LAURAL'S DISH
Laural is our dog, my dog. Everyone else heads off to school, "people like me and Laural" stay home. He's a fine companion, but you have to understand. If he's having a really good time he tries to bite you, me, anyone. Not hard, just…similarly, if you're scratching his belly real good, but then shift to his (apparently less preferable) ears, he'll growl at you. The irregular spelling of his name results from the time that Alexandra and I were mulling the possibilities, in a tunnel in Newton Abbot, when we came across the graffiti: Laura L is a dog.
Laural loves to eat more than any living being ever created, and he will eat absolutely anything. We've weaned him from rocks but he once tried to eat an unopened can of Carlsberg Export. surprise! So his dish frequently has unusual things in it, bits of this or that, absolute treasures that others might consider slightly unfit for human consumption, for whatever stupid reasons.
Beneath please find my literary reflection of Laural's Dish:
Laural's Dish comes out on Fridays, before lunch, usually.
29 October 2010
In honour of the glorious tradition of Siesta-and because I've been too lazy to take any new shots-this week's Dish is littered with pictures from our trips to Barcelona, none recent-they all pre-date both Laural and his dish, 2001 and 2004 I think,, though there's an idea-
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20101025/tod-snoring-ecuadorian-wins-siesta-compe-870a197.html
It is, of course, that rare issue upon which Ronald Reagan was not only right but perhaps the greatest of presidents. Naps are good.
But then, napping is one thing, and siesta is quite another...they have little more relation to one another than picking up a lighter and picking up a flamethrower...of, you know, reading Little Women and reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas...hardly any relationship at all.
I could have been a world champion siestan, I believe so. I've always been good with naps, and when we lived on the beach outside of Barcelona for six weeks in the spring of 2001 the spirit of siesta so damn near overwhelmed me that it's a wonder we ever got out of there at all. It's a wonderful thing: the weather heats up, everyone stops doing everything so there's nothing to do anyway...
So you go and take a nap, except that it's not just a nap it's a colossal social phenomenon...it's like the entire collective subconscious regroups, it's a bonding thing, it's about teamwork as much as relaxation, a celebration of collective joy and the opportunity to take a nap. It's a beautiful thing, and the weather was getting really hot anyway...and then you wake up and everything's even more beautiful because you've had this great rest and the breezes are starting to pick back up.
It's an art form. As I say, I might coulda been a contendah...Pedro Soria Lopez I salute you!
The Keith Richards autobiography. All that's being written about it. I imagine that I'll read it some day. I'm not in a hurry. As an informal Stones historian (is there any other respectable kind?) I'm not really hearing anything new, certainly nothing that surprises me. But it does get me thinking.
In inducting the Stones into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Pete Townshend famously advised them, "Don't grow old gracefully. It wouldn't become you." It was a great line, well received, I applauded it at the time, I still do. But I'm not so sure, I'm not so sure what...meaning you can give that, or if it gives itself much without your giving it one. It's one of those things that means more the less you think about it, and can take on some sinister sense in analysis that isn't really there in the first place.
John Cougar Mellencamp is obviously an artist of some lesser magnitude, but I always liked the line "hold on to 16 as long as you can," and it may be closer to the mark. I wrote, nearly 30 years ago now, a poem including the line "oh joy that is a wayward youth/don't leave me down the line." A cynical friend was duly impressed, and suggested the couplet "searching for freedom/he found only truth" in place of "don't leave me down the line." I didn't incorporate it, but immediately recognized...something.
What's the joy of a wayward youth, then? Is it that openness and sense of possibility, or is it some set of circumstances and reaction, some demand against a universe that's holding out? Is it an expression of exaltation in what is, or manifest ingratitude and eternal expansionism, some luciferian pretext and self-apologia for forever demanding more, a prescription for dissatisfaction?
There's that French film where the Nazis come and all of the insane asylum people are suddenly running around in an abandoned town. One of them mounts the altar of the cathedral and entreats the others, "Choose...to be happy."
Thanks Keith.
Yeah ok, so everyone knows once I get started talking about the Rolling Stones I tend not to change the subject much. So how about....TOP TEN KEITH RICHARDS MOMENTS THAT IMMEDIATELY JUMP TO MIND (not even having read the book)...
