Or Maybe He Wants to Be Vice President.

Filed under:Politics — posted by Anwyn on October 24, 2007 @ 9:40 pm

I hate to flout the wisdom of Allah, because we all know what happens to people who do that, but here’s the Hill article on what Giuliani would expect to get out of a Brownback endorsement:

“It would be absolutely huge,” said Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University. “It would mean that Giuliani is getting support form a part of the Republican Party that has been hostile to him.

“Brownback is very well-respected,” Baker added. “It would give a lot of social conservatives and evangelicals cover if they want to support Giuliani.”

And here’s what Allah has to say about that:

In theory Rudy would leverage Brownback’s campaign infrastructure in Iowa to close the yawning gap between him and Mitt, but how likely is that to happen? The most committed social con base in the country, pounding the pavement for the lone pro-choice Republican simply because their candidate of choice asked them to? I don’t think so … there’s no earthly way he’s going to endorse Giuliani. He’s just hinting at it to make the value of his endorsement more precious later, when it inevitably goes to some social con and the press eats it up as proof that the religious base can’t in good conscience vote for Rudy. But of course Rudy’s got to go through the motions and meet with him anyway lest he duck him and it be seen as a snub.

Or maybe he wants the vice presidency, thinks Giuliani’s the likeliest one to hand it to him, and also believes he can get his people on board whether they know he will be the VP nominee or not. Is it impossible that this timing, so soon after all the furor over Dobson, et. al., is not a coincidence? Given that the folks at those meetings could just have endorsed a candidate more in line with their views, like, say, I don’t know, Brownback perhaps, yet didn’t, choosing instead to try to strong-arm voters by declaring their intentions this far before the primary, it could well be that Brownback’s wrapping a little resentment and his VP hopes up into one nice little endorsement package? Christmas comes early for Giuliani and much later for the Brownback pro-lifers who get to have their candidate with his foot in the door for a future run.

I guess we’ll find out who’s right soon enough.

What Up, Craiglist People?

Filed under:It's My Life,Jerks — posted by Anwyn @ 9:23 pm

Why is craigslist populated by more than its share of jerks and idiots?

I’m trying to sell three cast iron skillets. A woman emails about one of the skillets, says she wants to come over tomorrow (yesterday) and get it … unless, of course, where I live is too far from where she is. Is it? she wants to know. Um. You can use craigslist but not Mapquest? I tell her roughly where I am. She says she wants to come get the skillet. Fine. I give her directions and all. She doesn’t show. She emails to say she got hung up at work and couldn’t email me in a timely manner. Fine. She emails again to say she deleted the email with my directions. . o O (???) Fine. I email them to her again. She’ll come over tomorrow (today).

She doesn’t show. Again. This time no email.

I hope she’s just too darned emabarrassed to email since she left me hanging yet again. But somehow, I doubt it.

Not the first time for this kind of thing with craigslist. Not the first time.

Bonus Gullibility

Filed under:Heh,It's My Life — posted by Anwyn @ 3:56 pm

I’m occasionally taken in by a good story, I’ll admit. I didn’t see the ending of Sixth Sense coming. It’s probably better for my enjoyment that way but it does occasionally make me feel foolish.

So here’s a little tale, completely true, about a visit to Sea World I was on with some cousins of mine. They won’t mind me telling the story since even if you knew my real name you couldn’t guess which cousins it was–I have a lot of them.

So I’m sitting next to my cousin, we’ll call him Stu, at the dolphin show, with his wife, we’ll call her Jane, on his other side. Gorgeous dolphins with incredible hang time, yay Sea World. They bring a family out–man, woman, daughter–to let the little girl give the dolphin a treat for its tricks. Aaww. The trainer suggests that Mom go up on a little bridge between the audience and the trainer area to take a picture of Daughter interacting with Dolphin. Aaaww. The next thing we know, Mom is in the water, she’s fallen off the bridge. And she’s freaked. She’s flailing and screaming as if there are barracudas in the pool instead of cuties who like to nudge you with their noses. A dolphin comes over to her and she goes even more berserk, screaming and splashing at the dolphin in a panic. Clue #1: No trainer had dived into the pool at this point. The sum total of their action consisted of encouraging the woman, via the microphone, to swim to the front of the pool where there was a ladder. I turn to Daddyman demanding to know how anybody can be such a total panicked loser twit that they would scream and splash instead of making nice with the dolphin and enjoying the accident of a lifetime. Probably his silence on this point was to spare my feelings. The bozo mom is making her way, with much trembling and drama, to the front of the pool, and still no trainer has taken charge of the situation. About this time, both woman and dolphin go under and suddenly the show finishes with some finale human-dolphin trick that I can’t remember right now. Oh.

I turn to Stu, deflated but giggling, “I feel so stupid. They really had me going.” Cousin Stu turns to me with a matching grin. “This’ll make you feel better. They took me in too … until Jane said, ‘You idiot, they got you with this one the last time we were here.’

Eah. He works in the industry which is one of my primary areas of consumer input–Hollywood. I suppose a reasonable–reasonable, I said!–dose of credulity is an advantage for people who work on or just love good stories.

For Real?

Filed under:Authors,Blogging,Cool — posted by Anwyn @ 9:55 am

Man. I procrastinate reading Lileks for a few days, and this is what I miss:

… young idiots [drove] by and [shouted] obscenities at everyone … the gentleman at the next table whipped out a long thin bamboo tube and shot what appeared to be a sharp dart into the rear right wheel of the vehicle … the POP of the tire’s explosion was followed by two more, each punctuated by a sharp concise exhalation from the man at the next table … the vehicle had come to a stop, its driver too stunned to proceed, and by the time the driver regained his composure the fellow had opened the door and removed he youth who had shouted the obscenities to the ladies. He marched the youth back, and with the slightest pressure on his upper ear – a gesture that seemed to inflict a great deal of discomfort – he compelled the youth to apologize to the ladies, and empty his pockets to pay for the meal he had sullied with his vulgarities. Then he dispatched him with a kick on the seat of his trousers, but you could tell it was intended more for show than the actual infliction of injury. We rose in a round of applause, and thereafter amused ourselves watching the youths push their vehicle off to the side of the road. Shouts of “Get a horse” and “that’s right, lads, get your back into it” were laughingly proffered.

I hope Mr. Lileks forgives me for reprinting the heart of his story, but I’ve started three emails to him and abandoned them all as too fatuous, basically asking: “Are you pulling our legs?” So I guess I will just post the fatuousness here on the blog for all to see, instead.

Is he or isn’t he? He tells the story with what passes on the web for a straight face and gives no indication that he’s joking. But my basic experience of modern life inclines me to believe this is so unfathomably unlikely that I’m left … flummoxed. Not to mention that the “youths,” morons or not, would have had a good case of destruction of property to take to the police. Real or Not?

Verdict: Consult the laws of physics, Anwyn, you credulous girly girl. I’m going to credit it to Lileks having an Owl Creek Bridge moment, then.



image: detail of installation by Bronwyn Lace