The Creator Has A Master Plan

Lightning Rod and Whipping Boy

I think that I saw our President in one of his most cynically dishonest moments the other day. The Fox reporter was asking him about his falling credibility with the American public and Obama said that the reporter must be conflating him with Clapper. And I thought, how ingeniously disingenuous. Keep Clapper around to hang and take the hits, while he has actually been doing your bidding, and you get to skate above it all, at least in your mind. Really looking forward to your big privacy speech.

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Sotomayor Strikes!

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Where you from, boy? Harvard Dialect Map. It pegs me as Modesto and Fresno. Close I guess, considering I am a transient regional polyglot.

Step Right Up

We get the shit

Draper's six state proposal. Wrong. You take Lancaster, Lake Elsinore and El Centro and we can talk.

I Am the Light of This World

Jorma is seventy three today. Happy Birthday Jorma!

I eat therefore I am

Interesting food weekend. Stan and I went to D.Z. Akins in La Mesa before the Aztecs game Saturday night. D.Z. is the only real deli in our vicinity and Stan had never been there. Took to it like a mallard dipping its tail feathers in a frosty lake for the first time.

You walk in and there's a good jewish bakery smell, something you don't get at second rate delis like Milton's for instance. This place is for real. First thing you do is check out the large crock of pickles. The better ones are usually near the bottom. They brought us out decent rye bread and butter. Stan had eaten halvah in the car and I was worried about his appetite but he soldiered on like a trooper.

I had a corned beef and tongue fresser with good potato salad. Stan decided to tackle a half order of chicken liver which was plenty. Waitress said that they didn't have any water bagels but they had plain. Oy! We split a big fat knish.

I brought home corned beef for the spouse who made us a beautiful omelet yesterday.

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I got lost trying to find the right parking structure when I got to the campus. I have no orientation ability. Stan, one of my closest autosomal genetic cousins, is the same way. We don't take direction well. And got turned around at one of my alma maters, no less.

We made it to the game with plenty of time to spare. The papers said that the team struggled and the first half was close, McNeese State played hard but the final score was 65 to 36 and we played our scrubs at the end so how much of a struggle could it have really been?

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Read books and chilled and never left the couch yesterday which really felt great. Les made a nice light dinner.

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Kudos to the Mormons for Equality and all the rest of the long ostracized Utahans who will now be able to be legitimately married in that state. The state's argument was so specious; they argued that Utah's law promotes the state's interest in "responsible procreation" and the "optimal mode of child-rearing." I guess my wife and my marriage isn't sanctified, responsible or optimal since we decided to bypass the whole breeding thing. Governor wants Court to recognize the will of the people. A majority backed slavery too, sometimes the feds need to step up, and I am glad that they did this time. The times, they are, a changing. Finally. But all you dinosaurs feel free to keep your clenching, iron grip on the past. Because it will be gone before you know it.

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I had to go to San Diego again this morning to see another painting and decided to finally try a place I have heard so much about, Carnitas Snack Shack. It is located between University Heights and North Park, on University, in a neighborhood of quaint little bungalows, real close to where I was born. I cut off a woman on the way there and she started flipping me off and hurling course epithets. I rolled the window down to give her a little back and had an epiphany that this one could have probably kicked my ass on my best day, shoulder notwithstanding, and split.

This restaurant has been the most sizzling, trendy hot, joint in these parts for a couple years and I was way overdue for a visit. A big time chef who decided to get back to basics and opened up the penultimate taco shop.

The line stretches a city block. I got in line in the quite blazing December sun and wondered if it could in any way be worth it? I could be slurping egg flower soup up on Convoy in a matter of minutes. But what the heck, it was my duty, to all of you. And to my country.

When I finally made it where I could make out the makeup board I realized that the food looked interesting and was not cheap either. I would have to make some choices.

I talked to the people around me and quizzed them on their past selections. Carnitas sounded like a must.

I decided to try the triple threat pork sandwich, a melange of pork loin schnitzel, pulled pork, bacon, pepperoncini and aoli on a good bun. I swigged down a mexican coke with it and it was all pretty good. A bit complicated for my palette but lots of interesting textural levels. An obvious commitment to quality and local sourced foods. Even delicious.

Walking down to the place I passed a normal "bertos" type mexican restaurant that served tacos de cabeza and I imagine lengua and I wondered for a second what they thought of the crazy gringos doing their home cuisine with lines a mile long down the street? And where I would be ultimately happier dining, being a born sucker for the original?

I ordered some smoked brisket to take home and carnitas for my wife. Made friends with a pathologist from Seattle and his stepmother, Lena. Talked about old punk rock and this and that and she was sweet enough to give me an incredible css  salted caramel. Thank you both. Hope that you enjoy the blog.

I had almost finished the entree when I realized that I had not taken any forensic pictures of the evidence, a no no in today's world to miss the selfie. So here goes. Sorry, I was hungry...

Carnitas’ Snack Shack

2632 University AvenueSan Diego, CA 92104 USATelephone: +1.619.294.7675

We’re open daily, Wednesday through Monday, from 12:00 noon to 12:00 midnight, closed on Tuesdays.

