August 27, 2008
Speaking of things I'm very excited to see:
Posted by Faustus, MD at 09:25 PM | Comments (2)
August 26, 2008
the greedy the people
(as if as can yes)
they steal and they buy
and they die for because
though the bell in the steeple
says Why
the chary the wary
(as all as can each)
they don't and they do
and they turn to a which
though the moon in her glory
says Who
the busy the millions
(as you're as can i'm)
they flock and they flee
through a thunder of seem
though the stars in their silence
say Be
the cunning the craven
(as think as can feel)
they when and they how
and they live for until
though the sun in his heaven
says Now
the timid the tender
(as doubt as can trust)
they work and they pray
and they bow to a must
though the earth in her splendor
says May
e.e. cummings
Posted by Faustus, MD at 10:42 PM | Comments (5)
August 25, 2008
I have been waiting for years for the release of this movie. I honestly don't understand why it's taken so long. I mean, come on: Cthulhu and Tori Spelling?
(Take a look at this post to refresh your memory of Cthulhu and/or the story of how It he and I met.)
I am more excited than I have been since . . . I don't know. I may actually be more excited than I have ever been before in my life.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 11:39 PM | Comments (13)
August 24, 2008
Yesterday afternoon I was walking briskly towards Astor Place and I passed three college-age kids and heard the following excerpt of their conversation:
BOY: . . . and this girl said your asshole as to be open before they fuck you or there'll be pain, so I put a banana in my butt.
GIRL 1: Oh, a banana's a good idea.
GIRL 2: But you can use anything. A cucumber, a shampoo bottle.
GIRL 1: Or a back massager. I used a back massager once.
BOY: Why'd you use a back massager?
GIRL 1: I was bored.
GIRL 2: You could use a back massager for S&M, too.
BOY: Would you be one of those S&M people?
GIRL 2: Hell, yeah. You get paid a lot, like seven or eight hundred dollars
GIRL 1: Would you whip a dwarf?
BOY: For eight hundred dollars I'd whip anybody.
At this point our paths diverged—theirs down the street, mine into the subway.
But I went down the station stairs grinning at the joy of youth.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 07:07 PM | Comments (7)
August 22, 2008
As the uptown 3 train was pulling out of the 14th Street station this evening I witnessed the following exchange.
Foreign Couple Looking (Intelligently) at a Map: Jabber jabber jabber jabber jabber.
Old Guy Who Looks Like Santa Down on His Luck: Where are you trying to go?
Foreign Couple: We are wanting to go to Times Square.
Old Guy: Oh, you just go to 34th Street and get off, it's right there.
Foreign Couple: Thank you so very.
Old Guy: Here we are, 34th Street—it's my stop too. Here's where you get out.
(The couple stands up to follow him as he leaves the train.)
Random Nearby Lady: This is not your stop. Times Square is at the 42nd Street stop, which is next.
Foreign Couple (sitting back down): Thank you so very.
(The couple sits back down until 42nd Street, at which point they leave the subway, as do I.)
I mean, okay, it's kind of weird to live in New York and not know that Times Square is at 42nd Street. I mean, there's a musical about it. But if you live in New York and don't know that Times Square is at 42nd Street, don't you think there are tasks to which you're better suited than giving people directions?
Posted by Faustus, MD at 11:16 PM | Comments (6)
August 21, 2008
Since I am 1) a writer and 2) very disorganized, I have more than a passing familiarity with the phrase "insufficient funds."
I usually encounter it, however, in the context of buying clothing, for example, or too many books.
Before this evening I had never encountered it in the grocery store with a basket containing half a pound of chicken, four peaches, an onion, and a bottle of paprika.
This has not been my day.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 07:48 PM | Comments (17)
August 19, 2008
Okay, I need help.
(Ha, ha.)
Would you please go here to take a two-question survey?
It may help me resolve a problem over which I've been gnashing my teeth and tearing my hair out for three weeks now. The nature of the problem itself must remain concealed for the moment, but the day will come when all will be revealed.
Thank you.
