Chat Lunatique

à Alfred Tattet

Adversus Absynthium (A l'encontre de l'absinthe)

Absynthe, monstre né jadis pour notre perte
De l’Afrique à Paris traînant ta robe verte
Comment donc as-tu pu sous le soleil oser
Souiller ses lèvres d’or de ton âcre baiser
Vile prostituée en tes temples assise
Tu te vends à l’esprit ainsi qu'à la sottise
Et ne fais nul souci aux adieux, laurier
Qui couvre le Poëte ainsi que le guerrier
Hélas ! n’avait-il pas assez de l’amertume
A laquelle en vivant tout grand cœur s’accoutume
Aussi que l’eau du ciel ......
Qu’il ne reste plus rien de ton amer poison
O monstre sois maudit, je te jette à la face
Les imprécations de Tibulle et d’Horace
Et contre toi j’évoque en mon sein irrité
La langue que parlait la belle antiquité.

Fontainebleau, août 1847
Antoni Deschamps

****(et aussi)****

Five o’clock Absinthe1
By Raoul Ponchon
Quand le couchant étend son voile d'hyacinthe
Sur Rastaquapolis2.
C'est l'heure assurément de prendre son absinthe,
Qu'en penses-tu, mon fils?
C'est en été surtout, quand la soif vous terrasse
– Tels cent Dreyfous3 bavards –
Qu'il convient de chercher une fraîche terrasse4
Le long des boulevards.
Où l'on sait rencontrer l'absinthe la meilleure.
Celle du fils Pernod;
Fi des autres ! De même un dièze est un leurre
Quand il est de Gounod.
Je dis le long des boulevards, et non à Rome,
Ni chez les Bonivards5;
Carpour être absinthier on n'en est pas moins homme.
Et sur nos boulevards
On voit passer les plus suaves créatures
Aux plus gentes façons :
Tout en buvant, cela réveille vos natures,
C'est exquis... mais passons.
Vous avez votre absinthe, il s'agit de la faire;
Ça n'est pas, croyez-moi,
Comme pense un vain peuple, une petite affaire,
Banale et sans émoi.
Il ne faut pas avoir ailleurs l'âme occupée,
Pour le moment du moins.
L'absinthe veut d'abord de la belle eau frappée,
Les dieux m'en soient témoins !
D'eau tiède, il n'en faut pas : Jupiter la condamne.
Toi-même, qu'en dis-tu ?
Autant vaudrait, ma foi, boire du pissat d'âne
Ou du bouillon pointu6
Et n'allez pas comme un qui serait du Hanovre7,
Surtout me l'effrayer,
Avec votre carafe, elle croirait, la povre8 !
Que l'on la veut noyer.
Déridez-la toujours d'une première goutte...
Là... là... tout doucement.
Vous la verrez alors palpiter, vibrer toute,
Sourire ingénûment;
When sundown spreads its hyacinth veil
Over Rastaquapolis
It’s surely time for an absinthe
Don’t you think, my son?
It’s especially in summer, when thirst wears you down
- Like a hundred Dreyfus gossips -
That it’s fitting to seek a fresh terrace
Along the boulevards
Where one finds the best absinthe
That of the sons of Pernod
Forget the rest! They’re like a sharp by Gounod:
mere illusion.
I say along the boulevards, and not in Rome,
Nor at the home of the Bonivards;
To be an absinthier is not to be any less a man.
And on our boulevards
One sees pass the sweetest creatures
With the gentlest manners:
You’re drinking, they rouse your nature,
They are exquisite... but let it pass.
You have your absinthe, it’s all about preparation
This is not, believe me,
As the cynics think, a small matter
Banal and without emotion
The heart should not be elsewhere
For the moment at least.
Absinthe wants first, beautiful ice water
The gods are my witness!
Tepid water, none of that: Jupiter condemns it.
Yourself, what say you?
Might as well, my faith, drink donkey piss
Or enema broth
And don’t come on like a German,
And scare her,
With your carafe; she would think, poor dear!
That you want to drown her.
Always rouse her from the first drop …
Like so ... and so ... very gently
Then behold her quiver, all vibrant
With an innocent smile;

Street Sweeper Social Club:




Mercedes Sosa



Hasta Siempre

SPAIN: NOBODY HAS TO KNOW

Nobody has to know
Girl we've fallen so in love
It was just a year ago
And you've kept it to yourself

Nobody has to know
Nobody has to know

Nobody has to know
Girl our love has grown so strong
Close the shades unplug the phone
How can our love be so wrong

Nobody has to know
Nobody has to know

Nobody has to know
Girl we've fallen so in love
It was just a year ago
And you've kept it to yourself

