Part of being a good citizen of the blogosphere is visiting, reading and, most importantly, taking the time to leave a comment on other’s blogs. It’s all about the conversation. In the interest of setting an example I’ve decided to link to those blog posts that have compelled me to leave a comment.

0708 Would you share?

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings: Recipes and reflections by Edward Espe Brown.

“If you want to see virtue,” [Suzuki Roshi] said, “you have to have a calm mind.”

Without really having any idea how to actually do it, I began to try “to see virtue.” Whenever I found fault with someone, I would remind myself to look again, more carefully, more calmly. I began to recognize people”s basic good intention, to sense people”s effort, the effort it took even to stand on-the-spot and be exposed for all the world to see. I would catch glimpses of our shared vulnerability. p. 74

Yambo: I am back from my first adventure, down to Kandahar, a lovely place in the southern desert with daytime temps around 130F. The breeze feels like a hair drier. Plus we’re carrying 80 Lbs of helmet, weapons, vest and ammunition. A real joy. At times this feels like another training event, but then something strange happens, like you reach into your pack and pull out a…

I just need to wrap my whole feckin’ laptop in cling wrap. When I was growing up I loved watching Hollywood Squares and I can’t even begin to count the number of times I watched as Paul Lynde’s replies reduced host Peter Marshall to gasping fits of laughter (even if the zingers were scripted.) Like this exchange:

Q. PETER MARSHALL: When you pat a dog on its head he will wag his tail. What will a goose do?

A. PAUL LYNDE: Make him bark?

Thank you Andrew Sullivan. Pop over there for more of these.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

Scenario: Billy breaks a window in his father’s car and his Dad gives him a whipping.

2006 – Billy’s Dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy removed to foster care and joins a gang. Billy’s sister is told by state psychologist that she remembers being abused herself and their Dad goes to prison. Billy’s mom has affair with psychologist.

(For the record, I graduated from Warren High School in 1973 and I have no doubt that this is true.

Every morning when I wake up I celebrate my ignorance because one of my great joys in life is learning. But occassionally I come across lists like this one from the table of contents of The Company They Kept: Writers On Unforgetable Friendships and realize I don’t know any of these people (OK, I know 11 of the 55 people listed.)

Stanley Kunitz on Theodore Roethke
Robert Lowell on Randall Jarrell
Edward Dahlbert on Hart Crane
Robert Oppenheimer on Albert Einstein
Dwight Macdonald on Delmore Schwartz
Alfred Kazin on Josephine Herbert
Jason Epstein on Edmund Wilson
Susan Sontag on Paul Goodman
Anna Akhmatova on Amedeo Modigliani
Robert Craft on Igor Stravinsky
Saul Bellow on John Cheever
Mary McCarthy on F.W. Dupee
Derek Walcott on Robert Lowell
Darryl Pinckney on Djuna Barnes
Maurice Grosser on Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas
Prudence Crowther on S.J. Perelman
Michael Ignatief on Bruce Chatwin
Joseph Brodsky on Isaiah Berlin
Caroline Blackwood on Francis Bacon
Elizabeth Hardwick on Mary McCarthy
Tatyana Tolstaya on Joseph Brodsky
Enrique Krauze on Octavio Paz
Richard Seaver on Jerome Lindon
Seamus Heaney on Thomas Flanagan
Larry McMurtry on Ken Kesey
Brad Leithauser on Anthony Hecht
Oliver Sacks on Francis Click

How many did you know?

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I tutor a student at the Orange branch of the Cuyahoga County. More often than not there’s a guy who sits in his car and listens to the radio; turned up really loud so that I can hear the show. Yesterday he was listening to a Cleveland talk radio station and the following exchange (paraphrased) floored me.

CALLER: I want to comment on Barak Obama…
HOST: Sure, go ahead…
CALLER: People are saying that he could be our first Black president…
HOST: Right…
CALLER: But he’s not Black…
HOST: Yes, he is…
CALLER: No, he isn’t. His mother is White, so he’s White…
HOST: His father is Black so he’s Black. It’s the law…
CALLER: There’s a law…?
HOST: Yes, the law says the if you’re 1/16th black, if your grandparent, er or your great grandparent was Black, then you’re Black…
CALLER: You sure…?
HOST: Yes, it’s the law…
CALLER: OK. Well, thanks…
HOST: You’re welcome.

The only way I can understand this is to think that with a Black man looking really good as a presidential candidate in 2008, there is a segment of our population that needs to remove him from his blackness, to render him palatable; to make Obama a racial eunuch.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell wasn’t Black, he’s Jamaican.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice isn’t Black, she’s a Republican.

When will the idiocy cease?

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings: Recipes and reflections by Edward Espe Brown.

“What it is to be unstained… Being unstained is like meeting a person for the first time and not considering what they look like. Also, it is like not wishing for more color or brightness when viewing flowers or the moon,” Dogen Zenji, Shobogenzo. p. 16

I know what I’m going to be reading with great intensity this evening: a blogalogue between Andrew Sullivan and Sam Harris. Harris, for those unfamiliar with his work is the author of The End of Faith, a book I highly recommend, and Letter To A Christian Nation, which I have yet to read. So many books and so little time.