Update: Some people have been kind enough to leave the answer to question #1 in the comments section on this post. I appreciate your generosity, but I'd like to ask readers not to do so from here on out. I myself know the answer; my aim is to find out whether readers recognize the phrase—and so putting the answer in the comments actually defeats my purpose.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 06:45 PM | Comments (8)
August 13, 2008
BEIJING — AUGUST 10: President of the United States George W. Bush holds up the American Flag the wrong way before wife Laura Bush instructs him to turn it around at the swimming arena at the National Aquatics Center during day 2 of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on August 10, 2008 in Beijing, China.
Are we to be spared nothing?
Posted by Faustus, MD at 09:07 PM | Comments (14)
August 11, 2008
Today I saw Mamma Mia. I wept rivers during "The Winner Takes It All."
Then I went to a party where I sat next to Oksana Baiul, who was hysterically funny.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 10:25 PM | Comments (10)
August 08, 2008
Remember Dmitri the Lover?
Well, lucky for us all, he's giving lessons.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 09:43 PM | Comments (9)
August 07, 2008
When I was in college, if I was in love with somebody I knew slightly but I couldn't come up with an excuse to, you know, actually speak to him, I would tell him he'd appeared in my dreams the night before (in a completely non-sexual way).
"I dreamed that there were a bunch of people floating around as circles," I said to one guy once, "and I was a triangle, and then I saw another triangle floating around, and it turned out to be you."
We ended up making out once, several months later, so obviously I was onto something.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 07:28 AM | Comments (7)
August 06, 2008
It has just come to my attention that there are people who have not read True Porn Clerk Stories.
If you are one of these people, please, please do your part to rectify the situation.
You won't regret it.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 11:07 PM | Comments (2)
August 05, 2008
Of course, the job he was beginning was in the department where this happened less than a month before his first day, so it's possible he should be granted some leeway.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 10:23 PM | Comments (2)
August 04, 2008
A few weeks ago today, E.S., having finished his psychiatric residency in Hell at Beth Israel hospital, began his new job as an attending psychiatrist at a city hospital. To support him, I decided to wake up early on his first day and cook him breakfast; when I asked him the day before what he wanted, he suggested that oatmeal and scrambled eggs would be delicious. I asked him when he would be going to work, and he said he thought he'd leave the house at around 8:30.
The next morning, at 7:30, I was in the kitchen boiling water for the oatmeal (I scorn instant oatmeal and use only steel-cut oats, which take me about 45 minutes or so to prepare on the stove) when E.S. came downstairs, attired for work. I was concerned, since he doesn't usually dress in the morning until shortly before leaving the house. Then we had the following conversation:
FAUSTUS: Wait, when are you leaving?
E.S.: In about half an hour.
FAUSTUS: But—but—I won't be able to finish your oatmeal before then!
E.S.: I guess not. Obviously I need to find a boyfriend who loves me more.
FAUSTUS: But—but—
E.S.: No, just kidding. I'm leaving at 8:30.
FAUSTUS: Oh, my God. You were lying to me.
E.S.: I was motivating you.
FAUSTUS: With lies.
E.S.: It's a currency you're familiar with.
The only thing that kept me from dumping the oatmeal on his head was the fact that I really like oatmeal.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 09:24 PM | Comments (20)
July 31, 2008
I can't remember whose blog got me here but this experiment using non-Newtonian fluid might freak me out a little bit less if I understood what it meant for fluid to be non-Newtonian.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 11:10 PM | Comments (8)
July 30, 2008
From my new favorite book:
Dear Dr. Tatiana,
My name's Twiggy, and I'm a stick insect. It's with great embarrassment that I write to you while copulating, but my mate and I have been copulating for ten weeks already. I'm bored out of my skull, yet he shows no signs of flagging. He says it's because he's madly in love with me, but I think he's just plain mad. How can I get him to quit?
Sick of Sex in India
Dear Dr. Tatiana,
I'm a European praying mantis, and I've noticed I enjoy sex more if I bit my lovers' heads off first. It's because when I decapitate them they go into the most thrilling spasms. Somehow they seem less inhibited, more urgent—it's fabulous. Do you find this too?
I Like 'Em Headless in Lisbon
Dear Dr. Tatiana,
My boyfriend is the handsomest golden potto I ever saw. He's got beautiful golden fur on his back, creamy white fur on his belly, he smells delicious, and he has ever such dainty hands and feet. There's just one thing. Please, Dr. Tatiana, why is his penis covered with enormous spines?
