Superstition

Wolves and the henhouse.

The subprime mortgage market collapse does “not warrant a fundamental overhaul of the basic regulatory structure. Banking regulators… have since responded in a coordinated and measured way to preserve both confidence and liquidity in the banking system.” – American Bankers Association President Ed Yingling, November 20, 2007


The American Bankers Association is pressing hard in Washington this week to lobby  against a myriad of efforts to protect the American consumer, including stricter credit card regulation, the institution of a consumer protection agency, forcing national banks to abide by state laws, proposals to end risky trading practices by banks, and an end to the scary derivative shell game that helped take down Merrill, AIG and the american economy.

The 900 member group got a pep talk from congressional enabler John Boehner, who urged them not to be intimidated by congressmen and their "punk staffers." I took special note of the words from one banker from Michigan, who was quoted in the Washington Post as saying,"We're not going to sit silently while we are blamed for problems that were caused by others."

Hmm. It is amazing to me that a group that has received so much from Joe Taxpayer can so readily show us the back of their hand. They are blameless, because government regulators should have been smarter at catching them at their game. It's like the fox blaming the farmer for not building a better door on his chicken coop.

Other industry groups have been equally displeased about pending regulation, including the usurious payday loan companies and the United States Chamber of Commerce, which never misses an opportunity to put a nail in the side of the american consumer.

***

I was reading the other day about the California gas bureaucrat Floyd Leeson who never disclosed that he had a big position in one of the firms he was supposedly regulating and fast tracked a bunch of sweetheart deals to his peeps. He has since resigned but the damage has been done. We need to find a way to stop the revolving door between the regulators and industry and put some of these people in jail.

****

Losing my site yesterday was a total freakout. Not having a hard copy of the blog was scary since there are a few things that I have written that I would probably want to reread some day. I made an xtml copy yesterday when I finally found, revitalized and resuscitated the beast and need to copy it somewhere else.
I was pleased to see the number of emails I received from readers and lurkers who noticed that I was missing.

It is obvious that cyber warfare is still in its nascent infancy. There is too much readily available information around for really nasty shit not happen. If you have enough money or work for an information company like let's say, Google, and somebody pisses you off, how hard would it be to make somebody's cyber footprint and history vanish in thin air? Accidently, like. Change the past with a few keystrokes.

***

Of course the farther we get from an actual event, the more apt we are to view it through a distorted lens. I am glad for efforts like the Shoah Project, which documents the first hand stories of holocaust victims and those that rescued them. The deniers are certain to claim that it is all dummied up. Nutty and paranoid conspiracy theories should only get worse in the coming years as our reliance on third party aggregation information sources increases and we get even further removed from empirical fact and reality.

Rockin Chair - Gwen Mc Rae

Hijacked!

I found out that my blog had been hijacked about an hour ago. I am glad that you have found me. I was freaking out that all of my work product had been lost but managed to save it. I will try to work with google, the company that has no phones to answer to see if I can get everything back to normal and will tread water with this address for a while.

Hot Chocolate - Emma

One of Leslie's favorites.

Yerba Buena

I scooted back up to the Bay Area, not quite a trip to the corner market, but a pretty smooth journey today. Left about 9:00 this morning and blew into Burlingame around 4:30.


The trip included a detour for some unknown reason around the 57 freeway, and a stop at Whole Foods in Pasadena for victuals, breakfast at Noah's as well as a couple pit stops en route.

I had a three hour long conversation with friend Gary along the way, Bakersfield to Fresno and beyond, comparing notes on mothers, family, art and insanity. After we hung up, my phone decided to call him once again. "Oh" he said, "It must have been a pocket call." A pocket call must be a new addition to the english lexicon for the times when your cell phone accidently starts dialing numbers on its own, something that happens to me rather frequently.

New technology has a way of changing the language rather quickly, we have quickly gone from tivoing to googling to friending. Today I started the process of unfriending a few folks on Facebook, another new word, I imagine. A tough matter of etiquette and diplomacy that is sometimes necessary. You are a christian republican who likes scrap booking, I'm a pagan trotskyite who likes to cross stitch, it will probably never work out.

Today I ran my hands under a faucet wringing them in the air, only to look down and see that there was actually a manual valve on top. So twentieth century.

My gmail was on the fritz for the most part of yesterday. Since google has no customer service, being a free service that depends on ad revenue, I was forced to navigate through various forums and FAQ's to try to resolve the issue. I tried the suggested fixes, going to their encrypted site, switching to an HTML version, switch off google labs, all to no avail. The forum was funny because there is a person there we will call Keith, who doesn't say he works for the company that promises to do no evil, but obviously does. He was berating people who expected things to work rationally, indignantly informing them that the internet was a complex environment that demanded flexible solutions and besides couldn't they follow simple directions? I felt like I was listening to a communist party apparatchik berating his comrades.

I evidently could not fix the problem myself because Gmail still failed to fire, on my phone and on the desktop. There was talk was that the problem laid with Yahoo, the mail originator. I finally found a site that said that they were experiencing problems with some gmail service but that the problem had been dealt with. Except for me of course.

