If I had a million dollars...
I'd buy you and me a drink. A tad pricey, but probably damned good hooch. I'm more or less an atheist, but if there is a God, when you die and go to heaven, this is what it has on its breath.

Seal the borders, NOW!
This kind of stupidity could be contagious. Don't misinterpret me, I don't think that belief in God should disqualify one from holding high office, but I do think that disbelief in science should. If you are superstitious enough to believe, despite mountains of empirical scientific evidence to the contrary, theat we humans were put here in our present form as a species less than 10,000 years ago by your mystical Sky Daddy, then you are denying basic empirical evidence. If you really believe this, I have no reason to trust that you wouldn't go along if the pope or Pat Robertson told you gravity was just God pushing down on your shoulders and that airplanes could fly because He chose not to push down on them. Would you hire a person who believed that to design aircraft? Or teach biology or physics?

From the linked USA Today/Gallup poll:

23.Next, we'd like to ask about your views on two different explanations for the origin and development of life on earth. Do you think Evolution, that is, the idea that human beings developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life is:

Definitely true 18%
Probably true 35%
Probably false 16 %
Definitely false 28%
No opinion 3%
Total true 53%
Total false 44%

B. Creationism, that is, the idea that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years is:

Definitely true 39%
Probably true 27%
Probably false 16%
Definitely false 15%
No opinion 3 %
Total true 66%
Total false 31%

I suppose the difference between the percentage that are sure evolution is definitely false and the percent that are sure creationism is definitely true represents those who cling to intelligent design to try to put a faux scientific gloss on their superstition, but the notion that there is a core of about 30% or more that are just plain willfully ignorant is more than a little disturbing.

Plenty of surprises up its sleeves

By Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

The Prestige

5 stars out of five

Dir: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson

Watch carefully, for things are not as they seem in The Prestige. Writer and director Christopher Nolan's hand is quicker than the audience's collective eye, and while he provides plenty of clues along the way, surprising plot twists abound on the way to a stunning finale.

The structure of the entire film is set up in the opening scene, in which Mr. Cutter, a designer and builder of stage illusions played by Michael Caine, explains to a young girl the three stages of any magic trick: the pledge, the turn and the prestige.

Showing her a caged canary, Cutter explains how the magician shows you something ordinary. The second step is to make the ordinary object do something extraordinary, he tells her, collapsing the small cage and making the bird disappear.

"Now if you're looking for the secret, you won't find it. That's why there's a third act called the prestige. This is the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you've never seen before," Cutter tells the girl, producing the canary from thin air.

The girl turns out to be the daughter of Alfred Borden (Christian Bale), a famous magician facing the hangman for the murder of his archrival and former friend, Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman).

Set in late Victorian era London, The Prestige follows Borden and Angier from their early days as friends learning the tricks of their trade. When an escape goes wrong, killing Angier's wife, he seeks revenge on Borden. As the years pass, the two become famous rivals and the competition becomes obsessive with each seeking to sabotage the other. When Borden comes up with an inexplicable, showstopping illusion, Angier goes to exceptional lengths to duplicate and finally, with the help of mysterious genius inventor Nikola Tesla (an understated but magnetic David Bowie), to outshine Borden. Who will take the final bow, however remains a mystery until the last moments of the film.

As he did in Memento, Nolan very deftly manipulates the audience much like a magician, misdirecting our attention to spring surprise after surprise.

While a lesser film might have relied completely on a clever script with a surprise ending (see the works of M. Night Shyamalan), The Prestige provides the total package: a subtle, multilayered script (cowritten with his brother, Jonathan Nolan), smart dialogue, terrific performances by all the principal cast, smooth pacing, beautiful atmospheric cinematography and a jaw-dropping, mind-blowing final act worthy of the film's name.

(From the Jun. 9 edition of The Daily Yomiuri)

In yer ear

By Kevin Wood Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

WILCO

Sky Blue Sky

Warner Music, 2,680 yen

After soaring high with the more experimental Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born, Wilco return to Earth with Sky Blue Sky.

The album harkens back to their earlier alt-country roots. Despite major personnel changes, the Wilco of Sky Blue Sky sounds a lot more like the band that recorded the Woody Guthrie tribute Mermaid Avenue than the group responsible for the abstract excesses of Ghost.

At times, Sky Blue Sky sounds like the best '70s country-folk-rock album never made, with twangy hints of the Grateful Dead ("What Light"), the Flying Burrito Brothers, and God forgive them, even the Eagles. Mix that with a stiff dose of introspective, moody melodicism by songwriter and frontman Jeff Tweedy, punctuate with some guitar heroics by new member Nels Cline and the result is a largely understated song cycle about the uncertainties of love.

The gentle, tentative nature of the opening song "Either Way" with its pretty, breezy guitar solo sets the thematic tone: "Maybe the sun will shine today/The clouds will blow away/Maybe I won't feel so afraid."

Several songs, notably "I Hate It Here," and "Shake It Off" seem rooted in a fear of, or a reaction to losing love, while others such as "Walken" and "On and On and On" are more straightforward love songs, although they tend to dwell more on reassuring a lover than seduction or celebration. Others, like the title track and "Leave Me (Like You Found Me)" seem to be about surviving emotional chaos.

Musically, Tweedy's neurotic energy and famously jangled nerves come through in the arrangements. "You Are My Face" starts off quiet until a sudden burst of dissonant roaring guitar sends the song off in a much more intense, melodramatic direction. "Side With The Seeds" is a sonic standout, with the band showing off their chops. The acoustic-guitar folkiness and sunny harmonies of aforementioned "What Light" are balanced by the plaintive, lonesome plea "Please don't cry/We're designed to die" of "On and On and On."