Spooked in Gabon
Posted by Faustus, MD at 11:44 PM | Comments (7)
July 29, 2008
Cons of taking a very short trip to Israel for your cousin's bar mitzvah:
1. You will learn that the story you have been told about your grandfather and how during his time in prison he carved the image below in sandstone with his fingernails is a total lie—
—because in fact he used a pin.
2. When, two hours after the bar mitzvah and the light lunch following it, you start feeling hunger pangs that escalate before long into agonizing cramps, and eventually your aunt insists that they take you to an emergency room because you might have appendicitis, and your Israeli uncle calls the Israeli version of 911, and the ambulance shows up and all the way to the hospital attractive Israelis keep telling you in English to breathe more slowly and calmly, and you try but that just makes it hurt worse, and you get to the emergency room and they spend twelve hours injecting fluids and taking X-rays and CT scans and putting a nasogastric tube into your stomach through your nose, which makes it very difficult for you not to vomit, and your father maintains a very funny and informative running monologue on the history of the United States presidency so that you don't have to speak, and finally at two in the morning your stomach isn't hurting anymore but they say they want to keep you in the hospital for a day or two just to be safe, but you're not allowed to take the nasogastric tube out in case they need to do more things with it in the morning, and as soon as you're alone you rip it out anyway because you would rather go through the unpleasantness of having another nasogastric-tube insertion the next day than sleep with the nasogastric tube in, because in fact you would rather peel your skin off to the accompaniment of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing a cover of "It's Raining Men" than sleep with the nasogastric tube in, and when the nurse sees that you've removed the nasogastric tube she looks darkly at you and mutters scary-sounding things in Hebrew—well, when these things happen, the absolutely gorgeous intern who shows up to tell you you have a bowel intussusception and you'll be absolutely fine will say, "If anybody asks you whether you've had a rectal exam, just tell them you have, because it's two-thirty in the morning and I'm just not up for that right now."
Posted by Faustus, MD at 07:31 AM | Comments (14)
July 28, 2008
Pros of taking a very short trip to Israel for your cousin's bar mitzvah:
1. You will be very proud of your cousin.
2. You will be able to make up with a branch of your family that you recently offended.
3. You will learn that the prison in Akko where your grandfather was imprisoned for plotting to overthrow the British Mandate in Palestine has, in the 22 years since you last saw it, been much further excavated and that what you remember as kind of a boring building is now part of an astonishing archaeological record of a city from the middle of the 12th century, when the Crusaders took it from the Muslims as second prize when they realized they weren't man enough to take Jerusalem, through the late 13th century, when the Mameluks took it from the Crusaders, filled it with rubble, and built another city on top of it that lasted until it was destroyed by the Ottomans in the early 16th century, through the 1950s, at which point people started to realized what they were living on top of, and seeing your family in the context of a millennium of oppression and empire will blow your fucking mind.
Actually, I think I'll leave the cons for tomorrow.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 08:02 AM | Comments (5)
July 21, 2008
Here is the kitchen knife stand I received two years ago as a housewarming gift from him and him.
It's called The Ex.
I feel that no further comment is necessary.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 09:42 PM | Comments (14)
July 18, 2008
This is a page from a comic book Oklahoma County Commissioner Brent Rinehart has drawn and distributed as part of his reelection campaign.
There are fifteen more pages just like it. I'm kind of in awe a little bit.
You can read all about it here and, far more importantly, you can download the whole thing here.
Thanks to these guys for the link.
Update: Download link is fixed now.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 04:01 AM | Comments (12)
July 16, 2008
A few weeks ago I got the following e-mail.
Dear Faustus,
I have been asked to contact you by [Very, Very Famous Person]. He has just read your new book "Swish" and loved it. [Very, Very Famous Person] would very much like to chat with you, would it be possible to forward me a telephone number on which he can contact you?
Many thanks.
Sincerely,
N.S.
Personal Hairdresser to [Very, Very Famous Person]
Personal Hairdresser? I thought. If [Very, Very Famous Person] wanted to get in touch with me, why on earth would he do it through his Personal Hairdresser? Obviously this is from either a practical joker or lunatic who wants my phone number the better to stalk me with. No way am I sending my phone number.