It’s been a busy week in Wally World: the Universe’s source of cheap plastic crap. On The Writing On The Wal — the blog USA Today says should be on its readers’ radar — Jonathan Rees, Robert Feinman and I continue our work dedicated to drawing back the curtain on the Bentonvile Behemoth’s corporate disinformation and other flackery.

AT THE WALLY PLEX… There are sound stages on Hollywood”s back lots smaller than Bentonvile”s behemoths, so it”s no surprise that budding video talent has been sneaking cameras in at odd hours. And now for the midnight show at the Wally Plex featuring Mookieisms. Keep reading…

WAL-MART IS IN DEEP TROUBLE… That”s not my original opinion, although I agree with it whole heartedly. It”s the view of Businessweek”s Bruce Nussbaum. Back in November Nussbaum suggested that the Wal-Mart business model was deeply flawed. Since then things have only gotten worse. Keep reading…

IT”S NOT WHAT YOU ASK, BUT HOW YOU ASK IT… A great deal has been written in the last couple of weeks about Quinnipiac University”s poll on Wal-Mart. Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, was kind enough to point me to the complete surveys for Ohio and Florida. Keep reading…

IS THS HAPPENING ANYWHERE ELSE…? First it was bored teenagers and acid bombs. Now it”s shopplifters and exploding pool chemicals? I don”t know for sure what they mixed (if I did, I wouldn”t write about it) but these low lifes are part of a trend and it”s not a pretty one. From Faux News: Keep reading…

THE GNOMES ARE STARTING TO FREAK… Wal-Mart, the poster child for everything capitalist, Wall Street”s wet dream, is starting to look like the two-bit whore you woke up with after too many tequila shooters; she”s laying on your arm and you”re willing to gnaw it off rather than wake her. Keep reading…

WAL-MART: BURN IN HELL, SLUT… Or words to that effect. If Wal-Mart doesn”t fire this idiot (and the store manager who backed him) I hope this couple sues them back to the stone age. How much does it cost to raise a child these days? They should get that times 100. Keep reading…

THIS IS SO LAME… Wal-Mart announced that it wasn”t going to build a Supercenter in Spokane, Washington, because – I”m not making this up – a nearby radio tower would interfere with its computer system. No really, that”s the company”s story and it”s sticking to it. Keep reading…

CPT B. Tupper: It had been a difficult day, with a patrol through mined roads and in an area with recent enemy activity. Awakened by a lingering case of dehydration, I decided to get something cold to drink, and walked over to our TOC, the tactical operations center. While grabbing a cold bottle of Gatorade from the mini fridge, my attention was diverted by frantic voices…

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

Sometimes name calling isn’t swearing…

Bill Callahan has launched a blog for a statewide network of local broadband and digital inclusion activists: ONE Ohio Blog. The organization is a statewide network of community organizations, educators, civic leaders and interested individuals working to close Ohio”s Digital Divide through universal affordable broadband and community technology initiatives.

A bit of a blog kernuffle has arisen over Toby Harnden’s posting of a story about the hanging of Saddam Hussein’s execution before the hanging took place. His employer, The Daily Telegraph, has warned bloggers to not reveal tricks of the trade. It seems to me that what the memo really says is: don’t let folks know we’re cheating; it’s all smoke and mirrors.

[Update: 0823 — Ken Auletta obviously didn’t get the memo.]

Why is this despicable waste of human genome even drawing a breath? I’m no fan of the death penalty, not because of any misguided reverence for human life, but because I don’t have sufficient faith in our criminal justice system to justly pass a death sentence. But this guy freely confessed and clearly need to stop wasting our air.

From The Associated Press:

Joel Steinberg, the disbarred lawyer who served 17 years in prison for killing his illegally adopted daughter, must pay $15 million to the girl’s birth mother, an appeals court ruled Tuesday.

Joel Steinberg argued the award was excessive and should be reduced because Lisa died relatively quickly, after “at most eight hours of pain and suffering.”

It’s simple: fry the bastard and invest ever red cent he has in helping children.

Part of being a good citizen of the blogosphere is visiting, reading and, most importantly, taking the time to leave a comment on other’s blogs. It’s all about the conversation. In the interest of setting an example I’ve decided to link to those blog posts that have compelled me to leave a comment.

0811 Today is No Day for Stupids
0804 A pragmatic approach to reading
0656 Wedding recap
0615 assigning motivation

What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.
What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky.

so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.
It’s been doing that all week:
making beauty,
and throwing it away,
and making more.

From A Color of the Sky by Tony Hoagland.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings: Recipes and reflections by Edward Espe Brown.

The best teacher of …. Careful observation of the obvious. p. 10

Thanks to Broadsheet for the update on the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice vs. Senator Barbara Boxer scuffle. It looks like White House Sockpuppet Tony Snow should have checked with the boss’ wife before trying to wring a few more news cycles out of the exchange over the importance of who has children and who doesn’t.

From People Magazine:

People: Nancy Pelosi shattered Congress’s glass ceiling by becoming the first female Speaker of the House. Do you think there’s anything a woman would do differently with the Presidency?

Mrs. Bush: I agree. But it isn’t easy to live here. Dr. (Condoleezza) Rice, who I think would be a really good candidate, is not interested. Probably because she is single, her parents are no longer living, she’s an only child. You need a very supportive family and supportive friends to have this job.

Double ouch!