L'Ombre Et La Lumiere

Ah, la poesie!...and lots of it! as Lemmy Caution said to the Computer Mind of Alphaville when asked whether he had dined.

I do not know whether I have mentioned it, but I do not like buying gifts for the sake of buying gifts. I despise the bric-a-brac and bagatelle mortar of our lives of pseudo-hedonistic Consumerism, where everything is cheap, poorly made, and tawdry.

Therefore, I create my own tawdry gifts, thereby saving a bundle. For Christmas, I buy fancy paper, but I print my own cards on it. I add a poem, or some sort of literary devilment, and all is done. (Apologies to real people of intelligence for any plagiarisms.) So, from Xmas 2006:  

Susan’s tree, enwrapt in needles’ mysterie, 
star visions, shining in the skies; 
gifting-time, either honey or the bee, 
hope-weaver of our lives! 
druid sylvan, motionless in prayer, 
with what eyes, solstice now observing; 
on mountains tops, once and forever, 
ancient feasts partaking? 
Susan’s Christmas place, filled to overflow, 
good food, wine and sweets embroidered; 
weaver of delight, our gifts bestow! 
all our fears occluded!

Cahiers Du Cinema

I you read Les Cahiers du Cinema, I have une histoire, numero 532 exactement, in the Cine-Manga Interactif section. It is the November Cine-Manga and you mave have to rechercher (search) for it, as it may no longer be on the front page. Try it. It is fun.

The Technocracy Has No Clothes!

(c)2004-06 Rand Careaga/salamander.eps

Diebold Voting Machines

If There Is A Bible Code, Then...

of course there is a Quran code. Surprisingly, they seem to differ to the superficial glance, which is pretty much all this generation of mankind is capable of. HOWEVER, I have decided to apply the methods of Bible Code to a series of cellular automata generated by Stephen Wolfram. I shall be assigning letters to various sequences of squares ( one dimension), then sequences considered as two dimensional, and so on. I am not so sure I shall require the Bible Code after getting this far. In future postings, I shall refer to it as Wolfram Semiotics.

Mel Gibson's Apocalypto and Will Durant

Previously, from my big leather chair at the Cinematic Drones Club, I had sipped old scotch whiskey with water and said how I thought that Mr. Gibson's latest film was almost a masterpiece. I still believe it. I have some niggling problems with the time line - classic Maya (?) and Spaniards cannot be what was intended-but poetic license will cover all the chinks in the mortar. However, I have come across some contrary opinions that are decidedly strange. In filmcritic.com we see by Sean O'Connell http://www.filmcritic.com/misc/emporium.nsf/2a460f93626cd4678625624c007f2b46/2e132ed6c5ef09828825723c0075dd17?OpenDocument  

The director precedes Apocalypto with a cryptic quote by philosopher Will Durant: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within." Since the quote has nothing, in context, to do with the film, I’ll assume it refers to Gibson himself.

The critic seems not to have the slightest sense that the film is a critique of violence.

I have read at least 6,000 pages of Mr. Durant's work, along with that of his delightful wife, Ariel. So I am not entirely cold coming into this. Mr. Durant's love of wisdom isn't the point. The point is his quote. People do not know what Mr. Durant was talking about. When he says a civilization destroys itself from within, what does he mean? What are the details and specifics in this destruction? ( I think people are much too familiar with quotes of brainy types being inserted into prominent positions in films and books. We have become so used to it that we tend to think that brainiac quotes are more like allegories with an aura of wisdom...but no particular meaning; certainly no meaning such that we should actually have to read some of the brainiac's works, and then study the works, and then try to understand. No. We have to draw the line somewhere.)

Mr. Durant lived through World War I. I would guess his age to be around 28 to 35 at the outbreak of the war. World War I was total carnage. It profoundly shocked the generations alive at the time. We have become inured to carnage. We dismiss WWI because we believe our own time deserves the Palme d'Or for killing. The illustrious Arnold Toynbee made it very clear in his extensive historical work that one favorite method by which civilizations destroy themselves is violence. Constant wars which deplenish the commonweal; strife within the society between the classes or groups therein; these are the true destroyers of civilization. Hence, the point of the quote is that civilizations will suicide from an overdose of violence.

We see another review in SFgate.com by Mick LaSalle http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/08/DDGSLMPQNF15.DTL&type=movies It's a bloodbath, of course, but to say that isn't enough. Scorsese movies can be a bloodbath, but would Scorsese ever show you a man eating the raw testicles of a wild boar within the first five minutes of screen time? And what about the running motif of beating hearts yanked from living bodies? No, for those excesses one can only turn to Mel.

First, Scorsese would not flinch from such a scene. Scorsese has demonstrated time and again a loving pre-occupation with over-the-top violence. Furthermore, there may have been intent in the juxtaposition of the quote and this early scene: this is a world of violent acts; we kill to eat; but some violence freely chosen will destroy the body rather than nourish it. That is a possible gloss. The reviewers I have chosen have no eyes for subtlety. Neither reviewer had any inkling that the movie was about VIOLENCE itself.
Neither reviewer sensed that there were two arenas: (1) the internal religious violence of a civilization, and (2) a standard chase sequence with its violence. We have become so used to the expression "gratuitous violence" we think all violence is gratuitous. Not so. Try making a war movie without any scenes of violence. What interested me mostly was whether Mr. Gibson had anything to say to us. Was there any allegory linking to our society and its predeliction for War and Violence? I think so. The reviewers above didn't even get a glimpse. And...every one of my friends did not understand it when they saw it. They did some remedial work on Durant afterwards maybe, but they did not get it. I shall always remember sitting in that darkened theater and feeling the growing realization that I was watching a work of genius.

The Buck Stops Here

I have been reading about George W. Bush (GWB), his papers, his library, and Harry S Truman (HST).The discussion about GWB and his library centers on the unusual amount of classified material, and the war in Iraq.Some articles have been written about GWB and HST, both unpopular in their time.

It is the job of the president to make decisions, whether these decisions be popular or unpopular. Both GWB and HST had to make hard decisions unpopular in their times. HST's turned out to be good and GWB believes his will be.

I almost became sympathethic to GWB. I was actually moved.However, GWB made his decisions in arrogance.I needed to remember why I thought the War in Iraq was an appallingly immoral act: the incredible and monstrous arrogance which accompanied it.

Shock and Awe Remember? It was Shock and Awe. Our killing of the guilty and the innocent was Shock and Awe.

The War was named as if it were a version of Grand Theft-Auto. It was going to be a replay of Gulf War I. It was Gulf War II. Only bigger and better.

Every Neoconservative worth his grain of salt was heard crowing about how quick the war would be, how painless the war would be, how cheap the war would be.

Yet any fool knew in his heart this was a crude deception.

Then Mission Accomplished. And GWB danced a Caligula-like jig upon the deck of an aircraft carrier. (Amazingly enough, an ex-marine member of the Greybeards Club saw this and immediately turned against the President back in 2003. He said it reminded him strikingly of a railroad car in Compiegne and a doctored newsreel. He did not mean a parallel between GWB and any other historic figure. He meant the attitudes were repugnant to him.The fighting men yell and get drunk with victory. This war was nothing for the people at home. They were not inconvenienced.Why this display? He said the display was to re-inforce and establish the equivalence between 9-11 and Iraq. We suffered nothing from the Iraq War at that time. Hence, the only reason for a victory dance was 9-11. At this point, he saw through the lie. Those guys at the Greybeards are way too smart for me.)

And then the 40 million dollar Inauguration. And they danced while the innocent were killed. No. I do not see any resemblance between HST and GWB. I had a professor once whose dad used to play poker with HST. He said HST had an odd game wherein deuces, treys, jacks and queens were wild...mainly as a way of spreading the wealth around. GWB only looked for the well-being of the rich. I see no resemblance between HST and GWB.

