Women's suffrage called 'mistake' by conservative Kansas senator This is completely outrageous: [via Davezilla]

TOPEKA, Kan. — A state senator says she views women's suffrage as a sign that American society doesn't value the family enough but she wouldn't deprive women of the vote. Sen. Kay O'Connor, a Republican, yesterday confirmed reports that she told leaders of the Johnson County League of Women Voters that she does not celebrate the 1920 enactment of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

The other thing I recently learned was that the right for blacks to vote in the United States is temporary; it was only good for 20 years, and was "renewed" while Reagan was in office. This means that it "comes up for review" again in 2007. Again, I was outraged. It's just outrage after outrage around here. Down with bigotry and ignorance! Down! Down!
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Reading: a New York Times book review on'The Beauty of the Husband', by Anne Carson. My latest favorite poet.
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Right now I have a 1.5 lb. dog pulling on my sock. He's the half chihuahua half yorkshire terrier I got today. I called him Dos Pesos. I fell in love with Tigger and Chieka when they arrived just before I left San Francisco. Stewart picked Dos Pesos out. He's a darling. Tiny. He'll probably grow to be about 4-5 lbs. His sister looked just like this one but Dos Pesos's hair is shorter and more chihuahua like, and he's all copper-colored, with a white patch on his chest. Now he's crawling around inside Stewart's shirt.

I'll try not to gush too much. Now I have to go find the lost cable from my digital camera...
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My friend Chad's ideas on how technology companies can help with The rebuilding process. This is a problem that's always baffled me: when you have superfluous food here, and there are starving people there, why doesn't the food automatically go there instead of rotting here? I know the practical reasons for this, (the bureaucracies necessary for identifying the need, the expense of shipping the goods, the politics of "handouts") but my mind still can't get around it.

I've been looking at the faces of death -- the photographs of the terrorists -- that are now on the FBI site, and I'm quite unnerved by them. I keep looking at them, and then finding it unbearable, and closing the window. But then I want to look and open up the page again. Horrified. Disgusted. Fascinated. Horrified. Disgusted. Fascinated.

Murderers. Maniacs.
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Weird Dream. I dreamt I was being kept captive at Elvis's house, me and some other girl. Or guy. I don't remember which. Guy, I think. And they kept on doing autopsies on people to discover their secrets. Because everybody had a secret, and Elvis was implicated in each one. There were some small dogs around. And it was really scary in the house, because there was no sound, and no motion, except one dead-looking lady creaking back and forth in a rocking chair. Everything was all right in the end, because I escaped, except the other guy didn't. He had to stay on and be the on-staff veterinarian.
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NaNoWriMo. If you missed the Labor Day weekend Three Day Novel Writing Contest, all hope is not lost. There is still time left in 2001 for you to attain literary notoriety, at least amongst your own friends. November is National Novel Writing Month, and you can participate by writing a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. [ via umamitsunami.com]
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And anyone who's reading Dhalgren by Samuel Delany, should bop on over to Readerville where there's an upcoming online book group on that book. In Salon Michael Cunningham says, "If Samuel Delany were writing in the same innovative, intelligent way and his books were not science fiction, he'd be known to every serious reader and not just a relatively small band of us."
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Boy, I love weblogs. And the internet, isn't it just something?

You know how you discover something, and think it's just amazing and spend all your time with it, and it starts to lose its sheen, and pretty soon it's old hat and you don't think much about it any more, just take it for granted, and it becomes lackluster and ho-hum like everything else, drudgery even, and you start thinking maybe you should just get rid of it, sell it on EBay, and one day you realize with a start that WOW! THIS IS THE GREATEST THING SINCE TUBE SOCKS! What was I thinking?! and you fall in love all over again?

HOT DAMN, I love the internet! If I could hug it, I'd give it a whole gang of hugs!
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I never point to obvious things like The Onion or Salon (well, maybe I do) but hey, The Onion is brilliant this week, satire at its finest. Read the whole thing, God clarifying his stance on killing, what parents should tell their children about the WTC bombing, the TV listings. A sampling: Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves In Hell: 'We Expected Eternal Paradise For This,' Say Suicide Bombers.

Exacerbating the terrorists' tortures, which include being hollowed out and used as prophylactics by thorn-cocked Gulbuth The Rampant, is the fact that they will be forced to endure such suffering in sight of the Paradise they were expecting.

"...hollowed out and used as prophylactics by thorn-cocked Gulbuth The Rampant" ! By george, I wish I'd thought of that!
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Walking down Denman I noticed a woman sitting inside the Rain City Grill who had an incredible furrow going from between her eyebrows all the way to her hairline. It was like a column propping up her scalp, and all I could think was: You'd have to do a lot of scowling in your life to end up with a furrow like that one.

