So, how many more of these OH MY GOD, A PAKISTANI WOMAN WAS CAUGHT SMUGGLING LIQUID EXPLOSIVES ONTO A PLANE!

Hopefully, people are starting to catch on to SNAKES ON A PLANE!

Get some laser-printable address labels, and print HOOPS! on them in as large a font as will fit, and then stick them just to the right of the "W" on those "W in 2004" stickers so they read WHOOPS!

Fun, but illegal and disrespectful, so don't do it anybody.

Someone writes something on an airline's sick bag about planting a bomb: bring down the plane, major security alert, etc etc. (If you were in charge, would you dare to do anything less right now?)

You wannabe a terrorist today? You don't need bombs. You don't need guns. You don't even need sharp implements. All you need is a piece of paper and a pen.

Yes. The terrorists have already won.

"Karr has apparently been living abroad since being released from a California jail in 2001 after an arrest on child pornography charges. He is being brought to Colorado, where he will face charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping and child sexual assault, Ann Hurt, an official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said in Thailand."

Like most sane people, my reaction was "WTF? Why the hell is the Department of Homeland Security involved in this, let alone in freakin' THAILAND?"

The 24-hour news channels are all abuzz with the potential confession of some random guy in Thailand who says that he killed Jon-Binet Ramsey, or however you spell it.

They're NOT all abuzz with the fact that President's warrantless wiretapping program has been found BOTH illegal AND unconstitutional.

Just sayin'.

OH MY GOD! SOUTHERN REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE FOR SENATE (AND PRESIDENTIAL HOPEFUL) CAUGHT ON VIDEO USING RACIAL SLUR!

The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.

Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.

Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.

Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.

Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.

Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.

-- W.H. Auden

That particular guy (Qutb) spent a fair bit of time in the US in the 50s, hardly a decade of sin and iniquity; he seemed to draw a lesson that it was, though, and began to hate modernity from that point forward.

It's the same the whole world over...

When can I take it off?

--claire

Jane

He is so in French custody.

Ken MacLeod quoted that same Auden poem the day after Bush was re-elected.

(You could say much the same about Fiasco, BTW --- it was written by a military reporter for the Washington Post, and reflects the views of his military sources. These people are a lot less inclined than their civilian bosses to deny the obvious, so when things obviously did go wrong, you hear interesting things about how and why, though occasionally somewhat slanted things --- the role of military intelligence in the Abu Ghraib scandal gets very short shrift. There are also odd omissions (Hans Blix's name never comes up), and the relentless focus on military affairs also means you don't hear much about policy failures elsewhere --- like the disastrous economic policy that did a great deal to alienate the people. It fills in a lot of interesting details, particularly regarding the anti-planning anti-process in the Pentagon, but nothing that surprised me quite as much as the interagency turf wars described in The Looming Tower).

But enough of this trivia. I'm hearing disturbing rumors that when Paris Hilton hired the best record producers money could buy, she may have actually gotten her moneys' worth...

It's quite remarkable how apropos Auden has felt these last five years. Not just "Fall of Rome", but others like "Sept 1, 1939", and "Gare du Midi".

"A nondescript express in from the South,
Crowds round the ticket barrier, a face
To welcome which the mayor has not contrived
Bugles or braid: something about the mouth
Distracts the stray look with alarm and pity.
Snow is falling. Clutching a little case,
He walks out briskly to infect a city
Whose terrible future may have just arrived."

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

Bush has finally admitted that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

Opposition in the USA to the war is at an all-time high.

WOW! LOOKIT THAT! KZLA CHANGED FROM COUNTRY TO POP!