MIL Is For Millions

Fantastic returns to these armaments conglomerates have been reflected in the continuing jump in the value of their shares or stocks in the Wall Street: "Shares of U.S. defense companies, which have nearly trebled since the beginning of the occupation of Iraq, show no signs of slowing down. . . . All the defense companies-with very few exceptions-have been doing extremely well with mostly double-digit earnings growth. . . . The feeling that makers of ships, planes and weapons are just getting into their stride has driven shares of leading Pentagon contractors Lockheed Martin Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp., and General Dynamics Corp. to all-time highs. . . ."[3]

( http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_prof__is_070120_must_read_3a_why_isn_t.htm )

War is good for business. This much we have learned.

The military-industrial-complex [would] cause military spending to be driven not by national security needs but by a network of weapons makers, lobbyists and elected officials. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. - General Smedley D. Butler

A racket. The Age of War as a Racket.

It's all beginning to come together; the Christiano-wiseguys, the cosa-nostrafication of Business.

If the President is ever impeached, it will be for violating the RICO Act.

Coffee, Danish, and Cartoons

It's very late to talk about Danish cartoons, but the topic did come up at the Greybeards Club the other morning. There were some desultory remarks about freedom of speech or freedom of sketch, not backing into buzz saws, and the like. I told them the story of the time I was in the UK and Salmon Rushdie invited me over for tea and scones. Now there's a story for ya!

The Terror Of Frylock

By now you must know that the Boston Security people arrested those responsible for:

and this was on an Ad Campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force

Frylock is the Fries guy. When asked to comment, he said " No Comment."

Borgesian Bloopers 2

In the site Long Story Short Pier there is a page

http://longstoryshortpier.com/2004/04/08/memery

and upon this page is a game of sorts, played according to the following rules:
1 Grab the nearest book.
2 Open the book to page 23.
3 Find the fifth sentence.
4 Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

So I decided to do it.
The page was almost 2 years old and the fun had faded long ago for the dear departed players, who are now scattered to the four winds, but I decided to play it. So I went for Borges. I used the first Argentinian edition of Spanish-English published in Buenos Aires by Emece Editores, S.A. in 1965. On page 23, the fifth sentence begins:

" The afternoon was intimate, infinite. He lay back against the tree and picked up the book from the grass. He opened randomly, his gaze falling on page 23, where a marginal arrow pointing to the fifth sentence said 'post to Hsi P'eng' ."

Close...but no cigar.
--

Appliances Of The Future

This one is the Military-Industrial-Lobbyist Complex brain prosthesis.

It is called "Resistance is Futile!"

Why I Hate Ayn Rand

I got up in the middle of the night, scuffed my way into the kitchen, and stumbled across an article about the Super Bowl. http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4895 The Joy of Football: The Super Bowl Offers a Too-Rare Celebration of Goal-Achievement To make it even better, the author is described: Thomas A. Bowden, author of The Enemies of Christopher Columbus, is a writer for the Ayn Rand Institute. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Thomas A. Bowden practices law in Baltimore, Maryland. My mouth watered as I read, checking the blades of my mental scalpels to whet them to unusual acuity. Unfortunately, the article is rather brilliant. Blast! Oh, God of my fathers, that my opponents should be brilliant, and my friends be such dullards! Note well the following paragraph ( if you are happy enough to read th'article): Sports offer as close to a universal value language as we have left. The sense of brotherhood that sports fans feel makes it possible for complete strangers to find themselves happily discussing the latest exploits (or ruefully noting the recent failures) of their favorite team. It is my sad observation that Religion by its very nature is intended to be that universal language of values. And it has abdicated its position to Sports. Extremely interesting from my point of view. We will hear more of this. I shall save Mr. Bowden's article and ponder it. Oh, and by the way, I do not hate Ms. Rand, God bless her soul. (It was all a subterfuge, using the name of a popular icon to get you, the readers, into my gingerbread Blog. Tomorrow I shall entitle ' Why I Hate Stuart Erwin.' )

The Washington Neo-Conservative Memorial Design 5

This design is the Condoleeza Rice inspired Barber Shop, known to Beltway wags as Secretary Powell's close shave.

...Now That Football's Done

It was some Romantic poem; something, something, in the Sun; something, something, what's to do now that football's done? I think it was written by Sir Walter Raleigh. By circumventing 99.9% of the build up to the actual game, I found it vaguely enjoyable.

I began to regret that I had seen absolutely nothing of the NFL this season. I found Prince to be a bore. The special effects of rain were pretty darn good, however. If I were a performer, I do not think I would encourage the support team to do rain effects. It would be like encouraging my Foley editor to experiment with flatulence noises. It would come back sooner or later and bit you somewhere unpleasant

The closest I came to pre-game hoopla was reading Joe Namath rate the Quarterbacks, then subjecting his interview to a Bible Code analysis.

Amazingly, the result was " INDIAN CITY BY TWELVE "!

Since 'Indianapolis' is literally Greek for "Indian + City", this looked like a hit.

I went to dinner at my brother's. He is a fine cook. We had a very good pot roast which had marinated for 4 hours in a beer and red wine marinade. Heady stuff. They live in a condo high-rise on the 25th floor. I have a fear of heights, so I shy away from the windows. It was a cold day-about -15 degrees wind chill-and the snow showers zipped through the sky like my fingers at a sushi buffet. We spoke of all things. My brother spoke of our society's nasty habit of defining a process by its failures.

For example, the mistakes and problems of doctors lead to malpractice to high insurance premiums, resulting in a shortage of Obstetricians: the practice of medicine is delimited by its failures, not its successes.

I think a similar process works through the entire national subconscious. It is our failure in Vietnam that haunts us, and thereby is present to mind more than the good things we've done.

World War II is the exception that proves the rule, for it is now so long ago, that the present generations cannot claim it as their own. It was a victory of a golden past

And we cannot define our objectives.

What was our objective in Iraq? Weapons of Mass Destruction.

They did not exist. What was our objective then?

Getting the really, really bad guy in prison.

O.K. Got him. What then?

Export freedom and democracy.

O.K. What then?

Try to keep from getting killed..

There were no objectives in any rational sense of the word; they were just steps in a series of blunders.

Look now at Health Care. What are our 5 main objectives in a Health Care Program?

We don't know.

Maybe, just maybe we will say all kids should have health care, and maybe, just maybe, we shall actually accomplish something by 2012. Maybe.Do you think the present bunch of leaders and would-be leaders can bring Health Care off?Do you think the leaders and would-be leaders can do anything about Social Security?

The future is in the young. I do not think anybody over 30 has escaped being degraded into a useless, resentful ideologue in search of something to believe in.

Now the bad news...

Oceania, 'Tis For Thee!

The opening words of the anthem of Oceania, the bloc in which Winston Smith finds his sorry self in the novel 1984.

In 1984, there is a state of ongoing war. The three slogans of the ruling Party are:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

We are in the time of troubles foreseen by Dwight David Eisenhower, who warned of in his Farewell Address of the Military-Industrial Complex. The objective of the Military-Industrial Complex is War.

Not surprising, War is good for the economy. It always has been. It still is. War is the ultimate in Consumption activity.

We are on the brink of the Era of Constant War.

In http://blog.mondediplo.net/2006-12-17-Carter-Israel-et-l-apartheid

we see:

Dans un entretien donné au Washington Times du 13 décembre, sous le nom « General Foresees(sic) "Generational War" against terrorism », le général Mark O. Schissler, directeur adjoint de la guerre contre le terrorisme au sein du bureau de planification de l’état-major américain, fait part de ses réflexions. « Nous sommes dans une guerre générationnelle. Vous pouvez essayer de combattre l’ennemi où il est et où il vous attaque, ou les empêcher en défendant votre patrie (...) Mais cela n’est pas suffisant pour les arrêter. Nous devons briser la chaîne et cela signifie l’idéologie. Nous devons montrer les erreurs de la pensée islamiste extrémiste. » Un de mes problèmes, ajoute-t-il, est de savoir comment « maintenir la volonté des Américains, maintenir cette volonté à travers le temps ». Cette guerre sera longue parce que « notre ennemi est engagé pour une lutte longue, ils sont complètement engagés sur un plan de 50 ou de 100 ans ».

