In the United States we have a long — thank you Thomas Nast — history of political lampooning. It’s good, it’s healthy and it demonstrates to the world to what extent we hold our Constitution and its guarantee of free speech dear. But, and I’m about to tick off some readers here, what we do in house is different from what those outside the club might do.

That’s why I’ve taken offense at the advertisement above.

My friend Molly sent me the link to the BBC story about a small Canadian college in Thunderbay, Ontario’s student recruiting campaign. While I agree with the sentiment — going to Yale or Harvard doesn’t equate to a better education, just better contacts — I object to the use of President George Bush’s image in this manner for two reasons.

The first, and the most obvious one, is that it demeans the Office of the President of the United States, and, by association, me as a citizen of the United States. Where I come from calling my brother an idiot, even when he acts like one, is cause for an ass whoppin.’ I can call him an idiot because he’s family. Everyone else should be careful.

Now it’s no secret that I don’t like President Bush. (Right Tadvent and Dan?) But if I should be occassioned to visit the oval office I wouldn’t call him Georgie and offer a high five. No, I would act as I was raised and stand in his presence and address him as Mr. President. I would do the same for senators DeWine and Voinovich, two more politicians I don’t hold in high esteem. But they are United States Senators and ought to be treated as such.

The second reason is less obvious. I’ve never called President Bush stupid. I’ve called him dangerous. I’ve callend him a liar more times than I can count. I’ve even called him evil. I’ve called him a lot of things. But to call him stupid is to dismiss his responsibility for the actions he takes. And I’m never going to allow him that out.

So to University President and Vice Chancelor Frederick Gilbert (email: fred.gilbert@lakeheadu.ca) who told a reporter that the ad was literally a tongue-in-cheek way of getting attention, here’s a suggestion that he stick something else between his cheeks.

My Soundtrack: Strange Desire by The Black Keys on WOXY.

Sherry Chandler has two excellent posts up on: a forgotten aspect of Iraq — the loss of some of our most ancient artifacts; and popping the We’re-A-Christian-Nation bubble. A good mad over things is difficult in the midst of human slaughter, but Chandler makes a compelling case. And as for Christianity vs. Franklinity, well, just read it.

I know there is only one go –
and it went well
the first time. Where
it didn’t — well, it will
be good to see her again.

From Second Chance by Louis McKee.

From Wiley Miller

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 early GRRRL by Marge Piercy.

The Music Wars

If we could shut off our ears,
turn down the volume control
on the night, what would we see?
A hundred thousand peacocks
each displaying his tail,
slowly turning, strutting, posing.

From uncollected poems spanning several decades.

My Soundtrack: Cursed Sleep by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy on WOXY.

Thirty-eight years ago today the Summer of Rage came to a head as police stormed into Chicago’s Lincoln Park to roust protesters outside the Democratic National Convention. The numbers involved have grown with the telling — Abbie Hoffman once told me there were hundreds, not thousands in the park — but it changed the Democratic Party.

From The Writer’s Almanac:

In his notebook that night, the reporter and historian Theodore White wrote, “The Democrats are finished.” Hubert Humphrey lost the election to Richard Nixon that year. Before 1968, the Democrats had won seven of the nine presidential elections since 1932. In the ten presidential elections since 1968, Democrats have won only three.

Imagine a world where Eugene McCarthy won the nomination in 1968 and went on to defeat Richard Nixon.

My Soundtrack: Venosa by Amusement Parks On Fire on WOXY.

From Scott Stantis

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 early GRRRL by Marge Piercy.

For A Radical Poet

I want to understand why
I can no longer enjoy your poems
about revolution.

From uncollected poems spanning several decades.

My Soundtrack: When The Sun Shone On by Devendra Banhart on WOXY.

At 1809 today Have Coffee Will Write passed another milestone, clocking in for the first time 10,000 unique visitors in a single month. That works out to one unique visitor every four minutes. I’ve worked for national and international magazines that didn’t have monthly readerships that were measured in five figures.

The reader who put me over the top was identified as:

ool-44c7c5ca.dyn.optonline.net

and found HCWW via a Google search.

Wow, not only did the reader stop in and read, but he did the most important thing of all: he left a comment, it’s all about the conversation.

I actually now know who No. 10,000 is! How cool is that? I’m sending an invitation to him to come to the Town Fryer for the Blogger MeetUp on Wednesday, 20 September where his food and drinks will be on me.

A long 12 months ago I had 4,397 unique visitors. A 127 percent growth in 12 months isn’t bad.

Thank you Christopher. And thank you all.

