I thought I’d provide what I deemed to be an ironic follow-up to yesterday’s post regarding the aesthetic. Here are my stats for the most popular search strings for finding my blog:

Note that “ineloquent rambling musings on aesthetic” doesn’t appear on this list. However, “Venom cock” accounts for a full third and there are 15 other hits based on the conversation (I’m counting the 2 hits for “deflowered by cock,” “priapism” and “priapism pictures” but I’m not sure they’re all about the same conversation. Just what my mother always wanted, her son’s blog to come up as a result for the search string “deflowered by cock.”)

My favorite search string results are “hejduk sucks” (my least favorite player on the US National Team) and “most hated maradona tyson.” I’d like to meet these people and ask them if they found what they were looking for.

I also note that blatant name-dropping doesn’t hurt either, nor does being linked to from the wildly more popular blogs by JJA and Greg van Eekhout. The royalty checks will be cut before the end of the year guys, I promise.

So, for the future of my blog: fewer inarticulate musings, more links to more popular blogs, more blatant name- dropping, and more references to male genitalia, venom-laden or otherwise. Also, if there are any “hot insider topics” (I missed the boat on the whole Infernokrusher thing but was positioned well for the venom cock, so to speak) let me know so I can mention that, too.

I plan to include these tables and stats as part of my cover letter for future story submissions.

Current Mood - Can’t Complain |
Currently Listening To - The White Stripes - “White Blood Cells”

I am a huge fan of the always-excellent Phil Ball, who covers the Spanish league for Soccernet.com. His column always manages to make a point about culture as well as covering the footie, almost always with humor and never without a clever turn of phrase or two. Ball, better than any other sports writer I’ve ever read, regularly puts a finger on why sport matters–and not in a face-painting, goony fanatic sort of way.

Take for instance just a few lines from this article. In order to “get” it, it might help to know that British footballing icon George Best died a few days ago. Best was the best British footballer and his brilliance on the pitch was only matched by his self-destructive streak off of it. Boozing and general indiscipline ended his career prematurely at age 27. The article talks about the ascendency of Barcelona from being also-rans to one of the greatest teams in Europe and what they’re doing right.

“Manchester United were not as successful, statistically speaking, as they should have been. But the wonderful thing about George Best - and Busby’s ‘tactical talks’, was that it didn’t really matter all that much. In the pre-corporate age, which Best both symbolised and then helped to destroy, what mattered was the aesthetic, and Best had that in bucketloads.

As a kid, I saw him twice in the flesh - once when I nagged my dad to take me down to Notts Forest one evening (United played in blue - I can still see them under the floodlights) and once at Old Trafford against West Ham. It changed me as person. It cemented my obsession with football and guaranteed that I would waste most of my adult life watching it and worrying about it. I’m not the only one to say that, of course. Thanks George!”

In the pre-corporate age, which Best both symbolised and then helped to destroy, what mattered was the aesthetic, and Best had that in bucketloads.

Carry that sentiment beyond footie into anything you really care about. Ignore the avalanche of marketing and advertisements, hype, gossip, round-the-clock coverage, or whatever else surrounds it. What we’re all really looking for is a moment to behold something beautiful.

It’s easy to forget the world is a magical place. When we encounter beauty, often unexpectedly and always fleeting, we want to experience it again and again. It doesn’t matter whether it’s in music, or in a book, or an interaction with another person, we instantly know that feeling and we are drawn to it, and sometimes we try to replicate it. We play in cover bands, play pick-up games in the park, try our hand at writing a novel, volunteer to help those folks less fortunate than ourselves. There’s an indefinable quality to this, a very sort of I and Thou groove that’s well beyond packaging, buying, and selling.

Anyway, Ball’s article really resonated with me, probably because I don’t jive with the idea that everything can be understood if you break it into small enough parts. There’s no rational explanation that explains how a man running with a ball at his feet can transform a person’s life. The person who doesn’t “get it” thinks it’s simply a display of skill that’s worthy of admiration, but that doesn’t really work. I’ve played soccer my entire life and that gives me the ability to appreciate the skills of the best players in the world, yet there’s something out there floating in the ether that elevates certain moments to another plane, to something utterly beautiful. It’s like when Pele’ scores on a bicycle kick in Victory and the German commander can’t help but stand and cheer. That moment is supposed to demonstrate how that single act of sheer athletic beauty can eclipse the tense social and political climate of a prison camp.

