I’m here to start a new popular movement in America.

Drunkcall Damascus.

Everyone, sometime and sooner or later, has drunk called.

You know.  It’s 3:18 a.m. and you’ve had too much to drink and you call an old girlfriend.  Sometimes you just breathe and hang up, but sometimes you give them a piece of your mind.  Sometimes you beg for a piece just for old times’ sake.  Whatever.  What you really know is that you wake up the next morning and remember it and feel dirty, skanky, guilty and full of remorse.  Sometimes you don’t remember and you get to feel all those things when the drunkcall-ee gives you a going over for waking them up at 3:18 a.m. on a Tuesday.

Well, in this case, I think President Bush has a great idea.

We need someone to call President Assad of Syria and tell him to git Hizbullah to stop this shit.  Then it’ll be all over.

Why not every God-fearing, heavy drinking American?

It will save all those drunk calls to innocent former lovers, who will get to sleep peacefully through a Tuesday night and won’t wake up the next morning cranky with all their co-workers. 

Instead of feeling guilty about drunk calling, we can wake up with a sense of patriotic pride.

Hello, operator, give me Damascus.  This is London Calling, can’t you hear the damn CD?  I’ll turn it up.  Now put that guy Haaaasssssan on the line.

I’m not going anywhere, I just need a break from blogging.

I’ll start posting again next week.

(It’s really a photo from Miss K’s graduation from nursing school, but don’t let on)

John,

I’ve been upgrading a couple of my sites…

http://www.fastpipe.com/

http://www.hdtvok.com/

When you’re desperate for work, you work on that portfolio…

I’ve started following Mary Elizabeth’s blog, which I find very funny. 

In case I forget, happy birthday!

Dennis
—
Dennis Whiteman
FastPipe Media, Inc.
[email protected]
AIM Video: fastpipex

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face.
It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”
           — George W. Bush, November 2005

My son, Jack (and U2’s Bono) send this along

In the Valle de San Felix, the purest water in Chile
runs from 2   rivers, fed by 2 glaciers.

Water is a most precious resource, and wars will be
fought for it.

Indigenous farmers use the water, there is no
unemployment, and  they provide the second largest
source of income for the area.

Under the glaciers has been found a huge deposit of
gold, silver and other minerals. To get at these, it
would be necessary to break, to destroy the glaciers –
something never conceived of in the history of the
world – and to make 2 huge holes, each as big as a
whole mountain, one for extraction and one for the
mine’s rubbish tip.

The project is called PASCUA LAMA. The company is
called Barrick Gold.

The operation is planned by a multi-national company,
one of whose members is George Bush Senior.

The Chilean Government has approved the project to
start this year, 2006.

The only reason it hasn’t started yet is because the
farmers have got a temporary stay of execution.

If they destroy the glaciers, they will not just
destroy the source of especially pure water, but they
will permanently contaminate the 2  rivers so they
will never again be fit for human or animal
consumption because of the use of cyanide and
sulphuric acid in the extraction process.
Every last gram of gold will go abroad to the
multinational company and not one will be left with
the people whose land it is. They will only be left
with the poisoned water and the resulting illnesses.

The farmers have been fighting a long time for their
land, but have been forbidden to make a TV appeal by a
ban from the Ministry of the Interior.

Their only hope now of putting brakes on this project
is to get help from international justice.

The world must know what is happening in Chile. The
only place to start changing the world is from here.

We ask you to circulate this message amongst your
friends in the following way.

Please copy this text, paste it into a new email
adding your signature and send it to everyone in your
address book. Please, will the 100th person to receive
and sign the petition, send it to
[email protected] to be forwarded to the Chilean
Government.

No to Pascua Lama Open-cast mine in the Andean
Cordillera on the Chilean-Argentine frontier.

