GRABBINGSAND

Sir Lancelot: Look, my liege!
King Arthur: Camelot!
Sir Galahad: Camelot!
Sir Lancelot: Camelot!
Patsy: It’s only a model …
King Arthur: Shh!*

Our own King is just as deluded, it seems.

Speaking before the US Naval War College, an audience usually friendly to his words, Mr Bush did a little compare and contrast between Iraq and Israel. The news-at-large has picked this up as “Israel Model For Iraq, Says Bush.” On the face of it, this sounds ridiculous, even given the source. Really, how could anyone gaze longingly at the political design of a country so severely and violently divided? It was only after skimming the transcript of Mr Bush’s speech that I saw what was actually being said. Read with me …

Our success in Iraq must not be measured by the enemy’s ability to get a car bombing into the evening news. No matter how good the security, terrorists will always be able to explode a bomb on a crowded street. In places like Israel, terrorists have taken innocent human life for years in similar attacks. The difference is that Israel is a functioning democracy that is not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities. And that’s a good indicator of success that we’re looking for in Iraq: the rise of a government that can protect its people, deliver basic services for all its citizens, and function as a democracy even amid violence.*

Now I see it. Israel isn’t enviable because it works, but because violence has become so commonplace that an everyday bombing is no longer newsworthy. Instead, Israel just keeps on coming on, come hell or high water or pipe bombs or suicide vests. If it is a model for anything, it is a model of complacency at worst, or resigned acquiescence at best.

Does he even realize how many friends we won’t be making by saying that Iraq needs to follow the example of the single country that most countries in the Arab world hate above and beyond how much they hate one another? And before anyone leaves a comment they’ll regret, don’t even start with me about any ill feelings I might have about Israel. I have none. Even an blithering idiot can see that Israel is far from a perfect democracy.

Our President, however, cannot.

And what are we to make of that second sentence? “No matter how good the security, terrorists will always be able to explode a bomb on a crowded street.” This is a hell of a statement coming from a man who never hesitates to hang a sign of “surrender” on all who oppose our continued involvement in Iraq. Just last night, he was passing out more white flags.

“There’s a group in the opposition party who are willing to retreat before the mission is done,” [Bush] said. “They’re willing to wave the white flag of surrender. And if they succeed, the United States will be worse off, and the world will be worse off.”*

So we can’t surrender … but I suppose exploding cars fall within acceptable levels of tolerance, eh?

We have this King for another 571 days. Given the nonsense he’s spouting now, I shudder to think of what might come out of his mouth in the months to come.

(via Hans the Cat)

An apology might be in order. After six months of waiting, most of it spent passively or even apathetically, I have received not one, but two games from SaySwap’s video game trading service. Miracle of miracles …

If you recall, I had some major issues with SaySwap, mostly centered around a lack of depth in their available community inventory. And I think the truth of it still holds. If 40 members want Game X and only 10 members have Game X (and are willing to trade), then 30 members are going home hungry.

Since December, I’ve been receiving daily e-mails from SaySwap. Each time, they tell me that somebody wants one or more of my listed available games. As of my previous post, I’d put one game into their system, but I wasn’t about to let go another one until I saw some progress in return. A little greedy, perhaps, but fair is fair.

So a couple of months passed and nothing happened. Around the end of February, I’d had enough. The steady stream of e-mails just served as a reminder that I’d spent money for nothing. So I contacted SaySwap support and stated my case, saying that I’d like to cancel my account and maybe get back the cash spent on the yet-to-be-useful Trading Tokens. This was the response received:

SaySwao (sic) does not provide refunds for trading token/purchase point purchases, as per the site’s terms and conditions.

The e-mail went on to describe how the process might take some time, that maybe I’d have luck with Direct Trades with other members, and if I wanted still to cancel the account, then I’d have to contact Customer Service directly.

For some reason, I’d no drive to send another e-mail to another department, so I just let it ride. The money was no longer worth the modicum of concern required to care.

