After all, Cajun is actually a derivation of Canadian
This despite the wingnut whining about how no one is helping the US. Note the date of the story. Sept,8. CBC News: Louisiana senator: Thank you Canada

Today's heroes
If this doesn't break your heart, you ain't got one.
Survivor Story: 6-Year-Old Leads Five Toddlers, Baby To Safety - News - MSNBC.com

a joke
A lobbyist, on his way home from work in Washington, D.C., came to a dead halt in traffic and thought to himself, "Wow, this seems worse than usual."


He noticed a police officer walking between the lines of stopped cars, so he rolled down his window and asked, "Officer, what's the hold-up?"


The officer replied, "The President is depressed, so he stopped his motorcade and is threatening to douse himself with gasoline and set himself on fire. He says no one believes his stories about why we went to war in Iraq, or the connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda, or that his tax cuts will help anyone except his wealthy friends. So we're taking up a collection for him."


The lobbyist asks, "How much have you got so far?"


The officer replies, "About 14 gallons, but a lot of folks are still siphoning

(courtesy of SSquirrel at Eschaton)

A short note from the president



George W. Bush writes a quick note to Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice at the UN world leaders summit.

"I think I might need a bathroom break? Is this possible?"

The President of the United States of America ladies and gentlemen, the leader of the free world, is not sure if he needs to go to the toilet or not. He quite literally will not take a leak without Condi Rice's say so. And we wonder why the world is screwed up.

yes, the potty break note is real
Gelf Magazine: Bush's Bathroom Break: The Photographer Speaks

Nothing's as much fun as fishing with your dad


The Bushes spend some quality time together in New Orleans (stolen from the fine people at suckful.net)

Attention citizens!

The U.S. government today announced that it is changing its emblem from a bald eagle to a condom because the latter more accurately reflects the government's political stance. A condom allows for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks and gives you a sense of security while you're being screwed.

(someone brought this one into work today and I really had to share)

"Things come apart"

Short of calling in airstrikes, could FEMA and the local authorities have made things much worse in New Orleans?
a quick collection of stuff:

Police wouldn't let evacuees out New Orleans

Drownie, you're doing a heck of a job

Toxic waters will make New Orleans unsafe for a decade

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain --- or else

It's the poverty and class warfare, stupid

mercenaries, not looters, rule the streets

and Krugman, as usual, is dead on correct

What are the wingnuts smoking?

The Liberal Avenger points us to the latest in wingnut outrage over the design of a memorial for the victims of the plane hijacked and crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11. What's next, will they demand a patriotic boycott of crossiants?

IN YOUR EAR
Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

ROLLING STONES
A Bigger Bang
Toshiba EMI, 2,548 yen

The day will eventually come--probably about three weeks after Keith Richards' funeral--when the Rolling Stones no longer rock, but their latest release, A Bigger Bang, shows that time has not yet arrived.

Bang is the best Stones album in at least a decade, harkening back to the band's golden era of Exile on Main Street and Sticky Fingers. While not quite in the same league as those earlier classics, Bang could almost be taken for a collection of early '70s B-sides.

Despite the ravages of time, Bang has the energy of a band a third the age of the Strolling Bones. Kicking off with the none-too-subtle barnyard double entendre of "Rough Justice" ("At one time/ you were my prairie chicken/ now you've grown into a fox/ Once upon a time/ I was your little rooster/ am I just one of your cocks?"), Bang has plenty of Mick Jagger strut, but the real musical impetus is the relentless, driving beat provided by Charlie Watts and the twin rhythm guitar attack of Richards and Ron Wood.

The Stones have never really had a strong instrumental soloist in the rock guitar hero mode since the tenure of Mick Taylor, but Richards can do more with a handful of power chords and some distortion than most musicians can with a full orchestra. He and Wood use slide guitar fills and crunchy rhythm riffs to excellent effect. Richards even gets to trade places with Jagger, taking the lead on two songs.

Standout tracks include the acoustic blues number "Back of My Hand" and the rocker "She Saw Me Coming." Politically inclined fans will enjoy the skewering of the White House cabal in "Sweet Neo Con."

The Stones take a lot of abuse from hipper-than-thou critics for their huge corporate-sponsored tours and relentless plowing of the same blues-based classic rock field, but it's a genre they largely invented and perfected long ago.


