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[Jul. 20th, 2009|12:22 pm] |
" Just posted an article by my colleague Dan Engber on the subject of animal masturbation. It turns out that onanism has been observed throughout the animal kingdom: dogs do it, cats do it, horses do it, turtles do it, birds love to do it. Some moose can even bring themselves to sexual climax by just rubbing their antlers on a tree (!).
Dan's article explores the scientific explanations for why animals might have evolved this behavior. There's also an accompanying video slide show -- it turns out folks are very fond of posting footage of their frisky pets, or of the strange activity they saw a koala enjoying at the zoo..."
H/t Boing Boing |
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[Jul. 20th, 2009|12:06 pm] |
They're back!!!!!
The Business Roundtable are suggesting the unemployment benefit be made a loan, ie you get it but once you get a job you start to have to repay it.
Scum. |
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[Jul. 18th, 2009|11:13 pm] |
A sign of the recession ? Squeegee Bandits appear to be back. I seem to remember there being some law passed against them , but that doesn't seem to have stopped them reemerging . That poverty thing's gonna get to a whole lot more of us b4 this thing is over.
Another sign? The much talked about death of print newspapers, with much of the talking being done by old farts in suits saying it's all bloggers' fault. Just today Kim Hill (on National Radio) put it to Ursula LeGuin that books are on the way out too, to which Ms Leguin (now in her mid seventies but still producing new & apparently great books on a regular basis ) replied that they'll never entirely go away becos e-books in whatever form require electricity & there are vast areas of the world where that's just not available even now & for the forseeable future. Another sign - TPM had an item togay about how Amazons' Kindles have just somehow decided (& managed) to delete every title by George Orwell on EVERY KINDLE IN THE WORLD. Scary .
Actually this from Salons' interview with Dave Eggers sounds quite positive for (physical) book orientated types.-
"I think there's a future where the Web and print coexist and they each do things uniquely and complement each other, and we have what could be the ultimate and best-yet array of journalistic venues. I think right now everyone's assuming it's a zero-sum situation, and I just don't see it that way.
Our students at 826 Valencia still have a newspaper class, where we print an actual newspaper, and we do magazine classes and anthologies where they're all printed on paper. That's the main way we get them motivated, that they know it's going to be in print. It's much harder for us to motivate the students when they think it's only going to be on the Web.
The vast majority of students we work with read newspapers and books, more so than I did at their age. And I don't see that dropping off. If anything the lack of faith comes from people our age, where we just assume that it's dead or dying. I think we've given up a little too soon. We [i.e., McSweeney's] have been working every day on a prototype for a new newspaper, and a lot of what we're doing is resurrecting old things, like things from the last century that newspapers used to do, in terms of really using the full luxury of the broadsheet newspaper, with full color and all that space.
I think newspapers shouldn't try to compete directly with the Web, and should do what they can do better, which may be long-form journalism and using photos and art, and making connections with large-form graphics and really enhancing the tactile experience of paper. You know, including a full-color comic section, for example, which of course was standard in newspapers years ago, when you'd have a full broadsheet Winsor McCay comic. So we'll have a big, full-color comic section, and we're also trying to emphasize what younger readers are looking for, what directly appeals to them. It's hard to find papers these days that really do anything to appeal to anyone under 18, and the paper used to do that all the time. I think there will always be -- if not the same audience and not as wide an audience -- a dedicated audience that can keep print journalism alive."
H/t Salon |
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[Jul. 17th, 2009|11:19 pm] |
Oh Noes!!!!!
"I'll be outback: Aussies want intelligent killer robots:
The Australian military is seeking a human race Judas to design intelligent and fully autonomous robots that will be able to "neutralise threats" for a prize pot of $1.6 million.
From BBC News:
The government wants to develop an "intelligent and fully autonomous system" capable of carrying out dangerous surveillance missions.
Senior officials in Canberra have said they hope that unarmed robotic vehicles will do some of the army's "dirty work" in such hazardous theatres.
The ultimate plan is for groups of these sophisticated machines to be sent into battle to help neutralise the enemy.