One of the difficulties with behemoths like Google that eschew customer service is that laymen like me never know who is responsible when there is a problem, if it was something I did or didn't do. I guess it was them because around three this afternoon, the system started flowing again.

My wife has a cousin who lives up here. She went to sleep with indigestion the other day and never woke up. Just a few years older than me. Leslie is flying up for the funeral friday and we will drive back down together after my show.

I saw an interesting piece today about a couple of guys who have figured out a way to deduce social security numbers for about 8% of the population from readily available public data. The perils of being publicly visible in this transparent age of social networking. Beware!

The Ohio Players - Fire

william de vaughn

Brett Stokes - The last picture show

As a fan of cinema, shouldn't this be entirely black and white?

My friend Brett, a thirty year brother and confidante, is celebrating his eventual removal from Elder St. with the "last" exhibition of his paintings. I have made several enquiries as to what he means by last, does he have some inside info on an errant meteor strike that will squash mankind like a bug and leave the planet as a dank parking lot only fit to be inhabited by radioactive arachnids and seventh day adventists?

Will he forsake painting altogether and run for political office, perhaps giving that D.A. witch Bonnie Dumanis a run for her money?

I think it is far to late in his life's journey to seek gainful employment, since everyone knows that the artists get all the girls - perhaps his own coffee shop? No-o-o... A psychologist might have a field day for his choice of subject matter for his painterly adieu, a cold bleak landscape, perhaps signaling the fear he is feeling towards the act of breaking down the old wigwam.

One of my favorite paintings in my collection is a canvas by Brett, I will post a picture soon.

Anyhow, I hope that you will come and support my friend, Fallbrook's caffeinated conscience and come to the last round up and wish him well. See you there.

Rose Royce

A flake of hay, a lump of sugar, and thou...

Arizona wingnut candidate J.D. Hayworth Compares Gay Marriage To Bestiality.

grace jones

Rock Your Baby

Watch out - we may be entering Rob's disco and funk period.

Springing Forward

As once was so ably proclaimed by the scribes, real life is so much stranger than fiction - blonde bimbos groomed as manchurian missiles by the islamic invaders go hunting game in scandinavia, the wife of a supreme court justice becoming a leading teabagger, Iceland turned into a slushie by their mortgage holders in Great Britain, Texas scouring their academic curriculum of all traces of Jefferson, women, hispanics, dinosaurs, fossils, and non christian folks of the wrong complexion, replacing them with Phyllis Schafly, Roy Cohn and Kate Smith no doubt - its all just so damn hard to take! If you are not medicating in some way, I must admit that I view you with no small amount of suspicion.

I was most appalled when a teacher in Texas said that she had no problem with the curriculum changes and whitewashing, but the lesson plans were so long already, how in the Sam Hill could they mention all of these new heroes in a school year? Working hard enough, gosh darn it.

***

I have a growing hatred fighting a grudging acceptance of Facebook. A perfect communication medium for people who speak in 144 character staccato bursts and can not put together a complete sentence, or dare I say it, an original thought. Lately I am seeing more clipped lines from a song appearing, give me two stanzas of Bob Dylan or Robert Hunter and magically whisk me away to some internal warm and cozy metaphorical den. How about writing your own song or bad poetry? What's wrong with that?

****

The new social networking sites have an etiquette that is being written on the fly and can be somewhat confusing. I was on a site today that used to link me and see that all vestiges of the Blue Heron Blast has vanished from their pages. I reflexively found their own reciprocal link on my blog and sent them to Cyber hell with a click. I must have pissed somebody off, not a first. Mutually assured blog destruction. Oh well.

***

Kudos to Biden and Clinton for holding Netanyahu's feet to the fire. I have said it before, the current crop of Israelis in power are masters of the double dealing finesse move and have been less than forthright with their allies about their plans for settlement expansion. And that doesn't make me an anti semite.

Sufi Dancers

This is a video of a Syrian sufi dancing ensemble. When I followed the Grateful Dead around we had a kindred phenomenon for a while. Guys and gals dressed in tie dyed dresses would ply similar moves in their psychedelic fury. They were known colloquially as "spinners". You would have to amble through large packs of them in the lobby in order to get a drink.

And no, I never took the leap. Or spin.

Culture Vulture

I have been getting a healthy dose of culture this week, starting in the Bay Area and not slowing down a peep since my return.

Thursday night I stopped off at the monthly Fallbrook Writer's Read, a gathering of poets and writers that I believe was organized by my friend Kit Bacon Gressitt. A cynic's first inclination would be to belittle the  group as a bunch of serious and bitter english lit majors with corduroy jackets sporting leather patches on the elbows. You know, spouting self congratulatory paeans to Tolstoy and spring.

The reality was that they were all really good. It would take a bit of polishing for me to read in front of this group, not that I couldn't do it if I got my shit together and kept a straight face. The guest writer this month was an émigré from Chicago, Terry Spohn, whose bio shows publication in Ascent, Grub Street, Mississippi Review, North American Review, Oyster Boy Quarterly, Eclectica, and other magazines, and his poems have appeared in three anthologies.

