MORE ST MALO


L'Azur

De l'éternel azur la sereine ironie
Accable, belle indolemment comme les fleurs,
Le poëte impuissant qui maudit son génie
À travers un désert stérile de Douleurs.

Fuyant, les yeux fermés, je le sens qui regarde
Avec l'intensité d'un remords atterrant,
Mon âme vide. Où fuir? Et quelle nuit hagarde
Jeter, lambeaux, jeter sur ce mépris navrant?

Brouillards, montez! Versez vos cendres monotones
Avec de longs haillons de brume dans les cieux
Qui noiera le marais livide des automnes
Et bâtissez un grand plafond silencieux!

Et toi, sors des étangs léthéens et ramasse
En t'en venant la vase et les pâles roseaux,
Cher Ennui, pour boucher d'une main jamais lasse
Les grands trous bleus que font méchamment les oiseaux.

Encor! que sans répit les tristes cheminées
Fument, et que de suie une errante prison
Éteigne dans l'horreur de ses noires traînées
Le soleil se mourant jaunâtre à l'horizon!

- Le Ciel est mort. - Vers toi, j'accours! donne, ô matière,
L'oubli de l'Idéal cruel et du Péché
À ce martyr qui vient partager la litière
Où le bétail heureux des hommes est couché,

Car j'y veux, puisque enfin ma cervelle, vidée
Comme le pot de fard gisant au pied d'un mur,
N'a plus l'art d'attifer la sanglotante idée,
Lugubrement bâiller vers un trépas obscur...

En vain! l'Azur triomphe, et je l'entends qui chante
Dans les cloches. Mon âme, il se fait voix pour plus
Nous faire peur avec sa victoire méchante,
Et du métal vivant sort en bleus angelus!

Il roule par la brume, ancien et traverse
Ta native agonie ainsi qu'un glaive sûr;
Où fuir dans la révolte inutile et perverse?
Je suis hanté. L'Azur! l'Azur! l'Azur! l'Azur!

Stéphane Mallarmé

St Malo I





Le guignon

Au-dessus du bétail ahuri des humains
Bondissaient en clarté les sauvages crinières
Des mendiants d'azur le pied dans nos chemins.

Un noir vent sur leur marche éployé pour bannières
La flagellait de froid tel jusque dans la chair,
Qu'il y creusait aussi d'irritables ornières.

Toujours avec l'espoir de rencontrer la mer,
Ils voyageaient sans pain, sans bâtons et sans urnes,
Mordant au citron d'or de l'idéal amer.

La plupart râla dans les défilés nocturnes,
S'enivrant du bonheur de voir couler son sang,
O Mort le seul baiser aux bouches taciturnes!

Leur défaite, c'est par un ange très puissant
Debout à l'horizon dans le nu de son glaive:
Une pourpre se caille au sein reconnaissant.

Ils tettent la douleur comme ils tétaient le rêve
Et quand ils vont rythmant de pleurs voluptueux
Le peuple s'agenouille et leur mère se lève.

Ceux-là sont consolés, sûrs et majestueux;
Mais traînent à leurs pas cent frères qu'on bafoue,
Dérisoires martyrs de hasards tortueux.

Le sel pareil des pleurs ronge leur douce joue,
Ils mangent de la cendre avec le même amour,
Mais vulgaire ou bouffon le destin qui les roue.

Ils pouvaient exciter aussi comme un tambour
La servile pitié des races à voix terne,
Égaux de Prométhée à qui manque un vautour!

Non, vils et fréquentant les déserts sans citerne,
Ils courent sous le fouet d'un monarque rageur,
Le Guignon, dont le rire inouï les prosterne.

Amants, il saute en croupe à trois, le partageur!
Puis le torrent franchi, vous plonge en une mare
Et laisse un bloc boueux du blanc couple nageur.

Grâce à lui, si l'un souffle à son buccin bizarre,
Des enfants nous tordront en un rire obstiné
Qui, le poing à leur cul, singeront sa fanfare.

Grâce à lui, si l'une orne à point un sein fané
Par une rose qui nubile le rallume,
De la bave luira sur son bouquet damné.