While Sky Blue Sky may lack the alternative edginess of Yankee and Ghost, it also has a warmth the former lacks and the latter only hints at. Wilco has come full circle back to the classic rock elements Tweedy's early work with Uncle Tupelo was both a reaction to and a reflection of--and a welcome homecoming it is.

ALO

Roses and Clover

Universal/Brushfire 2,381 yen

The former Animal Liberation Orchestra returns with a follow-up to 2006's Fly Between Walls. The California-based quartet have tightened up their jam band-based sound, while still leaving lots of room in their songs for extended keyboard and guitar interplay.

The band's sound also seems to have coalesced into a more cohesive style. While their broad range of influences--funk, '70s rock, soul, jazz, blues and folk--is still evident, they no longer seem to change genres from song to song. Where ALO once went from Motown Funksters on one track to Nashville Country Rockers on the next, the group seems to be on a more even musical keel on Roses and Clover, opting to blend styles within songs rather than jumping from one genre to the next.

One thing that hasn't changed is the infectious, sunny, groove-oriented nature of their sound. Roses and Clover is a danceable romp with a rootsy feel and solid musicianship.

(From the June 9 edition of The Daily Yomiuri)

Supporting the Troops
Over the last several weeks we've seen Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Defense Minister Gordon O'Connor and Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day twist and squirm on the issue of prisoners of war captured by the Canadian military in Afghanistan. They seemed to have hit a new low last week when Harper, who has never served in the military (or even had a job in the private sector) tried to deflect criticsm of his gormless defence minister by suggesting that anyone who hadn't served in the military was not fit to criticize those who had. By the same reckoning I suppose those who have never taught school should be barred from criticism of the education system and those of us who have never held a seat in the House of Commons should just keep our traps shut and be grateful for the fine job the Gnu Gummint of Kanada is doing on our behalf.
This is, of course, to use the technical term complete and utter bullshit. Canada is not a military dictatorship, the armed forces answer to their civilian overseers, who are supposed to answer to the voters.
This week, they've sunk a notch lower in their emulation of the national security state to the south, where anything the government does, no matter how many of its own laws it breaks, can be justified by claiming it is being done in the interest of national security (Just like they do in such enlightened democracies as North Korea and Burma. The government is now stonewalling on releasing information about the number of prisoners taken in Afghanistan, saying the enemy could use such information for propaganda purposes or to hurt our gallant boys in harm's way defending our way of life over there so that we don't have to fight the terrorists over here and why aren't you wearing red with yellow ribbons you islamoanarchofacist pinko bastard?
Doris wants to know how we dare to even ask questions:

"Detainees are not simply people who have jay-walked," Day said. "These are people who are suspected terrorists."

"That has been the air of the questioning, so much so that our troops tell us they think they're being accused of doing wrong things."

Doris better go read the Geneva Conventions again, because if the military is handing over prisoners to be tortured, they are doing the "wrong thing" -- the kind of wrong thing that could land people in the Hague. By asking these questions and demanding the military act properly we are supporting them, we are making sure they don't inadvertently violate international law and commit a war crime by mimicing the conduct of our neighbors to the south.
It is not the job of the grunts in the field or their immediate superiors to determine whether the Afghan government tortures prisoners. They should be able to take the word of the minister of defense and the prime minister and the chief of defense staff who job it is to determine what happens to prisoners taken on the battlefield. It very definitely is their responsibility to determine whether the Afghans are likely to torture any prisoners we hand over to them.
The opposition are doing their job, the voters are doing thier the troops are doing theirs -- why isn't the government doing its job?

crossposted at the Galloping Beaver, where Dave explains for the fourtyleventh time why it is important for us to follow the Geneva conventions, even if the other side doesn't.

Giving crazy a bad name

"With God's help, the countdown button for the destruction of the Zionist regime has been pushed by the hands of the children of Lebanon and Palestine. By God's will, we will witness the destruction of this regime in the near future."

-- Iran president Ahmadinejad, on Israel

Because the—all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases.
There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those—changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be—or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the—like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate—the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those—if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.
---U.S. President Bush, trying to explaining his plan to save Social Security,
Tampa, Fla., Feb. 4, 2005

Shouldn't these guys be out on a street corner in tinfoil headgear, shouting at traffic?


We have suffered a bit of computer meltdown at home so posting will be light for the next few weeks, but stay tuned -- once we get things up and running again, I have a huge multipart post on race and immigration in Canada planned, and my new shipmate over at the good ship Galloping Beaver, Alison, wants me to finished the Execution sketch.

the swift and terrible sword of justice
In Ohio, the sword of justice is certainly terrible -- swift, not so much.

LUCASVILLE, Ohio (AP) -- Death penalty opponents called on the state to halt executions after prison staff struggled to find suitable veins on a condemned man's arm to deliver the lethal chemicals.
The execution team stuck Christopher Newton at least 10 times with needles Thursday to insert the shunts where the chemicals are injected.
He died at 11:53 a.m., nearly two hours after the scheduled start of his execution at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. The process typically takes about 20 minutes.

At least the condemned was a good sport about it:

But Newton, who had insisted on the death penalty as punishment and made no
attempt to appeal, chatted and laughed with prison staff throughout the delay.
It took so long that the staff paused to allow Newton a bathroom break.

