My Friend Nick is Missing

If any of you folks are in the Seattle area (hell, even if you aren't) please look at this:

http://community.livejournal.com/seattle/5056342.html

My friend Nick is missing. He's got a wife and kids and another little one on the way. Please, if you have any information at all, contact the authorities.

At the very least I hope you'll all join me in wishing for his safe return and sending prayers/good thoughts or whatever sort of fellowship you can in the direction of him and his family.

This site has also been set up to make more information available. Please keep your eyes and ears open.

Posted by August on 02.16.08 at 2:42 AM | Comments (0)

So It Goes

Kurt Vonnegut has left us.

Posted by August on 04.12.07 at 2:51 PM | Comments (0)

Appalling

Appalling. There are almost no words for how ridiculous and horrible a thing this is. A UCLA student was arrested in a campus library and then repeatedly tasered by the police after he had been handcuffed.

Posted by August on 11.17.06 at 3:30 PM | Comments (0)

Kerry Concedes

Well my American friends, you are now well and truly fucked.

Posted by August on 11.03.04 at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)

Reality or Faith

I don't normally discuss politics here, or at least not anymore, but this article in the New York Times Magazine (registration required) has me worried about our friends in the south. Ron Suskin writes,

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend—but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

That is, frankly, pretty scary stuff. Later on in piece, Jim Wallace makes a point that every supporter of Bush who is a Christian ought to understand:

Can the unfinished American experiment in self-governance—sputtering on the watery fuel of illusion and assertion—deal with something as nuanced as the subtleties of one man's faith? What, after all, is the nature of the particular conversation the president feels he has with God—a colloquy upon which the world now precariously turns?

That very issue is what Jim Wallis wishes he could sit and talk about with George W. Bush. That's impossible now, he says. He is no longer invited to the White House.

''Faith can cut in so many ways,'' he said. ''If you're penitent and not triumphal, it can move us to repentance and accountability and help us reach for something higher than ourselves. That can be a powerful thing, a thing that moves us beyond politics as usual, like Martin Luther King did. But when it's designed to certify our righteousness—that can be a dangerous thing. Then it pushes self-criticism aside. There's no reflection.

''Where people often get lost is on this very point,'' he said after a moment of thought. ''Real faith, you see, leads us to deeper reflection and not—not ever—to the thing we as humans so very much want.''

And what is that?

''Easy certainty.''

Posted by August on 10.17.04 at 11:46 PM | Comments (0)

On Politics

I totally forgot that I was interviewed by Northern Life on the issue of youth voting.

Posted by August on 06.16.04 at 8:42 PM | Comments (0)

On the Eve of Destruction

George W. Bush, president of the United States of America, issued an ultimatum to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein not five minutes ago. Saddam and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours, allowing troops from the United States, Great Britain, and other countries to enter and disarm the nation, and establish a new regime. If Saddam does not comply, there will be war.

There will be war.

I do not believe that war is warranted, for many reasons. I have not commented on the war in this blog simply because this is a literary site, and I don't want it taken over by the war. Laura Trippi has been keeping up with news of the war rather well, and has been exploring certain theories about what's going on, and why. I recommend that any of my readers who are interested in good, intellectual coverage go there.

As the war develops, I may comment on it from time to time, but again, I want literature to be the focus of this site. If you catch me slipping, feel free to give me a virtual splash of cold water on the face to get me back on track.

Peace.

Posted by August on 03.17.03 at 8:29 PM | Comments (0)