That's their ultimate plan you idiot, not ours.
Our ultimate plan is to take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
H/t Mind Hacks |
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[Jul. 17th, 2009|01:27 am] |
'Scuse me anyone I seem to be dissing on t'net at the mo. I'm having a bit of a series of "senior moments" what with all this newfangled facebook type technology. I WILL figure it out, it'll just take a little longer than fr youse gen x/y/millenial types.
Actually I've had 3 examples of people being quite gratuitously nice/pleasant whatever in two days so I'm thinking right at the moment that humanity's not, well maybe not entirely the rotten putrescent heap of decomposing ordure I tend to think it is at other times.
Could do with some more days of fine weather tho.
Am quite liking where this urban foraging thing Kerry's set up is going though I don't feel any particular need to start racing around visiting the so far 16 suggested foraging spots. Anyway pretty much all of it is gonna be out of seaon right now .
Am really into crime writer Richard Price at the mo. He's one of three top rated US writers who participated in writing for the Wire, the others being Dennis Lehane and Greg Pelecanos. I've now read one book each of Pelecanos & Price & 2 by Lehane. Price is the best of the three IMHO. The one I read of his was called Freedomland & it's easily the best crime book I've read ( not written by Jim Thompson). Have just started on Clockers which was a Spike Lee joint at one point. Freedomland was about 760 pages & was just an astonishing picture of how one crime can send a devestating shock through two whole communities directly effecting tens of thousands of people. His characterisation & even his running accounts of the music his protagonists are listening to (which Pelecanos is also good with) are just right. Lehanes books make great movies (Eg Mystic River & Gone Baby Gone) but I don't really like the rather old fashioned wise cracking gumshoe type characterisation of his detective.
Also enjoyed the Whedon sourced Fray graphic Novel & am currently liking one by Cory Doctorow . Not too much progress with the saving to get up to Welly in October but we live in hope. Haven't exhausted every avenue for selling off shit just yet tho it was annoying to traipse around Smith's City, the warehouse & 3 supermarkets & still not to be able to find the right sized (or any) corks for wine bottling today despite having potential buyer fr some. Have already bought & planted another Pear tree & am going to plant 2 more apples (when we get 2 consecutive fine days). Might try to squeeze in another grapevine as well. |
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[Jul. 14th, 2009|07:45 pm] |
Eyehategod - anxiety disorder
H/t Crooks & Liars where Max Marginal tags them the best sludge-metal band of all time |
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[Jul. 14th, 2009|01:04 pm] |
A blog post touched with greatness:
"July 13, 2009
A Horse With No Name
Every time we listen to this America classic we hear something new. Today it was the lyric "the heat was hot." Damn. We try to write stupid lyrics but we'll never top that, and we'll bet you the guy wasn't even trying. It just rolled off his pen. The same goes for "there were plants and birds and rocks and things." That "things" is pure genius. It could include those steer skulls you always see in the desert in the movies. Or an Orange Julius stand. Or the great Don Ho.
Musical scholars have spent years trying to figure out the horse's name. Theories abound, but proof is in short supply. We've always leaned toward Greil Marcus' theory that the horse is really French Situationist Guy Debord. America decided to substitute a nameless horse because nobody's going to buy a song that goes "I've been through the desert with a French Situationist named Guy Debord, it felt good to be out of the rain."
That shit doesn't even rhyme."
H/t Unrelenting Failure blog |
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[Jul. 14th, 2009|12:52 pm] |
Dave.i.d. - Why weren't the message sent?
h/t Drowned In Sound |
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[Jul. 13th, 2009|05:26 pm] |
The short version (the full version's Emma Harts' blog at Public Address):
"Must read
Over on Public Address, Emma points to some very good OIA work by Thomas Beagle about the Department of Internal Affairs' plans for internet filtering. The short version: DIA are about to implement an internet filtering system in secret. It will be voluntary for ISPs and aimed only at child pornography - but we know from experiences elsewhere that such schemes never stay that way, and inevitably suffer from mission creep (up to and including covering criticism of the scheme itself). And naturally, they are refusing to release the blacklist, on the basis that it is a shopping list for paedophiles. The fact that it means they never have to admit to, let alone answer for, the inevitable mistakes and abuses of course has nothing to do with it.