This translates to General Mark Schissler saying the War is inter-generational. Our enemy in the War is set on a duration of 50 to 100 years!

( the original link was in the Washington Times, but they seem to have seen fit to remove it.)

I concur that we must fight against extremists. I deny this is a War. One of the determininants of the start of the War in Iraq was the need to have something that actually looks like a war, not just chasing a bunch of Wahhabis through the mountains.

We must fight against the Military-Industrial-Lobbyist cabal, the MIL. We must fight to define the scope of action, to define what is a war and what is not.

People will not support WAR expenditures for things that are obviously not war. The MIL created Iraq for this reason, out of many other reasons. For the people to support the government, the government must give them something that looks like war. Our generation knows the difference. All the generations gathered here today reading know the difference.

However, the generations of the future will have been degraded by the MIL and will not know what a real war was like. Their wars will be blunderings about the globe to enrich the MIL.

Super Duper Bowl

I had intended a light-hearted post today, something medium length and bubbly, just right for wrenching a smile from the lips of my readers who anticipate the Super Bowl this evening with chips and dips stars in their eyes, 3-alarum chili in their loins, and a variety of horrid gut-busting delicacies. I am going to my brother's for dinner. I shall eat well. I was asked if I wanted to watch the game. I declined with fervor. I used to watch the game. My interest in football ended when the local franchise did the Ground-Hog Day bit once too often; team sucks, need new coach,who will be new coach?, we have all confidence in newbie, honeymoon is over, team sucks. Baseball was destroyed in 1993 when owners and players joined in destruction. The intention of replacement players who were not good enough, thus assuring that when the regular players return, no one team will have too great an advantage, was an affront to Sparky Anderson. He would rather sit out the season than insult Baseball by a charade. The owner gave him one more season- for appearances-and he received his walking papers. In the Hall of Fame, Sparky wears a Cincinnati hat. This isn't Cincinnati. The last game I attended was inter-league, the Tigers were awful and I went to see Sammy Socia. It was a bright, hot July day. I went to buy 2 bottles of water. While I was in line waiting, Sammy Socia hit a home-run. That was too bad. Then he hit his second home run of the game. How long was I in that line? Long enough. The owner had such contempt that he fielded a terrible team and he ran a terrible park. I never watched professional sports since. This last year, the Tigers were in the World Series. I watched nothing. I knew the name of one player, Punch Rodriguez, and this was wrong, the correct sobriquet being "Pudge". I suppose it would have mattered had I been in a gaggle of fans waiting outside the locker room, clutching a brand new baseball in my sweaty hands, yelling for "Punch!" to sign it.

The Silence Of The Lambs

I have an eerie feeling that they will shoot me during a demonstration protesting the extension of hostilities to Iran. The price of gas will be a non-issue; if you have to ask how much it is, you can't afford it! We will walk to the protest...and it will be right down on the corner...right next to Jenny's Coffee Clutch. And there I shall experience true mortality. The white light I see will be Jenny's flashlight. "Is the old ___ still breathin' ?" Boulos will be there, head bent to my chest. "No." A tear in his eye. Thanks, Boulos, I hardly knew ye. "Bring him 'round back." she will say, wiping a sharp deer dressing knife on her bloody apron. "Can't even afford horsemeat now...damn gas prices."

We Probably Gave Powell the Wrong Speech

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,462782,00.html  
The former chief of the CIA's Europe division, Tyler Drumheller, discusses the United States foreign intelligence service's cooperation with Germany, the covert kidnapping of suspected terrorists and a Bush adminstration that ignored CIA advice and used whatever information it could find to justify an invasion of Iraq.

This article is a truly interesting read. I mean, we gace the Secretary of State the wrong speech? I guess that mistakes indeed were made.
At this point, one is supposed to smack one's forehead and fulminate about the Bush regime which indeed should be changed, but what's the point of that? We pretty much got what we asked for. And if we did not take the time to see the little man dancing behind the curtain in his flak jacket, operating all the controls of our Oz-like fugue state following the September attack.
I do not mean to diminish the importance of the Action Against Terror. The recent events in Birmingham, England demonstrates that a goodly number of evil mad men do indeed exist in our world and whom we had been hitherto able to ignore. Now we cannot.

However, the unsuccessful attempt to chivvy Osama bin Laden from his lair in Afghanistan and to capture him should have been a wake-up call to us. Slipped through our fingers? It never ceases to amaze me that when we beat the drums to war, we are wise and competent; when things go wrong, mistakes were made, we cannot know everything, the body-armor was in the mail to Iraq, and so on, and so on.

If Sam bin Laden had been apprehended and incarcerated, we might have thought the war was over.

That could not be allowed to happen.

Therefore, Sam must be allowed to slip away, and a REAL war must started.

Once again, I caution you that I am not necessarily implying that things were done intentionally. Bad stuff and stupid stuff may occur unintentionally. However, the bad results of evil done unintentionally is just as bad as that done with intent. The victim of murder and the victim of manslaughter 1 see no distinction; only the judicial system does.

At which point, we come to the object of the posting.

)(=)(=)(=)(=)(=)( : : : : ( an emoticon termed "the stipled-back centipede" that is used to indicate long, arduous detours from the point. particularly note the tracks left behind.)

My three nephews, who have names, but whom I call 6, 6, and their brother 6, have asked me why I was so positive that Saddam Hussein had no WMDs. I mean, right from the get-go I had been adamant about it. Did I possess some arcane knowledge? Or did the fact that my Arabic teacher had a sister who had a niece whose next-door neighbor had a daughter married to a second-cousin of a nephew of Tarik Aziz have anything to do with it? Scarey. I don't know. I mean, I do go to the same church as Tarik Aziz, meaning that he is a Christian - and don't think he wasn't soundly given the raspberries about that at the meetings at Saddam Central! - and I think he was the same denom as I. Now they are trying to prove he shot blokes and mollies, which, come to think of it, is something a Christian might do.

All I can say about the WMDs ( or ' WiMDoos' as I have taken to calling them...you can not take me to task for this macabre jocularity, for I have spent my entire life under the threat of Wimdoos, and if I want to crawl under my school desk to protect myself from the blast and pray that God spare us from wimdoos, it is my right!) is that I paid a great deal of attention during 2002 and 2003. I relied on the BBC, the Guardian, some Belgian paper dont j'oublie le nom, Al Ahram from Cairo, and The Christian Science Monitor and my local Daily Bugle.
I was fortunate here, for most of the US media were co-opted as well as being embedded. The truth was very hard to discern for news readers and viewers. I never watched FOX, except as an 'exception' that proves the rule type thingey: find something, read, see what FOX says, if FOX says things which fly in the face of all reason ( freequently the case, unfortunately), then I have 'proofed' the rule...or the proposition...or the matter under scrutiny.

At some point, probably after the UN inspectors had been there quite a long time and repeatedly said that they found nada, I found no evidence anywhere for WMDs. I repeat, everything given out by our government had absolutely no proof of anything, and Secretary Powell's speech to the UN - and I recall Adlai Stevenson during the Missile Crisis-would have gotten a 'C' at best for 'Show and Tell'.
Sometimes my certainty faltered, but I never wavered. So I was right. Big deal. My parents were convinced in the opposite direction, and they still believe the Wimdoos are there, hidden under some mountain in the north-east, probably next to Frederick Barbarossa, King Arthur, and some other fabled characters, waiting for the fullness of time to return.

My father, when pressed to it, says if they'd give some financing and some hi-tech metal detectors like those used on the beach to find coins and bottlecaps, he'd go and find the WMDs, that is, if he were 10 years younger. He is contemptuous of this generation. His generation fought and beat the Third Reich and the Japanese Empire in less time than the Iraqi war has lasted, then for dessert they fought the Cold War.

