It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold:
"Peace on the earth, goodwill to men
From heavens all gracious King!"
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing.

Still through the cloven skies they come,
With peaceful wings unfurled;
And still their heavenly music floats
O'er all the weary world:
Above its sad and lowly plains
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever o'er its Babel sounds
The blessed angels sing.

O ye beneath life's crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow;
Look now, for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing;
Oh rest beside the weary road
And hear the angels sing.

For lo! the days are hastening on,
By prophets seen of old,
When with the ever-circling years
Shall come the time foretold,
When the new heaven and earth shall own
The Prince of Peace, their King,
And the whole world send back the song
Which now the angels sing.

A couple years ago I took part in a online effort to memorialize all 2,996 men and women who died in the attacks on 9/11. Each participant was assigned a name and was asked to write about them. Here's my essay, not a terribly great piece of writing, but one story of one man of many that we should remember.

Liam Callahan wasn't supposed to be working tuesday morning. Not originally.

There was a back-to-school event at his children's school, and as head of the children's school association, he had to go. His normal 3 to 11 schedule at the PATH Emergency Services Unit with the Port Authority in Jersey City's Journal Square would keep him away from it. Heading up the association wasn't all he did, he volunteered in other activities, he worked lunch duty, he also chaparoned school trips, including one in the World Trade Center in which he apprehended a man who slapped a student when he bumped into the man.

So, to make that meeting, he pulled a double shift.

The double shift meant that Liam hadn't seen his wife, Joan, since Monday morning. He had seen his two youngest kids, Ellen and James at noon on monday when he delivered their lunches. Ellen was happy she had gotten a roast beef sandwich, but didn't give her father a hug.

And then the first plane hit the World Trade Center. And Liam, of course, went. He was a member of the Emergency Services unit, and he was just a tunnel ride from the trade centers. It wasn't the first time he had responded to a terrorist attack at the World Trade Centers. In 1993, had earned a Police Valor Award for carrying disabled people from the tower, among other honors.

Liam Callahan lived his life a hero, and died as one. He is survived by his wife Joan, and his four children, Brian, Bridget, Ellen and James.

May he rest in peace.

Thursday, 31 August 2006, 06:39
C O N F I D E N T I A L

Summary
-------------------

Weddings are elaborate in Dagestan, the largest autonomy in the North Caucasus. On August 22 we attended a wedding in Makhachkala, Dagestan’s capital: Duma member and Dagestan Oil Company chief Gadzhi Makhachev’s son married a classmate. The lavish display and heavy drinking concealed the deadly serious North Caucasus politics of land, ethnicity, clan, and alliance. The guest list spanned the Caucasus power structure -- guest starring Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov -- and underlined just how personal the region’s politics can be.

Dagestani weddings are serious business: a forum for showing respect, fealty and alliance among families; the bride and groom themselves are little more than showpieces. Weddings take place in discrete parts over three days. On the first day the groom’s family and the bride’s family simultaneously hold separate receptions. During the receptions the groom leads a delegation to the bride’s reception and escorts her back to his own reception, at which point she formally becomes a member of the groom’s family, forsaking her old family and clan. The next day, the groom’s parents hold another reception, this time for the bride’s family and friends, who can “inspect” the family they have given their daughter to. On the third day, the bride’s family holds a reception for the groom’s parents and family.

Father of the Groom
-------------------

On August 22, Gadzhi Makhachev married off his 19 year-old son Dalgat to Aida Sharipova. The wedding in Makhachkala, which we attended, was a microcosm of the social and political relations of the North Caucasus, beginning with Gadzhi’s own biography. Gadzhi started off as an Avar clan leader. Enver Kisriyev, the leading scholar of Dagestani society, told us that as Soviet power receded from Dagestan in the late 1980s, the complex society fell back to its pre-Russian structure. The basic structural unit is the monoethnic “jamaat,” in this usage best translated as “canton” or “commune.” The ethnic groups themselves are a Russian construct: faced with hundreds of jamaats, the 19th century Russian conquerors lumped cantons speaking related dialects together and called them “Avar,” “Dargin,” etc. to reduce the number of “nationalities” in Dagestan to 38. Ever since then, jamaats within each ethnic group have been competing with one another to lead the ethnic group. This competition is especially marked among the Avars, the largest nationality in Dagestan.

As Russian power faded, each canton fielded a militia to defend its people both in the mountains and the capital Makhachkala. Gadzhi became the leader from his home canton of Burtunay, in Kazbek Rayon. He later asserted pan-Avar ambitions, founding the Imam Shamil Popular Front -- named after the great Avar leader of mountaineer resistance to the Russians -- to promote the interests of the Avars and of Burtunay’s role within the ethnic group. Among his exploits was a role in the military defense of Dagestan against the 1999 invasion from Chechnya by Shamil Basayev and al-Khattab, and his political defense of Avar villages under pressure in Chechnya, Georgia and Azerbaijan.

Gadzhi has cashed in the social capital he made from nationalism, translating it into financial and political capital -- as head of Dagestan’s state oil company and as the single-mandate representative for Makhachkala in Russia’s State Duma. His dealings in the oil business -- including close cooperation with U.S. firms -- have left him well off enough to afford luxurious houses in Makhachkala, Kaspiysk, Moscow, Paris and San Diego; and a large collection of luxury automobiles, including the Rolls Royce Silver Phantom in which Dalgat fetched Aida from her parents’ reception. (Gadzhi gave us a lift in the Rolls once in Moscow, but the legroom was somewhat constricted by the presence of a Kalashnikov carbine at our feet. Gadzhi has survived numerous assassination attempts, as have most of the still-living leaders of Dagestan. In Dagestan he always travels in an armored BMW with one, sometimes two follow cars full of uniformed armed guards.)

