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 Ice
Cube 
 "Word
comes that brother Cat Stevens refuses to lend his support to
our virtuous jihad. May this turncoat's Peace Train be laden with
explosives and rammed into the Mountain of Mohammed, peace be
upon him. "
 "The
idea -- if we may use so flattering a term -- was that the
Pentagon would monitor the site and the betting, and thus
get a jump on terrorist acts to come. After all, as the theory
goes (and never mind the whole dot.com fiasco), if people
are willing to put money on something, they must have a pretty
good idea what they're doing."
 "There's
some thing in our psyche, this kind of right or privilege
to resolve our conflicts with violence. There's an arrogance
to that concept. To actually have to sit down and talk, to
listen, to compromise, that's hard work. To go for the gun,
that's the cowardly act."
 "The
recall provision itself was designed as a way for the
people of the state to get rid of a governor who had
disappointed them. Not a bad idea on the face of it,.
but then about 90 years later, reality sets in."
 "There
was some-thing truly visceral about Cube's voice that made his ever-present snarl that much more serious. As he barked on Death Certificate and Amerikkka's, he was the nigga you love to hate as well as the wrong one to fuck with."  "Even
though Sonic Youth grabbed Cobain by his hypodermic
needles and helped foist him into the spotlight, alterna-fans
du jour didn't return the favor when the New York
noisemakers lobbed this bottom-soaked missile their
direction."
"Bush's
lame response to North Korea has made it quite clear
that all he wants is to invade Iraq again. North Korea
may be more dangerous in fact, but there's no oil
there, and it simply doesn't figure in the grand eschatological
design of Bush's theocratic circle. Pyongyang isn't
even in the Bible!"  "People
are more aware of the world that they want to live in,
and now they have to realize that they can actually
create that world and fight for the things that are
worth fighting for and not feel apathetic. We are all
going to die. There is no point in holding anything
back."
 "There's
a scene in Richard Link-later's Waking Life
where the protagonist crouches down to read a note
in the street that says, 'Look to your right,' which
he does, only to come face to face with a speeding
car aiming right for his head. That's what it's like
to listen to Mars Volta's De-loused in the Comatorium
for the first time."
 "Well,
well, well. President George was in one hell of bind
when it turned that that Saudi Arabia funded Al Qaeda,
not Iraq. Realizing we'd invaded the wrong country,
Bush did the honorable thing: he's come out against
gay marriages."
 "Gregory
Peck, in what may have been divine justice died
comfortably in his sleep, old age finally having
caught up with him. His soul, like his formidable
legacy, was one of peace, so it is poetic that he
left this world in such a manner. But the times
he has left behind for his unknown sons and daughters
resembles the dystopia of Boys From Brazil
more each day." "Can
you believe these guys? A third grader can tell
you that crack is to pot like an Uzi is to a banana.
Crack kills, pot giggles."
 "'When
it comes to learning from its mistakes, corporate
America has fallen off the rehab wagon more times
than Robert Downey, Jr. A quick glance at last
week's papers reveals that it's monkey business
as usual on Wall Street."
 "There
is no one thing to know in Lord of the Rings
more important than the fact that everything
is disappearing, and disappearing fast. Jackson's
final film in his peerless trilogy tenaciously
latches onto this theme and never lets go."
 "By
the time this page fully loads, Guided By
Voices' Robert Pollard will have probably
composed, performed, mixed and pressed yet
another tightly coiled pop-rock nugget."
 "Unless
his friends and neighbors turn bitch and
completely bail on him, the hyperskilled
Lyrics Born will be here later this day,
that day or whatever day, until he's too
old to physically rhyme or sing anymore.
In that, perhaps he can take some solace,
dropping that baggage off at the door in
the process."
 "There
is no doubt in my mind -- and in this
I seem to have a lot of company -- that
Transatlanticism is Death Cab For
Cutie's best album so far, not bad for
a group that's been professionally plugging
away for just over four years now. And
there is also no doubt that Ben Gibbard
is one of pop music's finest talents.
."
