if you wait till you're ready you'll never make a move


brendan murphy, one true feeling

* Top ten conservative idiots. excerpt:

"1. Dick Cheney

"It was revealed last week that Dick Cheney's former chief-of-staff Scooter Libby has dropped a dime on the vice president. Libby testified under oath that he was authorized to disclose classified information 'by his superiors,' according to a letter written by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

"That loud whirring you hear emanating from the direction of Washington D.C. is the sound of Cheney's pacemaker going into overdrive: if this information is true, then his next undisclosed location could well be a federal prison. Or perhaps Guantanamo Bay - I believe that's where they're supposed to keep enemies of the state these days. Hey, if he's really unlucky, Cheney could end up being "extraordinarily renditioned" to some black hole in Uzbekistan. (Don't worry Dick. After all, it's not really torture, right?)

"This news comes hot on the heels of fresh information revealing that - despite the radical right's assertions to the contrary - Valerie Plame was an undercover agent. According to Newsweek, 'Plame had indeed done 'covert work overseas' on counterproliferation matters in the past five years, and the CIA 'was making specific efforts to conceal' her identity, according to newly released portions of a judge's opinion.'

"Gentlemen, start your waterboards.'

-- related: Cheney shoots lawyer in hunting accident.

* Silver Jews article (in Hebrew) in the Time Out Irael (have to click on magazine and follow the pictures).

* Once In a Lifetime: A documentary tribute to the 1970s New York Cosmos. excerpt:

"'Once in a Lifetime,' now on the film festival circuit, recreates the Cosmos' brief vogue in the late 70's. That's when Howard Cosell said soccer would become 'the biggest big league of all.' Mick Jagger, Barbra Streisand and Henry Kissinger mugged with players and cheered at games. The film relives all this, but also has the honesty to portray the dark side of this glamour. It entertains the possibility that the Cosmos may have actually undermined soccer's growth here.

"In the film's sprightly telling, the life and times of the North American Soccer League, in which the Cosmos played, resembled a cocaine-fueled night at Studio 54, where the Cosmos regularly frolicked. The N.A.S.L. binged on fat television contracts and rapidly expanded to 24 cities. But when ratings failed to materialize and expansion teams fielded incompetent squads, it all went bad. Instead of blaming mismanagement, the TV executives and sportswriters chastised the game itself. It was simply too boring, too unsuited for the American temperament, they reasoned."

-- related: "The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It's the way I see football, the way I see life." -Bill Shankly, Liverpool Manager, 1959-1974

* Take a caffine nap. excerpt:

"The Caffeine Nap is simple. You drink a cup of coffee and immediately take a 15 minute nap. Researchers found coffee helps clear your system of adenosine, a chemical which makes you sleepy. So in testing, the combination of a cup of coffee with an immediate nap chaser provided the most alertness for the longest period of time. The recommendation was to nap only 15 minutes, no more or less and you must sleep immediately after the coffee."