Slate: “One problem right now is that the United States—the would-be shuttle diplomat—has long cut off relations with Syria and Iran, both of Hezbollah’s enablers (and thus potential disablers). If Bush doesn’t reopen the lines, there’s no point in sending Rice on the plane; it would be a shuttle to nowhere—and, short of sensational luck, a region sliding to war.”
Year / 2006
“Hatred. It’s the Only Thing That Lasts.” — Charles Bukowski
Lovely. (via Chekhov’s Mistress and This Space)
Get Well, Ebert, If Only to Stop That Roeper Weasel from Running Amuck
Editor and Publisher: “Movie critic Roger Ebert is on leave from his syndicated column as he recovers from cancer surgery. Ebert has not had a column appear since the week of July 3, according to Universal Press Syndicate. It’s not yet known when he’ll resume his feature, which runs in about 250 newspapers.”
And given how much of a workaholic Ebert is, this does not augur well.
A Public Confession
I’d like to clear the air right now and respond to the troubling rumors that are now circulating around the Internet.
There are some people who misunderstand my relationship with my box of Kleenex and the porn that I download through Kazaa. I have had a relationship with the former for almost twenty years and the latter as long as I have had access to broadband. So I can understand why people might think that I masturbate, but I don’t. I assure you that it is a very close kinship I have with Kleenex and a pedantic curiosity I have with naked bodies undulating in my Media Player window. The porn, with its grunting and amateur acting, is calming and haiku-like and often prevents me from grinding my teeth. But I do not masturbate to it.
Because of these misperceptions, I have a strong sense of what Oprah’s going through. There isn’t a definition in our culture for this kind of bond between a balding thirtysomething man and his Kleenex. So I get why people have to label it — how can you be this close with a box of Kleenex without being sexual?
Well, dear readers, believe it or not, I am. And it’s not the kind of relationship you might expect. The truth is, if I did masturbate, I would tell you, because there’s nothing wrong with masturbating.
So I’m asking you to stop disseminating these vicious lies. Leave me alone with my box of Kleenex and let me live my life, damn you!
Putting a Little Faith in Percy
BBC: “An unknown poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley has been discovered nearly 200 years after it was written. The 172-line poem was included in Shelley’s pamphlet Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things, which was printed in Oxford in 1811.”