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by Ross Levine Once per annum, as the Earth completes another pointless whirl around the sun, the year draws to its close, and 2003 is no exception. The 21st century is now well enough underway that most of us aren't even writing "19" on our checks anymore. And what shape is this not so new millennium taking? Well, if we look at the pattern so far, it's the same pukey world we tried to leave behind in '99. The year 2000 terminated with an election decided by Supreme intervention, 2001 with a tragedy so inexpressible that attempts to memorialize it have proven futile, and 2002 with Senator Strom Thurmond turning 100 and Trent Lott on hand to lament that the old man had outlived Jim Crow. This year, Strom finally met his maker, and was perhaps fittingly dispatched to the dark side, but he still had a little surprise up his underwear which we'll get to in short order. In the meantime, here are some choice surprises of 2003:
1. We begin by recalling that Gray Davis had three more years left as governor of California, until a certain Republican on steroids, with some help from "the special interests," came and kicked political sand into Davis' less than popular face. One hundred seventy-nine candidates from all walks of life, including a Prius-pushing pundit, a porn star and an aging billboard bimbo, were vying for his job, but Ahnold came out on top, despite lurid, eleventh-hour allegations of serial groping. Ahnold grinned for the cameras and said sorry, and the electorate believed him, just as they assumed he would sally into Sacramento and terminate all the state's ills by killing the car tax, uncovering billions in wasteful spending and re-defeating the Indians. After his first month in office, all we can say is, "governor, what big teeth you have. . ." 2. We were dismayed to witness another space shuttle -- Columbia -- burning up in space and taking a team of dedicated astronauts along with it. This time, instead of an O-ring, it was a piece of foam that did the vessel in, with NASA management quick to insist there was nothing they could have done, even if they hadn't - surprise -- treated alert staff underlings as over-cautious Cassandras. A test conducted post-calamity revealed the true extent of the foam's destructive power -- perhaps the only weapon of mass destruction discovered this entire year (see #19 below). 3. The Democrats in the Texas legislature had to go on the lam in New Mexico so as not to be coerced into accommodating a Republican plot to redistrict the Lone Star State in a non-census year. With the nation focused on Texas state government, we learned that legislators there are part-timers who earn $600 a month -- no wonder they fled across the border. With House Majority Leader Tom DeLay threatening to send a posse of federal marshals after them, the Democrats were forced to return, the Republicans got their gerrymander, and we all got a pointed lesson in American government, i.e., that most congressional elections are fixed. Apparently, the problem is worthy of the Supremes, who will render a decision this term about just how squirmy Elbridge Gerry's salamanders can get nowadays. In the meantime, we can only hope that the democracy we graft onto Iraq is an improvement over the one it's taken us 207 years to demolish.
4. Speaking of Iraq, who can forget the heady days of April when we saw our Mission Accomplished in a Baghdad square, a bunch of Iraqi men attempting to topple a statue of the less-than-beloved Baath-tard who had ruled their nation for decades. Alas, American soldiers had to help out, and momentarily draped Old Glory over the dictator's visage to make sure they received proper credit, and before long, Saddam's iron puss was being dragged about through the streets. Days of looting and rioting ensued, which Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld summarily dismissed -- "it's untidy and freedom's untidy" -- yet for some reason, nobody compared Rummy to the Iraqi Information Minister. And nor did anybody compare Rummy's boss to that same psycho of spin, not even after Dubya hit the deck of an aircraft carrier (busy protecting the San Diego coast) and announced the end of major combat operations. Who knew this would mean, from that point on, a daily drip of dead and mutilated American soldiers? We can only assume the President didn't know either, which is why, after his heady "bring 'em on!," he later distanced himself from the "Mission Accomplished" banner by blaming it on others, a maneuver faintly reminiscent of his predecessor's "Wizard of 'Is'" speech before the grand jury. 5. And speaking of Iraq again (can we help ourselves?), this latest war, O-peration I-raqi L-ibera -- uh, Freedom -- introduced a new brand of journalist to the fourth estate -- the embedded reporter. Meaning that Pentagon wags were so confident their military campaign would clinch next year's election campaign for their current commander in chief that they wanted plenty of live-action footage, lending quite an original nuance to the term "attack ad." 6. Meanwhile, on the home front, Americans did their part for the war effort by both devouring extra helpings of freedom fries as well as the Administration's line that Saddam and Osama were conjoined evildoers separated at birth.
