The Cailleach's Time

The Cailleach arrived last night. The Hag of Winter made her presence know around 8:30pm. We were lounging by the firepit, comfortable in shirtsleeves and sweats, sorting out the problems of the world with a nice fire. A benign warm-ish breeze blowing. Around 8:20 the breeze fell off like someone had thrown a switch. A minute later, a new breeze, this one from the opposite direction, and bitter cold. It picked up to the point where our flags were fluttering flat-out and we found ourselves huddling close to the fire just to keep from freezing.

The Hag holds sway now, and will do so until Feb 2, when a small female figure will emerge from inside the hollow hills to engage The Cailleach in a desperate battle.

RIP Hitchens

I found the man smarmy and infuriating when he was wrong (e.g., Iraq), and could be almost as smarmy and  infuriating when he was right (which was often). But damn it all, the man could write. 


RIP Hitchens.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2011/12/16/firebrand-christopher-hitchens-dies.html

The Long Slump

…Under the best of conditions, we will endure a Long Slump. If we respond incorrectly, as we have been, the Long Slump will last even longer, and the parallel with the Depression will take on a tragic new dimension…

– Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz 

Goodbye, Jobs

I remember when Steve Jobs took all his Apple $$ and poured it into a little thing called Pixar. "Rich man's folly," I grumbled. Years later, he generated a boatload of buzz over something with the ridiculous name of iPod. "Stupid glorified MP3 player," I harrumped. Then the iPhone: "Christ, people, it's a goddamn CELL PHONE!" Finally, the iPad - "Dude, everyone's tried to launch a tablet. All have failed. You're different how?" A life well-lived, and cut short too soon. RIP, Jobs. (typed on my MacBook Pro ...)

Sunday morning haiku

Grey, dawn a ways off
Hens bounce up, down for breakfast
"BOK!" they insist. "BOK!"

Happy Labor Day

When I was a kid, my grandma put my hand on her head, under her hair, and I felt the lumps and scars. "The fookin' goons cracked my skull lotsa times," she said. And that's how I learned how my grandma stood with her sisters and helped organize the ILGWU. When that old "look for the union label" commercial came on, she would stand and sing along, hand over heart like she was singing the National Anthem.

Happy Labor Day, grandma. And a shout-out of solidarity to all those who labor.

SOUTH

Just finished reading "South: the story of Shackleton's 1914-1917 Expedition" on Kindle.


An amazing read, and a humbling one. A matter-of-fact description of the kind of heroism, loyalty and determination that we moderns, with our addiction to pointless luxury and gawking inactivity, can not even imagine, let alone hope to emulate. When did hardship become a horror to escape rather than a challenge to accept and overcome?

Genetics account for up to half of intelligence differences

Genetic differences between people account for up to half of the variation in intelligence, according to a University of Edinburgh study of more than 3,000 individuals.

Intelligence Tests Highlight Importance of Genetic Differences

"There is no longer a West .."

"The word "West" used to have a meaning. It described common goals and values, the dignity of democracy and justice over tyranny and despotism. Now it seems to be a thing of the past. There is no longer a West ..."

Once upon a time in the West

Race riot in Milwaukee

Back in a simpler time we called them "race riots." Not sure what we call them now; "unruly youths," I suppose. Our language has become riddled with cowardice.

"Witnesses' accounts claim everything from dozens to hundreds of young black people beating white people as they left State Fair Thursday night."


Witnesses describe mobs, some people claim racially-charged attacks

What the slave wants

“The true desire of the slave is not freedom, but rather that he and his slave master exchange places.” -- Franz Fanon

Where have these guys BEEN all my life???

By all the gods, this shook me to my roots. This should be it, the last song ever, the one you play as you sit in your favorite chair with a smoldering Cuban in one hand and a whiskey in the other hand ... waiting for the medicine to take its final hold.


Blood Axis, Vortex

No, not one jot!