22 October 2010
Myles and I took a nice day in town, and picnic along the quay. This week Laural's Dish features photos immortalizing the event...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20101018/pl_politico/43753
Oh, please. See, this is the mainstream media: the issues before us deal with trillions of dollars and millions of lives...and they're terribly offended by bad manners...unbelievable.
America wasn't always this way. There's a great historical event....my father used to tell me about it from his geneological research, then I found a recounting of it in a history book at the Ocean Beach library.
Back in Virginia, in the 1750s, 1760s, I forget....but voting was done in the tavern. The candidates and their best friends would show up (and presumably start drinking) early, and try to convince the voters who showed up to vote for them. In this particular race there were three candidates: one backed by the Father of Our Country, another by my ancestor, and a third guy.
Votes were counted as they went along, and as dusk began to fall the third guy was winning. Ale and passions and electoral politics and all...a man so taut is not always a man at his best. And so it came to pass that champions of the two losing candidates-George Washington and my ancestor-came to a rather loud and pronounced disagreement in the tavern...you know, parking lot or whatever they had then...and my ancester knocked George Washington off his horse.
This is, I guess, a rather celebrated event amongst pre-Independence election afficianados...the coolest thing of it is that years later George-now running Virginia-gave my ancester a land grant....which probably goes more to show that George was one of those few historical figures who lived up to his status and hype by not holding a grudge, but might be argued as evidence that he'd decided that my ancester was right about whatever it was between them...
In any event, please don't try to divert my attention from the issues with this "(lack of) style over substance" bullshit. If anything I think it's showing some moxy that some of these candidates are rude to the other clowns...that's who we want representing us against Ruppert Murdoch!
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20101021/tsc-oukoe-uk-kitten-1df2b7e.html
yep, ok, now there's a major issue...I offer my unadulterated support for the cat...we need to marshall our forces...military intervention should be a last resort...
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/boxscore?gid=301016122
I'm sure they have pitching match-ups at least this good in Heaven all the time. Cy Young-Walter Johnson, Grover Cleveland Alexander-Satchel Paige, Popeye Mahaffey-Cannonball Redding...but here on earth, in the 21st century, Tim Lincecum-Roy Halladay is about as good as it gets. Good enough to keep me awake until five in the morning, seeing what happens.
It's not just that they're the two best pitchers in baseball, it's the extreme contrasts in their teams and styles. Roy toils for the Phillies, who probably have the best lineup in baseball, and would be a threat to win the World Series even if they had to start, you know, Jim Bunning (I know he was really good, but he's like seventy years old now) every game. Tiny Tim twirls for the Giants, who are anything but. They barely have anyone else noticeable on the field, guys who either never were or had their greatest years more back towards high school.
Then there's appearance. Halladay is clearly an athlete, he has that solid, confident look. I guess it's slightly undercut by his beard--which is nowhere near the Bert Blyleven league, more the desperate sort I conjure up once in awhile-but there's a quiet calm and confidence, something even scholarly in an athletic way about the entire presentation.
Tim, on the other hand, looks like an escapee from the Hobbit convention. He's very small, he's got a face that you could cast as a fourteen year-old, and big ears keeping his long hair from flying all over the place. The general sense is of a hurricane in training, of a minor firecracker just a-lookin' for a home.
Roy pitches in a psychological vacuum, and becomes silently enraged at any encroachment. When the umpire blows a call he says nothing but somewhat loses concentration, the next couple pitches are more likely to be uncharacteristically imperfect. Tim pitches in the central ring of a personal three ring psychological circus, checking out what the crowd's doing, is entranced by the jumbotron screen, goes ballistic when the umpire misses the same call. He flapped around the mount saying f-words that weren't "fudge" until his manager came out and calmed him down. Then he looked around for awhile, looked up again amazed at the jumbotron and what was playing on it, messed with his hat for awhile and resumed as if nothing had ever happened.