   We ask the Chilean Government not to authorize the
Pascua Lama project to protect the whole     of 3
glaciers, the purity of the water of the San Felix
Valley and El Transito, the quality of the
   agricultural land of the region of Atacama, the
quality of life of the Diaguita people and of the
   whole population of the region.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascua_Lama

   Signature, City, Country

   1) Katharine Proudfoot, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
   2) Laura Cole, London, UK
   3) David Platt, London, UK
   4) Diane Platt, Manchester, UK
   5) Tanya Corker, Manchester, UK
   6) Nicola Hargreaves, UK
   7) Nicholas Jones, UK
   8) Johann Don-Daniel, Germany
   9) Ashley Berger, Germany
   10) Sarah Downie, Leeds, UK
   11) Paula Delahunty, Bingley, UK
   12) John O’Driscoll, Bingley, Uk
   13) Jordan-Lee Delahunty, Bingley, UK
   14) Claire Mulvey, Bradford, UK
   15) Marie Malcolm Bradford, UK
   16) Ann Clowes, Halifax UK
   17) Jayne McGee, Brighouse UK
   18) Jason Barratt Oldham UK
   19) Lindsay Torrance, Rochdale UK
   20) Maggie Ford, Rochdale, U.K.
   21) Barry Cook, Todmorden, U.K.
   22) Shelley Burgoyne, Todmorden, U.K.
   23) Lisa Stuart, Potes, Spain.
   24) Michael Stuart, Potes, Spain.
   25) Renee Engl, Byron Bay, Australia
   26) Adrian Begg, Brunswick Heads, Australia
   27) Riana Begg, Brunswick Heads, Australia
   28) Oriel Paterson, Brunswick Heads, Australia
   29) Alicia Paterson, Brisbane, Australia
   30) Lyneve Robinson, Sydney, Australia
   31) Jennifer Moalem, Sydney, Australia
   32) Alexandra Pope, Sydney Australia
   33) Shushann Movsessian, Sydney Australia
   34) Amanda Frost
   35) Chris Liddell, AUS
   36) Jade Deegan, AUS
   37) Donna Duggan, Sydney, AUS
   37) Jo Satori, AUS
   38) Katinka Lytton-Hitchins, AUS
   39 Anthony Ashworth NSW, AUS
   40)ShamanaTara, NSW Australia
   41) Lorene Barin, NSW, Australia
   42) Dimahi Dettra Farrell, NSW Australia
   43) Julie Pirotta, WA, Australia
   44) Ginny Webb, Perth, Australia
   45) Elspeth Taimre WA Australia
   46) chris murray WA Australia
   47] Annie Parkhouse, Carlisle, UK
   48) Norah McWilliam, Bradford, Yorks. UK
   49) Simon Dunn, Manchester, UK
   50) Kate Dunn, Manchester, UK
   51) Jeremy Haughty, Exeter UK
   52) Julie Verre, Exeter, UK
   53)Tricia Cassel-Gerard, Exeter, Uk
   54) Simon Evans, Wembury,UK
   56) Neil Cooper, Modbury, UK
   57) John Nightingale, Capton, UK
   58) Tim Malyon, Uplowman, UK
   59) Tony Bennett, London, UK
   60) Lora Fountain, Paris, France
   61) David Koblick, Steyr, Austria
   62) Sylviane Bellamy, USA
   63)  Virginia MacArthur, VA,USA
   64) Maribel Moheno, Richmond, VA, USA
   65)  Nora Finton, NYC
  66) Dorian Rush, LA, USA
  67) Jack Long, LA, USA
http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/getinvolved

Privacy Shattered Sharon sends this along

The thing to remember is that the six million Jews who were murdered would, today, be the parents and grandparents of 20 million.

     IN MEMORIAM – The event that cannot ever be erased!

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain. It was launched during Passover 2005 “The Jewish Holiday of Freedom” until Holocaust Memorial Day, in memory of the six million Jews who were massacred during the Holocaust.
This e-mail is intended to reach six million people around the world!Join us and be a link in the memorial chain and help us distribute it around the world.

Please send this e-mail to 10 people you know and ask them to continue the memorial chain.Please don’t just delete it. It will only take you a minute to pass this along – Thanks!

Gifts, cards, food, MySpace greetings, phone calls …

It is a happy and wealthy man who has so many friends still willing to notice a birthday when you’ve had so many already.  Uh, had so many birthdays, not had so many friends.  Well, I’ve had a few of those friends.  This isn’t going the way I thought it would.