I can see the Monty Python/SNL sketch already:

Executioner: Okay, are we ready? Doctor, have you found a vein?

Doctor: Yes

Executioner: Warden, can we go ahead?

Warden: Do your duty.

Convict: Duty? Duty? Wait a minute! Wait! I need to go to the toilet.

Executioner: Didn't you go before we left the cell?

Convict: I didn't need to go then!

Executioner: Well, can't you hold it for a few minutes? This won't take long.

Convict: No. I need to go now!

Executioner: (Sighs) Okay. Okay. Guard, unstrap him.

Convict: Thanks, I owe you one.

Executioner: Yeah, yeah, whatever. Can we just get on with this? I have to take my kid to soccer practice and I can't stay late tonight.

(Convict and guard shuffle out of death chamber, Executioner, warden, priest, doctor make uncomfortable small talk "how about those Mets, huh?" until convict and guard shuffle back in)

Executioner: Okay, ready? Can we do this now?

(convict is strapped in)

Bill Smith, you have been convicted of murder in the first degree by a jury of your peers and sentenced by a lawful court to death. Padre, would you administer the last rights?

Priest: Through this holy anointing, may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy....Uh, can we just pause there for a minute, I need to visit the uh...

Executioner: Oh, for the love of God -- fine! Just hurry it up will you? (to convict) Sorry about the delay, really.

Convict: 'Sallright

(more uncomfortable silence, guard starts to whistle aimlessly, some lively tune like Oasis' "Live Forever" or Queen's "Who wants to live forever" or even "Live and Let Die" until he notices others scowling at him. Priest returns.)

Priest: Sorry about that, just got caught short, I had a lot of coffee this morning

Executioner: Okay, are we ready now? Bill Smith, you have been convicted of murder in the first degree by a jury of your peers and sentenced by a lawful court to death. Padre, would you administer the last rights?

Priest: Through this holy anointing, may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit...

(Warden's cell phone rings, Executioner glares at him as it continues to ring. the Warden answers)

Warden: Oh, uh hello Governor...I'm fine, how are you?...really, I'm sorry to hear that. Have you seen anyone about it?..uh-huh...and the ointment is working, is it?...uh-huh...that's great!.....A 78, fantastic!...Uh-huh...uh-huh...no, not yet...okay...okay...right...Really! Gosh that is surprising...well, if that's the way you feel about it...I suppose it is for the best...Well, no, nobody likes to play God, I suppose....Yeah, I'll take care of it...Okay, thanks Governor, I understand... I'll talk to you later...right, okay...bye-bye.

(Warden puts phone back in pocket, resumes stance next to convict strapped to gurney. Executioner continues to stare at him)

Executioner: Well? (Everyone stares at Gov.)

Warden:What? Oh! The phone (laughs) yeah, it was the governor. He shot a 78 in the pro-am last week, can you believe it?
(They continue to stare)

Convict: AND?

Warden: Well, he's going on junket to Hawaii next week and he was thinking of having his hamster put down, since he won't be home to feed it, but I promised to take care of it for him.

Executioner: (sighs with relief and starts up again, very quickly) Bill Smith, you have been convicted of murder in the first degree by a jury of your peers and sentenced by a lawful court to death.....

You deserve a break today
A group of well-to-do busybodies in England are petitioning the Oxford English Dictionary to change the definition of "McJob" from "an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector."

"We believe this definition is out of date, out of touch with reality and most importantly is insulting to those hard-working, talented and committed people who serve the public every day in the UK. As the namesake for this derogatory term, this prejudice is felt most sharply by the 67,000 people who pursue careers and jobs at McDonald's in the UK."
"It is time the dictionary definition of "McJob" changed to reflect a job that is stimulating, rewarding and offers genuine opportunities for career progression and skills that last a lifetime."

In a related story, a group of serial onanists are petitioning the editors of the Cockney Rhyming Slang Dictionary to remove the term "Merchant Banker" as they feel associating their their sensual pursuit with such people is demeaning.
"At least our hobby brings pleasure to someone, even if it is only to myself," said Hans Innis-Pahnts, spokesperson for Onanists Organized Over Orwellian Humbuggery. "This lot obviously has too much time and not enough meat on their hands. Uh...I mean to say, Sir Digby obviously hasn't spent a lot of time flipping greasy beef, stuffing it between buns and slathering it with....uh, excuse me for a few moments," said Innis-Pahnts, who could not be reached for further comment.
In a related development the White House announced it would petition to have the definition of "corruption" changed to "a win-win situation" and "incompetence" changed to "doing a heckuva job." Other proposed changes include "Up" being defined as "Down" and "Black" being defined as "White."
The late George Orwell could not be reached for comment, but journalists visiting his grave reported hearing a definite whirring sound.


I've had my share of jobs in the service sector working in kitchens and classrooms where everything has been time-and-motion studied to death and all actions, attitudes, attire and thoughts must conform with the manual. It seems that according to the authors of the aforementioned letter -- Sir Digby Jones, late of the Confederation of British Industry and David Frost, director-general of the British Chamber of Commerce and about a dozen others who have probably never flipped a burger, scrubbed a hotel toilet or read from a call center script-- the problem with demeaning, soul-destroying low-wage jobs is not that people are forced to smile while working long and hard at tasks that would bore the shit out of your average farm animal, but that the Oxford English Dictionary acknowledges that fact in its definition of "McJob."

