FRACTURED FAIRY TALES FROM THE FARM NO. 4

Meet the vermin, aka varmint, aka varmin. He is a fearsome critter, but his pelt is much in demand. And in fact, the fur industry has given this animal an extreme makeover, by taking away the first letter of his name. They call him the ermin. Don't be fooled by this P.R. move, they knew that the name vermin had negative connotations and would never sell. Their 'rebranding' is about as reliable as those labels inside of furs that say 100% pure mink or the like. The vermin has had an identity problem from the start because various people have used this term in a non-technical sense to refer to any creature that is a pest. For example, in Australia farmers call the wild rabbit a 'varmit'. No wonder the poor vermin is confused. Between misidentification and the rebranding of the fur industry anybody could be confused.

One of the great problems in nature is human interference. We are all the time taking species of animals outside their native habitats and placing them where they don't belong, where they have no natural enemies, and multiply too rapidly. Take for example the case of 'so-called' ermin wraps. One woman goes out to Needless Markup (my name for the store), and buys a shoulder wrap made of pure vermin fur. Next thing you know both her neighbors are envious and they want one too. Pretty soon they have proliferated prodigously all over the city, and there is no returning them to their native habitat, shoot you can even return them to Needless Markup. It becomes an epidemic. This explains the old southern expression 'a fur piece', as in they live a 'fur piece' from here. Contrary to what you think, this means 'living only the length of a fur wrap from me', and it is used as a unit of measurement because some folks measure themselves by how big a fur wrap they can afford to have. Imagine that, people measuring their worth by the expense of their possessions. What's the world coming to?

What is a vermin really? Its not a rabbit or a mouse, or an ordinary pest, its a long-tailed weasel. Need I tell you that the fur industry definitely couldn't sell weasel-wraps due to the negative connotation of the word weasel. So they weaseled out of that deal by calling it an ermin, or as the French prefer 'le ermine'. One place this weasel was introduced into is New Zealand, to control the rabbit population. But this had an unintended effect. The vermin took a likin' to kiwi fruit, and the whole country almost had to rename all their sports teams that they like to call the Kiwis. You can see what I mean about it being a mistake to take a critter out of its native habitat where it has natural predators after it.

In Europe in fact this critter has another name-- the stoat (no not the Stout, that's a beer, or at least a beer belly). One of the odd facts about this animal whose pelt is so widely loved, is that in fact it is a member of the SKUNK family. Yes, you heard me right, the skunk family. Can't you just hear someone saying "Don't you just love my new skunk-fur wrap?" To which the proper but impolite reply should be "No, it stinks if you ask me." The vermin/ermin/skunk is a noturnal creature, which explains the tendency to only wear the wrap to evening functions. But I must report to you a very alarming development. Now people are using the vermin for food.

Now I am not talking about the kind of folks who scrap up roadkill from the side of the highway and cook them. I have a tin of that I bought in Tennessee in my office, and I am not referring to that old Southern practice. No, I am referring to using weasel parts to make pasta! Yes, you read right--- pasta.

Perhaps you've heard of it--- vermincelli??? It's real thin, kind of like angel hair pasta, and I have been told that what it actually is is vermin whiskers that have been battered up and cooked into a hard yellowish consistency. Turns out the vermin can be both the meat and the noodles in your spaghetti if you so choose. Who knew? Meditate on these things, and take some action. Don't try and weasel out of your responsibility either. Just look at that picture at the top here and those fearsome teeth, and do the right thing, at night of course. Otherwise your spouse will notice when you snag her wrap out of her closet and take it to Goodwill.


Question from alert reader Kimberley from Vancouver B.C. Kimberley wants to know, where does the Easter bunny come from? Thanks for this question Kimberley, and I will resist telling you 'from the same place as Santa' because that would be a fib. In fact they come from Easter Island of course.

Rinse that nuum

The Hardcore Continuum? A discussion

Presented by the Centre for Cultural Studies Research, University of
East London In association with The Wire

---------------------

Wednesday April 29th 2009 2:00pm-6:00pm

Simon Reynolds'’ commentary on the ‘'hardcore continuum'’ - the
mutating sequence of dancefloor music to have emerged from the
breakbeat hardcore matrix of the early 1990s - has recently generated intense debate in the musical blogosphere.