Gadzhi has gone beyond his Avar base, pursuing a multi-ethnic cadre policy to develop a network of loyalists. He has sent Dagestani youths, including his sons, to a military type high school near San Diego (we met one graduate, a Jewish boy from Derbent now studying at San Diego state. He has no plans to enter the Russian military). Gadzhi’s multi-ethnic reach illustrates what the editor of the Dagestani paper “Chernovik” told us: that in the last few years the development of inter-ethnic business clans has eroded traditional jamaat loyalties.

But the Avar symbolism is still strong. Gadzhi’s brother, an artist from St. Petersburg, ordered as a wedding gift a life-sized statue of Imam Shamil. Shamil is the iconic national symbol, despite his stern and inflexible character (portrayed in Tolstoy’s “Hadji-Murat” as the mountaineers’ tyrannical counterpart to the absolutist Tsar). Connection with Shamil makes for nobility among Avars today. Gadzhi often mentions that he is a descendant on his mother’s side of Gair-Bek, one of Shamil’s deputies.

The Day Before
--------------

Gadzhi’s Kaspiysk summer house is an enormous structure on the shore of the Caspian, essentially a huge circular reception room -- much like a large restaurant -- attached to a 40-meter high green airport tower on columns, accessible only by elevator, with a couple of bedrooms, a reception room, and a grotto whose glass floor was the roof of a huge fish tank. The heavily guarded compound also boasts a second house, outbuildings, a tennis court, and two piers out into the Caspian, one rigged with block and tackle for launching jet skis. The house filled up with visitors from all over the Caucasus during the afternoon of August 21. The Chair of Ingushetia’s parliament drove in with two colleagues; visitors from Moscow included politicians, businessmen and an Avar football coach. Many of the visitors grew up with Gadzhi in Khasavyurt, including an Ingush Olympic wrestler named Vakha who seemed to be perpetually tipsy. Another group of Gadzhi’s boyhood friends from Khasavyurt was led by a man who looked like Shamil Basayev on his day off -- flip-flops, t-shirt, baseball cap, beard -- but turned out to be the chief rabbi of Stavropol Kray. He told us he has 12,000 co-religionists in the province, 8,000 of them in its capital, Pyatigorsk. 70 percent are, like him, Persian-speaking Mountain Jews; the rest are a mixture of Europeans, Georgians and Bukharans.

Also present was Chechnya’s Duma member, Khalid (aka Ruslan) Yamadayev, brother of the commander of the notorious Vostok Battalion. He was reserved at the time, but in a follow-up conversation in Moscow on August 29 (please protect) he complained that Chechnya, lacking experts to develop programs for economic recovery, is simply demanding and disposing of cash from the central government. When we pressed him on disappearances, he admitted some took place, but claimed that often parents alleged their children had been abducted when in fact their sons had run off to join the fighters or -- in a case the week before -- they had murdered their daughter in an honor killing. We mentioned the abduction of a widow of Basayev, allegedly to gain access to his money. Khalid said he had not heard of the case, but knew that Basayev had had no interest in wealth; he may have been a religious fanatic, but he was a “normal” person. The fighters who remain are not a serious military force, in Khalid’s view, and many would surrender under the proper terms and immunities. He himself is arranging the immunity of a senior official of the Maskhadov era, whose name he would not reveal.

During lunch, Gadzhi took a congratulatory call from Dagestan’s president, Mukhu Aliyev. Gadzhi told Aliyev how honored he would be if Aliyev could drop in at the wedding reception. There was a degree of tension in the conversation, which was between two figures each implicitly claiming the mantle of leadership of the Avars. In the event, Aliyev snubbed Gadzhi and did not show up for the wedding, though the rest of Dagestan’s political leadership did.

Though Gadzhi’s house was not the venue for the main wedding reception, he ensured that all his guests were constantly plied with food and drink. The cooks seemed to keep whole sheep and whole cows boiling in a cauldron somewhere day and night, dumping disjointed fragments of the carcass on the tables whenever someone entered the room. Gadzhi’s two chefs kept a wide variety of unusual dishes in circulation (in addition to the omnipresent boiled meat and fatty bouillon). The alcohol consumption before, during and after this Muslim wedding was stupendous. Amidst an alcohol shortage, Gadzhi had flown in from the Urals thousands of bottles of Beluga Export vodka (“Best consumed with caviar”). There was also entertainment, beginning even that day, with the big-name performers appearing both at the wedding hall and at Gadzhi’s summer house. Gadzhi’s main act, a Syrian-born singer named Avraam Russo, could not make it because he was shot a few days before the wedding, but there
was a “gypsy” troupe from St. Petersburg, a couple of Azeri pop stars, and from Moscow, Benya the Accordion King with his family of singers. A host of local bands, singing in Avar and Dargin, rounded out the entertainment, which was constant and extremely amplified.