Nobody has to know
Nobody has to know

Time Will Break The World - The Silver Jews

The sun and the shutters and the sun shattered hair
The butler hesitates at the top of the stairs
A kitten from Great Britain sleeps behind the drapes
An old silver bowl filled with apples and grapes

It's so very cold in the mansion after sunset
The snow is blowing through the baseboard outlets
And I have no idea what drives you, mister
Tanning beds explode with rich women inside

All my poor, hungry children
All my poor, hungry children
All my poor, hungry children
Time will break the world
Time will break the world
Time will break the world

The snow falls down so beautiful and stupid
For the black silhoutte of Abraham Lincoln trees
The sky's low and grey like a Japanese table
And my horse's legs look like four brown shotguns

The icicles are dripping like the whole house is weeping
On an evil little car with gull-wing doors
And I have no idea what drives you, mister
But I've killed you in my mind so many times before

All my poor, hungry children
All my poor, hungry children
All my poor, hungry children
Time will break the world
Time will break the world
Time will break the world

caloric restriction as the new longevity scheme

*****

re: Brasserie Wepler, place Clichy:

Du côté des écrivains, le spectacle mouvementé des passants, l'animation sensuelle qui règnent sur la place, fascinent. Dès 1928, Henry Miller en fait son repère préféré. « Je m'y suis assis à la terrasse et à l'intérieur, par tous les temps et à toutes les heures du jour et de la nuit. C'était pour moi un livre ouvert. Tous les visages des garçons, des gérants, des caissières, des putains, de la clientèle et même des dames de lavabos sont gravés dans ma mémoire comme les images d'un livre que j'aurais feuilletés tous les jours.» Jours tranquilles à Clichy.

******

And, recounting on Montmartre:

jusqu'on 17eme siecle, son utilisation pour construire les maisons a ete intensive, au point que le dicton en vogue etait Il y a plus de Montmartre dans Paris que de Paris dans Montmartre...

And sadly, no pictures to upload yet, but if it helps, my current location:


Agrandir le plan

FILM

Curious to see what they'd have to say about Happy Go Lucky after watching this, Mike Leigh's new film.

This bird, laughing smiling, whole philosophy was about making people, making the world around her better. It was all very esoteric and boring, annoying even, the mindless giggling and chatter, I almost grew to hate this character until the freak driving instructor's massive outburst allowed her to reveal a human side which was more than one dimensional. Had other dimensions of the bird's character come out sooner, might not have had to have felt as though the first 45 minutes of the movie was an endurance contest.

anyway, here's what "they" say:

Poppy Cross is happy-go-lucky. At 30, she lives in Camden: cheeky, playful, frank while funny, and talkative to strangers. She's a conscientious and exuberant primary-school teacher, flatmates with Zoe, her long-time friend; she's close to one sister, and not so close to another. In this slice of life story, we watch her take driving lessons from Scott, a dour and tightly-wound instructor, take classes in flamenco dance from a fiery Spaniard, encounter a tramp in the night, and sort out a student's aggressive behavior with a social worker's help. Along the way, we wonder if her open attitude puts her at risk of misunderstanding or worse. What is the root of happiness?

Well, what is at the root of being one-dimensional?

In any event, here's the trailer, decide for yourself in 1 minute 47 seconds.

VILNIUS POKER




from Ričardas Gavelis

What they say:

Ričardas Gavelis wrote to intimidate and attack, and his novel Vilnius Poker, seldom subtle in its language, demands attention. It is a masterwork of bitterness and sarcasm, one that descends into the self-destructive impulses of those who, though they physically survived the privations inherent to Soviet Russia, were nonetheless emotionally traumatized. Part national rant, part passage into madness, Vilnius Poker is more than a product of the Cold War. It is a condemnation of everything Gavelis thought was wrong with Lithuania, and this first English translation, published twenty years after Poker was originally written, feels fresh.

Vilnius Poker is disorienting, as right from the start Gavelis offers Vytautas Vargalys, an extravagant, energetic narrator whose thoughts shift between the lucid and the figurative. The speaker for the first two-thirds of the book, Vargalys is a survivor of a Russian prison camp where he was physically beaten and emotionally destroyed. His once-brilliant future was ruined by the camps, and he now obsesses and rants about the failures of Lithuania; in fact, so thorough was his transformation that his survival of the camps seems almost futile. As with much of Vilnius Poker, Gavelis never says precisely how Vargalys survived; instead, the inhumanity of the camp haunts Vargalys as he suffers from post traumatic stress—induced flashbacks.

What HE says:

(page 31)

..."I began on The Way against my will. I had already settled down and forgotten all the quests for meaning. Even chest pains no longer upset me - it was just the first ones that were frightening. I no longer tormented myself if I didn't feel the slightest desire when I saw an ideally sexy woman. I was forty-three years old..."