Scott and Alana's wedding in Memphis was Southern Wonderful. The wedding was beautiful, the betrothed in love, the weather perfect. The party had been stocked with a healthy supply of geniuses (as well as Yalies, Fundamentalist Christians, rabid Razorbacks fans, a man speaking earnestly about "The Lost Civilization of Atlantis", pyramid power and why purple is the best chakra, and many ladies of the "The bigger the hair the closer to God" persuasion), which made for a ripping good time. Saw Emily and Miles, who I'd been waiting too long to see, and Henry and Talia and Scott and Dave and Karen. We took the inevitable side trip to Graceland, which, while amusing, suffers from a complete lack of irony, the absence of commentary by, say, Slavoj Zizek on the audio tour, and a total neglect of the deep-fried seediness of the whole Elvis enterprise, fraught as it was with an Oedipus complex, an obsession with firearms, pedophilia, elective obesity and finally death on the toilet with no less than 10 drugs in his bloodstream. Nobody was crying at his grave, thankfully, by the time we got there we'd been overelvised. Talia wanted one of these, just like the King's."

Had some BBQ at the BBQ Shop, reputed to have the best BBQ in Memphis, and I can't argue with that, boy was it good, and plentiferous. Miles asked a woman what the chunks in the gravy poured over his biscuits were. She looked at him confusedly. "Those are nummy bits." "What?" "Nummy bits." And shook her head. Later we took the trolley down to Beale St. and while lamer paid musicians played in the bars, sat and listened to this kid play his electric dobro while singing and playing percussion himself, out on the sidewalk, passing the hat around. He was great. Rockin. And oh so blue.
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The Hotsy-Totsy Club becomes the Bellona Times, named after the newspaper in Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren, a science fiction masterpiece, which, if you haven't read already, you should read now. It takes a bit of getting used to, as does much of Delany's latter work, but it's the tale of a man who has forgotten who he is, known to us as The Kid, who lives in a post-apocalypic world full of scrungy anarchic hoodlums, catastrophe and transcendence. There is a great deal of graphic violence and sex, so it is not recommended for the faint of heart. And it does tend to go on. But, yeah! I really have to read it again, it's been a while.
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The Blog Twinning Project is kind of addictive. As it stands right now, I am the twin of wood s lot.
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"It was the nature of his profession that his experience with death should be greater than for most and he said that while it was true that time heals bereavement it does so only at the cost of the slow extinction of those loved ones from the heart's memory which is the sole place of their abode then or now. Faces fade, voices dim. Seize them back, whispered the sepultrurero. Speak with them. Call their names. Do this and do not let sorrow die for it is the sweetening of every gift." -- Cormac McCarthy's, THE CROSSING

Phil Agre has a lot of cogent points to make about the terrorist conflict in Some Notes on War in a World Without Boundaries. He points out several problematic issues in how the "war" is only ambiguously "war" and wavers between the language of war and the language of police action, law and crime. He also questions whose "responsibility" the attack was, and how much of it the United States should shoulder, and goes into our government's blind spots, and how we all believed the internet would universally modernize ideologies. It's long, but makes several excellent observations, and is worth the time spent reading it. [via eric.stamen.com]
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Our friends at trench.com give us the following:

Then the LORD said to me, "Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery, just like the love of the LORD for the children of Israel, who look to other gods and love the raisin cakes of the pagans." [Hosea, 3:1 (New King James Version)]

...and also provided this:

"The suburban household has struggled hard to contain the anxieties generated by its increasing dependence on, and vulnerability to, the events, both real and imaginary, which take place beyond its front door: anxieties generated by fears of public failure on the one hand, and of threats of physical and symbolic violence on the other. Defenses are constructed, against otherness in whatever form, and rehearsed daily in the public media, as tabloids, soap operas, and confessional talk shows chew their way through the dilemmas of the day. At the same time, and from time to time, suburban culture itself erupts, and the lava of mod and punk flows across its surface scaring skin and clogging pores until it is itself consumed by the relentless juggernaut of mass commodification." -Roger Silverstone, Editor Visions of Suburbia (Rutledge, 1997)

spin·drift ('spin-"drift)
Function: noun
Etymology: alteration of Scots speendrift, from speen to drive before a strong wind + English drift
Date: 1823
1 : sea spray; especially : spray blown from waves during a gale
2 : fine wind-borne snow or sand

Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementi. (There is no great genius without a tincture of madness). -- Aristotle, as quoted by Seneca: De Tranquillitate Animi, 15.

va·de me·cum (va'de me'k?m, vä'de ma'-)
n., pl. va·de me·cums.
A useful thing that one constantly carries about.
A book, such as a guidebook, for ready reference.
[Latin vade mecum, go with me : vade, sing. imperative of vadere, to go + me, ablative sing. of ego, I + cum, with.]

ichor ( 'I-"kor, -k&r)
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek ichOr
Date: 15th century
1 : a thin watery or blood-tinged discharge
2 : an ethereal fluid taking the place of blood in the veins of the ancient Greek gods
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Addall.com is this book search and price comparison thingy that'll calculate and compare prices and shipping at different online booksellers. You can also do a search for used books. I generally buy everything at Powells since they ship for free if you buy $50 or more -- and they mark the box "GST paid" so you don't have to pay a ghastly fee to Canada Post for the pleasure of having them charge you the GST. [thanks Shannon]
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Travelling by plane, contrary to rumour, was completely painless. Perhaps because the airport seemed to be devoid of passengers?
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Maybe it wasn't Bin Laden? I have to link this intriguing report: Who did it? Foreign Report presents an alternative view