The main activity of the day was eating and drinking -- starting from 4 p.m., about eight hours worth, all told -- punctuated, when all were laden with food and sodden with drink, with a bout of jet skiing in the Caspian. After dinner, though, the first band started an informal performance -- drums, accordion and clarinet playing the lezginka, the universal dance of the Caucasus. To the uninitiated Westerner, the music sounds like an undifferentiated wall of sound. This was a signal for dancing: one by one, each of the dramatically paunchy men (there were no women present) would enter the arena and exhibit his personal lezginka for the limit of his duration, usually 30 seconds to a minute. Each ethnic group’s lezginka was different -- the Dagestani lezginka the most energetic, the Chechen the most aggressive and belligerent, and the Ingush smoother.

Wedding Day 1
-------------

An hour before the wedding reception was set to begin the “Marrakech” reception hall was full of guests -- men taking the air outside and women already filling a number of the tables inside, older ones with headscarves chaperoning dozens of teenaged girls. A Dagestani parliamentarian explained that weddings are a principal venue for teenagers -- and more importantly their parents -- to get a look at one another with a view to future matches. Security was tight -- police presence on the ground plus police snipers positioned on the roof of an overlooking apartment block. Gadzhi even assigned one of his guards as our personal bodyguard inside the reception. The manager told Gadzhi there were seats for over a thousand guests at a time. At the height of the reception, it was standing room only.

At precisely two p.m. the male guests started filing in. They varied from pols and oligarchs of all sorts -- the slick to the Jurassic; wizened brown peasants from Burtunay; and Dagestan’s sports and cultural celebrities. Khalid Yamadayev presided over a political table in the smaller of the two halls (the music was in the other) along with Vakha the drunken wrestler, the Ingush parliamentarians, a member of the Federation Council who is also a nanophysicist and has lectured in Silicon Valley, and Gadzhi’s cousin Ismail Alibekov, a submariner first rank naval captain now serving at the General Staff in Moscow. The Dagestani milieu appears to be one in which the highly educated and the gun-toting can mix easily -- often in the same person.

After a couple of hours Dalgat’s convoy returned with Aida, horns honking. Dalgat and Aida got out of the Rolls and were serenaded into the hall, and into the Makhachev family, by a boys’ chorus lining both sides of the red carpet, dressed in costumes aping medieval Dagestani armor with little shields and swords. The couple’s entry was the signal for the emcee to roll into high gear, and after a few toasts the Piter “gypsies” began their performance. (The next day one of Gadzhi’s houseguests sneered, “Some gypsies! The bandleader was certainly Jewish, and the rest of them were blonde.” There was some truth to this, but at least the two dancing girls appeared to be Roma.)

As the bands played, the marriageable girls came out to dance the lezginka in what looked like a slowly revolving conga line while the boys sat together at tables staring intently. The boys were all in white shirts and black slacks, while the girls wore a wide variety of multicolored but fashionable cocktail dresses. Every so often someone would shower the dancers with money -- there were some thousand ruble notes but the currency of choice was the U.S. hundred dollar bill. The floor was covered with them; young children would scoop the money up to distribute among the dancers.

Gadzhi was locked into his role as host. He greeted every guest personally as they entered the hall -- failure to do so would cause great insult -- and later moved constantly from table to table drinking toasts with everyone. The 120 toasts he estimated he drank would have killed anyone, hardened drinker or not, but Gadzhi had his Afghan waiter Khan following him around to pour his drinks from a special vodka bottle containing water. Still, he was much the worse for wear by evening’s end. At one point we caught up with him dancing with two scantily clad Russian women who looked far from home. One, it turned out was a Moscow poet (later she recited an incomprehensible poem in Gadzhi’s honor) who was in town with a film director to write the screenplay for a film immortalizing Gadzhi’s defense of Dagestan against Shamil Basayev. By 6 p.m. most of the houseguests had returned to Gadzhi’s seaside home for more swimming and more jet-skiing-under-the-influence. But by 8 the summer house’s restaurant was full once more, the food and drink were flowing, the name performers were giving acoustic renditions of the songs they had sung at the reception, and some stupendously fat guests were displaying their lezginkas for the benefit of the two visiting Russian women, who had wandered over from the reception.

The Wedding -- Day 2: Enter The Man
------------------------------------
The next day’s reception at the Marrakech was Gadzhi’s tribute to Aida’s family, after which we all returned to a dinner at Gadzhi’s summer home. Most of the tables were set with the usual dishes plus whole roast sturgeons and sheep. But at 8:00 p.m. the compound was invaded by dozens of heavily armed mujahedin for the grand entrance of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, looking shorter and less muscular than in his photos, and with a somewhat cock-eyed expression on his face. After greetings from Gadzhi, Ramzan and about 20 of his retinue sat around the tables eating and listening to Benya the Accordion King. Gadzhi then announced a fireworks display in honor of the birthday of Ramzan’s late father, Ahmat-Hadji Kadyrov. The fireworks started with a bang that made both Gadzhi and Ramzan flinch. Gadzhi had from the beginning requested that none of his guests, most of whom carried sidearms, fire their weapons in celebration. Throughout the wedding they complied, not even joining in the magnificent fireworks display.

