The World According To, Jr.... R.I.P.

The World According To, Junior is no more. From now on I will only be updating the original, full-featured site: The World According To.

And yes, I killed the RSS feed. Sorry, but I just don't have the time to code that stuff. If you must read this over a feeder, you can create your own feed at Ponyfish.

One more thing... I'm coming up on my 10th anniversary online. My very first column/post was on June 27, 1996. Pretty amazing that I'm still here. Thanks for being here with me. They'll be some big news over the next week also, so stay tuned.

Under construction

I'm prepping a major site overhaul. Stay tuned... I hope to be back up in the next week, possibly with a new url.

Right-wing Rationalization

Scooter Libby is being indicted for leaking information. He had to resign for this indictment. He says that Bush approved the leaks. Bush confirmed that he approved the leaks.

Right-wingers are stepping forward to defend Bush. They suggest that since he is president, he can declassify anything. If they truly believe this, I must ask if they subscribe to Richard Nixon's belief that "When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal" (Richard M. Nixon on The Nation, 1977).

For the sake of argument, let's say Bush is within his rights to declassify information and authorize the leaking of information. Why didn't he simply step forward and absolve Libby?

According to Bush, he was within the law to authorize these leaks. He asked Cheney to have the info leaked. Cheney asked Libby. Why is Libby on trial if he did nothing wrong? Furthermore, why didn't Bush step forward and bail Libby out for following orders?

And why did Bush say on the record two years ago that he did not authorize leaks and did not know of anyone within his adminstration that would leak information? Was he lying then or lying now?

If Bush is legally able to release classified information, why leak it selectively through other parties instead of simply declassifying the info? Why the clandestine nature of the information getting out?

If this was designed to smear Joe Wilson, why not say that? And why go to the trouble of smearing him; why not simply release the intelligence to prove him wrong (if in fact he was wrong or simply "lying" as some right-wingers have suggested)?

My Hero

How'd this dude slip by the screeners? And check out the woman seated next to him.

This made my day.

Eww.

Here's a tender moment form earlier today, as Bush bid a fond adieu to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.



And from Monday, January 23rd...

Question: You're a rancher, a lot of us here in Kansas are ranchers-I just wanted to get your opinion on Brokeback Mountain, if you'd seen it yet?

Bush: I hadn't seen it.

Really?

Happy Birthday

Today marks the 30th anniversary of Apple Computer. I bought my first Mac over ten years ago: the Power Macintosh 7500 with a 100 mHz processor, running OS 7.5.

I followed that up with a blue & white G3 that tripled the processing speed (300!). Then my first laptop, the PowerBook G3 with a 550 mHz processor. It served me well until last fall, when the hard drive finally sputtered out. I swapped it out for a new HD and got it purring again. It was my main computer until my MacBook Pro arrived two weeks ago.

And how about the iPod? I'm on my third one. Got the first gen 10 gig model, then the four button third gen and finally the 60 gig video iPod last fall.

Apple's products just fucking rock.

--------------------------

A recent e-mail from a copywriter I used to work with:

Ron,
I was walking to work last week wearing jeans and a suit coat (I had a client meeting) and about half way there I had a epiphany... Wearing a suit coat and jeans is the "Clothing Mullet": Business on top, party down below. I don't think I can ever wear that again. From now on if I need a suit coat I wear a fucking suit. I just thought this seemed like the kind of information one should share with Ron Lim.
- Pat

--------------------------

Why I hate telemarketers...

PHONE RINGS.

ME: Hello.

CALLER: Hello, may I speak to Jerry please?

ME: Uh, no. He hasn't had this number for years. Sorry.

CALLER: May I know who am I speaking to?

ME: No you may not.

CALLER: You don't want to give me your name?

ME: No. What is this regarding?

CALLER: You don't want to give me your name?

ME: No.

CALLER: Then go to HELL!

CLICK.


