Really, Hitch? Nothing at all?

Christopher Hitchens discusses his diagnosis of of cancer and subsequent experiences in typically fine essay in Vanity Fair:

I can’t see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it’s all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me. Rage would be beside the point for the same reason.”

To those of us who wonder how it feels, he sums up the existential horror of the experience in just a few swift sentences:

I was fairly reconciled to the loss of my hair, which began to come out in the shower in the first two weeks of treatment, and which I saved in a plastic bag so that it could help fill a floating dam in the Gulf of Mexico. But I wasn’t quite prepared for the way that my razorblade would suddenly go slipping pointlessly down my face, meeting no stubble. Or for the way that my newly smooth upper lip would begin to look as if it had undergone electrolysis, causing me to look a bit too much like somebody’s maiden auntie. (The chest hair that was once the toast of two continents hasn’t yet wilted, but so much of it was shaved off for various hospital incisions that it’s a rather patchy affair.) I feel upsettingly de-natured. If Penélope Cruz were one of my nurses, I wouldn’t even notice. In the war against Thanatos, if we must term it a war, the immediate loss of Eros is a huge initial sacrifice.

 

I call this hangover Ron. Ron is a “differently special” Eagle Scout from Provo whose hobbies include losing shit and staring.

– The Modern Drunkard’s Frank Kelly Rich, via his Twitter page.

Sorry Mickey, Jeremy is backing Babs. Along with co-author William Yeatman of the Competitive Enterprise Instiitute, he explains why Senator Barbara Boxer is his choice in the American Spectator today:

Boxer’s bungling of global warming legislation has been impressive. If we had decided to plant a mole in the Democratic Party to scuttle the legislation, we’re honestly not sure we could have done any better. In late 2007, for example, soon-to-retire Senator John Warner, a powerful Republican representing Virginia, lent bipartisan cover to a major cap-and-trade energy rationing scheme he co-authored with Joseph Lieberman. After passing through committee that December, the Warner-Lieberman climate legislation had the big mo, and gave us a big headache.

Then Boxer got hold of it. Over the next six months, she changed it, adding hundreds of pages. By the time she unveiled her version of the bill, the topic had become stale. The legislation fizzled and the defeat was embarrassingly bipartisan. Cap-and-trade is a Democratic Party platform plank, but ten senators from Boxer’s own party sent her a letter explaining that they could not vote for her bill.

Read the rest here and breathe easier knowing that she is in charge.

He has a few kind words for challenger Mickey Kaus over at RealClearPolitics.com though, including the claim that Kaus is not the crypto-conservative he often appears to be. It is probably too little, too late though.

From Agence France Presse:

RIGA (AFP) – Latvia on Thursday banned alcohol sales on September 1, the first day of school known as Knowledge Day, which returning students often spend drinking rather than learning.

“I’m convinced many parents will support a day without alcohol and will provide an example for their children,” Sarmite Kikuste, the member of parliament who proposed the law said ahead of the vote.

Many Latvian children and teenagers end up in hospital after excessive drinking on the first day of school, she said. Parliament passed the ban Thursday and sent the bill to the president for formal final approval.

But opponents — mostly partners in the centre-right coalition and the association of alcohol producers and retailers — slammed it as a populist political manoeuvre ahead of Latvia’s October general election.

According to police records, in 2009 only two cases of under-age drinking were reported: a 15-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl. In a rare case, a 6-year-old first-grader was hospitalized under the influence of alcohol.

The legal drinking age in Latvia is 18.

According to 2007 data collected by the European School Survey, 89 percent of Latvian students consumed alcohol.

Latvia, a country of 2.2 million people, broke free from the Soviet Union in 1991 and joined the European Union and NATO in 2004.

While I go out with a set of ideas, I try not to let that set of ideas interfere with how I see the world. I went to a fair number of Sarah Palin rallies during the campaign, and my friends would say, “Man, the pitchfork-wavers are really out there today.” I thought that, too, but then I started to talk to people, and they weren’t all angry. That’s just lazy. The story that should’ve gotten written, that was really interesting to me, was how at every rally there were families with children with Down syndrome. They weren’t there to support Sarah Palin politically. They were really happy that there was someone in the national spotlight doing what they have to do every day. When you think about what it takes to take a child with Down syndrome to a political rally, I found that really moving.

– Ana Marie Cox, aka Wonkette.

If Scott Brown manages to win the election Tuesday in Massachusetts, I will head to the local bar and buy everybody another round of whatever they’re already drinking.

(NYR#8)

My JeremyLott.net co-blogger may have questionable taste in movies but he has a great piece on how gay marriage sunk in Maine in the Catholic World Report. This was my favorite bit:

A series of TV ads repeatedly made Malone’s argument about how schools would begin to teach gay marriage to students if the law was not repealed. No on 1/Protect Maine Equality quickly ran ads in response, but those ads may have inadvertently reinforced the earlier message.

The ads were so effective that Sullivan was still steaming about them weeks after the election. “The emphasis of their campaign was to try to distract away from the real issues about marriage equality and make the campaign about a bogus issue of marriage equality and what would be taught in Maine schools. This is a tactic they imported directly from the campaign in California,” he said. [more...]

I like it because it highlights something that the anti-gay marriage folks know but the pro camp hasn’t quite figured out. Marriage is about children.

(NYR#5)

The year is coming to a rapid end and Jeremylott.net would like to close out 2009 with this pithy post from textsfromlastnight.com:

(718): we need to drink 2009 down the drain

Jeremy’s Last Call column for the American Spectator’s November print edition was posted yesterday. It’s about his misadventures trying to attend a wedding held on Sept. 12 and stay in touch with friends at a different wedding held on the same day. I’ve already quoted one bit. Here is some more:

I wasn’t the only resident of my Fairfax, Virginia, townhouse to go away to a rehearsal, bachelor party, and wedding that weekend. Two friends and former townhousers had planned on getting married this year and they didn’t consult each other before setting the dates on the same day. In their limited defense, they must have figured, “Who in their right mind would pick the day after September 11 to tie the knot? Just a few years ago, the likely travel headaches alone would have made that unthinkable.

So my roommate headed to Poughkeepsie, New York, and I went to the Butterfly House in Chesterfield, Missouri, to witness the nuptials of sometime AmSpec contributor Robert VerBruggen and his bride, the former Jackie Stewart. Through the modern miracle of text messaging, we kept each other apprised of the goings-on at the other wedding. At 8:23 Saturday night came the coda: “They’re married.” My party was well into the reception by that point, somewhere between toasts and dancing. After the married couple’s first slow dance, to a love song Robert had written and recorded for Jackie, the pace of the music picked up. That was my cue to vamoose: I am a lousy dancer and tuxedos only add to the horror. So I looked out on the duck pond and thought for a minute about how odd this was: two weddings the day after September 11.

Read the whole thing here.

I cannot claim to have completely read “Going Rogue” — I had to skim the last 150 pages (or more than one-third). I only got the thing into my hands late Monday afternoon with a deadline of early evening.

– Ana Marie Cox, in her Washington Post review of Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue. The entire review is just five paragraphs long, three of which are devoted to Palin’s opinions on smoking.