After the fireworks, the musicians struck up the lezginka in the courtyard and a group of two girls and three boys -- one no more than six years old -- performed gymnastic versions of the dance. First Gadzhi joined them and then Ramzan, who danced clumsily with his gold-plated automatic stuck down in the back of his jeans (a houseguest later pointed out that the gold housing eliminated any practical use of the gun, but smirked that Ramzan probably couldn’t fire it anyway). Both Gadzhi and Ramzan showered the dancing children with hundred dollar bills; the dancers probably picked upwards of USD 5000 off the cobblestones. Gadzhi told us later that Ramzan had brought the happy couple “a five kilo lump of gold” as his wedding present. After the dancing and a quick tour of the premises, Ramzan and his army drove off back to Chechnya. We asked why Ramzan did not spend the night in Makhachkala, and were told, “Ramzan never spends the night anywhere.”

After Ramzan sped off, the dinner and drinking -- especially the latter -- continued. An Avar FSB colonel sitting next to us, dead drunk, was highly insulted that we would not allow him to add “cognac” to our wine. “It’s practically the same thing,” he insisted, until a Russian FSB general sitting opposite told him to drop it. We were inclined to cut the Colonel some slack, though: he is head of the unit to combat terrorism in Dagestan, and Gadzhi told us that extremists have sooner or later assassinated everyone who has joined that unit. We were more worried when an Afghan war buddy of the Colonel’s, Rector of the Dagestan University Law School and too drunk to sit, let alone stand, pulled out his automatic and asked if we needed any protection. At this point Gadzhi and his people came over, propped the rector between their shoulders, and let us get out of range.

Postscript: The Practical Uses of a Caucasus Wedding
--------------------------------------------- --------

Kadyrov’s attendance was a mark of respect and alliance, the result of Gadzhi’s careful cultivation -- dating back to personal friendship with Ramzan’s father. This is a necessary political tool in a region where difficulties can only be resolved by using personal relationships to reach ad hoc informal agreements. An example was readily to hand: on August 22 Chechnya’s parliamentary speaker, Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov, gave an interview in which he made specific territorial claims to the Kizlyar, Khasavyurt and Novolak regions of Dagestan. The first two have significant Chechen-Akkin populations, and the last was part of Chechnya until the 1944 deportation, when Stalin forcibly resettled ethnic Laks (a Dagestani nationality) there. Gadzhi said he would have to answer Abdurakhmanov and work closely with Ramzan to reduce the tensions “that fool” had caused. Asked why he took such statements seriously, he told us that in the Caucasus all disputes revolve around land, and such claims can never be dismissed. Unresolved land claims are the “threads” the Russian center always kept in play to pull when needed. We asked why these claims are coming out now, and were told it was euphoria, pure and simple. After all they had received, the Chechen leadership’s feet are miles off the ground. (A well-connected Chechen contact later told us he thought that raising nationalistic irredentism was part of Abdurakhmanov’s effort to gain a political base independent from Kadyrov.)

The “horizontal of power” represented by Gadzhi’s relationship with Ramzan is the antithesis of the Moscow-imposed “vertical of power.” Gadzhi’s business partner Khalik Gindiyev, head of Rosneft-Kaspoil, complained that Moscow should let local Caucasians rather than Russians -- “Magomadovs and Aliyevs, not Ivanovs and Petrovs” -- resolve the region’s conflicts. The vertical of power, he said, is inapplicable to the Caucasus, a region that Moscow bureaucrats such as PolPred Kozak would never understand. The Caucasus needs to be given the scope to resolve its own problems. But this was not a plug for democracy. Gadzhi told us democracy would always fail in the Caucasus, where the conception of the state is as an extension of the Caucasus family, in which the father’s word is law. “Where is the room for democracy in that?” he asked. We paraphrased Hayek: if you run a family as you do a state, you destroy the family. Running a state as you do a family destroys the state: ties of kinship and friendship will always trump the rule of law. Gadzhi’s partner agreed, shaking his head sadly. “That’s a matter for generations to come,” he said.


signed William Joseph Burns, United States Ambassador to Russia

Troops loyal to Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi march on Benghazi, the last holdout of the anti-Gaddafi rebels. The rebels prepare their last stand, but know that the army is ready and willing to put a brutal end to the revolution. As the rebels wait for the full force of Qaddafi’s army to strike, they turn their eyes westward and ask themselves: “How far does Barack Obama have Duke going in the NCCA Tournament?”

On March 3, President Obama declared “...let me be very unambiguous about this. Colonel Qaddafi must step down from power and leave.” At least when King Canute ordered the tides to stop he knew he had no power over the seas. Apparently feeling that saying Qaddafi must step down was enough, since then the President has been nothing but ambiguous, desperately searching for anyone else to take the lead.

The United Nations passed a resolution ordering an arms embargo to Libya, though the State Department interpreted that as applying to both Qaddafi, and the rebels. France and Portugal have recognized the Libyan transitional council as the legitimate government of Libya, while Secretary of State Clinton only met with rebel leaders. British Prime Minister David Cameron proposed a no-fly zone on February 28. France has supported the plan, and Lebanon, representing several Arab countries, has promised significant Arab support. But the only country with the military capability to lead a no-fly zone is the United States, and the White House is still “evaluating a number of options” in the words of Press Secretary Jay Carney. On March 12th, the Arab League endorsed a no-fly zone for Libya, which the White House called “an important step,” but nothing more.

Worse, it's impossible to act as if behind the scenes at the White House President Obama is hard at work to solve the crisis. The Washington Post reported that on March 9th the President skipped a meeting with his top aides on Libya, but did find time that night to watch his Chicago Bulls defeat the Charlotte Bobcats. Since that day, the President got in his 61st round of golf as President, held a conference on bullying, taped three interviews with local television stations about No Child Left Behind reform, attended a Democratic National Committee fundraiser for his re-election, and traveled to Rio de Janiero for three days.