(Fortunately, we have an answer to secretive, unaccountable bureaucrats: the Ombudsmen. And if that fails, there's always WikiLeaks...)
I am dubious enough about internet filtering - it is IMHO simply a pointless waste of time (in that such measures can be trivially circumvented), while being ripe for abuse. But the fact that this is being done in secret with no publicity, consultation or debate is beyond the pale. That is not how things are supposed to be done in a democratic society. If the government wants to do this, it should own its policy and say so openly so they can be held democratically accountable for it. Of course, that is the last thing any government wants to do..."
h/t No Right Turn
Wonder if Tv3 & 1 & Prime & The newspapers will follow up on this? They should & I personally don't care whether the bloggers get the credit. The point is to STOP it . |
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[Jul. 13th, 2009|11:11 am] |
"As Gen. McChrystal calls for an increase of troops to Afghanistan in order to see "victory" (although I'm still waiting to hear what constitutes a victory) the Sunday Express, a conservative paper in the UK, says the war has already been lost:
In case anyone hadn’t noticed, there is a war on. And when this nation is at war it has a tradition of pulling together in support of the troops. But as far as the campaign in Afghanistan is concerned there is precious little sign of that. The death toll of British troops there this week is horrendous.
And yet the Government has been put under almost no pressure to explain what our soldiers are doing and when it expects their mission to be completed.
Gordon Brown does not appear to know whether this war is worth prosecuting with the full might of the nation’s military resources or not. He has already turned down a request from Barack Obama to send significant reinforcements, while the shameful inadequacy of the equipment supplied to our soldiers has already been well documented. After the losses of the past few days, this half-hearted approach has become utterly unsustainable. Britain and indeed the whole of Nato must now decide whether this fiendishly difficult bid to tame a hitherto untamable land is worth all the blood that is being spilt.
This newspaper’s assessment is that the chance of outright victory in Afghanistan vanished the moment US and British forces went into Iraq. The focus on Afghanistan was lost and the coalition against terror broke up. There is now little prospect of the rest of Nato committing wholeheartedly to the fight against the Taliban. In a war of attrition, such as is presently being fought, victory will not be achieved, but heavy losses will certainly be sustained. Our brave soldiers deserve far better than that."
H/t Crooks and liars
Care to remind me why we're in Afghanistan again? |
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[Jul. 11th, 2009|08:52 pm] |
Dudes.
Had a garage sale today & ended up with my worst ever result. 8 people in the gate & a grand total of 1 (count 'em) 1!$ sales * & that was for a working battery charger, which would have cost 25 or 30 $$s new, & NZ has barely scraped the surface of this recession thing yet what with coming out of 9 years of a mildly liberal, only barely visibly NEO-liberal Labour Government that learned fast that it had to keep its trap shut about Blairite "Third Way" type lies & spin after Tony crapped his nappies by following (enabling?) Bush into Iraq.
So !
Spotted this on TPM Blog. Dunno much about this Reich dude but Kos & Atrios & all the rest of the "Progressive" US bloggers appear to rate him along with Krugman as the best of the economist/Dismal scientists. (His Wikipedia bio's here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Reich - He's no anarchist/anti authoritarian )
"When Will The Recovery Begin? Never.
July 9, 2009, 5:02PM
The so-called "green shoots" of recovery are turning brown in the scorching summer sun. In fact, the whole debate about when and how a recovery will begin is wrongly framed. On one side are the V-shapers who look back at prior recessions and conclude that the faster an economy drops, the faster it gets back on track. And because this economy fell off a cliff late last fall, they expect it to roar to life early next year. Hence the V shape.
Unfortunately, V-shapers are looking back at the wrong recessions. Focus on those that started with the bursting of a giant speculative bubble and you see slow recoveries. The reason is asset values at bottom are so low that investor confidence returns only gradually.
That's where the more sober U-shapers come in. They predict a more gradual recovery, as investors slowly tiptoe back into the market.
