidel's guide to the Koran--nothing unusual for leftie bloggers--except that yesterday the big klatcher in attendance was Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, aka (cue Psycho music) Kos, of the famous (and infamous) Daily Kos.

It was sort of a setup. Lisa Jones, the talented liberal feminist lesbian author late of Rocky Watch (whose new blog debuts May 10) got an invite from an outfit called ProgressNow to have "coffee with Kos" (pronounced "Kohfee with Kohs") at their offices. The guy with the most heavily visited blog in the U.S. was in Denver to flog his book Crashing the gate: Netroots, grassroots, and the rise of people-powered politics (I'm exhausted from typing that). You can probably figure out what it's about.

Suspicious circumstances

But Jones couldn't make it, so she was kind enough to ask me, your darling Drunkablog, if he might like to attend in her stead. Even after I mentioned my Manchurian Candidate problem ("Markos Moulitsas Zuniga is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever met in my life") Lisa said it'd be okay. Hmmm.

So I showed up, and there were lots of Colorado-brand Democrat movers and shakers there, if the Drunkablog's limited knowledge of such can be trusted. Bloggers like Jeralyn Merritt from TalkLeft, others from New West, Soapblox Colorado and Media Matters; a couple of local Kos diarists; some sort of internet guru for the state dem party; really rich guy and state board of education member Jared Polis; and others less rich and therefore unworthy of mention.

No news

It was actually fairly boring, even for a coffee klatch. Fundraising on the net in various congressional races, the supposed importance of local bloggers--oh, Kos did mention a "vast left wing conspiracy." Something like that, anyway. Sandra Fish of New West provides slightly more detail.

The klatch lasted about an hour and ten minutes, but for some reason hardly anybody ate. Even the big quiche went untouched:


Please excuse the blurry shot. The D-blog was forced to employ surreptitious camera technology. The button says, "Mom, baseball, apple pie and a unified Democratic juggernaut." According to his publisher, if you buy one copy of Kos's book, you get one button; buy five and you get 20!

What's actually important

Check out this picture:


That's Kos. Yes, as everyone points out, he's a little fella looks about 12 years old. But see the card on the table in front of him, next to the Minute Maid product placement? That's the Drunkablog's "business" card, and you can't. freaking. read it.

Man, I would have had that shot enshrined on this site in one stinkin' second. But you can't read the card. Kos took it with him, though--or at least, didn't throw it away right in front of me. It's kind of a neat card, too:


Soon, everybody will have one--by law.

One more important thing: The whole time the Drunkablog was there, meeting people, moving around, taking pictures, free as a boid--his pants were unzipped. No lie. And it wasn't even intentional.

Update: Kos posts on the Denver visit. Despite his unzipped pants, the Drunkablog is not mentioned. Goddamn liberals.

Update II: Glenn Reynolds published his center-right version of the internet-empowers-everyone argument before Kos, and it's even more exhaustingly titled: An army of Davids: How markets and technology empower ordinary people to beat big media, big government and other goliaths. Got it in the mail today, oddly enough.

Light reading

The Drunkablog is currently getting his yocks from Better for all the world: The secret history of forced sterilization and America's quest for racial purity. Initial reaction: One look at the D-blog and these eugenics "scientists" would have fallen to sharpening (okay, dulling) their little scalpels. But, as usual, women got the worst of it. Excerpt:

How do you spell that word?" asked Congressman William Vaile of Colorado.

"M-O-R-O-N," replied [eugenics advocate Harry] Laughlin. "It is a Greek word, meaning 'a foolish person.' . . . [W]e find that the moron girl is highly fertile sexually. She has not any sexual inhibitions, as a rule, and her fecundity is limited only by the number of children and coming in contact with men; that is, physiological, not social, conditions limit the fertility of the average female moron that is not placed in an institution and protected."

The debt the Nazis owed these freaks is apparent in their propaganda war against (and sexualized fascination with) the Jews, but author Harry Bruinius doesn't fudge it: in the U.S. and Britain, eugenics and forced sterilization were largely supported by progressive zealots eager to eliminate the "unfit" for the good of humanity. Of course, as the omni-maniacal blogger Crazy John Ray never tires of pointing out, Nazism itself was a socialist movement (scroll down to near the end of the "Elsewhere" post).