Waiting for the United Nations or NATO to come to approve action on Libya is a luxury the Libyan rebels don't have. Saif Qaddafi, the son of Moammar, said on March 16 that "The military operations are finished. In 48 hours, everything will be over. Our forces are close to Benghazi. Whatever decision is taken, it will be too late." On March 11th the President said that the world was “slowly tightening the noose around Gaddafi.” It appears that Qaddafi will be much faster in tightening the noose around his the rebel's necks.

A crazed dictator is about to crush a democratic uprising in Libya, but Barack Obama decided it's more important to go on television for the third year in a row and describe his office pool bracket. For over a decade, the height of Presidential malfeasance was when George W. Bush continued to read “The Pet Goat” to second-graders for nine minutes after being informed of the 9/11 attacks as to not panic them. Barack Obama spent at least twenty minutes with ESPN's Andy Katz explaining why he felt Kansas would go all the way this year, and has spent the last two weeks focusing on trivialities while Libya burns.

But he does have Maryland's Lady Terps going to the Sweet Sixteen in the woman's tournament, which is nice.

We three kings of Orient are
Bearing gifts we traverse afar.
Field and fountain, moor and mountain,
Following yonder star.

O star of wonder, star of night,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect Light.


Born a king on Bethlehem's plain,
Gold I bring to crown Him again,
King forever, ceasing never
Over us all to reign.

O star of wonder, star of night,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect Light.


Frankincense to offer have I.
Incense owns a Deity nigh.
Prayer and praising all men raising,
Worship Him, God on high.

O star of wonder, star of night,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect Light.


Myrrh is mine: Its bitter perfume
Breaths a life of gathering gloom.
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding dying,
Sealed in the stone-cold tomb.

O star of wonder, star of night,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect Light.


Glorious now behold Him arise,
King and God and Sacrifice.
Alleluia, Alleluia
Sounds through the earth and skies.

O star of wonder, star of night,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect Light.

1. Pick up the book nearest your hand ( of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

( I would prefer that a book that was mine or at least was one I was reading was the one closest to me, but that's how it goes. )

One of the blogs I really like, Wonderduck's Pond

1. If you’d like to play along, reply to this post and I’ll assign you a letter.
2. You then list (and upload or link to the video, if you feel like it) 5 songs that start with that letter.
3. Then, as I’m doing here, you’ll post the list to your journal with the instructions.

Since I can't resist a good meme, I jumped in, and was assigned the letter D (for delurk). Thusly, my five "D" songs are...

( ...in the livejournal cut. )

This is a first draft, subject to change.

• Hospital Cancers - 1st Pick
  None listed
  
  
  
  
  
• College Park Shurigans - 2nd Pick
  Ronnie Brown, Mia RB
  Ryan Grant, GB RB
  Michael Crabree, SF WR
  Sidney Rice, Min WR
  Antonio Gates, SD TE
  
  
• Norman Lightning Lads - 3rd Pick
  None listed
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Foley Kid Touchers - 4th Pick
  Matt Schaub, Hou QB
  Tony Romo, Dal QB
  Adrian Peterson, Min RB
  Beanie Wells, Ari RB
  Brandon Marshall, Mia WR
  
  
• Angry Fighting Footballfish - 5th Pick
  Philip Rivers, SD QB
  Cedric Benson, Cin RB
  Andre Johnson, Hou WR
  Calvin Johnson, Det WR
  Roddy White, Atl WR
  
  
• Washingtonian Thunder - 6th Pick
  Brett Farve, Min QB
  Donovan McNabb, Was QB
  Pierre Thomas, NO RB
  Randy Moss, NE WR
  
  
  
• Salisbury Vrikkians - 7th Pick
  None listed
  
  
  
  
  
• Lima Harvesters - 8th Pick
  Aaron Rodgers, GB QB
  Ray Rice, Bal RB
  Michael Turner, Atl RB
  Ricky Williams, Mia RB
  
  
  
• Mt. Hermon Yellow Jackets - 9th Pick
  Jamaal Charles, KC RB
  Shonn Greene, NYJ RB
  LeSean McCoy, Phi RB
  Larry Fitzgerald, Ari WR
  Greg Jennings, GB WR
  
  
• Pakistani Ninjas - 10th Pick
  Drew Brees, NO QB
  Maurice Jones-Drew, Jac RB
  Chris Johnson, Ten RB
  Miles Austin, Dal WR
  Wes Welker, NE WR
  

Narrator: During JaMarcus Russell's final year with the Oakland Raiders, team owner Al Davis became obsessed with getting some kind of return from the former first-overall pick.

Tumelo Hauck, former Raiders Director of Football Operations: Al had this idea to bring in a "passing-game coordinator," who would work with JaMarcus to try and improve his quarterbacking skills. But, you know, with Al Davis being Al Davis at the time, the Coliseum's degraded internal-phone system, and some confused interns, we ended up getting a past-life specialist.

Brent Wilkinson, Raiders Executive Assistant to President of the General Partner: In the team's defense, past-life and passing-game can sound alike if you weren't listening properly. And the person responsible was fired.

Narrator: Dr. Dennis Treadway is a psychiatrist and author of such books as Reaching Back: Uncovering the Truth of Human Reincarnation.