My Soundtrack: In Our Gun by Gomez on WOXY.

For a while now I’ve had a standing challenge to some of my readers to cite a single scientific paper not funded by the Petrochemical industry and published in a peer-reviewed science journal that argues against the phenomenon of Global Warming. Occassionally an article is suggested, but they’ve been worse than strawmen.

None, so far, has taken more than about five minutes to trace back to Big Oil. And people are getting desperate, parsing and cherry picking for any crumb they can use.

Mano Singham writes about how that cherry picking takes place.

Consider for example, the experience of Peter Doran, a professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 2002, he and his colleagues published a paper in Nature that ” found that from 1996 to 2000, one small, ice-free area of the Antarctic mainland had actually cooled.

Our report also analyzed temperatures for the mainland in such a way as to remove the influence of the peninsula warming and found that, from 1966 to 2000, more of the continent had cooled than had warmed. Our summary statement pointed out how the cooling trend posed challenges to models of Antarctic climate and ecosystem change.”

That paper was immediately seized upon by opponents of global warming to argue that the Earth was actually cooling, even though Doran tried to explain that his paper said no such thing.

Doran said that this legend has only grown in the four years since, despite his efforts to kill it. He says “Our results have been misused as “evidence” against global warming by Michael Crichton in his novel “State of Fear” and by Ann Coulter in her latest book, “Godless: The Church of Liberalism.”

Search my name on the Web, and you will find pages of links to everything from climate discussion groups to Senate policy committee documents – all citing my 2002 study as reason to doubt that the earth is warming. One recent Web column even put words in my mouth.

I have never said that “the unexpected colder climate in Antarctica may possibly be signaling a lessening of the current global warming cycle.” I have never thought such a thing either.”

He ends with this plea. “I would like to remove my name from the list of scientists who dispute global warming. I know my coauthors would as well.

I feel for Doran. I really do.

My Soundtrack: Do Not As I Do by Hanne Hukkelberg on WOXY.

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 early GRRRL by Marge Piercy.

On Technique

… Now like a woman
who danced wildly at evening at a party
wriggling her hips, bouncing her ass
around and comes home at last too tired
to fuck, she sits at her desk,
the sheet before her vast and white
in the avalanche of silence.

From uncollected poems spanning several decades.

My Soundtrack: The World’s Gone Mad by Handsome Boy Modeling School on WOXY.

wanting to kill it, wanting
to see great clouds of blood erupt
to prove that they exist.

[Snip]

Better to feel the salt wind
spitting in your face,
to hold your sharpened weapon high,

to see the glisten
of the beast beneath the waves.
What a relief it would be

to hear someone in the crew
cry out like a gull,
Oh Captain, Captain!
Where are we going now?

From Reading Moby-Dick at 30,000 Feet by Tony Hoagland

The Associated Press is running a story about how Jewish comedian Jackie Mason is suing the grossly misnamed Christianist group Jews For Jesus for using his image in one of its religious tracts. Mason is demanding $2 million and the immediate destruction of existing copies of the handout. Mason told the AP: While I have the utmost respect for people who practice the Christian faith, the fact is, as everyone knows, I am as Jewish as a matzo ball or kosher salami.

And Mason is not the first to sue the group for such misuse.

It was the next paragraph in the story that ticked me off.

Founded in the 1970s, Jews for Jesus practices Judaism but regards Jesus as the Messiah.

No it doesn’t. Jews For Jesus co-opts and perverts certain Jewish rituals and holidays to convince confused Jewish individuals that becoming a Christianist is the natural thing to do. To suggest that this Christianist missionary group practices Judaism would be like saying that Lutherans for Buddha practiced Christianity or that Muslims for Shiva practiced Islam.

This group is part of one of the nastier aspects of the Christianist agenda: that it is necessary to convert a certain number of Jews to Christianity before Jesus can make his curtain call. After the number is hit, the rest can all burn in hell; you make your quota and fuck the rest.

Jews For Judaism was created to counter the cult’s multi-million dollar twisted message.

According to recent Gallup and Harris polls, there are over 70 million “born again” Christians in North America, many of whom are convinced that in order for Jesus to return, the Jewish people must first be converted to Christianity.

Christian denominations such as the Southern Baptist Convention—which passed a resolution in 1996 targeting Jews for conversion—and the Assemblies of G-d, as well as countless other Christian groups worldwide, contribute more than $250 million annually to aggressively evangelize Jews.

These evangelical Christians have established special “Hebrew Christian synagogues” to attract Jews. Such “synagogues” have grown in number from 20 to over 400 in the last twenty years.