Then I thought about it some more, and I realized that because of my narcissism and need for attention I have already made myself pretty stalkable, so I figured, what the hell, and e-mailed [Very, Very Famous Person]'s Personal Hairdresser my cell phone number. Late that night, when unable to sleep, I checked my e-mail to find another message from [Very, Very Famous Person]'s Personal Hairdresser saying that [Very, Very Famous Person] would be calling me the next day. I didn't know quite how to feel about this.
The next morning it turned out that I had to spend some time doing some unspeakable things in my basement, where I don't get cell reception. When I came back upstairs my phone beeped and I saw that I had received a voice-mail. Oh, GREAT, I thought, casting about for something sharp with which to disembowel myself. [Very, Very Famous Person] called and I missed my chance to talk to him because I was doing unspeakable things in my basement and now I have ruined my life. I checked my voice mail and heard the following message.
"Hi, Faustus, it's [Very, Very Famous Person] calling. I'm back in [Very, Very Famous Person's Country of Residence] now and . . . I hope you're not back at cheerleading practice, my darling. But if you are, I hope you're being flung in the air as I speak. Listen, I'll keep trying you. I'm on the move and I'll keep trying you all day. All right? Lots of love."
Oh, thank God, I thought, letting the bread knife fall to the floor. There's a chance I haven't ruined my life. I just won't leave the part of the house where I get good cell reception until he calls again, if in fact he does call again.
And sure enough, an hour or two later he called again.
While I was on the land line doing a live radio interview.
I was in the middle of answering a question about knitting or sex or something like that when my cell phone rang; I knew immediately that it was [Very, Very Famous Person] because the number that showed up in caller ID had too many digits to be in the United States phone system. I went instantly dumb—I think I the last word I'd said was "syphilis" (which makes me think I must been answering a question about knitting)—and then started making choking noises. I had absolutely no fucking idea what to do. I couldn't very well ask the radio interviewer to hang on for a few minutes while I talked to [Very, Very Famous Person]. But if I didn't pick up the phone the second time he called then obvious [Very, Very Famous Person] wasn't going to call back. After several moments during which every part of my body was paralyzed (except for the vocal apparatus, which was still making choking noises), I jabbed my thumb wildly at the "OK" key. I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do; perhaps I could make the radio interview a three-way.
But I'd jabbed my thumb too late. [Very, Very Famous Person] had already been sent to voice mail. This time he didn't leave a message. I couldn't kill myself because then I wouldn't have been able to finish the interview, which would have been rude; luckily, the misadventure provided me enough fodder to give a very entertaining radio interview during which I made lots of funny jokes about why [Very, Very Famous Person] might be calling me and successfully concealed my desire to be eaten immediately by a South American giant anaconda.
But when the interview was over there were no anacondas around so I went, despairing, to the grocery store, bought an Entenmann's chocolate fudge cake, came back home, started eating, and didn't stop till I had finished the whole thing. Then the phone rang again.
Clearly, I thought, in a former life I saved the lives of several babies.
I still haven't quite gotten over picking up my phone, saying hello, and hearing, "Hi, it's [First Name of Very, Very Famous Person]."
"You're a difficult man to get ahold of," [Very, Very Famous Person] said. "What have you been doing?"
"URGH!" I said.
Our conversation lasted for five minutes and eighteen seconds. I am the world's most moronic moron for not recording it, because he said a number of very nice things about my book. He also said that he wanted to get together next time he was in New York and that I should keep in touch with his personal hairdresser ([Very, Very Famous Person] doesn't have a computer) and figure something out.
AND the personal hairdresser apparently looks like Daniel Craig.
That must have been a fuckload of babies.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 04:30 PM | Comments (20)
July 04, 2008
At long last, the (overdue) results of the First Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever Gay-Off.
In first place, with 206 votes (41.6% of the total) is Dan:
Most boys go to 4-H summer camp to learn about farming. I went to become Bette Midler's spiritual sister. While Bette sang "Matchmaker" on Broadway, I stood in the barn (Judy, anyone?), and at age 7 became one of Tevye's daughters. In shtetl drag. And what is shtetl drag? Beach towel cum peasant skirt and a schmata for a headscarf. And pinched cheeks. Whores use rouge, Tevye's daughters pinch their cheeks. And sing "Matchmaker" (like Bette!). And get married to a boy from another cabin. And become the most precious junior Broadway queen. Sui generis, sui FABULOUS.
