[Note: Movable Snipe is a week-long feature wherein two writers read and evaluate five blogs, sending each other one letter a day. This week's Snipers are Michael Helke and Fiona Maazel. Michael's first letter can be accessed here; Fiona's response to it, here. Day Two: Michael; Fiona. Day Three: Fiona; Michael. Day Four: Michael.]
Happy VD, Helke. I once wrote a song called “Immaculate VD” for a friend of mine. “Immaculate VD is what she had, woke up one day predictably sad…” And so on. Awful stuff. But oh, the memories.
You know, I was thinking about the anniversary of the fatwa against Rushdie today. 3 Quarks didn’t even have to remind me. My love life is such that this is the sort of thing I associate with 2.14. Rushdie, on the other hand, has little to complain about in this department. Especially since Turkey is the new Iran when it comes to harassing or, I suppose, killing dissident writers, e.g. Ömer Asan, Elif Shafak, and Orhan Pamuk, who, Elegant Variation tells us, has immigrated to the U.S. To New York, in fact. Don’t you feel like there’s a neighborhood bar somewhere in this story? If your country wants to kill you, dollar beers at the Beekman Arms.
Apropos Dawkins on 3 Quarks, I wonder what he’d say about this Dr. Ross fellow who, according to the NYT, is a “young earth creationist” cum paleontologist who dates the earth back 10, 000 years or 65 million, depending on which hat he’s wearing. I cannot understand this at all. The man’s a scientist working with fossils and data who somehow disbelieves the material he works with all day? Dawkins would probably call him a fool. Have you ever seen the Atheism Tapes? A bunch of interviews with renown atheists, Dawkins and Arthur Miller, among them, conducted by the somewhat windy but always fascinating Jonathan Miller? I recommend them, if they slipped your radar.
As for Drezner and the Center for American Progress’s poll, what do you expect? No conservative wants to hear that even his campadres are jumping ship. I checked the list of participants and while I didn’t recognize a lot of the names—besides Drezner, of course—I did notice the bit where the CAP asked the participants to characterize their bias. I can only assume the self-proclaimed conservatives are actual conservatives, not liberals hellbent on infiltrating the CAP’s poll. On a side note, didn’t that graphic of the poll results seem sort of fancy for Drezner? Ugliest site ever, but nice graph!
On Crooked Timber—these people are really starting to scare me. Why do they all know so much about the American Maoist Movement? And why do I know so little? I went to school with one of the Weathermen and I still know less than these people. What the hell is the Klonskyite CP(M-L)? The farther along I got in the comments, the more my eyes glazed over. I feel like this is a self-indictment, though I am trying hard to make it their fault.
Thank God for the Scanner! I’m not reading Nerve for the content—sorry, Waters—I’m just in it for the laughs. That period lesbian song from Buffy they featured today? Hilarious. She levitates. She cums. She cums under a “Willow” tree. Stop reading the main pages, Helke, and just go to the Scanner.
She went to parties, but grief accrued Immaculate VD is solitude.
G’night.
f.
Keep ‘em coming… you all do such a great job at such Concepts… can’t tell you how much I, for one appreciate all you do! —- Mobilier outdoor
the most common table lamp these days still use incandescent lamp but some of them use compact fluorescent lamps which are cool to touch*
The the next occasion I read a blog, I hope so it doesnt disappoint me about brussels. Get real, I know it was my solution to read, but I personally thought youd have some thing interesting to mention. All I hear is a number of whining about something that you could fix if you werent too busy interested in attention.