vrijdag, september 05, 2003

ADIEU, NEW YORK



Well, ladies and gentlemen, the long-threatened relocation to Merry Old England is finally in motion.

Desultory Turgescence will be packing up and shipping off within hours (or perhaps days, but shipping off and out, nonetheless).

As a result, Desultory Turgescence will be out of commission for at least a week or two, possibly for the remainder of September while new housing is located, pubs are researched and internet connection is reestablished.

For those who have asked, no, this relocation has nothing to do with sudden realizations stirred when Deep Johnny Depp finally came right out and called the United States a Dumb Puppy, turning 21 Jump Street fans everywhere into rabid, Anti-American sycophants. Until we hear such bitter vitriol from Holly Robinson Peete and America's hero, Peter DeLuise, the verdict is still out. It's a nice analogy but frankly, at this stage in the game, America is more like a Killer Squirrel or some other sort of rabid animal. But certainly not a dumb puppy. Puppies are supposed to be warm and cute. So maybe America is not like any animal at all. Maybe America is more like a big, fat zit waiting to be popped.

And for the others who asked, no, this relocation has nothing to do with NYC being major terrorist target. I have all the duct tape and shrink wrap and plastic sheeting I could ever possibly need to protect me. Besides, it isn't like this is St. Louis, the Most Dangerous City In America.

I have to admit, the fact that NYC is a smoke-free city whose residents have to sneak their $50 per pack cigarette smokes out on street corners like juvenile deliquents because the city and the state prefers to legislate its morality, isn't a big attraction. But hey, thanks to Mayor Buffoonberg, I've quit smoking tobacco altogether. Marajuana is cheaper and I can smoke that on the street just as easily as tobacco. Thanks, NYC and Mayor Buffoonberg for turning me into a pot head. I'm sure all the bartenders and waiters who won't die from cancer now will be very happy.

Unlike so many others, I do not Hate NYC.

In fact, I've decided to compile a brief list, in no particular order of importance, of 10 Things I Kinda Liked About NYC:

1. Even though I only made one round trip, The Staten Island Ferry: It's certainly no booze cruise, but after reading Frank McCourt's evocation of drinking beer on the ferry in his disappointing follow-up to Angela's Ashes, 'Tis, I felt compelled to have a beer and sit in the warm sun while riding to Staten Island. Believe me, had I known before that Staten Island had been home to so many famous people like Christina Aguilera, Ichabod Crane, Emilio Estevez David Johansen, Alyssa Milano, Rick Schroder, Steven Seagal and Randy "Macho Man" Savage, I might have visited sooner and might even have lived there in the hopes that such greatness might rub off.
2. The Cloisters: Although there are plenty of museums in NYC, this is the only one that impressed me enough to go more than twice. I've always left there feeling as though I'd been transported through time.
3. Shea Stadium: It may well be the most hideous Major League Baseball stadium still standing but what the hell, for better or worse, it is still the home of my favorite team. Besides, where else in the world can you get the feeling you are watching a baseball game on an airport runway?
4. McSorleys Old Ale House: Whenever I got nostalgic for Holland, this was the place to go. It's sawdust floors reminded me of the sand-sprinkled floors of Cafe Hoppe on Spuistraat in Amsterdam, minus the professors with the looks of cosmogeny in their eyes and the good beer, of course. It never hurt that McSorleys is only 418 steps from my apartment. Of course, like most places, it is well to avoid it on Friday and Saturday nights when it becomes filled with an execrable amount of frat boys puking on themselves and in the street. Other than the beer, it has the most notable urinals of any place I've been to except for the vinyl forehead rests above the urinals at U Vystreleneho oka in Zizkov.
5. The bleu cheeseburger at Paul's. These are the best burgers I ever had in NYC. If burgers were cows instead of cow by-products, I'd have my own 4,000 acre cattle ranch in Patagonia by now.
6. Roosevelt Island: I always wanted to live here but never found a suitable apartment and never could find the motivation to look hard enough. The best way to get there is riding the tram during a thunder and lightening storm. I understand the trams are not supposed to be in operation during such times, but really, the swaying back and forth, dangling in the wind over the East River is one of the most delicious senses of helplessness you can safely feel and certainly better than any ride at the quickly gentrifying Coney Island.
7. Peter Luger's Steakhouse: Telling that two places on my top ten deal with the sale of flesh. They cost alot, but they are the best damned steaks I've eaten in New York.
8. Lower East Side Tenement Museum: A great place to marvel in the transformation of the sweat and dreams of immigrants into...trendy new neighborhoods?
9. Bodegas: How many times have we been out as dawn is creeping up and the thirst for beer still lingers? How many times have we damned the existence of the bodega and its never-ending supply of beer? We've forged many a sick day by stumbling into bodegas at 4:30 in the morning, foraging through the coolers for that last six pack of Grolsch. Fortunately, we gave up beer for the duration of the summer and the bodegas have come to mean a convenient place to sate those 3:00 A.M. Chocolate Fudge Brownie Low Fat Frozen Yogurt cravings. This is what living in NYC has done to me. Marajuana has replaced tobacco and low fat frozen yogurt has replaced beer. But that isn't the fault of the bodegas. In a nuclear war, only the cockroaches will survive and the bodegas will still be open.
10. Detour: Free Jazz. Can't beat it. This is the place I take visitors when they want to go out at night. No pretension, no huge cover like most local jazz clubs. When I first started coming here, not only was the music great, but they had Leffe Blonde on tap, possibly the only place in NYC that could boast of such a feat. No longer the case, but still the best place in the hood to listen to jazz.