I'll give him the hard-working part, not that most service sector workers have much choice. Slack off when you're feeling tired and you'll be replaced by another faceless cog in short order. "Talented" -- well, it's called "unskilled" labor for a reason. Any half-bright cro-magnon can be trained to do most McJobs - I know, I've done them. Most consist of very simple, very repetitive tasks -- the more repetitive the better from a management point of view, because then employees can specialize and get really good at cleaning toilets or pulling french fries out of the grease in the manner laid out in the manual. "Committed" -- yeah, more than a year at most McJobs and you'll feel like you're ready to be committed to an asylum. There is a reason the employee turnover rate at Micky D's is over 300% and it isn't because good help is hard to find.

"Stimulating" -- yeah nothing is quite as stimulating as choking on the rancid fumes while cleaning out a grease trap, taking crap from arrogant teenage customers who think its funny to leave your tip in the ketchup or having some stressed out yuppie unload his rage on you because his burger has pickles, but not tomatoes instead of the other way around. "Rewarding" -- ooooh, $6 whole dollars an hour, assuming your area has an enforcible minimum wage law. And you can progress from fry cook to crew chief to assistant manager to the lofty pinnacle of manager in just a few short years, making almost enough to move out of Mom's basement.

I will admit that learning to repeat "Would you like fries with that?" or "Your call is important to us" like an automaton and getting the hang of smiling at customers and sleeping at night while knowingly selling an obviously inferior product do have wider applications in life. Likewise significantly increasing the saliva and mucous content of an annoying prick's take-out order can be satisfying, but I suspect that isn't what Jones, Frost and company had in mind.

I think a quick poll of the 67,000 people working at McDonalds in the UK would indicate that barring the trainable mentally handicapped and the brainwashed cultists from Hamburger University, most would say the definition is entirely accurate. Just ask these folks if they are "lovin' it."

And it isn't just McDonald's that is guilty of exploiting its employees; most fast food chains and other low wage franchise and chain service businesses like Molly Maid, Wal-Mart and most supermarkets stay in the black by paying as little as the traffic will bear. That why companies like McDonalds and WalMart hate unions or anyone who rocks the boat and demands a little dignity -- there just isn't any room for that in the manual or the budget.

If you've worked enough of these kinds of jobs you know they are a tough slog and means to an end, not a career choice. I'm not talking about middle-class teenagers working part time for a little spending cash- being on the exploited side of the equasion might actually teach them a little humility - I'm talking about adults who take these jobs because they need work and can't find anything better. Someone will always have to do these jobs, but shouldn't they be entitled to decent treatment and a living wage? If you think people in the service industry are just lazy and should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, go read Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America while I get your take-out order ready Mr. merchant banker.

Master of creepiness pens dark tale of damaged lives

Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

Piercing

By Ryu Murakami

Translated by Ralph McCarthy

Penguin, 185 pp, 13 dollars

An ice pick is a very simple tool that focuses the strength and weight of the user's arm onto a tiny, needle-sharp point, allowing the shaft of the ice pick to easily penetrate deep into a rock-hard block of ice.

Like the ice pick that figures so prominently in its pages, Ryu Murakami's Piercing focuses the life stories of a pair of complex characters into single harrowing encounter that transfixes the reader from the arresting opening scene.

To say Murakami's work is often dark would be an understatement.

In his best-known novel, Coin Locker Babies (1980), one of the main characters drops nerve gas on Tokyo. In the Miso Soup (1997) is about a psychopath carving a bloody trail through the capital's red-light district. While the body count in this newly translated 1994 novel is considerably lower, for sheer creepiness, Piercing puts both of the aforementioned books in the shade.

Ralph McCarthy, having previously translated In the Miso Soup and the considerably lighter 69 by the same author, seems well versed in the intricacies of bringing Murakami's subtleties into English with a sparse, matter-of-fact prose style that adds further impact to the stark brutality of the violence.

Piercing begins with Masayuki Kawashima, a successful graphic designer for an advertising agency, married to a kind and loving wife. His life seems the paragon of domestic bliss, but for the last 10 nights he has spent hours after his bread-baking wife has gone to sleep standing over his baby daughter's crib with an ice pick, trying to convince himself he won't stab her.

Kawashima decides that the only way to overcome his obsession with using the ice pick, and the fear that he will harm his daughter, is to stab someone else instead. He puts a few days into planning the perfect crime and under the pretext of taking a business research trip, checks into a top-end Tokyo hotel intending to use it as a base of operations to murder a prostitute. Further meticulous preparation ensues, during which the reader gets glimpses of Kawashima's nightmarish childhood and the brutal beatings his mother routinely inflicted on him before he was taken away to live in an institution for abused children.

Murakami then switches point of view to Kawashima's intended victim, Chiaki, a call girl who specializes in S&M games and who is also a survivor of childhood abuse. Chiaki's mental health is as dubious as Kawashima's and the roles of predator and prey become confused as the novel teeters between psycho-thriller and black farce as Murakami switches points of view, often revisiting scenes to give contrasting perspectives. Such a he-said/she-said approach would be doomed if not for Murakami's use of third person narration.

On the surface, Piercing is a chilling horror novel in the vein of Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter books, but on a deeper level it is about the vulnerability of children and the lasting damage that results from abuse. Both Kawashima's and Chiaki's deranged behavior stems from the coping mechanisms they have developed to survive their respective childhood ordeals. In the widening gyre of their adult lives, things fall apart and the coping mechanisms become psychoses that fill them with passionate intensity of the worst sort.