The drama was in some way diminished by the fact that neither one of them had their best stuff; Halladay coming off throwing the second no-hitter in playoff history and Tim off a 14 strikeout shutout. They've both got pitches that go all over the damn place doing all kinds of funky stuff, but the contrast between curves and sliders was not sharp; between fastballs with a tail and cutters almost slight. They were both better than at least 75% of the other pitches in the greatest baseball league on the face of the earth, but the only pitch that was working at anything near the historic level was Halladay's turbocutter, which was devastating but moved exactly the same way every time he threw it. Even it didn't have that overdrive that the great ones-including him-can reach for at the big moments.
They managed along without giving up too many runs, less than most, but Tim was having problems with his control. He walked a few guys and there were way too many pitches that weren't anywhere near where he meant to throw them, or didn't do anything resembling what they were supposed to do. Halladay didn't walk anyone, but he was having problems with command: he was throwing strikes, but some of them were getting too much strike zone, which is about the only chance that lousy hitters have against pitchers of this magnitude.
In the end it came down to temperament. Tim won. His pitch selection was entirely unpredictable, the stuff he threw wasn't great, but it was good enough. Roy had slightly better stuff, but his over-confidence as manifest in pitch selection predictability did him in.
The key at bat came when Cody Ross came up in the fifth inning, having hit a home run his previous at bat in the third. Cody Ross is by no means a great hitter, you're not going to win the World Series because Cody Ross is on your team. He's a real ballplayer though, tough, smart, he's been around a few years, you can win the World Series with him on your team. Presented with the same situation Lincecum probably would have just ignored the previous at bat, and gone to work; or if the mood struck him he might have thrown three straight increasingly high and inside à la Grover Alexander.
But not Halladay. First pitch: most preditable pitch ever, high and inside. Get off the plate, bub. Then the book says you can sneak a strike over the outside corner. Roy tried to get him to go after one an inch or two off, and Cody was so all over it that he didn't swing. The pitcher and batter were clearly in sync in terms of pitch presentation and expectation, never good news for the pitcher, now even worse down 2-0 in the count. So what's Halladay do? The obvious, most preditible thing imaginable: he came back inside which is exactly where Cody was waiting for him. Result: second home run in a row by a mediocre hitter off a great pitcher, Giants win.
So there's life's lesson of the day, according to the Gospel of Baseball as gleaned from The Mound.
Just listening to, watching all of this election year nonsense...it's tempting to think that I'm getting old and cynical and just content to make fun of whoever shows their face. That may be a creeping part of it, but by way of rebuttal let me offer the TEN MOST OBVIOUS THINGS EVERY CANDIDATE SHOULD BE SAYING:
ok, let's wrap it up with some film update....in the order of how fun they would have been to make...you know, fun scenes, cool sets, good moods, powerful personalities, groovin' stars...
15 October 2010
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20101012/toddly-teacher-explodes-in-classroom-cc3a409.html
Given that the headline was "Teacher Explodes in Classroom," this was pretty disappointing video. Hell, I can do better than this:
When I was matriculating at William T. Sampson High School, United States Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba...for a time we had an elderly English teacher named Mrs. Langston. Now Mrs. Langston was by no means a bad person-in fact she was a friend of my father's, but it was not clear that she had ever enjoyed teaching, or liked teenagers. Perhaps she once had, perhaps senility had set in, maybe she was always like that...I don't know. I do know that she progressively lost what little patience she had during the short time that I knew her.
Of course once she took to ranting it was all over, it was a challenge to the class: Who can set her off ranting the best. I won't name those who were the very best, and I ranked no better than seventh or so, I pulled my punches out of deference to what I knew to be her kind heart. But she was an irresistible target. One day she finally just lost it again-this time historically so-and just started screaming that we all--the entire class without exception--were nothing but a bunch of criminals and should go turn ourselves in to the police! Other than that it was a fairly routine class, I think one of my friends detonated a stink bomb he'd constructed out of sulphur in Chemistry and we got to go hang out beneath the palm trees. He did that a lot. I remain grateful.
But great ideas don't just die on the vine, and there wasn't all that much for teenagers to do on the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay. And so it came to pass that, accompanied by a friend, I drove my chartreuse 1968 Chevrolet Camaro with no roof down to the Military Police station. They were somewhat surprised to see us, and uncertain as to the procedure once we'd explained that we wanted to turn ourselves in.