His offerings seemed to reflect a youth spent participating in assorted acts of violence and anger, some of it courtesy of the Catholic church. I liked his stuff as well as the original work later read by his wife, also a writer with serious chops.

A few others spoke, a woman on her inaugural read offered up a piece describing the joy of her father's passing, the mercy of death to the infirm. This is one of two regular reads in Fallbrook, I believe that the library has one as well, and maybe cafe primo?

My guess is that these people spend a lot of time in the solitary pursuit of writing, massaging their craniums for the perfect turn of a phrase or perhaps a word that crystallizes their feelings in the most sublime way. The elocution and meter is apparently as important as the squiggles on the page and I noticed that some of the dynamics lagged towards the end of their pieces, like the air coming out of a flaccid balloon.

You people would tear my ass up if I ever tried that stuff but that is another matter.

***

Last night Doug and Retha invited me to an Indian cooking class in Cardiff. It was taught by Kamlesh Israni, the owner of KC's Tandoor in Encinitas. The gregarious and affable Israni taught the class at her lovely modern home, with her outdoor tandoori oven. Retha is a great boss and bought the class for her employees and allowed me to tag along.

We learned how to make two different curries, adjudicating proper amounts of turmeric, cumin, coriander and garam masala. Kamlesh cooks by feel and sound and showed us how to listen to the poppy seed pop in the oil at the exact proper moment.  She taught a lot of general techniques for all types of cooking, the importance of adding hot to hot, and described the differences in adding salt to cooking with meat and vegetables. Not big on proper measurement, the type of natural cook that throws a dash here and there and is more motivated by feel.

We were served two wonderful types of margaritas, a pomegranate and a tea based version, as well as wine.

I must confess that indian cuisine is not at the top of my chart, preferring thai and vietnamese for asian cooking. I have trouble digesting one of the spices, perhaps the garam masala. But this food was very, very tasty and I learned a lot.

We had both a shrimp curry and a vegetable curry, mung bean salad, chicken tikka masala and naan. Dessert was cherry ice cream. I make no bones about my deficiencies as a cook, but still enjoyed the evening and the ease with which Kamlesh moved around her kitchen. Thank you, Doug and Retha.

***

Tomorrow I am invited to a brunch where a professor will talk about his studies and thoughts on the famous Persian poet Rumi.

از جمادی مُردم و نامی شدم — وز نما مُردم بحیوان سرزدم

مُردم از حیوانی و آدم شدم — پس چه ترسم کی ز مردن کم شدم

حملهء دیگر بمیرم از بشر — تا برآرم از ملایک بال و پر

وز ملک هم بایدم جستن ز جو — کل شییء هالک الاوجهه

بار دیگر از ملک پران شوم — آنچه اندر وهم ناید آن شوم

پس عدم گردم عدم چو ارغنون — گویدم کانا الیه راجعون

So as you can see, I am positively bursting at the seams with culture and urbane sophistication. Will definitely need a trip to the Moose Lodge for a beer and a shot when this is all over.

Those are the questions I need you to reask...

Meg Whitman, the corporate wonk behind Ebay currently running for the governorship of California, appears to be having a little problem with the "town hall" concept. Somebody brought a video camera into one of her free exchanges of information and discovered that the whole thing was scripted and staged.

Why do I feel extremely worried about this woman as a leader of the Golden State? Didn't George Bush show us how an executive with real world business experience could right our ship?

Jerry Brown is looking better and better. Say what you want about Moonbeam, he has been remarkably solid in a long career of public service. Law and order guy in Oakland, governor that started solar credits, boinked Ronstadt, dad was a guvnah. Isn't it time to try a democrat?

Here Comes the Night

Them. Wembley. 1965. Young Van and his lads. Winners of New Musical Express poll.

THEM!

Northern Exposure

I had a really great trip up to the Bay Area. I sold a small painting, did some homework on the big one, ate like a hog, drank like a fish, hiked, talked and had a generally splendid time.

Left my house at four in the morning and caught the 6:18. Picked up the car offsite. If you are renting in San Francisco, try Ace. Around $24.00 a day including smart cars. I had a Suzuki that was great. 80% cheaper than the competition.

The weather was warmer up there than San Diego, just glorious. BigDave met me at Christie's, my normal breakfast spot in Burlingame.

Stopped off at my friend Michael's afterwards in San Mateo, a home filled with the creme de la creme of arts and crafts furnishings and that has had a major magazine spread.

Hightailed it to Oakland for the serious work portion of the trip and afterwards stopped by Melissa and Gary's house. Melissa's son Taylor had just came back from a major American tour with his speed/death metal band and had seemed to have grown up a lot. I had previously ripped him on the blog and his record label had seen it but he took it pretty well. His brother Morgwyn was there with his wife, preparing for proper nuptials in Scotland. Morgan is a chef at the Wood Tavern.