Et ce squelette nain, coiffé d'un feutre à plume
Et botté, dont l'aisselle a pour poils vrais des vers,
Est pour eux l'infini de la vaste amertume.

Vexés ne vont-ils pas provoquer le pervers,
Leur rapière grinçant suit le rayon de lune
Qui neige en sa carcasse et qui passe au travers.

Désolés sans l'orgueil qui sacre l'infortune,
Et tristes de venger leurs os de coups de bec,
Ils convoitent la haine, au lieu de la rancune.

Ils sont l'amusement des racleurs de rebec,
Des marmots, des putains et de la vieille engeance
Des loqueteux dansant quand le broc est à sec.

Les poëtes bons pour l'aumône ou la vengeance,
Ne connaissent le mal de ces dieux effacés,
Les disent ennuyeux et sans intelligence.

« Ils peuvent fuir ayant de chaque exploit assez,
» Comme un vierge cheval écume de tempête
» Plutôt que de partir en galops cuirassés.

» Nous soûlerons d'encens le vainqueur de la fête:
» Mais eux, pourquoi n'endosser pas, ces baladins,
» D'écarlate haillon hurlant que l'on s'arrête! »

Quand en face tous leur ont craché les dédains,
Nuls et la barbe à mots bas priant le tonnerre,
Ces héros excédés de malaises badins

Vont ridiculement se pendre au réverbère.

Stéphane Mallarmé

SUNDAY ROUNDABOUT

Teetotaller's Anonymous...

They, too, will have to confess their helplessness, their shame at the night they got home at 10.30 and didn't piss in the sock drawer. Their sadly unexciting, considerate treatment of their partner. The fact that they have no anecdotes about being off their face, wasted, wrecked, and out of it. The lack of red wine stains on their lips, and the absence of liquid excuses for their behaviour.

*****

Gay Jokes and Illegal ComedY

Rod Liddle, the Funny Man of the Op-Ed Pages, gets snarky about legislation to make homophobic jokes illegal in So a gay, blind suicide bomber walks into a bar...

For years I found racist jokes extremely boring – but they became funny when it was apparent that the act of telling them could (a) lose you your job and (b) bring the Old Bill down on you with a charge of inciting racial hatred. Now, as a consequence, I find almost all racist jokes hilarious, especially ones about Muslims and particularly if they are cartoons which feature Allah or Muhammad or fat ladies in burqas saying to one another: “Does my bomb look big in this?”

However, I don’t find them quite as funny as I find jokes about physical or mental disabilities – they are the real howlers these days. And that’s because the disability lobby has become so preternaturally sensitive, so disposed towards pouncing on anything which might be construed as disablist. Consequently, these days, all you have to do is say “and guess what . . . he only had one arm!” and I fall about laughing.

*****The Vigilante Bus?*****

AIG protesters took a bus tour of the homes of AIG executives yesterday but without significant incident.

"It's very hard to see people who've made such a contribution to our community singled out," a resident who is married to an obviously well-paid executive said. "Why don't they single out people who took out mortgages they couldn't afford?"

Contribution to the community? She must be on about the Community of Selfish Fucks.

******

Death Jazz

The Seedier Side of Life

Hobo Stripper:

I live in a van. Yeah, down by the river. And I dance nekkid for money. Weird, I know, but it's my path, and it's full of beauty and bliss. I hope my writings will inspire you to look inward to your own bliss. If you want to live in a van or be a stripper, then wow, I've got some tips for you.

*****

Shoe Cannons and "Complete Phonies"



I don't which bit is funnier on the absurdity scale:

Dubya Bush, offering to help President Obama by saying that "the president deserves my silence, and if he wants my help he can pick up the phone and call me."

Or the fact that at the building Bush was in

Up to 400 demonstrators chanted and threw shoes outside the venue – though police disabled a makeshift cannon rigged to fire shoes into the street.

Footwear has been collected and a cannon has been constructed to toss shoes at an effigy of the much-maligned leader in homage to the Iraqi reporter who chucked his loafers at Mr. Bush last December and was sentenced last week to three years in prison.