7 come 11

Redmeat Savior

Forgot to mention this one. A conservative group, led by Phyllis Schafly's son Andy, is rewriting the bible. Not the whole thing, just the liberal parts. Anything that smacks of marxism, pacifism, environmentalism, all the bad and icky isms, are now miraculously deleted! I give you, The Conservative Bible Project.

Now you get warrior jesus without all the turn the other cheek crap, that nobody knows if he really said anyway. Bravo. And we all know that the bible is totally free market so the new bible seeks to "identify faulty pro-liberal terms used in existing Bible translations, such as "government", and suggest more accurate substitutes."

I started mulling around their website and it's pretty good. Found stuff like this:

The Conservative Bible Project is a project utilizing the "best of the public" to render God's word into modern English without liberal translation distortions.[1] A Colbert Report interview featured this project.[2] We completed a first draft of our translation of the New Testament on April 23, 2010.

Already our translators have identified numerous pro-abortion distortions that omit or twist clear references to the unborn child.

Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations. There are three sources of errors in conveying biblical meaning:

    lack of precision in the original language, such as terms underdeveloped to convey new concepts introduced by Christ
    lack of precision in modern language
    translation bias, mainly of the liberal kind, in converting the original language to the modern one. 

Experts in ancient languages are helpful in reducing the first type of error above, which is a vanishing source of error as scholarship advances understanding. English language linguists are helpful in reducing the second type of error, which also decreases due to an increasing vocabulary. But the third -- and largest -- source of translation error requires conservative principles to reduce and eliminate.[3]

As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:[4]

        Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias. For example, the Living Bible translation has liberal evolutionary bias;[5] the widely used NIV translation has a pro-abortion bias.[6]
        Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other feminist distortions; preserve many references to the unborn child (the NIV deletes these)
        Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity[7]; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level[8]
        Utilize Terms which better capture original intent: using powerful new conservative terms to capture better the original intent;[9] Defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words that have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".
        Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction[10] by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots";[11] using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census
        Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
        Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
        Exclude Later-Inserted Inauthentic Passages: excluding the interpolated passages that liberals commonly put their own spin on, such as the adulteress story
        Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels
        Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God." 

and:

Jesus's recognition that the truth would remain hidden from arrogant "intellectuals" while simultaneously revealed to humbler, more openminded people. This foreshadowed the creation of theories to pull self-centered intellectual wannabees away from God, such as the Theory of Evolution, the Theory of Relativity, the homosexual agenda, the secular culture of abortion, Communism, and countless other liberal and atheistic ideas and ideologies. 

And a great explanation for the book of Jonah.

The Book of Jonah describes his survival in the belly of a giant sea creature for 2.5 to 3 days. Scientists declared this to be impossible due to powerful stomach acids that quickly break down any material and the lack of breathable air inside marine animals.
In 2010, scientists found the following materials intact in the belly of a gray whale that had died after being stranded on a Northwest beach:[37]
    a pair of sweat pants
    a golf ball
    over 20 plastic bags
    small towels
    duct tape
    surgical gloves 

And maybe the persecutors really did know what they were doing? Or just another second century liberal conspiracy?

I'm sold.

The NSA is Coming to Town

From the good folks at the ACLU. Don't let the NSA capture your holiday moments.

Elvis

elvis covers gordon. doesn't give the latter effort all it deserved with all the bu-bu-bu-bu stuff, but it is still damn good.

The Band

Yule Gibbons

I will try to keep it light. It's a holiday. Nobody wants me to go off on the NSA for the umpteenth time. A little housekeeping and I'm done. Not going to mess up anybody's sunday.

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Feel good story today out of Oklahoma, Seriously. Senator James Inhofe has had some sort of epiphany after the tragic death of his son and maybe liberals aren't quite as bad as he thought they were. Bless you, Mr. Inhofe.

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Hudgins sent a few things over. Conservative donors are funding the global warming denial movement, no real secret there. But they are ponying up about a billion bucks a year and you toss that kind of scratch around and you could convince the average american that their aunt is really their uncle.

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And the Obama administration is playing the same old game regarding "standing" in regards to the domestic surveillance lawsuit up in San Francisco. Didn't we go through this last week?

The government is asking the court to dismiss the two cases on grounds that the plaintiffs, Carolyn Jewel and Virginia Shubert, have not proven they were monitored by the NSA’s interception of their phone calls or e-mails. To prove that they were would require disclosure of collection techniques that could cause “exceptionally grave damage” to national security, officials said.
Jewel is suing on behalf of all AT&T customers, and Shubert is suing on behalf of all Americans.
“As a matter of course, the NSA cannot publicly confirm or deny whether any individual is or has been subject to intelligence gathering, because to do so would tend to reveal actual targets or subjects,” said Frances J. Fleisch, acting NSA deputy director, in a declaration also filed Friday.

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Our President has been, shall we say, less than forthcoming with the American people. We needed to have this big domestic surveillance discussion. But tell me Barry, if not for Eddie Snowden, when exactly would that discussion have taken place? Udall and Wyden were forbidden to disclose anything by your chief intelligence henchman, Diane Feinstein. You have done nothing but play games like the one delineated above since you took office. Your FISA judges are all Republican ex Prosecutors selected by Chief Justice John Roberts. A lot of objectivity, credibility and passion for civil liberty there. Where exactly are those checks and balances again?