NEW PORNOGRAPHERS
Twin Cinema
P-Vine Records, 2,415 yen

On first listening to Twin Cinema, those unfamiliar with the New Pornographers might think they've stumbled onto some long-lost drug-inspired late-'60s collaboration between ABBA, Brian Wilson, Jefferson Airplane and Blondie.

The Vancouver supergroup (most of the members have had success with other bands or as solo artists) draw on a wide diversity of influences and abilities to craft incredibly layered, complex power pop that embraces '60s psychedelia, folk rock, New Wave and producer-driven progressive rock with trace elements of punk and a dozen other rock sub-genres. Despite the array of influences, the thoroughly postmodern Pornographers' sound is not so much derivative as it is distilled, and the heady mash of inspirations makes a potent brew.

The band makes excellent use of its wealth of vocal talent with alt.country songstress Neko Case trading lines with frontman and main songwriter A.C. Newman (Zumpano) and gruff-voiced Dan Bejar and the whole band chiming in on harmony backing vocals that add further energy and depth to the tuneful melange of sound.

Newman's hook-laden songs stray far from the typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus pop structure, yet manage to be catchy and memorable while following a form all their own. While maintaining a cohesive sound throughout the album, the cuts range from up-tempo indie rockers like the title cut to the more gentle, sunny-sounding acoustic-guitar tinged "These are the Fables" and the Beatlesesque "Sing Me Spanish Techno."

(Sep. 8, 2005)

NOLA cops hard pressed to cope -- No tolerence for looters?

An interesting story from AP's generally excellent Jim Litke....

New Orleans' Thin Blue Line Stretched Taut

By JIM LITKE
The Associated Press
Sunday, September 4, 2005; 7:33 PM
NEW ORLEANS -- There may be no better way to explain the desperation on the city's ravaged streets than this: In the past few days, two police officers took their lives with their own weapons and dozens have turned in their badges.

New Orleans' thin blue line is frayed at the edges.

Deputy Police Chief W.J. Riley on Sunday identified two officers who committed suicide as Sgt. Paul Accardo, the department's spokesman, and Patrolman Lawrence Celestine. He called both "outstanding cops" and friends.

Asked how they died, Riley put a finger to his temple, then paused.

"Both of them," he said, shaking his head slowly. "Used their own guns."

Several dozen of the city's 1,600 police officers have failed to report for duty, and some have turned in their badges.

*********************************************

Remember the wingnut's "shoot the looters" campaign and the President's promise of "zero tolerance for looting"? Well if you read all the way down the story you find some interesting information about how the cops in NOLA have been feeding themselves....
*********************************************

On top of the burdens of law enforcement, officers have had to forage for food and water and even for places to relieve themselves.

"Our officers have been urinating and defecating in the basement of Harrah's Casino," Police Superintendent Eddie Compass said last week. "They have been going in stores to feed themselves."

*********************************************

The obvious joke about some officers obeying orders to shoot looters a little too strictly would be in very bad taste, but then so is the on-going bullshit about how the people of NOLA turned into looting savages overnight because of the hurricane. People do what they need to do to survive. There will always be a few assholes who use others misfortune to fill their own pockets, in this case its a few thugs, usually its the Republican Party and Halliburton.

Until I get around to it

heeeeeeere's Sisyphus

Katrina round-up

All the Katrina links you'll be able to stomache may be found here with a huge tip of the fedora to Sisyphus Shrugged, whom I really ought to add to the links, as she writes a damn good blog.

...And the horse he rode in on

How is George W. Bush a lying prick bastard, let me count the ways:
number one
number two
number three
number four - and by the way, Dubya's concern for Trent Lott is sure to be moving for those in New Orleans 9th ward who have lost what little they had

What would you look like on South Park?
Create-A-Character Hours of fun for the whole family.

About as sharp as bag of wet mice

"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees."
-George W. Bush

""When the levy break, we gonna have no place to stay"
-Led Zepplin
ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES has the full skinny on the reaction of curious George

So much to blog, so little time to blog it in

I'm just returning to work after two weeks off. I thought I'd have plenty of time to do lots of deep meaningful blogging while on holidaze (and daze is the operative term) but nooooo! Instead, as the photos below should indicate, I've been bicycle Yoda for the two young ones ("Do or do not you must, there is no try") who have finally found their wheels. Ken has everything but starting pretty much down pat without the training wheels after only two weeks and should be pedalling off to kindergarten by the end of the week. Lucy is more interested in telling everyone about her pink princess bike than actually pedalling, but seems to have the hang of it.