A shoe cannon?
Advise from Bush?

You do the maths.

note how engaged and energised Brown's cabinet members appear...hey Jacqui Smith, how about another Qualude?

And then, over on the other side of the pond, Tory leader David Cameron showed his mastery of the economic crisis and political theory generally by stating:

"I'm glad you are back to reading out quotations. We now know how long a pledge from you lasts. Yesterday you said in the Guardian, 'I personally have always said that modern politics, with its focus on who said what, when and how, is far too divisive to meet the problems of the country'. What a complete phoney!"

Glad to see the deep intellectual debate as the country goes down the pisser.

First Scotland raised the minimum on cheap drinks to combat the thirst of their own countrymen, then England started sniffing around the notion. After all, somewhere in there can be found more revenue for an insatiable Gordon Brown whose Labour Party's limits for stealth taxes and cash penalties knows no bounds.

However, as it is pointed out in Concussing yourself with cheap cider does not veto your right to fairness. Not sure when "fairness" has ever entered into the equation but the author makes a few good, if not tongue-in-cheek points:

I think we have to consign to the dustbin of dur the fact that it takes publicly funded research to establish that young people and alcoholics prefer drinks that don't cost very much, and move on.

What? And take away the rights of publically funded researchers to collect salaries pointing out the criminally obvious?!

Oh right, the country is bankrupt, the world economy is in the pisser and hmmm, it must be time to release a study on the drinking habits of The Young and The Poor and poke around the idea of making it more expensive for them to drink.

The writer also appears to rightly have it in for Sir Liam Donaldson:

Perhaps he is one of those who simply despise people he considers weak. What do you call them again? Oh yeah, Tories. His proposals are that alcohol be priced at a minimum of 50p a unit, and he defended all this with the rather emotive statement that the "quality of life of families and in cities and towns up and down the country is being eroded by the effects of excessive drinking. Cheap alcohol is killing us as never before." (I cannot stand it, by the way, when one's status and respectability are elevated by this airy reference to "families". Are we all in a family, or do you have to physically live with the buggers? Do we all deserve our quality of life to be considered, or just those with children and/or parents?)

Well of course, rallying around the empty slogan of children and families is the new vanguard of moral cowardice, innit?

It's a tactic the psychopathic morality of the Republican Party in America has used with great success for years.

Meanwhile, is it the fault of cheap alcohol that the UK is to lose 1 million more jobs?

Diversion. Don't look here, look over there. Those cheap drunks and corrupted youth.

*****



See any drunks among these faces?

This extraordinary painting depicting 103 figures from world history in striking detail has become the latest internet hit.

Message boards have erupted with contests to identify all those featured, who range from instantly recognisable figures like Gandhi to some more obscure figures such as Liu Xiang, the Chinese hurdler who limped out of the Beijing Olympics in the summer.

Random Bits

"I often perceive my native language as alien. Not until I found
myself abroad did I notice that my fellow countrymen communicate in a
kind of half-language, half-swallowing their words and uttering
semi-sounds. I experience my native language as an attempt by a
linguistic invalid to vonvey even the simplest though through
gestures, grimaces and intonations. Conversations among my
compatriots seem long, exhausting and devoid of content. Instead of
talking, they seem to be stroking each other with words, spreading a
soothing, sonorous saliva over one another...."

and then a little later, speaking about a colleague from Zagreb: "He
had a Zagreb way of talking that gone my nerves - the la-di-da stress
on the last syllable, the constant use of reflexives, verbal forms
referring to the self, that made him sound intimately related to
everything other on earth..."

both from: The Ministry of Pain by Dubravka Ugrešić

*****

pensée: a thought expressed in literary form. A pensée can be short and in a specific form, such as an aphorism or epigram, or it can be as long as a paragraph or a page. The term originated with French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, whose Pensées (1670) was a collection of some 800 to 1,000 notes and manuscript fragments expressing his religious beliefs. The form was particularly popular in French literature, as in Denis Diderot’s Pensées philosophiques (1746).