Dr. Treadway: When I first got the call, I was in my office. Al Davis called me, but he wasn't very clear. I heard him say something about shotguns and thought he was talking about a vision of a crime that he had seen in a prior life.

Narrator: A self-described "Reincarnation Topographer," Dr. Treadway has claimed to have helped over 5,000 people rediscover their past lives.

Dr. Treadway: The goal is to help people rediscover who they are, and map out a path to understand the way their prior lives create the landscape of their soul.

Hauck: Al became very interested in Dr. Treadway's work. He became convinced that by finding the reincarnations of past Oakland Raider greats like the late Fred Biletnikoff, he could rebuild the team's glory days.

Fred Biletnikoff: -a very much not dead Biletnikoff drinks from a coffee mug and looks around away from the camera-

Narrator: At first, Dr. Treadway's work seemed to pay dividends.

Wilkinson: Dr. Treadway was supposed to help out the passing game, but he did great work in other areas. He helped Sebastien Janikowski work past the issues of how in 1693 his father was unable to save him when their Spanish Galleon sailing toward Hispanola nearly sank in a hurricane.

Hauck: It was starting to infect the scouting department. I was meeting with some of the scouts and one of them said "You know, I bet the reincarnation of Ken Stabler is in college right now. If we could find and identify him, I bet we could get him at a steal in a upcoming draft."

Ken Stabler: -walks into the shot with Fred Biletnikoff and sits down next to him, the camera pans back- Sorry, traffic was a nightmare.

Narrator: Dr. Treadway's tenure with the team ended shortly after the last game of the season, when through counseling, it was determined that Wide Receiver Johnny Lee Higgins was the reincarnation of J.P. Weyerhaeusen, the prominent Washington state lumberman.

Dr. Treadway: We had made great strides, discovering why Johnny Lee had the disposition of man who driven to succeed, had to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, and had a deep fascination with plywood. But when we rediscovered the memory of the kidnapping of his son George Weyerhausen, things got...complicated.

Sgt. Buzz Dixon, Deputy Public Information Officer, Alameda County Sheriff's Office: Mr. Higgins was reported as distressed, accusing a woman that she had kidnapped his child, the rightful heir of his vast lumber fortune.

Video from a police cruiser, several officers are pointing guns at Johnny Lee Higgins, who is holding a woman (who's face is blurred out on the tape) at gunpoint.

Officer #1: Put down the gun!

Higgins: I just want my daughter back! Can't you see? This is Percy Minnie!

Woman: Let me go!

From off camera, Dr. Treadway rushes into the shot.

Dr. Treadway: Don't shoot! Johnny Lee is only reliving a situation from a prior reincarnation in a repeating fashion!

A long pause.

Officer #2: Fire!

Sgt. Dixon: As the lawsuit is still before the courts I cannot confirm or deny reports that certain Sheriff's deputies confused Johnny Lee Higgins with a serial-killer.

Hauck: It wasn't all bad. Dr. Treadway did decide that JaMarcus' suffered from stubborness, a feeling of natural superiority, and a lack of interest in harnessing his talents. It's just that I could have told Al that for a whole lot less money and declaring that JaMarcus was the reincarnation of General Thomas Gage.

In terms of literary works, how many can be described as "infamous"? Perhaps your hatefilled screeds like Mein Kamph or The Protocols of Zion could be considered. But what about in terms of simply lacking in talent, skill, and ability?

The Eye of Argon is such a piece. Published in a small-time science-fiction magazine, it (in a way that was incredibly difficult in those pre-internet days) spread across the globe to amaze and astonish yet more and more fans of science fiction, fantasy, and crap writing. What Uwe Boll did for filmmaking, poor 16-year old Jim Thies was doing for writing, three decades prior, and worse.

There are several ways to enjoy the Eye of Argon. The MiSTing is here, and a PDF of the original published version (with illustrations!) is here.

With the hiring of former NFL Wide Receiver Keenan McCardell as the team's Wide Receivers Coach, the Washington Redskins have a full compliment of coaches. And here are their names and C.Vs (as best as I can figure them, at least):

( Cut for dull. )

Hark the herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled"
Joyful, all ye nations rise
Join the triumph of the skies
With the angelic host proclaim:
"Christ is born in Bethlehem"
Hark! The herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!"

Christ by highest heav'n adored
Christ the everlasting Lord!
Late in time behold Him come
Offspring of a Virgin's womb
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see
Hail the incarnate Deity
Pleased as man with man to dwell
Jesus, our Emmanuel
Hark! The herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!"

Hail the heav'n-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings
Ris'n with healing in His wings
Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth
Hark! The herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!"

...why there are all these "single mom discovers trick to turn yellow teeth white" ads all over the place.

My teeth are not yellow. I don't get cavities. I don't bleach my teeth. Why am I getting these ads?

At the beginning of the UFL, I was not terribly impressed with either the names for teams or their color schemes. However, I've grown in my appreciation of both.

I like all the team's helmets in spite of myself. I like how instead of a stripe, they have a sorta-logo instead.

Take the Los Vegas Locomotives, for example. I was dismissive of the name early on. However, I appreciate it more. Gamblers is a rather typical name for a Las Vegas based sports-franchise, certainly. Locos is a pretty creative shortening, and the cattle catcher logo is pretty nifty.