Melissa took me to the Berkeley farmers market, where I had the greatest ever macaroon, dried elephant heart plums and more chocolate. Saw the most amazing selection of Sonoma dry farmed potatoes. She also gave me this twenty year old photo of Les and I at David and Amy's wedding. Yes, I guess you could call it a mullet.

Gary, an ex navy diver, and Melissa and I went to our brilliant cookbook author, teacher, poet, friend Denis and gracious wife Kathy's house for hors d'oeuvres and drinks and then onwards and upwards to the famous Bay Area restaurant Bay Wolf for dinner. Started at the same time as Chez Panisse, Bay Wolf was an instrumental player in the northern california culinary revolution.

I actually wasn't that hungry after all the snacking at phenomenal chef Melissa's home, where I had been munching on this outrageous chocolate. But like a trooper I rose to the occasion and had the requisite Duck liver flan with olives and cornichons. I followed that with a butter lettuce and poached lamb's tongue salad.

We drank a remarkable white wine with our first courses. Denis is a Beard Award winner and a wine judge at the California State Fair and knows his way around a corkscrew. I normally am not a big fan of white wines. Now I know the problem. I am too cheap, you have to order the expensive stuff!

Denis selected a 2000 Savennieres from the Loire Valley. This Chenin Blanc is grown across from Vouvre. He explained that these whites, like his favorite Sancerre, can age for ever and that he had bought a 50 year old bottle in Paris that was still remarkable when consumed.

This wine was round, fruity and not too sweet. No trace of the dreaded oak, the main problem I have with most California whites.

I continued on the a small entree of oxtail ravioli with savoy cabbage and herbed bread crumbs. Delicious and perfect. The others had duck, ragout of spring lamb with fava beans and fried artichokes and swordfish. I ordered a peppery old vine Scherrer zinfandel for our entrees.

We finished off the night with a tart rhubarb cobbler with buttermilk ice cream. Denis and his wife Kathy had a nice pear liqueur that was delicious. The food was top of the line although it was expensive. A mellower place than Chez Panisse, sort of reserved.

What is really great about nights like this were getting two stellar cooks together and just listening to them. No one upmanship, just enthusiasm,  shared experiences and lots of knowledge. I love Gary, Melissa's beau and a really funny and solid man. We could attack my friend from both sides, always fun.

The next day I went into the city to see Big Dave. We drove up to Marin and saw my friend Ron, who has another virtual museum of paintings and decor. Ron is originally from Cleveland and has an extraordinary padlock collection.

We then hiked up the Mt. Tam watershed to Phoenix Lake, towering redwoods, ferns and many shades of green.

I made it back to the airport in time. Lo and behold, we sat on the tarmac for two hours while they tried to figure out electronic problems in the cockpit. Very reassuring. Stopped at Mickey D's for a late night assignation with my friend big mac.

I do not wish to give the mistaken impression that my wanderings and life are a mere exercise in mindless gluttony, why nothing could be farther from the truth. I had several honest to god epiphanies mixed in with my dionysian grunts, although they seem to still be lurking just outside of my cognitive grasp. Or I must disguise them to protect the identities of the guilty or maybe timid.

In any case I did hear a couple of funny things the past couple days that I would have written down if I merely had a pen or suitable stylus and now must recount from faulty memory.

"She used to get up after we had sex and would smoke a cigarette, now she runs straight to facebook..."


"Being jewish is really popular these days, it's the new black..."


I also got headshrunk a bit by friend Denis, a very smart guy.  I was talking to him and mentioned that while I show no fear while writing, painting or speaking, I am afraid of the kitchen. I have no confidence cooking. He said that I was a perfectionist, and you couldn't be one in the kitchen. He remarked that I had a platonic view of life, idealizing the perfect and that he was an aristotelian, who preferred what is. We discussed an embarrassing episode that I recently witnessed and he also maintained that I was a calvinist to his catholic which I find equally spot on and funny. In many personal matters, I happen to be a total prude.


I will be driving back up to the bay next Tuesday for another show that sort of happened out of the blue, the San Francisco Art International that starts with a gala Thursday night. I am going to bringing some very interesting paintings up. 


I got linked up the other day with the national and very high powered blog Crooks and Liars. Probably got 1000 hits that day, a record. My Virginia gay rights piece. Rob Sommers, the new gay literary icon. The straight one. I appreciate the ink and wonder if any of it will stick? The blog has sort of taken on so much momentum with my regulars that I feel a bit guilty if I don't continually feed it, something that occasionally becomes a chore. I may try to back off and write only when smitten by a more emphatic bug which must be excised. Although many admittedly come only for the music.


Until whenever.


Robert

Terry Riley - A Rainbow in curved air

c. 1969

Customer Service

One thing that is quickly going down the old shitter is the concept of customer service and accountability in the sparkling new digital age. Try to speak to a live person at Google if you have a problem with any of their vaunted services that now apparently rule the world. Good luck. Billion dollar companies now route you through confusing forums, faqs and labryinths, and you are never any closer to figuring it all out. God forbid that you aren't some child cyber prodigy. Never a live body to, horrors, ask a real question. What, are you stupid?