Personally, I don't buy into either camp. In a recession this deep, recovery doesn't depend on investors. It depends on consumers who, after all, are 70 percent of the U.S. economy. And this time consumers got really whacked. Until consumers start spending again, you can forget any recovery, V or U shaped.
Problem is, consumers won't start spending until they have money in their pockets and feel reasonably secure. But they don't have the money, and it's hard to see where it will come from. They can't borrow. Their homes are worth a fraction of what they were before, so say goodbye to home equity loans and refinancings. One out of ten home owners is under water -- owing more on their homes than their homes are worth. Unemployment continues to rise, and number of hours at work continues to drop. Those who can are saving. Those who can't are hunkering down, as they must.
Eventually consumers will replace cars and appliances and other stuff that wears out, but a recovery can't be built on replacements. Don't expect businesses to invest much more without lots of consumers hankering after lots of new stuff. And don't rely on exports. The global economy is contracting.
My prediction, then? Not a V, not a U. But an X. This economy can't get back on track because the track we were on for years -- featuring flat or declining median wages, mounting consumer debt, and widening insecurity, not to mention increasing carbon in the atmosphere -- simply cannot be sustained.
The X marks a brand new track -- a new economy. What will it look like? Nobody knows. All we know is the current economy can't "recover" because it can't go back to where it was before the crash. So instead of asking when the recovery will start, we should be asking when and how the new economy will begin. More on this to come."
Maybe Chch & other @'s should be thinking & writing about what sort of "new economy" would spring from their/our ideas & ideals now in the 21st century rather than constantly looking back and trying to live in a past that hasn't existed for five or six decades at least.
This kind of result is gonna make getting to Welly for the art auction somewhere between extremely difficult & impossible.
Update: From Nouriel Roubini as quoted on Crooks & Liars "alleged green shoots are mostly yellow weeds that may eventually turn into brown manure." |
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[Jul. 11th, 2009|01:56 pm] |
Re The Coming Insurrection"
"The novelty, the authors assert, consists in the total absence of message, leader or demand on the part of the insurgents. Thus have the suburban rioters, according to the authors, set the tone for any new guerilla action. Since "the present has no exit," it's useless to seek empty social compromises. Since the catastrophe "has already taken place," it's impossible to further an ecumenical ecology that supplies capitalism with its most perfect ideological legitimization. Since everything must be made spectacle, traceable, legible, one might as well become "invisible."
This strategic upheaval is a political turning point. Most alternative movements have sought to attract the attention of newspapers, even though that risked their transformation by the media into official trouble-makers. So it's not only against all union and militant bureaucracies, but also against all coordinated movements that "reproduce so many governments in miniature," that the "Invisible Committee" pits its anonymity, its permanent dissolution."
H/t Truth Out
read it here; http://www.truthout.org/070909X |
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[Jul. 11th, 2009|01:59 am] |
Marc Maron is starting to get his mojo back:
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[Jul. 9th, 2009|07:28 pm] |
one art show I woukd REALLY REALLY like to see;
"Jean Tinguely show coming up
By Bruce Sterling
July 3, 2009 |
*I gotta get around to doing a study of “device art” and its relationship
to speculative practice in devices and machines.
Joyous Machines: Michael Landy and Jean Tinguely
Tate Liverpool
Albert Dock
Liverpool
L3 4BB
UK
Phone: +44 (0) 151 702 7400
Fax: +44 (0) 151 702 7401
Contact:
visiting.liverpool@tate.org.uk
www.tate.org.uk/liverpool
2 October 2009 – 10 January 2010
Admission: £5.90 (concessions £4.40)
With the support of Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council
JOYOUS MACHINES: MICHAEL LANDY AND JEAN TINGUELY
Tate Liverpool
2 October 2009 – 10 January 2010
Jean Tinguely (1925-1991) was one of the most radical, inventive and subversive sculptors of the mid twentieth-century. A founding member of the Nouveau Réalistes, his work was playful, ironic and often anarchic. ‘Joyous Machines: Michael Landy and Jean Tinguely’ at Tate Liverpool will be co-curated by renowned British artist Michael Landy who, having seen the Tate Gallery’s Tinguely retrospective exhibition in 1982, has been significantly influenced by the artist and his constructive and destructive tendencies. In ‘Break Down’ (2001) Landy catalogued and destroyed every single one of his possessions from his birth certificate to his car. (((You gotta admit that conceptual art has advanced rather a lot since the heyday of Tinguely.)))