For the next season, they should stick with the silver, since Nevada is the Silver State, but they should switch the blue for red. Nevada is also the Battle Born State, and the red would reflect that. But since blue and silver are on the Las Vegas flag, I guess it could go either way.

There is no helping those jerseys though. They are pretty darn ugly.

Dammit.

I just had a really nice nap. Though I'm not sure precisely why I need a four-hour nap in the late afternoon/early evening in order to not feel tired before going to bed later. But I guess it'll keep me going to watch out for election results!

It's election day you know. In Virginia, New Jersey, a open-seat Congressional race in New York, the Annapolis mayor's race, the New York City mayor's race, the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, a open Congressional seat in California...there's alot.

I'm hoping the GOP does well!

Flush from my earlier successes, I decided to make the full on leap to having my own version. I made this leap slowly, but leap I did. This battle was one of four (and a half, though the half will be explained later) that were on the site when I submitted it.

Battle #1: Critical Error - November 24, 2000
This means Chill Version began when I was little over 13 years old, putting me in eighth grade. By the way, the 24th was a Friday.
Location: Shawn's House, Blue Version
Player: Shawn [no record]

SHAWN turned on COMPUTER!
SHAWN WENT to POKéBATTLES.COM!
SHAWN saw BLUE VERSION is CLOSED!
Wait, doesn't that mean I don't exist anymore?
That seriously stinks!
A master of understatement, that's me.
COMPUTER used SHUT DOWN!
COMPUTER SHUT DOWN!
Hey! What the...
No.... It couldn't be.....
Watching me abuse ellipses like that makes me feel kind of foolish, frankly.
COMPUTER BEEPS hapilly!
YOU!
We can't BATTLE. BLUE VERSION is SHUT DOWN.
I think I overused capitalization. You capitalized most nouns in Pokébattles, I capitalized darn near everything. Keep in mind, I didn't even have a Game Boy at this point.
COMPUTER explains that since BLUE VERSION is CLOSED, it can do WHATEVER it WANTS!
COMPUTER wants to FIGHT!
But what if I don't want to FIGHT?
100 angry ELECTRODES are rolling torwards your HOUSE, ready to use EXPLOSION on COMMAND!
In a bit of long term planning, the 100 angry Electrodes were supposed to make more appearances, but they never did.
From who?
As I recall, they were going to be captured by a character that would be named something like Butch Kaloogacoogie, or some such name. The last name, whatever it was, was an actual name belonging to an actual human being.
FROM the NARRATOR!
Eek. Ummm.. Well. Okay... Go SPEAKERS then.
GO! SPEAKERS!
COMPUTER sent out MOUSE!
SPEAKERS use your VOLUME attack!
SPEAKERS used VOLUME!
SPEAKERS VOLUME greatly rose!
If I was more clever, this attack should have made the Speakers larger over time. Still, this is much better than my last one.
MOUSE used DOUBLECLICK!
MOUSE CLICKED AWAY!
Alright. SPEAKERS! Use your PLAY attack!
SPEAKERS used PLAY!
SPEAKERS played a FAMILY GAME with MOUSE!
I think I saw that in LIFE once...
LIFE CEREAL! In STORES right now!
I meant the GAME LIFE!
The LIFE GAME! From MILTON BRADLEY!
You're sick.
This whole section is amateur to the max. But I was only 13.
The ELECTRODE....
AHHHH!!! PLEASE NO!!!!
MOUSE used CORD WHIP!
MOUSE becomes UNPLUGGED!
MOUSE fainted!
Great!
SPEAKERS gained 12 exp. points!
SPEAKERS grew to level 16!
COMPUTER is about to send out PRINTER!
Will SHAWN change POKEMON?
Yeah. I'll send myself out.
Return SPEAKERS!
GO! SHAWN!
COMPUTER sent out PRINTER!
I'll use my ... uh... what attacks do I have?
SHAWN knows SCREECH, PUNT, PUNCH and UNPLUG!
Remembering continuity, I did use all those attacks in the Blue Version battle.
Then I'll use my UNPLUG attack!
SHAWN used UNPLUG!
SHAWN'S attack failed!
PRINTER used LOADS-OF-PRINTER-PAPER-SHOT!
SHAWN got PAPERCUT!
It's SUPER PAINFUL!
OWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!
Too many w's, too many exclamation points.
SHAWN used SCREECH!
I'm BLEEDING! That PRINTERS gonna PAY!
PRINTER is RELOADING with paper.
Me, UNPLUG!
SHAWN used UNPLUG!
SHAWN UNPLUGGED PRINTER!
PRINTER FAINTED!
Unplug was the Guillotine of the fighting electronics set. Left unexplained is how they could faint from being unplugged yet roam around in the wild.
SHAWN gained 11 exp. points!
COMPUTER is about to use COMPUTER!
Use next POKEMON?
Nope.
COMPUTER sent out COMPUTER!
I'll use my UNPLUG attack!
SHAWN used UNPLUG!
SHAWN couln't find the WIRE to UNPLUG!
SHAWN'S attack failed!
Ah, foiled by the nest of wires! It rings of reality, no?
Dang It!
SHAWN used PUNCH!
SHAWN HURT his HAND!
ARRRGGGG!
SHAWN tries to lift up the COMPUTER to use PUNT!
SHAWN'S attack failed!
Interestingly, both this author avatar, and my later author avatar both had attacks that were utterly ineffectual and led to their defeats. One of the problems I think I had with Chill Version is that winners kept winning and losers kept losing.
NOOOOOO!!!!!!
SHAWN tried to RUN!
Got away safely!
Someday COMPUTER! SOMEDAY!
SHAWN is RUNNING AWAY!
for a semi-contemporary joke, just add in: with the WIND in his FACE! It's like FLYING!
SHAWN flew up high! (or however the phrasing went)
That would probably be the first Polyphonic Spree joke in Pokebattles. And it wouldn't have been the last, the Polyphonic Spree are so weird they'd be great here.
COMPUTER is FOLLOWING SHAWN!
ELECTRODE are following COMPUTER!
COMPUTER WINS!