Maybe if we all just learned to live together with war. War gets a lot of bad press now. Back in '02 it was a fresh, young ingenue, just starring in its first big role. Now it's a tired, evil, jaded virago.
Learn to love War. According to the Vice President, we shall have this one at least for 3 or 4 administrations. They did not tell us that back in '02. That would have ruined the surprise.

Winter Of The Heart

 Jeremy Irons and Jpohn Gielgud in Brideshead Revisited

In the end of January, the snow blows in from the North, howling up the hill where we live, coming like the white sands of winter upon those same lusty winds that bear the brittle grains of summer’s dust. It comes so thickly that it obscures the firmament, filling over the grey tent stretching from east to west with a uniform of white.

The world has lost its horizon, undifferentiated foreground and back. There is no hand in front of your face, and small, well-considered steps become fearful plunges into the unknown. Angry swarms surround the left-over Christmas greens, mixed species, baccate red and undessicate, forming balustrades upon the balcony and atop the antique terra cotta pots in whose smiles are sequestered the long-lived pansies that had flourished through the wet holiday and well into the new year.

It is then we view Brideshead Revisited and The Jewel in the Crown. We turn to a better world whose fancy will not decrease. Each episode opens with its musical theme, the same pictures of the past march by, and we go into that labyrinth of color and sound, and we dance with the ancient mysteries of love and hate, war and peace, food and drink, and man’s humanity and inhumanity within a world spinning out of its orb; all being in the 20th century, all being at the end of empire.

 Perhaps we are sitting in on the beginnings of empire. Many of our countrymen believe our country is just beginning its imperial march. I tell my wife I think it is more like Athens, an Athens no longer spiritually creative, and NATO the Delian League. The greatness of the West in North America started just before 1500 and reached a high point around the writing of the Declaration of Independence, a span just short of 300 years.

This zenith lasted until the Second World War, which saw the great evil and the great good come together in a war like none before as happened in Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Like Tolkien’s world, the world began to run down and unwind after the great war. The greatest moral achievement left was the ending of the Cold War: the refusal by the USA and the USSR to destroy each other and the world. Then the Peace Spring...which in retrospect appears to have been Peace Autumn.

At this point, no one cheered. We looked around like moles thrust into the sunlight, and we sought for greater wars in which to spend as much as we could, and pass the bill to future generations. Now, as we watch Brideshead, the world is looking again to engage in thermo-nuclear stand-off, and we all seem to stutter about the important issues like Anthony Blanche in a louche bar.

As we watch Jewel, General Dyer fires on the defenseless at Jallian Walla Bagh, Gandhi dies (to be re-born next year at this time), there is rioting in the cantonments, and Rose Cottage passes into a mythic past – yet we will dance again to swing records on Lily Chatterjee’s victrola. Each episode closes with its music. This time the music bears the undertone of the passing of enchantment; the death of the Muse. And it never fails to sadden us.
--

Father Ghraib And Mother Gitmo 2

Another example of the idiosyncratic, yet brilliant, poetry of Richard Cheney.

We can do more than one thing,

We have removed the scorpion's sting;

Yet Al Qaida lies scheming.

Old man Sam of bushy beard,

will by Bush his beard be sheared...

and of scum an ethnic cleaning.

That which is not dead may eternal lie,

And with strange aeons, even death may die;

In his lair, Cheney waits, dreaming.

This small bit of verse was discovered in a trash can in front of the Naval Observatory.

Neo-Conservative Books 1 The NecroNeocon

The NecroNeocon is a Lovecraftian tome consisting of the finest works of the greatest NeoCon minds. A definite plus to any library! With notes in the hand of Abdul Alhazred himself!

It is said to contain the names of 600,000 to 700,000 of the dead ( De Inferis Quaerite ! ), or of only 30,000 to 32,000, depending on whom you ask. Incredible? You betcha!

What The Heck Is Writing?

I cannot yet answer the question posed in the title. However, I am able to say that when I came to write my review of the film Notes On A Scandal
( http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2007/01/film-review-notes-on-scandal.html ),
I had a very different approach to it relying on my interpretation of the grammar of the Imagery and the grammar of my Emotions.

I was quite content to accept the cinematic observation of Dench's character that the Blanchett character was shallow. As soon as I touched upon this in writing, I realized this was a stupid, self-serving evaluation of Sheba's character. And I mean ' as soon as'! It was as if one form of consciousness- adequate for observation, recall, and the interpretation limited to Images and Emotions- gave way to another form of consciousness - one more attuned to understanding, making distinctions, seeing connections more subtle than those easily discernible by the Logic of Images.

The film began to bear an uncanny resemblance to The Queen, a film where the interest of the tabloid press and the public seems to be unnaturally focused on the sensational and the lurid, rather than on the good works of the individual who is unfortunate enough to fall under this particularly coarse lensed microscope.

In The Queen, Lady Diana is the focus of the emotions of the crowd and the press. One feels sure that it was not her labours in the field of outlawing land mines that led to the more intense outpourings of grief. It was something else; something evocative of someone's guilt, someone's shame, someone's failure, someone's ending of innocence, something of the long and final trek through the tunnels under the surface streets of Paris where wolves are behind and the unearthly light is at the far, other end. All due to writing. Very neat.

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The Washington Neo-Conservative Memorial Design 4

This design is called the "Richard Cheney"

It is intended to evoke a plaintive wail that the media does not cover all the good that is going on on Iraq, outweighing the slaughter of innocents by far.

In Iraq, mistakes were made, but on the whole things are just dandy.

This a soupcon of the Military-Industrial-Lobbyist complex in the signs labelled 'money orders' and 'check cashing'.

The lottery sign is a reference to Borges' story 'The Babylonian Lottery'.

Faith And Reason

From The Times Online, The Times Literary Supplement, January 17,2007, article named
 " A Deadly Certitude"

Alas, Islam turned against science in the twelfth century.
The most influential figure was the philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali, who argued in The Incoherence of the Philosophers against the very idea of laws of nature, on the ground that any such laws would put God’s hands in chains.
According to al-Ghazzali, a piece of cotton placed in a flame does not darken and smoulder because of the heat, but because God wants it to darken and smoulder. After al-Ghazzali, there was no more science worth mentioning in Islamic countries."

Notice that a Muslim philosopher uses Reason to modify Faith. The Religion itself is not inimical to Science, rather Reason is used to do the dirty work!

Then on Monday in http://www.firstthings.com/ , in an article named  "Reason and Pop Atheism"  we see:

"de Lubac might seem to be elevating the place of reason here to such a height that he ends up conceding reason’s right to judge the things of God—the very procedure he found so objectionable in Descartes and Kant. "

This is a demonstration of a recurring theme: Faith is not opposed to Science and Reason. If you believe a Faith to be inimical to Reason, look at what Reason did to Faith in mediaeval Islam. Al-Ghazzali used Reason to make judgements about the works of Allah. This was a fundamental error on his part:  the works may be necessarily good, but the complexity of the process cannot be divined by Al-Ghazzali, neither in his inquiry nor in his lack of inquiry.
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Emoticons For The Impaired 2

8 )

name: The Buddy Holly

alternates: The Drew Carey, The Robert Q. Lewis

used to connote: general myopic friendliness with large frames.

: < (

name: The Eric ( from Lon Chaney's The Phantom of the Opera )

used to connote: Don Juan Triumphant, subterranean opera, I'm feeling ugly today,...

-( : {

name: The Kaiser Wilhelm ( non-plussed, neither unhappy nor happy; sort of "Was ist's...?"

used to connote: ambition, hybris, sort of a "Die Welt ist mein Feld" type of bonhomie.

}{ }{ }{ }{

name: The Belly Dancers

alternates: The Hula Dancers, The Chicken Dancers, etc.

used to connote: depends on the type of dance; if chicken dance, used to imply extreme discomfort, usually accompanied by fountains o' chocolate and cheap bubbly.

I'll See The Bible Code When It Comes Out In Mishnah

Recently, quite recently, yesterday, in fact, I decided to look into the structure of statements dealing with future events.

Among such statements are those of prophesy and those foretelling the future.

