What in the hell …

This post at Eli’s reminded me, I hate fairness. (more…)

We do not torture, President Bush famously declared. As it turns out, it’s official, we do. The chorus of outrage on the right would be hilarious if it weren’t so disgusting: “now we can’t break the law anymore” is what the torture defenders and memo-release critics are really crying. The subtext is “oh shit please don’t bring us and our pals up on charges.” The stupidest part is that torture isn’t an effective thing to do and helps the ostensible enemy.

Repulsed my ineffective anger and I take refuge in angry song lyrics:

Donald wept through the proceedings. His tears soaked through the canvas that cloaked his twisted face and they stained his orange jumpsuit where with such rare distinction he once displayed the evidence of his outstanding contributions to the maintenance of a kingdom come. But those days are gone. He’s nothing more than a number on a docket thick with shareholders, engineers, PR firms, politicians: war-profiteers. How the fuck did I end up here? This just isn’t fair. Ain’t no place for a millionaire. He searches for the words to stop this table in mid-turn, like “we are but old men” and “we only did what we were told,” but the laughter from the gallery drowns out these vestiges of a profession’s oldest defense. The court will direct the record to reflect compliments from the bench; you sir, are central casting’s crowning achievement. And for your outstanding performance in a comedic role, I’d like to dedicate the findings of the jury to the dead. But how can one man ever repay a debt so appalling? Can’t gouge 10,000 eyes from a single head so I think we should observe a sentence that will serve to satisfy both a sense of function and poetry: so you will spend the rest of your days drenched in sweat, with your face drawn in a rictus of terror as you remove another buried land mine fuse. Meanwhile, 100 yards back behind the sandbags, a legless foreman pulls the trigger on a red megaphone. Squelching feedback. Drunken laughter. Broken English. His dead daughter’s picture. Time and tide, no one can anticipate the inevitable waves of change.

Excerpts from Mark Taylor’s op ed in today’s NY Times. No time to post substantive comments. For now, Taylor opens with a comparison between higher ed and auto - does anyone know of a good criticism of arguments that the U.S. auto industry needs to be restructured? My sense is that “restructure auto” is code for union busting and other pieces of an anti-working class agenda.

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Not a rhetorical question. Got recommendations? I’d love to hear them.

I’ll put up a list of more stuff I want to read soon-ish.

A fucking novel, that’s what, and maybe some comic books. And I’m going to watch some damn TV and start going back to the gym (I was doing so good, 3 times week since the second week of january but then I hurt my neck and haven’t been for like two weeks no). That’s what I’m gonna do. Fucking hell. Stupid world.
And then I will read the following (more…)

Part of what prompted the text dump in my last post was that I just stepped down from a position in the international. I’ve got some thoughts on that that I’ll be mulling over, started them today on paper. For now, a few random things. (more…)

So recently I posted some IWW stuff I’d been writing for the paper and a work in progress. For a while I was hesitant to post that sort stuff here, only doing so occasionally, I don’t really know why. Trying to keep my life compartmentalized I guess. Anyhow, here’s everything else I got written so far. Some of it’s been circulated, I think all of it actually. Formatting isn’t very good and the post is super long, sorry, just trying to get these up here before I forget again. (more…)

Much in life’s stressful lately, and annoying, and sleepless, but here’s what’s awesome: we’re having a baby. That’s the coolest thing ever. I got to feel the baby kick for the first time (I mean first I could feel it with my hand on my wife’s belly) this week. That was awesome. Awesomer yet: I got to be at the ultrasound on Friday and see the baby swimming around doing a leg motion like riding a bike, bringing hands up to face like sucking a thumb, and swallowing. Very cool.

Awesomest of all: we found out we’re having a girl. My wife and I have talked about this a bit - it’s a bit funny to love someone so much who you haven’t met yet, but that’s how it is. It’s great to find out a bit more about her and I’m looking forward to meeting her eventually.

While a few days ago if anyone had asked me I’d have said “I’d prefer to have a boy” I’m in no way sorry we’re having a girl. It’s like… I love the baby exactly how she is and wouldn’t make her different, so her being a girl is perfect.

On the preference of genders, here was my rationale. I’ve had this conversation a few times and it seems to be pretty strongly gendered in terms of reactions. With men, the conversation and reasoning goes something like this: imagine having a teenaged son. Imagine having a teenaged daughter. Which is more frightening? The answer is having a daughter. With women, there tends to be a rejoinder along the lines of “we’re not as fragile as you think we are.” That’s totally fair. It *is* patronizing to say “gosh, men are so awful” and all that as a part of a preference in a hypothetical situation about whether one wants a boy or a girl baby. What I mean is, the reasoning process if taken very literally would go something like this: “patriarchy is so awful for women, it’d be better to be a man instead.” That’s stupid - it’s conceding patriarchal values out of an ostensibly feminist value system.

Other gender point - the pregnancy and baby gender stuff has been instructive in another way. I would never say that gender is a key piece of anyone’s humanity. At the same time, gaining a gender specific pronoun - our baby has become “she” and ceased to be “it” - has made her less abstract to me, more real, more of a person. I know this doesn’t have to be that way, but it was for me. Instructive about my own make up, I think.

Anyhow, what I prefer in a baby is my baby. I’m very excited to meet her when she’s born in the end of August. She’s the coolest.