Other than that we spent some time at the parents-in-law's in Sendai (home of beef tongue and earthquakes) saw lots of fireworks and spent a couple days at the beach in Kamakura - more about all this later.

In the meantime, New Orleans is being washed out into the Gulf of Mexico and another good blogger has died in Iraq.
His blog can be found here - and anyone who has a large photo of Woody Guthrie on their blog and carries a copy of the Subterraneans around while serving in Iraq has to have gone to heaven.

The crowbar protocol -- An environmental plea

Those of you who know me know that while I'm in favor of environmentalism, I'm not exactly a hardcore tree-hugging, bunny-coddling, Gaia-worshipping, vegan eco-guerrilla.

I admit that plastic and concrete have their roles to play in life's rich pageant and that if we want computers, flat screen tv and air travel, there will always be some industrial wastes and fossil fuel to deal with. I admit that I could do more, but I recycle, I take public transport almost everywhere (easy to do in Tokyo) and try to avoid excess packaging (very tough to do in Tokyo). I don't think eating meat or using disposable diapers or throwaway chopsticks made from farmed poplar make me an evil person.

I think that if women must wear cosmetics, which going by most of the women I see, they must, then I'd rather the stuff be tested on cute lil' fluffy bunnies than third world children. I think the Kyoto accord is good, but could go farther, and would love to have an electric or fuel cell car.

In short, I would consider myself a moderate environmentalist.

So it may shock you to know that I am very close to taking a crowbar to some windshields in this city on the basis of my environmental beliefs.

Tokyo is situated in a sort of coastal bowl that traps warm wet air in a thermal inversion. In summer temperatures in the mid 30s are the norm, with humidity around 80 to 95 percent. Smog builds up to the point that on bad days the sky can be a brownish yellow and the government advise old people and children to stay indoors. Obviously changing the geography and the weather patterns are not really options, so you would think cutting down on air pollution would be a priority. And for some it is.

But for the truck drivers, delivery people, tradesmen, salesmen and taxi drivers of Tokyo it clearly is not. Like many people in this country, they spend long hours at their jobs, not working, but sleeping. Obviously when you work 12 hours a day, every day, a little siesta at lunch or even on company time is a nice thing. People in my office (you know who you are) regularly nod off at their desks. But what about those who aren't in the office? What do those who spend their day out of the office do for a place to sleep and dodge work? Use a park? Go to a movie? Spend an hour getting coffee at Starbucks? Nope.

They get in their cars, vans and trucks, roll up the window, crank up the air conditioning and sit there with the engine running. For hours at a time, pumping filth into the air, driving up the temperature and making more smog.

Few things piss me off more than to walk along the sidestreet next to my home and find it nearly bumper to bumper with cars parked with their engines running, spewing exhaust into the air and radiating heat. What is worse is seeing the same vehicles there when I come home two and half hours later.

I'm thinking of getting a small notice printed up in Japanese to ask them not to run their engines, but I fear the response will be to dismiss me as another annoying foreigner who doesn't understand Japanese ways.

That's why I'm leaning more and more to the crowbar protocol idea. A notice that reads: "Turn off your engine you lazy, inconsiderate, selfish shithead or I'll smash your windshield with a crowbar. You are poisoning the air I breathe and I will consider it self-defense to smash the hell out of your car and even you if that is what it takes to get you to shut off the engine. If you need an air conditioned nap so badly, go home or to the mall or the donut shop -- because if I see your vehicle here ten minutes from now, with the tailpipe smoking and heat dissipation haze hanging over the hood and your white socked feet up on the dash and you snoring in the driver's seat, you will soon be picking windshield glass out of your hair."

Then all I have to do is walk along the row of parked cars, tapping tires and maybe windows, very gently with my three-foot tempered-steel crowbar and smiling a crooked smile.