"Israel’s military intelligence service, Aman, suspects that Iraq is the state that sponsored the suicide attacks on the New York Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington. Directing the mission, Aman officers believe, were two of the world’s foremost terrorist masterminds: the Lebanese Imad Mughniyeh, head of the special overseas operations for Hizbullah, and the Egyptian Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri, senior member of Al-Qaeda and possible successor of the ailing Osama Bin Laden."
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I leave tomorrow for absurd places, but I'll return here Sunday night. -- Octave Mirbeau

Tomorrow morning, early, off to Memphis for Scott and Alana's wedding in Memphis, TN. I hope the airplane experience isn't too troublesome. While I'm gone, go look at the stuff on Scott's site, including the Gravilux, which is in Java, and fun to play with. Back Sunday.
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"I write this diary reluctantly. Its dishonest honesty wearies me. For whom am I writing? If I am writing for myself, then why is it being published? If for the reader, why do I pretend that I am talking to myself? Are you talking to yourself so that others will hear you? How far I am from the certitude and vigor that hum in me when I am, pardon me, "creating." Here, on these pages, I feel as if I were emerging from a blessed night into the hard light of dawn, which fills me with yawning and drags my shortcomings out into the open. The duplicity inherent in keeping a diary makes me timid, so forgive me, oh, forgive me (perhaps these last words are dispensible, perhaps they are already pretentious?" "Yet if I am incapable of making this thought real here in the diary, what is it worth? Yet somehow I cannot, and something bothers me because there is no artistic form between me and people and our contact becomes too embarrassing. I ought to treat this diary as an instrument of my becoming before you. I ought to strive to have you understand me in some way, in a say that would enable me to have (and let this dangerous word appear) talent. Let this diary be more modern and more conscious and let it be permeated by the idea that my talent can arise only in connection with you, that is, that only you can excite me to talent or, what's more, that only you can create it in me." -- Witold Gombrowicz, Diary, 1953

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An interview with Tamim Ansary -- catapulted into the public eye by sending an email to 20 friends, which immediately flew through the ether into the mailboxes of millions.
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In my unending Search for the Truth™, I also find Voltaire's evergreen and ever-quotable Treatise on Toleration. Of course all of his "Deism" posturing is sheep's clothing, especially to our eyes; this guy's a dyed-in-the-wool atheist. I guess in that very jumpy pre-Enlightenment age you had to be a bit of a phony to save your hide.

"And is it not evident that it would be much more reasonable to worship the Holy Navel, the Holy Foreskin, or the milk or the robe of the Virgin Mary, than to detest and persecute your brother?" he says.
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I was wondering what Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, would have to say about this. There's a letter from him on this site, speaking out against Muslim extremists, and he quotes the Koran extensively, and explains how certain passages are taken out of context and used by the extremist to justify their ends. I found it useful.

However, as many will remember, he did say Salman Rushdie ought to die, and, were there no law forbidding it in Britain (where he lives) the right thing to do would be to follow the instructions in the manual and kill him.

I find fundamentalists of all stripes who abide by the words in books without consulting their own consciences perfectly horrific. Like the Great Man*** said, "I will fight to the death for all men's right to seek the truth, but I will shoot on sight any man who claims he has found it." Amen. Another favorite:

"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

*** I completely forget who said this. I seem to remember it quoted by Luis Bunuel in his autobiography My Last Sigh, but I don't have that book anymore. Voltaire? Anybody? This is also a paraphrase. In my search for the truth (heh) I found these other applicable quotes.

• Similar, but not quite right, is this one: "Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it." -- Andre Gide (I also found this one, unattributed: "Bring me into the company of those who seek the truth, and deliver me from those who have found it.") Lots of seek vs. find.
• "The search for truth is more precious than its possession." and "Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods." --Albert Einstein (the latter quote seems somehow un-Einsteinian.)
• "For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate error so long as reason is free to combat it." -- Thomas Jefferson
• "Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected." -- Gandhi
• "Those who are convinced they have a monopoly on The Truth always feel that they are only saving the world when they slaughter the heretics."-- Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
• "A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it." -- Oscar Wilde

"Money mediates transactions; ritual mediates experience, including social experience. Money provides a standard for measuring worth; ritual standardises situations, and so helps to evaluate them. Money makes a link between the present and the future, so does ritual. The more we reflect on the richness of the metaphor, the more it becomes clear that this is no metaphor. Money is only an extreme and specialised type of ritual."

-- Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger
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Interesting article in Lingua Franca about the work of Ellen Dissanayake who by applying concepts evolutionary biology to questions of how art is created and why, comes to the conclusion that creativity is genetic.
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Back in 1994 when I had a really kewl personal site enhanced by a Nabokov facts and bibliography page and marred by a great deal of Kai's Power Tool abuse, the only other "Caterina" online was a dominatrix called "Mistress Caterina" who had a page with photographs of all of her shoes. She's apparently left the building; I just noticed there's no sign of her anywhere anymore.
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Saturday: In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar-Wai, an opera of hesitancy, obsessive posterior views and an amazing collection of shiny/tight/erotic 1960s cheongsam dresses. A man and a woman living in adjacent rooms in a crowded Hong Kong rooming house discover their spouses are having an affair, and commence an almost-affair of their own. The streets of Hong Kong are strangely vacant, as they would be in memory, the oblique dialogue contributes little to our understanding of what is going on, the endless departures form a kind of theme and variation of loss. The soundtrack is so central in this restrained movie, it becomes something like the film's narrator. In the Mood for Love is about as unAmerican a movie as you could imagine, save for the melodrama; there is no reckless abandon, no one seizing the day, just emotion thwarted by a sense of propriety. Loss is considered to be so inevitable to this couple, they rehearse it again and again as if by preparing for it, its pain could be diminished. It's not. I cried at the end of course, not only because I am a hopelessly weepy cornball, but also because this was a devastatingly beautiful film.

Wong Kar-Wai, Wong Kar-Wai, Wong Kar-Wai. Bravo.
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Please support RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, (donations via Paypal on this page) and the Afghan Women's Mission. Their site has an extensive photo gallery of of what life is like in the many Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. [ via tmp]
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From turbanhead: (Quoted verbatim, there were no permalinks on the page (Thanks Stan!)) some great links to interesting articles in The Atlantic:

In "The Roots of Muslim Rage", the historian of Islam Bernard Lewis explored the reasons behind Islamic fundamentalists' antipathy to the West.

In "Blowback", Mary Anne Weaver explained Osama bin Laden's rise to power as an example of the manner in which the U.S. support for the Afghan mujahideen—the loose coalition of fighters from all parts of the Islamic world who doggedly resisted Soviet occupation during the 1980s—has backfired on the United States.

More recently, Robert Kaplan visited the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and, in "The Lawless Frontier", painted a disturbing picture of a region dominated by tribalism, ignorance, violence, and rampant religious fanaticism.

And finally, in "The Counterterrorist Myth", Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former high-level CIA operative, argued that the CIA's efforts to infiltrate bin Ladin's anti-American terrorist organization in Peshawar have been ineffective and misguided. The article highlights the difficulty of obtaining good intelligence about any tightly organized fringe group that may be targeting the United States.

Taliban declares Holy war against the United States. Doesn't "holy war" = "oxymoron"? Nonetheless, everybody, put your hands together. Pray.

But wait: "The Taliban denied reports it will resume its holy war, or jihad, against the U.S., Agence France-Presse said."

Possibly a propos: My grandfather had an indulgence (no, those were apparently not banned in the Middle Ages) hanging on the wall of his house signed by Pope Paul, from around 1962 or so, that said that so long as "any member of the family of Juan Mercado Ramos invoked with heart or mind the name of Jesus Christ our Lord at the hour of death" we would all ascend directly to heaven. It was a terrific document, elaborately graven, hand scripted with huge foil seals and a red wax seal with the imprint of, I suppose, the Pope's ring. There have been dark nights when I've thought of that document and felt a modicum of relief, saying to myself, Well, you never know.
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Some guy wrote to accuse me of having a spine like a chow mein noodle (he used different language) since I don't want Uncle Sam to go into Afghanistan with guns blazing and missles firing. He insisted that, since I'm so smart, I tell him what the U.S. military ought to do. I was flattered that I was being consulted on so grave a matter, so I gave it some thought, and given my paltry knowledge of Afghanistan (I mean, I still can't tell you its capital without looking it up), Pakistan, Islam, military strategy, foreign policy, the history of terrorism and Middle Eastern politics, I threw out his email post-haste.

All I can say is: I do not want the terrorists who committed this atrocity to sleep well and live long. They should be toppled, smashed and pulverized. I don't want the U.S. stomping around doing the 800-lb. gorilla act throwing bombs willy-nilly at possible terrorist hide-outs if there is a likelihood that civilians will go down. If it were possible to show the Who's Who in Terrorism what's what, single out the perpetrators without harming anyone else, I'd say, Go Kill the Bastards, and Now.

What else? I want Arab-Americans, Arab-Canadians and Arab-Arabs to live free from harassment and harm. I want the economy to be buoyant and robust. I do not relish the prospect of WWIII. I want peace. I am scared. I have bitten off several of my fingernails. I stay up until four every night reading op-ed piece after encyclopedia entry after weblog trying to make sense of what's going on. I thank my own personal agnostified deity-stand-in and my lucky stars to be safe and healthy and living in a country where I can not only learn to read and write, vote, speak my mind, choose my mate, worship whatever facet of the great omnipotent Is I choose, but go see Hong Kong action flicks, get take-out shwarma, vacation in Fiji, and a thousand other things I no longer take for granted. I hope there will be a national re-shuffling of priorities away from Gary Condit, Monica Lewinsky, O.J., Lady Di and other minor news stories to the tragedies happening all over the world, every day, not just now. I am learning a lot about things I never thought much about. I see the reasons why my parents -- who were children during WWII, my mother living in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation -- are the way they are. I need a lot of hugging.

So, Guy Who Wrote Me, the answer is, I don't know what the U.S. military should do. I only have hopes and fears and a heart beating like a tom-tom, just like the rest of us.

