This Man
Is a freak of nature.

I just got done watching Troy and wow what a mess that movie was. First of all the most blaring inaacuracy in the movie is that Agememnon did not die at Troy. He dies when he returns to Mycenae, killed by his wife Clitomnestra. She kills him because he had his daughter sacrificed to Posiedon so that he wouldnt be stuck at sea.

The first 20 minutes of this movie were agonizing. Every scene kept repeating ad nauseum that this was an epic war. It also seemed that the characters in the movie are pre- cognitive of thier legacies, they somehow know that they are epic characters. I thought Achilles' was portrayed as some kind matrix-like superhuman. Ridiculous. Also I couldnt quite pin down what Brad Pitt was trying to accomplish in the way of an accent. It was a mix between british and a roided out venice beach bodybuilder. Peter O'Toole looked like an aged gay man the entire time and whenever Orlando Bloom and the hack of an actress that played Helen were on screen I wanted to barf. This movie was a piece of trash. Im so glad it flopped. I hate movies.

The Washington Monthly This is interesting. I hadn't heard anything about this. Im perplexed nonetheless. What does John Stossel have against organic produce?! He bends the results of all these tests to demonize organic foods. WHY?! John Stossel you are a tool, you belong in the tool box with Robert Novak.

I just finished reading "Me talk pretty one day" by David Sedaris. I have been hooked on the comedy of his sister, Amy, for quite sometime and I decided to finally pick up this book and read it.

What an amazing collection of essays. I have never related so much to a book before. His stream of thought and the way he tells the stories is brilliant. He takes the mundane situations of everday life and peppers them with language to create vivid tales of life that I am uterly envious of. He even takes the most undesirable situations and narrates them into an adventure.

I particularly related to the last chapter, one where he exposes about his father's habit of buying old vegetables and meat from the grocery store. I grew up with a similar father and to this day he cant resist items that are marked for sale because they are old. Reading the final chapter was as if reading my own memories.

I was fascinated by his time in Paris in the book as well. I just went for my first time this summer and I was deeply disappointed by my experience. I expected to be taken away, seduced by the "City of Light" but instead I was disgusted and repulsed. It seemed to me a city devoid of all life, passion, and creative juice. It has reached, in my view, a state where it cares nothing about its present existence but instead lives in the present in a vicarious haze of its past. Sedaris, however, offers a different American perspective on Paris, one of someone that has spent a considerable amount of time there. His view is more anthropological. He makes keen observations about the french, their language, and their culture. He finds a niche for himself in Paris but yet doesnt lose his perspective as an outsider. The result is a collection of great stories of Parisian and provincial life and the linguistic hardships that accompany him throughout his stay.

I highly recommend this book. I will be reading his latest book, "Naked," in the very near future.

AlterNet: Election 2004: How Bush Won This topic is getting very very tired. I was bummed out as anyone when Bush won the election but PLEASE can we not rehash the topic anymore. However, I found this quote from a letter in the article highly amusing. Its from a letter written to Bush from the Rev. Bob Jones III, president of Bob Jones University:

"In your re-election, God has graciously granted America – though she doesn't deserve it – a reprieve from the agenda of paganism. You have been given a mandate. ... Don't equivocate. Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ. ... Undoubtedly, you will have opportunity to appoint many conservative judges and exercise forceful leadership with the Congress in passing legislation that is defined by biblical norm regarding the family, sexuality, sanctity of life, religious freedom, freedom of speech, and limited government. You have four years – a brief time only – to leave an imprint for righteousness upon this nation that brings with it the blessings of Almighty God. ... If you have weaklings around you who do not share your biblical values, shed yourself of them."

P.S. I'll be opening my own University in the near future and I am announcing my presidency of it, effective as of now.

alternate: The Neverending Story This article is interesting. I agree with some of it, then again some of it doesn't quite jive with my sensibilities. I have to agree with the commentary about the compassion of the human race just being a few inches under the surface and how the media dictates when it is and isn't okay to feel sorry for other people suffering around the world.

I personally think about all of the human suffering around the world on a daily basis. Maybe its because I work in scientific research and I like to think that the work I'm doing today might help someone in the near future. I think it would do everyone some good to take time and reflect on how your actions might serve other people in the world that might be suffering. You shouldnt change your profession per SE but it would help a lot if everyone did some research on the net about a charity that could help others that are in need. If you step back and told the story of the last couple of weeks to someone from the suitable headline might sound hyperbolic, "Human compassion sparked only by the the force of Tsunami." Sadly this isn't an exaggeration.