I am flying to San Francisco tomorrow to look at a painting. I made my Priceline reservations last week (hiss), getting confirmation on the plane flights and a rental car. Today I went to gather up my itinerary and they regret to inform me that the car has vanished, they can't honor the reservation and tough shit. Available cars are now $150.00 a day. When I called Gabby, the talking head at customer service, she apologized in her own particular cold and insincere way and said that there was nothing that could be done.

My question, now getting quite warm under my collar tips, was why not email me days ago when they figured out they were having these performance issues? Many humans suffer from performance issues, mostly men I am afraid, supposedly it helps to talk about them. Now I am peddling real fast to secure affordable transportation.

This is the way it is in the Brave New World. Talk to the machine, talk to the computer, talk to the hand but heavens no, no accountable human being. You should see the lack of information that comes from Motorola on the Droid, you are now expected to just sink or swim into the technological morass, but don't worry or study too hard, because the product is designed to break within a year so you can then buy a new one anyway and it will be different by then.

Bank of America successfully dinged me for a mistaken 19 cent error for over $100.00.

I just told Sirius Radio to cancel my service after the third Starmate equipment failure and they quickly sent me a freebee, after sensing my displeasure and adamance. Human beings deserve better.

Joe Pass - All the Things You Are

Looks like the great Bob Magnusson on bass.

Separate and unequal

The newly elected Attorney General of Virginia had no sooner let the new gold leaf lettering dry on his office door before he issued a decree to Virginia colleges to end protections for gay people. 

Ken Cuccinelli II sent a letter to each public school and university in Virginia directing them to rescind policies that ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, arguing that their boards of visitors had no legal authority to adopt such statements.

His policies seem to work in perfect harmony with those of the new governor, Robert McDonnell, whose masters thesis at Regent University said that working women and feminists were "detrimental" to the family. He also maintained that government policy should favor married couples over "cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators." He described as "illogical" a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples. 

The real result of their actions are that gay teachers and administrators will not be allowed health benefits for their partners. This seems petty and vindictive to me and patently unfair. Of course, Christian conservative groups like the Family Foundation vigorously applaud his actions, preferring to punish the sodomites and the fornicators with the full brunt of state law. 

Gay people should not have to jump through hoops to get equal access to health benefits or the right to survivorship. This type of behavior by the Virginia A.G. unmasks the petty vindictiveness of the so called moral majority. I hope that american citizens of all sexual preferences will choose to spend their money in a state with more progressive and human values and boycott the commonwealth of Virginia.

Virginia is for lovers (as long as they are straight.)

The Lightning Thief

Brunch with the Swans and then we all decided to go out and see a movie. Jim took some prodding as he had some car races to watch from europe.

I suggested The Lightning Thief, a kid's movie but what looked like a cool diversion. I wasn't in the mood for anything heavy and it looked like it had some nice special effects.

It was pretty good, with your basic  adolescent plot line. Uma Thurman is great as Medusa and Pierce Brosnan a centaur. Sort of Narnia meets Harry Potter.

Won't belabor the whole plot but it moved forward quickly and had its moments.

The central protagonists find themselves at the Lotus Casino in Las Vegas, a soma filled playground where people get trapped in a never ending party for eternity. Trapped, tripped, it was a very cool scene.

If you want to take in a movie, you might want to take the kiddies to this one.

Carrie's Trip

Carrie Repking just came back from a whale watching trip to Baja. She went to Scammons, San Ignacio and Guerrero Negro, where she ran into a ton of ospreys. Carrie is a very talented writer and I hope that she will pen a short trip log of her experiences for us. She allowed me to grab some of her and Bob's shots from her facebook page. Looks like an incredible trip!

Andreas Vollenweider - Dancing With The Lion

Louis Nidorf - Botanical Moods

Cutting edge digital photographer Louis Nidorf is having a new one man show at the Calumet Gallery in Escondido.


The show starts April 2nd and will last through the end of the month.



"all of the floral images that I am showing began as digital photographs. they were then transformed with multiple adobe filters creating moods that transcend the garden."





Calumet - 8310 W. Valley Parkway, Escondido, CA 

Saturday Schtuff

Interesting article in the New York Times today about all of the American companies still doing business with Iran. And a breakdown here. We have given these companies 107 billion dollars in federal funds over the last decade. At least 15 billion of those dollars were used to develop Iranian oil and gas fields, an activity contrary to U.S. Law. Some of the companies just used proxies and front men in other countries to shield their activities. Real patriots. Iran, the nation hellbent on turning the middle east into a parking lot.

I love the typical response from a trade lobbying group:

William A. Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, lobbied against Mr. Dorgan’s bill and has opposed other unilateral sanctions. He argues that their futility can be seen in the intransigence of the Iranian government and the way American oil companies have simply been replaced by foreign competitors. Moreover, many foreign companies with business interests in Iran are also large American employers; deny them federal contracts and other benefits, Mr. Reinsch said, “and it’s those workers who will pay the price.”


