Mark Maynard | 2004 | August

shall – we – play – a – game?

By Mark | August 26, 2004

Im finally getting around to last weekends New York Times magazine and thought that you might find this article on the intersection of video games and urban warfare to be interesting. Heres an incredibly troubling clip:

Before long, military experts began to approach private-sector game designers, looking for opportunities to collaborate. Video games have even been used as a form of outreach, the military’s public face to American youth. More than 10 million people have downloaded a first-person shooter game called America’s Army that the Army gives away as a recruiting tool. It now ranks as one of the most popular games ever. (In a recent poll by I to I Research, 30 percent of a group of young people with a favorable view of the military said they had developed that view from playing America’s Army.)

Unicycle-riding clowns wrangling kids up into school busses for vacation bible school just cant compete as a tactic. Jesus had better whip up his own first-person shooter game… X-treme X-ian… “Last time, I died for your sins. This time, it’s your turn.”

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flotilla of douche-bags part two: oh, you meant that cambodia?

By Mark | August 26, 2004

John ONeil, one of the Swift Boat assholes out to torpedo John Kerrys presidential campaign, was just caught in another lie. This time it has to do with Cambodia and his recent claim that, when he and Kerry were swift boat commanders in Vietnam, they never entered into the country. In saying this, he, of course, is suggesting that Kerrys been lying when hes said that he was running missions into Cambodia. Well, it turns out that a tapes just surfaced of a conversation between a young ONeil and president Nixon. Heres part of the transcript from CNN last night.

O’Neill said no one could cross the border by river and he claimed in an audio tape that his publicist played to CNN that he, himself, had never been to Cambodia either. But in 1971, O’Neill said precisely the opposite to then President Richard Nixon.

O’NEILL: I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border on the water.

NIXON: In a swift boat?

O’NEILL: Yes, sir.

So, when were you lying, John? Then, or now?

Of course all of these bits and pieces that are coming out now arent getting a fraction of the airplay that the ads against Kerry were. But the Republicans knew all of this when they launched the campaign in the first place. They knew the attacks and the attackers would be discredited in due time, but they also knew that it didnt matter. They just needed to get in quickly and plant the seed in the minds of those voters who hadnt already decided long ago who they were voting for. Just as they did with their first baseless attack, suggesting that Kerry had an extramarital affair with a young student, the facts didnt matter. They just wanted the words Kerry and intern said repeatedly together, recalling the Clinton affair. This time they just wanted images of men in uniform calling him a coward and a liar (and all the better if it could be shot in such a way as to suggest that they actually served on board the same ship). This is about winning at all cost. This is war and they will do whatever it takes to win.

And if youre one of those who dont think that this Swift Boat charade was orchestrated from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, theres a story you should read on the Washington Monthly site about Ben Ginsberg, one of Bushs attorneys who just stepped down after an eye-witness surfaced that placed him at a meeting of the Swift Boat group. Heres a clip:

Ben Ginsberg, says that everything he’s done is technically legal. And that may be true — I’m not enough of an election law expert to judge.

But what’s also true is that Ginsberg himself has attacked what he characterizes as the impropriety of individuals holding dual roles with campaigns and 527s.

An article that appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer just two weeks ago included this bit about Ginsberg: “Ben Ginsberg, a legal adviser to the Bush campaign, specifically condemned the dual roles played by Democrats Harold Ickes and Bill Richardson, who had official roles at the convention and also within prominent friendly 527s. ‘They’re over the coordination line,’ Ginsberg said of Ickes and Richardson. ‘The whole notion of cutting off links between public officeholders and soft-money groups just got exploded.'”

So, the pieces are falling into place, but it may be too late. In a few months we may be watching as the media examines their complicity (as theyre doing with regard to the question of WMDs now), but it wont matter. The election will have come and gone, just as the war did, without even a whimper from the nations press. (note: On a very local note, I think its absolutely shameful that a great university like the University of Michigan does not have a journalism department.)

On the subject of the role of journalism in this whole Swift Boat mess, heres a clip from a good piece at the Columbia Journalism Reviews site:

While the SBVFT may have a questionable grasp of the facts, it has been extraordinarily sophisticated in its manipulation of the media. To understand why this campaign has been hijacked by a small group of veterans bearing a thirty-year old grudge, it’s worth examining the institutional susceptibilities of a campaign press corps that allowed the SBVFT’s accusations to take on a life of their own. The SBVFT may have put themselves in the game, but it’s a flawed media that made them stars.

One last question Why arent there fucking people in the streets? Where are the young people of our nation? Dont they have spines anymore? I know were about to see protests in New York, but is that all the energy we can muster? Why arent there sit-ins at college campuses? Isnt all of this every bit as bad as what was happening during the Nixon administration? Why is it that were so much less angry? Is the TV that much better now? Is it video games? Is it that we’re fatter now than ever? Is the only difference the draft? Is that what it takes to outrage people? If so, I say, Bring it on.