And please. Sod off.
LINK | 10:39 PM |
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Today (Sunday) was the first day that I felt as if I weren't on the verge of an anxiety attack, maybe because it became evident that the U.S. wasn't going to carpet bomb Afghanistan, though perhaps my system is just preparing itself for some protracted anxiety by lowering my worry level to a rate more manageable over the long term. Hard to say, really.
LINK | 12:11 AM |
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Wow! How come nobody ever told me about the CIA WorldFactbook? It's got, well, lots of facts about different countries. Here's Pakistan and here's Afghanistan.
LINK | 1:19 PM |
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On CNN: Inside the Taliban's Afghanistan
LINK | 8:55 PM |
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I just took out all the things I brought back from Lebanon and Syria and Turkey two years ago and showed them to Stewart: This is an incredibly cool bucket made out of a tire that I got in a market in Aleppo; this is a scarab-shaped ashtray made of bronze; this is some kind of Islamic rosary carved out of bone with pictures of the Koran on it.

I'd never been to a Muslim country before. I read 1001 Arabian Nights on the plane flying over. I was amazed at how many of the stories I already knew: Sinbad the Sailor, Aladdin and the Lamp... And when I arrived -- everywhere there were beautiful, intricate patterns, in the carpets, in the tilework, in the facades of the buildings, arabesque upon arabesque, great cat's cradles of intersecting lines that led you to infinity.

The mix of the different cultures were remarkable. The woman who worked at the cleaners on the corner from where we were staying in Beirut wore a red white and blue veil completely covering her hair and full gangsta regalia underneath: a big baggy nylon sweatsuit with TOMMY HILFIGER emblazoned across the back, big Nikes with the tongues pulled forward. Some Saudi women spotted at Beit Edine who were not allowed to speak in public -- some of them were not even allowed to speak with their children -- were swathed from head to toe in opaque black fabric. Sometimes you could catch a glimpse of Prada shoes sticking out from underneath, but most of the time you couldn't tell if they were coming or going until they started walking. On the street in Hama, one of the most conservative cities in Syria where we counted 67 minarets from the hotel's roof patio, I found a scrap of paper on the sidewalk: it was an essay in English on Waiting for Godot. I sat in an outdoor cafe in Istanbul and someone busted out an oud and started singing a song everyone apparently knew, the Turkish equivalent of She'll be Coming Round the Mountain, because everyone in the restaurant and people walking by -- little kids and grandpas and teenagers and moms -- all started singing along.

The people that I met were phenomenally kind, kinder than any other people I've ever met, and that includes people fabled for their kindness such as Filipinos. They have an ancient tradition of hospitality there, having been nomadic people since time immemorial. Walid, the man who drove us in his 1959 Studebaker to see the ruins around Aleppo left us several times a day to say his prayers, but he always timed our tour perfectly so we had cool drinks and shade and something interesting to see before he departed. When he returned, he always brought us cookies.When we bought coffee from a cart in the street, the people in the tire store across the street brought out their chairs for us to sit on; when we asked directions, the person we asked would walk us all the way there, even if it took a half of an hour. An elderly man came up to me in one of the souks holding open his Arabic-English Book and pointing to the translation of 'hello' saying "Hello! Hello! How are you! Hello!" and smiling like he was about to burst into blossom and everywhere you went there were children yelling "Welcome! Welcome!" That the thing I most remember: "Welcome! Welcome!" I never didn't hear it.

All these people screaming for blood are making me sick. I've been trembling all day in impotent rage and utter horror at the idea of all the impending destruction, and the death of innocent people. No.

No.
LINK | 2:33 AM |
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From my friend Maura, a letter from Tamim Ansary, an Afghani-American writer:

When you think Taliban, think "Nazis." When you think Bin Laden, think "Hitler." And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps."

Dear Gary and whoever else is on this email thread:

I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage. What else can we do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done."

And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am from Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've never lost track of what's going on there. So I want to tell anyone who will listen how it all looks from where I'm standing.

I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York. I agree that something must be done about those monsters.

But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would exult if someone would come in there, take out the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country.

Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. There are millions of widows. And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban.

We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that.

New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide. Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans,they don't move too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn't really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would only be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time

So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West.

And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants. That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the west wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, that's even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong, in the end the west would win, whatever that would mean, but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?

Tamim Ansary
LINK | 5:30 PM |
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Rendezvous With Afghanistan. This article helped me understand the political allegiances of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and how the U.S. would best go about forming alliances.
LINK | 2:48 PM |
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The Good. I'm not one of those people that believes that good comes of everything, that even bad experiences can "make you better", that suffering necessarily begets wisdom. I think that there are things that are just bad, only evil, solely wrong -- steely and grim, unenhanced by any silver lining. Terror and darkness are terror and darkness, and while the best of times and the worst of times often happen simultaneously, it is not the bad that begets the good. The good was always there, it just shines brighter in the darkness.

