Mamet for Toddlers

My favorite thing in the world to watch: Sam steers, Caleb pushes.

They will sleep anywhere so long as it is daylight and they aren't in their cribs.

This is the picture I need to see when it's 3 am and only the adults want to sleep.

Hopefully, soon, video. I have to buy a Firewire cord, as well as the shooting scripts for "Glengary Glen Ross." Current casting plans have Caleb as Ricky Roma and Sam in Jack Lemon's role as Shelly " The Machine" Levene. I'll handle the Baldwin role.

Third prize is you're fired.

I Eat Grubs and Have Moss-Covered Fur

I know. Been quiet lately.

But that's because (A) cartoon-making energy has been elsewise diverted; (B) work has been too slow, and so I've become somewhat Sloth-like, because an object at rest tends to remain on my desk; and (C) I have two kids who are incredibly, incredibly fun at the moment. I could watch one-year olds try to walk for the rest of my days.

At any rate, Qanimaliqpunga happens this weekend, so I imagine I'll be more productive once its out of the way.

Great Moments in Semantics

From the AP:

Rice engaged in a tense exchange with [Senator Chuck] Hagel [R., Neb.], a Vietnam veteran and longtime critic of Bush's Iraq policy, disputing his characterization of Bush's buildup as an "escalation."

"Putting in 22,000 more troops is not an escalation?" Hagel asked.

"I think, senator, escalation is not just a matter of how many numbers you put in."

"Would you call it a decrease?" Hagel asked.

"I would call it, senator, an augmentation that allows the Iraqis to deal with this very serious problem that they have in Baghdad," she said.

Hagel told Rice, "Madame Secretary, Iraqis are killing Iraqis. We are in a civil war. This is sectarian violence out of control."

She disputed that Iraq was in the throes of a civil war.

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Al sent along this map and suggested we compare it to 2004 Presidential Election results.

Does Not Play Well With Others

Here are two fantastic sentences written by Dave Itzkoff as they appeared in last Sunday's New York Times Book Review 's review of Michael Crichton's "Next" :

Though the moment may lack the inherent gravitas of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s encounter with Abraham Lincoln, or even Elvis Presley’s private audience with Richard Nixon, surely history should reserve a special place for the day in 2005 when Michael Crichton was invited to the White House to meet with George W. Bush. Imagine: the modern era’s leading purveyor of alarmist fiction, seated side by side with Michael Crichton.

If you look at today's remarks from White House counselor Dan Bartlett you'll hear a foreshadowing of what we'll be hearing from W. tonight and hearing more and more in the next year or so. Bartlett says we've been "handcuffed by political interference by Iraqi leadership" and that "The Iraqis have got to step up." When we ultimately withdraw from Iraq, we'll do so while waving talking points that will condemn Iraq and its people for failing to help us help themselves, for failing to see the grace of democracy, for dragging their feet on freedom. We couldn't help them, we will say, because they wouldn't help themselves. We'll remark upon the thousands of American lives that died trying to make Iraq a better place and ignore the tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who suffered by our helping hands.

Meanwhile, here are some phrases I would be very surprised to hear tonight: "weapons of mass destruction," "Al Qaeda," and "Ossama Bin Laden."

I am thankful for John Chancellor

NBC News 12/8/1980

I am thankful for Joe Strummer

Johnny Appleseed

I am thankful for Joe Strummer.

I am thankful for Jim Henson

Monster Eats Machine

Sam and Caleb Comics #4

We'll Suceed Unless We Quit

Some things I’d take the time to notice, were I able:

• Late news, yes, but I’m really happy about what my nation accomplished on Tuesday, November 7th. I’m less happy about the bad headcold I received after a long day of working as an election volunteer for the city. My kids have that cold now, so the spectre of 11/7/06 hangs over our head still. I hope we recover before the opposition party does.
• Our president, in his speech in Hanoi, suggested that the great lesson of our long and ultimately futile war in Vietnam was that we should stay in a long and (so far) futile war in Iraq.
• The counter-kinder-culture baby clothing available at http://www.babywit.com/. Whoever wants to buy my kids Billy Bragg T-shirts featuring the image of The Clash’s Joe Strummer can do so here. Also worth checking out, the “Color of Dissent” coloring book.
• Speaking of which, enjoy FEMA’s coloring book. What color is your hurricane?
• Television is really bad all of a sudden. Shows I was looking forward to watching, like “Studio 60” and “30 Rock” and “Six Degrees,” have been unwatchable (or nearly so, in “Studio 60”’s case). “Lost” has really slumped since late last season, particularly in killing off its 2nd most interesting character and in refusing to have any forward action thus far in Season Three.
• Fox News and at least one CNN anchor suggest that our fabuloso mid-term elections may cause terrorism and insurgency.
  

  JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Well on the point that Michael Ware was making. That the people who are fomenting this kind of activity over there aren't stupid. They understand with the results of the U.S. midterm elections that there are a lot of unanswered questions in this country about what happens next. And they are going to use that opportunity to make hay while the sun shines if you pardon a kind of poor play on words. But our uncertainty and lack of direction at this moment simply creates another opportunity for the bad guys and they are taking full advantage of it.
  

  
  This reminds me of Stephen Colbert’s election night accusation that the Democrats had only been in power for 3 hours and already we’d become stuck in a quagmire in Iraq.
  Oh, and, um, terrorism/insurgency = making hay in the sun?
• I also loved how the Today show this morning tried to use the election for House majority leader as evidence of a dis-unified, disconnected Democratic party. If I had a time machine, I’d track down Will Rogers and make him understand that his quip about belonging to “no organized political party” would make life easy for hack journalists in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
• The local news channel, meanwhile, has a reporter circling sites of drunk driving accidents on a city map with the idea that then you can avoid those particular intersections and be safe from drunk drivers. There’s a name for the place where all the drunks live in the same area and go to the same tavern via the same roads. It’s called “college.”
  TV News: Is It Trying to Do Your Thinking For You? Find out at eleven.
• This adroit comment by Harry Shearer regarding O.J. Simpson’s upcoming Fox TV special entitled “If I Had Done It”: “It's a breathtaking use of the past subjunctive by a network that normally can barely manage the present tense.”
• Alan Kalter's Message To Britney Spears
• And more comics, sometime soonish.

Sam and Caleb Comics #3