*****

Bay of Fundy:

The Bay of Fundy is known for its high tidal range and the bay is contested as having the highest vertical tidal range in the world with Ungava Bay in northern Quebec and The Severn Estuary in the UK

The river becomes the Severn Estuary after the Second Severn Crossing between Severn Beach, South Gloucestershire and Sudbrook, Monmouthshire. The river then discharges into the Bristol Channel which in turn discharges into the Celtic Sea and the wider Atlantic Ocean. The Severn's drainage basin area is 11,420 square kilometres (4,409 sq mi), excluding the River Wye and Bristol Avon which flow into the Bristol Channel.

Nosso estranho amor

(Marina Lima)

Não quero sugar todo o seu leite
Nem quero você enfeite do meu ser
Apenas te peço que respeite
O meu louco querer

Não importa com quem você se deite
Que você se deleite seja com quem for
Apenas te peço que aceite
O meu estranho amor
Ah! Mãinha
Deixa o ciúme chegar
Deixa o ciúme passar
E sigamos juntos
Ah! Neguinha
Deixa eu gostar de você
Pra lá do meu coração
Não me diga nunca não
Teu corpo combina com meu jeito
Nós dois fomos feitos muito pra nós dois
Não valham dramáticos defeitos
Mas o que está depois
Não vamos fuçar nossos defeitos
Cravar sobre o peito as unhas do rancor
Lutemos, mas só pelo direito
Ao nosso estranho amor
Ah! Mãinha
Deixa o ciúme chegar
Deixa o ciúme passar
E sigamos juntos
Ah! Neguinha
Deixa eu gostar de você
Pra lá do meu coração
Não me diga nunca não
Ah! Mãinha
Deixa o ciúme chegar
Deixa o ciúme passar
E sigamos juntos
Ah! Neguinha
Deixa eu gostar de você
Pra lá do meu coração
Não me diga nunca não.

By all means, the new "must read" piece of lit comes from The Conqueror by Jan Kjaerstad which pulls you in from the first words and drags you immediately into another world. I read the first few pages excerpted on Amazon and when the excerpt ended, ordered the book. I can't wait to read the rest of it.



A proper analysis can be found at Three Percent. Tysend tak.

*****gotan project*****



*****Queen of Funk: Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings****
(merci, chez lubacov



*****

Hey how about another fat dollop of worthless government intrusive blundering cleverly masked in concerns for terrorism? Haven't had enough yet? Still hungry? Good, because it is now alleged that all travel plans and personal details will be traced by the Government.

In most cases the information will be expected to be provided 24 hours ahead of travel and will then be stored on a Government database for around ten years. The changes are being brought in as the Government tries to tighten border controls and increase protection against the threat of "international terrorism".

International terrorism indeed.

Like all those terrorists putting the wrong rubbish in their bins covered under the 2000 Terrorism Act?

Or all those Icelandic terrorists out there?

Could it be they are merely trying to track Satan?

The marks were similar to those in the original Devil's Footprints which have been shrouded in mystery for over 150 years when it was believed Devon was visited by the devil himself.

Legend has it that on February 8, 1855, a trail of hoof-like marks following straight lines appeared in the snow for more than 100 miles across South Devon.

NeoCapitalism?



The FT unleashes another in a series of considered essays on the future of capitalism:

What, then, is capitalism’s future? Our current, damaged system is not, despite Marx’s hopes, to be replaced by a totally egalitarian, communist society (such arrangements might be there in life after death). Our future political economy will probably not be one in which Smith or his present-day disciples could find much comfort: there will be a higher-than-welcome degree of government interference in “the market”, somewhat larger taxes and heavy public disapprobation of the profit principle in general. Schumpeter and Keynes, one suspects, will feel rather more at home with our new post-excess neocapitalist political economy. It will be a system where the animal spirits of the market will be closely watched (and tamed) by a variety of national and international zookeepers – a taming of which the great bulk of the spectators will heartily approve – but there will be no ritual murder of the free-enterprise principle, even if we have to plunge further into depression for the next years. Homus Economicus will take a horrible beating. But capitalism, in modified form, will not disappear. Like democracy, it has serious flaws – but, just as one find faults with democracy, the critics of capitalism will discover that all other systems are worse. Political economy tells us so.