Your hand picked panel of yes men say that no abuses have taken place. Okay. What about the analysts' girlfriends that were being tracked? What about the several million americans whose information was wrongly queried and sifted, the stuff Reggie Walton was squawking about so much in 2009 that he threatened to shut down the entire program? Who speaks for them?And what was with ex NSA operative Bill Binney when he said that these programs were nothing but an information pipeline for the DEA and FBI?

We aren't engaged in domestic surveillance unless we can catch you doing something that we think is illegal, is that the crux of the matter? Why would any clear thinking American or anybody else on the planet for that matter ever trust our government again after what has been revealed to date.

I didn't think that I would get everything with this President but I had hoped that at least we would have a leader that respected our constitution. Oh well. Obama thinks that the whole kerfuffle is merely a packaging or perception problem. I don't se it blowing away. Whole thing seems downright un-American.

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I have maybe even less faith in Verizon, ATT or Google being the data gatekeeper. How about we go back to the old standard of probable cause. As Federal Judge Richard Leon noted, its not like these programs have been the least bit effective at stopping terrorism anyway, at least when viewed with the slightest amount of objectivity. Certainly not worth the eventual bill.

Damn, I said I wasn't going to go off on this stuff...

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Read about Parkinson's law the other day, the part about bureaucracies eventually just devolving into pointless and expansive behemoths only interested in keeping themselves alive. Spot on.

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© Kip Peterson

Kip sent me a scan of a shot he took in Zion recently that was quite nice, film actually, his medium format Contax, I believe. Good job. I don't think he will mind me posting it. Zion Sunrise.

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Going on my first bird count this week with Beth C. Hope to be strong enough to hold my camera.

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Salon - How the GOP became the Whiteman's party. Great read.

“you know, I started off talking about schools and highways and prisons and taxes—and I couldn’t make them listen. Then I began talking about niggers—and they stomped the floor.” George Wallace

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I read such a great book today, Studs Terkel's And they all sang. If you have any interest in music, or musical history, get this book. Studs was brilliant, the absolute best. Amazing interview with Garrick Ohllson. And I found this quote in the book, attributed to Picasso; Computers are useless, they only give you answers. Did he really say this? You be the judge.

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According to Huffpo, the term oenophilic was coined in the year of my birth. Oxford dictionaries word generator.

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Target offers extra 10% discount for hacked debit cards. Sweet!

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Speaking of words, do you realize that afore and before mean the very same thing? And I picked up this word from Studs's book; diaskeuast - gk. an editor, one who revises, lexicographer.

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robotic handjobs?

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nsa pays rsa $10 m for trapdoor.

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same google search, two different results. dave in japan sends an interesting article on the phenomenon termed the filter bubble.

"Most of us assume that when we 'google' a term, we all see the same results -- the ones that the company's famous Page Rank algorithm suggests are the most authoritative based on other pages' links. But since December 2009, this is no longer true. Now you get the result that Google's algorithm suggests is best for you in particular -- and someone else may see something entirely different. In other words, there is no standard Google anymore.
"It's not hard to see this difference in action. In the spring of 2010, while the remains of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig were spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, I asked two friends to search for the term 'BP.' They're pretty similar -- educated white left-leaning women who live in the Northeast. But the results they saw were quite different. One of my friends saw investment information about BP. The other saw news. For one, the first page of results contained links about the oil spill; for the other, there was nothing about it except for a promotional ad from BP.
"Even the number of results returned by Google differed -- about 180 million results for one friend and 139 million for the other. If the results were that different for these two progressive East Coast women, imagine how different they would be for my friends and, say, an elderly Republican in Texas (or, for that matter, a businessman in Japan).

Burnable

good eats

I was driving on the coast one night last week after looking at a collection and I was hungry. Leslie was playing mah jong with the girls or something and told me to figure out my own dinner.

My first inclination was to go over to La Especial Norte for chicken soup. La Especial, located on Highway 101 in Encinitas, has long been the gold standard for chicken soup in the area. But the reality is that the soup isn't quite as good as it once was. Lacking a bit of essential schmaltz, a little skimpy on the chicken. Still great, but...

In the beginning there was La Especial, and then through a divorce and partnership break up, there was La Especial, Jorge's and Raoul's, all claiming that the precious soup recipe was originally theirs. Jorge's, located on Santa Fe, offers their version in a slightly hotter Texcoco style. My spouse isn't exactly crazy about the place because you dine with paper and plastic. What to do? I kept driving.

We all have our spots for comfort food. Pizza Nova is great in Solana Beach but I didn't want a big production since I was by myself. Being able to read the newspaper in peace is a must for me. Lot of times I just need to hide in a corner.

Carlitos in Oceanside always fits the bill for the original pollo loco style grilled chicken but I eat there all the time and wanted something fresh and different.