I’m also trying to put together my statement of purpose for grad school and I’m having difficulty explaining why I quit a pretty good career in order to go back to school to drop a five-digit figure to get a non-essential degree in an entirely too-competitive field. I realized the real reason while writing this post: I wanted to get back closer to things that matter, to brush shoulders with that indefinable aesthetic quality I encounter when reading great stuff. (That happened sometimes when I worked for US Soccer and got to see cool stuff first hand, but it came further and more far-removed the higher I climbed on the totem pole. )

Unfortunately, there’s no way to say that succinctly in a statement of purpose without sounding like an utter crackpot.

Current Mood - Wishing I Was Anywhere But Here |
Currently Listening To - The Ramones - “The Ramones”

One other thing. While driving to the grocery story, Amy saw a white dog (looked like a shepherd/husky mix) rooting around in some garbage at the end of our block and no one else was around. She approached him and, although skittish, he didn’t appear mean. Attached to his leash was about twenty-five feet of cord with a snapped end, so we were pretty sure he just broke out of his back yard. No tags on his collar, though. It was almost dark, rainy, and getting cold.

We walked him to our house and put him in the yard. Amy watched him while I called Animal Control and found out, lo!, that they don’t work on Sunday. The guy on the phone said I could keep the dog in my yard or garage until the morning when someone from the city could come get him. Or what else? Turn him loose? “That’s your decision,” he said. Or I if I hurried I could take him to the Humane Society which closed at 5:00. It was 4:45 when I learned this but that sounded a whole lot more comfortable from him than sleeping outside or in the garage and, as much as we were tempted to bring him in the house, we had no idea how he’d be with Athena and, more importantly, Heineken.

We loaded him into the back of the Jeep and I sped across town, arriving at 5:01 and, luckily, the folks at the Humane Society weren’t clock watchers. They took him and I filled out a little paperwork. If he hadn’t been collected in seven days, he’d be put up for adoption. If he hadn’t been adopted in a “reasonable” amount of time, he’d be euthanized. *gulp* But he was a nice boy, knew how to sit, and didn’t ever snap or even bark at us. He had a nice leather collar and he smiled and wagged his tail when he saw me come out of the house to load him into the car. He’s really friendly, he’s just lost… :sad:

Amy just called the Humane Society and his owners picked him up this morning. Sleepless night for them, sleepless night for him, and restless night for us because we had to have both Athena and Heineken sleep on the bed. I’ll be a wreck whenever I have kids.

Two things I learned: it’s amazing that I expect 24-hour service for someone from the city to come pick up a stray dog I found late on a Sunday afternoon, and that this could have been so much easier on everyone had the fella been wearing a $3 dog tag.

Current Mood - Relieved |
Currently Listening To - The White Stripes - “De Stijl” (yes, still the White Stripes)

I had a terrific four-day holiday at the in-laws. I got to see my nieces and both my brothers, albeit on different days, and I caught up on sleep and did a little work on my academic writing sample for grad school, which is a spiffed up version of the article I wrote for Shadows of Saturn awhile back. I wrote the article in a hurry and really wanted to expand it and go into more detail and now I get the chance. It’s going s l o w l y but I think it’s turning out okay. It needed to roughly double in length in order to meet the criteria for the academic writing sample so I want to add quality, not just padding. Of course, when I start going off on Tolkien that means I could easily wander into a book-length ramble…

I’m putting together my Christmas/birthday wishlist and it’s startling how few wants I really have. I’m looking for a cool rune ring (preferably one that describes the sentiment of “cattle die, kinsmen die, one day you die yourself; the only thing that never dies is a man’s reputation” which is from the Norse Sayings of the High One) but this isn’t something you can easily pick up at Target. I’m also in the market for some comfy brown boots as I find myself growing out of wearing tennis shoes everywhere. The problem is that despite being an unrepentant slob I happen to be extremely picky when it comes to clothes. I happily sacrifice style for comfort and you’ll be hard pressed to find any article of clothing in my closet that’s not a basic solid color. Stripes and patterns are a definite no as I think they make me look like a clown.