"Where will these millions of to-day be in a hundred years? Will not at least a result be left which those of a hundred years hence may be the better for? No, not one jot! There will not be any sum or outcome or result of this ceaseless labour and movement; it vanishes in the moment that it is done, and in a hundred years nothing will be there ... for nothing is there now." - Richard Jefferies

A nearly complete capitulation ...

"... a nearly complete capitulation to the hostage-taking demands of Republican extremists. It will hurt programs for the middle class and poor, and hinder an economic recovery."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08​/01/opinion/to-escape-chaos-a-​terrible-debt-deal.html?_r=2

Malcolm McLaren, dead at 64

Malcolm McLaren: impressario, fashion visionary, and general agent provocateur, dead way before his time. His fashion boutique was the seed from which the whole "punk look" emerged, not to mention the idea of piercing one's body parts. Before McLaren, only women got pierced, and then only once in each ear, for inserting a single pair of sensible and non-flamboyant earrings. So if you have any piercings of any kind (and I most definitely DO NOT WANT TO KNOW ABOUT IT if you do, thank you very much), you can thank Malcolm. He also kicked in the doors of the tedious, pointless disco era with a quartet of fresh-scrubbed, clean-minded lads known as the Sex Pistols. Whatever you may think of their music (and mind you, I'm a person who can play every verse of "Anarchy in the UK" in my head), they were total game-changers.

Johnny Rotten, speaking at McLaren's funeral, choked back tears as he so eloquently expressed what we all must be feeling:

"**** on you, ya ****in' utter ***t!!! I'm *****n' glad yer *****n' dead, so ******and don't forget to ***** while ya ****** yer ******** and
your Mum too, ya *****n' wanker!!!!'

(OK, I made up the Johnny Rotten paragraph. Couldn't resist .... ;-)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100408/en_nm/us_mclaren_2

Creepiest Childrens' Books Ever

This is some messed-up stuff right here. Thankfully, my mother chose to scar my psyche Olde Schoole Style, with endless readings of the anarchistic guerrilla-theater stylings of "The Cat in The Hat" and the bitter nihilism of "The Cat in The Hat Comes Back." I mean come on, seriously: a children's book called "Hair in Funny Places"? Really? Still, it sure beats #14 on the list, "I Wish Daddy Didn't Drink So Much." Hell, when I was growing up, we all kind of rooted for Daddy to drink his fill, he was more tolerable when he was three sheets to the wind. But I digress.


Creepiest Childrens Books

Does Jesus Cause Gayness?

I'm really starting to wonder if there isn't some connection between ultra-conservative belief in Jesus and men who do all that there secret gay sex stuff. Could it be ... is it possible? ... OMFG!!! We finally know what causes gayness -- it's Jesus!!!

VATICAN CITY- One of Pope Benedict's ceremonial ushers and a member of an
elite choir in St Peter's Basilica have been implicated in a gay
prostitution ring, in the latest sexual scandal to taint the Vatican.

Read more:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/03/05/2010-03-05_gay_prostitution_scandal_rocks_the_vatican.html?ref=rss#ixzz0hMI43gTs

O Irony, is there no end to your endless array of manifestations?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/04/roy-ashburn-arrested-anti_n_485419.html

Early Wednesday morning, State Sen. Roy Ashburn (R-Calif.) was pulled over and arrested for drunk driving. Sources report that Ashburn -- a fierce opponent of gay rights -- was driving drunk after leaving a gay nightclub; when the officer stopped the state-issued vehicle, there was an unidentified man in the passenger seat of the car.

Good for the French

Given their tendency in recent decades towards that uniquely post-modern combination of strident relativism and knee-jerk anti-Westernism -- this is the country, after all, that has inflicted both Foucault and Derrida on the world -- it's good to see the French can still act in a way that suggests they may still possess some vestigial remnants of cultural sanity.

Veiled wife costs man French citizenship

Paris, France (CNN) -- France has denied citizenship to a man because he allegedly forced his wife to wear a full Islamic veil, the French immigration minister said in a statement Wednesday.

The ever-quotable Mark Twain

"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it."