Or, "crack down and it will cost american jobs. Or, if not us, it will be somebody else."


****


Governor Paterson, Eric Massa, Charlie Rangel, democrats all, just goes to show that corruption is an equal opportunity employer.


***


The Pentagon shooting is another warning that fanning the flames of the teabagger's rage might have unfortunate consequences.


****


President Obama should have come out of his election guns firing, while he had a head of steam. Now the forces of entropy have set in. His early nod to bipartisanship was fruitless and bore no returns, allowing the opposition to coalesce into an angry mob. Now the opportunity to evoke real change will be that much harder. He could have taken a cue from his predecessor George Bush and gone full speed ahead with his agenda without feeding the opposition and been better off. The sides are now so entrenched and dug in that reconciliation is probably the only way, the Republicans want to score points and do everything in their power to stop him from enacting anything.


***


I don't have any problem with not federally funding abortion. I can understand a person taking a moral stand against using their tax money on a procedure they find morally reprehensible - as long as they respect my own moral position that my tax dollars don't fund foreign excursions in countries like Iraq.

Graham Parker

Start a fire.

Virtual Repentance

 

Catholic Bishops are none too pleased with the new french service which allows people to make their weekly confessions over the phone, skipping over the normal priest. The service cautions that it is intended for more of your garden variety sinning and nothing too grave or mortal.

It was hoped that the dial a confession would serve those busy 21st century on the go types who just didn't have time to make it to church.

"For advice on confessing, press one. To confess, press two. To listen to some confessions, press three," says a male voice welcoming the caller to "Le Fil du Seigneur", or "The Line of the Lord" service, for a price of 0.34 euros (46 cents) a minute.


"In case of serious or mortal sins -- that is, sins that have cut you off from Christ our Lord, it is indispensable to confide in a priest."


I am not a catholic, but I think the confessional is an excellent tool and am surprised that it has not been adopted by other religious creeds.  People have an opportunity to get things off their chests and talk to somebody, it has to be cathartic when you are stressed out. 


I was talking to my catholic buddy Mike at the gym today and he said that he used it like a car wash in college, weekly Sunday absolution for Friday night's sins. Like everything, it can be abused but like I said, it is probably a good thing.


The spokesman for AABAS, the Parisian company that started the service, said that they received about 300 calls the first week. Just giving the almighty a little technology boost in the new millennium. Mon dieu!


Old joke.
An elderly man walks into a confessional. The following conversation ensues:
Man: "I am 92 years old, have a wonderful wife of 70 years, many children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. Yesterday, I picked up two college girls, hitchhiking. We went to a motel, where I had sex with each of them three times."
Priest: "Are you sorry for your sins?"
Man: "What sins?"
Priest: "What kind of a Catholic are you?"
Man: "I'm Jewish."
Priest: "Why are you telling me all this?"
Man: "I'm 92 years old .... I'm telling everybody."

Feeling all right

Cocker and Belushi.

We got films.

Sanoguy wrote and asked for an update on the film festival. This year I am the chief judge for the third annual Fallbrook Film Festival. Not that that necessarily means much, I still only have one vote. I pout a lot and usually get my way. We had five judges and they all come from a different place and I respect all of them.  Anyway, we watched more films this year and had more submissions than ever before, well over 100 movies, some excellent, some fair, some not so good.

Last year we were besieged by movies about young crystal using white trash in trailers. That genre has evidently been mined to extinction, thank god. This year the shorts were a little peppier with more surprise hooks and twists, which I like. But it is getting harder and harder for me to put myself in the place of a twenty something college director and to see the world through their lens. Dark and so serious.

Dodge College of Film at Chapman University continues to produce thought provoking and technically superb movies. We also got a really nice local movie about the history of surfing in Carlsbad.

We had an outstanding selection of animation entries this year after a paucity last year. I think my favorite submission was an animated film, something that has not happened before. A very powerful film called Prayers for Peace.

Documentaries and features were a little bit lean. A lot of good shorts, some that I really liked were a bit twisted. My fellow judges and I watched every movie, mostly in their entirety. Painful at times but it is over, at least for another year. I will update you as I get more information on the festival. Hope that you will come out and watch the movies. They will be showing at the Ultra Star in River Village this year. The organizers have some great things planned. See you at the movies.

Lola

Whatever floats your boat.

I am proud to live in a town where a certain merchant feels comfortable enough to walk around town in a smart ensemble, a not too short skirt, leggings, and a bodacious pair of ta-ta's. He walked by the coffee klatch this morning and somebody remarked that black was so slimming. Must take a lot of courage to withstand small town ridicule, but this happily married father has done his own thing for a long time. Raise a toast to Fallbrook's own Corporal Klinger! Viva la difference.

Bloodletting

Many people in Southern California have been shocked and horrified by the disappearance and murder of the beautiful young girl, Chelsea King. How could you not be affected by such a brutal and senseless tragedy?