During the past three days I've seen the generosity of millions of people all over the world. I received dozens of messages from friends and family and complete strangers, saying they loved me, saying they were there if they were needed, saying all kinds of earnest, heartfelt things. IM'ing with my sister Corey, she told me about her volunteer work at a local school in San Francisco where she's working with a troubled kid whose mother is a prostitute and who watched his father get killed. She's teaching him to write his name. IM'ing with my friend Emily in New York, she kept running to the oven to take out more cookies since she could only make 8 cookies at a time in her little oven. She was baking them for the rescue workers down by the WTC, and was going to bring them down herself. These stories made my heart swell. And right here where I live, some small piece of good: I have been angry with my mother. I buried the hatchet and called her. I told her I loved her.

Yesterday I went outside and watched a particularly beautiful sunset over English Bay. It was so beautiful -- green and pink and purple -- and it made me terribly sad, because there was so much misery all over the world, so much loss, death, hatred, anger, and a brewing war. I came back in and IM'd my friend Elizabeth and told her how bleak the beauty made me feel, the encroaching twilight, the death of day, and she said, "Don't feel bad. Every little bit of happiness is what the world needs right now."

The main complaint that I've been hearing from my friends and family and have been reading on weblogs is that they feel helpless, that there is nothing that they can do in the wake of this atrocity. They've given to the Red Cross, they've given blood, they've baked cookies. They've told everyone they can they love them. There's nothing more to do but to watch the news with dread.

The world needs these last days' kindness and generosity every day. When I was helping at a soup kitchen at the Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco one Christmas Day, I remember a harried worker saying to the many volunteers, "These people are hungry every day. This kitchen is open every day. Please, please come and help us on days that are not Christmas."

I can't think of a thing to do either, but all the things we always ought to do: be generous every day. Tell people you love them. Vote. Fight for your beliefs. Write to your Congressperson. Be kind. Save the Whales. Keep your heart and mind open. Give to whatever causes you believe in. Help the needy, feed the hungry, educate the children. Smell flowers, watch sunsets. Forgive. Remember to breathe. Do good. Be good.
LINK | 9:00 PM |
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Dervala sends the very apt September 1, 1939 a poem written by W. H. Auden on the occasion of the invasion of Poland:

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I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

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Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
LINK | 1:51 PM |
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From Eunice Scarfe:

Americans Show Unity Against Terrorism - Friday, Sept. 14, 2001

Friday Night at 7:00 p.m. step out your door, stop your car, or step out of your establishment and light a candle. We will show the world that Americans are strong and united together against terrorism. Please pass this to everyone on your e-mail list, or post it to your web site. We need to reach everyone across the United States quickly. The message: WE STAND UNITED - WE WILL NOT TOLERATE TERRORISM!

Thank you.

We need press to cover this - we need the world to see.
LINK | 1:37 PM |
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$3.1 million has been donated so far to the Amazon Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund. It's a wonderful thing to see. Please contribute if you haven't already.
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The Counterterrorist Myth From The Atlantic July/August 2001 A former CIA operative explains why the terrorist Usama bin Ladin has little to fear from American intelligence.
LINK | 11:14 AM |
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My friend Chad writes:

"I woke up yesterday with a line from T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" reverberating through my head endlessly ("I had not thought death had undone so many"). The last time I read it must have been eight or nine years ago, so I felt compelled to dig it up and read it as soon as I got out of bed. After re-reading it, I feel even more stunned than before -- in places, it reads almost as prophecy. The image of streams of people walking over the London Bridge after a friend in NYC described to me the crowds walking home from midtown to queens over the bridge. . . . the dust. .. .the stony rubbish. . . the falling towers. Amazing, powerful, and moving."

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust

. . . . .

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours

. . . . .

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

I'd been waiting to find the words to describe this experience we've all been going through, wondering where the poets were in all of this and when they would speak up. Says Tom:

"Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power, -- who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government." -- Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon

Rebecca Blood, always a clear thinker, has some very cogent -- and I think correct -- ideas about the missing motivations of the terrorists, and what they potentially misunderstood:

I am No Historian, but as I understand it, our government was designed to be a coalition of states. Federal government was designed to do those things that could be done more efficiently by a larger entity for all; but it was intended to support the self-governace of individual states.

Clearly circumstances of all kinds have changed, and each state is more reliant on federal government than our Founders ever envisioned they would be. But it's clear to me that in an instance of the removal of our federal government, states would discover that they are, in fact, endowed with power sufficient to govern until federal government was up and running.

In other words, if the yesterday's purpose was to cripple the United States, the terrorists have an incomplete understanding of both the US Constitution and the US character. To wit:

- through an accident of history, states have Constitionally derived powers sufficient to govern their people, with or without a fully functional federal government.
- most Americans do not recognize the true source of our global strength. Many Americans truly believe that we prevail because of the ideals our nation has espoused, not due to our inordinate military and economic power.

To Jill in Norway (my email keeps bouncing back as "Undeliverable") :

She writes: ... So from here the idea that the world doesn't appreciate America, and that the world takes anything America gives us and gives nothing back doesn't seem right. Does it seem that way where you are? Or is that not what you meant?

You're right -- the world is certainly supporting the United States right now in the midst of this crisis, [ NATO has just invoked article 5 of the treaty and decided that yes, indeed the attacks on America are an attack on the entire alliance] and Canada has certainly been working very hard on America's behalf. Having moved from the States to Canada recently I've certainly been exposed to a great deal of anti-American sentiment. When people find out that I'm an American they have a great deal to criticize; I've certainly been given an earful on many occasions -- and I have to say, I often agree with their criticism. The U.S. -bashing happens on the TV and on the radio here. It's everywhere. I've often felt very defensive for being American. Many Americans I know, when travelling in Europe, claim to be Canadian to avoid confrontation.