This particular asshole was calling from India. Then, for the next three hours, his co-workers called me every hour. I stopped answering. For the record, I did add my name to the National Do Not Call list, but they called looking for Jerry Gerber, the man who used to have my number.

Nip It in the Bud

Hmmm. It's been a busy few weeks for me. A few months ago I mentioned that something big was coming up. Well, it has. As of January 1st, I've been freelance. I took most of January off, but have been slammed since then.

I'll try to post as much as I can, but in an effort to keep the posts coming, I will doing more sketch posts. These will doodles and sketches I draw during the course of the day.

FYI, the illustration above was done on the Sunday that Don Knotts died and posted that night to my illustration site. I think I'll be combining this blog and the illustration side more and more. It will help the lack of posts here.

-----------------------------

And here's my top ten movies of 2005... like it matters at this point.

10. (Tie) Munich/War of the Worlds
Directed by Steven Spielberg

9. Batman Begins
Directed by Christopher Nolan

8. Cinderella Man
Directed by Ron Howard

7. Sin City
Directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller

6. The Constant Gardner
Directed by Fernando Meirelles

5. Wedding Crashers
Directed by David Dobkin

4. The 40-Year-Old Virgin
directed by Judd Apatow

3. The Squid & the Whale
Directed by Noah Baumbach

2. Syriana
Directed by Stephen Gaghan

1. Good Night, and Good Luck
Directed by George Clooney

-----------------------------

I am one of the Crash-bashers and guess what... it had nothing to do with Brokeback Mountain. For the record, I was rooting for Good Night, and Good Luck (though I knew it stood no chance).

To tell you the truth, aside from the gay thing, I found Brokeback to be
standard story of forbidden love; a modern day update of Romeo & Juliet. Of course, this probably comes from my upbringing in San Francisco. Gays and lesbians are accepted here and it's not unusual to see advertisng and marketing targeted to that community. Nothing taboo or strange about that lifestyle to us.

I bash Crash because it has the subtlety of a ten-ton truck smashing into a nursery school. It's over the top, cliched script left me groaning. The connections between the characters went beyond mere coincidence; it smacked of lazy convenience for the writer. It was almost as if Paul Haggis took the racial epithat montage from Do the Right Thing and expanded it into a two-hour movie.

Honestly, I found it to be the worst among this year's best picture nominees. It lacked grace, realism and plausibility. I find it puzzling that so many critics have embraced it. To me it's not so much as a mirror, but a funhouse mirror, distorting reality and exaggerating the truth.

Rumsfeld suffers from a "dangerous deficiency

By now you may have read about Donald Rumsfeld comments today about how Al Queda is winning the PR battle and how the U.S. needs to be more tech saavy.

"Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but ... our country has not adapted. For the most part, the U.S. government still functions as a 'five and dime' store in an eBay world," Rumsfeld said,"While al Qaeda and extremist movements have utilized (new technologies) for many years ... we in the government have barely even begun to compete in reaching their audiences."

Consider his words as you read this excerpt from an earlier story on MSNBC: The House committee established to investigate Katrina was “informed that neither Secretary Chertoff nor Secretary Rumsfeld use e-mail."

Read that again: Rumsfeld doesn't use e-mail.

How the hell do you get ANYTHING done today without using e-mail? What kind of pictures does this conjure up in your mind. I can just see old Rummy now... trying to figure out how to stop the VCR's clock from blinking "12:00"... boiling a cup of water on the stove instead of using a microwave... writing his appointments in his Dayrunner instead of his Palm or Blackberry.

"Hey Donald... what are you doing there with those sticks?"

"Trying to make fire!"

------------------------------------



Let's put this headline in amber and pack it into the time capsule. Let folks know what it was like." - Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo

------------------------------------

I was talking to a friend a few weeks ago and we were lamenting the lack of journalists in the world right now.

Last month, I saw a clip from a 1973 NBC news broadcast. John Brinkley introduced a clip of John Erlichman from the Watergate hearings and then they rolled the footage. It was an unedited 4 minutes excerpt. Imagine any evening news broadcast doing that today. It's all about soundbites and single sentence quotes.

