Sorry about the light to non-existent posting hereabouts in the past weeks. I’ve had a string of killer crunch days at work,with some very long hours, and haven’t been able to summon up much energy to post anything in my off time.

For anybody who’s been curious about what I do for a living

[Okay, that's probably a longshot]

my job can be briefly described thus:

Results of data mining projects done by about 50 medical investigators are given to me to clean, sort, and then shovel into 4 or 5 databases as fast as possible. That’s it. And, unlike at my previous job, my phone rings only occasionally if at all, so I get to listen to music all day as I stoke the fiery furnaces of insurance fraud detection.

Spent the long Memorial Day weekend mainly sleeping and doing the tube tuber thing. Watched several episodes of Band of Brothers with my kids, to whom that miniseries is Holy Writ. To me:  not so much, but it was pretty darn good. Also watched Saboteur, one of my favorite Hitchcock movies. Also watched a bunch of other things I don’t remember, but that’s good because the point was to watch as mindless stuff as possible and so preserve the few remaining brain cells I have, so considered that way the weekend all in all was a great success.

Did manage to get over to Lakewood Monday afternoon, and spent a fine couple of hours sitting in Memorial Day traffic gridlock, the standard situation all over the normally deserted cemetery.
I love Lakewood. My parents and grandparents are buried there, and I probably go there 3 or 4 times a year, usually to bring flowers or a wreath for the holidays.  Even tho I’ve irrevocably shuffled off the coils of organized religion, I keep thinking that a long, long, long time from now, when the time finally comes for me to shuffle off the mortal coil, and if there’s anyone still around then who feels the need to have a memorial service for me, I would like that service to be held in the memorial chapel at Lakewood. It’s one of the finest examples of Byzantine style architecture in the world, and the mosaics that adorn the interior are spectacular.

Don’t need religion of any kind in order to appreciate such beauty.

UPDATE:  I forgot to mention the highly subjective and scientific bumpersticker poll I took of the cars at Lakewood yesterday.  The results:

Peace/anti-war message bumperstickers:    15

What Would Wellstone Do? bumperstickers:   3

Kerry/Edwards 2004 campaign bumperstickers:   7

Bush-Cheney/”W”/Bush support message bumperstickers:   0 

Ford Bell bumperstickers:     1   [okay, that one was on my car]