It would be nice to have a few more details as to the restrictions and dictats that are alleged causing banks in America to return their bailout money handouts.



It would appear that other than unfounded allegations of "social engineering" the cuts in executive pay packages and other potential government "demands" don't sit well with bankers who are accustomed to being the ones ramming it to people rather than the other way around.

One of the biggest concerns of the banks is that the program lets Congress and the administration pile on new conditions at any time.

The demands to modify mortgages or forestall evictions are especially onerous, some bank executives and experts say, because they could prompt some institutions to take steps that could lead to greater losses.

Hmmm, piling on new conditions at any time? Putting those receiving funds to take steps that could lead to greater losses? Sounds a little like the way banks treated customers for years and years and years.

Well and truly one must be comforted by the mantra that if bankers don't like it or are against it, it must be good.

Since when are they to be believed and further, given they've already ground the economy into dust with their insatiable greed, what credibility to bankers really have anyway? They're going to lose money? Well, they did a brilliant job of that on their own so the claim rings a little hollow at this point.

Of course, if you're interested in detailed analysis of what the IMF believes is the appropriate fiscal policy for the financial crisis, and you have time to sift through 38 pages of bureaucratic economo-speak, it's there for the reading.

On the other hand, to the delight of reductionists everywhere, the policies and ideas are neatly summarised by the FT as:

temporary spending and tax cuts aimed at high-spending groups will be more effective and less risky than broad tax cuts.

In other words, "sustaining demand", the ironic way that this all works is give MORE money to those who already HAVE more. Think we've heard that one before, haven't we?



*****

Come to think of it, no point in worrying about economies collapsing or not having any money. We should be saving up for scuba equipment because we're all going to be underwater in a matter of months anyway

Sounds like a good reductionist terror lead for GMTV or BBC Breakfast, both of whom are desperate (perhaps GMTV moreso because their funding isn't predicated on the extortion of UK tax payers).

Sea levels are predicted to rise twice as fast as was forecast by the United Nations only two years ago, threatening hundreds of millions of people with catastrophe, scientists said yesterday in a dramatic new warning about climate change. Rapidly melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are likely to push up sea levels by a metre or more by 2100, swamping coastal cities and obliterating the living space of 600 million people who live in deltas, low-lying areas and small island states.

Low-lying countries with increasing populations, such as Bangladesh, Burma and Egypt, could see large parts of their surface areas vanish. Experts in Bangladesh estimate that a one-metre rise in sea levels would swamp 17 per cent of the country's land mass. Pacific islands such as Tuvalu, where 12,000 people live just a few feet above sea level, and the Maldives, would face complete obliteration.

Oh, I dunno. The hysteria just doesn't seem "real" enough unless it's got a failed and gutless American politician making a film about it.

If you're feeling hopeless, you could always watch Sizzle, a mocumentary about global warming.

*****

PSST, have I got a conspiracy for YOU!

What if it were the same gunman (or gunmen) here and here?

Samson contractor Greg McCullough said he was pumping petrol at the station when the gunman opened fire, killing a woman coming out of the service station and wounding McCullough in the shoulder and arm with bullet fragments that struck his truck and the pump.

``I first thought it was somebody playing,'' he said

Somebody playing? They sure play hard in Alabama.



And maybe even in Northern Ireland

Northern Irish politics is, as a rule, boring. Think about the material you have to work with. Between Martin McGuinness’ lachrymose banalities and Peter Robinson’s rigid bigotry (there is a great deal of both in Stormont), there is little room to be inspiring. The only occasional frisson is when one of the demented crackpots of the hard right says something unspeakably ignorant and stupid. Sammy Wilson, the environment minister, denies that there is such a thing as man-made global warming, and that ensures that his smug, dopy-eyed, reddened face gets on the news for a week. (Sammy is also, you may care to know, an Ulster Jobs for Ulster Workers guy). Likewise, when Iris Robinson MP, spouse to First Minister Peter, describes homosexuality as being “viler” than child abuse, there follows a brief uproar before the the usual run of anti-gay violence is resumed with vengeance. (Not that Nothern Ireland has a problem with exaggerated machismo - anyone who says it does will receive a boot in the ballicks.) Though I have not visited NI for years, and don’t feel much connection to it, it is hard not to be embarrassed by the kinds of people who get elected in that neck of the woods. They are so obviously unfit for the job. They should be spreading mulch and spouting misanthropy out in the suburbs and farming communities.