(Page 43):

"Only those who have lost their spirit fear the monsters of the interior. Only those who have lost their balance pretend their insides are pure and refined. You can only become truly great by joining your heaven with your hell. All of the good in people is the same but the kingdom of evil is different in everyone."

(Page 54):

"That he could even have those kinds of feeling surprised me, but I quickly figured it out. He was afraid to be left forgotten and alone, to fail to attract others' attention for even a second. Every person who still has a thing or two left inside is able to be alone with himself. There was nothing inside this lumbering figure that could be relied on. He no longer had himself, so a secret fear constantly gnawed at him..."

(Page 77):

"It is the Vilnius Basilisk's gaze, piercing me every morning, a morning that begins with the overcrowded trollybus, the crush of figures, the jounrey from non-existence into none-existence: from the drabness of dreamless sleep to the unthinking work machine. It's only by Their will that the tired figures with puffy eyes cram into iron boxes with fly-covered windows and slowly creak towards their daily bondage. The day begins with smells: the stink of rancid sweat and cheap soap, the stench of last night's drinking, and a whiff of nightmares...."

And after that, just try and imagine what it was like all those years, winter, summer, good weather, shite weather, always under the gaze of communism, all lives for generations lived under that shadow. No matter what you're doing now, that was their reality then. Imagine that. Miserable yet still trying to live life, still trying to fart out a few joys...

FOR THAT COLD AND RAINY FUTURE DAY:

The Three Acts I saw in Győr Last Weekend

Artem Chepkonakov



Omar Sosa Afreecanos Trio



Astillero

Fat People Will Pay More

The chieftains at Ryan Air could show the government a thing or two about raising revenues.

Look at this, democracy in action, letting people VOTE how to charge fat people more money to fly:

The Ryanair proposals are:

* Charge per kg over 130kg/20 stone (male) and 100kg/15 stone (females);

* Charge per inch for every waist inch over 45 inch (male) and 40 inch (female);

* Charge for every point in excess of 40 points on the Body Mass Index (+30 points is obese);

* Charge for a second seat if passengers’ waist touches both armrests simultaneously.

Ryanair spokesman Stephen McNamara said: “With passengers voting overwhelmingly for a ‘fat tax’ we are now asking them to suggest which format the charge should take.

So why didn't Alistair Darling unveil in his Idiot's Guide To Losing Money Budget a new tax on fat people too? I mean look around you in England, people. There's positively billions that could be had making fat people pay more for existing.

Why stop at the rich and the pub crawlers and the fat people for that matter?

How about a poor tax?

It's a great idea. The way it works is that children borne to a mother with no job and on benefits or a family already unable to sustain itself, are sold, by the government, to the highest child labour bidder. Just think about it - with the birth rate among people on benefits being what it is Poor Kids And Cheap Labour could become England's new and fastest growing export industry.


"There is nothing worst than the person sitting next to you on the plane taking half your seat as well. It is only fair that these people pay for a double seat."
stan white, leeds, u/k, comments in the article about the Ryan Air fat tax.

Only fair? Why let them fly at all? Why not ground them for life? Should fat people be allowed to fly? It defies gravity. Not to mention the added risk to a plane flying with fat people on board.

I don't think there should be a new surcharge on fat people for flying Ryan Air.

Ryan Air should just be bold and make it a company policy: Hey Fat People, Fuck Off. We Don't Want Your Business.

*****

Here's the funny bit about the alleged bold fuck you to rich people entailed in Darling's new budget:

Firstly, he's going to raise the planned new top rate of tax on incomes over £150,000 from 45% to 50%.

Then, people with incomes over £150,000 will also see their pension tax relief restricted from 2011, while personal allowances will be scrapped for those on incomes over £100,000 from next April.

Bravo.

Or not.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned the hike would produce far less revenue than the Treasury hoped unless more stringent measures were brought in to crack down on tax avoidance.

Michael Wistow, head of tax at law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner, said: "History shows that increasing tax rates rarely achieves the objective of increasing the tax take, individuals will now look to find other ways of earning money or reducing tax liabilities."

Greed. You gotta love it.

Dominic Lawson has more than a few realistic pokes at new Labour in Beware green jobs, the new sub-prime:

That remarkable prime ministerial pledge predated the recession; its motive was to demonstrate that Britain was “leading the world in the battle against climate change”. We aren’t, as a matter of fact; but under new Labour we have certainly led the world at claiming to do so. Mandelson expressed this almost satirically last week when he declared that “Britain has taken a world lead in setting ambitious targets for carbon reduction”.

As ever, new Labour confuses announcements and newspaper headlines with real action. Whenever it becomes obvious even to ministers that Britain will not meet its current carbon reduction target, they replace it with a yet tougher target, only with an extended deadline.