Missionaries convince their recruits that they are not complete as Jews until they accept Jesus as the Messiah, and that a Jew retains his or her Jewish identity after converting to Christianity. According to a 1990 Council of Jewish Federations population study, over 600,000 Jews in North America alone identify with some type of Christianity.

Over the past 25 years, more than 275,000 Jews worldwide have been converted specifically by missionaries who use deceptive tactics that masquerade Christian beliefs in the guise of Judaism. The Gospel is preached by “Messianic rabbis” wearing yarmulkas (skullcaps) and talleisim (prayer shawls) at “Shabbat” and “High Holiday” services.

There was no byline associated with the AP story, but I’m trying to find a way to ask for a correction to the writer’s simplistic characterization. If anyone has such a contact, please let me know.

My Soundtrack: National Dream Registry by Brief Candles on WOXY.

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 early GRRRL by Marge Piercy.

Eye Contact

Rarely have lovers
stunned me with insight.

From uncollected poems spanning several decades.

My Soundtrack: Sick Of Goodbyes by Sparklehorse on WOXY.

Not yet, but a report from the BBC points to another reason why living in a heavily urbanized area — specially if you are elderly and poor — is getting more dangerous; and it has nothing to do with crime or drugs, unless, that is, you consider President George Bush’s denial of how our petroleum addiction is slowly killing us to be criminal.

What’s the danger? The Urban Island Heat Effect.

The predicted rise in temperatures in the coming decades will be exacerbated by what scientists call the “urban heat island effect”, in which temperatures during heatwaves can be 6-7 C [11-12.5 F] higher in cities than in surrounding areas.

The new research, led by Professor Glenn McGregor of King’s College London, analyses data from recent heatwaves and concludes that the risk of heat-related deaths is greater in urban areas, especially in London.

The researchers have devised a Heat Vulnerability Index – a highly detailed map plotting the areas of London where the highest temperatures have been recorded and where there are the highest proportions of residents who are elderly or living alone, the categories of people seen as most vulnerable.

My Soundtrack: Lonely Does It by Forget Cassettes on WOXY.

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 early GRRRL by Marge Piercy.

Grand Tour 1957

I was going to Europe, where culture was stored in cathedrals
and made in cafés, where the Left was alive
I had read in a book by Sartre, consumed
illicitly in the philosophy department
hidden like a Batman comic
behind the text of Kant.
I wore black and lived on beans.

From early, early poems that appeared in various publications.

My Soundtrack: In The Hidden Places by The Mountain Goats on WOXY.

From Scott Stantis

How we label things affects the way we perceive them. Our usages have taken some twisted paths of late and we’ve become so wrapped in our naming that we forget what it was we named. This fictitious list shows how things can go very wrong very quickly. Anyone who has seen me in my sister’s wedding video knows how well No. 4 applies.

1. She is not a babe or a chick — she’s a breasted American.

2. He does not have a beer gut — he has developed a liquid-grain storage facility.

3. She is not a screamer or a moaner — she’s vocally appreciative.

4. He is not a bad dancer — he’s overly Caucasian.

5. She is not easy — she’s horizontally accessible.

6. He does not get lost all the time — he investigates alternative destinations.

7. She is not a dumb blond — she’s a light-haired detour off the information super highway.

8. He is not balding — he’s folliclely challenged.

9. She has not been around — she’s a previously enjoyed companion.

10. He is not a cradle robber — he prefers generationally differential relationships.

11. She is not an airhead — she’s reality impaired.

12. He does not get falling-down drunk — he becomes accidentally horizontal.

13. She does not get drunk or tipsy — she gets chemically inconvenienced.

14. He does not act like a total ass — he develops a case of rectal-cranial inversion.

15. She does not have breast implants — she’s medically enhanced.

16. He is not a male chauvinist pig — he has swine empathy.

17. She does not nag you — she becomes verbally repetitive.

18. He is not afraid of commitment — he’s relationship challenged.

19. She is not a tramp — she’s sexually extroverted.

20. He is not horny — he’s sexually focused.

21. She does not have major league hooters — she’s pectorally superior.

22. It’s not his crack you see hanging out of his pants — it’s his rear cleavage.

23. She is not a two-bit hooker — she’s a low-cost provider.

My Soundtrack: Burning Too by Fugazi on WOXY.

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 early GRRRL by Marge Piercy.

Storm Outside, Storm Inside

for the friction of body hard on body
as two stones cracking on each other
hit till one stone finds its flaw.

From early, early poems that appeared in various publications.

My Soundtrack: Not A Moment Too Soon by Tommy Stinson on WOXY.