I’ve got lots more that I want to tell you about, but I need to sleep now. Goodnight.
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did it die, or just go underground?
I meant to post a link to this story last week, but I never got around to it. (Since I gave up coffee, my late-night, cheese-eating, full-nude blogging parties have been seriously curtailed.) At any rate, an article on Wired News announced that John Poindexter’s proposed database system to spy on American citizens, known at the Total Information Awareness program, has been shot down by US Senators. Apparently, they felt as though the government was overstepping its bounds, even in light of the current concerns over terrorism. (story)
I don’t know that I believe it, but the folks in DC say that they’re pulling back, at least for now. My suspicion is that it will go forward in some capacity though, probably hidden from our view. This is a good sign though. It means there’s a line over which even Bushie’s people cannot cross, at least publicly.
Here’s a clip from the article:
Saying they feared government snooping against ordinary Americans, U.S. senators voted Thursday to block funding for a Pentagon computer project that would scour databases for terrorist threats.
By a voice vote, the Senate voted to ban funding for the Total Information Awareness program, under former national security adviser John Poindexter, until the Pentagon explains the program and assesses its impact on civil liberties.
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he probably just has a thing against maynards
One of my favorite authors, JD Salinger, had something of an affair in the early 70’s with a young coed from Yale. Her name was Joyce Maynard, and she wrote a book about their time together. To my knowledge, she and I are not related. We do have in common, however, the fact that we both have website urls that spell out our names. (I have MarkMaynard.com and she has JoyceMaynard.com.)
Somewhere in this house of ours, I have a newspaper headline that says something like, “Salinger Lures Nubile Young Maynard into Sexual Liaison.” It’s one of my most prized possessions.
I haven’t read her book about being with Salinger. I, like many others, was kind of pissed when I’d heard that she was writing a tell-all book about the famous recluse who lured her with a trail of letters to his home. I was even more pissed the following year when she auctioned off the sixty-some letters that he had written to her. (Someone bought them at auction and promptly destroyed them, saying that it was no one’s business what they contained.)
Her story, as I recall, was lurid. According to her, the much older Salinger (by around 40 years) tried to take her virginity, but settled for oral sex, which she administered for some six months, during which time he berated her and encouraged her bulimia. Whether that’s true or not, no one knows but them. Either way, it doesn’t make him any less great of a writer.
A few weeks ago, my friend Jeff sent Mr. Salinger a letter. A few days afterward, it came back to Jeff, along with a stamp saying that it had been refused. I had the same experience a few years ago. I tried to write to Mr. Salinger, thinking that perhaps I, with my wit and a few good ball-shaving anecdotes, could lure him out of his shell. I entertained the notion that he and I could become friends.
When I got my envelope back in the mail, unopened, I was a bit demoralized. Trying to make myself feel a little better about the rejection, I created a scenario where he was tempted to open my envelope, until he had seen that, like Joyce before me, I was from the Maynard bloodline. To this day, I like to think that it is her who kept me and JD Salinger from becoming close personal friends.
getting through: the salinger project
I’ve had an idea for a while now, that it would be interesting to have a competition to see who, if any of us, could break through the wall of privacy and get a letter into the hands of JD Salinger. I have never known anyone to have a letter sent to them by Salinger, but I know that such a thing must be possible. I know that there exists some combination of words and images that, if packaged correctly, could illicit a positive response. The puzzle is how to do it. How does one get him to read the message and then to respond?
I have ideas.
Most of my ideas involve finding a thin, intelligent 18 year old woman and having her pose for photographs which I then paste to the outside of an envelope. That, I think, should get the envelope into the house. The rest is a secret.
So, we could do this a few different ways. We could open it up to competition and several of us can take a stab at it, or we can work together to see if we can make any headway. I’m open to it either way. As my “Operation Whitney Lover” is a little slow to get started, I am looking for another project to fill my time. It might as well be this. So, challenge me or work with me.
Let other people solve the problems of the Middle East. Let us work to coax the great Mr. Salinger out from under the couch.
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our friends the saudis
A few months ago, I made a little crack about our friends the Saudi’s. I was trying to help them come up with a little tourism jingle. (It had been reported that the royal family had signed a multi-million contract with an American firm to wage an all out public relations campaign.) The best marketing slogan I could come up with was, “Fifteen out of nineteen September 11 terrorist can’t be wrong: Saudi Arabia!” (If you’ve got a better one, send it in.)
I dislike the Saudis, and not just because three-quarters of the terrorists that attacked the U.S. on 9-11 were brought up there, under their fantastically progressive regime. I didn’t like them before they altered the skyline of New York. For a long list of reasons why, just look here.
Well, this evening, I sat down here at the computer to answer email and I decided to look at today’s webstats report, just to see whether or not people were still coming to read this stuff. Well, everything looked about as I would have expected until I got to the bottom of the report and saw that I’ve had 37 visitors so far this month from Saudi Arabia. I’m not quite sure what to make of that, but it concerns me. I wonder who would even have internet access in a country where there is no such thing as freedom of speech, and women aren’t allowed to drive cars.
Here’s what Human Rights Watch had to say after visiting Saudi Arabia: “Freedom of expression and association were nonexistent rights, political parties and independent local media were not permitted, and even peaceful anti-government activities remained virtually unthinkable.”
I can’t imagine that reading MM.com is OK when there’s not even freedom of expression. (“You, in the corner, was that an expression?! It looked like a smirk. That better not have been a smirk, young man.”) My hope is that these mysterious Saudi visitors of mine are either US military personnel wasting their time, or oil industry people doing the same. I fear, however, that it’s folks within the House of Saud.
Someone at their PR firm is probably getting their ass reamed out right now.
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vonnegut on the state of the union
Matt sent this in. It’s a good interview with one of my favorite authors, an author who, by the way, Matt turned me onto when we were both youngsters in high school. The interview is about our government and the coming war in Iraq. It’s good. Vonnegut’s great. I love the man and I respect him. Here’s a clip from the article:
I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”
Read the whole thing. You’ll like it. In addition to being a damned good writer, he’s a very perceptive observer of history.
With that said, and acknowledging the fact that our country is being run by a smug buffoon, I still hold to my opinion that, given all the facts, we need to proceed on the matter of removing Saddam Hussein from power. While I love Mr. Vonnegut and respect him, I don’t think that he’s offering a better, realistic alternative. As I said before, it kills me to think that this war is allowing Bush’s gang to force through asinine legislation and that he and his oil friends will financially benefit from it, but I don’t see another course of action that makes sense.
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