This brings us to the Bible Code

To be a spoilsport, I shall say right now I consider this particular bit of idolatry of the modern age to be moronic.

The adepts of the Bible Code are creating an entire new Torah based on their slice and dice Torah. Of course, there is need of new Mishnah for the new Torah. And they are creating the new Mishnah, too!

I came across this bit of doggerel on http://www.biblecodedigest.com/page.php/236 .

It deals with Mel Gibson. Mr. Gibson was not in the Bible until he had the misfortune to mouth off while drunk. Once he did that, his fate was sealed. Amazingly he turns up hidden in the Bible, and in an unfortunate light.

I am shocked!

1. Skip=3,806 – Main skip 147 letters The ones that made me, the mob, was blackened by me (one hundred are his Gods). The one who fixed outside1Give (tell) it right! Please cut off 60! 2 Comes3 an honest, a whole hearted4 person to Gibson: "Guilty one! 5 Are the Nation6 and G-d a joke? Does a heap of ruins a place to permanently place water? No!" (That is) His line! It is their Anger! The story of creation7 the guilty one will negate (refuse to accept)! He placed permanently, and he insulted from a record8. Ah, you are in a heap of ruins. It is a beautiful hotel that is a heap of ruins (that is Kosher). Hashem: "Mel is rotten." It has to be said9 G-d is one10. My God! Hashem is the one that kills11. He killed; or, another interpretation12: "because Hashem is G-d."

Now you see why further elucidation is required. Quite the code. Apparently the idols speak in pidgin.

Remember when it comes to this process, there may not be vowels marked in the text. The choice of vowels appears sometimes to be up to the discretion of the adept.

Furthermore, remember that the letters themselves are a linear sequence of letters; there is no punctuation, there is no separation of letters into words: that must be done by the adept.

Therefore, if I see a sequence ( from the above): M L S R T T N.

This reads " Mel is rotten". I could just as well read it " MuLeS, RoTTeN" or " MoLeS aRe Too TiNy".

Even if the vowels are included, we are very close to " MeLeS Rotten" wherein we "correct" the "i" occurring after "L" and change it to "e". This gives us the statement that the river Meles, where Homer was born, is rotten - probably uttered by a schoolboy studying the Iliad.

I often wonder why my parents wouldn't let me have my own golden calf to pray to.

In Praise Of Jimmy Carter

I am honored to have been a countryman of Jimmy Carter.

I do not consider it an honor to have any such association with his critics.

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Emoticons For The Impaired

There was a great flurry recently about emoticons, those little bits of type confused with the ancient qwerty-arts into living symbols.

For example, we may see     
:)    (sideways) smiling face. This is not only 'smiling face', but may indicate the writer is in a good mood, the writer is smiling, the writer may be enjoying a good laugh over something (although we would expect :) = lol which would be smiling face, classic Maya glyphic speech indicator, and 'lol' meaning 'laugh out loud' .)

Now, if you are up to speed, you will have noticed that I ended my paragraph above with a 'knowing wink'; i.e.
; )  

By using italics, we can create " smarmy wink", or "wink, wink, nudge":
 .)

Having had discussions about President A. of Iran recently, and having actually had a visit from a Farsi speaking individual who translated the infamous "wiped off the map" quote in a proper manner for us of the Greybeard Roundtable, we noticed a lot of noise in the air and on the net about Mr. Hitler. It was primarily things like "He's just like Hitler!" "Yer freakin' crazy, he is not!" "You're a Hitler!" "Am not! You are!" and so on. We decided to provide the proper emoticon for the "Yer a Hitler. No, you are" kind of interchange. This would provide everyone the proper punctuation for ending an insightful discussion into Hitler parallels. We submit the following punctuational emoticon:  
 // : =(            This is the "Sad Hitler". You may use the "Happy Hitler" for stronger effect.

The Washington Neo-Conservative Memorial Design 3

This one is called "The Douglas Feith"

It is also termed "Iraq-Hawks", with a slight reference to "Nighthawks" diner scene.

The idea was "We buy [oil], you [Iraqees] fry." The builders got it wrong, and we have to read "You buy [our notion of democracy], we fry [your sorry a.] " photo: tEdGuY46

NeoCats and NeoDogs

I have been reading about the Neoconservatives. It seems most of them had been Neoliberal at one time. They only changed the trappings of compulsion.

Their belief in the State Behemoth imposing its will on the country and the world is the same, whether under the aegis of Liberalism or Conservatism. Neoconservatives and Neoliberals are power-brokers.
The difference between them and a Serbian General is that the Neos know when to stop the blood-letting...at least, they used to know. Sometimes it goes out of control.

 They are totally the same in the reality that YOU do not matter one whit. Only the allegorical YOU matters, whether you are John Q Public, or you are the forgotten man, or you are the feminist, or whatever the label they apply to you and duct-tape across your mouth... No, we do not matter to them.

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Z News January 18 2007

"Z News" is end of time news, like Z, or Zed, at the end of an alphabetic sequence. It is not a funny rendition of Parisian news, "Leesten to zee News at 11:00!", instead of Les Nouvelles or Les Informations. My humor is not necessarily above a little Pepe LePew, but not this time. And , come to think of it, it really isn't "new" at all. I mean, all these things are going to be tedious repetitions of things we've seen before; nihil novi sub sole ( nothing new under the sun) and semper ubi sub-ubi (always wear under-wear). (1) An administration official, Charles Stimson, displays arrogance, even though they know by now that arrogance should not be worn after a catastrophe. "A Pentagon official who criticised US law firms for representing detainees at the Guantanamo Bay US base in Cuba has apologised for his remarks. " He also tacitly threatened them, but read it all at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6270783.stm (2) Israel vs Palestine, Round 4,567: Although Israel withdrew from Gaza more than a year ago, its control over the lives of Palestinians there is in some ways even tighter than before, a new report by an Israeli human rights organisation says http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6270331.stm and the Israeli HR organization: Gisha: Center for the Legal Protection of Freedom of Movement is an Israeli not-for-profit organization that seeks to protect the fundamental rights of Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories by imposing human rights law as a limitation on the behavior of Israel’s military. http://www.gisha.org/english/index_eng.htm (3) Doomsday Clock The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has "added climate change to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as the greatest threats to humankind. " http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6270871.stm Therefore, they have pushed the minute hand on the good old Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight. Now, there is considerable controversy about climate change and whether it may be remedied. My own approach- which I frequently tell people and which has given me a well-deserved staus as a crank-is to advise people: "Ask those who have died from it!" ( whether 'it' is climate change, or the Iraq war, or homelessness, fill in the blanks.) (4) Nouri Al-Maliki, the present PM of Iraq, wants more weaponry. Hitherto, the US has feared the extra weaponry would just fall into the hands of the insurgents. The previous ruler of Iraq also requested and received numerous weapons from the USA. Maliki wants the same. Maliki probably is the same. The only thing I know about Al-Maliki is that the President thinks he's the boy. Excellent. Nouri Al-Maliki will go the same way as Saddam Hussein within 8 years.

Piranesi Meditations

Piranesi did a series of drawings entitled I Carceri, The Prisons.

"Our assumptions always become a prison to our possibilities..."

Our assumptions and our belief systems, as we foppishly call them. Belief systems, indeed! The quote continues,

"...,and the mid-nineteenth century's assumptions about the role of women in society turned the world of intelligent, thoughtful women everywhere into a grim, dank dungeon from which they yearned most desperately to escape."

Bram Djikstra, Idols of Perversity, Oxford University Press, 1986, New York. 

How many people today are in prison? How many whose lives are lived in a grim, dank dungeon? How many desperately yearn to escape? We are imprisoned just as the soul of Jacob Marley was, doomed to drag the chains of our assumptions, belief systems, and world views to our graves. Contrary to the opinion of many people, we are not best served by striving to create coherent "belief systems", for any coherence we achieve is on the surface; we do not go deeply into the realms of the soul. Faith is better. Faith is tougher.