So I was driving past Palomar Airport Rd. and thought, why not german? Tip Top Meats is right there and I hadn't eaten over there in ages. Tip Top is a german butcher shop and restaurant that does a really good job. Once in a great while I stop there for lunch, practically never for dinner. Tip Top is the place to go if you need an odd cut of meat, a grouse or a pheasant, a perfect steak or chop. Been in the same spot since 1967. Owner John Haedrich runs a very tight ship.

Place ain't fancy. I stood in line and thought about the possibilities. You get an amazing meal at Tip Top for ten bucks, salad included. I considered the prime rib roast, the rouladen and the sauerbraten but settled on a gigantic stuffed pork chop festooned with mashed potatoes, red cabbage and sauerkraut. Very delicious and I was able to finish the sports page without anyone talking to me. It was a good decision and the food hit the spot and was beyond tasty.

Tip Top Meats‎
6118 Paseo Del Norte
Carlsbad, CA 92011
(760) 438-2620
tiptopmeats.com‎

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For a guy who doesn't drink very much I am sure finding myself over at the Fallbrook Brewing Co. a lot, the microbrewery caddy corner from my shop. They have a nice assortment of beers that they make and sell in nice 4 oz. tester glasses as well as larger sizes. Flights for eight bucks. I favor the vanilla and coffee stouts with nitro but the russian imperial is really good too. They do a lot of seasonal brews and are currently serving a beer called Murica, an 8.2% beer brewed by armed service veterans.

Last week Corrie met us there and we ordered in a pizza from Vince's (they can't serve food at the brewery with their license.) The other night I stuck to pretzels with R & D. One of the cool things about Fallbrook Brewing is that is is all ages friendly and has a healthy mix of many factions of the community. Jim Helms' painted car hoods decorate the walls.

Occasionally they have really good music. Shoshana's husband Luke was playing his Gibson sg bass with a local rockabilly type band that had a really good singer, who I found out later was my next door neighbor's nephew. Not sure his name but it might be Alex Boren. Played some Johnny Cash, some Kinks, really good pipes, the whole thing was a lot of fun.

Brewery got really full as the night got older. Nice venue for our community. Owners are nice people too. Come by and let's have a beer. Couple tasters and you are good to go.

Weirdos

TED - Master of Attention

Fresh Garbage - Spirit

Body loving, body loathing

I saw a statistic yesterday that roughly sixty percent of thirteen year old girls in a specific study were worried about putting on weight, as opposed to a much lower percentage of similarly aged boys. And I started thinking about the phenomenon and did a little research and came across this Glamour survey titled, Shocking Body-Image News: 97% of Women Will Be Cruel to Their Bodies Today.

Our research found that, on average, women have 13 negative body thoughts daily—nearly one for every waking hour. And a disturbing number of women confess to having 35, 50 or even 100 hateful thoughts about their own shapes each day.

If these limited studies are accurate and women really hate their bodies to this degree, this sounds very unhealthy, not to mention awful and I have some questions. And the primary one is this, why don't men, by and large, give a shit what we look like, straight men anyway? And why are women presumably so hardwired to their body image? Why do you care so much? When we don't, the spare metrosexual notwithstanding?

I brought up the question to a few of the baristas, all young ladies, down at the coffee shop this afternoon. They blame men. Men want us to look perfect when we are naked. This may be so but I have had men tell me that women were far sexier with some clothing on. Sexy, after all, comes in all shapes.

And I know from experience with my wife and her shop, that women don't dress for men, they dress for each other. So is this about what men think or what women think and why is image and pretty apparently outrank all the wonderful womenly attributes? Why are women judged by shape, and men not to such a degree? And is this battle, largely self inflicted? Do we need to rewire our psyches on this one?

Are we still in a day and age when women need validation, sexual or other wise, from men in order to feel worthy and complete? Thought we were all a bit more liberated than that. Is it really fair to blame men for all this, why cede them that power? Screw men, sisters.

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I, of course, went to seed long ago. Will never have that Charlie Atlas physique again. Love me, love my fat. When they took my kidney out, the surgeon mistakenly cut a nerve on my left side that kept all my muscular insides in. Now I have a misshapen hump on the left side that would make quasimodo kvell. Sometimes I think maybe it shifts sides at night. What hump?

Hey Bulldog

12.19.13

We are getting mighty close to the Christian holiday so I will try to keep the blog on the up and up. I could go to my snarky default setting but don't think that I am much in the mood. How does neutral plus sound?

I am awash in an eighty year old tie collection that I purchased from the sister of an old deceased friend. His father worked at Marston's and started the collection in the thirties and forties. The man had some sartorial splendor.

I've got wide, skinny, mod, leather, paisleys, hand painted silks, novelty ties, bow ties, the whole panoply of the neck ware spectrum.


Mushrooms and stooges, grouses and beach blankets, cowboys and fish. Red power ties and ties that expertly say absolutely nothing.

Major design house ties, Burberry, Wembley, Talbott, Zegna, Hermes, YSL even Mr. Blackwell, a tie which is actually very cool. Tons of french, english, italian. Some of the fine men's shops I grew up with in San Diego.