What is the value of this concept? Does it still usefully describe the
context from which dynamic new beat musics emerge? Can the conditions of creativity in the 1990s be replicated in the era of web 2.0? Should we even want them to be?

Speakers: Mark Fisher (K-Punk), Alex Williams (Splintering Bone
Ashes), Steve Goodman (Kode 9), Lisa Blanning (The Wire), Dan Hancox (Guardian, New Statesman), Kodwo Eshun (Author of More Brilliant than the Sun), Joe Muggs (Mixmag, The Wire), Martin Clark (Blackdown), Jeremy Gilbert (Co-author of Discographies)

Attendance is free but pre-registration is recommended. For info or to register contact J.Gilbert@uel.ac.uk.

Location: UEL Docklands Campus (Cyprus DLR) Room wb.1.01

For full travel details see this or this.

Room wb.1.01is located on the first floor of the West Building (the
building to the right upon entering the main square from Cyprus DLR)
---------------------

UPDATE: Oi Oi, Mr Reynolds has launched a pre-emptive strike!

Anonymous Daughter just forced me to watch a video on YouTube of an unattractive British woman singing very loudly. Apparently this Susan Boyle video has been seen by tens of millions of people and is captivating the world. This is why we ban YouTube in the office. I don't know what the big surprise is that a 47-year-old unemployed, unattractive woman can sing well. What else can she possibly have to do with her time other than practice? She has no job, no family... if I had no job and no family, I could be a terrific singer too.

What bothers me is all the attention she's getting. It's giving failures hope. I'm sure I have associates watching this video and thinking: "Things could work out for me, too. I could leave this job and follow my dreams and even though I'm very unattractive and have few friends and no family, I could find success doing something I love instead of being stuck in the office 90 hours a week doing mindless document searches and redrafting agreements that exist in virtually identical form on pretty much everyone's hard drive in the entire firm."

I can't have people thinking like that, especially in this economy. More than ever, now that we only have what seems like seventeen associates and half a staff member firm-wide, we need their eyes on the real prize: imaginary partnership. We need them focused on feeling like they could somehow do enough to impress me and my colleagues and force our hands into making them junior partners. Obviously that won't happen, especially in this economy, but we need them to feel like it could, and be hungry for it, and not just watching unattractive people sing loudly and get applause. I know they miss applause. I miss applause. But adulthood isn't about applause. It's about fear and worry and economic insecurity motivating all your decisions. Not passions and dreams. That's for the unemployed.

GOLDEN SILVERS - true romance (true no.9 blues)

another new british band that makes me jump on tables... Funky pop music with great attitude, hooks, little strange rapping and everything else a song released in april has to have. Their debut album will be out on XL anyday now.

stardom guaranteed!

www.myspace.com/thegoldensilvers

FRACTURED FAIRY TALES FROM THE FARM NO. 3

Ours is an age of hybrids. Hybrid cars, hybrid economies, hybrid vitamins and foods in general. It is thus not unexpected that there might be hybrid holiday food, in this case for Thanksgiving. Enter the turducken, one part turkey, one part duck, and apparently some chicken as well. Scientists have had theories about the origins of these rare birds, even though no one seems to have seen them in the wild. Here below is one scientific hypothesis on the matter.



Even cartoonists have gotten into the act speculating about how this hybrid creature originated and propagated.




Still, no one has been able to catch one glimpse much less of a photo of this animal in the wild, but we have some theories. For one thing talk about this bird only comes up in the fall--- during football season (although now a days ESPN seems to think every season is football season, even broadcasting spring practice games, so desperate are they to satiate the hunger of football fans). For another thing, the most famous football announcer who has regularly talked about this bird is a man who refuses to fly, riding around the nation in a tricked-out RV of considerable girth. I am referring to John Madden.



Madden has just suddenly retired, and I think I know why. His secret about the turducken was about to be exposed, because you see, that RV is in fact a rolling scientific lab, where experimentation has long gone on, on innocent animals, producing the turducken! Madden would ride along between games gathering up ducks, chickens, and turkeys in the fall, and putting them through his animal synthesizer. Though we never saw the process, we certainly saw the product and proof these shenanegins had been going on. Here is a shot of a cross-section of a turducken.