BRISTOL MORN WALKS III

BRISTOL MORN WALKS, II

Back by popular demand, a further in the series of early morning/dawn walks around the city of Bristol, UK.

BRISTOL MORNS

For a little home-style touch, these are some photos taken around Bristol over the last week on early morning walks:

Frankie Boyle

part 1



part 2



part 3

Sunday Reads And Listens, etc.

“When a place gets boring, even the rich people leave.”

somewhat fascinating study on how the crash will reshape America and some of the observations therein:

The historian Scott Reynolds Nelson has noted that in some respects, today’s crisis most closely resembles the “Long Depression,” which stretched, by one definition, from 1873 to 1896. It began as a banking crisis brought on by insolvent mortgages and complex financial instruments, and quickly spread to the real economy, leading to mass unemployment that reached 25 percent in New York.

During that crisis, rising industries like railroads, petroleum, and steel were consolidated, old ones failed, and the way was paved for a period of remarkable innovation and industrial growth. In 1870, New England mill towns like Lowell, Lawrence, Manchester, and Springfield were among the country’s most productive industrial cities, and America’s population overwhelmingly lived in the countryside. By 1900, the economic geography had been transformed from a patchwork of farm plots and small mercantile towns to a landscape increasingly dominated by giant factory cities like Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Buffalo.

And, discussing the future, mobility and home ownership versus renting, flexibility and transience:

If anything, our government policies should encourage renting, not buying. Homeownership occupies a central place in the American Dream primarily because decades of policy have put it there. A recent study by Grace Wong, an economist at the Wharton School of Business, shows that, controlling for income and demographics, homeowners are no happier than renters, nor do they report lower levels of stress or higher levels of self-esteem.

And while homeownership has some social benefits—a higher level of civic engagement is one—it is costly to the economy. The economist Andrew Oswald has demonstrated that in both the United States and Europe, those places with higher homeownership rates also suffer from higher unemployment. Homeownership, Oswald found, is a more important predictor of unemployment than rates of unionization or the generosity of welfare benefits. Too often, it ties people to declining or blighted locations, and forces them into work—if they can find it—that is a poor match for their interests and abilities.

As homeownership rates have risen, our society has become less nimble: in the 1950s and 1960s, Americans were nearly twice as likely to move in a given year as they are today. Last year fewer Americans moved, as a percentage of the population, than in any year since the Census Bureau started tracking address changes, in the late 1940s. This sort of creeping rigidity in the labor market is a bad sign for the economy, particularly in a time when businesses, industries, and regions are rising and falling quickly.

*****
Iva Bittova & Vladimir Vaclavek: "Sto let"



*****

My Top 4 Favourite Tee-Shirts From Tee-Shirt Hell:


For the Welsh?

For those who've had enough?

just so...wrong

honesty?

To where pretty much anywhere

******

More on British Scottish Drinking Habits

Maybe not. Whereas the French sip, Scotland, like the rest of Britain, gulps. A survey by Sweden’s National Institute of Public Health asked how often drinking sessions turned into binges (defined as one person drinking a whole bottle of wine or more). French men reported bingeing 9% of the time, Italians 13% and Germans 14%. For British men, 40% of drinking sessions turned into binges. Women were similarly ahead of their continental counterparts.

Bingeing is not unique to Britain: Nordic countries are almost as raucous, with Swedish men bingeing 33% of the time. But they don’t drink as much in total: annual consumption is less than six litres in Sweden. Britain’s special curse is to combine northern European drinking habits with southern European volumes.

Alma Apretada
Pablo Neruda

Hemos perdido incluso este crepúsculo. Nadie sierra nosotros esta
tarde tomados de la mano mientras que la noche azul cayó en el mundo.

He visto de mi ventana que la fiesta de la puesta del sol en la
montaña distante remata.

