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Drooling on the Pillow

Saturday, December 25, 2004


Hockey Sweat Shirt, Check
Cammo PJs, Check
Let's Roll Posted by Hello

I just wanted to add one note to this. What she's doing here is her little robot joy-dance, her version of the Snoopy joy-dance, because she knows full well that there is a red Gameboy SP there in her right hand.
Posted by: Sluggo / 6:24 PM
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The Jack Daniels Item Was Mine Posted by Hello
Posted by: Sluggo / 6:21 PM
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Thursday, December 23, 2004

Cracking a Cold One 

In the late seventies I was living in the Pacific Northwest. I was doing one-week stock in Helena, Montana and, in the winter, living mostly in Pullman, Washington, living off WSU co-eds. At the time you could not buy Coors beer in the state of Washington and Coors beer, therefore, was what your smart young Couger wanted to drink. At the time I was driving a 1953 Hudson (the loss of which was among the five dumbest things I've ever done (and that's saying something)) and one of my sources of income was driving the eight miles into Moscow, Idaho, filling the capacious trunk with Coors and selling the amber liquid to the Greeks on campus.

Coors is a decent beer. I've got no problem with Coors. In fact, Coors is one of the few beers you would have a hard time finding in Berkeley. It's a red state beer. The Coors family has a long standing reputation for conservative activism. It's a beer that pisses off the people it's a pleasure to piss off. So Coors is a good thing.

It's current ad campaign, on the other hand, is a bad thing. The coldest tasting beer? WTF? If you have ever, in your life, lifted a frosty, put it down and said, "Mmmm, that tasted cold," you win a life-time supply of Stroh's. A beaker of medical waste, left in the reefer for a few hours "tastes" cold. Cold is not a category of "taste". No more than brown, bubbly or liquidy. They're not trying to say that it has a uniquely wonderful taste when it is cold. All they're saying is that it tastes "cold", whatever that tastes like.

I love beer commercials. There's some great ones out there now. Please, someone, tell me there's a level of irony I'm being deaf to here. Please. I won't be embarassed.
Posted by: Sluggo / 7:11 PM
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And a Happy New Year 

I'm just mooching around the office waiting for a decent hour to go Code 7.

Meanwhile, let me wish you all a merry Christmas. I like that whole 'merry' thing. It means an absence of anxiety or fear, a vacuum of anger, an utter lack of envy or bitterness. It means a heart filled with humor, lightness and generosity. A plenum of contentment. It means you know where your next meal is coming from and you know there are people who care about you. It means you know about the sweetness of life.

I wish you the merriest of Christmases.
Posted by: Sluggo / 2:35 PM
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I Want the DeCavalcante Model 

Through John Shabe of The Jersey Side, I learned that Barista of Bloomfield Avenue wants to know what we want for Christmas. I climbed up in her lap and asked for a Cadillac New Jersey.
Posted by: Sluggo / 1:15 PM
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Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Jack Newfield, R.I.P 

With Moynahan gone and now Newfield, liberals to admire are getting pretty thin on the ground. Any nominations?
Posted by: Sluggo / 10:38 AM
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Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Speak For Yourself, Nitwit 

Many critics of Social Security reform have hinted as much, but Richard Cohen in his Washington Post column today comes right out and says it: Americans are too dumb to make investment decisions on their own for their retirement.

From his point of view, I guess this makes sense. After all, Americans were dumb enough to vote George Bush back into office. Lets keep sharp objects and 12.5% of their income away from them.

Well.

He goes on to make an extended, painfully extended analogy between WMD and the Social Security "crisis" (scare quotes his) contending that the administration could not be trusted on the one and shouldn't be trusted on the other.

Let's allow him the analogy, but look at it in a different way. Critics of the war, those who believed it was the wrong war at the wrong time were implicitly making the case for the status quo ante. "Of course Saddam is a monster, but . . ." They allowed themselves to believe sanctions were working, that the international community was having an effect and that the U.N. was the proper forum to settle the matter. Two years latter there remains much more evidence that there were, in fact, WMD than for these three contentions.

Of course, Social Security isn't going to blow up tomorrow. We could wait ten years. Or twenty. And then what? Richard Cohen has the answer. Raise taxes on the "rich" (scare quotes mine). So we put off reform until the whole thing is ready to tumble and the plan is to throw 2 trillion in new taxes into an economy that's decades away. What if it happens to be during a recession? What if any one of a hundred factors make this unworkable?

Why don't we just buy a lot of lottery tickets?
Posted by: Sluggo / 10:13 AM
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Monday, December 20, 2004

Abondonza 

I was under the impression that I was headed for a Christmas party on Friday night. I'm sure Lane told me what the deal was, but it slipped through the widening gaps.

It was, actually, sort of a combination launch party and thank you for people who had helped an old friend of Lane's produce an instructional DVD on voice-overs.

It was held at Monte's, an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn that's been around since 1906. An old Sinatra hang-out. I include a link because you want to go there.

The food was unbelievable. So good and it just kept on coming and coming. It's a beautiful place. It looks like the template for every Italian restaurant you've ever seen, with the fresco of Venice and the red banquettes. But this is the real deal. It was there first. And I'm so glad there was someone there from Jersey to drive us home because you had to wrestle with the waitress to stop them pouring the wine. Actually, I don't remember wrestling with them, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Posted by: Sluggo / 1:47 PM
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Hotel Rwanda 

Last night we watched, courtesy of my friend Ian, Hotel Rwanda. It's almost unbearable to watch, although it's a little difficult to follow the politics unless you're somewhat familiar with what went on. Since it follows the story of a man who sheltered 1,200 people in the hotel he managed, it's not anywhere near as brutal and bloody as it might be. What does come through with perfect clarity, however, is that two men, Kofi Annan and Bill Clinton, still alive and still powerful, bear much of the responsibility for what happened because they had in their hands the power to stop the genocide and they decided, for bureaucratic and political reasons, not to. In a country the size of West Virginia 800,000 people were slaughtered, retail, by hand, up close, mostly by machete. Clinton has admittted he made a mistake, but, I don't know, I don't think that really gets him off the hook. Do you?

The U.S., the U.N. and France, shamed themselves by acting out of a combination of greed, cowardice and moral idiocy.

Speaking of Annan, read Kenneth Cain at Opinion Journal this morning on the real reason Annan must go.
Posted by: Sluggo / 10:51 AM
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Frankly, my dear . . . 

Via 2Blowhards, a competition for the cheesiest movie lines ever, won by Titanic's "I'm the king of the world!" Independence Day makes an appearance, but not with my favorite line. It happens early when a bunch of New Age nitwits gather on top of the tallest building in Los Angeles to greet the visitors from outerspace. As the alien ship (the size of Rhode Island) settles directly over them and a probe pointed at them begins powering up, one of the nitwits turns to another and says, "I've got a bad feeling about this."
Posted by: Sluggo / 10:20 AM
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Sunday, December 19, 2004

A Very G'day 

Lift one for Mr. John Howard, who tomorrow will begin another term as Australia's Prime Minister. America, and freedom, doesn't have a better friend.
Posted by: Sluggo / 11:47 PM
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