Tragedy and cornflakes.
Note to mothers and other sensitive souls: Avoid the New York Times this morning. First, seven kids, being driven by their 15-year-old sibling, die when their van is rear-ended by a semi.
Worse: six-year-old strangled by playful golden retriever.
Some days, the Wall Street Journal is comforting.
Big today today, busy busy busy, so not much time to dilly-dally here on this busy busy day. A few links:
The Poor Man deconstructs the Deborah Howell thing (if anyone cares) entertainingly in Let’s stage an all-star panel on blogger ethics in my pants.
In Fort Wayne — speaking of things no one cares about — there’s been a mini-drama going on in blogs and (to a far lesser extent) in the newspaper, regarding a student’s expulsion over the “publication” (photocopying, I presume) of a “book” about his high school. It’s supposed to be a hilarious send-up of Carroll High School life, written in the tone and spirit of Jon Stewart’s “America (the book).” School officials responded to this impertinence in the usual Allen County high-school-administrator fashion — i.e., they expelled the kid. (Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen had nothing on these folks.) One thing you need to know: The kid is either a founder or a member of the Allen County Teenage Republicans, which means he’s getting an awful lot of hand-holding and support from non-teenage Republicans in the area. And all this discussion has been happening with only a few people having actually seen the book in question.
Well. Nathan Gotsch at Fort Wayne Observed has scanned and posted all 14 pages, and now we can all judge for ourselves. My take: Expulsion was overreacting, but if this kid thinks he has a career in comedy, he has inordinately high self-esteem. My further cynical take: In two years he’ll be at some comfy university, offering $100 for examples of professors with liberal bias. Yawn. Fifteen minutes up.…now.
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brian stouder said on January 26th, 2006 at 9:59 am
I know your today is busy busy busy today -
but the link to the infamous book is dead dead dead — dead as a dead cat.
hmmmmmmm.…Lewis Carroll’s red queen meets Carrol HS’s dead ‘tween.…..nahhh, it doesn’t ‘scour’
basset said on January 26th, 2006 at 10:11 am
talk about “useless wankers”… that in-my-pants discussion is just ridiculous. this one said that, the other one accused someone else of something, I say tomato, you say tomahto, who cares?
basset said on January 26th, 2006 at 10:13 am
and that golden link was truly awful. we’ve had goldens for years and are involved in rescue work… finding homes for goldens who’ve been mistreated and/or abandoned.
our organization is Middle Tenn. Golden Retriever Rescue, rescueagolden.org.
nancy said on January 26th, 2006 at 10:52 am
Link fixed.
And as for the Poor Man, I think a useless-wanker discussion of a useless-wanker discussion is pretty apt. Can anyone put together a panel of bloggers that doesn’t include Jeff Jarvis and Glenn Reynolds? That’s all I want to know.
alex said on January 26th, 2006 at 11:24 am
As a Carroll alum (’79) it’s fun to see how suburbanization and the Age of Zero Tolerance has changed the place. When I was there it was a small country school. Today it’s a huge mega-campus. In my day, expulsions were rare (and often reversed following threats of litigation from the pompous-ass lower-tier executive types who were the pioneers of the exurban migration). These folks regarded the administration as a bunch of rubes, which they were and probably still are, but operated under the delusion that only the farm and hilljack kids’ shit smelled like shit. Yeah, the punishment in the instant case is draconian, but not surprising. I see Mr. Niles Pfafman is still there and after all the abuse he and other administrators have taken over the years from the imperious nouveau riche pricks they deal with — and I’m talking about parents and the children of such — it’s no wonder they come down so hard.
brian stouder said on January 26th, 2006 at 11:48 am
Speaking of oddly written things, check out this Reuters story
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11041522/
The thing is a straight (so to speak) bit of politics/gotcha-kulcha at first, but it goes sideways by about the third paragraph — and by the time it gets to some gatuitous quotes from constituents near the end, it is heavily into the wall
Dorothy said on January 26th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
Basset — I know I owe you a recipe (the cookbook is at home) and don’t want to make a real long entry here to give it to you. Can I e-mail you a Word document with the recipe? I’ll need your address.
The Golden we own was a rescue of sorts. We adopted him right after we moved to South Carolina about 16 months ago. Someone had shot him in the front left leg! He’s doing just great. Boy that was a sad story, that one in the Times.
brian stouder said on January 26th, 2006 at 5:16 pm
Dorothy — it took me all day, but I finally braced myself and clicked that link, and read about half of it before bailing out…but not before seeing pictures of the hauntingly beautiful little girl, and the proud family dog.
Our own beautiful little 19 month old girl is in a phase where she actively seeks out things to wrap around her neck — shirts, pants, tube socks, belts — anything. Of course, we vigilantly take these things away, and long ago removed cords for window blinds and lamps and so on.…..
but certainly when she’s 6 years old, our alert-level will be lower.
Stories like those make my (remaining) hairs turn gray, and put wrinkles in my forehead
Nathan Gotsch said on January 26th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
A link guaranteed to work:
http://fwmn.blogspot.com
mary said on January 26th, 2006 at 9:08 pm
Smokey, my lab, requests no more depressing retriever stories for a few days.
Dorothy said on January 27th, 2006 at 6:32 am
Have any of you read “Marley & Me”? I bought it Monday at 7 PM and finished it Wednesday at 9:12 PM. I think all dog lovers deserve to treat themselves to this book.
mary said on January 27th, 2006 at 10:15 am
I saw a blurb for that book, Dorothy, describing Marley as the worst dog in the world, and listing some of his faults. He’s got nothing on my late dog Sophie.
I’ve been reading a lot of dog books lately, unsentimental ones. Jon Katz’s book about dogs is good, and although the author’s name eludes me, the books How to Speak Dog and How Dogs Think are good. The combination of my adopting two new dogs at the same time and being appalled by the recent trend towards dogs as fashion accessories has got me thinking about the connection between dogs and humans. Not sure where this interest is going, but there’s some interesting stuff to read.
Dorothy said on January 27th, 2006 at 10:51 am
At John Grogan’s website (I think it’s marleyandme.com) he has other letters/stories listed where people disagreed with him about Marley being the worst dog. A few of them have worse stories than Marley. I imagine most people have had a few things destroyed by their pups over the years, including me. I’ll have to look for those books you mention. I also have been thinking about re-visiting my James Herriott books. Lots of great dog stories in them!
mary said on January 27th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
I think dragging a dead skunk into the house and shaking it, spraying rotting dead skunk parts on the walls, ceiling, and furniture beats drinking from the toilet in the worst dog competition.
Dorothy said on January 27th, 2006 at 8:52 pm
I had an Irish setter once who decided to jump into my neighbor’s pile of manure, which was at the ready to be spread on his garden plot. We smelled that damn manure on the dog’s fur for a good year after that, despite frequent baths. She wasn’t the worst dog, but she ranked up there among the dumbest.
Dan said on January 28th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
Although the Carroll “Book” got most of the press, I find the FBI investigating MIE to be the more interesting story in Ft. Wayne.