Just thought I’d bring these to your attention

While I mentally take a little break. Trust me: I need one. So read. It’s good for you.

Federal Web sites knocked out by cyber attack

An alternative to operation stimulus

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Following bliss

My friend JT is moving to Tennessee to become all super educated — PhD in English Lit. She’s a super smarty pants — anyway, I’m a little sad because I really just became friends with her and now she’s leaving. I mean, she could have had the decency to wait to move until I moved. But I guess the University of Tennessee really can’t be expected to cater to my schedule. Although this does provide an excuse to visit the great Volunteer state again — I used to play in tournaments there quite a bit and visited the Noj there frequently before he moved back to the Atl. And the upshot is she’s given me more inspiration not to fear picking my life up and hitting the road — I’m getting a bit frustrated with the slowness of that event but I’ve been told that said slowness is all in my head so I’m trying to keep the frustration, and my propensity for jealousy (I know. It’s a problem I work on relentlessly) when I hear of people who are actually making moves in some direction, at a minimum. Anyway, that’s all I’ve got today. Well, that and this. Here’s the crucial line:

“Just because you don’t know what Sarah Palin is doing doesn’t mean that she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

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Revolutionary Ideas

Last day at work this week and I’m seriously — in between pool time and sparkler fest 2009 with the ballroom crazies and beer and food and possibly “hole bag” (yes, I was let in on the new terminology) — going to try to reflect on this great American experiment that remains so compelling and relevant and alive, no matter how much we abuse it and kick it around. And while I love this quote from Dazed and Confused:

“Okay guys, one more thing, this summer when you’re being inundated with all this American bicentennial Fourth Of July brouhaha, don’t forget what you’re celebrating, and that’s the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white males didn’t want to pay their taxes.”

I think it’s more complicated than that. So I give you a little of this.

“The genius of the Founding Fathers was their ability not only to grasp the revolutionary ideas of the period, but to devise a means of implementing those ideas in practice, a means of translating them from the realm of philosophic abstraction into that of sociopolitical reality. By defining in detail the division of powers within the government and the ruling procedures, including the brilliant mechanism of checks and balances, they established a system whose operation and integrity were independent, so far as possible, of the moral character of any of its temporary officials—a system impervious, so far as possible, to subversion by an aspiring dictator or by the public mood of the moment.

The heroism of the Founding Fathers was that they recognized an unprecedented opportunity, the chance to create a country of individual liberty for the first time in history—and that they staked everything on their judgment: the new nation and their own ‘lives, fortunes, and sacred honor’.”

We diverge on the topic of God but I do like her style. And also, because at some point in the future — hopefully sooner rather than later — I’ll be kicking the dust of this little town off my boots for wilder pastures, here’s a recent poem read at the annual music awards ceremony here in town. Anyone who’s lived in Athens, Ga. for even a little while understands the sentiment conveyed here — you missed all the really awesome things that went down back in the day. I remember a great many of the things he cites — I played on the Atomic Softball team in the bar league for example and, against all reason and logic, we were actually really good — and Landers, who told me about this, exclaimed “I was there!” in reference to the party where someone hoses people down with a fire extinguisher. It’s sounds crazy and probably unsophisticated, but I think I’ll always remember Athens the way this poet describes it. Even though I wasn’t there for half of it. Here’s the secret: no one else was either.

And then there’s my girl Regina with a song I just really, really like. She’s a cool cat that one. Be free this weekend.

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