You can see perfectly well how the dark and light meet have been sectioned together in zones, an amazing feat of alchemy, and making it almost impossible for the picky person to be able to avoid eating both dark and light meet. Whilst there are some theories that the turducken originated in the kitchens of Cajun chef Paul Prudhomme, I assure you it is not so. Madden, the mad scientist, is at the bottom of this. If you wonder where he got his favorite expression "then BOOM, the quarterback got sacked....", the boom of course comes from him regularly experiencing explosions in the back of his RV whilst combining animals, using a modified farm combine.

I have little hope now that Madden will ever be caught and charged, especially in the wake of his sudden retirement. In fact, he is now making enough dough (figuratively speaking) from his Madden NFL game to be able to retire. And I have heard rumors as well that he has cut a deal with the NFL commish as well. You thought all those footballs were really made of pigskin? Certainly not! The skin of a football is much too dark to have come from a pig. No, in fact over the last ten years it has been the hides of turduckens that have been used! This may explain why so many field goals have gone wide right, because when a turducken tries to fly with the will of a chicken, the mind of a duck, and the wings of a turkey, it flies in wobbly fashion for sure. But there is more. Look closely at the laces on the football. Notice they are no longer made of cloth or string, but rather of some kind of hide or leather. I'm think it is the turkey gobblet that hangs down that has been made the sacrificial source. Enough for now, next episode we must investigate that most famous of all sly creatures--- vermin, or as it is known in the South, the Varmint.

Question d'Jour from Bubba in Chittlin' Switch N.C. Does the turducken produces as much tryptophan, that sleep-inducing drug, as the turkey does? Answer: No, far less which is why Madden was trying to substitute it for the turkey at Thanskgiving, to improve the football ratings on the Thursday afternoon NFL games on Turkey Day. What would the Pilgrims say!!!

Al-Maqam Al-Iraqi - Classical Iraqi music and songs .... المقام العراقي حسين الاعظمي

.

المقام العراقي - حسين الاعظمي : مقام المحمودي، مقام بنجكاه، مقام نهاوند، مقام دشت وبسته، مقام بيات وبسته، مقام جمال، مقام خلوتي، ايقاعات عراقية، كل لحظه امر عليك، مقام نهاوند، مقام دشت 2، يازارع البزرنكَوش، فراكَهم بجاني، مقام بنجكَاه 1

The above link is a collection of Al-Maqam Al-Iraqi by the group of Hussain Al-Adhami during a performance in Bahrain in 2005 and at other locations.
.

I am turning into me

Mashooka indian blouses bought (good): 2; Hair like RL hair bought: 1 (unsettling); Hot tub locations remodeled: 1 (good) ; Harpsichords bought: 1 (good)

Noticed some new hair from SLink and have been meaning to check them out, so tped over. Noticed fatal flaw immediately, i.e. however hard I looked none of the hair colours were blue so that should have been that.

However, still tried the demo, to see what I was missing, and struck me that ... it was somehow familiar and this was because it REMINDED ME OF MY OWN RL HAIR. So succumbed and bought hair in colour which is spookily like my own, or my own before it got streaks of grey in it anyway. Should mention that also possess some SL hair that is straight & roughly same length (though blue) as RL hair, but problem with long loose straight SL hair is that it inevitably disappears inside one's torso in a way that (thankfully) does not occur in RL, thus lessening the illusion.
Left hair on for a while and realised that not only was hair now rather like mine in RL, but my blouse was also very like raspberry pink indian silk blouse that I own in RL. Sat down for a while and took this pic from angle that is most like RL me ... and then removed hair and reverted to blueness.

Am pondering why felt rather shifty when wearing brown hair. Is it because once it looks like me, except thinner, taller, unlined, and with enormous eyes (and a few other minor imperfections ironed out, though my RL toes are a considerable improvement on SL ones), it seems like am living out a fantasy of being a younger self? Whereas once I add the blue hair it is a bit more whimsical and thus acceptable? Hmmmm.
Anyway upside is that SL hair has reminded me that used to wear RL hair a bit like this and ought to try it again as alternative to normal scraped back look that use when lecturing. Or is that an equally unsettling thought?

Well, forget all that, had a fun hour ripping out the old Hot Tub Platform on Infolit iSchool, which no-one seemed to visit much, and replacing it with a more atmospheric Hot Tub Glade (see above), which also opens up the fine views from this mountaintop location (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/64/83/54/ ). Incorporates a stone fountain and platform made by Grey Kurka and there was also a nice copiable tent which didn't use but it could come in handy for ... something or other.