Two Pulitzers for Rocky

Congratulations to Jim Sheeler and Todd Heisler, who won in the feature writing and feature photography categories, respectively, for the moving series Final Salute, "which told the story of the U.S. Marines who have the difficult task of making death notifications and caring for the loved ones left behind."

"RockyTalk Live" blogger Mark Wolf posts on the newsroom celebration; the Denver Post somehow refrains from gushing, contenting itself with the AP story; and Rocky editor John Temple hasn't updated his blog yet. And for pity's sake, where's the self-congratulatory editorial? (Oh, it's coming.)

Update via hotline from the Drunkawife: "What is a pulit, and why is it surprised?"

Update II: The Rocky's Linda Seebach, magnanimous in victory: "One more and we'll have caught the Denver Post -- and our four are all this century."

Update III: Mike Littwin gushes all over himself.

Update IV--4/19/06: Remarkably, Gateway Pundit uses the photo that won Todd Heisler the Pulitzer to help prove that Cindy Sheehan is a mendacious liar.

Sunday funnies

Comment #5 at Tim Blair's about the picture accompanying this slagging of an "angry liberal" blogger in the Washington Post yesterday:

”...and I'm stabbing him and stabbing him and he keeps saying ‘Why do you hate freedom?’ with that smirk and there’s blood everywhere but HE JUST WON’T DIE and then Cheney and Rove pull me off him and then I woke up."--Posted by Jim Treacher.

Update: The article and particularly the photo are totally unfair, of course.

Picture

Picture

Picture

Picture

Technology on the march

Beautiful mutants!

Lack of postagings due to computer problems. Hard drive involved. Warranty on computer valid only until May 8. Race against time. Drunkablog fleet neither of foot nor brain. Luck needed. Updates when possible.

Update: It's getting better.

World News Roundup

Actually just junk I read in the Denver papers:

Remember Colorado, the "Hate State?" We're back! Will Perkins, the "Colorado Springs car dealer" (a title that precedes the man's name like "Phillipine strongman" used to precede "Marcos") who organized passage of Amendment 2, is now pushing an initiative that would "outlaw civil unions or domestic partnerships."

The News' television critic Dusty Saunders has been with the paper for 53 years, most of them in that slot. The guy is a living repository of television history, which probably works well at parties.

Why, after breathlessly describing the thrill of securing a seat in the courtroom at the beginning of the "historic" Enron trial, and then of actually shaking ex-CEO Jeffrey Skilling's paw, is Post business columnist Al Lewis twiddling his, er, thumbs in Denver while Skilling is actually on the stand, testifying?

Rocky editor John Temple's blog shlumps along with three posts since March 31--if one counts yet another defense of his pet "citizen journalism" site, Yourhub.com, from yet another media critic. He hasn't mentioned it, so I wonder if Temple has seen Jay Rosen's (and his cloyingly named "Blue Plate Special" students') ranking of the best blogging newspapers in the U.S. The News is not among them. (Neither, to be fair, is the Post, which shares Yourhub with the News but doesn't go on and on about it like it's some revolutionary concept.)

Denver Baptists write to apologize for the recent visit of the verminous Reverend Fred Phelps' in his ongoing "protest [at] the funerals of fallen American soldiers, claiming that their deaths were God's judgment on our nation for condoning homosexuality." He claims to be a Baptist, and they don't like it.

Finally, in the Post cute sack o' crap Cindy Rodriguez wags her cute little poop-filled finger at us:

We all have some element of racism inside us and it will be passed on to succeeding generations unless we purge [oh, baby!] ourselves of it.

I try to work on my own [sic], which is what led me to an "unlearning racism" workshop at the Jewish Community Center in Boulder.

The workshop, led by Lee Mun Wah, an internationally known diversity trainer, drew 150 people. . . .

We watched "Last Chance for Eden," a documentary following nine people of different ethnicities as they participated in a diversity retreat.

In the film, two Caucasian men spoke about feeling like they are under attack. An Asian-American woman said people assume she's heterosexual but when they learn she's not they say to her, "What a waste."

An African-American man said people have made derogatory remarks about blacks in front of him and then say, "I don't mean you."

At the end of the film Lee asked us to pair with a stranger to discuss what we learned. The white woman I sat with talked about feeling frustrated that racism still existed. . . .

How unexpected.

After the workshop, people in the audience apologized. They didn't realize they had been accomplices in keeping the status quo. . . .

