Yes indeed, a 000 12-fret by Kathy Wingert that I purchased last weekend at the Newport Guitar Festival. This is really cool, as I've been told her waiting list extends out three years.

This sonorous beauty is German spruce over cocobolo, with ebony bindings, board, bridge, and peghead overlay. An abalone rosette trimmed in red (which also circles the top) is a lovely focal point.



( more pictures of my new guitar )

Pretty tasty, eh?

It sounds even better than it looks.

I also have a great deal of sympathy now for the people who take high-quality pics of guitars -- the reflections, especially on the back, are the devil to work around.

So today the Beloved and I went to the American Repertory Theater here in Cambridge to see their production of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. We've been subscribers for some 5 years now and are used to the ART's imperative to put the Drama in Drama.

Anyway, it was one of those rare productions that can really impact an audience. After, as we walked down Brattle Street, we decided that it was good that it was springtime, and a matinee, as leaving this play to face a harsh winter night would probably be asking too much of an audience. The play was exhausting and stimulating. And riveting. (You can see the ART's page at http://www.amrep.org/oedipus/.)

Much of the chorus was sung in Greek, with the translation projected on the back wall of the set. One set of lines was (approximately):

Hubris breeds the tyrant
Hubris feeds hungrily
and does not fear justice.

There was much relevance in this 2500 year-old play that focused on the willful pride of one man who thought he could impose his will on the world and the gods. Unlike Shakespeare, Sophocles didn't include subplots or comedy relief: everything in the play was directly related to the main plot. Very powerful, very basic, and very devastating.

One of the best three we've seen there (with Brecht's Mother Courage and Shakespeare's Richard III).

Date:	2004-05-22 19:34
Subject:	Amusement
Security:	Public
Mood:	amused

Well, I came across this link today: http://www.emogame.com/bushgame.html

It's a simple video game which is definitely aimed at an early-20s male audience, especially one that plays video games. If you go there to play it, you must keep that fact in mind: some of the items which appear tasteless are designed to appeal to that crowd.

Also, it'll take between 40-60 minutes to save the world, maybe more. If your characters are all killed, selecting "continue" will get you a few more.

Check it out.

Date:	2004-05-07 23:44
Subject:
Security:	Public
Mood:	contemplative

Brad De Long ( http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/ ) posted the latest blog from Timothy Burke ( http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/tburke1/ ) of Swarthmore. Here are the first few paragraphs. I particularly like the way he articulates his emotional reaction to the latest turn of the Iraqi screw:

- - - - - - - - - -

“Stop with the hindsight”, says one writer. “Be patient,” says another.

Oh, no, let’s not stop with the hindsight. Not when so many remain so profoundly, dangerously, incomprehensibly unable to acknowledge that the hindsight shows many people of good faith and reasonable mien predicting what has come to pass in Iraq. Let’s not be patient: after all, the people counseling patience now showed a remarkable lack of it before the war.

One of my great pleasures in life, I am ashamed to say, is saying “I told you so” when I give prudential advice and it is ignored. In the greatest “I told you so” of my life, I gain no pleasure at all in saying it. It makes me dizzy with sickness to say it, incandescent with rage to say it. It sticks in my throat like vomit. It makes me want to punch some abstract somebody in the mouth. It makes me want to scrawl profane insults in this space and abandon all hope of reasonable conversation.

That’s because the people who did what they did, said what they said, on Iraq, the people who ignored or belitted counsel to the contrary, didn’t just screw themselves. They screwed me and my family and my people and my nation and the world. They screwed a very big pooch and they mostly don’t even have the courage to admit it. They pissed away assets and destroyed tools of diplomacy and persuasion that will take a generation to reacquire at precisely the moment that we need them most.

- - - - - - - - -

Well said, say I.

Date:	2004-05-06 23:34
Subject:	Call the White House
Security:	Public
Mood:	infuriated

So last week, I wrote a letter to the White House. I was even polite. I wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------
Dear President Bush,

I think this (from an AP article in the Globe) is shocking and shameful:

* * *

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was asked about the toll at a
hearing of a House Appropriations subcommittee. "It's approximately 500, of
which . . . approximately 350 are combat deaths," he responded.

"He misspoke," spokesman Charley Cooper said later. "That's all."

Since the invasion of Iraq last year, 722 US troops have died there, 521 of
them in combat.

* * *

He didn't mis-speak. He simply didn't know. The number two civilian in the
Pentagon, a major proponent and architect of the invasion of Iraq, the man
who thinks he knows more about military operations than General Shinseki,
had only the vaguest idea of how many of our young soldiers he has
sacrificed to his Iraq schemes.

There is no excuse for this: he has access to the most up-to-date
information from the military. If there were one piece of information he
should ask for every day, it would be the number of our dead.

And there is no justification that a man entrusted with the lives of our
combat soldiers should be so callous in spending them.

Mr. President, if you truly respect and honor our fallen soldiers, you will
fire Wolfowitz immediately.

The blood of our forgotten dead cries out that Wolfowitz must go.

Sincerely,

Dogbite
------------------------------------------------------

I get the following reply:
------------------------------------------------------
Dear Dogbite:
Thank you for your message. We appreciate your views and welcome your suggestions.

President Bush is dedicated to pursuing policies and programs that make America safer and more prosperous for all citizens. We hope you will visit the White House website at www.whitehouse.gov for more information on these issues. Thank you for writing. Best wishes.

Sincerely,

Heidi Marquez
Special Assistant to the President
and Director of Presidential Correspondence
-------------------------------------------------------

Which I guess means that Shrub has no respect for the sacrificed lives of our military.

Now we've all learned some approximate spelling of Abu Ghuraib and seen some of the pictures. We've also heard the paltry excuses and minimizations by such mental midgets as Limbaugh and Rumsfeld who now, it appears, is gonna take some heat.

So I thought I'd call the not-so-White House to weigh in on Rummy's departure, only to learn that "your comment in important to the President, which is why he asks that you call back from 9am to 5pm Monday through Friday." Which provides no relief.


These patridiots who are ruining our country are SOOO infuriating. It's not only that they have bad ideas which are completely detached from the realities of this world; it's not only that they pursue those ideas despite the world's continually proving them wrong; it's not only that they justify those ideas with bald-faced lies; they're also just plain incompetent. They're trying to do the wrong things for the wrong reasons using the wrong tools and they haven't a clue how to go about it. If they were building a MacDonald's restaurant in rural Pennsylvania it might be amusing -- but instead they're running our country into the ground.

IDIOTS!!! STUPID STUPID REPUBLICAN IDIOTS!!!

It's bad for my blood pressure.

Arf! Well, this looks like a likely spot. Good place for a hydrant. Some trees would be nice too. And something to chase. And a nice breeze. Smells good.