Also bought harpsichord from same creator, which includes set of Bach's Goldberg Variations. You rez one of the music sheets and it plays a variation when clicked. Don't have to just use them with harpsichord, so may start planting Variations through the island as do have (from somewhere I can't remember where) a free copiable music stand. Installed harpsichord in hobbit house and took this pic which I think looks rather Vermeer-esque. Except with more bobbin chairs.

من اللذين مد الإحتلال يده إليهم للعمالة

.

ـ"عندما دخلت البيت الواقع على أطراف مدينة لاهاي الهولندية وجدت نفسي بين عشرات العراقيين من اليساريين والمثقفين وأصحاب اللحى المدججين بالخواتم والمسابح وأجهزة الموبايل، بعد ذلك دخل ثلاثة أجانب تعلن عنهم أناقتهم ولغتهم وبشرتهم البيضاء ( ثلاثة أمريكيين أحدهم من أصل يوغسلافي) وهذا الأخير خبير بحرب البوسنة والهرسك. ثم بدءوا محاضرتهم عن كيفية إسقاط الأنظمة البالغة القسوة والقوة. فاتني القول أن ما أرويه لكم حدث قبل الاحتلال الأمريكي للعراق عندما وجه الدعوة لنا الصحفي (إسماعيل زاير) بعد إلحاح لم نعرف أسبابه قبل غلق الباب خلفنا. ـ

.....

وعندما أدركت أن المتكلم المهذب يعرف عني الكثير رجوته الاختصار ودوائر الأمريكيين الثلاثة لا تفارق ذاكرتي، فقال ما مضمونه " أن العراق مقبل على تغيير كبير وتاريخي ونحن وبسبب الانقطاع الطويل عن الوطن لا توجد لدينا خيوط اتصال مع الشارع العراقي ونحتاج إلى فتح مقرات ومكاتب في مدن الجنوب والوسط ونبحث عن أشخاص معروفين في هذه المدن ولديهم عائلات معروفة وعلاقات طيبة ويجيدون الكلام والإقناع".ـ
فسألته والألم يعتصرني :ـ
ـ إذا أنا مثلما تقول من عائلة شهداء ونضال وسياسة فهل مثلي يصلح لهكذا مهمة، فقال
ـ لا تقلق سندفع راتبين واحدا لك في العراق لتسيير الأعمال والثاني لعائلتك في هولندة، فقلت له
ـ قل لي بصراحة تريدونني (سياسي لو عميل) ؟ فقال
ـ أنت لا تصلح للعمالة"ـ

في الذكرى السادسة للاحتلال ..نـــــــــعم... فقد تآمرنا على الوطن!! ـ

نصيـر عـواد

ـ18 نيسان 2009

مع تعليقين في أسفل النشرة

The above is a confession of a recanting Iraqi was was offered collaboration with the occupier since before the occupation.

FRACTURED FAIRY TALES FROM THE FARM NO. 2

Meet the spamster. He is native to small islands in the south Pacific, including Hawaii. The spamster is a cute little fellow who starts out without ears, and then grows little pointy ones, the better to hear the commands of his master when its time to stand up, roll over, play dead, or in general, look cute. When he is fully grown the spamster tends to be somewhat long and lanky, a sort of skinnier version of the chihuahua. The spamster is a carnivor who loves to eat chicken, ham, barbecue, but not beef. The cows in the Chick-Fil-A commercial think he's cool and are thinking of starring him in a future episode. Because the spamster only eats chicken and lean pork products, he is svelt and has very flexible muscle tissue produces a wonderfully flexible chewy meat product---- called SPAM. And you thought that spam was simply bad email. Wrong. Its a whole food group. Perhaps whilst perambulating through the grocery store you have come across a can of SPAM.



Little did you realize how many spamsters had to be slaughtered to produce just one can of bright pink, chewy spam. One estimate puts it at 13. Yikes. Now spam is a truly versatile food. So versatile that there are whole Spam cookbooks, and indeed Spam creation contests. For example, here below you will find an Ipod Shuffle created out of spam! Who knew!




Spam is especially popular in Hawaii, and anthropologists hypothesize this is because the natives hunted the spamster to near extinction for many centuries on the island of Molokai. Not surprisingly, the spamster jumped on some steamers heading west to the Orient, only to discover that their tasty meat was even more popular in places like Hong Kong where you can get Spam-musabi--- no lie, see below.



