Life

Watch: President Bush gets older, falls from the sky

For his 90th birthday, President George H. W. Bush was more bad-ass than any of you pip-squeaks, in that he once again went sky-diving. His landing, though, wasn\’t the best: Mr President, you’re going to need to do better if you want to get your Pilotwings A License. Just kidding. I’m in no position to give advice. I certainly ain’t jumping out of the sky anytime soon. You know, on account of how I’m a big wuss.

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Last Caress

Since I bought it a million years ago, my copy of The Misfit\’s Static Age always had a weird skip on the first guitar strum of “Last Caress.” I listened the hell out of that CD for years, and it eventually found its way ripped to MP3s on each computer I’ve had since then (don’t even ask how I still have all my late-90s MP3s, but have exactly zero papers I wrote in college, including my Plan, in electronic format). So. it just came on my Pandora station, but the opening riff was actually correct, and it...

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New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you’re one of the three people who reads this here premier “web log,” you may have once checked out the New York Times op-ed page. You might even recognize the names of the columnists, who every day spout the most conventionally wise of the conventional wisdom. This is a feature that is dedicated to these folks, highlighting one line that is either funny, ridiculous, strange, or actually intelligent or well-written. Today\’s is from David Brooks, who in his column today, \”The Employer\’s Creed,\” writes: But if you fear leaping out in this way, at least think...

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Poems for the Cruelest Month

T.S. Eliot was wrong. February is the worst. February by Bill Christophersen The cold grows colder, even as the days grow longer, February\’s mercury vapor light buffing but not defrosting the bone-white ground, crusty and treacherous underfoot. This is the time of year that\’s apt to put a hammerlock on a healthy appetite, old anxieties back into the night, insomnia and nightmares into play; when things in need of doing go undone and things that can\’t be undone come to call, muttering recriminations at the door, and buried ambitions rise up through the floor and pin your...

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Feminist rant of the day

[I’m sure this won’t actually be a daily feature here at V&V, but it’s a pretty reliable description of what much of my blogging is about, so.] This is how it goes.  You tell me you’ve figured out what the “77 cents to a dollar” means, and it isn’t that a woman working the same job as a man gets paid that much less.  It’s comparing women’s median pay with men’s median pay, without accounting for the jobs they’re in or hours worked or what.  And also there’s a study that among educated 22-30 year old non-parenting...

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John 14:27

I park the car behind the house, on the grass on the far side of the driveway. I come in through the back door. I’m expected. The back door leads directly to the kitchen, and nothing’s cooking. It’s only 11:15, so nothing would be. No one greets me. The long walk from the door through the kitchen takes years. I remember last week. I remember how frail she looked, how much frailer than the week before, and the week before that, and the month before that. My foot hits the threshold of the living room. It touches...

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