Today, network news is all about reporting. That's it. No investigation, no confirmation of whether anything someone is saying has any factual basis. Instead, they will have a clip of Bush followed by a Democrat refuting whatever Bush says. Why be a journalist when you can simply show film of two guys contradicting each other?
When Bush says his wiretaps are legal and Al Gore says they are illegal, that's all we get. The networks don't even bother to send out any legal factcheckers to actually find out. No, that would be too much work.

A few years ago, I read a story where reporters complained about having to clean up President George W. Bush's statements.

Apparently, he stutters and uses many "um's" and "ah's" while talking to reporters. Well, no reporter is going to publish a quote from the president that is punctuated by poor grammar and rambling. So the reporters would edit out all of Bush's stuttering and awkward pauses. Their thinking was it was best simply to represent the point of Bush's speech without all garbage; it read better.

The problem is this: by fixing the president's mistakes, they are not painting an accurate picture of this president's ability to hold a simple conversation. Witness the occasional viral news clip of Bush as stumbles through a press conference (the tribal sovereinty speech is a classic). Or moments of the 2004 presidential debates (the stutterin' George W. McBlinky). And who could forget "subliminable"?

That's why I found George Clooney's "Good Night, and Good Luck" to be such a revelation. I knew that Edward Murrow helped take down joe McCarthy and his communist witchhunt, but I didn't know how. The fact is that Murrow simply ran about 20 minutes of various McCarthy speeches without editing them. He buried McCarthy with his own words. A couple of weeks later when CBS gave McCarthy 30 minutes to rebuke Murrow's report, he was simply rebutting his own public statements. The McCarthy follow-up episode only made him look desperate and sad and effectively helped ruin him.

Imagine a network running 20 minutes of George W. Bush or anyone else contradicting himself. Think of all the false statements and bad predictions on how the Iraq War would go. There's no way any of these guys owuld still be office when faced with their own history.

I would just love to see the networks return to actual journalism where politicians were held responsible for the crap that comes out of their mouths.

Top Ten Albums of 2005

Sorry for the delay in posting updates, especially this one. A lot of great music came out this year, mostly from indie labels. Here's my list of the top ten albums of 2005.

10.) The Cardigans-Super Extra Gravity (Import only)
So much more than a one-hit wonder, this was their strongest album to date.

9.) Josh Rouse-Nashville
He gets better with each album. He loaded this one with his best pop songs yet.

8.) Brendan Benson-The Alternative to Love
Benson strikes back with his most ambitious record yet; a bold step forward from his last album.

7.) Ben Folds-Songs for Silverman
Folds grows his sound... and no novelty track this time!

6.) The Magic Numbers-The Magic Numbers
Joyful pop by two sets of siblings, which makes it that much joyful.

5.) Martha Wainwright-Martha Wainwright
Better than brother Rufus's last album by a mile. All the melancholy without the depressing ballads.

4.) Illinoise-Sufjan Stevens
Complex, layered and smartly written. Amazing.

3.) Plans-Death Cab for Cutie
"They've sold out, they've sold out!" Bullshit. Brilliant love songs.

2.) Kayne West-Late Registration
He may be an egotistical ass, but he's got the talent to back it up. Plus it didn't hurt his case when he bashed Bush on live TV. Bravo.

1.) Extraordinary Machine (Jon Brion version)-Fiona Apple
Sure, if this version didn't exist, the release version would still be on the list, albeit lower. The released version has too much sheen. This one, with the requisite Brion strings, feels much lusher and organic.

Honorable mentions:
Z-My Morning Jacket
The New Pornographers-Twin Cinema
Feist-Let It Die
KT Tunstall-Eye to the Telescope (Import only)
Spoon-Fiction
The Go! Team
Great Lake Swimmers-Bodies and Minds
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah-Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

-------------------------------

I was hoping to have seen most of the big 2005 movies by now, but I didn't quite make it. If I'm not able to catch "Capote" in the next week, I'll post my favs regardless.

