First Looks category archive

Lilacs come earlier (emphasis added):

Every year has its own weather character, but the (Boston–ed.) arboretum’s celebrations marking the peak lilac bloom have migrated by three weeks over the last century. In 1920, Lilac Sunday was held on May 30; in 1983 it was May 22; in 2003 it was May 16; and this year it is May 8. Is it global warming? The arboretum is careful not to take a position.

To answer the question in bold, in the immortal words of a character (who can remind me who it was? I forget–a gremlin maybe?) from a Warner Brothers cartoon, “It ain’t Wendell Wilkie!”

They should have been banksters. They have the right instincts:

Nearly 100 drivers whose cars disappeared in the city during the last two years had those same harried thoughts, only to learn that their automobiles had met an even worse fate.

The cars, police spokesman Lt. Ray Evers said, were taken by eight crooked tow-truck drivers who sold the vehicles to a Hunting Park scrap yard for a small sum, usually between $300 and $500.

How long has it been since you’ve looked something up in a phone book? I think I’ve done it twice in the past three years, and both times it was Yellow Pages. Think of the landfill space this will save:

The Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) today granted Verizon the right to stop automatically distributing the phone books to customers in the state. The company intends to provide customers with an online, electronic version of white pages residential listings as the primary means to access such directory information. Customers also will be able to request a free printed or CD-ROM directory of residential listings.

Verizon will notify customers about how to request printed versions of the phone book through press releases and inserts in their bills, company spokesman Harry Mitchell told the Citizen.

Print directories containing business and government white pages, customer information pages and the yellow pages will continue to be delivered to all customers.

I can’t find a link, but my reading indicates that most of the opposition to this has come from companies that print phone books. They even tried claiming that it abridged their freedom of speech (apparently, speech is now spelled i-n-v-o-i-c-e).

Shaun Mullen remembers.

Mr. Feastingonroadkill a simple description of the modus operandi of right-wing media.

Addendum, the Next Day:

Helen gives an example, ripped, as they say, from the headlines.

Heh. From The Smoking Gun:

Thanks to the efforts of an elite team of American forces, Osama bin Laden will soon have criminal charges formally dismissed against him in federal court in New York City.

Documents at the link.

“We will be relentless in the defense of our citizens . . . .”

I give President George W. Bush credit for a gracious statement.

Mr. Feastingonroadkill pretty much sums it up.

From a long post at After the Future:

The cultural left is a tired, morally spent force in American culture. But the cultural right is full of people blinded by their moralistic ideology. Moralism is wannabe morality. It’s the priggish posture taken by the morally immature to appear morally righteous. The moralistic person deep down knows he is a fraud and aggressively strikes out at anyone who would expose him. They know deep down that the world as it really exists does not fit neatly into their simplistic template, so they reject whatever doesn’t fit as ‘evil’. And for these people there is no accommodation with evil; they must confront and destroy it because they sincerely believe it will destroy them if they don’t. Hence the paranoia that is at the heart of the cultural right.

The good part starts about six minutes in (warning: 15 second commericial at beginning) (CNN clip replaced to get rid of the commercial.):

Via Zandar.

Click for the original image.

Via Some Guy with a Website.

Moved because of Easter.

Date: Saturday, April 30th.

Special Guest Speaker: Louisa Strayhorn, the last African American to serve on the Virginia Beach City Council

Location: Bubba’s Deli & BBQ, 3600 Dam Neck Rd, Virginia Beach (Map).

Cost: Adults $10.00, Under 12 $6.00 for all-you-can-eat buffet (it’s a pretty good buffet, too–plenty of variety).

More information here.

Off to drink liberally.

Fun and fellowship for liberals. Join us.

When: Wednesday, April 27, 6 p

Where:
Kelly’s Tavern
1936 Laskin Rd, # 201
Virginia Beach, Va. (Map)

More here.

Irregular shenanigans to resume shortly.

Celebrate yourself some Easter bunny hype:

Did you know that Easter was originally a pagan festival dedicated to Eostre, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, whose consort was a hare, the forerunner of our Easter bunny? Of course you did. Every year the fecund muck of the internet bursts forth afresh with cheery did-you-know explanations like this, setting modern practices in a context of ancient and tragically interrupted pagan belief.

The trouble is that they are wrong. The colourful myths of Eostre and her hare companion, who in some versions is a bird transformed into an egg-laying rabbit, aren’t historically pagan. They are modern fabrications, cludged together in an unresearched assumption of pagan precedence.

The Eostre bunny is like the fairies those little English WWI era girls photographed–made up.

The real Easter Bunny is good enough, thank you.

Read the whole thing, It’s a nice commentary on modern mythology.

Read more »

Spring cleaning.

Every once and a while, teabaggers reveal what truly lies beneath their (you will pardon the expression but in some ways it is most accurate) movement.

My container roses survived the winter quite nicely.

Also, light bloggery.

What Atrios said. (Though the voting profile doesn’t apply to my state. Wish it did, but doesn’t. Southern Strategy and all that.)