3/26/2003

 

Nanny



Frances Arnette Butler
June 21, 1930 - March 25, 2003

To my favorite person in the whole wide world: I hope Heaven is an endless beach with blue seas, warm air, and plenty of turtles. I love you more than you could ever know.

12:14 PM

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3/20/2003

 

Question

Why is it called GIVING birth? I'd say it's more like HAVING birth. Heck, if I could give it to someone else to have, I would! What woman wouldn't?

9:15 PM

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Hmmmm...

This was posted to my humor list by Paul Benoit, who didn't say if he wrote it, and I'm reposting it entirely without permission.

All right, let me see if I understand the logic of this correctly...
We are going to ignore the United Nations in order to make clear to Saddam Hussein that the United Nations cannot be ignored. We're going to wage war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war. The paramount principle is that the UN's word must be taken seriously, and if we have to subvert its word to guarantee that it is, then by gum, we will. Peace is too important not to take up arms to defend. Am I getting this right?

Further, if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is to vitiate the democracy of the Security Council, then we are honor-bound to do that too, because democracy, as we define it, is too important to be stopped by a little thing like democracy as they define it.

Also, in dealing with a man who brooks no dissension at home, we cannot afford dissension among ourselves. We must speak with one voice against Saddam Hussein's failure to allow opposing voices to be heard. We are sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make the point that might does not make right, as Saddam Hussein seems to think it does. And we are twisting the arms of the opposition until it agrees to let us oust a regime that twists the arms of the opposition. We cannot leave in power a dictator who ignores his own people. And if our people, and people elsewhere in the world, fail to understand that, then we have no choice but to ignore them.

Listen. Don't misunderstand. I think it is a good thing that the members of the Bush administration seem to have been reading Lewis Carroll. I only wish someone had pointed out that "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking
Glass" are meditations on paradox and puzzle and illogic and on the strangeness of things, not templates for foreign policy. It is amusing for the Mad Hatter to say something like, `We must make war on him because he is a threat to peace,' but not amusing for someone who actually commands an army to say that.

As a collector of laughable arguments, I'd be enjoying all this were it not for the fact that I know--we all know--that lives are going to be lost in what amounts to a freak, circular reasoning accident.

10:16 AM

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3/19/2003

 

I just love

the way students phrase their questions sometimes:

"Are you any good at finding peer-reviewed journal articles?"

Nope, I suck at it. Librarians are lousy at finding journal articles. In fact, I'm so bad at it they promoted me!

"Do you have a bathroom?"

Nope! We have to go next door to pee.

"Do you have any books on insert incredibly broad subject here - i.e. science?"

Nope! We don't carry any science books. We only have books about history, sports and French.

Here's your sign!

7:03 PM

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3/16/2003

 

GO DUKE!!!

We won!!! We won!!! OK, we really shouldn't have won, but we won!!! WAHOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! NCAAs, here we come! (Yeah, I know we ain't gonna win it all, but WE WON THIS ONE!!! WOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!)

And speaking of winning, the Checkers took all 3 games this weekend. We may have a prayer of making the playoffs after all! Woohoo!!! GO CHECKERS!

Oh, and by the way, I'm blogging from my new computer! I got a cu-ube! I got a cu-ube! :-)

10:14 PM

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3/13/2003

 

Hey Dubya...

Even your dad thinks you're being a dipshit. Get a clue!

11:15 AM

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3/12/2003

 

Still here!

Yeah, yeah, it's been a while since I updated. Get over it. :) I spent the weekend dancing my feet off and just generally having a blast at Spring Fling in Gatlinburg. For the non-cloggers out there, which is probably everyone reading this, Spring Fling is a 2 1/4 day clogging workshop. You spend 2 full days learning new dances, dance at the open dance all 3 nights, and watch competitions and a show in between. You come home totally exhausted (especially when you crammed 8 people into your hotel room, most of them kids!) and you can hardly walk, and I loved every minute of it.

And speaking of kids, it's odd to realize that I've apparently gotten old-enough-looking that kids will listen to me and do what I tell them to. Even the 13-year-olds listened to me, to the extent that they listened to anyone at least. I guess I am now officially a Grownup. Hmmm.

11:07 AM

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