We caught some television coverage of her alleged killer's arraignment last night while we were having dinner at the sushi bar as well as video of a gang of neighbors storming his mother's house in Rancho Bernardo, screaming and demanding that the family leave the area.

My first thought was that it was like something out of Frankenstein when the villagers lit torches and tried to storm the castle. The one young male family member was being set upon by the neighbors like a pack of wild dogs. He looked bewildered and traumatized. Can we really blame the sins of John Albert Gardner III on his family? Do we know enough about the rearing of this man to demand blood vengeance from them? I do not presuppose to know the family dynamics of the Gardner's but there have always been "bad seeds" that have come out of seemingly normal families and circumstances.

My second thought was that thank god, the perpetrator was not an african american or latino. The fires of xenophobia and racism are already so strong here, it could reach a tipping point. The backlash would even be more horrific. All of the recent high profile rapists/ kidnappers, be it Garrido, the kidnapper of Jaycee Dugard, Brian Mitchell, the man in the Elizabeth Smart case, John Albert Gardner, all have happened to have been white. I actually heard a person of color remark the other day that there would be nowhere near the attention if the victim had been a member of an ethnic group other than white. Unfortunately, that may in fact be true.

Moody Blues

Another great band of harmonizers - Paris 1970. The Moody Blues were named after one of the two morning glory strains with supposed psychedelic properties, the other reportedly being heavenly whites. Originally formed as an R&B band in 1964. Admitting you like the Moodies is a bit like admitting to liking Abba or The Kingston Trio. But I confess.

The artistic imperative

A friend of mine, who happens to be a professional photographer, asked me an interesting question today. Rather than paraphrase, here is what he wrote:

btw - why does this seem pointless??

I must be losing it.

what is the point in sharing photos with people you do not know?

grrrrr...pissy mood due to lack of jobs, money and prospects.....other than that, top o' the marnin tih yeh.

Now my friend asks a very fair question. Why do I feel the need to display my writing and photography in a public forum? My friend, a true professional and teacher of the art, can shoot circles around me. Amateurs like me are dumbing down every craft, take a look at spelling and syntax on the Huntington Post or your local newspaper.  The democratization of the digital arena has allowed art departments to cut back on their photographic budgets, preferring to lift everything out of the public domain.  Know it all writers like me can be quoted for pennies or worse, free and so the real honest to god writers are left waiting tables for bread.


Nevertheless, art, regardless of its relative merit, must be shared and artists can't create in a vacuum. Artists, musicians, poets, writers, all have to create because they have to create. Whether its a paying gig or free for all mankind to ponder. Ask Thiebaud or Vermeer or Van Gogh or Kerouac or any other artist sufficiently brilliant to make their mark on this world. It certainly wasn't the pay for Vermeer and his dutch buddy.


I was cleaning out a spare bedroom and found a whole bunch of shots that I took when I went to Africa over 20 years ago. Type R and Cibachrome. Some of the best work I have ever done. But stuck in a closet where no one sees them, I guess they cease to exist.

I try to find the base instinct for my own narcissistic need to be read and appreciated and I once more go back to Plato's third basic urge, thymos, the need for recognition. We neurotics need an awful lot of affirmation. I guess it starts when we first leave our artistic marks on the shithouse walls.

I replied to my pal that I had always been one that, like my redtail hawk friends, needs to constantly feather his nest. From a young age, I was adorning my lair with colors and imagery. A friend who has renounced the material asked me why I was so into "stuff". Well, stuff is what I do. Drain my aesthetic tank and there ain't much left, frankly. The drive to isolate the compositionally sublime is a powerful current in my archetype. Keeps us folks running around.

And the ability to share what little artistry and talents I have allows me to vent and hopefully keeps me from blowing my brains out. Although that is a tried and true literary cliche as well. 

Liz Cheney and the American Taliban

Liz Cheney and the group Keep America Safe is hellbent on keeping the conservative right's gunsights firmly fixed on the american system of jurisprudence. In a tactic reminiscent of the good old days of Joseph McCarthy and Alger Hiss, she now wants to root out terrorist sympathizers in the justice department. Because they may have had the audacity to defend alleged terrorists at Guantanamo. Read about the moslem baiting here.

This continues a long held republican tradition of attacking defense attorneys, or "hang them first and we will try them later." Not content to merely bash tort attorneys, we now must challenge the entire defense bar. I was taught in my law classes in college that in America, everyone has a right to mount a legal defense if they are charged with a crime. That is how the system worked, well, up to now. Because that is now un-American in the eyes of groups like Keep America Safe. Eric Holder, our Attorney General is suddenly in league with the enemy. 

I have met military JAG's who have recounted the enormous pressure they are under from their superiors for representing alleged terrorists. Now they are trying to put seven justice department lawyers under the same fire, for the affront of representing America's enemies.

Having a level playing field in regards to criminal justice has served us very well since our founding. I believe, for the most part, in the essential equity and fairness in our system of justice. It would be a shame to destroy that system on the pyre of false patriotism.

