Updated 5.6.2011
"The American President, when he speaks, must speak clearly and must mean what he says." -President George W. Bush, Remarks by the President at the Newspaper Association of America Annual Convention, 4/21/04
Bear that in mind as you vote this fall
http://www.fundrace.org See who's giving money to get whom elected.
http://factcheck.org See whether what you're hearing is actually the case.
This is the internet home of the mangled tragedy of Romeo and Juliet -- An ongoing project to replace all the words in Will Shakespeare's version with, well, other words. The project sprung from an innocent comment: "A plague on both your monkeys!" That led to the idea to replace every occurence of "house" in R & J with the word "monkey."
You may wonder about the logic of some of these replacements. Some were expansions: "dogfish" for "dog," and, "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince" for "Prince." Some were inspired by other works: "Cleveland" for "Verona" comes from a Neil Simon play, and "coherent" for "poor" from Sondheim's A Little Night Music. Others were researched, on the internet of course. The first thing one-word answer that had multiple google hits for "a fate worse than death" was "fat," so it takes the place of "death" ("dead," too).
In other words, don't try to figure out the logic.
If you have any suggestions for names to replace Romeo and Juliet, or any other suggestions, send them to: joizeydevil at yahoo dot com. Let me know if you perform any of the play, and whether it's funny or not.
OK, 'nuff talk -- you want to read the play: Romeo and Juliet. Only one caveat. I had Word convert it to HTML, so I take no responsiblity for BAD HTML. When it's done, or, more done, or, less Romeo and Juliet, I'll do it myself.
I'm wearing an invisible ribbon to commemorate all the innocent ribbons of ALL colors that have died meaninglessly in social movements all over the country.
I love it when the computer crashes. Not some piddling little 'Netscape has stopped responding' kind of crash, or just a system lock-up. That's just annoying. We're talking about the times when you get "Eudora has incurred a fatal error" (Poor Eudora, how could she have known any better?) so you euthanize her (It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it, sir.). But not enough- your screen goes blue, and the thing offers you one more hope of resurrection: a fatal exception has occurred at 14872XD:12i56i4. Off in some exotic land, a brave soldier has fallen in the battle for order and productivity. But we can still win the war with the sacrifice of but one more program. You know what you have to do. A flicker of what the screen should look like, one last glimpse of reality as you and I know it. and then the blue screen again.
"It's looking bad, Captain."
"More power, Scottie, more power!"
"The photon torpedoes did too much damage, sir, it looks like we're going down!"
And it goes out with dignity, in silence, no womanish screams as a day's work is lost forever, just the screen and me, staring blankly back at each other.
So I came across this at the height of the SARS epidemic, in a book we're publishing called Replaceable You by David Serlin. The more things change...
"Communist germs, spawned in the swamps of iniquity and terror, have blotted out ... the sunshine of free thought, independent research, and unfettered inquiry. They have "sickened" many nations and literally killed countless persons. These germs are infectious and deadly, easily transmitted and often difficult to detect."
--John Edgar Hoover (yes. THAT J. Edgar Hoover), "Let's Keep America Healthy," Journal of the American Medical Association(yes, THAT American Medical Association!) 144:13 (November 25, 1950), 1094-95
The Golden Horse Ranch-- home on the web of The Golden Horse Ranch Square Dance Band, a fine group of musical-type folks, who put together a damn good party, and the only location of The Golden Horse Ranch, which, sadly no longer accepts guests in the analog world.