Film Review: Notes On A Scandal

Great acting, directing, camera; loved the Foley( as usual). Never bored. Either repelled, fascinated, or enchanted.

Story disturbs on many levels.
Judi Dench plays a Hannibal Lechter of the soul. Bride of Dracula, really. Cate Blanchett's character, Sheba, is portrayed as if David Lynch had been a guest doing a bit of cameo directing. The character is profound, yet presented as shallow. Judi Dench's Sappho from Hell character, who is the obsessive note writer, describes her as shallow, but a cursory survey of the elements in Sheba's life compells us to denounce this as a lie.
The entire film is based on our complicity with the Denchian Sappho and we are forced to focus on Sheba's sin with a 15 year-old boy and not see anything else. Sin and sensuality is the only thing that is not shallow. All is ennuie, all is accidie except the pleasant stroking of naked skin.

The story is in its essence a frantic romp of sensuality and sin. I got the frenetic feeling of an anti-burlesque A Nasty Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, everything occurring at a fevered pitch and a serio-comedy where Plautus bared his fangs. It was either Sylvester Stallone on Shakespearean English, or it was Two Gentlemen of Verona as interpreted by Thomas Harris (The Silence of the Lambs).

You know, I just may go see it again. (Now that I forced myself to write about it, I feel as if I have a glimmer of understanding. Note this important point: Understanding comes from a variety of conscious behaviors. We need not merely view, we must write; we need not solely write, we need to act, to feel, to do all those things which renders us human and our understanding divine.)

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Report From The Committee: Ground Hog Day

The new army of the new Iraq does not have enough experience nor tradition nor understanding of our agenda to effectively perform what is expected of it.
It is mainly Shi'a. It will not be effective against the Shi'a forces.

The army reflects the population at large; it is 80% Shi'a. There are Sunnis who do not wish to leave their home provinces where they feel they are needed to protect their Sunni people. Under fire, it will unfortunately break asunder and all will run to their tribes. They do not believe the fiction of the national state. We do. It is something we learn as children. They do not. They would need a number of years of indoctrination in order to view the world through our eyes.

Therefore, I propose we institute a Ground Hog Day scenario for the new Iraq. This should be firmly based on the film with Bill Murray. Not Surge; Ground Hog Day. Not Cut and Run; Ground Hog Day. You have gotten the idea. Every day that the forces of good fail, give it a try again on the morrow. Try different ways to assassinate Moqtada As-Sadr. Try to execute some people and get it right even in the eyes of the corrupt. I reckon that 10 years, real time, would be enough under the Ground Hog Day scenario to turn things around in Iraq. We cannot lose, for failure would mean the end of our illusions. And those are more dear than any lives. Give it a try in Iran. If the ground hog sees his shadow, there will be only six more weeks of nuclear winter.

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My Readers Weigh In

I went into Jenny's Coffee Clutch yesterday. I was alone. It was not a day for a meeting of the Greybeards Club. Boaz and Boulos, two of the workers, found time to talk to me about the old Blogstead. Jenny herself, whose real name is Hanaan, or the sympathetic one, but she is not the antitype of her name, I assure you!-watched us with cats' eyes; to us, to the clock, us, clock,..tick...tock. I asked B & B whether they'd better be working. They laughed and said let the 'ajuuz stare all she wanted! (They did not say this loudly enough that the 'old crone' referred to actually could hear them, however.) They picked some paper up from the floor. There were three crumpled daily local newsy blurbs that infest this type of eatery, stating what shows on which A.M. radio station, some F.M., country music, news of the Whirled, and so on. Mixed in with them was a print-out of my Blog! This is not as nice as it sounds; remember that these papers were on the floor in an advanced state of crumplitude. "How nice." I said, meaning anything but. "We got a question...", Boulos said, and placed the print-out flat on the table and ironed it flat with his hands. He had some oily substance on a finger, and it smeared the ink, but it remained legible. "What is this...," he pointed with the offending digit. "What is this...peace dividend spring? " Silence for a beat or two. Boaz added, "We know 'hurrah' . Just what is this peace dividend spring? Spring of a car?" I sensed this would take a bit. There were 45 minutes until closing. I ordered two of the best BLTs imaginable: one fer me, one fer the missus. This quick transaction allowed us the time to speak, for Hanaan knows that if I were not talking about myself, I would merely have had a finjaan of her wretched tea. We traded talk-time for 2 BLTs, and this order would probably be her last today, a rain day, maybe an ice storm day; only mad dogs and Americans go out in the midday ice storm. Hanaan busied herself at the grill. She jerked her head around and growled. "Hulwaiyaat?" This was her way of letting me know that the sweets for desert she had from the Pain d'Or ( Khubz Dhahabi) delivered by the young Indian (South Asia) delivery service from Shatila Bakery in the early morning still graced her boudoir...I mean her dessert kiosk wherein sweets twirled in a decadent glow of crystal. There were more crumbs than sweets by this time of a Sunday.

Crumbs caught in a Kiosk, I though to myself. Like butterflies caught in a web? Possible headline for a post here, about what I do not know. I had to acquiesce. I told her to put them in a tiffin box. ( Way too many lingos here!) Now as the bacon sizzled and snapped and Hanaan pecked her fingers into the revolving kiosk of sweets, grabbing far too much baklava for me, I spoke to B & B. I explained the origin of the phrase "Peace Dividend". This was something that we were supposed to experience when the Cold War abruptly ended. Since arms budgets would be vastly reduced, we would have more money in our pockets. Of course, the dividend was only declared for a few years; then the company ceased issuing dividends. Boulos smiled. "We doin' O.K." Boaz smiled, too. "Yeah," I said, "...but we coulda been...rich! We coulda been...contenders!" They stared at me, goggle-eyed. I had gone too far. "O.K. We could have kept more of our money. And we could have used it for good purposes. You guys could have had medical insurance...like, now..." This seemed to strike a chord. Their smiles faded. They nodded their heads. They began to understand. So much for Peace Dividend. Now the word 'Spring'. It was the season of Spring and it was an echo of a short story by Ray Bradbury 'Rocket Spring'. The story was written in a time so long ago and so innocent that people could believe that the burning of the rocket's engines as they lifted off into space could melt the snow and moderate the cold, causing the flowers to bud early, causing the sap to rise- a time when technology had not yet put on the right-hand glove of Rotwang...(O.K. The glove of Dr. Strangelove, then.) It was a type for a long gone golden age of innocence, never to come again. At this point, their long faces indicated I had gone too far. They may have been about to cry. Or weep. Or ululate. Hanaan brought over two tiffin boxes and plopped them unceremoniuously on the table. She handed me a brown bag of sweets. Already a oily stain was beginning to stretch across the paper of the bag. "Cash or charge?" She said as she waddled back to the counter.

She spoke from habit.

I said "Charge."

She shook her head. "Not enough. Cash only." She glanced at the clock. Twenty more minutes and she would be rid of us.

I pulled my pockets inside out and explained in Arabic that I had gambled all my coins on sporting events. B & B giggled. Hanaan snorted and turned to clean the griddle. One more thing: the title for Father Ghraib and Mother Gitmo was based upon an erroneous identification between me and the brilliance of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weil.

photo: falseprophet.typepad.com

Peace Dividend Spring, Hurrah!!

Tomorrow is MLK Day, and I think I shall take it easy, especially if the ice storm breaks over us here near Port Desespoir. We need another Holiday to memorialize another great moral victory of the 20th century. We are possibly too close to the period of time to appreciate the importance of all that happened in the 20th century. Why do we need another National Holiday, indeed, a World Holiday? We remember the 20th century for its horrors and wars. The history of mankind is so filled with horror and war that the future may not find the 20th century's violence too far ahead of the field of competitors for most destructive era. The great things are the hard things, the good things, the good acts, acts of comity. The USA and the USSR worked together and achieved a reduction in nuclear arms. The USA and the USSR, after facing each other down in the Cold War, decided that nuclear war was too horrible a thing for rational men to contemplate. By the time of Reagan and Gorbachev, both sides were competing to achieve more reductions. There was a brief time when, after the fall of the USSR, it seemed that nuclear arms might actually be eliminated. It was one of the greatest moral achievements of all history. It was Peace Dividend Spring! Those days seem to be long gone as we take little steps into a new worldwide arms race. We need a Holiday to commemorate what the good men and women of the USA and the USSR and the UN in the 20th century achieved. We need to remember. We may not get another chance.

photo: BBC News

Proof Goof

I have been accused of being the "Proof Goof".

