My Celebrity Crushes

My blog has been lacking images lately, so I figured it was time to add some pictures. And why not pictures of hot men? These guys are my celebrity crushes. I know, this makes me sound like a 13-year-old girl, but so what. Patrick Wilson is the newest addition to my crush coterie, having just seen Little Children and Hard Candy. He's just such a Golden Boy. What else can I say? Eric Bana? Dark and handsome and Australian. Yum. And Wentworth Miller, star of Prison Break? He's a great multiethnic beauty. Not sure what his heritage is, but whatever it is, it comes together to create one beautiful man. Enjoy!

The Elections, The War, and the Brilliant Frank Rich

The midterm elections are a few weeks away. All signs point to the Dems taking control of the House--and maybe the Senate, too. Uh, please let this happen. If not, I think I've fucking had it with this country. (Yeah, I know, I said that when Bush was not really elected and then re-elected, but this time I mean it!) Everyone says the Dems always manage to lose, to clutch defeat from the jaws of victory, etc. But can we also lay some blame on idiotic voters? (Not to mention all the losers who don't even bother to go out and vote.) Last time the Republicans fear-mongered the public to death, and stupid voters somehow fell for it, thinking the Republicans are keeping us oh-so-safe. Now, two years later, it's clear to most everyone that this disastrous war has made us less safe, not safer. So will voters finally realize that Republicans are ruining America and vote for change? Time will tell. I want to believe...but the cynical, pessimistic side of me can easily see how, once again, I'll wake up on November 7 disappointed, disgusted, and near-suicidal.

And speaking of this war. Three years ago, when this administration was "selling" the idea of the War--you know, how Iraq and Saddam had WMDs, were a threat to America, blah blah blah--I knew all along that it was bullshit. But I wasn't alone--hundreds of thousands of other people did, too. Actually, anyone with half a brain knew the war was based on bogus and fauly intelligence--not to mention lies, lies, lies. But now that the war is an unqualified disaster, people who once supported the war are now turning against it, saying that if they had known there were no WMDs, if they had known that Rummy and Gang had no postwar plan, than they would have been against it from the beginning, too. Bullshit. (My favorite word in this posting, apparently!) These people are just covering their asses because they are on the wrong side of history.

And the rest of them, who were genuinely hoodwinked? Well, if I took the time to read the papers and stay informed, and if I knew that the whole thing was based on lies, and if I knew all along that Bush and his cronies were crooked and caught up in their neocon delusions--if I knew all this, these other people could have--and should have--known, too. They have no excuse, except their own gnorance and stupidity. If they'd get off their asses and read and watch the news and engage with the world around them, instead of hoping Jesus solves all their problems, instead of spending their time bashing gays and defending marriage and boycotting French fries, well, then, we wouldn't be in this mess, and more than 2,500 young men and women wouldn't be dead, for no reason whatsoever.

God, I could go on and on. Just read the brilliant Frank Rich's new book, The Greatest Story Ever Sold, if you want to know the downright criminal and disastrous lies the Bush administration peddled (and still peddles!) to get us into this war. Nobody says it better than Frank Rich, and he has from the get-go.

So, in two weeks, maybe we'll have a new Congress, one that can turn things around. I don't expect miracles if the Dems take over, but it sure would halt the wretched policies that Bush and Republicans have rammed down the country's throat for the past six years.

Nobel Time

The Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced tomorrow, which has produced a flurry of articles about who might win and about the award itself. Salon has an interesting take on the bad deeds of past winners, including Knut Hamsen, who was a Nazi sympathizer, and Gunter Grass, who was, if briefly, an actual Nazi. Susan Salter Reynolds wrote a great piece in the Los Angeles Times about the Award and how the winner is determined.

Is it art or politics or a little of both? Oddsmakers have Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk as the frontrunner, but does it ever turn out to be who they think will win? Other supposed contenders are the Syrian poet Adonis, Philip Roth (overdue?), Ryszard Kapuscinski, Milan Kundera, Joyce Carol Oates (huh?), Margaret Atwood, and so on. They've given it to a lot of Europeans lately, so chances are they won't do that again, especially to an Eastern European (since Imre Kertesz and Elfriede Jelinek are recent winners). So that leaves Asia, Africa, South America, or North America.

Who do I predict? Well, predicting this award is a fool's game. I don't think the award should be political; I think it should be based solely on artistic merit--on a brilliant body of work. But so many other factors are in play, including geographical and genre considerations. A poet hasn't won in a few years, so maybe it's time. Since Pinter won last year, you can rest assured that a playwright won't win this year.

Who would I like to see win? Well, Roth has a shot, and I think he deserves it on purely artistic grounds. If you want an African--a black African--then how about Chinua Achebe? Isn't he more deserving, artistically, than Wole Soyinka was? Of course, I really wish Ireland's William Trevor would win. Or, even more, Canada's Alice Munro (a far more deserving choice, in my mind, than Margaret Atwood). They are both unlikely to win, however, because their work isn't overtly political. And that's a shame, because they are two of the masters of the short story, whose work will surely last. Unlike, say, Jelinek's novels or the plays of Dario Fo.

As Reynolds points out in her article, a lot of biggies did not win the award, including Leo Tolstoy, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, and Marcel Proust. And a lot of head-scratchers won (anyone ever heard of Romain Rolland, who won in 1915, or Frans Eemil Sillanpää, who won in 1934??). But the award has also gone to some amazing writers, like Faulkner, Hemingway, Camus, Coetzee, Marquez, Eliot, and, yes, even Toni Morrison.

So, tomorrow, the award will be announced and then criticized or praised. But in all likelihood, it will get people talking about literature and maybe even get them to explore a new (or not so new) writer's work. That can't be a bad thing, right?

I'm still hoping for a Munro or Trevor upset!