the corrections

OK, I left some stuff out last night and I made a few mistakes and its been eating at me all day.

First, no, I didnt know that you could read the Salon article for free just by agreeing to watch an ad. I guess that makes me a dumbass. I realize that now… Every time Ive ever gotten to that horizontal bar on Salon that says, subscribe to finish reading, I stopped reading. I never kept scrolling down the page to find out that theres another way to get to the rest of the article… So, thanks to all of you who pointed that out to me. Id particularly like to thank the people who didnt forward the story, but just said, Sallons free dumbass. Watch the fucking ad. Its for the people like you that I stay up late every night and do this.

Second, I passed up a perfect opportunity to reference a Velvet Underground lyric. I saw it there in front of me and I thought about it for a minute, and then I decided to pass on it. I though, in my drunken haze, that no one would catch it and bust my balls for missing it. I was wrong For those of you that arent big Velvet Underground fans (or know Moe Tucker, like I do (its one of the few things I have in this life to brag about, so I like to do it whenever I can)), theres a song on White Light / White Heat called The Gift. Its about a guy that ships himself in a box to the home of the girlfriend that hes been separated from. To make a long story short, she doesnt love the guy anymore. Shes moved on. Shes talking with a friend about being over this guy while hes sitting in the box, waiting for her to open it. If memory serves, she even talks about getting laid better now that hes gone. Anyway, he just sits there in the box, oblivious. Finally, she goes to open the box by plunging a large kitchen knife through the tape that holds it closed. It goes through the guys head Its a nice, little song, very different from the rest of the stuff in the VU canon. At any rate, when I was mentioning the story last night about the guy that shipped himself from Boston to Dallas, it occurred to me that I should tie it back to The Gift. I sat there for about five minutes, trying to think of the guy s name in the song, but I just couldnt. It began to eat at me. I got up and looked for White Light / White Heat, but couldnt find it. I debated just leaving it out. I thought, What if someone criticizes me for not making the connection? but I decided to take my chances. Then, I got home this afternoon and checked my email. He didnt come right out and call me a dumbass, but Kurt, a reader in Chicago, had a letter waiting for me. The subject? You didnt mention Waldo Jeffers. Mother Fucker! I cant let my guard down for a minute.

Third, as I was writing my entry last night about the Showtime docudrama on 9/11 that re-wrote history in order to hero-ify the actions of President Bush, it occurred to me that I should mention Leni Riefenstahl, the director of the 1935 Nazi-glorification film Triumph of the Will. I was really close to doing just that, but I didnt want to make such a blatant comparison between Bush and Hitler. (I dont want to spend even one night in Camp X-ray.) As poorly as I think of Bush, I dont feel as though that comparison is fair. I simply wanted to suggest that the filmmaker of the 911 movie took liberties in order to glorify Bush the same way that Riefensthal ignored the bad stuff in order to present Hitler as a godlike leader. Now, I wish that Id made the comparison. According to the New York Times, Leni Riefenstahl died yesterday, perhaps right after the airing of DC 911 on Showtime.

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