7. We're not quite finished with Iraq (and alas, won't be for many, many years), but for the moment, let's move on to the war on sodomy. Contrary to the misguided ravings of Pennsylvania Republican Rick Santorum, the Supreme Court ruled that Americans do have a right to a modicum of personal privacy, and that what two consenting adults do in their bedroom should not leave them vulnerable to an all-expense-paid timeshare in Guantanamo. By a remarkable vote of 6 to 3, the Court reversed its decision of 17 years prior and declared that states had no right to criminalize sex acts just because a bunch of heterosexual legislators may consider them deviant. Of course, the three reactionary justices (Tony, Bill and Uncle Thomas) said nay to this one -- sodomy is, after all, infinitely more heinous than a pubic hair placed in a soft drink between a man and a woman - while warning of dire consequences for the nation's diet of high moral fiber. And right they were -- the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has now given that state's legislature a deadline to make marriage more gay friendly, a decision that sent shockwaves straight to Washington, and presently has Congress and the White House ready to apply any means available to keep same-sex couples from surrendering their privileged pariah status. As the argument goes, marriage is a sacred male-female bond, and if gays are allowed to intrude on it, many heterosexuals might not find it a worthy vehicle for their own sanctified love. We see their point, too - imagine a world where, for example, Scott and Lacey Peterson might never have tied the connubial knot. 8. The topic of same-sex relations reminds us that baby-dangler Michael Jackson has been formally charged with having perpetrated "lewd acts" upon a sub-14-year-old boy with the help of "intoxicating agents." At Neverland Ranch, the scene of the alleged crime, an army of Captain Hooks arrested the blanched pop star in November with considerably more fanfare than that which accompanied the recent acquisition of a certain sought-after playing card in Mesopotamia (see #18 below). Come next year, Jackson will be forced to either "beat it" or spend as many as eight years convincing his more sensitive cellmates that his melanin shortage is a pathological condition and not any indication of an ethnic preference. 9. Before 2003, some of us never imagined that a $6,000 shower curtain even existed, let alone that someone might actually purchase one, but former Tyco International CEO Dennis Kozlowski has certainly set us peons straight. With plenty of help from the company coffers, he was happily scrubbing his underarms behind a floral-patterned gold and burgundy barrier that proved good taste and an appetite for accepting corporate charity do not necessarily go hand in hand. Not that Kozlowski's wife ever complained -- she was hoping all her birthdays would be as wonderful as her 40th, when she was treated to a $2 million-plus bash on the Italian isle of Sardinia, replete with Jimmy Buffet and a retinue of scantily clad Roman damsels and Adonises that kept her guests both amused and aroused. Stay tuned to 2004 to learn whether her magnanimous hubby will be giving up his golden curtain for an iron one.
10. Skipping back to the war on terrorism, Admiral Poindexter tried to win it for us with a brilliant plan to give speculators a chance to bet on the likelihood of future terrorist acts. Although we're certain William Bennett thought it was a splendid and upstanding idea, a few influential Senators were a tad offended, and arranged for the "Contra-versial" Poindexter's long overdue retirement from public service. 11. You don't have to be in the millenary trade to go "mad" over this next item -- President Bush and his toadies at the EPA took airborne mercury off the endangered species list by declaring that it's no longer a hazardous air pollutant, so that power plants need not fret much over removing it from our atmosphere. Those of us who, as children, thought playing with the squishy element was a blast can't wait to find out if breathing it is equally rewarding. In any case, the world's fish population doesn't mind, since they store the stuff in their tissues and then hold onto it forever. Other environmental developments of note in 2003 are the President's "Healthy Forest Initiative" (also known as "Leave No Tree Behind"), his proposed alterations to the Clean Water Act ("Leave No Wetland Behind"), and his revamping of our national park system's snowmobile policy ("Leave No Ecosystem Behind"). Thank God, at least, for federal judges, like the one who recently prevented an army of snowmobiles from blitzkrieging into Yellowstone (much to the chagrin, we imagine, of our First Flake), and another who, on Christmas Eve, ruled mercury may not be such a terrific tonic after all.
12. Jayson Blair, who had no qualms about planting a tobacco field in Jessica Lynch's backyard or placing sniper suspect John Alan Mohammed on the brink of a confession, was vilified by the New York Times for his creative flourishes and duly fired. The "Paper of Wreckage," as the rival Post called it, soon saw two top editors join Blair out the back door as the scandal blossomed, with one of them, Executive Editor Howell Raines, blaming his lapse of oversight on no less than affirmative action. Raines, who hails from Alabama, claimed he was too eager to give the black Blair a chance to succeed, which hardly explains why he ignored a rather unambiguous memo from the paper's metro editor: "We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now!" The moral of the tale being, I suppose, perhaps in the back of Raines' mind, that if Strom Thurmond had won the presidential election of 1948. . .well, nevermind. 13. Yet another new disease debuted in 2003 -- as if the world were lacking -- bringing misery and havoc to, among other places, Hong Kong, Beijing and Toronto. They called it Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS, which has us wondering why all these new afflictions get acronyms instead of names, as if, despite our advanced medical knowledge, we still know much too little about the causes and origins of illness. It's a good thing the common cold has been around awhile or we'd be calling it Stuffed Nasal Opening Trouble Syndrome, or SNOTS.