Anyway, that's the list, brief and painless. Ethical question of the day is: If one moves from NYC to England, should one relocate one's blog from the NYC Bloggers subway blogger map? Hmmm. Unfortunately, I don't think there are any subways in the West Midlands.

If anyone would like an email update when Desultory Turgescence is up and running at full speed once again, you can advise the gurus at this address and you will be updated before the ink is even dry.

In the meantime, Kindamuzik radio is a good listen while you're waiting.

"The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced."
Frank Zappa (1940 - 1993)






donderdag, september 04, 2003

Private Jessica Lynch War Hero Superstar to Launch Book for a Million Bucks

Since the return of Supergirl to her humble hillbilly town of made-for-tv Palestine, West Virginia, Jessica Lynch, a 20-year-old former Army supply clerk has been propelled to celebrity status and awarded several service medals for her ability to survive a car crash in Iraq.

Of course, the story of "How I Turned A Car Crash In Iraq Into A Million Dollars" doesn't appear to be as marketable as tabloid publishers would like so instead, she will tell her amazing story in a book co-written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Bragg. A source close to the negotiations told The Associated Press that Lynch and Bragg will split a $1 million advance, with any royalties going to Lynch for "I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story." Pshaw. What a lame title for a heroine like Supergirl, Jessica Lynch. It's almost as if the publishers are trying to downgrade her status so as not to frighten off potential buyers who fear they might be blinded in the presence of Ms. Lynch's Christ-like luminescence even if it is only a few words on a few pages.

Ok, let's quickly slog through the obvious punchlines:

When Private Lynch returned to her trailer park in West Virginia after being held in a hospital as a "prisoner of war" by Iraqi doctors and getting "rescued" by American troops, the Pentagon claimed that she couldn't answer any questions about her fascinatingly fabricated escapade because she suffered amnesia. This was supported by her doctors at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, who also said it was unlikely she would remember the events of her capture.

Good news for Jessica. She doesn't NEED to remember anything because the co-writer is none other than Rick Bragg, a former New York Times journalist who resigned from the paper in May after he forgot to attribute material from a freelance writer that he used in a series of articles.

Between the two of them, they could fabricate an entire encyclopedia of great journalistic stories:

How I Killed Saddam And Saved Humanity From Satan And Certain Death, by Jessica Lynch.

How I Made Peons and Unpaid Interns Write All My Stories At The New York Times and Then Pretended To Be A Big-Shot Writer, by Rick Bragg.

How We Made Millions Making Up Stories About Adventures We Never Experienced, by Jessica Lynch AND Rick Bragg.

"I'm sure she went through a lot of hell, but so did the other guys,"said Dale Stitzel of Carlisle, master of the understatement, was in the Army in 1945 and 1946. Stitzel said Lynch's story was "blown out of proportion."