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the worst has happened

By Mark | August 26, 2004

Id read yesterday that a Russian security expert was predicting that, as a result of a terrorist cyber attack, the whole internet would come crashing down today and the world would be thrown into chaos. Well, while that apparently hasnt happened, I have just received word from an MM.com operative on the east coast that people there are finding they can…. horror of horrors…. no longer access this site from their cubicles. Heres the photo he sent as proof

I suspect by tomorrow morning the news will be filled with stories of mass-suicide.

Fucking terrorists!

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i know you love ypsi, son, but

By Mark | August 26, 2004

I hesitate to mention it because I know were going to hear about it from Clementines grandparents, but apparently there is a man with a pistol running toward our house as I type this Excuse me while I put the dog out in the yard and hide the baby behind the couch.

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vomit in the eyes and the five beers of friendship

By Mark | August 25, 2004

I dont know if you could tell from my posts last night, but I was a bit tipsy when I penned them. After work, Id gone directly to the Sidetrack to take advantage of the beer special (25 ounce drafts of anything on tap from 4:00 to 6:00 (and again after 10:00) every Monday through Thursday, excluding holidays), and to meet up with Chuck Manly, my chuck who was visiting from California. (A chuck for those of you who arent caught up, is a stalker who, by some weird twist of fate, has morphed into a friend.) Anyway, we went out and I threw back a few big Guinness and Bass black-n-tans while Chuck sat staring at me like I was half-steak and half-Pam Anderson and sipping on his pop Im not sure, but Chuck might not even be 21 yet At any rate, he sat there staring at me, his eyes spinning around like pinwheels, and it crossed my mind that there must have been a moment that morning outside the Dakota when John Lennon suspected something wasnt quite right with the guy holding the copy of Catcher in the Rye But this is Ypsi, I thought to myself, and everyone looks like that. So, I kept emptying my beers and he kept sipping his pop and staring.

Then, at some point, he started telling me about everything going on behind the scenes at his group-blog, Caliblog, and bragging about all the women who wrote in saying that theyd fallen in love with him. It was that point, as I sat there lamenting loudly that none of my readers had ever hit on me, that my wife and baby apparently strolled up behind me The conversation abruptly changed course at that point.

So, after sitting there drinking and swapping stories for a few hours, Linette and I came home, where I promptly strapped the baby to my chest and took the dog for a walk. On the walk, I met a man who Im pretty sure was a pimp. (He was following a woman in sweatpants by half a block and he would occasionally yell directions up to her, like they were rowing around a lake looking for a good fishing spot.) He asked me about my dog. He wanted to know if she was a pit. So, I stood there on the corner, a bag of her warm shit in one hand, talking with this pimp, as Clementine gurgled and made little bird noises between my womanly breasts. It was very Norman Rockwell. (As an aside, Id never felt like a bigger pussy. I kept imagining how Id fight with a baby strapped to my chest and the thought made me feel extremely vulnerable. I might as well be wearing high heels into a prison yard, I thought. And it didnt help that I was toting around dog shit in a plastic Whole Foods bag… I’m not sure of much, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that pimps don’t pick up dog shit.)

OK, I was planning on a much bigger entry tonight, but Linette and I had company and she just left. Our friend Monica came over this afternoon to hang out with Clementine and Linette and she stayed for dinner. As it would turn out, that was just long enough for her to be the very first person projectile vomited on by our daughter. We were all sitting there, eating our beans and rice, when Clementine suddenly, and without warning, sent a scorching-hot stream of vomited breast milk and bile across the table and into Monicas eyes. It was truly terrible (how funny I thought it was).

So, thats it for tonight.

(I should note, for the sake of the historical record, that Chuck never really stalked me, and that he’s not either a) insane, or b) in love with me. I just think it’s funny to pretend that’s the case.)

Oh, here, before I go though, is a link to a neat little retelling of the Planet of the Apes as though it were an episode of the Twilight Zone. Its pretty cool.

Oh, and one last thing Yesterday, I posted a link to a site where a fellow had gone to great effort to detail the various medals and commendations earned by George Bush during his time in the military. The site, featuring awards like the Fearless Ninja award and the Five Bears of Friendship medal, was not real. Im sorry I didnt mention that earlier. My apologies to all of you who were hopelessly confused.

Well, the site not only confused an MM.com reader by the name of Ken, it encouraged him to make an award of his own, the Five Beers of Friendship medal. While I like it very much, and would be proud to wear it, Im not sure what it means. Linette and I were just debating it. She thinks that if you can drink five beers with a person and you still both like each other that you should both earn the ribbon. (She said, however, that if you ended up in bed with each other that you shouldnt get one.) My suggestion was that the award should be given to people once they had purchased five beers for another person, someone who had already earned the award him or herself. The way I envision it, it would be like a secret society that you only found out about once you were gracious enough to buy five (non happy hour) drinks.

(If youd like to design an award, either for Bush, or for your fellow MM.com readers, just send it in and Ill post it here.)

On that note, I must go up to bed. Be good, my invisible friends.