My book list is amazingly short. I have a lot of stuff on deck but my primary interest right now is short fiction so I have a few subscriptions to magazines I generally buy off the shelf. I’m alarmingly well-equipped for outdoor excursions, save for some decent portage pads for the canoe. So there are a few computer gadgetry things, a few iPod accessories (the ‘pods been in the shop for the last two weeks and I’m getting antsy for it) and the obligatory latest release of the FIFA series by EA Sports but nothing to really get my heart racing. What am I missing?

I’m still listening to “Wolves of the Calla” by Stephen King and, for the most part, I’m interested. ‘Tis a bit long and I find myself going back and forth between being engrossed and bored, though neither lasts very long. It still seems to be “epic” more because King thinks the story deserves it rather than it growing naturally from the events. It feels positively pieced together as King thought through what might happen next. Still, I might pick up a hard copy somewhere if I can find it used on the cheap because some of his descriptions are top notch.

Yeah, I need to make a New Year’s resolution on this one to make a concerted effort to Get More Out In 2006. I only made 25 submissions in 2005 which doesn’t sound so bad (averaging one every-other week) but these are mostly resubmissions, meaning there’s almost no effort involved between the time you send out a story the third, fourth, or fifth time.

I also went through a phase of writing one-shot wonder stories that were more about me futzing with voice or whatever than being actual “real” stories with minor things like plot, or where stuff actually happens. So I do have full-fledged stories, I just need to finish them off and get them in circulation. Most of the ones I’ve been sending out are more experimental in nature and not as structured, and I get the feeling that they’re not strong enough in and of themselves to overpower the natural inclination of the slush reader to reject, Reject, REJECT!

So I need to finish the academic writing sample and my statement of purpose and get those suckers off my plate and then stick to a steady schedule of writing, revising, and submitting. It’s very easy to get lazy or to wait until you’ve heard back from a market before getting to work on something new, but that’s not the path to success. In order for this whole graduate school plan to really work (meaning so I can get a job when I get out) I need to publish regularly for the next bunch of years, so there’s no time like the present…

It’s funny. For the last month my days have been pretty packed trying to contact folks to write me letters of recommendation, studying for the GRE, and being busy for work (requiring me to go in early and do some after-hours activities) it’s very easy to say, “Oh, this is time I could be writing.”

Now that things are starting to decompress a little I have my discretionary time back. I have to make a concerted effort to turn this time into finishing and submitting stories. Yes, I still need to take care of a few pesky things to round out my grad school applications but that’s on a scale of hours, not days. I have a pretty good idea what I’m going to use for my writing samples. So I after a day of relaxing, I need to follow a stricter schedule to get some stories done and out.

There’s a few pieces of good market news in the wake of SCIFI.com’s demise. Polyphony #6 (a great anthology series) is opening for submissions in mid-December and I plan to send them something; and according to the Black Hole response time tracker, “Realms of Fantasy” has brought their response times down within a reasonable level. Since August, the times reported on the site have been under 50 days which puts them ahead of Asimov’s which are tending to push into the 70, 80, and 90-day marks with alarming frequency.

Most of my stories currently in circulation are sort of gimmicky and long-shotish. This is not a profound statement, but editors are usually most interested in well-plotted, briskly moving stories that result in some kind of change in a character. The current crop I have out tend to be short, sort of one-line jokes. I received a rejection from F&SF the other day that basically said, “Interesting stuff going on here, but not really a story. Felt like part of something longer.” That pretty much tells it like it is.

I’ve got one story in a first draft that I need to finalize and post for comments. As of right now, I still like it. Or at least I remember liking it when I finished writing it. There’s another one that’s been critiqued by some of the Clarion crew that might have potential, too. I need to be shipping these to Gordon in a more rapid-fire fashion.

I also haven’t heard anything from Ciacada on my high fantasy minotaur story which, at this juncture, is only a good thing. Cicada takes about six months to respond to sales and about 90-120 days to reject. As of today, I’m at 91 days so hearing nothing means all I know is that I don’t know nothing. The editor asked me to send it to him directly and I hoped this meant it would be somehow fast-tracked, but right now I’m right in the mix for the start of the rejection window and here I will stay until mid-January. Not going to worry about it. Expecting a response (positive or negative) is just too draining to do for every submission. I’m getting better at letting them go and simply saying, “See you when you get back!”