Amy Klobuchar bumperstickers:    0

Mark Kennedy bumperstickers:  0

~~~~

… And I wonder how many other people think of Peter S Beagle’s book A Fine and Private Place as they stroll through Lakewood?

Well anyway, here’s a few pictures.
Gravesite of Paul and Sheila Wellstone:

Near the large boulder gravestone, the markers for Paul and Sheila:

Grandma Tild and Grandpa August gravesite:

I had to use a knife to clear off the encroaching turf:

My parents’ gravesite:

Posted: May 30th, 2006 under Chez Tild, General.
Comments: none

To assist with this weekend’s difficult moviegoing decisions, here comes Mal Valour, Hollywood movie quote whore extraordinaire, today scaling new heights of hyperbole in praise of The DaVinci Code.

See how Mal’s pithy synopsis grabs us immediately! :

Tom Hanks positively irradiates the screen with star power as Robert Langdon, Harvard professor of symbiology, who is called to the scene of a grisly murder at the Louvre, a famous Paris art gallery. He’s aided by French puzzle-solveologist Sophie (the ravishing Audrey Tattoo). Together they begin to unravel a hidden secret that has remained an obscure mystery, hidden obscurely in mysterious secrecy…until now!

Watch as Mal highlights the dynamic cast! :

Sir Ian McKellen is at his Oscar™®© calibre best as Sir Leigh Teabag, the eccentric man whose job is to explain things, and boy does he! Sir Ian explains the hell out of everything in sight, with style, grace and scene-chewing panache. Jean Reno smoulders as a Paris detective who plays by his own rules, once again proving himself to be the Frenchest actor of our time.

And of course the ever-courteous Mal takes great pains not to reveal crucial plot points! :

However, I was not prepared to have the very foundations of my faith shaken to their very foundations! The DaVinci Code contains startling information about Jesus and Mary Magdalene; I won’t spoil the surprise, but what you learn about these two and their children will forever change the way you look at life, God, the universe and the very nature of existence!

Read Mal’s entire rhapsodic review here!

I adore Mal Valour. His writing is so keen; so fresh; so sparkling. And yet– also so familiar.

Reading a Mal Valour blurb transports me to another time; another place; another world that’s somehow strangely reminiscent of a cowtown puppet show….

But how could that be?
*sigh* Ahh well, I guess I’ll never know. But that’s okay, because there’s one thing I do know:

I love you, Tom Servo Mal Valour!

Posted: May 19th, 2006 under Blurbtacular!.
Comments: 1

Today is the day known as Syttende Mai = Seventeenth of May, when we celebrate the 1301st anniversary of the day that Saint Kjettil-Bjarne

drove the ravenous tomtes out of Norway

so the lefse could flourish and grow plentiful again.

So join with us in celebration today by wearing beige, the official color of lefse.

 Happy Syttende Mai!

 

Posted: May 17th, 2006 under Scandinaviattitude.
Comments: none

[Edited: New! Improved! Now with Generalissimo Francisco Bushco version 1.1!]

“Of course, there’s a major difference between Franquistas and modern-day Republican authoritarians: their choice of caudillo. Or to be precise, the caudillo that was chosen for them. I think it’s beginning to dawn on a number of them that their “leader” is merely a figurehead for a small group of old men still obsessed with old failures. They had been promised John Wayne, the Apostle Paul, and Lee Iacocca all rolled into one; what they got was a sullen, ill-tempered high school student with an inability to deal with multiple-choice questions. You can see their panic in the frantic support of every stupid, illegal, or immoral policy coming from the administration, and their shrill condemnation of anyone who dares to point out that the emperor has no clothes.”

“American Franquistas” at the American Street

Posted: May 16th, 2006 under National politics, Politics, Wingnuttia.
Comments: none

Mark Kennedy’s latest catch..

 

Posted: May 14th, 2006 under Minnesota politics, National politics.
Comments: 1

Via:

“What really angers the White House and its defenders about both the Post and Times scoops are not the legal questions the stories raise about unregulated gulags and unconstitutional domestic snooping, but the unmasking of yet more administration failures in a war effort riddled with ineptitude,” Rich writes.

“It’s the recklessness at the top of our government, not the press’ exposure of it, that has truly aided the enemy, put American lives at risk and potentially sabotaged national security,” Rich continues. “That’s where the buck stops, and if there’s to be a witch hunt for traitors, that’s where it should begin.”

More excerpts from Frank Rich’s Sunday NYT column here.

And, from the Tild Newsstand, a magazine cover from last June that can stand another look:

Posted: May 13th, 2006 under National politics.
Comments: 1

Longtime readers know that I pull out and re-run certain posts or images at least once a year. Like the nose washing nasal irrigation jala neti sinucleanse neti pot post, which turns up regularly in the Google searches of people throughout the world who are afflicted with never-ending sniffles and hacking coughs and postnasal drip.

I was about to re-run another perennial favorite, the clip ‘n’ save Tolstoy To Do List, but then Atrios posted a to do list of his own that wipes Count Lev’s right off the map in terms of breadth and depth and timeliness.