But that is hardly all. Spam has become not only the breakfast of champions, but the inspiration of poets in Japan, so it is no surprise at all that we have Spam Haiku. You think I jest??? Take a look.



It is hardly a surprise then that those latter day saints of comedy, the Monty Python troop picked up on the legendary potential of this food, and created a suitable epic to memorialize it--- SPAMALOT of course. I can hear them singing now-- "A law was made a distant moon ago here. July and August shall not be too hot, and there's a legal limit to the snow here... in SPAMALOT."

All of this attention of course has led to a comeback in America of SPAM after a brief lull. In hard economic times SPAM is very useful, as it has a shelf life of a millenium, even if the can is open :) And for harried housewives or househusbands, the answer to the call, what's for dinner, has increasingly been--- fried or pickled, or baked SPAM, or SPAM sandwiches. Notice the following ad.



But take a moment to have some pity on the poor spamster. These days their meat is in so much demand,especially the female meat which is chewier, that there are hardly any spamster spinsters in the known world. This is a sad irony, because the truth is-- there is no content to SPAM. Its filling because its all made of filler. The truth is that SPAM in a can contains only 10% actual spamster meat. The rest is unmentionable, undesirable, and unconsumable filler. Rather like the spam you get on your computer. So once more, please write Pres. Obama and ask him, not least since he is a native of Hawaii, to put the spamster on the endangered species list. Unfortunately I gather he is not all that sympathetic to this cause, judging from what was served at a recent White House lawn picnic for under-privileged children (see below).




Speaking of children, Suzie from Sagebrush Gulch in Wyoming has written asking for an explanation as to why sheep are so dumb. Well Suzie its a sad, and even sexist tale. It appears that female sheep are smarter than rams, so some smart scientists decided to take what little gray matter a sheep could spare and inject it into the brain of the ram, so he would have more ram memory, and would stop butting things he had just butted five seconds before. The goal was to create less senior moments in rams, but like all such messing with God's creation and creatures, this experiment went terribly awry. Unfortunately what happened is that it made the ram remember how much it enjoyed mating with sheep, whilst the sheep forgot what happened to her the last time this occured, and so there has become a bumper crop of dumb sheep being bred, and appearing now all over the world. Its gotten so bad that in the Lake District in England sheep won't get out of the road even if being bitten by the sheep dog. Sad, just sad.

In our next episode of Fractured Fairy Tales from the Farm, we must turn our attention a holiday creation--- John Madden's Turduckin.

i was just sitting here thinking

How long exactly can you put off washing the dishes? For me, it's precisely this amount of time. Click on this drawing. It looks a bit better that way. Not a lot, but a bit.

Oh, and a little shout out to one of my very favourite, and one of the most fabulous, blogs on the whole of the entire interweb. I first came across Penguin and Fish through Suzanne. Back then they had featured her work. I've been secretly wishing they would feature mine, in a desperate needy sort of way, ever since. And, my wish came true. Thanks Alyssa!
Warning: you WILL lose the rest of the day if you click HERE.

Waters in Between by Lukas Felzmann

In the center of the Sacramento Valley two rivers, the Feather and Sacramento, flank several wetlands and marshes called the Sutter and Colusa Sinks. Much of this land has been drained and become some of the richest agricultural land for fruit orchards and various grains and rice. The photographer Lukas Felzmann has been drawn to these marshlands and especially the role water has taken to shape and transform the landscape. His new book from Lars Muller, Waters In Between is an empirical archive or as he describes the collection, "a sort of poetry of ruins."

Constructed as part methodic examination and part meditation, Felzmann and his 5x7 camera describe a landscape both naturally formed and manipulated by man. It is a transitional space upon which people have built homes and their presence has turned naturally occurring floods historically common to the area into "disasters." The attempt to control water through canals and underground systems speak of a cultural change and the power of economy on the area. There is a similar feeling behind this work to the moment when you find out Polanski's Chinatown is really about corruption controlling water.

Felzmann's camera is stylistically varied in ways that are refreshing. This book is not just a collection of the formally rigorous but playful with occasional panoramics and exchange between black and white and color. Individually the photographs are well made but it is his sequencing that make this project as interesting as any dealing with place that I have seen in a long while. Short poetic text pieces by John Berger and Angelus Silesius compliment Felzmann's work are interspersed throughout.



