"I also know that Iran’s women stand in the vanguard. For days now, I’ve seen them urging less courageous men on."

Writes Roger Cohen in a vivid NYT op-ed:

I’ve seen them get beaten and return to the fray. “Why are you sitting there?” one shouted at a couple of men perched on the sidewalk on Saturday. “Get up! Get up!”

Another green-eyed woman, Mahin, aged 52, staggered into an alley clutching her face and in tears. Then, against the urging of those around her, she limped back into the crowd moving west toward Freedom Square. Cries of “Death to the dictator!” and “We want liberty!” accompanied her....

“Can’t the United Nations help us?” one woman asked me. I said I doubted that very much. “So,” she said, “we are on our own.”

"Bridal gown for sale."

A sad little homemade sign, seen today...



.... between the Bounce and the bathroom:

Should you write your own wedding vows?

"In the traditional vows, the institution — marriage — makes and forms the couple; the vows set out what marriage is and what it requires. In today's write-your-own or instant-download vows, the couple picks and chooses the promises they make to each other — they make their own definition. The more casual attitudes toward the vows are probably a symptom of our more casual attitude toward marriage."

I don't know about all that. What I don't like about couples writing their own vows is that the writing is probably going to be bad. Attention is drawn away from the awesome reality of vow-taking to the particular words these 2 characters thought were so profound. You have to think about how the vows compare to the traditional vows and, before you know it, you've gone all judgmental and then you feel like you're doubting the quality of the couple's relationship and that seems pretty shabby of you.

"The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights."

President Obama.

ADDED: I'm wondering what Bush would have said... and if perhaps Obama feels he needs to avoid saying what Bush would have said.

IN THE COMMENTS: Meade won't let me front-page him since we're going to get married and it's a Saturday night and we've each had a beer, so I need to tell you to go in there and read Part 1 and Part 2.

It's more dangerous to be skinny than fat.

We're talking death here, not your social life.

"'This movie is making me angry, very sad, hopeless, and dirty-feeling.'..."

"... This movie is making me angry, very sad, hopeless, and dirty-feeling.” As the onscreen obese gay man poked at the bloody intestines and told the fifth anal sex joke, I looked at my daughter, and we got up and walked out. I started crying in the parking lot as we walked to our car. I am not from this world. I am an alien."

Victoria Jackson emotes over a Judd Apatow movie. There's no real way to controvert crying in the parking lot.

I've twice had the experience of bursting into tears while trying to talk after seeing a movie, but both times it was after sitting through all of a movie that I very much admired. In both cases, I made myself cry by voicing a particular thought about the movie, and each time — the incidents were 20 years apart — it was that a man had truly loved a child. Odd that I happen to think of that today, on Father's Day Eve.

"There's a huge bug in my house. I want Obama to kill it for me."

So tweeted I, right after making the video you can view in the previous post, but that isn't the post that inspired Chip Ahoy to animate this:



The inspiration comes from "Found guilty of downloading 24 songs, a woman is fined $1,900,000. Chip says:

This RIAA case and the outrageous irrational verdict reminds me of Obama killing that fly. How so? — you ask. This is how.

AKA overkill.

Unlike President Obama, I cannot kill an insect.

Now, admittedly, it's not a fly. I won't say I wouldn't harm a fly. In fact, what the hell is that thing? What feelers! I've never seen such feelers!



IN THE COMMENTS: Peter Hoh said:

With those feelers, it must be some sort of empathy beetle.

At the Front Porch Café....

... I'm just leaving, but you can hang out here.

IN THE COMMENTS: bearbee said:

You're leaving?!!......and I'm tied up here?!!!

A note to dog-lovers: The picture was taken last Sunday afternoon, when I sat with her for hours. And we would never tie a dog up and leave it alone.

"Mr. Obama directly addressed one of the most delicate topics confronting black leaders..."

"... how much responsibility absent fathers bear for some of the intractable problems afflicting black American. He noted that more than half of all black children lie in single-parent households."

Well, the kids should take some responsibility, if half of them are lying.

Give this law student a million dollars.

A contracts case for your delectation:

During the course of the ["Dateline"] interview, [James] Mason said it was impossible for Serrano to have committed the murders, since it would have required his client to fly from Orlando to Atlanta, exit one of the busiest airports in the world, and arrive at a hotel five miles away in less than a half hour.

"I challenge anybody to show me, I'll pay them a million dollars if they can do it," said Mason on the show....

Dustin Kolodziej, an enterprising law student at South Texas College of Law, decided to take up Mason's challenge. In December, 2007, Kolodziej retraced Serrano's alleged route and made a video recording of the travel. He made the Orlando-to-Atlanta-hotel trip in under 28 minutes.

... Was Mason's "Dateline" exclamation a rhetorical flurry or an actual offer that created an implied oral contract when Kolodziej accepted?

Found guilty of downloading 24 songs, a woman is fined $1,900,000.

In federal court in Minnesota. That's $80,000 for each of her selections, works by Linkin Park, Gloria Estafan and so forth.

IN THE COMMENTS: Marcia said:

Now you see why we need empathetic judges.

To rein in the heartless corporate thugs that we call jurors.

"1 in 4 South African men... said they had raped someone, and nearly half of them admitted more than one attack."

"The study, by the country's Medical Research Council... said practices such as gang rape were common because they were considered a form of male bonding.... The study found that one in 10 men said they had been raped by other men. Some 3% of the men interviewed said they had coerced a man or a boy into sex."

"The Washington Post fires its best columnist."

The outcry.

Appeasing the gay folks.

They're not happy with the current level of hopey-change.

Let's show them they count. Let's count them.

The Japanese get the whole perfect American thing better than Americans."

"They understand that it’s an identifiable style around the world, this American look. We think we appreciate it, but we really don’t, not like they do."