-------------------------------

The thing that the right-wing has done correctly is stick together. No matter how stupid the platform or decision, there is no derision in that party.

Harry Reid is right on whenever he tells Lieberman to shut the hell up. It's like in the Godfather when Michael Corleone tells Fredo to never take sides outside the family. That's why so many Dems think Lieberman should just jump sides; he's a liability.

Does the DNC lack a unified front? Hell yeah. Is that enough to stop people from voting for them? Not anymore. Bush has fucked up the country so badly, the Dems DON'T EVEN NEED to step up with a plan. As long as they don't get caught with a dead hooker or a live boy, they'll be fine.

It's like Donald Trump and the Apprentice. Sometimes, you just have to sit in that boardroom and watch your enemy talk themselves right out of their job. Then the last person standing wins.

The Dems will get hteir shit together soon enough. As soon as they get rid of turncoats like Lieberman and Zell Miller, they'll be in better shape. These returning vets running as Dems is a step in the right direction.

John Kerry is a good man. He was just way too cerebral and nuanced. It was perfectly logical for Kerry to say he voted for the 87 billion before he voted against it. I knew what he meant. Problem is, when you say something like that, you have to explain what you mean to the dummies and frankly, Americans don't like to be talked at; they like to be talked to. Or rather, down to.

The public likes candidates who talk in soundbites and simple sentences. Bush kept going to barbeques and trying to come across as a regular guy. I don't know too many "regular" guys in the Skull & Bones who went to Yale and played rugby... RUGBY! He fixed that image problem by driving around in his pick-up in Crawford and wearing a cowboy hat.

Same thing with Clinton. He bit his lower lip and felt our pain. Then he walked around with the nickname "Bubba".

Americans are dumb. One need only look at who our president is.

"Bigmouth Strikes Again"

Uncut magazine recently did a cover story on the 20th anniversary of the Smith's "The Queen is Dead". Shortly before I heard about this issue I had been getting back into the Smiths.

I had forgotten what a fucking great band they were. Easy to do when you followed Morrissey's output over the last 18 years. While he's still putting out some great music, one can't help but miss Johnny Marr's presence.

I was always one of those kids who would seek out import records from England. I would seek out news from the British music press... New musical Express and Melody Maker. This was long before the internet and mp3s. If you wanted to discover new music, you had to take a chance and buy it. I was way into Duran Duran before they broke in the States.

I remember the first Smith's album I bought: "Meat is Murder" on vinyl (am I dating myself here?). I remember looking at the cover image and thinking that I'd taken quite a step up from Simon LeBon.

And Morrissey's lyrics! The way he crammed so many words into places where that many words did not belong. Marr's Bo Diddley guitar riff on "How Soon is Now"... this was all new territory. I still have the 45 with two songs on the b-side, "Shakespeare's Sister" and "The Headmaster Ritual".

Then came "The Queen is Dead". That inner sleeve photo... was that that guy's boner hanging out!?! The shock... like seeing the topless pre-pubescent girl on the cover of the Blind Faith album or those two semi-nude women on the cover of Roxy Music's "Country Life" or the naked John and Yoko... well, you get the idea.

Then there was the music that captured that teen angst so well. Your parents didn't understand you, but Morrissey and Marr sure did.

Who speaks for today's alienated, misunderstood teens? Fall Out Boy?

So iconic the image, the photograph of the Smiths that tops this post was recently added to the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London.

The photographer, Stephen Wright, is selling numbered prints from the original negatives at his site. Naturally, I could not resist.

Other Smiths links:
The Salford Lads Club
The Smyths (Smiths cover band; including mp3's)
Classic Tracks: The Queen is Dead (interview with engineer Stephen Street)
The Smiths Wikipedia listing
Passions Just Like Mine
Ask Me, Ask Me, Ask Me
Shoplifter's Union