Stupid questions (a Drunkablog specialty!): What race were the audience apologizers, do you suppose? And were they smacked with Little Red Books while they made their self-criticisms?

Update: Rocky editorial writer Linda Seebach took iss-ee-uu in an e-mail with my gentle yet incisive ("sack o' crap") mockery of Rodriguez's account of Lee Mun Wah's "unlearning racism" workshop. Seebach attended a version of the workshop in 1995 and found it, to her surprise, laudable. I'll still pass. Can't find the quote, but wasn't it C.S. Lewis who said that (paraphrasing here) much of what is wrong in the world can be traced to the rise of the "workshop?" I'm stickin' with the C-man (as his friends called him) on that.

"U.S.A.! U.S.A!"

That's what the chant sounded like, anyway, until Billy Bob and I slouched closer to the protest against the Mexican immigration bill--or, as the Denver Post ultra-delicately put it, "to call attention to reforming the country's immigration laws"--at Sloan Lake Park this evening.

Of course, what they were really chanting was "Si se puede! Si se puede!"

The gathering was billed as a vigil for those who've died attempting to cross the border--not, of course, like they used to in Berlin, trying to get out, but by heat stroke, hypothermia, and dehydration, trying to get in.

There were maybe 3-4000 people there, and more coming as I left. Lots of kids, lots of dogs, lots of old folks in lawn chairs. In other words, non-militants.



Stinking capitalists were out in force too.


As were the ubiquitous Aztec dancer-persons. They never miss a protest.



The cops were everywhere, and clearly itching to bust some hippie--I mean Mexican!--skull.

Couldn't really hear the speakers (the sound system sucked), but think I caught an "indigenous" or two. Boring. If I wanted to be linked by LGF, I had to find some commies, and fast. What to do? Hire a couple of bums to wear Che shirts? Too obvious. Oh, and the Drunkablog does not fake the news. (He's a journalist.) But finally, paydirt: a Cuban flag with bonus Che applique:



But no wind. All day long it's gusting like crazy; at sundown, nada.


Rats! Obviously a Cuban flag, but what's Loretta Lynn doing on it?



There you go! Che! See? Radicals.



Well, one radical. Chubby girl wearing a bandanna. I was sort of embarrassed for her. The only Che flag at the rally, the only bandanna. Right on, dork! No idea if International ANSWER (yes, I omit the periods even though they don't) was backing her.


Anyway, it was a beautiful evening for a protest.

(Credit: Loretta Lynn pic from The Southern Diaspora.)

Update: The Rocky had a photo of the candlelight part of the vigil on their front page for about 43 seconds before it was replaced by Carmelo Anthony going up for a shot in the Nuggets' game tonight (which won them the division title). Oh, here's the Post and News on the downtown rally.

Lincolniana

My sister Sabra (I've always wondered just how many other non-Jewish women bear that name) sent me this strange photo, part of an old recruiting ad for Lincoln College in Lincoln, Illinois:

Believe it or not: The guy on the ri--left, rather,
is the Drunkablog's father.

No idea who the nobly thrust-chinned young woman is. Probably just some "jayhoo" (as my dad's mother would have called her).

The copy, naturally, is putrid:

Hard to read, but it begins, "Seventy-five years ago, the immortal shadow of the Great Humanitarian fell before the feet of future generations." Yeesh. It also just happened to be the 75th anniversary of the college's founding (1865). So it was 1940 and dad was 24.

Oddly, besides being a little old for the student role, my father never even attended Lincoln College. My grandfather on my mother's side, however, did, around 1912. So, briefly and much later, did the Drunkablog, where he majored in drug abuse with a minor in Buckhorn beer.

Here's Lincoln College's original building:

University Hall (1866).

Adventure afoot

One broiling Friday afternoon during summer session, when University Hall was both wide open and nearly empty (one doubts things are still so casual), a friend and I skulked up to the padlocked 3rd floor door that led to the attic, took it off its hinges, and, after carefully replacing it to look undisturbed, skulked up the stairs. Just to have a look. We thought we were so cool.

And our curiosity was rewarded. The attic was empty, but the walls and ceiling were covered with students' names, class mottoes, drawings and "funny" sayings from as far back as the 1870s through (I think) the 1920s, when the attic was apparently closed for good to all but maintenance types and inspectors.

And I didn't have a camera. Damn.