The only reason I bring this story up is that I have a sequel brewing in my brain. I’m not quite sure how the pieces fit together, but it will definitely feature the following elements: first love, pirates, and cherry blossoms. Somewhat alarmingly, ideas for stories in this world keep bubbling up which could lead to a (ulp) Young Adult novel. I have to say, if I was going to write a first novel (and I’m not saying I’m going to) I think a YA one might be a good place to start.

Part of the reason I think stories keep coming to me is because of the strength an as-of-yet unwritten character female hailing from my made-up country of Mursia which, in my mind, is Spain. [Book four in Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series is called "Wizard and Glass" and tells the story of a young Roland going out to the hinterlands of Mejis where Roland falls in love for the first and only time. Mejis is also based on Spain.] I have a love affair with Spain and Spanish culture. (Spanish football too, but that doesn’t factor in here so much.)

Anyway, I have this idea of my idealistic young man from the sticks stumbling into this proud and strong young woman who comes from an aristocratic society, and both of them trying to navigate the adult world that they’ve just entered. One of the things that fascinates me about Spain is the inherently contradictory nature of the culture, and this female character I’ve envisioned brings a lot to the table in terms of story, namely the conflict between her culture that dictates that she must spend time on the road seeing the world and proving herself against all its perils, yet that same culture has strict rules about what women are and aren’t allowed to behave. I’ve read before that good characters create their own stories, and I think that’s what’s going on here. I really have no burning desire to write a novel, just an intense interest in exploring this story and this character. But if the story is novel-length, so be it I guess. I feel like it might write itself at this point.

Of course, there’s whole pesky affair of actually writing the damn thing that gets in the way, but I guess that’s part of the business.

Current Mood - Monday |
Currently Listening To - The White Stripes - “White Blood Cells”

After looking at it a little closer, I guess my verbal score is pretty accurate but the math section is still a sham. Here’s a little table that shows the results of my practice tests (first four via Princeton Review, the last one from the GRE’s PowerPrep) and my actual GRE results:

So in hindsight I’m glad I didn’t bomb the verbal like I did in practice test #3 (although it should probably be stated this practice test was done between 11:00 pm and midnight.) Realistically, after analyzing the 710 verbal scores, I just shook my head. I guessed better on those two tests. That’s about the difference between a 97% and a 93%. I didn’t know any more, or didn’t use the process of elimination skills any better. I just happened to guess right on more important questions.

The math scores still bug me. Part of the problem I see with the GRE is that aspiring graduates students in history or English Literature (like me) take the same exact test as people going into chemistry and physics. So I’m not ashamed by any stretch to have gotten in the 46th percentile considering the competition and my notoriously bad math skills. I probably should have been in the 20th percentile (or lower) based on whether the hell I knew what I was doing or not.

One thing’s for certain: I won’t have to take the GRE again any time soon. Scores are good for five years and if I don’t get into a program in the next couple, I think that’s nature’s way of saying maybe I’m not cut out for it. However the most important thing is that these scores don’t work against me and put right in the mix for people who have been accepted into the programs I’m looking at.

Enough on this. Until I get the official score report at least.

Just got back from taking the GRE. I did okay. 660 verbal, 600 quantitative which puts me in the 92-93 percentile on the former, about the 48% on the latter. I’m pleased with the latter, not so much on the former.

To say it plainly, I wish I would have done better on the verbal. Yes, a 92-93% isn’t anything to sniff at but I really wanted to knock it out of the park and I didn’t do that. It became obvious after taking practice test after practice test that I probably wouldn’t be able to knock it out of the park just because the way the questions are worded and the way scores are calculated. My absolute lowest score I would tolerate was a 90% so I reached that–barely.

A 600 on the quantitative was my highest score and underlines why the whole test is a sham. Out of thirty questions, I felt confident I answered two or three correctly. Literally. Otherwise it was just guess, guess, guess and for the first time in all my practice tests, I was running out of time and had to answer the last five questions in five minutes. I don’t think I even understood the question on a few of them.

Compare that to the verbal. Out of thirty, I probably got five or six wrong. Of those, I would be willing to bet I gave the second-best answer on four or five them. I felt confident on the vast majority of questions, and that’s probably because I had at least two questions I was uncomfortable with in the first ten questions. I realized about 3/4ths of the way through that I felt the last half of the questions were relatively easy which meant I’d gotten something wrong early.

