With apologies to Dylan Thomas...

An entry at The Command Post grabs hold of a current news article ("Since appearing in court, Saddam had taken to reading the Qur'an and writing poetry, Mr Amin said.") and asks: What does a sociopathic mass murdering dictator write when putting pen to paper? Readers were invited to answer the question.

For some reason, the following parody was not that difficult to write:

In my daft and bloody art

In my daft and bloody art
Exercised in the still night
With only my loony rages
And my enemies, who are dead
With all their heads in their arms,
I labor by swinging light
My population broken and bled
And my palaces full of arms
And various missile stages
Not to mention the cages
Where my sons would cut out hearts.

Not for the proud man who shrinks
From my raping goons I write
On these blood-stained pages
Nor for the towers of dead
Who were buried sans ceremony or psalm
But for the Kurds, their arms
Round their murdered generations,
Who paid no praise or wages
To Allah or my art.

Personally, I think it's (just slightly) classier than my first try, which started 'There once was a man from Tikrit.'

Cheers…

Here I sit...

Which is pretty good, all things considered.

I decided to go to see the local sawbones today about a complaint that surfaced yesterday, and ended up scheduling a session with another doc in Durango tomorrow, bumping the medical appointment I already had scheduled for the morning to the afternoon. When I asked the local doc how important it was for me -- on a scale of 1 to 10 -- to clear tomorrow morning's appointment, the reply was not heartening: 8.

Fortunately, I managed to finish some short items that came in this morning before going to the doctor's office, because right now, I really don't feel like doing much of anything at all.

* * *And the Tube isn't going to be much of a consolation this week, what with the Dems in Beantown. I accidentally turned the thing on a few minutes ago, just in time to hear Jimmy Carter talk about an "uninterrupted string of mistakes and miscalculations," which I presume was not an evaluation of his own performance as President and diplomat, but intead an instance of the pot calling the kettle black.

It's not as if the Convention fever doesn't have its interesting moments, though.

Yesterday, Teresa Heinz Kerry was heard to say, "We need to turn back some of the creepy, un-Pennsylvanian and sometimes un-American traits that are coming into some of our politics. I remember a time when people in political parties in Pennsylvania talked to one another and actually got things done."

Afterward, some reporter asked, ""What did you mean un-American activity?"

Ms. Heinz Kerry then says: "No, I didn't say that," and after a couple of exchanges where the reporter asked what she did say, repeating the adjective "un-American," but this time leaving off "activity," the woman asks, "Why did you put those words in my mouth?" Then the next thing out of her mouth is: "I didn't say 'activity' or 'un-American'," at which point, she turns on her heel and leaves.

She's 50% right. She didn't say 'activity', but she clearly said 'un-American,' and frankly, not only would I like to hear a good definition of 'un-American,' but I'm greatly puzzled by just what constitutes 'un-Pennsylvanian' behavior (aside from, say, not rooting for the Steelers).

Anyway, almost a minute later (according to the voiceover in the video featured on this page) she comes back, verifies that the reporter works for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, goes "Aha!" and tells the guy to shove it. The rest of the video seems to be saying that it was okay for her to say that, since the Tribune-Review  is, according to the Kerry camp, "a right-wing rag," a charge that was obligingly allowed to be echoed by the august personage of the Pennsylvania governor, but not allowed to be challenged by anyone.

I'd offer to start a pool as to how successful the GOP would be with such an approach to handling presumably hostile members of the media, but anyone who'd buy a ticket in the pool probably ought not be allowed to handle money without supervision.

Cheers...