Stick 'em up...

and empty your pockets... It's that time again to donate to everyone's favorite Diabetics! The children of the diabetes and endocrine wing at Maria Fereri's Children's Hospital are walking in a circle to raise money for their disease. If they raise enough money they're going to buy Diabetes a shiny new bicycle for Christmas so he can ride out of town and never come back.

In seriousness though, Gillian and my close friend Jen (who works with the kids at the hospital) are both walking the walk along with some other pretty fabulous people and they could really use all the support they can get. Below is a link to Gillian's page where you can donate right there or surf around a bit and donate to the whole team (Jen's Journey). If you've used the internet before I have faith that you'll figure it out. But, if you have trouble and really want to help the hospital buy that new bike and send Diabetes packing, let me know and I'll walk you through it.. but not in a circle...

Gillian's Donation Page:
CLICK HERE OR LOOK LIKE A CHEAPSKATE!

Who's On First

I'm posting it because not enough people even know this exists anymore...

Music Vid from Madagascar

My friend Liz spent some time in Madagascar last year. While there she was courted to be in a music video. She plays the dutifully domesticated white woman...

TINONDIA-TSY MAMPIRAFY
Uploaded by ombilahy

My Map of Santa Monica

Google has added a new feature to the slew of tools they offer to the everyday internet user... My Maps is just another step towards organizing the world's information...

Below is my map. a work in progress...

Click Here

MC Rove

New York Times Editorial

The Rovian Era

Published: April 1, 2007

Turn over a scandal in Washington these days and the chances are you’ll find Karl Rove. His tracks are everywhere: whether it’s helping to purge United States attorneys, coaching bureaucrats on how to spend taxpayers’ money to promote Republican candidates, hijacking the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives for partisan politics, or helping to organize a hit on the character of one of the first people to publicly reveal the twisting of intelligence reports on Iraq.

Whatever the immediate objective, Mr. Rove seems focused on one overarching goal: creating a permanent Republican majority, even if that means politicizing every aspect of the White House and subverting the governmental functions of the executive branch. This is not the Clinton administration’s permanent campaign. The Clinton people had difficulty distinguishing between the spin cycle of a campaign and the tone of governing. That seems quaint compared with the Bush administration’s far more menacing failure to distinguish the Republican Party from the government, or the state itself.

This was, perhaps, the inevitable result of taking the chief operative of a presidential campaign, one famous for his scorched-earth style, and ensconcing him in the White House — not in a political role, but as a key player in the formation of policy. Mr. Rove never had to submit to Senate confirmation hearings. Yet, from the very start, photographs of cabinet meetings showed him in the background, keeping an enforcer’s eye on the proceedings. After his re-election in 2004, President Bush formally put Mr. Rove in charge of all domestic policy.

In that position, as David Kirkpatrick and Jim Rutenberg reported in The Times, Mr. Rove took a lead role in selecting federal judges and the hiring — and firing — of United States attorneys. Mr. Rove’s staff maneuvered to fire the prosecutor in Arkansas and replace him with a Rove protégé, and also seems to have been involved in the firing of a United States attorney in New Mexico who refused to file what he considered to be baseless charges of election fraud against Democrats.

Mr. Rove’s efforts to maintain one-party rule go deep into the government. Last week, we learned about a meeting set up by Mr. Rove’s staff with officials of the General Services Administration that was wildly inappropriate and perhaps illegal. The aim, as outlined by Mr. Rove’s deputy, Scott Jennings, seems to have been to take advantage of the billions of dollars in contracts put out by the agency every year to return Republicans to the majority in Congress in 2008. It included PowerPoint slides on vulnerable House and Senate seats.

This sort of behavior should not be all that surprising. It was not that long ago that the Bush White House embraced the priorities of the Republican governor of Mississippi and virtually ignored the far greater needs of Louisiana’s Democratic governor after Hurricane Katrina.

Mr. Rove retreated a bit from the public eye in the heat of the Lewis Libby trial, but after avoiding indictment, he seems to have regained his confidence. Take a look at YouTube to see his bizarre, humor-challenged gyrations as “MC Rove” at an annual media dinner in Washington the other night.

The investigation of the firings of the United States attorneys seems to be closing in on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who should have been fired weeks ago. But Congress should bring equal scrutiny to the more powerful Mr. Rove. If it does, especially by forcing him to testify in public, it will find that he has been at the vortex of many of the biggest issues they are now investigating.

