.comment-link {margin-left:.6em;} <$BlogRSDURL$>

Monday, November 21, 2005

Rumbledsfeld

Out of bed at 6, as is my weekend wont, and into mis-matching tracksuit and flashy Hong Kong "Mike"s for some pavement pounding as the best way to swill that chill foggy air around the lung crannies and alert ageing knee joints what'll they'll be looking at if they persist with their decrepit crackling.

I'm giving bacon 'n' eggs a rest in favor of petit déj' of juice, yoghurt, Greek honeyed toast and all assorted pills and potions as prescribed from Greece by my fit and seemingly immortal gardening/painting/social ising mama. All washed down by a foul and label-less tea-tasting concoction from a Hong Kong guru "aunt" who demands monthly photos in the buff on which to have her fortune teller fine-tune his ongoing dire predictions.

I forego today's Times in favor of Chapter 21's tutorial on Conditional Sum Wizards in Que's 1060-page pocket book on cracking the surface of Excel.

I have this theory that 'Life' can be organized according to Excel, if only I could work out *which* bits relate to which lifestyles.

PivotalTables clearly cover child-rearing as do edited macros make for a successfully object-oriented sex life but I sense a few more buried easter eggs before I reach Nirvana.

The importance of feeling and looking good of a Sunday morning is vital if I'm to enjoy George Stephanopoulos' masterly chairing of 'This Week' and the reining in of the splendidly dour George Will and the rest of the high-powered round table.

With the Gnome against the ropes and his régime daily more discredited, this morning's show was as riveting as it was depressing.

There'll be some frantic wheel-spin in the Bush camp to correctify perceptions of Don Rumsfeld's blurting out that he wasn't actually consulted over the 'war'.

If you ask me, DR must be high on the list for the next fall guy to take the rap.

It's obvious he's lost the budget to pay for full advice from his minders because he's forgotten every advice on TV body language.

  • On the few occasions when George lobbed him an easy one he could answer, his hands stayed flat on the table and those sinister rimless lunettes stayed in steady gaze.
  • To a more curving ball, his hands criss-cross a few inches above the table.
  • Cornered, he goes into positive hand-flap, gesturing at head level, his fluttering fingers obscuring his lying mouth, his seated stance twisting and squirming.
  • My saintèd father never actually needed spectacle when he chaired Hong Kong's Executive Council, but he used their doffing to devastating effect, removing them with commanding slowness and fixing with his ice blue eyes whoevered delivered an ill-informed impudence with a slow and silent look. So do guests on 'This Week' use their logo'd mugs of coffee (tho' some must wish it offered stronger brew), the confident ones rarely touching their mugs except to raise it in a sipless gesture when they've made a scoring point. Rumsfeld - a non sipper if ever I spotted one - was reduced to several lubrications to disguise post-fib cracks of his less successful dissembling.

    • A joyous sight guaranteed to further discomfort the waffling pigmy.

    It's no use hiding the fact that my eyes mist at the roll call of death of those lives ended at 19 or 20 and I admire George's summarising grim expression when the catalog of losses is done.


    // posted by Corfucius @ 1:52 am
    Comments: Post a Comment


    This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

    Links
    ARCHIVES