Waters In Between is an image of prosperity of natural growth mixed with images of the failure of man to sustain. The ruin left in his wake are ugly blights on the horizon line that one might wish could be wiped clean from stronger waters. Repetitive images that open the book of a whirlpool sucking into a black abyss starts the journey that ends with another set of photographs of an area under a cement overpass as it goes through various states of growth. Feldmann's accomplishment is an expanded dialogue which extends far outside its territory in thought provoking ways. At once we are aware of fragility of lives, the impact on the environment, life in transition, the natural and cultural systems and their effects, while at the same moment realize the irony in that this landscape is traversed by travelers speeding through what may be perceive to be a flat and boring stretch of highway.

Waters In Between is a long book at 320 pages but interest is sustained throughout. It is beautifully printed and designed and the materials used were nicely chosen. Should I venture to guess this may be on my list of "Best books of 2009."

Note: It is really hard to give a good sense of this book through the comps above. My suggestion is to take a look at a local bookseller.

I received an invitation today to an associate's wedding. I don't know why any of my associates would think I would want to see them socially, or be part of their lives. I don't know why any of them would think I even approve of a wedding when all it will mean is they have less time to spend focused on their work. And now, even though of course I'm not going to attend, I have to give a gift. I feel like it's a shakedown for a present. He knows I'm not going to come to his wedding. He knows there's nothing I'd less like to do than come to his wedding, yet still he invited me. I'm not going to take the bait. I'm not only not going to give a gift -- I'm going to call his bluff and actually go to the wedding -- and still not give a gift. Hopefully he'll spread the word around and no one else will ever invite me to their weddings. Who would be marrying this guy anyway? His fiancee must be a real winner... he's one of my worst associates.

Research Advisory Committee on GW Illness Chairman explains how Institute of Medicine was Made to Perform Studies Whose Conclusions Were Predetermined

Jim Binns, chairman of VA's Research Advisory Committee on GW Veterans' Illnesses since its inception, authored a detailed memo, with supporting documents, to show how Congress' statutory charge to the IOM was changed to exclude animal studies and raise the bar for granting presumptive disabilities to ill Gulf War veterans.

Jim deserves enormous thanks for his tireless pursuit of fairness for ill veterans, and his methodical discussion of how a series of mostly useless IOM reports came to be produced.

FLYING SOLO WITH A FRIEND-- 'THE SOLOIST'

The life of a mentally ill person is messy, and difficult, and often heart-rending. And what is interesting about such a person is that it is by no means simply a matter of some chemical imbalance in the brain, though that can be a large part of the problem. There is plenty of clinical evidence to support the view that a mentally ill person can live a much more normal life with plenty of love and friendship, indeed there is even evidence that such relationships can go some distance to change the chemical imbalances in the brain. Imagine that. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, and are at the end of the day, psycho-somatic wholes, who are often far from whole. And of course as a culture gets more ill, people get more ill as well, and the ones who most often go down for the count first are the sensitive souls--- musicians, poets, artists, the one's who live out of the life of the soul and express in words or musical sounds. When the world is sick and fallened and abnormal, what then counts as normal, any more?

One such person with largeness of soul is Mr. Nathaniel Anthony Ayers Jr. Yes, he is a real person, and the movie 'the Soloist' attempts to tell the story of some of his life, which to say the least is still a work in progress, but then that is true of all of us. Played by Jamie Foxx with empathy and sympathy and conviction (an Oscar worthy performance) this story, while hard to watch, is not hard to get emotional about. Most of us have had someone in our lives who at some juncture needed serious counseling, or medicine, or both because they were, or were becoming mentally unwell. What makes Mr. Ayers' story all the more remarkable is that he was and is a musician gifted by God with a rare talent for playing music--- in this case primarily stringed instruments. And Steve Lopez (played well by Robert Downey Jr.), exceptional columnist for the L.A. Times has chronicled his life first in columns and then in the form of a book. Here is a glimpse of the real Mr. Ayers...



