Sunday, 13 April, 2003

chicken little I read this story and felt crushed. There are only a handfull of museums in the world which are hometown archeology exhibts for one of the human races cultural hearths. This one was smashed and ransacked. Urns and objects that made it five thousand years or so, and found a home in a museum only to be wrecked by by neighbors harboring only a dull and narrow count of its present blackmarket value, the value that mankind seems to place on its own history. I also kept seeing in my mind Sec. Rumsfeld's press briefing the other morning. The Henny Penny one where he kept insisting that no looting was actually taking place, that it was all just one clip of one man carrying a vase out of a building shown over and over, and why was the press dwelling on this rather than considering the beneficence on our giving the gift of democracy to the Iraqi people. I'd link to a clip of that, I know I've seen it on ABC and the BBC, but the Google search I just did on Rumsfeld: waving his hands in the air and babbling incoherantly like some diesel-exhaust huffing spastic didn't seem to turn that event up. If this administration wants to be taken seriously it needs to start owning a bigger piece of reality than it currently aspires to. It's not a contest to seem like a bigger loon than the Iraqi information minister. pb ._._. Pillagers Strip Iraqi Museum of Its Treasure. It took only 48 hours for the National Museum of Iraq to be destroyed, with at least 50,000 artifacts carried away. By John F. Burns. [New York Times: NYT HomePage. 4:13:22 PM    comment []; earning my cap Here is something that happens to me a lot with the news aggregator that comes with Radio. I come across a line in the news page telling me there is a new Quentino Taretino movie coming out Kill Bill (MetaFilter link, figures). And for a brief moment this is the most important fact in the entire world for me and I am consumed by the impulse to hit post and publish buttons and share this with- well whoever. Then I stop and ask myself: "Have I ever seen any other of his movies ?" The answer comes back, "no, not one. missed 'em I guess. Although i did see an ad on tv for one of them once." There after the feeling wans. There is a line in an old Beatles song: "someone needs to know the time, glad that I'm here." You'll find the current time in either the upper right or lower right corner of your screen. Hey don't thank me I'm just doing what I can. I was walking down a street one day when I came across two people, street people, a older man barrel-chested gone to pot, but with sharp eyes and a gone-to-seed youngish middle aged women who was sitting with him hanging on to everthing he said. "Where did you get that go-to-hell cap", he said, referring to the cheap cotton ball cap I had on, which I had dyed an abnormal shade of green on my own. Bought it from a store down the street, I told him. He paused and scanned me intently for a moment, then in a brusque inquisiting tone snapped; "know any foreign languages?" No I answered simply. He waved his hand dismissing me: "pass on by". It's hard to be of help to others. Hard to know what to do. It takes thought, planning, research, consideration, Knowledge of other languages. It's 1:07 pm. 1:07:26 PM    comment [];

© Copyright 2003 Paul Bushmiller. Last update: 5/04/03; 01:20:55.