This is from the falsie awards on www.alternet.org (See Here). I had heard this man's name before but never knew what he was about. Why is the evidence that we were completely hoodwinked not compelling enough to this administration?

War Is Sell

The formerly exiled Iraqi Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress were exposed as hucksters who befriended powerful men in Washington and played an instrumental role in selling the Iraq War. The U.S. major media finally examined the extent to which the INC and Chalabi used funding provided by the U.S. Congress to position themselves as a central source for much of the now-discredited "intelligence information" that the Bush administration used to justify the March 2003 invasion.

“The former Iraqi exile group that gave the Bush administration exaggerated and fabricated intelligence on Iraq also fed much of the same information to newspapers, news agencies and magazines in the United States, Britain and Australia," Knight Ridder reported in March 2004. "A June 26, 2002, letter from the Iraqi National Congress to the Senate Appropriations Committee listed 108 articles based on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress's Information Collection Program, a U.S.-funded effort to collect intelligence in Iraq. The Information Collection Program was financed out of the at least $18 million that the U.S. Congress approved for the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmed Chalabi from 1999 to 2003."

"Chalabi appears to have recognized that the neocons, while ruthless, realistic and effective in bureaucratic politics, were remarkably ignorant about the situation in Iraq, and willing to buy a fantasy of how the country's politics worked. So he sold it to them," John Dizard wrote for Salon.com in May 2004. In a detailed profile of Chalabi and the INC, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer included some fairly candid admissions by Francis Brooke, the INC's PR guru. Without Chalabi, he said, "This war would not have been fought." Beginning in the late 1990s, Chalabi and Brooke had designed a campaign to influence "only a couple of hundred people" in Washington with the ability to shape Iraq policy – people like Trent Lott, Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle and Dick Cheney. Following 9/11, their marketing strategy switched to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Brooke claimed, "I sent out an all-points bulletin to our network, saying, 'Look, guys, get me a terrorist, or someone who works with terrorists. And, if you can get stuff on WMD, send it!'"

Following the toppling of Saddam Hussein, the U.S. gave Chalabi one of the 25 seats on its hand-picked new Iraqi Governing Council. The Pentagon's $335,000 monthly payments to the INC's intelligence program continued until May 2004, when U.S. intelligence agencies began reporting that Chalabi may have actually been a double agent working for Iran. American troops raided Chalabi's headquarters and home in Baghdad, arrested two of his aides, and seized documents. "Only five months ago," observed Andrew Cockburn, "Chalabi was a guest of honor sitting right behind Laura Bush at the State of the Union. What brought about this astonishing fall from grace of the man who helped provide the faked intelligence that justified last year's war?" According to Newsweek, "Bush administration officials say the latest intelligence indicates [Chalabi] may have been supplying the Iranians with information on U.S. security operations in Iraq that could 'get people killed.'"

Chalabi responded by demanding that the U.S. leave Iraq. "Let my people go," he said, adding, "It is time for the Iraqi people to run their affairs." More recently he has aligned himself with Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric whose militia battled U.S. troops in August in the Iraqi city of Najaf.

Wired News: How Did Animals Escape Tsunami? This is fascinating!

The New York Times > Washington > At Leak Inquiry's Center, a Circumspect Columnist Here is what I think what happened. Bobby here was all outspoken and against this war. The administration says, "Okay enough of this no war maularky. Leak this man's wife's name to shame him for letting everyone know the truth about the Iraqi threat and we'll pretend that you're not against the war." Bobby replies with, "Compliance heir Rove!" This man is such a tool. I hope he gets whats coming to him one day in some form or another.

The New York Times > Opinion > Sleaze in the Capitol So we take thier land, which is the shittiest land that we can offer, they spin it into gold and now we want to rob them again. What is it with these people? There must be a gene for greed that is caused by severe southern inbreeding.

www.marthatalks.com Martha you ROCK! No one else on the planet has the ability of this woman to spin shit into gold. She is taking her misfortune and turning into a cause. Be on the watch for Martha championing prison reform. She will take this misfortune and turn it into a personal renaissance.