The movie is as moving as such a disjointed and painful life can be, and indeed it gives glimmers of hope. I honestly don't understand those reviewers who don't get this movie simply because in form as well as continuity it seeks to tell the tale in a manner that suggests the incompleteness and messiness and troubling aspects of the story. This man has not led and is not leading a nice and tidy life, nor is it all happily ever after in the end. Authenticity rather than fantasy is what the director seems to be striving for and capturing. So, for about two hours one walks a mile with Mr. Ayers, and with his 'friend' Mr. Lopez. Mr. Lopez is not spared criticism in this movie, for indeed he did not originally set out to be a friend, he set out to write a remarkable story. And there is indeed a Christian under-current to the movie, ranging from the way the cello teacher is portrayed to the way Mr. Ayers prays the Lord's prayer, but in his less lucid moments thinks Mr. Lopez is either God or Neil Diamond (what a juxtaposition--- I can hear 'Brother Love's Salvation Show playing now in my head). There is also an interesting interview scene with an atheist where the atheist admits-- "its hard to build community around having something you don't believe in common." For sure.

Mr. Ayers has a profound and abiding love for Beethoven, and this movie shows over and over how, as Shakespeare once said, "music soothes the savage breast" even of a mentally ill person. Beauty, real beauty can do that. It can take you far from your troubles and even draw you close to God. And make no mistake, when you have become ill whilst becoming a world class cellist at Julliard, and then crashing and burning completely, you definitely need a little help from above. I must say I like Mr. Ayers taste in music. He goes for the best. But he had become a street person, a person of no fixed address, a person cast aside as the flotsam on the sea of life. This story is more about learning how to become less selfish and more loving and more friendly even towards those hard to love than it is about music however. This story reminded me of the story of a famous hymnist who lived early in the twentieth century and was incarcerated due to his mental illness. The story goes that he, Mr. F.M. Lehman, died in his confined cell, having written on the padded walls the following words...

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry.

If that verse is the mark of an unhinged mind, then we need more unhinged minds in this world.

Had Jesus lived in L.A. in my life time, Mr. Ayers is surely one of the people he would have spent time with. And so should we. Go see this movie, but take a box of kleenex with you. "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for..."

Bolivia: Evo Morales speaks on International Mother Earth Day

(Media-Newswire.com) - The primary cause of the twenty-first century should be the recognition of the rights of Mother Earth, Bolivian President Evo Morales Ayma declared hours after the General Assembly passed a resolution designating 22 April as “International Mother Earth Day”.

“If we want to safeguard mankind, then we need to safeguard the planet,” he said, stressing that social movements, regular citizens and presidents the world over needed to understand and support the rights of Mother Earth. “That is the next major task of the United Nations”.

Speaking at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon, he said previous centuries had witnessed a permanent ongoing battle for human rights. With those human rights now secured, it was time to fight for those of the planet, including the right to life, the right to regeneration of the planet’s biodiversity, the right to a clean life free of pollution, and the right to harmony and balance among and between all things.

“Mother Earth cannot be a piece of merchandise”, he argued, stressing that it was necessary to correct humanity’s historic mistake of buying and selling the planet. Human beings could not exist without Mother Earth, but changes in climate and the environment were already beginning to threaten that existence in some places. In the Andes, mountain peaks were losing their white snow-caps, lakes were drying up, and fish were disappearing from the Orinoco.

In light of the damage traditional power plants caused to the environment and the fact that gas and oil deposits are limited, he said his Government would be reconsidering its energy policy. It would explore developing clean energy sources, especially its numerous natural opportunities for hydroelectric energy, but investment would also be needed.

He was also working to defend equality, democracy and the rule of law in Bolivia, he said. Moreover, he intended to defend himself as Bolivia’s constitutionally-elected President and head of a Government that had, for the first time in the Republic’s 180-year history, been elected four times in a row with over 50 per cent of the vote.

Bolivia was also moving towards the approval of a new Constitution, which was supported by some 70 per cent of the population, he said. “This is a process of great transformation and change. Unfortunately, the neoliberal groups which still exist in some regions have attempted to take over the palace, but did not succeed”.

President Morales was joined by Paul Oquist, Senior Adviser to the President of the General Assembly, who outlined the run-up to the high-level General Assembly meeting on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development, scheduled for 1 to 3 June in New York. Informal consultations had already begun, with Member States submitting proposals for the meeting’s outcome document. Those deliberations would continue until 4 May, when the President of the General Assembly would issue a draft document that would then be subject to intergovernmental negotiations ahead of the high-level meeting.