The writing section went well– I think . I expect 5.5’s or 6’s on both essays and I’ll be quite upset if I don’t get that. Some essay questions I felt more comfortable breaking down that others, and I think I did a pretty good job of breaking down both of these and I also wrote a lot, which they say is a key to doing well. Fingers crossed. I think it takes a couple weeks to get the results.

Mostly though, it’s over. Not much I can do about it now and, in fairness, it’s probably accurate enough. I little Googling showed that most English graduate programs either expect above a 90% or state that the average verbal score for the people who were admitted were 640-660. As long as I’m in the average for the admissions as opposed to applicants, I can’t claim the scores hurt my chances. An outrageously good score would definitely help, but I don’t think I’m capable of an outrageously good score on a standardized test.

Anyway, it’s over. Now it’s time to fill out applications, whip my academic and creative writing samples into shape, and start harrassing my recommenders for their letters. Comparatively, this is the easy part.

Current Mood - Exhausted |

I watched Barcelona systematically dismantle Real Madrid today. The gulf between the two teams is enormous, even though they’re only a handful of points apart in the table. Madrid wasn’t ever in the game. They couldn’t staunch the flow of Barcelona all afternoon. If it wasn’t Eto’o, it was Ronaldinho. If it wasn’t Ronnie, it was Messi. Or Deco. Or Xavi.

In contrast, Madrid’s midfield looked lifeless. Zidane was marginalized and Beckham couldn’t get anything going. Ronaldo and Robinho looked isolated. The defense was shaky, Roberto Carlos in particular. The team might be decent enough to turn over most sides in La Liga and maybe most sides in Europe, but they’re a shadow of their former selves. So while they may be able to beat most teams, they certainly can’t compete with the elite. Real Madrid needs to take a hard look at Wanderley Luxemburgo’s setup as well as their buying practices. Madrid looked washed out and tired whereas Barca sparkled.

I’m listening to “Wolves of the Calla” by Stephen King. It’s okay.

In the Dark Tower series, I loved “The Gunslinger” and “The Drawing of the Three.” “The Wasteland” was so-so. “Wizard and Glass” was really quite good, although too long. I have a feeling that “Wolves of the Calla” will follow the same pattern, where the book is much longer than what really needs to be accomplished for the larger story arc. When’s the last time King has written a book that’s not thicker than your head?

What bugs me the most is how things just creep into the story. For instance, in “Wolves” we suddenly hear about “going todash” to travel between worlds. It’s never been mentioned before but now it becomes a mechanism essential to the story. I know that the whole Dark Tower series has been rumbling around in King’s head for most of his life, and I know the story somehow ties into his own personal life somehow (to be revealed in the last volume, I assume) but I don’t like how he seems to be making up the rules as he goes and trying to cover it with story. I understand that parts of the story you hadn’t visualized come out as you write as part of the creative process, but to me it just seems like King uses these plot devices to get himself out of jams. It feels false and forced.

And while I really like the way King plays with language and fables and sayings between the worlds, he overdoes it. So someone says, “It’s like a xyz” to which another character replies “what’s an xyz?” and then there has to be some explanation of what it means. Once or twice, it’s fine. It’s actually kind of cool. Five, six, seven times in the same conversation and it gets old. Really old.

I’ve downloaded “Wolves” and “Song of Susannah” (the next book in the series) which gives me about twenty-four hours each of listening. Sounds a bit excessive, doesn’t it?

“Waking up for breakfast, burning matches, talking quickly, breaking baubles, throwing garbage, drinking soda, looking happy, taking pictures, so completely stupid, just go away.”
- There’s No Home for You Here, The White Stripes

Awesome. Loving the White Stripes. Loving ‘em.

GRE tomorrow. :neutral:

Current Mood - Apathetic |
Currently Listening To - The White Stripes - “Elephant”

SCIFICTION has been a wonderful showcase for the breadth and depth of stories that we all, more or less, agree to call “speculative fiction.” Science fiction. Fantasy. Alternate history. Near future. Far future. No future. SCIFICTION featured stories that both defined and defied the genre. Who cares what you called it, as long as it was good–and stories on SCIFICTION were always good. You never knew whether a given week’s story would make you laugh or make you cry or (when you least expected it) simply steal your breath away.

