Too Absent Herald sweating the small stuff since 2003

Day Waster

I’m jumping on board this e-ship. Just about every blog I read has pointed to this with the same warning: Prepare to Have Your Day Wasted.

LIFE Magazine’s collection of images, - including the shots on photographer’s rolls never published- are now available on Google.

As Gruber points out, this is Google (and the internet) at it’s best.

Of course, the first thing I did was to search for Gunhild Larking, Swedish High Jumper, whose picture, taken by George Silk at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, has always been a show stopper. True to it’s billing, the Google archive has most of Silk’s other shots on that roll (only one is of her actually in her event).
This is the picture as it appeared in the magazine.

This is something found in the archive:

Yeah… anyway. Prepare to lose your day.

Here’s another example of the gems you’ll find:

“Power concedes nothing without a demand.”

-Frederick Douglass
This is a ramble.

I wanted to put in the Youtube video of the infomercial, here. There’s a moment, in the first part, when Obama is listening to a guy who had his pension sliced (are you listening, Pennsy?). Obama says “You earned your pension…” And the guy is just flabbergasted, and can only say, over and over, “Thank you.”

But instead, this might be the most smile inducing clip of the campaign, for me.

This says plenty.

Here’s the Scoreboard.

and some art. I always liked the Poster for the 1924 Olympics, learned from Chariots of Fire.

Andrio Abero

And, on the subject of Chariots of Fire, and keeping up the fight.

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold:
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England’s green & pleasant Land.

Pennsylvania, I’m looking at you. You gave up your first chance at greatness dragging your feet and letting Delaware sign the Constitution first.

Don’t let it happen, again. Let us unite the Commonwealths.

Kentucky will have to sit it out.

Three Ways to Lose

At first I thought McCain would lose along the lines of Dole, or, yes, even Goldwater. He’d go down, fighting, but true to… well, some principles.
So that’s out.

Then I considered that he would lose in a self destructive way. this was amenable to me as well. Though I never thought of McCain as 90% Bush. I knew that I cannot actually storm the Executive mansion and run the hoodlums out. So McCain’s shitty lowbrow tactics would allow some sort of transference of my 8 year animosity.

Finally, we arrive at the third way. With the 30 minute program tonight, I know how McCain will lose.
He’s just gonna get beat. As Ta-Nehisi put it, moments ago: “McCain should call his family.”

Obama himself narrates the story of the Obama campaign.

On his best day, McCain couldn’t beat that.

Just think…

I watch Obama giving his stump speech, for the, what, thousandth time? I mean, really, a THOUSAND TIMES. I joke about my lack of patience with the “undecided voter.” But this is the reason he is to be wondered at. To be able to say this, for the thousandth time, and not just scream (thank you, again, Dr. Dean) at people to let him get to work.

So I just think, in a few days, he won’t have to go through this circus any more.

That takes care of thinking for today. Now FEEL this. I could barely see my cheese fries through the tears.

A word about Palin

Or, actually, four words.

Happy Dumb Evil Driven

AG reminded me, this morning, of our collegiate-era system for classifying behavior patterns. It was based on the Keirsey-Bates schema of

Introvert / Extrovert
Sensing / Feeling
Intuitive / Rational
Judging / Perceiving

To some extent, this system was useful for self examination. But that quickly lost it’s sheen. Our new system was an outwardly directed classification system, like the scrolling list of targets in the Terminator vision.
This new system was, itself, outwardly directed. “I don’t care about you or me. But what about that guy over there? What’s his deal?”

We came up with

Happy / Sad
Smart / Dumb
Good / Evil
Driven / Lazy.
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