14. Does anyone remember the Road Map to Peace? Well, that's no surprise, considering that what the Bush administration thought was a line tracing a direct route to the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has turned out to be a 25-foot wall stretching nearly 400 miles across the West Bank. Gee, talk about a wrong turn. 15. The August power failure that plunged a huge chunk of the eastern U.S.A. into darkness had, in the early stages, some American officials ready to break into a chorus of "Blame Canada!," at least until the fault fell squarely on the smokestacks of Ohio's FirstEnergy Corp. The experts claim that the cause of such a vast outage remains a mystery (hopefully to Al Qaeda as well), but we can't help but wonder why nobody is plying the Enron boys with sodium pentothal, since they did such an expert job of outing California a few years back. In any case, it's reassuring to know that no matter what assaults take place on the U.S. Constitution, at least Murphy's Law is still in tact. 16. Not to overemphasize the contributions California made to 2003, but we'd be remiss if we failed to mention the fires that erupted there in October. Given the results of the recall election, in which candidate Schwarzenegger's mantra was an end to "tax, tax, tax," the fires underscored the need for public servants such as firemen and the public funds that support them. Never mind the car tax -- why not a fire tax on those who choose to homestead on such ultra-flammable terrain? We don't mean to sound callous, but you can't knot the fire hose at one end and expect it to continue gushing at the other. 17. And on the subject of gushing, no less than nine Democrats have been doing just that -- mostly about themselves -- as they vie for the opportunity to turn Bush into a tumbleweed and blow him back to Texas. If there's a savior in the bunch, we haven't found him -- if only Dr. Dean had Edwards' Dixie twang, or Wesley Clark Dick Gephardt's political experience, or Joe Lieberman a liberal idea or two. All year long, Bush has been assailed by a mob, which is unfortunate, since people tend to root for the guy who's outnumbered. In addition, Democrats are competing for the working stiff's pennies while Bush pockets every fat cat Republican dollar in the land. In other words, the nation's more progressive citizens find themselves in the lamentable position of praying for a stock market collapse or a second year of post-Hussein misery for the Iraqi people.
18. Which brings us to the image of that old, beard-bearing soul, hair unkempt, dusty, disoriented, rising from his cramped spider hole like some bedraggled prophet. So this was the figure of evil incarnate that Rumsfeld cuddled up to while he was busy gassing Iranians. This was the great dictator, the one with the vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, whom we spent billions of dollars and hundreds of young lives to flush out of his burrow. Yes, "we got 'im," and it's too bad we can't just saw his head off and mount it in the Oval Office and put this whole "Dubyous" episode behind us. But that's not how democracy works. In a democracy, the people with power can't just use that power to do whatever suits them. First they hire some clever speechwriters, and then they do whatever suits them. 19. Which may explain why Colin Powell showed up at the U.N. early in the year to talk about WMDs and present his amazing evidence. Yes, we can find a bedraggled old fugitive in a hole but when it comes to stores of chemical missiles and trailer parks for making anthrax, so far we've come up empty. Who could have imagined that after Colin's satellite pictures and his recordings of Iraqi secret agents: Mohammed: Quick,
hide the weapons of mass destruction!
20. And finally, there's old Strom, from beyond the grave, still hogging the headlines. Back in the roaring '20s, when he was a young buck, he took a hankering to a black maid, and for a fun and fleeting moment, relaxed his views on segregation. Nearly 80 years later an old woman looking just like the centenarian senator in drag steps up to a podium and announces to the world that she's the mixed fruit of his loins. But, she says, she bears him no ill will - after all, he was a good white father, providing for her, though not exactly showing her off at Capitol functions, and, in turn, not expecting her to grow up to be a good Dixiecrat. Perhaps all his career Negro-bashing was a misguided attempt to quell his own taste for miscegenational mischief. In any case, the old horn dog has now posthumously embarrassed his family, especially the white ones, who are understandably distraught that the Senator's daughter has gone public with her paternity. If only she had taken dear Uncle Strom's hypocrisy to the grave. It's to her credit that she didn't, and to his that he's left behind a reminder to us all: "It ain't what you say, it's what you do." Makes us think Hitler was half Jewish after all. And that about wraps up the year in a nice messy little package. Course, we've left out the saga of Elizabeth Smart, Rush Limbaugh's desperate pill-fering, Bush's Thanksgiving cameo in Baghdad and the head "shots" of Uday and Qusay. But we can't just keep looking back when there's so much mendacity certain to "lie" ahead. So on that note, have a great New Year. 31 December 03 Ross M. Levine is an author, Marcel Proust marathoner and manatee-hugger who feels safer on the edge; i.e., in New York or California. He agrees with the King of Brobdingnag that we're "the most pernicious race of odious vermin to crawl the surface of the Earth." He thinks Americans have too much freedom -- fries, that is.
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Copyright 2001-2003, Morphizm.com. All Rights Reserved. |
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