I made a favorite off limits pile that my clients are bee lining for and buying anyway. Leslie made a pile. I have to put some up on ebay. Many hundreds of ties and I haven't worn one in years. Timing. Everything. Come by the gallery and take a look, maybe buy a tie, cheap to not very expensive.

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There is a lot of talk going around about tolerance. The head duck down at the dynasty up and said his piece. Doesn't bother me but it is really quite ignorant. Well, the part about never seeing blacks mistreated down in the south pre civil rights anyway. Watch those Bull Connor dog videos again or the nasty white kids screaming at the poor kids trying to enter the segregated school. Rosa Parks, back of the bus.

There wasn't a problem if the blacks knew their place.

Personally I think any way two people figure out is the best way to love each other is fine with me as long is doesn't inflict lasting scars on each other and doesn't impact the rest of us too badly. I respect that some people feel that there is a biblical mandate against homosexuality. They have a right to that belief. The question is where does that right stop? Can they refuse to rent to them, teach them, serve them in their restaurant? And if they do have that right to refuse to serve blacks, gays, jews, aliens, whatever, is it not my right to consider them neanderthal assholes?

Which one of us is intolerant again or is it both of us? So tricky these days, tolerating people's intolerance.

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I don't have a problem with crosses on hillsides or in cemeteries. Many of my close associates do. Feel we need symbols from every creed and persuasion. I hate to sound too conservative but christianity, with both its contributions and ills (see Spanish missionaries subjugation of ipa, San Diego) is an essential part of the landscape and historical timestream of California.

I think that missions are beautiful, crosses and all. Used to live under the cross on Mt. Helix. Never bothered me a bit. Unnecessary battle to wage. Religious symbols don't threaten in the least, actually I think that the rather catholic spanish architectural style of the Presidio, Park and Missions is by far the most outstanding design motif in Southern California. Get over it already.

Having said all that I still have to fight off the compulsion to stick an area 51 alien or ET figure in the manger thingy down in front of Denny's.

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A lot of people kicking of late, Billy Jack, Al Goldstein, Peter O'Toole, Walt Bellamy. Sorry you guys couldn't stick it out to the end of the year but thanks for your many contributions anyway.

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I may have aztec tickets for saturday night I can't use. Third row, basketball. Killer. Call me.

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I am going to be showing at the Los Angeles Art Show in early January. The very expensive biggy. Hope I don't fall on my face. Have eaten a lot of my seed corn. Perhaps I can resonate with the Los Angeles public once again. Showing with buddy Steve, Stevens Fine Art.

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We will not be doing christmas dim sum this year. Sorry.

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Michael and his family are back in Thailand, taking care of business. He sends a picture of a protest rally and his wife and young daughter at a meal.

 

The family is dining on garlic encrusted fish, BBQ pork, Som tom, yum is right.

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My 3 to 5 months of shoulder rehab somehow morphed into 3 to 5 days. And I feel wonderful.

Heighty High

office talk

Green Dream.

I am pissed. Some guy named Ricardo Baca has my dream job.

Baca, of course, is the new marijuana editor for the Denver Post, the first such assignment in the country. What are his credentials I ask you? I have over forty five years familiarity with hemp.

I can wistfully speak with first hand knowledge about the chesty perfume of the now long gone Santa Marta Red, a columbian strain last seen around 1973. I readily admit that I fried my cerebrum with the notorious nicaraguan wacky weed in 1971, a plant that produced so much resin it smothered its own buds. People in New York still speak longingly regarding some of the great cuban smoke that I magically procured somehow back when.

Seriously, a large group of americans can finally admit that they like to smoke weed, some of them, horrors, for non medicinal purposes. Recreational users, living quite normal, decent and functional lives. Many millions of them.

A new study I saw today seems to suggest that it can affect adolescent's memory, but don't ask me about the damn study because honestly I forget. But it is clear that a large majority of Americans now favor legalization and I honestly think that the pot landscape in this country will dramatically change in the next five years. The millennials just aren't buying it.

Clearly time to stop the stupid drug war. After all, our last three Presidents have at some point in their lives all been tokers and the current occupant, try as he would like to forget, was once the lead stoner in the notorious choom gang.

It would be nice to write a weed column, I could be the herb's Robert Parker. "I give it a 94 Bob. Grassy, with hints of grape and notes of bubble gum. Nice finish, pleasant euphoria. Just stay away from the oreos."

I would publicly lobby to bring back the early land race sativas, that is if any still exist, start over with the early mexican strains and keep the indica out of the mix. Bring back the heady psychedelic smoke and let the kush strains stand on their own. It is a pity to think of all the wonderful flavors of my youth that no longer exist after all the dumb hybridization that took place.

Teach the kids a little something, I would. I had an older fellow walk into my shop today and we started talking about our mutual liking of brownies. Would be really nice to live in a world where I didn't have to hide my love for marijuana, where I could talk about how it has helped me survive some very serious medical problems including multiple bouts of cancer, entirely pain pill free. But I'm not Ricardo Baca. I can't. Not quite yet. But we're close.

Family Tree DNA

My journey into my personal genetic history has been one of my most fascinating and rewarding pursuits in recent years. I trace my male L-792 line back to africa over 22,000 years ago and have very close kinship with several well known despots, including one Napoleon Bonaparte. Born to conquer.