***

Most of us read about the girl in Pakistan who was raped and then charged with fornication while her attacker was set free. The american Taliban are evidently of like mind. In Bristol, VA, girls and women are being given pamphlets suggesting that their sinful dress is provoking men to rape, and suggesting that they will be at fault.

“You may have been given this leaflet because of the way you are dressed,” it begins. “Have you thought about standing before the true and living God to be judged?”

It continues with one essential theme: The sins of men are, in part, the fault of women, specifically women in tight-fitting clothing. “Scripture tells us that when a man looks on a woman to lust for her he has already committed adultery in his heart. If you are dressed in a way that tempts a men to do this secret (or not so secret) sin, you are a participant in the sin,” the leaflet states. “By the way, some rape victims would not have been raped if they had dressed properly. So can we really say they were innocent victims?”

The hand-out is signed “anonymous.”

What do you want to bet the pamphlet was written by a man?

***

In another salvo aimed at criminalizing women's behavior, the state of Utah has a new bill seeking to indict women who have forced miscarriages,  or indulge in reckless behavior like "drinking alcohol", even in the first trimester.

***

They just found the body of the poor girl from Escondido who had gone missing at Lake Hodges. The sex offender who was charged with the crime, John Albert Gardner III, had a psychiatrist suggest that he needed to be incarcerated for a longer period of time and had shown absolutely no remorse, but was overruled by plea bargaining prosecutors who argued that he had a lack of a prior record.

***

Interesting how Bunning, the lame duck Senator not running for reelection, is taking all the heat for throwing a wrench in and not extending unemployment benefits. The last time the deficit hawks tried this it was a public relations disaster. With the exception of John Kyl, who thinks that the unemployed are shiftless gamers of the system, not one other member of the GOP will publicly endorse the screwball ex pitcher's position. I hope that he sticks to his guns and helps solidify the american perception that the GOP is a party without heart or sensitivity to the problems of the common man, content to be pawns of the corporate establishment. Nice to see them come out against a Consumer Protection Agency recently, we all know that companies will police themselves.

***

Many boomers, including moi, have been on record that we need to revisit the use of nuclear power, as a cheaper, cleaner alternative to other energy solutions. Unfortunately, some of our nuclear facilities are experiencing real problems and have been found to be less than truthful about their safety record. Where humans are involved, we tend to be assured of getting a certain amount of human error.

In Vernon, Vermont, the Entergy Co.'s nuclear power plant has been leaking the dangerous compound tritium very close to the Connecticut River. This after denying that their underground pipes at Vermont Yankee carry the dangerous radioactive substance. Bring on the Bloom Boxes! 

***

On one of my genomic websites, someone has made the statement that Albert Einstein and I share haplogroups, in this case E1b1b1c1- d1. Supposedly a cousin of the good doctor has been tested by one of the DNA services. And I must state that while I am not particularly envious of his high intelligence, yawn, I wish that I had his musical aptitude.

Living on the River

I had a great weekend. Saturday, I sold several paintings out of the blue. Another tragedy narrowly averted! We went out to Trupianos, a nice local italian restaurant Saturday night, with a couple of our best friends, and had another really good meal, and not too expensive. One of those restaurants that you sometimes forget is there and then get blown away by. Stopped by Bill and Jean's house afterwards for dessert and dice and we watched some of the olympics coverage. They couldn't help but laugh at my obscene jokes.

I know I am officially of that age where everything was better in our youth, but, is it just me or does anyone else long for the early sixties/seventies type coverage where Jim McKay gave you all of the olympic sports and not just the USA battles? Where you didn't have to wade through the human interest bio crap. Just let me see the frigging events. please...

We were going to laze around yesterday but got a late morning call to join the Fish(s) and 10 of their closest friends for brunch at Le Bistro which killed a couple of the plans for the day, like whacking weeds or organizing my junk room.

But when we did manage to get back home we managed to run smack into a gorgeous day! Big puffy clouds and deep shadows and wildflowers galore. The Santa Margarita River Valley is so green right now. We took a walk down to the river, on a path across from our house.

I have lived on the river for 22 years and in its watershed for 30 and it is always changing. Due to the latest rain, we have a small rapids and waterfall in front of the house. When it really rains hard, the river actually gets lower, something counterintuitive but true. Found lots of shells. Beavers were not to be seen this time.

We caught the Great Blue Heron you see silhouetted in my blog header flying around and finally perching in a sycamore tree. I didn't see the osprey but did see ducks and jays and 4 hawks circling. Maddie our dog started chasing a pretty brown coyote which I managed to photograph. One of the juvenile hawks is starting to spruce up last year's nest for her own expectant brood. I saw bits of green grass this morning that she had added. Caught this picture of her yesterday with her puffy white chest.

We saw a beautiful native plant blooming which I am embarrassed to say that I can not identify. Also saw our first purple ceanothus of the year.

Maddie found a mud puddle and was hereby banished from the house.

The day ended with homemade matzoh ball soup to stave off our budding colds. Then a beautiful full moon snaked up over the mountain. A perfect day.