Which leads me to my grudge with Eric Schaller and his “Five Cigars of Abu Ali.” On a cold January evening last year, I found myself with fifteen minutes to kill before going home from work. In an effort to use the time productively, I surfed over to SCIFICTION to check out the latest story and found Mr. Schaller’s work. The good news? I successfully killed off those fifteen minutes. The bad news? I spent an extra thirty minutes reading without realizing it and had to come up with a lame excuse for my boss as to why I clocked out late. Mr. Schaller, if you’re reading this, you owe me some time back, sir.

I’d tell you exactly how this happened but it’s difficult to explain a story’s magic, isn’t it? Maybe this story captured my attention because I could relate to the protagonist, a married thirtysomething entertaining an old friend renowned for his partying ways; a friend his wife dislikes so much so she invents a reason to leave before he arrives.

Elizabeth kissed me good-bye but missed my mouth by an inch that was as good as a mile.

Been there. Boy, have I been there.

Or maybe the story grabbed me because I felt like I knew Abu Ali. He barges into the story, two shady girls in tow, wanting to drink whisky and smoke cigars into the wee hours of the morning regaling our protagonist with his latest so-crazy-it-has-to-be-true story. It’s a well-documented fact that the married man’s stories get tamer and lamer the longer he’s been out of college, so it’s unsurprising when the protagonist himself becomes a mute observer while Abu and his story inevitably take center stage.

Or was it the richness of Abu Ali’s story that made me lose track of time? Genies trapped in bottles, curses, magic cigars. What’s not to love? Then the last quarter of the story turns it all upside down so you’re left wondering what’s real and what’s not, a question Schaller partially answers in the closing paragraphs with a light yet powerful touch; and after reading the final words, it takes a moment to realize that you’ve been forgetting to breathe.

Powerful stuff, this fiction that makes us lose track of space and time. I hope some day I can beg a few minutes of that time back from Mr. Schaller so I may shake his hand and thank him for writing this story that touched me so deeply.

Double-thanks to Ellen Datlow, who provided so many stories I loved, and for ensuring that all those many minutes that somehow slipped away from me as I read (alas, a fortunately common problem for me) were never lost, never wasted; in fact, I am quite certain that while the SCIFICTION site will soon disappear, these stories will remain with me forever.

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“American soldiers and Marines are out there every day in dangerous conditions and desert temperatures — conducting raids, training Iraqi forces, countering attacks, seizing weapons, and capturing killers — and back home a few opportunists are suggesting they were sent into battle for a lie.”
-Dick Cheney, Vice President
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/11/20051116-10.html

Now look, I’m not that bright of a guy but even I can see the leap in logic here. The soldiers should be doing all of those things, regardless of whether this is a just war or not. I don’t know who is arguing that the soldiers should lay down their guns or they should be all court martialled — people simply seem to be saying that troops should come home so they can get themselves out of a dangerous situation.

Considering that the argument for war was that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat thanks to his weapons of mass destruction turned out to be, well, pretty much not true. Linking Saddam to the Saudi terrorists…yeah, again, pretty much not true. Bringing democracy to the Middle East? The administration gets partial credit on that one. It’s a possible fringe benefit of this whole fiasco, but not at all a probable outcome. Besides, that wasn’t the main reason they used for going to war. Sounded a little too much like the reasoning that got us into that whole Vietnam thing, I guess.

Are the political jackals who approved Bush going to war now taking advantage of the war effort going poorly? Absolutely. And may they all rot in hell for bending over a few years ago and paving the way for all this to happen. But Mr. Cheney, please. Few wars are noble. This one certainly isn’t. Even if you grant that the intelligent suggested Saddam was a threat–and I don’t–it wouldn’t be cowardly to admit that it was at least begun on pretenses that have now been shown to be false. Besides the fact that there’s documentation that this administration had a stiffy they wanted to plant in Iraq since well before September 11th.

None of the arguments about why we went to war and why we’re staying really make any sense until you factor in the whole “oil” part of the picture. Then things become crystal clear. I accept the fact that this war is entirely about oil and knocking a tyrant off the spigot. The argument can–and no doubt is–being made in some quarters that the US won’t be able to kick its oil addiction by the time we develop technological alternatives and in order for the US to ride it out and stay on top, we needed to have our hand on the spigot. Regardless of whether this is true, and whether it’s worth the sacrifice of so many lives, and whether this is the way our nation should be behaving, it at least makes sense.

But it’s the smugness that kills me. That President Cheney can stand up and call the kettle black with this smug indignation…it absolutely slays me.