"Well, ok, what have you done?" We hemmed and hawed, well we had a beer now and again, and I regularly parked in the Base Commander's spot. When they showed little initial interest, my friend upped the ante and conceded having participated in the smoking of a marijuana cigarette the previous week...we told them about Mrs. Langston, and how we were doing this great thing for her.
The MPs were maybe a few years older than us, in their early 20s, and so they gave the situation the consideration that they felt that it merited. They thanked us for our sense of civic responsibility, but explained that given the circumstances they couldn't really take any further action since they hadn't actually caught us themselves. That they would feel bad just taking a confession, like they hadn't done their part of the job.
And so we all parted on the best of terms. They resolved to do better at catching us, and actually even managed to every once in awhile. In typical military fashion I was thrown off the base several months after I'd already left.
I filled out my Washington State absentee ballot. I was really bummed that there weren't any wild Tea Party candidates, no one with great ideas that might lead to glorious governance or even absurd ones that might lend themselves low-brow entertainment. That being the case I had to vote for Patty Murray for the senate.
I feel bad doing it. Not because she's awful-she's a step above the Clintons, which means you can at least vote for her if you have to. But because she came in with such great hopes, and ideas and promise; then bailed when it turned out that the best of them could prove politically contentious and electorally burdensome.
Which makes her about like President Obama-a candidate you can vote for, but expect only the most limited returns. Not a candidate you'd want for something as important as the senate.
Which reminds me of Candidate Obama's great jobs idea: create thousands if not millions of jobs by redirecting government funding and incentives away from the oil industry and towards renewable green power sources. What was wrong with that? If was a great idea-like universal healthcare-and so an idea worth going to the mat for.
If he had, we would be spared the absurd spectacle of a president who's been half-assed at his best moments-and entirely subservient to big money at his worst-whining that it's "inexcusable" that his supporters are being just as half-assed in their support, and not at all enthusiastic.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_obama_interview
(yeah I know I already did this link, just that it bears repeating. How did that reporter manage not to laugh in his face, and isn't it bad citizenship if he didn't?)
Satchel Paige, probably the greatest pitcher who ever lived, and my friend's grandfather Popeye Mahaffey. Popeye faced Babe Ruth an estimated 100 times without giving up a home run.
Oh fucking please! When can we run Timmy for the senate?
I've always liked him, first because he reminded me of a right-handed Sandy Koufax, then because of the way he handled his marijuana bust. Rather than send himself straight to detox and have a well-paid and experienced consultant trot out begging forgiveness from the universe, America, fans, the legal powers that be, everyone's mothers...and announcing that half of one percent of his salary would be dedicated to helping crackheads with their postgraduate theses....instead he just sent out an email saying he'd been hanging out with the wrong people, and was going to hang out with his dad for awhile.
It was never clear to me, from the language of the email, whether the "wrong people" were the ones who forgot to tell him that you don't hide the joint in the ash tray of a Mercedes, or the cops who did tell him that. The whole thing blew over just as fast as it would have if he'd taken the more established route, though it admittedly helped that he works in San Francisco.
Tim Lincecum is on his way to becoming a great American hero, like John Wayne and Harry Belafonte, and Babe the Blue Ox. Just you watch.
Aurelio Rodriguez, greatest defensive third baseman to ever play the game, besides Brooks Robinson. There was a really cool cartoon in Baseball Digest when I was a kid, depicting Aurelio with a cannon growing out of his shoulder
Whereas Candidate Obama distinguished himself just by talking about alternative energy, former- and future-California Governor Jerry Brown is the elected official in America who's done the most to actually make it real. This is the easiest vote to make in America, and not just because his opponent's a corporate goof who's already sent thousands of jobs overseas, and surely would continue to do so at an accelerated rate if elected. I wish I was voting absentee from California.
It does concern me that only one member of his campaign staff is calling Meg Whitman a whore. Back when I was Jerry's National Grassroots Director during his presidential campaign in 1992 I used to call Bill Clinton "such a fucking corporate whore" all the time, and so he is. Sadly, no one ever asked me whether he was one or not in my recorded interviews with The Oregonian, Italian television, or MTV, and to be fair the campaign didn't really encourage me to engage the media all that much. I'm pretty sure I mentioned it in an off-the-record discussion at The Daily Pint with the guy from Time though, and he agreed and so did the bartender.