(May. 26, 2007)

Not to sound like a paranoid conspiracy nut, but...
It is strictly speculation, but could philanthropist Glen Davis have been murdered because of his support of the conservation movement? He gave millions a year to the World Wildlife Fund and the Sierra Club and that may not have sat well with some of the more extreme "traitorous liberals should all die" types out there. He survived a vicious beating two years ago that was never explained and his attackers were never caught.
I'm not saying he was killed because of his involvement with the environmental movement - I don't know enough about the other aspects of his life to say that there wasn't some other motive for the murder. But when I see the kind of overblown rhetoric that gets thrown around on the right side of the blogosphere about how this person or that person should die in some horrible way because they don't have the same beliefs as the poster, I always wonder how long it's going to be before some nut job take the idea to heart. Certainly, this has happened in the abortion debate. Call those doctors providing abortions baby-killers enough times and viola, some fetus fetishist dingbat decides to be judge, jury and executioner and plant a "pro-life" bomb at a clinic or shoot a physician in front of his family.
I don't know whether Davis was assassinated for giving millions to the World Wildlife Fund and the Sierra Club, but sadly it isn't beyond the realm of possibility

Speaking of nutjobs with bombs - While I'm sure sensible people everywhere would feel bad if there had been violence at Jerry Falwell's funeral, apparently it was his own guys that were ready to start throwing firebombs. Wasn't Fred Phelps and his addled band of cultists supposed to be picketing there?

The devil made him do it

A male comedian dressed up like a woman saying "the devil made me do it" in a comedy routine is funny.

A fundamentalist Christian teenage mother using it to defend her teenage would-be preacher's attempt to roast their toddler alive-- ehhh, not so much.

More progressive parenting in Jebusland:

Woman blames devil, not husband for burning daughter in microwave
May 20, 2007, 12:45PM

© 2007 The Associated Press

GALVESTON, Texas — A woman blames the devil and not her husband for severely burning their infant daughter after the 2-month-old was put in a microwave, a Houston television station reported.

Eva Marie Mauldin said Satan compelled her 19-year-old husband, Joshua Royce Mauldin, to microwave their daughter May 10 because the devil disapproved of Joshua's efforts to become a preacher.

"Satan saw my husband as a threat. Satan attacked him because he saw (Joshua) as a threat," Eva Mauldin told Houston television station KHOU-TV.

A Galveston County grand jury indicted Joshua Mauldin last week on child injury charges after hearing evidence that he placed his daughter in a motel microwave for 10 to 20 seconds.
The infant, Ana Marie, remains hospitalized. She suffered burns on the left side of her face and to her left hand, police said.

Eva Marie Mauldin, the girl's 20-year-old mother, told the television station that her husband is "not the monster people are making him out to be."

Another weekend, another barbecue
Took the curvaceous and emminently capable Ms. Rev. Paperboy and the youngin' up into the mountains of Yamanashi Prefecture this weekend to camp out on a mountain top at The Northlands with 50 of our closest friends from my old watering hole in Kawasaki, Moby Dick, (named for the drum solo, not the whale) the friendliest bar in Japan, if not the world.

We took the train up early Saturday morning and my big little brother Take-chan picked us up at the station and whisked up up the mountain for a day of eating, drinking, loafing in the sun, barbecuing, drinking, playing music, and more drinking. The next day we got up to bright, bright (I have never wanted sunglasses so much as I did when I stepped out of the cabin - did I mention I'd been drinking the night before?) sunny weather, let the kids feed the horses at the riding stable (priceless). After checking out of the campground we took a short, scenic, vomit-filled (Anyone know what the Japanese for "Gravol" is? Dramamine doesn't seem to work on my kids, in fact, I suspect it is making them sick) drive through the mountains we stopped for soba and then took the train home.

Special thanks to Kaki-san, Takarada-san, the G-Tribe Motorcycle Club, Linn-chan and Ayu-chan for drumming and babysitting above and beyond the call; wheel man and soup chef Take-sama and of course our gracious host The Chief.

To paraphrase the master (and this is the real list): "We had 5 cases of Heineken, 2 bottles of Captain Morgan's dark rum, 2 bottles of Blanton's Single Barrel bourbon, a bottle of Black Bush, 2 bottles of Beefeater, 2 bottles of Jose Cuervo Gold, a bottle of Bacardi white rum, 5 litres of red wine, 5 litres of white wine, a bottle of Glenlivet, a bottle of Kalua, a bottle of Amaretto, a bottle of cassis, ten litres of assorted sake, a half dozen different kinds of sho-chu, 5 kilos of Rev. Paperboy's homemade spicy Italian sausage, 3 kilos of chicken, 4 kilos of assorted beef, 2 tuna heads, a dozen baguettes, a broad assortment of salads, pickles, olives, cheeses, chocolates, 'smores and 6 litres of Take's fabulous vegetable chicken-sausage soup.
The only thing that worried me was the tuna heads. There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man drunk on sake in the depths of a tuna binge."





I'm not claiming we drank all the aforementioned booze - though I think I had the last beer the next morning - but we certainly put a dent in it. I know we went through about half of the Irish whisky just er...toasting my sausage -- which isn't nearly as dirty as it sounds.

And he's killed few people than Charlie Manson

Note to Conrad Black: If you want to stay out of jail, you may not want to compare yourself to the only man ever driven from the White House for his criminality.

The Money Quote:

His book, Richard Nixon: The Invincible Quest, is largely an attempt at rehabilitating the president brought down by Watergate. Had it not been for his "legal and ethical shortcomings," he writes, Nixon would now be ranked alongside Reagan andFDR as one of America's greatest presidents.