Listening to the CBC yesterday and today (that's the Canadian Broadcast Company, the public radio service here) and talking to people here, it is astounding how the Canadians have rallied around the cause. Thousands of Americans who were on international flights when the terrorists struck have been stranded here; there are 8,000 people here in Vancouver alone, 8,000 in Halifax, thousands more in Calgary and Edmonton and other cities. The sense I get is Canadians are not distinguishing themselves from the Americans -- they are as stunned, as terrified, as eager to help, and as helpless as the Americans. They are proud to be able to contribute to the effort.

It was more the expression of solidarity that I was pointing to, and not any perceived ingratitude. It seemed particularly poignant to me that this message was sent out to a long list of Canadians at this time, and the list of things that the Americans had done around the world made me proud again to be an American. With this crisis, all borders seem to have been erased and the show of compassion and outrage and desire to help has been very heartening to me. It makes me proud to be a resident of Canada.

Thanks for reading! Best wishes,

Caterina
LINK | 2:00 PM |
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When an Open Society Is Wielded as a Weapon Against Itself From the New York Times: "The new kamikazes of the 21st century bore no flags or markings. They hid behind ordinary citizens, and their targets included ordinary Americans. By hijacking civilian airliners and riding them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, they used the very accessibility of an open society to wound that society."

Henry Kissinger : "Of course there should be some act of retaliation, and I would certainly support it, but it cannot be the end of the process and should not even be the principal part of it. The principal part has to be to get the terrorist system on the run, and by the terrorist system I mean those parts of it that are organized on a global basis and can operate by synchronized means."

George F. Will, The Paradox of Terrorism:

"... many years ago a Chinese theorist said: "Kill one, frighten 10,000." A modern student of terrorism has correctly said that in the age of terrorism, the axiom should be: "Kill one, frighten 10 million."

"The real aim of terrorism is not to destroy people or physical assets, still less to score anything remotely resembling military victories. Rather, its purpose is to demoralize.

"Terrorism acquires its power from the special horror of its randomness, and from the magnification of it by modern media, which make the perpetrators seem the one thing they are not – powerful. Terrorism is the tactic of the weak."

Also, a refresher course on Osama bin Laden in Time Magazine.
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coreycfake: it's a crazy, stupid world we live in. it's our duty to make it a better place somehow.
coreycfake: i wish i knew how
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I managed to not hear about the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center until 11 this morning when my sister called. I don't have a TV and don't listen to the radio, and hadn't looked at the web.

I was stunned. I am still stunned. I am mute. My heart is in my mouth, so many dead, so many dead.

Death and chaos, fear and terror are loose upon the land.
LINK | 11:46 AM |
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Judith found "I Left my Wallet in El Segundo" on one of the mix tapes I left in Mr. Gomez when I sold her the car. I wonder if she's found the really embarrassing tape of me and my friend Rob singing X's " We're Having Much More Fun" while I was learning to play my new Telecaster. I forgot about that tape until just now. (whoa! cool lyric sheets!)
LINK | 12:38 AM |
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Wow! seems I have a fan. Thanks, Chris! I haven't gotten this much love since, uh,Tom thought that upon my death, it might be a good idea to liquefy and drink my brain. Certainly the most *unique* compliment I've ever received.
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Like Heather, I'm my own weblogger twin, followed by Derek and Heather. And Danny writes to say he's my twin too.
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From Ghost Town by Robert Coover, some of the best (albeit unpunctuated) colloquial speech I've ever seen. Here our protagonist The Kid comes upon an old dying prospector:

Them's purty fancy duds yu're sportin, podnuh, he says, all them thar fringes'n tassels'n porkypine quills, yu look tartier than one a them dandified joolbox coffins from out the east, which I sorely wisht I had now fer my imminent laying out in.

Sumbitchin outlaw rustlers tuck everthin I got. I wuz holed up thar in my cabin in all-day firefight standin off hunderds of em. It were mighty festive fer a time. I musta plugged fifty a them lowdown sneakthief claim-jumping desperadoes afore I burnt up all my munitions, hadta rassle barehand with the last of em, thet's when them savages et my arm'n stuck all these here knives in me. But ifn I'da had another gun at my side we mighta whupped them consarned butt-fuckin no-good rannahans. So whut tuck yu so long gittin here, podnuh?