The high-level conference would, he said, allow the “G-192” of the United Nations “to give voice and participation to all the world’s countries on the most important issue of our decade and perhaps our century”. It was intended to be a forum that was legal, representative and credible, since it would take into account the interests of all those affected by the crisis.

Echoing that statement, Mr. Morales said he was looking forward to the meeting, which would be an opportunity for everyone to be heard and the economic problem collectively resolved. “We all need to shoulder the responsibility for resolving the financial crisis.”

In response to a question on whether the United States stimulus plan was good enough to bring it out of the economic doldrums, he said that the crisis of capitalism could not be solved merely by injecting money. “You cannot issue more and more money unless you increase the means of production and the real economy of countries”, he stressed, underlining how even the G-20 [Group of Twenty] disagreed on how to turn national economies, as well as the global economy, around.

To a number of questions about the global financial architecture, he pointed out that France and Germany had questioned the bureaucracy of the International Monetary Fund and he welcomed proposals by Brazil and Argentina for its radical reform. He further welcomed ongoing changes within the World Bank, which had previously urged him to privatize a number of Bolivia’s industries, to no avail.

He went on to say that the response to the financial crisis had to be more than just the provision of money by the same institutions that had contributed to its cause, such as the International Monetary Fund. In fact, a revolution within the Fund was needed, with its bureaucrats thinking about the big picture rather than “lining their own pockets”.

Asked when his Government would provide more information on what it had described as a plot to assassinate him and two other high-level members last week, he said the investigation was ongoing. [Three men were killed and two others jailed by Bolivian police last week in the eastern city of Santa Cruz.] But, it was his hope that the Bolivian justice system would pursue the case to its end.

Asked about Government efforts to end cases where the working conditions of servants among some wealthy landowners seemed tantamount to slavery, as well as initiatives to redistribute land to the poor, he said a great deal of education was needed to end such conditions. The Government hoped to do more than institute agrarian reform. Indeed, the four components of its initiatives were just redistribution of land; mechanization; increased production of organic and biological products; and just and fair trade. It was also focusing on credit for micro-enterprise.

Responding to a question about recent educational reforms, such as the right of indigenous people to be instructed in their own languages, he said those new types of universities sought to repair the damage of the last 500 years. But, radical change –- as seen in the case of the new Constitution -- was needed. He hoped that those universities would teach young patriotic students who were committed to their country and would eventually work for it, rather than participating in a “brain drain”.

Asked about his recent hunger strike, he noted that such methods had previously been against the military dictatorship, but were now being used against the neoliberal model. Those who subscribed to that model were frightened of democracy, because they knew they would not win.

IN MEMORY OF:

Jacob Micah Lee, mommy misses you, you should be in my arms.
Happy birthday to my little nephew who I never got to meet.

To learn more about these memorials to our children or family members lost to abortion, or to post one of your own (anonymously if you choose), please read this.

IN MEMORY OF:

Jacob Micah Lee, mommy misses you, you should be in my arms.
Happy birthday to my little nephew who I never got to meet.

To learn more about these memorials to our children or family members lost to abortion, or to post one of your own (anonymously if you choose), please read this.

...in memory of Matthew Dean, gestational age 16 weeks. Late April 24/25 or 26, 1970. From his loving Mom - Lee Anne

To learn more about these memorials to our children or family members lost to abortion, or to post one of your own (anonymously if you choose), please read this.

...in memory of Matthew Dean, gestational age 16 weeks. Late April 24/25 or 26, 1970. From his loving Mom - Lee Anne

To learn more about these memorials to our children or family members lost to abortion, or to post one of your own (anonymously if you choose), please read this.

Army Nearly Done With Probe of Fort Detrick Lab/ Wash Post

No Signs of Criminal Misconduct Found Yet in Disappearance of Virus, Official Says

This rather inconsequential article (lacking context) says Fort Detrick is still working on its inventory...going on 3 months now? Not surprisingly, the Army hasn't found anything to be concerned about, according to Fort Detrick's PR person. The article implies that much of the base's research remains on hold.

Despite fines and sanctions at other research institutes for safety lapses, I have never heard of a single research center that basically shut down for weeks or months pending a review. That back story--what it took to shut the place down, and whether it relates to the anthrax letters--could be extremely interesting.