The Dead

We are fighting Osama abroad, but here at home we have to deal with anthrax-wielding lunatics. We have some sickos among us, and the nation needs to take some antibiotics. What is the equivalent of societal Cipro? Thanks for the link to Media Whores Online, which hard-core liberals will want to bookmark.
And before you offer your unwavering support for our government, you may wish to read this transcript of a Q&A with Noam Chomsky. He offers his usual astute but somewhat extreme observations about the current situation and how our government is able to define the moral
terminology of this battle against Osama. Not that Osama isn't a bad man that deserves to be spanked. But nothing is ever as clean as it appears, and by the time this is all over, everyone's hands will be dirty. Let's not pretend that there aren't lots of poor Afghans dying right now because we've cut off aid, or bombed the hell out of the land that they live in. To defend the way that we live, though, perhaps we must accept that type of moral arithmetic. Anyway, go read the article. Chomsky is nothing if not thought-provoking, even if he's impossible to debate and slightly insane.
Getting nostalgic for the early days of the web? Take yourself back.
Dubya popped up on the scoreboard during the seventh inning stretch of Game One of the World Series and once again said "make no mistake about it." In this case,
"Make no mistake about it, we will triumph over the evil ones." Something like that. Dubya, YOU make no mistake about it.
Finally visited Blogdex today. It crawls weblogs all over the web and has indexes for the most linked to websites among
weblogs. Interesting stuff from the all-time index:
Blogger is number one. Seems to be the most popular weblog software by far. I wonder if it was that mention in Wired magazine. That's how I first heard of it.
Lots of random weblog related community sites, indexes.
Then Google shows up. Not surprisingly. The search engine of choice for, well, everyone I know. One of the great user interfaces of this first era of the popular world wide web.
The Onion is next at number six. As the Simpsons starts to get long in the tooth, perhaps it is The Onion which has come to carry the banner for humor for those who like to think of themselves as cognoscenti of fine humor.
If you take the word of the community as gospel, then the king of personal weblogs is kottke.org, the top-ranked personal weblog.
Second to Blogger in popularity in the weblog software arena is Greymatter.
CNN.com is the highest ranked news site. Then come three sites I also use a lot: Salon, Memepool, Slashdot.org. Man, I'm like the average weblogger. I link to those sites all the time.
I just realized that song they play at the Mariners games when Kazuhiro Sasaki comes into the game comes from a Paul Oakenfold CD. Of course, he may have stolen, er, sampled it from someone else. It's off of Two Years of Oakenfold at Cream,
Disc One. Not sure what track #. Just in case you want to play it on those days when you need that extra motivation when being called down for breakfast.
My football cup runneth over. Stanford is #14 in the latest BCS rankings, and the Bears made a miraculous comeback today against the hated 49ers to move to 5-1. No one in Seattle really plays football. I miss going out on fall days with Nate, Rick, Vijay, Pavan, and all those folks to chuck the football around. The college days, with no pads hitting, the annual Rice Bowl, and the feeling of pain all over the body the next day. Of all the types of athletic pain I've felt in my life, nothing matched that. There's nothing better than hitting some weight-room sculpted meathead so hard he forgets his own name. My roommate Mark, who was no big weight-lifter, put a hit on some guy that gave him a concussion, and I still remember the sound of it so many years later.
I'm not sure how Stanford made it to #14 in the BCS. I remember a bunch of sites picked us to be last in the Pac-10 this year. We never have any Heisman caliber athletes, and we don't really crank out a lot of Pro-Bowl NFL studs. Teyo Johnson is perhaps our only truly freakish athletic talent. Our backup QB, and now starter, Chris Lewis, is raw, erratic. Throws a lot of interceptions. Our defense is not going to earn any nicknames. Must be good coaching.
In preparation for the novel I'm going to write starting Thursday, I've started transcribing James Joyce's The Dead again. Hopefully the ghost of Joyce's soul will inhabit me for a few hours a day. Enough to crank out 2000 words or so.
Bill bought a house. I wish I could pull the trigger. If I thought I'd definitely stay in Seattle another 3 years I'd do the same. Renting feels so 26.