Un pedazo del sol se quemó a veces como una moneda en mi mano.

Le recordé con mi alma apretado en esa tristeza el míos que usted
sabe.

¿Dónde entonces estaba usted? ¿Quién estaba allí? ¿Decir qué?
¿Por qué el conjunto de amor vendrá en mí repentinamente cuando soy
triste y sentirle está ausente lejano?

El libro cayó eso cerrado siempre en el crepúsculo y mi suéter azul
rodados como un perro lastimado en mis pies.

Siempre, usted retrocede siempre con las tardes hacia el crepúsculo
que borra las estatuas.


*****

Tennessee's 'Little Houdini':

Mr. Gay's much-publicized prison-break in 2007 to reach his dying mama's side failed, but only after he led authorities on a five-state, five-day chase that ended with him being arrested driving the country singer Crystal Gayle's stolen tour bus in Florida. Now police around the flyspeck burgs of northern Tennessee are back on full alert after another audacious escape by Gay in Kennesaw, Ga., on Tuesday.

*****

Kids For Cash, is a particularly egregious story about judges accepting kickbacks from some detention centre owner to lock up juvees for profit:

Last month the judge involved, Mark Ciavarella, and the presiding judge of the juvenile court, Michael Conahan, pleaded guilty to having accepted $2.6m (£1.8m) from the co-owner and builder of a private detention centre where children aged from 10 to 17 were locked up.

The cases of up to 2,000 children put into custody by Ciavarella over the past seven years - including that of Transue - are now being reviewed in a billowing scandal dubbed "kids for cash". The alleged racket has raised questions about the cosy ties between the courts and private contractors, and about the harsh treatment meted out to adolescents.

Alerted by Laurene Transue, the Juvenile Law Centre in Wilkes-Barre began to uncover scores of cases in which teenagers had been summarily sent to custody by Ciavarella, dating as far back as 1999. One child was detained for stealing a $4 jar of nutmeg, another for throwing a sandal at her mother, a third aged 14 was held for six months for slapping a friend at school.

Half of all the children who came before Ciavarella had no legal representation, despite it being a right under state law. The Juvenile Law Centre has issued a class action against the two judges and other implicated parties in which it seeks compensation for more than 80 children who it claims were victims of injustice.

*****

Have to say, Todd Snider is one of the more interesting guitarists/singers/songwriters/storyteller I've heard in awhile:

POOL SPRAY, new word of the day....

King of the Witless Buffoons

Looks like Sir Chubalard is not going to get centre stage at the auld White House as hoped.

Downing Street officials discovered last night that Prime Minister would not, as had been widely reported, hold a joint press conference with President Obama after their talks at the White House today.

Instead, the White House press office announced what it called a "pool spray" - a few shouted questions from selected agency reporters as the two men sat down for talks and photographers clicked away.

*****

For those of you who have been following the big Pirate Bay Trial may find it more than a bit ironic that Fredrik Neij, one of the PirateBay admins currently on trial in Stockholm, admitted that he rebooted one of the serves right there in the courtroom during closing arguments.

In some sense you might construe this as the biggest ethical trial in recent memory...

Commentary from the Aftonbladet can be found here

”Den som håller i en rock medan någon annan misshandlar en person är delaktig i brottet”, sa åklagare Hans Roswall i sin slutplädering i Pirate Bay-målet i måndags.
Piraterna har medverkat till geschäftliknande kopiering, och för det bör de straffas.
Försvaret menar att verksamheten, tekniskt sett, är lovlig. Att medverkansansvaret måste se annorlunda ut på internet, som bygger på länkar och hänvisningssystem. Ansvaret mellan de åtalade måste individualiseras.
Det kan låta komplicerat, men det duger med ringa kunskaper i upphovsrätt för att förstå vad rättegången egentligen handlar om: etik.

Not a bad movie for a rainy Saturday afternoon:



movie trailer should be self-explanatory but briefly, it's about a town dealing with grief, a university dealing with adversity and a football team needing well, players and coaches.

*****

COOL TOOL

Panoramic photography knocks out 360 cities, one for every degree, I suppose. Well interesting.

