The North Ring Road

Been a while since I blogged, hasn't it? That's largely because I've been busy doing essentially the same stuff: pushing along sales of the Zen Noir DVD and soundtrack. (The DVD is now available on Amazon, and the soundtrack can be downloaded from iTunes, either as a whole album or by the single track. Go on, spend some money, you know you want to!)

So there hasn't been much new to report on from that front, and I haven't really had time to discuss, say, the President's recent State of the Union or anything like that. (Though I will mention how disappointed I was--advance word had been that Bush might actually say something significant about the environment, but in the end he had almost nothing new to say, even with an important new report about to appear--a stark reading of our collective future that already appears to have been watered down.)

But that's all the stuff I don't have time to talk about. Instead, I'm going to tell a little story, about asking directions in Ireland, simply because it's amusing and I like to tell it.

Several years ago, my grandparents were living in Kinsale, County Cork, Republic of Ireland. It's a beautiful little coastal town with the best food in the country (the cooperative they created, called the Good Food Circle, was a stroke of genius), and for several years after their retirement, my grandparents ran a bed & breakfast. By the time of this story, however, they had already retired from their retirement, moved to a smaller house on Worlds End, and I went over by myself to pay a little visit. Spent a few days in Dublin, then rented a car to drive down.

As you can see from the map, Kinsale is just south of the City of Cork; and having made the trip before, I was hoping there might be a way to avoid having to drive through the city center, some sort of country road that might bypass the city altogether. So I stopped in a little town just north of Cork, and ran into a pub in order to use the Gents'.

Long metal trough; sound of rain on a tin roof. As I stood there, one of the bar's patrons, a regular if ever I saw one, came wandering in and stood next to me. Torrential downpour on a tin roof. As I stepped away and washed my hands, he zipped up, looked over and said something that sounded more or less like "Wassonweeyuh?"

I blinked, looked at my watch, and said "A little after three."

"No no," he said. "What's on with ye?"

"Oh!" Been a while since I've heard a good "ye," so I figured the guy was friendly, let's ask him about the roads 'round Cork.

"Ah. What ye do, you see, is you take the Nort' Ring Road to the east do y'see, that'll bring you right round the town."

But as he said this, another of the pub's regulars had come in; gutterspout emptying into a tin can. But he heard what the first guy had said and suddenly interjected: "No, no, no. If he takes the Nort' Ring Road it'll bring him right t'rough the center of town, which is just what he said he was tryin' t'avoid." Zip, step back, advance. "No, what you yis do is you take the Nort' Ring Road to the west, d'ye see, and that'll take yis right round the town."

Back to the first gentle soul: "Are ye mad, Liam? If he takes the Nort' Ring Road to the west it'll take him to fuckin' Kilkenny!"

I left them there, continuing to argue about the best way to go right 'round the town, and set off again in the car. Reached the North Ring Road and headed east. Sure enough, it looked like it was bringing me right into the center of town, so I stopped and doubled back. Retraced my route and, this time, went west on the North Ring Road. The miles passed, I was indeed avoiding the city, the land was all the gentle rolling green of Ireland with no sign of stone cities and traffic. But the signs, they weren't right--by now, shouldn't I be seeing signs for Kinsale? Why instead was I seeing--"Oh crap!" I said, and stopped and turned around, shortly after the first sight of a sign reading "Kilkenny."

I retraced my steps yet again, went east again, went right through the very heart of the City of Cork, dealt with all the traffic, and finally reached my grandparents in Kinsale. Warming up with a nice cuppa, I asked them, "How exactly do you get 'round the city?"

"Oh heavens," said my grandmother. "You can't do that."

A Good Step in the Right Direction

FISA Warrants

Extremely welcome news from the Bush administration today: they have apparently given up on the idea of conducting warrantless wiretaps on whomever they choose. But the phrasing, at least as reported by the Associated Press, just kills me: the Justice Department "has decided to give an independent body authority to monitor the government's controversial domestic spying program." Which is of course complete nonsense: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court always had the authority to monitor the government's surveillance activities; in fact the FISA Court was set up specifically for that purpose, and the only reason the Justice Department is "giving" the authority to the court is because the Justice Department illegally stole it in the first place. It's a bit like a thief stealing your car and then demanding gratitude when he gives it back to you.

Particularly when the thief gives it back only because he's afraid of prosecution. I suspect rather strongly that this action was only taken because of the the new Democratic Congress, and the prospect of harsh legislative review (in fact, Mr. Gonzalez is scheduled to appear tomorrow before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Pat Leahy was for sure going to have some strong questions about FISA). Surely the Attorney General and the White House Counsel's office understand perfectly well that no matter what sophistries they employed to justify their willing defiance of FISA regulations, it was all completely unconstitutional; and so, knowing that the Congress was about to actually do what it's supposed to do and put the brakes on this travesty, they decided to be, oh I guess they'd call it magnanimous and "give" the authority back to the FISA court. Isn't that just peachy of them?

That's one small step for a lawyer; one giant leap for freedomkind. (Even if all it does is get us back where we started.)

A Simple Plan

The Bush Administration is fond of claiming that those who oppose their Iraq war policies fail to offer any plans of their own, that they are quick to judge but never offer anything constructive in return. They justify this nonsense with some mildly-clever semantics: Bush said in his radio address Saturday, "Members of Congress have a right to express their views, and express them forcefully. But those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance for success."

But of course it's all in how you define success, isn't it? And if you declare over and over again that a troop withdrawal amounts to "cutting and running," then it cannot possibly result in success and is, therefore, not really a plan at all. "To oppose everything," Bush said, "while proposing nothing is irresponsible." This allows the President and his henchmen to claim that only they are offering any real, cogent plan for the disposition of Iraq and that complaints from Democrats and/or Congress are mere politicking at the expense of our valiant boys (and girls) in uniform.

Pure poppycock. There have been plenty of alternative plans proposed. I promised a plan of my own yesterday, and it's pretty simple: this one right here, from the Iraq Study Group. I won't get into all the ins and outs of why it's a better plan, because I just don't have enough time right now (see below), but take a look at it--I really think it speaks pretty well for itself.

Buy Our CD!

Meanwhile, off in a completely different direction, I will take just a moment to note that the Zen Noir soundtrack, composed by Steven Chesne, is now on sale on our website (we've got some samples up, too, so you can hear a bit for yourself). People who've seen the movie almost universally praise the soundtrack, so we're very happy to put Steve's superb work out in a format where people can enjoy it in its own right.