Yeah, and aside from that brief bit of unpleasantness in front of the Book Depository, the future Mrs. Onasis quite enjoyed the drive through Dallas.

On what basis can Nixon be considered a great president? His prolongation of the Vietnam war? His secret and illegal wars against Cambodia and Laos? His backing of Pinochet's coup in Chile? His backing of Indonesia's bloody invasion of Timor?

"Oh, but he went to China!" the conservatives always say. He was hardly the first to recognize that the communist regime there formed a legitimate government -- and it only happened 30 years after they had chased Chang-kai Shek off the mainland.

Yes, he ended the draft and started the EPA, but that hardly makes up for using the constitution as toilet paper.

And let's be clear: Reagan was a disaster as president. He tripled the national debt, sparked the homeless problem by emptying the mental hospitals, was a union-buster, sold arms to Saddam Hussien, gave the religious right the undue influence in U.S. politics that it weilds to this day, got rid of the FCC's fairness doctrine thereby allowing evil, lying bags of pus like Rush Limbaugh to abuse the public airwaves, contributed to international tensions and instability by heating up the cold war until it threatened to turn hot, ignored AIDS until it reached epidemic proportions and made George Bush his vice president, thus leading to the coronation of the current dolt in the White House.

And all that is in addition to the crimes he commited gassing students as Gov. of California, rushing to eagerly name names for Joesph McCarthy and making the Bonzo movies.

That Black believes Nixon and Reagan were great presidents on par with FDR tells you all you need to know about his lunatic, aristocratic Tory view of history, but if you need other reasons to dislike him look let us judge him by his actions and his words rather than his reputation as a ruthless robber baron who gutted the Canadian newspaper industry.

He also responds to the repeated attempts by the prosecution to portray him not just as a thief but prone to an over-the-top lifestyle. "It is a total fraud that I lived with any particular extravagance," he complains. "I had certain ideas about how the chairman of a big newspaper should behave. So I tried to conform to that. But I was not a vulgar person."

Contrast that with:

They also allege Black used shareholder money to partly fund a US$54,114 birthday
party for his wife at La Grenouille, an upscale New York restaurant, and charged shareholders when he took the company's jet on a personal vacation to the South Pacific island of Bora Bora.

Nothing over the top about that at all, nor his $9,000 gardening bill, although many people live on less than $200,000 a month

While he admits that there have been some "scary moments", he goes on to insist: "The game is won. I'm on an inexorable march to victory."

That is going to look so good after Lady Babs has one of the servants embroider it on a sampler for his lordship to hang in his cell.

Addendum
Commenter John M. Miller correctly points out that Ford and not Nixon was the president during the invasion of East Timor. However, I would argue that as Ford and Kissinger were both Nixon appointees, Nixon still bears some degree of responsibility for what happened on their watch. The same goes for ending the draft - it was Ford that signed the papers in 1975, but the original groundwork had already been laid by Nixon, who ended active conscription in 1973.
There is one other nail that should be driven into Nixon's coffin; He brought Donald Rumsfeld (whom he admiringly called a "ruthless little bastard") into the executive branch, and thus Dick Cheney, both of whom clearly took to heart the boss's arguments about executive privilege and the right of the president to do anything he wants.

My big break
I've been asked by the proprieters (well, Dave anyways -- maybe this is his little practical joke on the others to make sure they miss him while he's on vacation) to help blogsit over at The Galloping Beaver for a couple of weeks. I'll be joining Allison from Creekside and West End Bound from Moving to Vancouver in keeping an eye on things over there. The Galloping Beaver draws a lot more hits than the Woodshed, so this could be my ticket out of the blogging ghetto -- I'll try to remember all you little people kindly when I become a big blogging star and get invited to the big blogging ethics panels on CNN. In the meantime, anything I post there I will also crosspost here. The Woodshed will still offer some exclusive content in the form of book and music reviews.

Ding Dong


I've been trying very hard all day to take the high road and not to gloat, cheer or pile-on. It should always be a sad occasion when someone dies, but in the case of Jerry Falwell I'll make an exception. I'll also admit to having cracked a smile when they hung Saddam and when I heard Nixon and Reagan had finally croaked. Evil crap-sacks, each and every one. The ad is from Hustler --Jerry famously sued them and lost. He is the bastard who got the burgeoning fundementalist Christian movement tied in with the Republican party with his Moral Majority (all together now: "it was neither") movement starting in 1979. He got St. Ronnie of Raygun elected, he got Bush senior elected, he had a lot to do with getting Clinton impeached by the House of Representatives (though not as much as Clinton did, let's be fair). Without him there would be no politically active fundementalist movement -- no Ralph Reed, no James Dobson, probably no abortion clinic bombers either. He blamed 9/11 on homosexuals, the ACLU, abortion-providers and People for the American Way. He was a hate-spewing homophobic, racist, sexist bigot and if there is a hell, he is smoking a turd in it right now. And I for one, am glad.
That's right blogging Tories, CNN and conservatard everywhere, my name is Rev.Paperboy and I'm an angry, intolerant, godless, anti-Christian, liberal blogger. SFW?

The Barley Sammich
Inspired by a pair of blog posts, I must weigh in on the subject of Budweiser, beer and breakfast drinking. Please note the large brightly colored comma separating Budweiser from beer, as I would hate to have anyone confuse the two.