America's Republic Party Run By A Radio Ignoramus


Run Captain Pigface, Run!

If you ever needed proof of who runs the Republican Party, here it is.

"What is so strange about being honest and saying I want Barack Obama to fail if his mission is to restructure and re-form this country so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation?" said the Pig Faced Limbaugh.

President Pig Face Wanna Be?

Oh, I dunno, what's so strange about a guy who calls himself a patriot yet at the same time hopes his president fails?

As always, Limbaugh has proven he's a self-serving Machiavellian who wants the Republicans, or his brand of Republicanism to maintain power at all costs. Even if it means his own country fails.

The spineless absence of direction of the Republican Party, who have now confirmed their party chairman is a glorified Uncle Tom, justifies again, as if 8 years of chaos and destruction wasn't sufficient evidence already, that America may have saved itself from irrevocable harm by not proving how ignorant and stupid the population's majority is yet again and voting another Republican in.

Sorry to spew vitriol but any time Rosh Limbaugh has a voice in America, it's an American that is always worse off. Limbaugh is everything that is wrong with American ignorance.

Drink Me Up, Scotty

According to the statistics, every person over 16 drinks an average of 23 units of alcohol every week. That is the equivalent of 570 pints of beer, or 125 bottles of wine, or 42 bottles of vodka a year. More than 1,500 Scots die from alcohol related problems every year.

570 pints of beer a year? How is that alot? That's less than two pints a day. Why the Austrians piss more pints out than that a day

Only drinkers in the Czech Republic consume more beer on average than those in Austria, according to the Austrian Brewers Association.

Association head Markus Liebl said today (Mon) Austrians had consumed 8.6 million hectolitres of beer in 2008, two per cent more than in 2007.

*****I'm Not Hungary, I'm Bloody Starving!

Ferenc Gyurcsany lost big in the Hat-In-Hand-Eurothon this weekend, despite rumours that the crisis had been resolved.

Resultantly, the time to unload your Central European currencies has probably passed.

The forint sank to 306.6 per euro by 1539 GMT, down 2.3 percent from Friday's closing level. It was still off its all-time low of 310 but negative pressure built when agency Fitch cut Hungary's ratings outlook to negative.

.

Now consider the went through all of this already LAST March and you begin to wonder if this isn't Hungary's new Annual Rite of Spring, the Devaluation of the Forint, the Influx of Eager Tourists, etc.

And if you think Hungary's got it bad off, think about the Ukraine going belly up and running out of hryvnias to pay off the Russian Gas Gods with. Better hope global warming hits Kiev soon.

*****

David Foster Wallace, a slice of Wiggle Room:

Then another one, then a plummeting inside of him as the wall clock showed that what he’d thought was another hour had not been. Not even close. May 17, 1985. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a poor sinner. Cross-checking W-2s for the return’s line 8 off the place in the Martinsburg printout where the perforation, if you wanted to separate the thing’s sheets, went right through the data and you had to hold it up against the light and almost sometimes guess, which his chalk leader said was a chronic bug with Systems but the wiggler was still accountable. The joke this week was: How was an I.R.S. rote examiner like a mushroom? Both kept in the dark and fed horseshit. He didn’t know how mushrooms even worked, if it was true that you scooped waste on them. Sheri’s cooking wasn’t what you would call at the level of adding mushrooms. Then another return. The rule was, the more you looked at the clock the slower the time went. None of the wigglers wore a watch, except he saw that some kept them in their pockets for breaks. Clocks on Tingles were not allowed, nor coffee or pop. Try as he might, he could not this last week help envisioning the inward lives of the older men to either side of him, doing this day after day. Getting up on a Monday and chewing their toast and putting their hats and coats on knowing what they were going out the door to come back to for eight hours. This was boredom beyond any boredom he’d ever felt. This made the routing desk at UPS look like a day at Six Flags. It was May 17th, early morning, or early midmorning you could maybe almost call it now

*****

What the Fuck Is the World Coming To?



Apparently, there's now a no cussing club, started by a 14 year old. Wanna hang with us?

No fucking way.