Then in May, I get a different e-mail. Instead of the standard “Another user has requested …” subject line, this was a “has shipped” message. What made it head-shakingly funny was that the game shipped (supposedly) was Final Fantasy III … a game I’d received a few months earlier. I’d ignored SaySwap so completely that I hadn’t bothered to update my list of wanted games. But even this was less of a victory than it seemed, because the shipper decided to renege on the promise.

I was ready to return SaySwap to “whatever” status, but last week, I got another “has shipped” message. Two games this time. One I had and the other I didn’t. This was too good not to investigate, so I logged back in to SaySwap for the first time since December to follow-up with the proposed sender. I left a “thank you” message on their board and waited.

This week, I got both games. So now, I’ve got Mario Kart DS and Nikki has her own copy of New Super Mario Bros*. If nothing else, I can call my initial investment of $8 returned and then some. As a show of good will, I sent out one of my listed Xbox titles day before yesterday and will send out a couple more today.

So what’s the lesson learned? Maybe this just means that patience is mandatory for a commercial site based on community interaction. Maybe I should’ve taken the higher ground and sent the titles requested of me as each e-mail arrived. After all, pumps must be primed before they give forth anything of value.

I suppose the true test will be the length of time before I see another of those “has shipped” messages. If we’re looking at another six months, my doubts about the service remain. But if the time is much shorter, then maybe the system’s circulation has reached a sustainable level. We’ll just have to see.

* - Let it be known, Nikki is a Mario Bros Savant. Yes, she curses the game just as much as I’ve done, but she’s hit World 6 in less than two days of casual playing. A force with which to be reckoned, indeed.

[tags]SaySwap[/tags]

I’m a pirate.
Originally uploaded by grabbingsand.

Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” … performed on a $1579 theremin.

(Found on Laughing Squid.)

Gold In A Glass
Originally uploaded by grabbingsand.

Dogfish Head Midas Touch

A fine cover for your Friday afternoon. This is Leela James.

This is another sponsored post. I’ll make no bones about it, as it is what it is.

So how would you go about selling an exit sign? It seems just too utilitarian to promote, doesn’t it? Who needs innovation in something so simple? You have an exit, mark it. Is is in a dark hallway or a movie house? Mark it and light it. Done and done. But I suppose I’ve been missing the finer aspects of the craft.

Or maybe the people at exitsigns.net are trying to uplift the practice. At the very least, with their website, they’re doing their level best to do something that shouldn’t be possible. They’re trying to make exit signs sexy.

You read me right. Sexy exits. (more…)

Let’s put the Microsoft Surface in perspective, shall we?

Found at SarcasticGamer.

Piebar Perplexity
Originally uploaded by grabbingsand.

Piebar is round. Piebar pizza is not.

First, there was Mike Gravel’s “Rock.” This was followed by “Fire.”

“Rock” became the subject of much discussion and contemplation. Meditative surreality seemed an odd choice for a pair of campaign commercials. What did it mean? Is this some kind of Beckett-esque take on the current state of American politics? Is Gravel telling us that he’s some kind of latter day Howard Beale, just one rock short of becoming mad as Hell? Is David Lynch funding the Gravel campaign? Were any waterfowl harmed during the filming?

To sum up, we all just had one simple question.*

And yesterday, we got our answer, right from the candidate’s mouth. It turns out that these spots were not campaign commercials. Not really. They were art films, developed and directed by Matt Mayes and Guston Sondin-Klausner. The explanatory interview is just beyond the cut, but there is one bit around the 3:15 mark that made me smile a bit (bold mine).

And boy, when I hear about the reaction that you see … What is it? I’ll tell ya … people don’t even understand Shakespeare, they don’t understand what a metaphor is, because they’re so used to seeing all this stuff that’s going on in politics … when all they’re trying to do is to convey one simple message: here’s an ordinary citizen called Mike Gravel, and what he’s doing, he’s trying to make a change in society, and then he’s going on with his life or to death. Who knows? But this is beautiful, this is very artistic and beautiful, and if some talking heads don’t have enough artistry in their hearts to understand what these kids were doing, that’s their problem.

(more…)