I agree with Avedon and others that that list could and should be adopted immediately as the Democratic party platform.

Atrios: We’re the Decider

Undo the bankruptcy bill enacted by this administration

Repeal the estate tax repeal

Increase the minimum wage and index it to the CPI

Universal health care (obviously the devil is in the details on this one)

Increase CAFE standards. Some other environment-related regulation

Pro-reproductive rights, getting rid of abstinence-only education, improving education about and access to contraception including the morning after pill, and supporting choice. On the last one there’s probably some disagreement around the edges (parental notification, for example), but otherwise.

Simplify and increase the progressivity of the tax code

Kill faith-based funding. Certainly kill federal funding of anything that engages in religious discrimination.

Reduce corporate giveaways

Have Medicare run the Medicare drug plan

Force companies to stop underfunding their pensions. Change corporate bankruptcy law to put workers and retirees at the head of the line with respect to their pensions.

Leave the states alone on issues like medical marijuana. Generally move towards “more decriminalization” of drugs, though the details complicated there too.

Imprison Jeff Goldstein for crimes against humanity for his neverending stupidity

Paper ballots

Improve access to daycare and other pro-family policies. Obiously details matter.

Raise the cap on wages covered by FICA taxes.

Now that’s the kind of list Tolstoy was talkin’ about when he asked so famously:

ЧТО ЖЕ ДЕЛАТЬ?

Which can be translated variously as

“What Is To Be Done?”

or

“What Then Must We Do?”

I thank the perspicacious Mr. Black for writing it all down in a To Do list for progressives that could hardly be improved upon.

And as a bonus here’s a handy clip ‘n’ save Tolstoy list too.

Posted: May 10th, 2006 under General, nose washing.
Comments: none

Via Tristero at Hullabaloo (and in the article when you scroll down to the end you get an extra added bonus of Digby barging in with a last minute link):

What was George W. Bush’s happiest moment during the last five years?

The preznit says it was when he caught a 7.5 lb. perch in his very own lake.

Boy howdy, if there was ever a better opportunity to reprint some classic Tildification I don’t know when.

Posted: May 7th, 2006 under General.
Comments: none

Via Atrios:

Huh? Wait a minute. Didn’t we debunk and lay to rest this flyblown canard at least 6 months ago?

I think I posted a chart*  last year that was kind of helpful. Ah, here it is:

Was that so hard? For some outlets of our SCLM, apparently it was.

And yet, for millions of reality-based Americans, not so much.

*UPDATE: When I posted this chart last year, I was never able to find out from whence it came. If I knew I’d be happy to attribute.  Anybody know who made this handy chart?

 

Posted: May 7th, 2006 under General.
Comments: 6

Bill asks in the comments for the Kosapalooza post if the “bitchy little girl with a chip on her shoulder” reference [off-camera in the picture of Nearly Headless Wege] was a reference to Bitch PhD, who, along with Kos and PZ Myers was one of the bigtime-blogger celebrity visitors at last Tuesday’s DL.

The short answer is no, but as usual there’s a longer and more complicated answer. The off-camera subject wearing the bitchy pink t-shirt was DL diva REW, and here’s some backstory:
A while back, our fearless leader in all things DL was dismissed sniffily in the comments of some MOB-related blog as being “a bitchy little girl with a chip on her shoulder”.

Update:  Smartie corrects me — the comment was posted on a blog which is not  a MOB member, which reflects well on Jeff of Blog of the Moderate Left, but doesn’t make the comment any less pissy.

Now obviously such puny, spiteful darts of bloviating blowhards hath no sting for intelligent adults like our Miz REW. Still, she kinda liked the label and asked me if I might commemorate the phrase in form of a pulp paperback cover.

But of natch! I replied. And in due time this is what I came up with:

[Oh boy, here it comes: the capitalist moment. The shopkeeper's pitch. The break for a commercial....]
Click on the t-shirt image to be taken to the Tild Store, source of fine quality Tildified merchandise, where this dandy garment may be purchased at cost.
What’s that, you say? Buy at cost? That’s right, no markup for me. You can buy this stuff at cost just like I do. I don’t make a dime on these sales. And what’s more, whenever CafePress has a shopkeeper’s sale — meaning shopkeepers can buy their own merchandise at 10% or 20% below cost — I’ll let you know about it so you get the discount too. Is that a deal or is that a deal?! And now, back to our informational post, already in progress:

Yes, that’s Dr. Bitch’s arm displaying her gift item. And no, I’m not going to show her face. If you’ve ever read her blog you will know that if ever there was someone who appreciated the value of pseudonymous blogging it is she, and I’m certainly not about to trash that happy status quo. It was wonderful to meet her in person last Tuesday.

So Bill, there’s your slightly roundabout answer.

Posted: May 7th, 2006 under General.
Comments: 2