Listen to Uranus Bruyant:

...an overvitaminated version of a funk brass band, directly connected to James BROWN, Maceo PARKER, Georges CLINTON, an others such as DIRTY DOZEN Brass Band. The eight musicians spread an amazing groovy feeling throughout their original tracks, mixing jazz and funk, with powerful brass instruments and crazy beats.

A banjo, a tuba, a bass drum and a snare : the rhythm section turns you into dancing, you can't help it !

Two saxophones, a trumpet, a trombone : a line of blowers with various backgounds, who can put an audience on fire with their wild soli !

Hugging the curves of the River Avon, nestled among the West Country hills, allow Bath's Georgian and Gothic architecture, cobblestone streets lined with exquisite cathedrals, tasteful manor homes, and quaint shops that speak to another time, empower you and reveal life's slower pace.

Atop a grand hill discover the Royal Crescent, an architectural treasure with sweeping vistas of the townscape below. Thirty elegant townhouses of honey-colored stone in the Georgian tradition designed by John Wood in 1767, is today one of the most popular and opulent hotels in Bath, the Royal Crescent Hotel.

The springs and sacred Roman Baths date back 7,000 years when the Celtics worshipped the goddess Sulis. When the Roman legions occupied the city, the citizenry gathered around the 'watering hole,' to drink the natural elixir, socialize and soak in the calming mineral waters of the Great Roman Baths. On your walk through history, the steamy waters reflect statuary, pillars and ancient artifacts but leave your bathing suit at home. Bring with you a desire for tranquillity and inner peace. For a glorious ritual of fire and water that will renew your soul, join an escorted torchlit tour of the baths on any August evening. In the Pump Rooms be sure to grab a glass of spring mineral water; the town's people swear to its rejuvenating properties. On second thought, you might want to stash a case in your luggage for the trip home.

Bath Abbey, begun in 1499 and completed in 1606, built in the Perpendicular (late-Gothic) style, can be seen from the terrace of the Roman Baths. Carved in stone, angels ascending ladders decorate the front of the Abby. In the interior, read the inscriptions on the tombs of the romantic poets, bards, and kings etched in stone walls and floor.

Now THAT is what you might call a good show.

Especially if you took the bass player from Butcher, the front man/guitar from Howlin Lord and the drummer from The Hateful, mixed it all up.

*****

Europe's Last Man

Is it true that Western Europeans, after half a century of peace and prosperity, suffer from the kind of moral malaise that Nietzsche warned about, and that Fukuyama and Kagan diagnosed? One way to answer this question is to listen, not to American pundits, but to Europeans themselves—in particular, to their novelists. In the nineteenth century, a reader of Dostoevsky and Flaubert could have gained insights into the state of Europe that a reader of newspapers would have missed. In the twenty-first, it is at least possible that the most significant European novelists can give us similar insights. Precisely because novels are not, and should not be, political documents, they offer a less guarded, more intuitive report on the inner life of a society. And when novelists from different European countries, writing in different languages and very different styles, all seem to corroborate one another’s intuitions, it is at least fair to wonder whether a real cultural shift is under way.

The three novels I wish to consider are not, of course, anything like a representative sample of the fiction being written in Europe over the last two decades. But W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, Michel Houellebecq’s The Elementary Particles, and Ian McEwan’s Saturday are as distinguished and emblematic a selection as might be made. All of these writers were born in the 1940s and 1950s, and emerged as major novelists in the 1990s. In other words, they are members of the post–World War II generation, and did or are doing their most important work in the post–Cold War period. They belong to, and write about, a cosmopolitan, peaceful, unified Western Europe: McEwan (b. 1948) is English; Sebald (1944–2001), a German, spent most of his adult life in England; and Houellebecq (b. 1958), who is French, has lived in Ireland and Spain.

*****

so this drunk man with one arm and three legs walks into a bar and says come to Slovakia. Really.

*****

And in just a few words, Hanif Kureishi, in Something to Tell You has managed to summarise England:

"The typical figures on the streets were a young man in a green bomber jacket, jeans and polished boots, followed by an under-dressed teenager with her hair scraped back -the 'Croydon face-lift' - pushing a pram. Other girls in micro-minis, drift sullenly about, boys on bicycles circling them, drinking sweet vodka mashes from the bottle and tossing them into gardens. And among these binge-mingers, debtors and doggers hurried Muslim women with their heads covered, pulling their children."

Yes, it's only one thumbnail of England, but summarises so clearly the miserable hopelessness, the pointless push forward to the next day.


Wouldn't it be funny if people from America or Europe came to England in packs of one to two dozen for the sole intention of getting wasted, puking on England's streets, smashing England's shop windows, and shouting down the English public?

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