And that was one of the less ribald, less colorful passages in this extended hoot'n holler metafictional send-up of a Louis L'Amour Western, and the only one I could quote and still keep this site at a PG rating.
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Has anyone ever heard of this fluorescent lighting that someone invented that makes you smarter, more alert, happier? Tonight Derek mentioned seeing it somewhere, perhaps in a popular science magazine, but hasn't heard of it since. Piqued my curiosity.
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Today's activities:

• Called the Worm Composting hotline and set a time to go to the apartment composting workshop. For $25 they give residents of Vancouver lessons, a composting bucket and a supply of red worms so you can compost your kitchen waste in an urban setting. Good for your windowsill herb garden.
• Watched the BC Tel guy try to fix the faulty DSL wiring.
• Went to bank, deposited check using ATM. Just as I was making a hefty withdrawal, just as a tremendous amount of cash was about to come squeezing through its slot, a homeless guy started searching the garbage can next to me. I positioned my body between the guy and the fat wad spurting from the machinery, and quickly stuffed the twenties into my wallet. Then I felt sorry and bad for a little while for being so suspicious and greedy when I was holding so much money in my hands and he was so broke.
• Went to the Salvation Army and bought a bunch of non-matching china, a couple of japanese vases and stood and considered buying a wildly underpriced Danish modern bookcase. Wondered why there was always so much great mid-century modern furniture in the thrift stores, and where were all the dealers. Quick, freelance penny-pinching modernistas! Grab all the good stuff before the vultures move in!
• Picked up the following books from the library, which I had ordered for them to ship to my local branch and hold for me using their online system (I love the internet!):
  • The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
  • The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams
  • The Dog of the South by Charles Portis
  • The Twenty-Seventh City by Jonathan Franzen
• Sensing impending sunset by the pinkness of the walls on the building next door, I ducked out of the apartment, ran down the stairs and across the street. Perfect timing. A minute later, the sun, trembling redly on the verge of the sea, set anticlimactically. Watched it get dunked and fizzle out weakly, then ran back upstairs. Took about four minutes.
• Ordered Indian food delivered, Saag Paneer and Aloo Gobi, Garlic Naan and Somosas. Yum.
• Sat down to finally start writing, procrastinated by writing this blog entry.

Today I became the Mayor of Geeksville and I am so very happy! Today in New Westminster, we found a copy of the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica -- that's the 1910 one, the sublime one, the great one, the Victorian one with entries written by all the eminent Victorians...touted by that great Encyclopediphile Borges as the very best, ever, bar none. It's the Cambridge University Press version, bound in burgundy morocco leather, and gilt in gold. All 29 volumes are here, and in perfect condition...I'm just unpacking them now. It cost a mint. It was worth every penny. I'm the happiest Mayor Geeksville has ever known!
LINK | 10:26 PM |
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Clap clap Clap! Looky here! Daegan did it folks! She competed in the three day novel Writing contest, with a story about children raised by wolves (I'm assuming). A heroic undertaking by any stretch. I was planning on doing it too, but forgot I'd be busy chasing after lightbox thieves, commanding burly men to lift heavy boxes and drooling over the new dishwashing and clothes-washing applicances in my new apartment. I'm thinking of doing it next weekend instead. 33 pages a day for three days? Sounds doable, dreadful and difficult, but wow! Imagine having a (rough draft of a) novel in three days!
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Wayne wrote me an email regarding the Franzen post from yesterday, and asking whether or not I'd be buying The Corrections. The answer is yes, if only to see if he's actually been able to write anything good from underneath that mantle of despair. His bleak worldview certainly comes through in the Harper's article, which Wayne has also found: Perchance To Dream: In The Age Of Images, A Reason To Write Novels

A funny thing: he was introduced to my weblog by his old school friend Philip, who was here visiting a couple weeks ago, and doesn't think we know each other, but we actually already do. Remember, Wayne? Caterina from the early days of Organic Online, circa 96? You were around then, occasionally appearing at South Parklike, Wiredish, Cyborganicist events, etc.?
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Two good pieces in yesterday's New York Times: In the Magazine, Jonathan Franzen's Big Book, a story about the miseries endured by Franzen, after he touted himself in Harper's as a peer of Pynchon and DeLillo and promised his next book to change the face of fiction. I was fascinated by the misery that man puts himself through, viz. the first paragraph:

The blinds were drawn. The lights were off. And Franzen, hunched over his keyboard in a scavenged swivel chair held together by duct tape, wore earplugs, earmuffs and a blindfold.

Also the Book Review had an excellent review on what seems to be a fascinating Turkish novel, My Name is Red, about murder and miniatures, during the reading of which I had an epiphany about perspective and its role in Renaissance perspectival drawing. It was a religious prohibition against perspective, because using perspective could make a man or "even a dog" in the foreground larger than a cathedral, and not represent their true worth in the eyes of The Big G.
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This just in: 60% of Christians in the United States believe that if Jesus were alive today he wouldn't go to church. But if Jesus were alive today there wouldn't be church, now would there?
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Ghost World just got here to Vancouver, and it's a must-see for anyone who's ever been into thrift-shopping, comic books, punk rock, country blues, record-collecting, doodling in notebooks, treasuring things other people treat as trash. Others required to see this movie are: anyone who's ever been overweight, undertall or aesthetically challenged, dyed their hair a regrettable color, sat alone in the high school cafeteria, failed gym, come from a dysfunctional family, had an uncanny ability to sniff out phonies, been a critic of consumer culture, or had no reliable friends.

Right. That's all of you. This is the movie you've been waiting for. Either you will see it 5 times or you will save your money and buy it on DVD, even though you don't own a DVD player. Now get down to your local movie theatre now!

Sez who? Sez me!
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