Let me first address the attempt by Crooked Timber's Daniel Davies to defend Budweiser and even to sing its praises. I don't hate Bud because it is an American mass market beer -- though that would be reason enough. As any good Canadian beer drinking hoser knows, American mass market beers are like making love in a canoe, that is to say, it is fucking close to water. There are many fine American beers (Anchor Steam anything for example) but Bud isn't one of them. I don't hate it because it and tap water are the only two things you can get to drink almost anywhere in the civilized world ( I don't see that there is much difference between the two). I don't hate it because it's made with rice -- I'm enjoying a rice-based Kirin as I write this. It isn't any of those other reasons either -- I agree that micro brews are often overrated and beer snobbery is as pretentious as wine snobbery, but also admit it exists for a very good reason - because there are some very good obscure small beers and some really crappy mass market ones. I don't care about Budvar's claim on the name or whether it is "for poufs" -- though if we are dealing in stereotypes, I'd argue that "poufs" are supposed to have better taste than to be caught drinking Budweiser.

I hate Budweiser because it is lousy beer. I'd say it tastes like crap, but the flavor isn't strong enough to even say that. It's the weak instant coffee of beers -- a horribly bland vaguely beer-like beverage with a hint of crap. Cold Bud and warm Coors Light are what is on tap in Hell.

"Snap, crakle and burp -- the breakfast of ex-champions"
--Hawkeye Pierce, pouring beer on his corn-flakes

As to the esteemed Mr. Noon's post over at LGM on beer as a breakfast beverage and breakfast drinking in general (go read the post and the many many comments), for a cool spring morning, Guiness or a good coffee stout would be breakfast on their own - the venerable oatmeal sammich. I agree with the points made in the comments about Irish whisky and coffee, but then I think a healthy measure of Bushmills is good for just about anything, except maybe driving, surgery or operating chainsaws.

Before going further let me say that I do not condone or encourage breakfast drinking, nor do I regularly participate in it. Drinking in the morning will not make you Hunter Thompson or Charles Bukowski -- neither of whom you'd want to share a house with no matter how well they might have written. But on the occasional lazy weekend morning, when breakfast is served at the crack of noon, an eye-opener is not a criminal offense. Certainly some cocktails are designed with breakfast in mind -- like the Mimosa or the Bloody Mary.

The beer and tomato juice cocktail -- I've heard it called a Canadian Sunset -- is another morning type drink for those who like tomato juice ( I hate it) and I've actually seen it served as a Red Eye with a raw egg and hefty shot of tobasco as a hangover cure. I think the theory on this was "Whatever doesn't kill you, make you stronger."

Personally, I find Guinness a bit heavy to add to a actual full fry-up breakfast, but if you're just having a bagel or toast or a bacon sandwich, it goes down a treat. The Budweiser fan is right about one thing, lighter rice-based lagers do make better breakfast beers.

Tokyo in summer is as close to Hell as I'd like to get; humidity of 80 to 90 percent and temperatures in the high 30s to low 40s (over 90 F for you non-metric types), often you wake up in the morning drained of all bodily fluids, feeling like you've just run a marathon through the Sahara. The tap water is blood warm in July and August and you forgot to make ice last night. Your wife is drinking the last of the iced coffee you put in the fridge yesterday. You stagger to the fridge and all you can find is milk - which will curdle in your stomach and make the pasty texture in your mouth even worse - some kind of evil, sweet yogurt and fruit juice concoction the kids drink, a diet cola guaranteed to eat a hole in your guts if the medicinal aftertaste of the aspartamine doesn't kill you first, and a frosty can of Sapporo. It's a working day, but you don't have to be in until 11 and you're not driving anyways. I ask the court -- is it a crime to pop the top on a can of suds or is it better to die of dehydration?

When doing the full Hunter Thompson breakfast, I tend to favor a lighter lager or pilsner, preferably ice cold, and a few shots of amber rum, Cuban if possible. The rum goes especially well with any citrus or tropical fruit.

The ultimate Canadian breakfast is, of course, a back-bacon sandwich and a cold Sleeman's Cream Ale or, if you can find it, a Big Rock Brewery Traditional Ale or Grasshopper Wheat Beer.

Over here in Japan, beer in the morning is not so rare, especially among the salaryman set , though many prefer a morning pick-me-up of chu-hi, a concoction of soda water, shochu (distilled liquor made from rice or sweet potatoes that runs the gamut from nice, vodka-like pricey hooch to industrial solvent) and usually some kind of citrus flavor, that come in at about 6 or 7 percent alcohol by volume -- imagine a weak vodka-and-soda with lime. Not bad if you are hungover, but the sho-chu is usually closer to industrial quality and tends to be hangover-inducing in the long run.

I've seen I've seen guys quaffing on the train platform at 9 am and I've seen quart bottles of beer set out as part of the breakfast buffet at hot spring resorts. Get on a bullet train here at any time of the day and people are drinking before the train leaves the station, no matter what time it is.

Japan is also awash in some low-priced, nasty-tasting imitation beer-like substances called happoshu and "third category beer-like drinks" the latter of which are like drinking soda water and grain alcohol with some hops flavoring.

Shandies are also nice - I prefer the beer-and-ginger ale style one to the beer-and-lemonade one. Some girls I knew in college taught me a variation that adds a double shot of iced vodka to the pint of beer and lemonade called a strip-and-go-naked, but that's a whole other post.

Faking it
(the edited review of this ran in The Daily Yomiuri on Sunday, this is the longer original draft)

The illusion of keeping it real

Faking it—The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music

By Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor

Norton, 375 Pages, $25.95

By Kevin Wood

Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

All performance is, by its very nature, artifice, so why are music fans so obsessed with “keeping it real?” Why is it that raw authenticity is valued above artful contrivance in music? What makes one performer real and another a fake?