In July, she was awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star, one of the nation's highest awards for meritorious service and her superhuman ability to remember intricate details of her life despite amnesia. This is the first time a soldier was given a Bronze Star for surviving a car crash and staying in a hospital for nine days.

That recognition lessened the medal's value, said Charles "Chick" Morris, of Harrisburg, a Marine during World War II and the Korean War.

She "merely awoke one morning in an Iraqi hospital and was rescued," he said. "She may be a very dedicated young woman, but I don't think [that] rates the attention of a Bronze Star."

Rumor has it that the book will claim not only that Jessica uncovered a billion Weapons of Mass Destruction and ate them all to save the planet Earth from certain destruction at the hands of Saddam Hussein but also that while in the hospital, she secretly located Saddam Hussein and killed him, eating his body parts one by one to stay alive during her ordeal.

"No claim is too fantastic," Rick Bragg was alleged to have said. "Jessica Lynch is almost superhuman in her will to live and her bravery and her unmitigated ability to save Planet Earth time and time again from destruction at the hands of evil dictators."

A spokesman for the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, said Lynch's book is due out in mid-November.

Call From New-Look Heaven: Jesus Says "Send Us More Murderers To Martyr!"

According to this world's first talking bowel movement, Paul Hill, a former minister who gunned down an abortion doctor, said he feels no remorse and suggested the state will be making him a martyr when he becomes the first person executed in the United States for anti-abortion violence.

"The sooner I am executed ... the sooner I am going to heaven," Hill said in a jailhouse interview. "I expect a great reward in heaven. I am looking forward to glory. I don't feel remorse."

What is it about loving Jesus Christ that makes people want to kill so bad? There's this loser, and then, on an even larger scale, there's President Jesus Bush running around telling everyone that in order to liberate the Iraqis you have to kill thousands of their civilians and destroy their country in the name of Jesus and Democracy.

It's a wonder anyone even bothers to worship Satan any more when they've got Jesus as a handy excuse for all their killing.

Even President Jesus Bush's brother, Jeb Bush, the governor of the Holy Land called Florida where poor Mr. Killer for Jesus will be put to sleep, has somehow horned in on the act. Abortion-rights groups worry that Hill's execution will trigger reprisals by those who share his steadfast belief that violence to stop abortion is justified. Several Florida officials connected to the case received threatening letters last week, accompanied by rifle bullets.

Gov. Jeb Bush, who was named in one of those threatening letters, said Tuesday the threats would not keep him from carrying out the law.

"I'm not going to be bullied," the weaker Bush said, inflating his flat chest, shoving his junkie daughter and immigrant wife, Aye Columba, out of the way to underscore his point.

Bush also said: "I'm not going to change the deeply held views that I have on (the death penalty) because others have deeply held views that disagree. I totally respect them. I love them. I love killing, in anyone's name, in any state, for any reason. And they should respect what the rule of law is here in our state, which is kill or be killed"

It just proves the point that God Hates America and we should kill him too. Certainly Donald Rumsfeld is strong and brave and heroic enough to do the job.

woensdag, september 03, 2003

Bush and Cheeta the Chimp Defy The Norm



Chimpanzees in the wild tend to live for 40 to 45 years and to the mid 50s in captivity, according to chimpanzee researchers.
While Bush has already celebrated his 55th birthday, Tarzan's Cheeta's Life as a Retired Movie Star continues to flourish. The 71-year-old Cheeta, the chimpanzee of Tarzan fame who celebrated his birthday a month ago.

"He, not George Bush, is the world's oldest chimp and in excellent condition," said Dan Westfall, who cares for Cheeta and several other retired showbiz primates at the Cheeta Primate Foundation in Palm Springs. Cheeta's "world's oldest" title is noted in the Guinness Book of World Records.

US Justice Department Directive #1, If You Can't Catch The "Real" Criminal, Arrest Someone Else And Cause A Big Media Stir So That To The General American Public Who Isn't Really Paying Attention To Anything Beyond Headlines, It "Looks" Like You Caught Him

Reminiscent of a few weeks ago when the hysterically incorrect spin was launched to make it seem like the US Government had arrested a dangerous terrorist with missiles when it reality they'd arrested a guy who wanted to buy fake missiles from fake terrorists, they are at it yet again.