Update: Check this out: I mentioned my long-ago little adventure to Sabra, and she said she had a good friend whose husband had something to do with security at Lincoln College. Today she called this friend, who said she thought it would be fine with her husband if we went up in the attic and looked around. So when I'm in Illinois in July that's what we're going to do. Bee-zarre. But if this comes off you can bet I'll have a bloody camera with me.

Update II: I can't find "jayhoo" in the wiki-list of American slang terms for either "promiscuous woman" or "prostitute." It should be in there. Later: Can't find it in any (free online) slang dictionary. Would one of the Drunkablog's many supremely literate, word-savvy, and wealthy readers happen to have a copy of the DARE? If so, please see if "jayhoo" is in it. Thank you.

Update III: Here's a watercolor of University Hall by an outfit that specializes in selling watercolors of college campuses. Hooray for capitalism.

The great debate

Poor Pirate Ballerina worked his tiny fused digits to the bone liveblogging the Horowitz-Churchill debate this evening, and it's good stuff. Some of the comments are sharp, too (mine are just whiny). The Rocky, meanwhile, touts the debate on its front page, and provides a link to their five-part series on Churchill. No post-debate story yet. As a wise man with a Moe haircut once (well, a few thousand times) said: Advantage: bloggers!

Update: "Churchill, Horowitz smack each other with kid gloves." The Rocky's M.E. Sprengelmeyer "plays" the dope:

Organizers billed the event on stage at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., as "Academia's Royal Rumble." The two combatants struck one another with the longest words they could find — many of them so long they would
not fit on a standard reporter's notebook.

Sprengelmeyer is definitely a standard reporter. He [Update: Or she! I have no idea what sex Sprengelmeyer is] continues:

In one colorful exchange, Churchill told a story about being in the eighth grade in Illinois in 1960, and casting a vote for the socialist candidate in a mock presidential election.

"I didn't know what a socialist was," he said. "It just sounded like a cool thing to do." He said teachers gave him detention for two weeks: "Now that is indoctrination."

That's one I never heard before, and typically convenient for Churchill.

Then Sprengelmeyer explains the Little Entenmanns essay:

Churchill was widely denounced for the essay, which called people who died inside the World Trade Center "little Eichmanns," and somehow complicit in a deadly U.S. foreign policy that inspired the attacks.

Somehow? Churchill is quite explicit on the point. Those who worked in the twin towers (except the night clean-up crews, I believe) were fascist hegemonist greedheads who polluted and impoverished the world to satisfy their lust for etc. Therefore they deserved what they got. Nothing's clearer. So Sprengelmeyer (I'm getting tired of typing that name) is either lazy or playing dumb.

Finally Sprengelmeyer gives his [or her! see above!] opinion of an incident during the debate:

Horowitz landed the least scholarly attack of the night, saying of Overland High School geography teacher Jay Bennish, "The point here is, that teacher is an ignoramus."

Why is that unscholarly? Bennish is an ignoramus.

Update: Rocky's headline for Sprengelmeyer's story changed overnight.

Update II: The Post's post-debate piece has the two-weeks'-detention-for-voting-socialist yarn, too.

Book talk

Somebody in a comment thread somewhere (Hey, I'm a journalist!) linked to this Jonathan Yardley review of The Easy Way to Start Smoking: A Step-by-Step Guide to Smoking Twenty Cigarettes a Day -- And Loads More in the Evening. Read the whole thing, but here's Yardley on the authors' solution to a fear from which the diehard smoker is never quite free:

They steer you through that most desperate crisis -- "it's 2 a.m. and I have run out of matches and can't find a lighter" -- when you can't get the stove or the gas grill to light. One suggestion: "Rip the front off the gas boiler and smash the little window in the middle with your fist. Here you will find your friend -- the pilot light."

Sitrep

Almost glommed for b & e today because I arrived early to this parenting class and tried to get into the building before anyone else was there. It's in Idaho Springs, which is terminally touristy, but when I found all the doors to the place locked I wandered around and took a picture or two.

Unfortunately, I also kept running into the (several) people who'd already observed me trying doors on this damn building. You could tell they thought I was a perv. Never helps in these situations that I look like a perv. Skulking around with my filthy camera.

Drunkablog readers will also have (quite naturally) assumed that the Drunkablog must have been required to attend this parenting class, whether by court order or some other legal mechanism.

But ho, no!