That's what's wrong with this country, folks: it's ok to be a corporate whore, but it's not ok for anyone else to point it out.
Joe Lovitto, all-time icon of the Texas-California Axis of Cool...
I don't read a lot of novels written by living writers. The dead ones wrote a lot more, and more are having been written by them every day. I probably haven't read novels by more than 50 or 60 living novelists, and there are a lot of very famous ones I've abandoned after ten pages or ignored altogether. But Alexandra-being 17-is very much into contemporary culture, and she (along with a recommendation by ESPN baseball analyst Keith Law) convinced me to try Haruki Murakami's Dance Dance Dance (which is barely more than 20 years old, a mere literary baby!). He's a great writer, it's an excellent novel. I'm going to read another one. But first...TOP TEN THINGS I LIKE ABOUT DANCE DANCE DANCE
Baseball Playoffs Update
Regular readers of this dish will not be surprised at all that the Giants beat the Braves, and Rangers beat Tampa. I'm sure that I share everyone's bewilderment as to how the Yankees and Twins didn't both lose to each other.
An update on Tony Curtis' reprising his role as Marvin Lazar on a cosmic scale, though. Celestial Insiders have informed me (no, they don't only talk to Pat Robertson) that Tony is indeed getting the band back together, that he's been trawling far and wide, beyond the dimensions of heaven and earth, in an effort to put together the Bad News Bears in time to make a run at the World Series. AND....here's the real news....well, you knew he would, but he's rounding up ringers. So it's not all going to be down to Kelly and Ahmad and Engleberg this time. Tony's rumored to be working with the players previously depicted in this edition of Laural's Dish (don't they al look like Bad News Bears, and won't they be cool in their Chico's Bail Bonds uniforms?), and
Oscar and Tom will reprise their roles as Mustapha and Jimmy Feldman, respectively.
Tug McGraw. When asked what he was going to do with his World Series bonus in 1969, he responded, "I'll probably spend 90% on wild women and Irish whiskey, and waste the rest." If there really needs to be a Writer's Wing in the Baseball Hall of Fame, he's the only person who definitely belongs in it. He went to high school with Sly Stone, he once fell of the mound on purpose to win a bet with a teenager. His autobiography, Screwball, is without question the greatest baseball book ever written. The chapter entitled "I'm a people and I'm screwed up" trumps Nietzsche, and his syndicated cartoon, Scroogie, included a segment where the protagonist receives a congratulatory phone call from then-President Gerald Ford (probably the only one on the Warren Commission dumb enough to actually believe the "magic bullet" theory). A loud noise ensues:
PRESIDENT FORD: Sorry, I dropped the phone.
SCROOGIE: Ah, don't worry about it, I do that all the time.
PRESIDENT FORD: On your head?
8 October 2010
I've celebrated birthday week, which I'm pleased to say this year had nothing to do with throwing up or getting arrested. Maybe we really do get wiser. Maybe we really are working towards our proper place in the cosmos. It's a real exciting thing to be part of!
I mean, we really are doing something here, right? I remember when I was younger, and thinking I was having these major philosophical/psychological breakthroughs on a near daily basis. And I was. But as I get older it's more the way it all shifts itself and adjusts into focus, into a more solid foundation...how our proper attitude towards the cosmos is neither fear nor self-aggrandizement, but gratitude.
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The people that reported this need to be identified, arrested and redoctrinated. It really is time to give some credence to the sensibilities of consenting adults.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20101006/ten-x-factor-star-kicked-off-show-and-ou-ea4616c.html
I think we should kick ALL X-Factor "stars" out of the UK! This is an excellent precedent...and deserves universal application.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_china_nobel_prize_favorite
Why don't we invade China? Why did we grant them Most Favored Nation trading status in the wake of Tiananmen square? I don't wonder why some people think our professed foreign policy is a bunch of self-serving pompous bullshit.