That's right. Instead of capturing the person(s) responsible for created and dispersing the internet virus that caused problems for MILLIONS of computers around the world, the FBI makes a big splash announcing the "capture" of Jeffrey Parson, a teenage kid from Minnesota who did indeed created an Internet computer worm, but one which affected a mere 7,000 computers.

Normally, such an arrest should be celebrated. Any jerk creating an internet computer worm should be arrested and at least have a few fingers amputated.

But all the hoopla and hype creates the illusion that the FBI actually did their jobs.

Nope.

Once again, as we have seen while Osama bin Laden runs free, planning new horrors, and has a secret life, as we note when we note that for all of President Bush's blustery and adolesescent posturing and threatening, Saddam Hussein is still spotted more often than Elvis (even if the school books of Iraqi schoolchildren aren't), the clownish yet frightfully underachieving Bush Administration never gets the right guy.

But they are good at creating a giant media spin that makes it seem like they've actually captured somebody important.

Too bad Osama bin Laden or Saddam or the person(s) who REALLY created the internet computer virus isn't a cartoonist. The FBI is very good at investigating cartoonists like the poor bastard who drew this.

Some people think Bush is a blasphemer and heretic.

You know, they've got a website to Impeach Bush and a website to recall Bush but why isn't there a website yet to OVERTHROW BUSH?

It's not as though this is a legitimate government anyway.

If you want to try your hand at fighting terror and know you can do a better job than the stiff upper lips and the bumbling, criminally incompetent jackasses in the Bush Administration, here you can look how to fight The War On Terror

dinsdag, september 02, 2003

Looks like NYC is preparing Desultory Turgescence for the weather ahead in England:

NYC:

This Afternoon: Cloudy with a chance of light rain or drizzle. Highs in the mid 60s. Northeast winds 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent.
TonightCloudy with a chance of rain. Lows in the lower 60s. Northeast winds 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent.
Wednesday Rain likely. Highs in the lower 70s. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph becoming southeast. Chance of rain 60 percent.

Stratford-Upon-Avon:

Today: Dry but rather cloudy though a little sunshine at times. Maximum temperature 19 deg C (66 deg F).
Tonight: Remaining dry with clear spells. Minimum temperature 9 deg C (48 deg F).
Outlook for Tuesday: Rather cloudy with the odd light shower.


A nice little film called Hybrid vs. Hummer pits California gubernatorial candidate Arianna Huffington (aka Hybrid) against Ahnold (aka Hummer).

Hands Off Ashcroft

By now, we've all heard how President Bush, thinking his dog Barney was an intelligent thought or something equally dangerous, dropped him like a bad habit in front of a bunch of impressionable Little Leaguers, on the tarmac of at the TSTC Airfield in Waco.

So far, no word on whether or not PETA will file a complaint for attempted dogslaughter.

maandag, september 01, 2003

Labor Day, 2003

How many labor leaders can you identify?

What Work Is
Philip Levine

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is--if you're
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it's someone else's brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, "No,
we're not hiring today," for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who's not beside you or behind or
ahead because he's home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You've never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you're too young or too dumb,
not because you're jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don't know what work is.

News to me: Henry VIII, King of England from 1491-1547 wrote poetry:

Lusty Youth should us ensue

Lusty Youth should us ensue,
His merry heart shall sure all rue.
For whatsoever they do him tell,
It is not for him, we know it well.

For they would have him his Liberty refrain
And all merry company for to disdain,
But I will not so whatsoever they say,
But follow his mind in all that we may.

How should Youth himself best use
But all disdainers for to refuse?
Youth has, as chief assurance,
Honest Mirth with Virtue's pastance.

For in them consisteth great honour,
Though that disdainers would therein put error,
For they do sue to get them grace
All only riches to purchase.

With Good Order, Counsel, and Equity,
Good Lord, grant us our mansion to be!
For without their good guidance
Youth should fall in great mischance.

For Youth is frail and prompt to do,
As well vices as virtues to ensue.
Wherefore by these he must be guided
And Virtue's pastance must be therein used.

Now unto God this prayer we make,
That this rude play may well be take,
And that we may our faults amend,
And bliss obtain at our last end.
Amen.