Of course I could opt for the cyber vigilante method and email time-stamped digital photos of the snoozing employees to their companies head offices, since the company name is often on the door of the car or van. Sure, it would probably lead to fewer confrontations with drivers upset that their nap has been disturbed and far less police involvement, but there is something so satisfying about the crunch of a heavy iron bar on supposedly shatterproof glass that I just don't know if I can deny myself the pleasure of pursuing my own Buford Pusser/Steven Segal style of environmentalism.

Hornby's 'Long Way Down' not up to scratch : Book Review : Features : DAILY YOMIURI ONLINE (The Daily Yomiuri):

Hornby's 'Long Way Down' not up to scratch
Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer
A Long Way Down
By Nick Hornby
Riverhead Books, 352 pp, 24.95 dollars

Perhaps it is the result of seeing so many liberties taken in adapting his previous works for the silver screen (About a Boy, High Fidelity), but Nick Hornby's latest novel, A Long Way Down, reads more like a preliminary draft of a screenplay than an actual novel.

The premise is pure Hollywood pitch meeting: Four disparate characters, all intending to kill themselves, meet by chance at the top of a London high-rise on New Year's Eve, form a bond and proceed to try to fix each other's lives. It's sort of like The Breakfast Club meets Harold and Maude meets The Apartment.

The quartet of would-be suicides are: Martin, a disgraced, sarcastic and self-loathing TV host; Maureen, a middle-aged single mother who has devoted her entire adult life to caring for her apparently vegetative adult son; Jess, a lovelorn and disturbed attention-seeking teenager; and JJ, a failed American musician whose band has broken up.

Hornby tells the story in first person, switching perspective among the four characters every few pages, occasionally giving more than one version of the same events. The problem is that the four voices are not sufficiently different from one another.

Hornby has tried, unsuccessfully, to vary the tone and style, but the variations seem cosmetic, like a storyteller varying the pitch of their voice to suggest dialog by different characters: Martin is self-involved and caustic, but erudite. JJ is a bit bland and needy. Jess is invariably foulmouthed while Maureen is bothered by and never uses obscene language to the extent that she bowdlerizes the salty language of the others when recounting conversations.

And there are plenty of conversations. The majority of the book consists of the four characters describing their various meetings and interactions, with little time spent describing what they do on their own. For the most part, Hornby gives us a series of set-piece meetings of the four told from shifting perspectives, interspersed with expository monologues by each character detailing their reaction to the meetings.

Each of the four protagonists seem to serve fairly transparent nonnarrative purposes for the author, especially JJ, who, as an American and a musician, allows Hornby to make a number of comic observations on the absurdities of British life, rock 'n' roll and the music business. Martin's fame and disgrace allow the author to tee off on the tabloid media and the shallowness of television. As Hornby is himself the father of a severely autistic child, some of Maureen's frustration can be read as autobiographical.

Oddly enough, it is Jess, the character Hornby bears the least evident resemblance to, who rings the most true. With her, the author presents a believable portrayal of the attributes of a troubled teenage girl without resorting to maudlin cliches or stereotypes. Jess is alternately spoiled and ignored by her upper middle class parents, whom she affects to despise. She is both naive and knowing, tender and vicious. Jess is the one who pushes the others forward along the arc of the story.

Hornby takes what on the surface promises to be either a very dark and emotionally harrowing story or an inspirational story about the power of love and friendship and refuses to allow it to become either one. Darker moments are leavened with black humor and comic asides, and Hornby's innate cynicism keeps him from allowing things to get saccharine. In the hands of a lesser craftsman, this book could have been a disastrous moan-fest or a sappy Hallmark card. It is neither.

Nor is it a complete success. Hornby seems to have solved the problem of walking the tightrope by not moving too suddenly or too far. He keeps the precarious balance between laughter and tears by not delving too deeply into either. Dividing the narrative voice among the four characters seems to water down the emotional investment the reader makes in each of them. By the end of the book, we are not really that bothered about whether they jump or not.

In High Fidelity, the reader is amused by the digressive riffing on pop music and the smart dialogue, but is made to care about the eventual fate of the main character. While the tangential discourses in A Long Way Down on everything from the nature of rock stardom to the benefits of anonymous chain coffee shops are entertaining, Hornby fails to draw the reader far enough into the heads of his four protagonists to build an emotional attachment. It is as though the author is waiting for actors to breathe real life into the roughly drawn characters he has presented. Ultimately, A Long Way Down fails to live up to the promise of Hornby's earlier work.