I have discovered over 2300 cousins through Family Tree DNA's Family Finder Autosomal test, they range from second to fifth. I have traced my mother's mitochondrial K dna, a progeny of the eighth daughter of Ulrike and am aware of several hundred of those matches. And most importantly, through the E1b1b1b double helix website, I have learned so much about genetics from the many fantastic professional and amateur genetics experts in my clan.

Family Tree DNA is running a very good sale right now. For $99.00 you can get the Family Finder test and get your feet wet. Autosomal DNA is actually what comprises most of your chromosomes, the y being only a twenty third of the whole package. They send you a kit and you do two cheek swabs. Packet gets sent to the Texas Genomics Center and in six weeks you get your results.

This is a great company, far better than some of the companies getting negative press lately and one with a huge database. I believe they are giving a hundred dollar restaurant coupon as well so the deal is basically free. Check it out. You won't regret it. Unless all the new kin want to come over for dinner at the same time.

I could go into a long dissertation about what I have learned about my genetic clan, which is known to some as the Sea People. Suffice it to say that I have an enriched sense of identity and respect for our forbears and a much greater knowledge of our human history. 99 bucks.

Surveillance

This is a screen grab of a pdf poster created by my friend Larry Miller & co. Very nice job, folks. And that's what I call an attribution. I am starting to feel guilty...

Adaptation by Larry Miller and Pat Rogondino of the Obama Campaign Poster (“Hope” 2008), which was made by Ernesto Yerena Montejano, in the studio of Shepard Fairey, starting from an Assoc. Press image of a photograph by Mannie Garcia.

Ray Price

Call me a square. I loved this man's music, his emotional expression, his beautiful whiskey voice. Rest in peace, Ray.

The Flying Burrito Brothers

Hand in foot

Hand attached to ankle in China.

How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live?

12.16.13

Keyhole Man - © Robert Sommers 2013

A Federal Judge believes that the Prism NSA Surveillance operation is likely unconstitutional. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon, an appointee of George W. Bush, said that the program, leaked by Edward Snowden earlier this year, appears to violate the Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which states that the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated."

“"The Fourth Amendment typically requires 'a neutral and detached authority be interposed between the police and the public,' and it is offended by 'general warrants' and laws that allow searches to be conducted 'indiscriminately and without regard to their connections with a crime under investigation.' 

" I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying it and analyzing it without judicial approval,” Leon wrote in his 68 page ruling.

"The almost-Orwellian technology that enables the Government to store and analyze the phone metadata of every telephone user in the United States is unlike anything that could have been conceived in 1979."

Hmmm.

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The San Diego Union Tribune ran an apology this weekend after running an ad for the Western American and Gun show right next to the story about the recent school shooting in Colorado.

The bizarre juxtaposition was first noticed by Dave Holland of City Beat, who tweeted the picture. The Tribune was quick to apologize.

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I dig this Pope. Rush Limbaugh be damned, I love this guy. This is the Pope I have been waiting for my whole life. New sheriff in town. Very decent man. Time to kick ass and take names.

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Megyn Kelly. Yawn.

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Tony Soprano, er, Chris Christie's, main political consigliere David Wildstein has apparently bought up all the choice websites of his don's potential political opponents. In other places this kind of behavior would stink like a Jersey waste management company but in Trenton it's called business as usual.

He may be a real lovable guy and everybody loves a fat man but what do you get when you dig down deep? First the vindictive bridge scandal, now this. Oh New Jersey, you are the best.

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Interesting to see more intrusive surveillance and a ratcheting down on civil liberties post Snowden in both France and Japan. No one wants to be the last police state on the block.

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One of the more interesting parts of Judge Leon's ruling was his calling bullshit on the Justice Department's stance that the defendants in the surveillance lacked standing because who knew if Verizon was actually getting bugged?

In his ruling, Leon rejected the government’s argument that Klayman and a co-plaintiff — the father of an NSA cryptologist killed in Afghanistan in 2011 — lacked standing to bring the suit because they were customers of Verizon subsidiary Verizon Wireless, which has not been publicly revealed as taking part in the program. “The government,” he said, says it has created a “comprehensive” database — “in which case, the NSA must have collected metadata from Verizon Wireless, the single largest wireless carrier in the United States.” Yet, at the same time, he wrote, the government asserts that the plaintiffs lack standing “based on the theoretical possibility” that the NSA has not collected Verizon’s records. “Candor of this type defies common sense and does not exactly inspire confidence!” he wrote. To draw an analogy, he wrote, omitting Verizon Wireless, AT&T or Sprint “would be like omitting John, Paul and George” and building a “Ringo-only database.”

This is the kind of sophistry and gamesmanship on the part of our government that makes me frankly, sick. Thank you Wyden, thank you Udall, thanks you Leahy, thank you Judge Richard Leon.

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Blast viewing is way up in the last two months. Not near as high as it was pre tantrum but well over twelve hundred people a day and steadily climbing. Maybe some day I could write for a living. That would be nice.