They do buy a lot of burgers, though.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/nobel_peace_prize
http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/uk-on-cusp-of-second-banking-failure-skynews-5809d3acd179.html?x=0
Not to sound like a broken record, but venture capitalism is supposed to involve an element of risk. We need to let the venturists go about their business, and fail if they need to. It's not a way of life that's of much benefit to the rest of us.
The ones we should have bailed out-still have a small chance of bailing out-are the family farms. That's an honourable way of life worthy of our support.
If something's too big or important to fail, the government should be doing it. That's food, housing, safety and healthcare for all. There shouldn't even be any need for government-funded beer tents for the homeless-though it's a really good idea-because there needn't be any homeless. I care more about people than profit margins.
....or social experiments on the unfortunate...
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http://shine.yahoo.com/event/lifeslittlepleasures/9-signs-youre-happier-than-you-think-2392659/
Hey, I got 7 out of 9! Apparently all I need to be even happier is have a sister and a cup of cocoa! But there are a lot of nice people who write on my Facebook wall on my birthday. Thank you!
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Tony Curtis wasn't one of my heroes, but I was glad that he was there. He had a great sense of comedic timing, and a humorous sense of self. He was a perfect Hollywood guy, in that way. When you saw those big Hollywood celebrations of itself he was one of those guys-like Tom Cruise or Jack Nicholson-who clearly really belonged there, was really doing what he was supposed to be doing, was really into every aspect of the art, game and illusion.
Top 10 Tony Curtis Movies (ones without links I saw a long time ago, so they may be significantly better or worse)
... he had a substntially higher career standard of quality than most, but he was also in his share of terrible films (several crtically acclaimed), and so the 5 worst...
Finally baseball playoffs at a glance, for betting folk. Ranked in order of how likely they are to win the World Series.
1 October 2010
Happy Birthday Mom!!!!! Happy Rocktober ever'bodyl!!!
http://www.tmz.com/2010/09/22/steven-tyler-american-idol-judge-aerosmith-joe-perry-video/
This just too much to pass on. I've always dealt in heroes, and since I was maybe 15 or so-33 years ago-Stephen Tyler has been one of 'em. Of course as the years roll by I've realized that you either have to cut heroes some slack some times, or run out of 'em pretty quick.
It was a very bad, much worse, thing when Stephen's drug addictions diminished him to a mumbling wreck washing around on this side of the bank of the River Styx, or however that worked. That was tragedy and near worse, this is just embarrassing. It's damn near as embarrassing as when Mick Jagger was sitting around practicing being knighted.
Like most embarrassing situations, however, it does not lack any element of humor. I love how Stephen feels both that the other Aerosmith members are hopelessly jealous of his new vocation, and also really wish him well despite saying something rather diff-....those awful jealous things they're saying.
Ok, take him to the farm! (again)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-most-hated-man-in-isr_b_737411.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100928/ts_nm/us_gaza_activists
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/301/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4861
There is a revolutionary counterculture as long as there is Patti Smith. There is hope for peace in the Middle East for so long as Gideon Levy and Abdallah Abu Rahmah are alive. Gandhi smiled.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20100923/tuk-world-s-largest-wind-farm-opens-off-45dbed5.html
Wow, Obama look! Isn't this just the sort of thing you promised to do?! You know, break the terrible fossil fuel addiction and create green jobs at the same time? Coulda been doin' it if you weren't so damn caught up in figuring what-if any-strings should be attached to unsecured and open ended loans to capitalists who can't cut it-even with all the breaks given them by Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush- on the free market.
I wonder what kind of crowds are going to grace the president's campaign trail? Paid to be enthusiastic lots like greet Castro, or mammal shells reflecting the last echoes of a passion gone, like Mondale.
Oh look! Here he is again...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100927/ap_on_hi_te/us_internet_wiretaps
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100927/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama
Oh fucking please. Wiretaps and a longer school year? So this is....what?...brilliant positioning to seize the fascist nerd vote? The Gingrich demographic's in play!
http://criminaljustice.change.org/blog/view/the_government_wont_let_james_stacy_tell_the_truth?me=nl
Ah, the Obama Administration continues its carnival of "Change That Isn't Quite as Advertised."
