You've Got to be Kidding

Making life greener for the troops
via Baynews 9
Saturday, July 30, 2005

Thanks to a St. Petersburg company, the Iraqi desert is about to get a little greener.

Tour Links is sending portable putting greens to golf enthusiasts serving in the military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The five-hole portable green looks like a giant jigsaw puzzle, and it could solve the mystery about how to keep troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan entertained.

Tour Links is a Pinellas County company that makes portable putting greens, allowing anybody to build a putting green wherever they want.

Even on a military base in the Middle East.

Tour Links President Dave Barlow is working with the Army and the Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) tour to send the putting equipment overseas.

"That's so the soldiers can receive the greens, put them together and they have the added value of having their own golf course at their base in the middle of the desert," Barlow said.

Barlow said the company has sent 10 units so far, with another 10 on the way. It's about $20,000 worth of equipment, with the PGA pitching in golf clubs and balls. Barlow hopes to expand the program in the future.

"These guys are going to be there for a long time, so our goal is to keep outfitting them as long as they want them," Barlow said.

Barlow hopes the greens will help soldiers fight boredom and get in some good swings during their down time.

"I feel great about the fact while they're there, they have a little bit of home with them," Barlow said.

This is beyond pathetic. We're close to 1800 dead soldiers and stuck in the middle of a civil war and this is how we "support the troops"?

Be there or thirst

Hey Paradisiacs!

It's that time again. Time to insulate ourselves from the anarcho-corporatist intrusion by Drinking Liberally:

via Cookie Christine:

Wednesday, July 27th is the day. 7:30pm is the time.
New World Brewery at 1313 East 8th Avenue in Ybor.

I will be partaking of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale on tap!

Be there or be anarcho-sober!

The Realism of Pacifism

Guest poster John McGowan @ Michael Be'rube' offers a reality-based meditation on pacifism:

The Rhetorics of Violence

Of course, in matters of violence, the manly rhetoric of determination, will, prevailing, and necessity is considered “realistic”—and is opposed to the namby-pamby, pie-in-the-sky idealism of the pacifist who refuses to face facts. I beg to differ. The most abiding lesson I have learned in the four years since September 11th is the persistent inability of humans—as a species? Who knows? But certainly in many instances—to call a spade a spade. The rhetorics of violence divert our attention away from the maimed and suffering and dead bodies that are violence’s most real product. Think of the ways that “sacrifice” and “victory” were deployed in Bush’s recent speech about the Iraq War. Was there any connection offered between these terms and the dead bodies our war is producing daily? Pacifism calls us to the fact that violence means killing and maiming; it means inflicting physical harm and pain on humans. It tells us to be suspicious—very suspicious—of the words in which we cloak violence, in which we justify it, and in which we avoid apprehending its real effects on the ground. Get real. By jumping away to the message violence sends about our resolve or to the desired results we imagine it will produce, we cultivate a blindness that renders our claims to be “realists” delusionary.

Please read the whole thing.

Gallery Hopping in Paradise

Hey Paradisiacs!

I just stumbled on this:

Summer Gallery Hop

It takes place this Friday from 5:30 - 9:30 - 3 different art galleries in So. Tampa.

I found it linked here.

Summer Gallery Hop
Florida Oils & Photography Show
in conjunction with
Nuance Galleries
804 S. Dale Mabry Hwy. 875-0511
and Gold Dragon Gallery
508 S Manhattan Ave. 832-2755
July 15, 2005
5:30 P.M. to 9:30 P.M.
Park at one gallery and ride the trolley.
Trolleys brought to you by HARTline
and the Hillsborough County Board of Commissioners
and our media sponsor WSJT 94.1

Happy hopping!

My First Ever

[The President's recent speech has promted me to attempt a re-creation of my very first ever blogpost, posted on 09/10/03 @ Brief Intelligence, a weblog by Kimberley Fox. The site has since been taken down, so I have re-created it from memory. It is not verbatim but the essence is there.]


THE CEAUCESCU MOMENT

December 21, 1989.
I remember it well.
It was right there.
On TV.

Nicolai Ceaucescu came out to calm the crowd. Events were spinning out of control after the latest outrage. But Nicolai woud spin them back into conrol. He was tough. You had to be to run a country. And Nicolai ran it with an iron fist, with the usual brutality and bromides, the show trials and the no trials, the occasional round-up. But Nicolai would remind them of all the things he had done for the greater glory of Romania (and himself). All those concrete slab block buildings separated by tree-lined, empty boulevards. He would remind them of all the things he had done for them.

As he began to speak it happened. They hurled it all back in his face full force. Just a few at first but then more and more. He was hit with a palpable wave of anger and disgust for all the outrages over all the years. All of it. All at once.

He stepped back, shaken, eyes glazed, mouth open. How could this be? Didn't they understand?

All the things he had done for them.


They did understand.

All the things he had done for them were the things they did not want.

They gave him his clue. He was ushered off the stage.


There's a reason for this acid flashback.

I want George W. Bush to have his own "Ceaucescu moment".

I want him to appear before a real crowd, not one of those Rove-picked ones. And when he begins to give that same speech that he's always given before, I want them to hurl it all back in his face, full force. All of it. All at once.

I want him to be hit with that palpable wave of anger and disgust for all the outrages over all the years.

For all the dead and the dying. For all the lives lost and the lost lives. For all those left behind. For the WMDs that don't exist and the RPGs that do. For the wounds that have not healed and the wounds that may never heal in our lifetime.

I want him to realize all the things that he has done to them.

I want him to realize that all the things he has done to them are the things they do not want,

I want them to give him his clue. I want him to be ushered off the stage.

I would like to be there to see it all, but if I can't be there I still want to see it all.

Right there.

On TV.