In the movie Proof, Anthony Hopkins plays a man whose form of dementia is obsessive writing. He fills notebook after notebook with writing. Of course, the writing is obscure and abstruse and demented. Gwyneth Paltrow plays his daughter.

Three imps drawn by Hieronymous Bosch play my nephews. Now you know the source of this unflattering parallelism. The name Proof Goof is a bit more elevated than " The old Foolosopher". I'm trying to remember if Larry was called that in The Iceman Cometh. How about Jimmy Tomorrow?

Many of my postings have an obscure and tenuous relationship to God, or even my daughter, for that matter, at best. Certainly, the Desert Isle is an event that takes place outside the temple. Mundane and Profane. However, my approach to the Holy is somewhat different. I do not go into the inner sanctum and don vestments. The Holy should be always present.
A long time ago I came to a parting of the ways with the Logical Positivist philosophers because they could not make sense of metaphysics and religion, so I tossed them out the cognitive window into the gutter of odd notions along with the night soil, so to speak.

I do not believe there can be any philosophy which does not seriously come to grips with all facets of our existence. You cannot ignore what you don't understand and call it nonsense. The Holy is something present all the time, not merely on the High Holy Days. Therefore, our experience of it must make sense like our other consciousness makes sense.
--

photo: www.moonstick.com
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First Arab Minister In Israel

A momentous occasion: Israel's Labour party leader has appointed Raleb Majadele as science and technology minister - making him the first Arab Muslim in Israel's cabinet. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6254691.stm also http://prorev.com/2007/01/appointment-of-arab-minister-in-israel.html The spokesperson for Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu said that the appointment is "a lethal blow to Zionism", adding that Raleb Majadele's appointment as minister of science and technology damages "Israel's character as a Jewish state.". . In case this is not clear, this spokesperson means that the appointment is a bad thing.

There is a segment of Israel which believes that the Arab population within its borders should be marginalized, should be disenfranchised, should be 'removed'.

Meir Kahane was a vocal supporter of transporting Arabs to 'somewhere else'. There is a segment which views Zionism as a means to...shall we say, cleaning up Israel - and this segment is not the President of Iran alone, it is Israeli. If you have expressed a recent opinion on the state of Israel-Palestine recently and did not know this, then you are a dunce. We are all dunces for a time. St. Paul said that we see for a while through a darkling glass. Later...sometimes much later, we shall see clearly. picture at http://www.supportsanity.org/

Stopping By The Blooming Woods On A Winter's Eve

This is the time of year when we used to have a period of weather the older members of the clan called 'the January thaw'.

This was a period of relative warmth coming after the cold in December. It would have been cold right up to a frigid New Year's Day, then back to work and everyone in the doldrums so no one noticed anything-unless there would be a blizzard-but everyone just plodded along, not looking up...until one day when the sun was out and the tears did not freeze to your face when you gazed up into the blue sky.

The January Thaw had arrived.

It would be followed by more cold, but in the meantime, life was good.

This year I decided to take the Christmas tree down well before the Kaiser's birthday on January 27th.

All the decorations of light came down as we plunge back into the dismal grey clime of the area. Words cannot express how the light of Christmas fills my soul with gladness. Contrariwise, when cleaning up after Christmas, a somber mood prevails.

I do not play Christmas music while taking down the tree. That would be too sad. So I played (1) Cat Stevens (both as Cat Stevens and as Yusuf Islam), (2) The Cure, and (3) Leonard Cohen. By Mr. Cohen I was indeed as cold as a new razor's blade.

Everything came down. Everything went. Except for one wreath.

This wreath was a superfluity. A friend, who had purchased his own wreaths, had received two more wreaths from an open-handed neighbor who did not wish to be bothered by the excess. This friend, in a similar spirit of giving, saw my wife a week or so before Xmas and bestowed the two wreaths upon her...and she heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight, thanks for taking them wreaths off my hands, my load is now light!

However, we are used to such largesse. For Christmas itself my mother presented us with some little gifts such as old candles, half of which had been previously lit. We have resigned ourselves to being the last link in the chain between certain consumers in our lives, their purchases, and the inevitable dust bin and land fill.

We are the trash facilitators.

Back to the wreaths. One of the wreaths was hung on a door. The other was laid upon a large potting urn which contained pansies from summer.

The flowers had not died. Pansies seem to be rather hardy. They had come through a couple cold snaps without any visible discomfort. And in the balmy days before Xmas, they were doing fine.

So the wreath was flung upon them, collaring the top of the urn, letting a few pansies show through the opening in the middle and peeking out from underneath. They were going to go soon anyway, right?

Wrong. They still flourish now in January. This morning, as I write this, I hear the rain falling.

The wreath still hugs the pansies, providing protection in case of cold, and the pansies still bloom.

There is nothing inconvenient about that truth.

picture: Gusta van Dobbenburgh

The New Plan For Iraq

I no longer have an opinion. However, I do not ever want to hear "Dienbienphu" in the next two years.

Claire Grace Schutt

Claire Grace Schutt passed away the morning of New Year's Day.

She was 95 years old.

She had not been well for a long time, suffering from leukemia and Alzheimer's disease. We were just sitting down New Year's Eve morning, that Sunday, getting ready to do the New York Times crossword, when we received the call. So we packed the funeral clothes that had not been unpacked from the previous alert a year earlier, and drove 240 miles through the rain to Toronto.

In 1911, Claire Grace was born into a large family in the Ottawa Valley, in Vinton, in the Pontiac, in Quebec, Canada-and island of Irish culture in the middle of a river of English and French, telling their own Irish stories and viewing the world with their own unique wit.
Claire was one such charming Irish story. She married Henry Schutt and raised a family with him in Manhasset, New York. For us, her story is infinite. It exists forever in our hearts.

We see her face, we hear her voice, we remember her cooking Sunday dinner, we smile at her cheerfulness, her singing, and how she made everything fun. And when we here have gone, the immediacy of these memories is gone, but the underlying patterns of her story still reverberate: piety and hard work, sweetness and love, family and friends, charity and a light spirit. These things echo on to Eternity; continuing in Heaven, continuing on Earth.
--

photo: Voillemont on cycloparcppj.org A road in Vinton, Quebec

Gerald Ford

God's Rest.
 I liked Gerry Ford. Still do.
His life showed an amiable axis that exists in the USA which most people are unaware of: Grand Rapids and the western shore of Michigan over to Ann Arbor. He had an interview. I shall tell you what I think of the interview. I think it was a shame that all the former Presidents - Ford, Carter, Clinton, Reagan, and George H.W.Bush- with all their years of experience were never once consulted in the run up to war. Not once. All their words will come out post mortem.

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Father Ghraib and Mother Gitmo 1

These postings will be exclusively devoted to the poetry of the George W. Bush Administration. What the Hey, IAEA! radionuclides spread around, pit bull guard dog we split th'atom and tamed it down, dead fish pig eye. alls i know, the law of Oil, iraqee attackee radionuclides in the soil! fallooja baquba situation fraught with danger ( i'm o.k.) kick menora, splinter manger! (aren't you? ) Richard Cheney

Frank Barone Cleans Up Congress

Things were quiet at Jenny's Coffee Clutch yesterday.
Too quiet.

