Chen Wants a Piece of Obama

Of course you can leave prison, travel to Washington, and testify in an american court. Link to China Post article in the title.prison sentence article

B- for Pen/Ploughmanship

Having trouble embedding the video, so here is the link. There is only a bit of audio at the end. This link from a Texas Monthly blog has a short report and interview.

Obama Songs

In news of the gay, CBC Radio is making a mixed CD for incoming President Obama.

Canadians were invited to vote for the canuckiest of songs. 49 will be chosen.

Polls closed last night. I'm happy to not hear the promo anymore.

Despite what the thought bubble on this link says, I think "Go For A Soda" will make the list.

That or "Patio Lanterns".

You gotta have patio lanterns.

I forgot to vote. PIMP? Kevlar? DW?

I Read the News Today

A Google-free opinion

Waiting for the typhoon winds to lessen a bit to make my ride back home a little easier, I picked up my newspaper searching for any article I had not yet read. I settled on Maureen Dowd's opinion piece titled Stalking, Sniffing, Swooning. I had breezed through it earlier but decided I should give it a thorough read. Why are some columnists more popular than others? Their content? Style? Personality? Some combination of the three? Here are my notes I scribbled from the table outside of my favorite Mom and Pop store.

Passing acquaintances collide in a moment of transcendent passion. They look at
each other shyly and touch tenderly during their Paris cinq à sept, exchange
some existential thoughts under exquisite chandeliers, and — tant pis — go their
separate ways.

She's talking about Obama and Sarko. I don't know what half of this means. A Paris cinq a sept - a six and seven? Is she rating them? Tant pis - again no idea. I thought tant might be uncle and pis is fish. Uncle Fish? Whatever else she is saying, one thing is clear: Women have the same fantasies about two men together as men do about two women together.

"You must want a cigarette after that,” I teased the candidate
after the amorous joint press conference, (speaking to Obama)

Again with the sexual reference. An amorous joint press conference? Where's the video? Was the cheek-kiss, cheek-kiss open mouthed?

Sarko, back to Carla Bruni. Obama, forward to Gordon Brown. A
Man and a Man. All it needed was a lush score and Claude Lelouch.

Sarko, Brown and Obama. That's three males. A Man and a Man. That's only two. She just castrated either Brown or Sarko. That would leave the castrato free to lez out with Bruni. Claude Lelouch is obviously a French cognac.

After spending a third of her column on these Outlandos d'Amour (Hah! Back at you, Maureen), she moves on to her questioning of Obama.

How do you go back to the Iowa farm after you've seen Paree?

“One of the values of this trip for me was to remind me of what this campaign
should be about,” he said. “It’s so easy to get sucked into day-to-day,
tit-for-tat thinking, finding some clever retort for whatever comment your
opponent made. And then I think I’m not doing my job, which should be to raise
up some big important issues.”

What's up with that? I think the people are looking for someone who can do more than just raise some "big important questions." It didn't work for Cliff Claven and it won't work for a presidential candidate.

I asked how his “Citizen of the World” tour will go down in
Steubenville, Ohio.

If he's running for Citizen of the World, shouldn't he be applying to the U.N.?

“There will probably be some backlash,” he said. “I’m a big believer that if
something’s good then there’s a bad to it, and vice versa."

So everything is gray? So could you please explain the bad aspects of your policies?

"We had a good week. That always inspires the press to knock me down a peg.”

Like the German reporter Dowd cites in the last third of her column who enthuses,

"I'm getting hot, and not from the workout. What a
man."

The article concludes with Obama using a scene from "The Color of Money" to describe his situation. Fair enough. But this piece is more suited for the entertainment section, not the op-ed section of the New York Times.

Conclusion: You too can be a reporter. Or , God help us, even a politician.

Hub City Report

Monday was only a semi-jet lag day. A day of firsts. My first cold beer in a mug since leaving Taiwan, about $42 worth at $2 a pop. It was also the first day of any physical activity for me as I helped my friend build a fort-tree house for his kids. Kevlar would be proud. He eschewed the pre-cut, pre-drilled kits that only required inserting and screwing in the screws. No, he wanted old school. Old school requires that you spend more alone on tools to construct the fort-tree house than the kit itself. The icing on the do-it-really-by-yourself cake is flatlining your bank account to buy the materials so that your new toys have something to do. Old school is sinking the foundation posts a year ago and then waiting until one or more of your friends find themselves unemployed and/or on vacation to help you. My friend found both and we went at it. Actually, they had started before I arrived back in Lubbock. My assignment was to document the progress and play with the dog.

Work, and belly rubbing, progressed nicely until we were left with only one assignment for the day - the swing. Ah, the swing. Old school allows you to add those cool - and highly unsafe - features that the kits don't have: a trap door in the floor (Safe enough); sliding front door (Safe but inviting heavy ridicule - How do you answer the door? In an ascot?); a rope ladder attached to the left-most branch for kids that don't even reach to the floor of the fort, no more tree house, its' a fort (Hey, they say broken bones heal stronger than they before - Old School Book of Knowledge); and a swing supported by the yardarm sticking out of the roof on the left ( Danger high. Having already been placed and decided upon as the swing location, it just needs some support. How about placing those two 4x4s under the end of the yardarm? No, impossible. A bracket has already been bought to secure the 4x4s to the end of the yardarm, and the OSBofK does not allow returns or admissions of error. It will be interesting to see what the OSBofK has to say about lawsuits.

Obama notes from the Take Back America conference

• I think Chris Matthews has a man-crush on Obama.
• Obama wants a principle-based, united America and if you don't agree with him, then "we will beat you." At the polls, I suspect.
• He likes the unions. Boy, does he like the unions.
• He also likes trade. Not really free trade, but the kind of trade where both sides follow strict environmental standards, everyone in the world makes money on the deal and unions are in control.
• He thinks China and the US have identical manufacturing sectors and our factories (unionized) need to produce more of what China is producing for us. Good thing he's going to declare a billionty dollar minimum wage so we can afford our new Made in the USA Che T-shirts

Packaging Question : What does Mar1795 mean? It was on the front of the package of Sargento's shredded parmesan cheese that I ate.