These are not idle questions for Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor, authors of Faking It – The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music. Rather they are central to their book’s thesis, which seems to be that full representational, cultural and personal authenticity in music is an ideal rather than an achievable goal and may not even be such a laudable end in itself. The obsession with authenticity, they argue, “has limited the kinds of music that musicians aspire to make and that critic and listeners appreciate.” The authors seem to come to the conclusion that authenticity is highly overrated as a yardstick of musical talent or quality, which may be true, but it is their examination of the notion of authenticity in a variety of popular genres that is likely to spark arguments wherever music obsessives gather.

In making their case, Barker, a former musician, and Taylor, an author and editor, start with a shared chapter comparing Kurt Cobain and Leadbelly and the notion of selling out or faking it and then move chronologically with Taylor authoring early chapters on racial segregation in southern music, Jimmie Rodgers, Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” and Neil Young’s “Tonight’s The Night”, while Barker tackles the Monkees and the Archies, Disco and Punk. A pair of co-authored closing chapters take snobby potshots at Ry Cooder and the entire genre of World Music, accusing them of trading on notions of authenticity while being inauthentic, and sing the praises of Moby and KLF for their ability to toy with the whole idea of authenticity.

Part of the problem with Faking It seems to be that the authors never really nail down a clear definition of authenticity in music beyond some fairly obvious comparisons between Ozzy Osbourne’s “Iron Man” (inauthentic) and Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter” (authentic) in the introduction. It seems to be like pornography, they can’t describe it exactly, but they know it when they see it. c

The opening chapter is something of a microcosm of the book as a whole. It compares and contrasts Cobain and Leadbelly, noting that Cobain’ s last public performance was of a Leadbelly song “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” and makes the argument that Cobain was obsessed with authenticity and was authentic, while Leadbelly was uninterested in the concept and was presented in an inauthentic, even racist manner. Some of the chapter is consumed by trashing the reputation of early musicologist John Lomax for promoting Leadbelly as an unsophisticated primitive and speculating, not without some merit, on the correctness of the racial politcs of Lomax and his era. Interesting points about the notion of primitivism are raised, but as happens again and again in the book, salient points made are later undercut by logical overreaches and statements that, taken at face value, are just plain laughable – such as the notion that the failure of other grunge musicians to kill themselves like Cobain did, robbed the genre of its “essential gravity” or that fans insistence on authenticity, not his own drug addiction and manic depression killed Cobain.

“It’s too simplistic to say that it is our fault, but deep down we wonder: if we had not encouraged them—if we had thought less of “authenticity” and more simply of good music—might they have survived?”

Faking It is the kind of book where you might read nodding in agreement for pages as the authors build a carefully constructed proof of a theory and then blow their accumulated credibility by describing Donna Summer as “a brilliant musical innovator” or suggesting that the contribution of the Monkees’ Mike Nesmith to the evolution of Country Rock was somehow on par with Gram Parsons’. Barker’s efforts to draw parallels between Nesmith and John Lennon also become more than a little labored—the two aren’t in the same ballpark, they aren’t even in the same sport. Lennon was a brilliant songwriter and musician, Nesmith, despite his ambitions to do likewise, merely played one on TV.

And don’t even get me started on the chapters on John Lydon, Donna Summer and Ry Cooder. I’m not a violent person by any means, but a discussion over a sufficient number of drinks between the authors and myself would likely end with us circling each other in the parking lot with mayhem in our hearts—we are the people Nick Hornby was writing about in High Fidelity. This is very much a book for music geeks, and I mean that in the best way.

For all its many faults, Faking It is worth reading and does have some valuable things to say about the notion of authenticity and its importance in pop music. Like any argument among obsessives, there is plenty of opinion masquerading as fact and hyperbole presented as considered positions, but it is an interesting argument.

Bleating about the Bleat
It's hard to fathom, but some people seem to like James Lileks, though they also claim to have named the blogosphere.

Roy, on the other hand, has never liked the work of the most pedestrian of pedestrian writers.

What will become of the Gnat? Will the St. Paul Target store have to lay off staff now?

The funniest thing you'll read all day: "And although Lileks is one of the most talented writers on the web, I’m pretty sure he won’t be able to replace his newspaper income with his blog/website."

Stop it, my sides, ow, my sides!

Artistic Synergy
In the course of researching a review of Faking It-- The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music, a great book for starting arguments among musicians and music geeks, but one I had some problems with (the review will come out Saturday, wait for it) I checked out the authors' blog and found this gem of an MP3. I don't know who the mimic is or whether it could actually be Mr. Zimmerman, but you ain't heard nothing until you've heard Bob Dylan sing the Dr. Seuss classic, Green Eggs and Ham

Journalism is hard work
The New York Times' Eric Asimov tackles a gruelling assignment. He suffers, oh how he suffers, but Asimov valiantly soldiers on to get at one of the most troubling issues confronting society today:

"It’s come to my attention that some people believe martinis are made with vodka. I hate to get snobbish about it, but a martini should be made with gin or it’s not a martini. Call it a vodkatini if you must, but not a martini. Gin and vodka have as much in common hierarchically as a president and a vice president. Vodka can fill in for gin from time to time and might even be given certain ceremonial duties of its own, but at important moments you need the real thing. Vodka generally makes a poor substitute for gin in a martini or any other gin cocktail."

'nuff said?