Arthur Brown: Fanfare - Fire poem / Fire

The spy who was left out in the cold

The whole Robert Levinson saga is straight out of LeCarre. Analog side decides to run its own Joe on a rogue mission, then denies his existence when the ex FBI, DEA agent, way out of his turf, lands up trying to turn an Iranian on the Island of Kish off the Iranian coast in 2007. After a clumsy meeting at a hotel one morning, he goes missing, hasn't been seen in seven years and the official line is the guy was a private out sightseeing.

The firm of course denies all knowledge, sorry Bobby, you aren't one of ours, you never existed, ends up lying to Congress. DENY. And the lying continues, all the way up to Condi Rice apparently.

But eventually somebody gets a hold of internal emails, about the government running him,  a couple three heads roll over at the Agency and the U.S. finally has to claim him as one of their own. Kudos to the family for their dogged pursuit of Levinson.

McGee said he was previously told by FBI agents assigned to the case that the FBI was aware the CIA had hid its connection to Levinson, but said there was nothing they could do about it.
"...[They] passed on word that we should just drop the issue and go away," McGee recounted. "Leave Bob in Iran."
"He's 65 years old. He's diabetic. He doesn't have that many years left," McGee said. 

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Today the Iranian Minister in charge of knowing these sorts of things, Javad Sharif, says that he has no idea, they don't have him, Dawud Salahuddin, the american convict turned Iranian emigre who Levinson was trying to turn, says that they definitely do. Or did.

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There is a great scene in the movie Smiley's People when the Russian woman who had her daughter taken away when she was very young, asks Alec Guiness if she will ever see her again? And George Smiley, who lost all of his own hope when his beloved Ann started plonking that traitor Bill Hayden, looks at her sadly and rather coldly says, "No, you won't."

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Once I would have expected more from our government. Say what you want about the Israelis but they never stop taking care of their own.

Hoyt Axton

Davanti retrux

Happy Monday!

Leslie and I went out with a bunch of foodie friends to Davanti Enoteca in Del Mar yesterday. We had a blast. I really enjoy their food and as you know I am a fairly critical person. Just a perfect strike down my wheelhouse.

I am a little surprised that the place isn't more packed, considering the quality of the fare, hopefully it will continue to thrive. We had a great server yesterday, Paolo from Milan, and the manager was sitting behind us with her family and really couldn't have been nicer.

Brunch at Davanti is a tapas style affair and we all willingly shared plates. I ordered a brussels sprout and parmigiano salad that was simple and pretty incredible. As was pretty much everything else we ordered. It is tough to get the order right for a boisterous table of eleven and there were a couple miscues, but we all happily dealt with it.

My beef cheek pappardelle somehow morphed into a pork shoulder ragu on a steaming, heaped trough of mascarpone polenta. Never gave it a second thought it was so good.

The meal started once again with two orders of the honeycomb topped foccacia, which is just an absolute must. I ordered a bloody mary. Wow!

You order a bloody mary at Davanti and you get a glass half full of vodka with a perfect piece of bacon swimming in the glass.

Then you are escorted to a bloody mary bar about eight feet long with every conceivable addition and condiment including mortadella, pickles, five kinds of salt, stuffed olives, capers, celery, citrus of all kinds, prosciutto wrapped asparagus, cauliflower, the list just goes on forever.

You basically can fit a decent sized meal in your glass when it is all said and done.

We ordered the La Tur, Grana Padano and Point Reyes blue for a cheese course, which unfortunately came without bread. Last time we had too much bread, this time not enough.

I also wish that we were sitting at a round table, eleven at a long table means you don't get to talk to the people on the other end, even with a loud and obnoxious voice like mine.

I am not going to give a full meal breakdown, everything was good if not great, the sausage on the rigatoni plate sweet and wonderful. The only negative thing I recall hearing was that the orechiette (little ears) dish with sausage was over salted and it definitely was.

We finished with three desserts, a light lemon tart, a goat cheese cheesecake with caramel and sea salt and a phenomenal apple whiskey caramel concoction in a puff pastry finished with vanilla gelato. All superb.

Bill with gratuity, drinks included, was about $41 bucks a piece. Not bad.

Loved the meal, loved the bloody mary, love my friends, love eating outside on the patio, love this style of cooking! What else can I say? Thanks to one and all who attended.

Trouble In Mind

Mejiro

Received this note from Ted in Kauai:

This beautiful little Mejiro a.k.a. "Japanese White Eye", was chirping outside my bedroom window and caught my attention.

So I snuck up on it with camera in hand just 7 feet away from me and through the window screen, managed to fire away some snapshots of it jumping around on the bush, foraging for these berries.

They are one of the cutest birds on the island and very skitterish, making it difficult to get close like this without a big zoom lens. The screen acted as a filter to give it a soft look as well.

Max Frost And The Troopers

Bechoots l'eretz

Brian Snyder/Reuters

Warren emailed regarding  this shot, of a hardy swimmer in Jerusalem testing the waters at the David Citadel Hotel during a rare old city snowstorm.

First snow in Cairo in over 130 years as well.

