waider

I've been poking and prodding around various JFK-related stuff randomly for the last few days, largely out of curiousity and largely because, well, it's addictive to go through the Zapruder movie frame by frame and think that you're going to see something that noone else has noticed, and so forth.

Anyway, I propose to you the following new theory: Kennedy had, in fact, arranged for Ruby to do a hit on Oswald for being a commie pinko. Alas, the law of threefold return kicked in early. Poor John.

It just occurred to me (well, duh, I'm slow) that using Google to "check someone out" when you're interested in them, as I understand is the habit of some people, is merely the tip of a very large iceberg now that you can also download and listen to their favourite tune, clips - or perhaps all of - their favourite movies and TV programs, listen to streams from their favourite radio stations, read the texts of a scary amount of their favourite books - particularly if they like classics - or at least sample them on Amazon... damn this net is a scary and powerful thing.

I met Mo Hume on Roatan Island, Honduras, in 1997. My girlfriend of the time, Audrey, had a friend doing aid work in El Salvador, and we took a month off work to visit Audrey's friend and pretty much to hang out in various parts of Central America. Having arrived in El Salvador, Catherine (the friend) dragged us off to Roatan Island for a two-week trip which included Christmas Day. We were to meet a bunch of friends of hers up there, which we did, and one of the friends-of-friends (I'm not sure of the connection, to be honest) was Maureen Hume, or Mo as she liked to be called. Mo's Dad, John, has been a big figure in Northern Ireland politics pretty much forever, and was one of the principal architects of the Good Friday Agreement for which he won a share in the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998. Which leads to my abiding memory of Mo: drinking beer, probably at the reggae bar down on the beach, lying in hammocks or sitting against the palm trees, asking each other what our parents did for a living. And noone asked Mo what her Dad did. Her mom, sure (no, I can't recall), but not her Dad. Noone even made a joke about it, like "we're not going to ask you that!" or whatever. It was funny, maybe a little sad, too.

I've not seen her since. I wonder what she's doing?

While I don't necessarily agree with AjD's hypothesis, I'll suggest one of my own: for any given phrase you come up with, someone can suggest an appropriate URL. And often will, too.

1. Choosing Dick Cheney as VP is the best possible life insurance policy Dubya could take out. Bar none.

2. Damn. I had a good joke about greaves, but it turns out I was confusing them with vambraces.

On livejournal, it's only a few clicks from "this guy's cool" to "this guy would not understand satire if it accosted him in the street and burned itself into his retinas".

it's amazing how much easier a job becomes when you let someone else plan it.

You know, it's probably a requirement of governments to declare that they will punish the people responsible for whatever, but it's a bit pointless and futile from some perspectives. I mean, (a) you're relying on catching them in the first place, and (b) sure, we all thought you were going to just pat 'em on the back and let 'em go until you told us otherwise.

Actions may well speak louder than words, but it appears that words are required anyway. I guess the newspapers'd get upset otherwise.