And yet...somehow he thinks it's our fault that we aren't all excited about him
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_obama_interview
Apparently he's not as smart as he looks. Or maybe we're a little smarter than he's given us credit for. Lack of enthusiasm for the Obama Administration is far from "inexcusable" at this point, it's the only rational response. That all being what it is....I should probably say that I haven't looked at my absentee ballot from Washington, but I imagine I'll put X's next to more Democrats than anything else.
Fatigued, disgusted and disturbed, saturated with American law and politics I moved my family to the United Kingdom in the summer of 2001. I figured Tony Blair was doing a good enough job and I could ignore politics and just vote Labour for the rest of my life. Of course we hadn't even found a place to live when 9/11 happened, and American politics became global politics.
To be fair, American politics and British politics had been running parallel for some time already. If anything Thatcher was even more eager to take things from people who didn't have much to start with and give them to people who already had a bunch of them than Reagan. And 9/11 gave Tony Blair the opportunity to play Bill Clinton, emasculating the peoples' party and rendering it a pale imitation of the corporate party it "replaced" in "power." The result being that I haven't voted Labour once.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20100928/tuk-ed-miliband-to-shun-new-labour-era-dba1618.html
New Labour is dead. Long live whatever killed it.
Ed Miliband is certainly not who I would have picked to lead Labour, but of the choices (or should I say brothers) with any chance to win he was better. He at least understands that banks have functions that go even beyond feeding at the public trough. He once worked for Tony Benn (the sainted icon of the populist wing of Labour), so he's at least been exposed to greatness.
He opposed the Iraq War against his party, his brother and the stupid prime minister; he's saying the right things. He rode to victory in the Labour leadership contest on the back of the trade unions, so the first challenge worth noting is how he explains to them that a lot of their members have nanny state jobs and need to be re-trained to do something worthwhile, like working a wind farm.
If he can handle that, he can handle the corporate media. They're already writing him off as rather a dull wit who has no chance of ever getting elected. That's what they say about anyone who makes them nervous. As Gandhi said, “First they ignore you , then they laugh at you , then they fight you, then you win.” Ed Miliband's on level two (but then again, so is Sarah Palin).
The corporate media says he'll never be Prime Minister, but public opinion polls reflect that if this election was held this morning, he'd be PM this afternoon.
What if the saviour that 21st Western Civilization so desperately needs isn't a black man from the hoods of Chicago after all; but a nerdy raised-Jewish atheist whose father was a Marxist historian, and brother a Blairite simp? Stranger things have happened, and suddenly voting Labour is no longer entirely out of the question.
Went bivvying with Woodcraft Folk in Haldon Forest this past weekend. That's where all these cool pictures are from. For the uninitiated, bivvying derives from the German bewatcht which means something along the lines of "sleeping outside without a tent." So you can either set up something really cool, sad like mine, or just get all bewatcht and come to a complete stop wherever you are.
This Top 10 Bivvying Songs is by no means comprehensive, it's just a list of ten that worked nicely on the jPOD this time around. It's always dumb putting top 10 lists in order, so obviously I'm not going to be able to resist the opportunity of assigning numerical coefficients to songs that are in absolutely random order, so I'll do that, too.
wait, I gorgot...OMIGOSH IT'S TIME FOR THE GREAT AUTUMNAL FASHION LINE & PHOTO SHOOT!!! (to the musical accompaniment of Beethoven's Ninth, obviously) Decrying the commentaries, objections and downright condemnation of those in this family who think they know something about fashion, THIS is what all the cool people are going to be wearing this fall (all photos of and by Clayton Trapp; unauthorized-or any-reproduction will likely be considered grounds for induction into the insanity ward, for which I deny any and all responsibilities including but not limited to, you know, legal ones...)
Casual and fully centered in the skate-punk tradition, this Nordic Ensemble integrates the finer elements of...
counterculture bureaucrat...
...the sophistication of the posturing urban landsman, and the subversive windblown passions of the Arctic tundra. We just hope you're as proud of your new ensemble as we are. THIS IS A FINE SUIT!!!!!
...and now for something a bit more pleasant. Amelia's official Glastonbury 2011 photo, along with a few classics from the archives
Archive
2009
Dish empty ! Now go home