Barstow - Harry Partch

I listened to the Kronos rendition of this this morning as well as the Newband orchestration with Partch's original instruments. I believe that this is the original. Harry Partch (June 24, 1901 – September 3, 1974) was a genius, a man born in Oakland and who died in Encinitas. Partch was a unique composer and microtonalist, he divided the octave into 43 unequal tones. Built his own, rather bizarre instruments.

This piece is called Barstow: Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California and was first written in 1941. I discovered it thanks to a room mate named Ron, at boarding school in Idyllwild.

Partch's early life, from Wicki:

Partch was born on June 24, 1901 in Oakland, California. His parents were Virgil Franklin Partch (1860–1919) and Jennie (née Childers, 1863–1920). The couple were Presbyterian missionaries, and served in China from 1888 to 1893, and again from 1895 to 1900, when they fled the Boxer Rebellion.[1]
The family moved to Arizona for his mother's health. His father worked for the Immigration Service there, and they settled in the small town of Benson. It was still the Wild West there in the early twentieth century, and Partch recalled seeing outlaws in town. Nearby, there were native Yaqui people, whose music he heard. His mother sang to him in Mandarin, and he heard and sang songs in Spanish and the Yaqui language. His mother encouraged her children to learn music, and he learned the mandolin, violin, piano,[1] reed organ, and cornet. His mother taught him to read music.[2]
The family moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1913, where Partch seriously studied the piano. He got work playing keyboards for silent films while he was in high school. By 14, he was composing for the piano. He early found an interest in writing music for dramatic situations, and often cited the lost composition Death and the Desert (1916) as an early example.[1] Partch graduated from high school in 1919.

Liquid Sky

This has not held up real well, very campy, I confess it was one of my all time favorite B movies. Congratulations to any of you who can finish it.

12.14.13

The chinese landed on the moon this morning and immediately claimed it for the motherland.

"The moon is, and has always been, a chinese possession and woe to the hegemonist imperialists who seeks to interfere in our galactic affairs."

The United States and Russia immediately sent up their own  warships but it might take up to a light year or two to haul in the heavy armaments and who the hell knows what lays in store for us then, now that the Chinese have such a head start. Our own damn fault for letting the space program go to shit.

© Robert Sommers 2013

Poontang

poon is a hug, tang is a kiss... Stan sent this over a few weeks back and I just had my first chance to listen. I believe that it is fairly early, will check.

Pipeline Masters

Rick Griffin

Jerry sent this over. If you like big wave surfing, check out the livecast:

Rob. thought you might want to take a look at this. Pipeline Masters:

http://www.vanstriplecrownofsurfing.com/billabongpipemasters2013/live

Final day of the final contest of the year today, which will determine the world title for 2013. It's coming down to Kelly Slater vs. Mick Fanning. The surf at Pipeline is 10 to 15 foot today. Epic! Best conditions and swell that they've had for this contest since 2000. Shalom...

Vicious

i saw Amazon peddling some big Lou Reed Velvet compilation today. Everybody's darling, if I may borrow a phrase. In death Lou is cashing in like he never could when he was alive. The major headphone endorsement deal at the very end of the line seems perhaps a bit strange and oddly timed. Why cash in at the end, like Laurie Anderson needs the bread? I guess in death his punk, anarchic message is finally safe for the masses. Lousy guitar player, but gutty enough to pull the whole thing off.

I love Lou, wore out Transformer, loved him when he was alive too, damnit. You can check the tapes.

Bimbim-bap!

photo - A.P.

One of the unfortunate truisms of life is that you can pick your friends but you can't pick your family. Who among us doesn't have one goofy uncle who likes to act up at the family barbecue?

Or maybe likes to drop trou at the nudist resort with a bunch of similarly disrobed octogenarians, like my good old Uncle Norm likes to do. Most of us just slough it off and have another long neck. Not North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. He had his own uncle wacked.

For not clapping fervently enough at his nephew's speech. 

Jang Song Thaeck was asked by Kim's own pop, his wife's brother, nutty Dictator Number two, to watch over the lad while he grew into the full flower of evil despotism. Guess it was a lesson very well learned as Kim made a move that would have made Oedipus himself proud and went to the mattress rooms only a year or two into his nascent bloody reign.

So the young tyrant went Luca Brasi on his poor Uncle. Some thanks, huh Jang? You try to help a kid out. But remembering Tessio, I am sure it was only business. Jang certainly knew how the game was played on the parallel. But a machine gun? Ouch.

Kim may not be thinking too good. Jang was the go between with China and those are not the kind of neighbors you really want to piss off. But with the circle of confidantes that were advising the youthful dictator, people like zany power forward Dennis Rodman, it is no wonder that he may not be thinking right and got fratricidal with the poor guy.

I heard some talking heads trying to read the tea leaves on what might have precipitated the purge and a few mentioned a generational conflict. Something similar happened in the cultural revolution in Red China when the young bucks were walking around pulling the old guys beards and wreaking all kinds of havoc. Kids!

Anybody else remember the movie Wild in the Streets from the sixties, where everybody over thirty five gets sent to a death camp? Watch those younguns folks, they don't seem to be thinking quite right.