In second place, with 148 votes (29.9% of the total), is Aidan Gilbert:
In third grade, Sister Rosemary assigned a paper describing who we most admired. I wrote about how I wanted to be just like Helen Lawson when I grew up. I recall expressing my longing for a silver lame pantsuit and a red wig. My mother was called in to meet with the principal, who used my paper as evidence of my unnatural tendencies. My mother read it and said, "He's got an eye for clothes. Wouldn't that silver pantsuit look great on me? I wonder if he could learn to sew." I still want to be Helen Lawson. And I look fabulous in lame.
And in third place, with 87 votes (17.6% of the total), is J.P. Johnson:
When I was a kid, at the beginning of my family's driveway was a fir tree, in which I spent a lot of time, giving the branches hairstyles and chattering away with my ladies. I'd give each lady her own specific style, personality and name (Miss Bertha was a hawk with a "whirlwind"); all the while, I would talk both sides of the conversation: on politics, fairies, books, boys, the weather. I'd expound on the snatches of my Mother's gossip, out loud, my feet dangling a good 10 feet off the ground.
In a surprise honorable mention, with 62 votes (what would be 11.2% of the total) despite not being a finalist and therefore not being an option for voters to select, is Kyle Golemba.
The prizes for the contestants are as follows:
Dan has won an inscribed copy of Swish, an inscribed copy of my first book, Gay Haiku, a Swish T-shirt, a gay haiku written especially for him, and, depending on geographic location (which I still don't actually know), a tin of brownies homemade with loving care by me.
Aidan has won an inscribed copy of Gay Haiku, a Swish T-shirt, a gay haiku written especially for him, and a tin of brownies homemade with loving care by me.
J.P. has won a Swish T-shirt, a gay haiku written especially for him, and a tin of homemade brownies made with loving care by me.
Kyle has won a Swish T-shirt, a gay haiku written especially for him, and a tin of brownies homemade with loving care by me.
And last, Chuck Cleary, as one lucky voter, has won a tin of brownies homemade with loving care by me.
Congratulations to one and all. And if you entered and are irate not to have won a T-shirt and brownies, then if you can contain your fury in such a way as not to stick a voodoo doll of me full of pins until I die or am utterly incapacitated, then I feel certain you'll have a good chance of winning next year's Gay-Off.
Chuck, please send me your mailing address; Dan, Aidan, J.P., and Kyle, send me your mailing addresses and shirt sizes. I will undoubtedly take far longer to get you your books, shirts, haiku, and brownies than is seemly, but perhaps you can convince yourself that this is because I will have put even more loving care into them than I'd planned.
Happy Independence Day, everybody.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 11:39 AM | Comments (3)
July 01, 2008
Oh. My. God.
I was going to post the winners of the gay-off, but I'm too mesmerized by what I'm about to tell you to do so. Tomorrow, I promise.
Because remember Darren "You Ate the Food, You Drank the Wine" Sherman?
He clearly has a brother.
Update:
There's more!
Here and here, but most especially here, here, here, here, and here.
The last five are most certainly not safe for work, and in fact I found them pretty disturbing.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 07:31 PM | Comments (9)
June 30, 2008
Today is the last day you can vote in the gay-off. For those of you who have "voted" in the last two presidential "elections," I must explain that this is a slightly different process, in that your vote will actually affect the outcome of the contest.
(I know I said the deadline was yesterday, but we're working on gay time here.)
Posted by Faustus, MD at 08:55 AM | Comments (2)
June 28, 2008
Speaking of ancient Greek, this semester I sat in on a class in Greek tragedy. The class comprised me and one actually registered student. We were originally supposed to to do philosophy rather than tragedy, but the one actually registered student said she didn't like philosophy, so we read Sophocles' Antigone.
Antigone is really fucking hard.
Really. The syntax is tortuous and the vocabulary is beyond obscure. But we stumbled through, though I suspect the one actually registered student cheated far less often than I by looking at the translation.