Last year I tried to take part in NaBloPoMo, but failed miserably. This year, I'm going to give it a second shot, but this time I'm hoping to guarantee success by reposting junk I've already done before. I'm feeling confident this time around.

So here is something I wrote when I was thirteen: my very first pokébattle. In order to make it more interesting, I'm adding in Director's Commentary! The "player," Shawn in this case, will be in this shade of light blue (I like to think of it as "Chill Version blue," as that was the color that Chill was designated), the Narrator will be in red, and my notes will be in whatever default color is set. Since this is from the actual Blue Version archives, I'm going to include Jason Ross' (the guy who runs Pokébattles) comments.



The speakers allowed Shawn to hear the computer's angry voice.

This battle is another take on one of the Blue Version clichés (known as the Blue Cliché Triad: Trees, Star Wars, and Computers - though I should point out that Red Version is guilty of using all three of those as well). This one is based on the computer, and like the other battles before it, a frustrated user (Shawn) battles against the frustrating machine. This time, however, the mouse pad and the printer join the fray.

Battle: 52: Mad Machine January 26, 2000
I remember sitting down and writing this in one single go, and then being incredibly surprised to see it on the site. I was so proud, and so shock. I figured it wouldn't make it past the cut. Though, looking back on it, I guess there was no cut at all.
Setting: Game 20% / Reality 80% / Anime 0%
Player: Shawn [No Record]
For a beginning writer, they say write what you know. Like an idiot beginning writer, I knew myself the best, so there I sort of am.
Written by jester@bwave.com New Author
Hey, it's our first e-mail address! We got two-plus years of internet for free from them, in exchange for services rendered. We gave them some shelves. Not sure how that deal happened, but it was the internet, for free.

Ahhh... Here we go. The Computer, Internet. This is the life.
This was probably shortly after we got the internet in the first place.
COMPUTER doesn't want to be used.
WHAT!!!!!!
Abusing exclamation points. In my defense, I was 13.
COMPUTER wants to fight.
This isn't a POKéMON game. Oh ****, now look, It's doing that capital thing!
Ah, the domain of the immature writer, indicating the presense of curses but blanking it out. Also, I was unclear on when I should be capitalizing. I think I wrote it and immediatly sent it in without proofreading. Let that be a lesson, kids!
COMPUTER sent out MOUSE PAD.
Okay, fine. GO! SPEAKERS!
MOUSE PAD used TACKLE!
It has no effect!
Since mouse pads are so floppy and stuff. That was before the advent of the laser mouse, rendering mouse pads useless.
SPEAKERS! Use PLAY!
Speakers PLAYED!
It's Super effective!
MOUSE PAD fainted!
COMPUTER used MOUSE!
Go, FOOTBALL!
MOUSE used CLICK!
FOOTBALL! use THROW!
Attack failed!
WHAT!!!
MOUSE Used WRAP!
Figures, FOOTBALL! Use... THROW again!
There's me being super creative, huh?
FOOTBALL uses THROW!
MOUSE uses CORD WHIP!
MOUSE becomes UNPLUGGED!
MOUSE faints!
That's really stupid.
I'm right. That is really stupid.
SHAWN thinks that MOUSE's fainting is STUPID!
I hate this COMPUTER.
COMPUTER sends out PRINTER!
PRINTER uses LOADS OF PRINTER PAPER SHOT!
SHAWN is now PAPER CUT!
That dumb black and white PRINTER. Owwww!
At the time we had a dot-matrix printer. Seriously old-school stuff there.
It was SUPER EFFECTIVE!
On me yeah. Look I'm BLEEDING!
SHAWN CONSIDERS!
Shawn here should have lost a turn, but whatever.
SHAWN goes into KITCHEN! He gets a KNIFE!
That's IT! I'm now really P.O.ed.
SHAWN is P.O.ed!
That is really ANNOYING!
At some level it's funny how the narrator is reiterating my characters stupid lines, but if you don't have the self-awareness to realize when you're doing something creative, is it actually funny?
I'm going to use AIR GUST!
SHAWN stabs FOOTBALL with KNIFE!
FOOTBALL uses AIR GUST!
PRINTER FAINTED!
SHAWN WINS!
YEESSS! Now can I use the COM, ::ahem:: puter. Thank you.
COMPUTER uses ERROR!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
ERROR 789: General Default. Buy Jumbohard's DOOR 2000 to fix it.
Instead of Microsoft, it was Jumbohard. Instead of Windows it was Door.
WAIT A MINUTE! You want me to buy a whole new software program costing over 200 POKéDOLLARS!
Pokédollars?
I didn't know what to call the P-yen sign the games used for money, so Pokédollars it was.
SHAWN SCREECHES!
END
Yeah, not sure why END is in there, but there you are.