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Below is the video referred to in the editorial. It is more excruciating to watch than you could possibly imagine.

grand canyon pics

sorry it's been so long. no excuses other than the standard ones...

i just don't have it in me for a long diatribe about the grand canyon. so the short of it is that we rolled Darcy's s2000 off the trailer down on route 40 and then sped like hell up to the giant hole. I'd now be lying if I said I had never been in a car at 130mph... we got there just in time for dusk. anyway, here are the pics.

grand canyon

apt video tour

Since my last post of pictures of the new apartment generated so much buzz (this statement is chock full of sarcasm...) i decided to comply with the requests of all of our readers (Gillian) and post a video tour. hope it helps give you an idea of the space i'm occupying so that when we speak you can imagine me sprawled out on the floor of my enormous closet. :P



again, i implore you to use the comments function and let me know that whatever minimal effort i put into posting is being minimally appreciated...

Apt. Pics

Apt Pics

Home, Sweet Home

I now live in Santa Monica, CA.

After 64 hours of driving, taking shifts and napping in the cab of a 26' truck over the course of 3 days, Darcy and I have arrived in LA. We're not settled in yet, but at least we're here. Unfortunately, we won't have electricity until Monday and internet won't be connected until sometime after that. So for the time being, all dispatches from the west coast will be conducted from... you guessed it, Krispy Kreme. We all have to make due sometimes...

So, we're moving in, slowly getting acclimated, exploring the immediate neighborhood, and looking forward to becoming LAers or whatever stupid name people who live here go by. (suggestions should be submitted via blog comments)

If you'd like to know my new address, email or call. I don't really want to post it up here for the world to see.

Off to dinner with Jake and Sandy. Pics of the apartment will follow tomorrow.

The Journey Thus Far (Part II)

This post is on behalf of both David and myself (Darcy). I am perched on the edge of the car carrying trailer across from a Super 8 a little west of Oklahoma City after Dave and I spent the last 30hrs or so driving ans napping our way this far. All i hvae time to say is, there are many pictures to be posted, and now we head to the Grand Canyon.

Darcy

Pulp Fiction in Typography

it's amazing what people do in their spare time. a great homage to a great scene from a great movie...

Santa Monica, Here We Come...

So, a quick update won't bring you up to speed but it'll have to get you by...

Two night before Valentine's Day I was trying to figure out what to get Gillian and coming up empty. So, I dropped my dog off with an old friend from high school fabulous enough to take care of him for a little while, gave my car keys to Jake (who promised to take care of her as if she was his own), and bought a last minute flight home to Stamford. Although it's much more romantic to think that I flew home just for V-Day, I have to admit that I also needed a place to live for the month of February as my new apartment was only available as of March 5th.

Yup, you read that right... new apartment. The apartment that Darcy and I found, loved and didn't think we would get, came through. It's an awesome 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom, 1 loft, 2 parking space awesome apt. and the lease is signed and the checks have cleared. It's ours. We just have to move in.

So, in order to achieve that last part, Darcy and I are packing a 16ft Penske truck on Tuesday, March 6th and plan to roll out of Stamford early on the 7th. If we have our way with the road and only stop to eat & pee (ok, #2 too), we hope to hit the west coast by Saturday... Our only detour is a minor jaunt along the rim of the Grand Canyon. Otherwise, we plan to stay on Route 40 most of the way out. I'm pretty excited about this route for two reasons: 1) It's new. I drove out on Route 10 last time, so this trip presents new stuff to look at and less road time in TX. 2) A good portion of Route 40 runs parallel or on top of what used to be Route 66 the infamous, decommissioned "Main Street Of America". We'll be rollin' along side history...

So, that's the short of it. Trust me, the long version ain't too interesting. I did a lot of sitting around these past few weeks. Other than running a couple of errands and helping Darcy pack and wrap things up here on the east coast, it's been a fairly low key trip.

Hope you're all well and I encourage you to stay tuned to the blog in the next week or so (and longer) because I fully intend to post dispatches from the road and a whole slew of more photos from The Journey: Take 2.

COMMENT!

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i want one.

Real Men Of Genius

The Hole - video powered by Metacafe

The Earth Wants To Eat Us

Sinkhole in Guatemala...

Horticulture How-To

one of the best things to come out of my time at MComm...

jetBlue's promise to you

an interesting moment for corporate communication...

smartcar commercial

clever...

Kennedy conspiracy development

A NYTimes article detailing new discoveries regarding the Kennedy Asassination due to new film footage recently uncovered. It supposedly proves that the "one shooter/bunched jacket" theory is actually possible.

worth a glance

Just good writing...

Letter From California: Looking for the Pattern of Ordinary Life - New York Times