So, anyway, I’m a happy guy on my 57th birthday.  I’m three years younger than President W, who also celebrates his birthday today.  Looking at the polls, I think I may be slightly more popular than he is.  Of course, my mistakes haven’t caused the deaths of thousands, so I’ve got that going for me.

Just as when I was a child, I don’t feel a year older.  In fact, I feel like a child.  Maybe a child of about 30.  I wonder who she might be?  Uhm, this also isn’t going as planned.

So, anyway, here I am at this advanced age and still I’m being photographed as a model and the doctors tell me I’m in remarkably good shape FOR MY AGE (I still don’t like that prepositional phrase.  Why wouldn’t we say that so and so looks good for their age when they are 25?  It’s because it’s unnecessary, right?  So, I can’t be healthy, I have to be healthy FOR MY AGE.  It’s a bitch.  Getting older is not for sissies.)

I wish I had a wealth of wisdom to pass along.  You know, those verities of life like:

          1.     Don’t spit into the wind.

          2.     It’s always a bad idea to pee on an electrified cattle fence.

          3.     Buy low, sell high.

However, I’m a few verities short these days.  I think I would be rather surprised to find my blog entries collected into a Tao de Ching.  It’s barely possible, given a 3 year old grand-daughter, that I’ll be remembered a century from now.  I’m comfortable knowing that 200 years from now, my existence will be entirely erased with the exception of the odd bit of DNA.

I suppose if I have any wisdom, it begins there — with trying to remember than most of the small stuff I sweat is small stuff and that it will hardly matter at all a year from now, much less 5 years or 50 years or 500 years from now.

That, and that I’m fairly sure that men are not supposed to understand women and vice versa.  To understand would erase the mystery and destroy the balance of the universe.

So, I’m along my merry way, trying to do the best I can from day to day, comfortable with growing older and not up.

Thank you, my friends and family.  You are all that my life is worth and more than I can otherwise aspire to.

Happy Birthday to me.

North Korea, a furtive and Stalinist country, launched six missles today.  At least one of the missles was designed to be long range, capable of reaching the United States, but that one failed about a minute after launch.  The others flew into the Sea of Japan, making our major Asian partner very nervous — Tokyo will take the matter to the U.N. Security Council.

Since we are in Iraq, have 200,000 troops and civilians there, and are spending $200 billion a year there and for the foreseeable future, there is no military response available to either intimidate the former playboy and dissociated dictator, Kim Jung Il.  Nor could the United States contain, short of an atomic bomb response, aggressive moves by the North against South Korea.

North Korea, as you may know, is following/leading/going parallel to Iran in developing nuclear capability.  They were a client of the Pakistani scientist who peddled atomic knowledge and equipment across the world to rogue states.

It’s not really changing the subject when I note that in Afghanistan, the Taliban are killing a few Afghans that are associated with Western forces.  The ones they are killing are ALL translators.  The Taliban has recently launched attacks with as many as 400 troops massed into one operation.  It’s a much higher level of insurgency than we see in Iraq.

Also today, the United States military announced that the special team formed to take out Osama bin Laudin has been disbanded.  Did someone say “dead or alive”?  Excuse me, that was “bring it on”.  No, it was “Mission Accomplished”. 

I agree that they should disband it.  After all, Pakistan is not in control of the so-called “Tribal Areas” along the Afghan border if for no other reason than Musharreff is hardly in control of the rest of Pakistan.  In all events, the idea that someone will give up Osama and/or that the United States will be able to go in there in force or in stealth is not probable at this time.

The military is doing it for the reason that it’s several thousand GIs short of Special Forces, Seals, and the like. 

Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Pakistan, Iran and the list goes on when you remind yourself that Israel is in a shooting war with Gaza again.  Tel Aviv has taken a large number of the Hamas parliamentary leaders into custody and is occupying ground in the north end of the Gaza Strip.  Tanks and men are on the ground and there are missle and artillary strikes against Hamas offices and HQ. 

I do not think it imprudent to say that American foreign policy has seen better days, even recently.  I do not think it unfair to say that America is rather quickly showing itself to be an inept hegemon.  I also think it is fair to say that this president has nothing to offer but a record of foreign policy failure and poor judgment.

You and I will pay the price for his bungling.