So, it was time to stir things up. Frank McQuestion ( pronounced " mac-Ah-shin", emphasis on the upper-case syllable ) made a crack about John Murtha having seriously considered taking a bribe during the ABSCAM affair.
Now I do not have a penny invested in Mr. Murtha. I have been for much of my life a John Conyers man - meaning Mr. Conyers represented the district in which I lived. My daughter interned for Mr. Conyers one summer. Look cross-wise at Mr. Conyers and you will have a fight.
However, as I mentioned, things were too slow. Idle hands and minds may indeed be the devil's workshop, but even Old Nick himself had been laid off and was sleeping in the corner, dead to the world. So, to take up the slack, I rose to the bait. I said that I had seen the film of Mr. Murtha and I did not consider his response an indication that he was or would seriously consider taking a bribe. I said that it sounded to me as if Mr. Murtha were flabbergasted and did not know for the life of him what to say.

McQuestion disagreed and his lips moved, but I was preparing my riposte and heard nothing.
I said Mr. Murtha was obviously shocked. I said that it was as if a beautiful 20-something young lady had come up to Frank McQuestion and said how admirably masculine a figure he cut! Now every spirit at the table rose! We were about to do some serious joke making. Everyone had an opinion at last. So I said that Frank would probably stutter and mutter, then say something about the weather, then say good-bye (not "thank you" for he could not acknowledge the immensity of what he'd just heard) and trip over the curb.

He came back with a brilliant assumption that I could do better in a pig's eye. His face began to erubesce. Then I said "What would you have done? Drawn your enormous dignity about yourself, stand up on your high horse of Justice, put on your baseball cap of Rectitude, and denounce the briber?"
"Yes." he said. "I would so have done!"

Notice that we had reached a point where Master Rhetoric began to take over from Dame Conversation. We spoke in lofty terms and measured periods worthy of Milton and Cicero.
"No," I said. "You would have acted like a young lady in Donegal Town accosted by a drunken sailor. You would have closed tight your legs like a thunderclap, you would have drawn your skirts tight about ye..."

Language was becoming omnitemporal; the usual limits were disappearing.
"...and ye would ha' been off! Run off like a scared coney (rabbit), you big Nancy!"
And so on. You will notice that at this point I assumed a persona much like Frank Barone. This is my homage to Peter Boyle, whom I first saw in the theaters in "Joe", and that was almost 40 years ago. I know that Mr. Boyle passed on a month or so ago. I know I appear tardy in my homage.
However, I told you that news travels slowly around here; the speed of light itself is 55 mph.

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Fear And Bennett in Las Vegas

I shall immediately disassociate myself from the low blow in the title: mentioning Bill Bennett and his gambling addiction. I subscribe to a title writing service and use what they give me. So, good old Bill Bennett has a blog. What could be in it? Let's have a look see. Proposed 2008 Platform 1. Global War Against Islamic Terror--call the war right and fight it right. This I like. I particularly like calling the Terror Islamic, thereby ensuring a certain amount of what we shall refer to as the Haditha Effect. In the heat of war, it will be hard to discern who is friend and who is foe. If the terror is Muslim, then all Muslims are fair game. This is what Mr. Bennett would call "leveling the playing field." 2. Publicly commit to regime change in Iran. I would like to see something further, like "using diplomatic means short of nuclear strikes", but what the heck. 3. Fund and deploy a fully operational missile defense system. I would like to expand this by adding a coda: using a technology which cannot be gotten around or short-circuited or evaded by the enemy (whose names are Legion!) I seem to remember that the Rooskies are already working on a way around a missile defense system. http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2006/12/merry-anti-christmas.html Bill is correct: fund a system that incorporates technology that prohibits end runs! What we need is (1) A Manhattan Project for missile defense, and (2) a missile defense Czar to run it. If I not mistaken, Mr. Bennett himself was once a Czar of some program! O.K. I'm bored. We're outta here.

Spring Back, Fall Forward

During the exhilirating Xmas festivities, we renewed acquaintances and had many warm conversations. I was at my brother's for a wonderful spread of food. I was deep into a conversation with Big Bob, the hunter, about global warming when someone nearby suddenly began to talk about hunting up North. He sprang to his feet and ran across the room with a smile as wide as a Christmas tree. Well, I don't like chit-chat, anyway. I write better than I chit. So I took another stab at the enormous Brie in pastry. It was indeed a delight, but the party had been going on for over an hour, and the huge Brie kugel began to resemble Chtulhu wounded and wizened, bleeding his life essence (such as it was) all over the place. I really ate like a swine. I gained exactly 1 pound over the holidays. Blast! My next foray into the oral arts had to do with John who had run in the Chicago Marathon. He had run with his whole bloody family: father, sister, brothers (2), and grandmother. My story was of the year when, as the autumnal equinox had been gone 30 days or so, I set my clock one Saturday night to correct for the passing of daylight savings time. My wife had once taught me a mnemonic ditty: Spring forward, Fall back to remember how to correct. Unfortunately, this year I recalled it as: Spring back, Fall forward. Since this seemed decidedly odd, I had to think about it: Spring back...as if in fear. Suppose a snake were to crawl into the room; I should spring back with alacrity, knocking over the lamp and falling prone upon the bed, where I lay exposed to the venomous fangs... Enough of that. The Intro makes good sense. Now, Fall forward...as in exhausted. I was standing at attention in ranks after a 15 mile run with full backpack under the blazing sun. No, it was with full KIT...and we were clothed in rags under a blazing sun. A mean-spirited Colonel Saito sat on his verandah in the shade as Lieutenant Miura kept watch. Those who were in a weakened condition fell forward, their eyes turning upwards in... Enough of that, too. O.K. It makes good sense. I wondered where everyone was that morning. I usually ran at 5:00 A.M. Thus, it was 4:00 A.M. and the streets were pretty deserted. Now that you've read the story, you will have the same problem.

George W. Bush 2007: A Life in Art

"I am the great Isis..." Odilon Redon 

 

I sense a change coming in the work of the artist, George Bush. After a lifetime spent in the shadow of his father, during which his contemporaries demeaned him with the nickname "Little Boots" or "Caligula", we sense that he is finally coming into his own. The years 2002 through 2006 saw the influence of Goya. Indeed, we term this period "El Sueno de la Razon" which indeed produced many masterpieces, as well as the seemingly obligatory Goyaesque "monstruos".

However, as Harry Truman once said, "If you can't stand the nightmares, get outta the bedroom!" In 2007 we shall see the inception of a period of works inspired by Odilon Redon. This may be the "Great Isis" period, influenced also by a series of poems of Richard Cheney's on Lyndie Englund entitled "Abu Ghraib Wa Umm Gitmo" ( Father Ghraib and Mother Gitmo).

The debt that Bush owes to the Symbolists becomes manifest. The Imagery of Death, especially Death untimely-that of innocents-plays a central role. It is a link which ties together Bush and Redon, as well as Flaubert and Huysmans. Redon's "Grand Isis" hints at disturbance and confusion. Nothing is clear, whether Isis and Harpocrates are stepping into a flower of evil or a portal to divinity. It brings to mind Cleopatra and Caesarion, similarly poised on the brink; ultimately they fell into untimely death. Yet, it is this very lack of clarity which defines and delimits the works of Bush.
This confusion takes us from the mundane and opens a new world of perception, a higher world, as evidenced in the accompanying illustration of "Eye Balloon", a rising to new heights and new glories.

"Eye Balloon" Odilon Redon

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Firstest with the Mostest

QUICK DECISION: Stung by charges of being tightfisted and slow to respond, Bush makes tenfold increase in pledged amount. headline from SFGate.com

What is the event behind the headline?
It was the Tsunami which hit Banda Aceh and elsewhere in Asia. The date for the article is January 1, 2005, which is 8 months before Katrina, so back off.

What brought this up is not the usual sophomoric Bush-Bashing that I engage in, but rather a conversation I had with a lady who was under the impression that the USA is always kind and loving to all and sundry in the world, and when disaster happens, we respond first and foremost, and so on and so on. This is the usual litany we learned as children. The facts are: There are many good people in the USA. There are many bad people in the USA. Sometimes the good people get their way, sometimes not.

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