But none of this has anything to do with this post. Recall, please, that earlier in the year we got our dog A. a friend, E. Well, E., like many very young puppies, discovered that chewing up paper was the most fun thing ever in the entire world. Given the number of trees' worth of paper I tend to leave on the floor, you can imagine how much fun she was having. Finally I wised up and put all the paper on shelves, thereby ensuring that it would never be found again, but not before E. had stumbled upon my copy of Antigone. I had two copies, actually; this one was different from the official class edition, and I used it mostly because it had a lot of commentary that didn't overlap with the official class edition's commentary.
But the next day, I brought both editions into class, fair bursting with excitement, because for the first time in my life I got to say that the dog had eaten my homework.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 10:04 PM | Comments (15)
June 27, 2008
I meant to post yesterday [I actually started writing this a few weeks ago, on a day after an un-posted day; an explanation will come in time]. I spent most of the day, however, in a haze of bliss, because I began it by solving one of the most vexing, intractable linguistic problems facing current speakers of English.
I figured out what to do with "hoi polloi."
A brief rundown to remind us of the problem:
The phrase "hoi polloi," meaning essentially "the masses," came into 19th-century English from ancient Greek, in which it means literally "the many (people)," usually though not always in a derogatory sense. (This in itself is interesting, given that the borrowing was almost certainly inspired by Pericles' Funeral Oration, in which he used the words in high praise for the citizens of Athens in days marked not just by the Pelopponesian War but also by an outbreak of the plague, which eventually laid Pericles low too.) The difficulty in English comes because "hoi" is the Greek word for "the" in "the many." People who wish to use the phrase are faced with two equally unsatisfactory options: say "the hoi polloi" (as in "we went outside to join the hoi polloi") and be thought by some people to be saying "the the many," or say "hoi polloi" (as in "we went outside to join hoi polloi") and be thought by some people to be an insufferable snob. I myself end up doing what I always do with words and phrases the pronunciation of which is (correctly or incorrectly) disputed ("forte" as a noun, for example), which is simply to use different words ("strong point").
There are reasonable arguments on either side. Members of the anti-the contingent point out that nobody says, "I was looking for the le mot juste" (French for "the right word). Members of the pro-the contingent counter that nobody says, "Put the vase in alcove" (in the Arabic word for "the vault," "al" is "the").
[A note to the reader: I wrote the above two weeks ago. I stopped where I stopped, mid-discussion, because I knew I had a great deal more to write, and my energy was flagging; I'd just pick it up again, I figured, a few days later. Now that it is a few days later, however, I have absolutely no idea what more I could possibly have had to discuss, so I'll just cut to the chase.]
Obviously, we just have to treat "hoi polloi" as one word in English: hoipolloi. Then it becomes much closer, structurally, to things like "alchemy" than to things like "le mot juste," and "the" feels much less incorrect.
So now that that's decided, I just need to figure out how to convince the hoipolloi to go along with it.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 02:44 AM | Comments (24)
June 26, 2008
In the category of "sentences you could never have convinced me in a million years I would write":
I loved the new Adam Sandler movie.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 11:46 AM | Comments (9)
June 21, 2008
Sigh.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 09:19 AM | Comments (24)
June 20, 2008
I have posted the finalists for the Gay-Off. If you vote, you may very well win a tin of the best brownies I have ever made.
Voting continues through 11:59 p.m. next Sunday, June 29 (the day of the gay pride parade in New York).
May the gayest person ever win.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 02:20 AM | Comments (7)
June 12, 2008
In case anybody is in a mood to be amused. (Solve for some value of "amused.")
Posted by Faustus, MD at 01:03 AM | Comments (21)
June 11, 2008
No fucking WAY:
President Bush regrets his legacy as man who wanted war
President Bush has admitted to The Times that his gun-slinging rhetoric made the world believe that he was a "guy really anxious for war" in Iraq. He said that his aim now was to leave his successor a legacy of international diplomacy for tackling Iran.
In an exclusive interview, he expressed regret at the bitter divisions over the war and said that he was troubled about how his country had been misunderstood. "I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric."
Phrases such as "bring them on" or "dead or alive", he said, "indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace". He said that he found it very painful "to put youngsters in harm's way". He added: "I try to meet with as many of the families as I can. And I have an obligation to comfort and console as best as I possibly can. I also have an obligation to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain."
(Thanks to him for the link.)
Posted by Faustus, MD at 02:38 AM | Comments (6)
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