The Drunkawife teaches it, and he began attending early on in a spirit of healthy curiosity. It turned out to be such a soap opera (with which the Drunkablog is not involved!) that the Drunkablog is addicted. Plus the doc says the Drunkablog needs to get out more.

Update: We're never safe from clowns, are we? "Slipknot." Gonna be up late tonight.

Update II: Almost glommed for b & e? Almost glommed for b & e? Glommed doesn't even sound right there. But I see from my crappy online dictionary that it is: "[v] to seize upon or latch onto something; 'The Republicans glommed onto Whitewater'; [v] take by theft; 'Someone snitched my wallet!'"

So, I was almost glommed by the cops. Still sounds stupid.

Update III: "Someone snitched my wallet!"? That sounds pretty stupid too.

Drunkablog readers: Nothing left to live for

Please don't harm yourselves any more than usual, but the Drunkablog must take his semi-lemon of a Dell in for service. The poor thing appears to have Alzheimer's and is so slow the Drunkablog can easily outperform it in complex calculations.

With any luck I'll have it back tomorrow and we'll have a nice chat. If not. . .

This is scary.

Noam Chomsky--in the news!

Sorry. I'll keep it to a one-paragraph quote as I so egregiously failed to do recently in mocking a similar but lesser-known lunatic. It's from a previously unpublished (I think) interview which contains several gems of Chomp-speak, including this one on CU's investigation of the charges of plagiarism and scholarly misconduct against Ward Churchill:

You could take the entire Harvard faculty and investigate them as to how, whether they followed proper scholarly procedures, and I am certain you will find a huge number of cases where they don’t. If you want me to give you examples I can, where people publish, respected people, distinguished professors, publish what they know to be outright lies, fabrication, for the purpose of defamation, for the purpose of state worship and so on. There’s case after case about this. I mean, I’ve actually published some of them. Most of them I don’t bother with because I don’t like to explore these gutters. But, if anyone wants to carry out such inquiries it’ll be easy. Take the, I’ll tell you where ever [sic] to start.

Chomsky the ruthless exposer of academic fraud! He's like the Keith Windschuttle of America! Almost unbelievably, however, interviewer Grant Crowell fails to follow up on this highly senile provocative opinion. Crowell used to write for the Hawaii Reporter. He may still, but Pirate Ballerina (from whom I got the link, and who has his own fave quotes) describes him as a "documentarian." One thing he ain't is a proofreader. The transcript is a mess.

Without further Delay

Tom Delay is abandoning his reelection bid, Chris Mathews just told below-average guy Joe Scarborough. Drunkablog reax: Do Delay and Algore share the same luxuriant but tragically undersized hairpiece? And why do politicians so often have strange hair? (No links; you can think of your own examples.)

Nothing can stop them now

Rockies are 1-0, beating the Arizona Diamondbacks 3-2 in 11 on Opening Day. Rockiez rule!

Slickhorn

Purty picture by a gink going under the name of Zack. It was taken--well, can't find my notes, but I think it was taken in Slickhorn Gulch on the San Juan River in Utah.

Disorienting: Cliffs reflected in a Slickhorn pool (photo courtesy Dan "Dan'l" Zack).
Here's a shot (same trip, but I took it) of yet another pool in Slickhorn (from a March post).

Essence of river revealed

The San Juan is very strange. For one thing, it sometimes smells like an oil refinery: the stuff seeps from the cliffs into the water, which as a result not only stinks but is actually greasy.

For another, a phenomenon known as "sand waves" occurs on the San Juan. Here's a description of the natural oddity: "The waves, uncommon on most rivers, form because of the high silt load and the river’s steep gradient. Sand ripples form on the bottom of the river and waves build in response."

Something like that. Utah.com says, "Sand waves can form huge rippling waves up to eight feet high! They give a fun and certainly exciting ride." (How oddly phrased.)

Third, the San Juan forms part of the northern boundary of the Navajo Nation (another of those sites that won't let you link, God knows why; it's totally boring: www.navajo.org). Anyway, the left bank is all Navajo land and requires a separate (but cheap!) permit.

Update: Here's a San Juan River photography workshop. No idea if it's any good, but the site has some beautiful large-format photos.

Update II: A 1990 NYT article on the San Juan.

Update III: By "large-format" I mean the photos were taken with a large-format camera, not that they're huge files. They're not.