The exhibition will focus upon Tinguely’s rarely examined early career, revealing the interplay in his sculpture between the functionless, the utilitarian and the destructive. The exhibition traces the development of Tinguely’s work from the late 1940s building up to his momentous ‘Homage to New York’. This, the most famous and influential of all ‘auto-destructive’ works of art, was a 27ft high self-destroying mechanism that came to life for 27 minutes during a performance in the Sculpture Garden of the Museum of Modern Art, New York on 17 March 1960.
Tinguely’s sculptures were often based on the machine and broke down the stabilities of the traditional artwork. In the early 1950s he freed himself from static compositions through the creation of kinetic sculptures that often include geometric shapes painted in bright primary colours. His extensive series of ‘Méta-Malevitch’ reliefs of the same period consist of simple moving shapes cut out of metal, painted white and set against a black background. Motion and change are central to all these works, yet rather than being logical and sequential, their action was unpredictable taking months or years of operation before a sequence repeated itself.
The interaction of the viewer in Tinguely’s work, setting his machines in motion, is crucial to his examination of the relationship between people, machine and technological process in post-industrial society. The ‘meta-matic’ drawing machines of the late 1950s, several of which will be included, relied upon the participation of the viewer to fulfil their ultimate function – creating abstract works of art.
A major component of the exhibition will be devoted to ‘Homage to New York’. Assembled from found objects and constructed with collaborators including Robert Rauschenberg, this vast self-destructing machine was set into motion but, bursting into flames after only 27 minutes, it failed to self-destruct under its own terms and had to be extinguished by museum guards. (((For extra credit, explain why this made it “better device art” or “worse device art.”))) Michael Landy’s comprehensive research and responses to the work, including a new documentary film and a selection of his impressive series of drawings (he has made over 160 in total), will be presented alongside photographs, films and relics of the original event.
Curated by Michael Landy and Laurence Sillars." |
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[Jul. 9th, 2009|06:49 pm] |
"The unemployment timebomb is quietly ticking
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Published: 8:45PM BST 04 Jul 2009
One dog has yet to bark in this long winding crisis. Beyond riots in Athens and a Baltic bust-up, we have not seen evidence of bitter political protest as the slump eats away at the legitimacy of governing elites in North America, Europe, and Japan. It may just be a matter of time.
One of my odd experiences covering the US in the early 1990s was visiting militia groups that sprang up in Texas, Idaho, and Ohio in the aftermath of recession. These were mostly blue-collar workers, – early victims of global "labour arbitrage" – angry enough with Washington to spend weekends in fatigues with M16 rifles. Most backed protest candidate Ross Perot, who won 19pc of the presidential vote in 1992 with talk of shutting trade with Mexico.
The inchoate protest dissipated once recovery fed through to jobs, although one fringe group blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995. Unfortunately, there will be no such jobs this time. Capacity use has fallen to record-low levels (68pc in the US, 71 in the eurozone). A deep purge of labour is yet to come.
The shocker last week was not just that the US lost 467,000 jobs in May, but also that time worked fell 6.9pc from a year earlier, dropping to 33 hours a week. "At no time in the 1990 or 2001 recessions did we ever come close to seeing such a detonating jobs figure," said David Rosenberg from Glukin Sheff. "We have lost a record nine million full-time jobs this cycle."
Earnings have fallen at a 1.6pc annual rate over the last three months. Wage deflation is setting in – like Japan. Interestingly, The International Labour Organisation is worried enough to push for a global pact, fearing countries may set off a ruinous spiral by chipping away at wages try to gain beggar-thy-neighbour advantage.
Some of the US pay cuts are disguised. Over 238,000 state workers in California have been working two days less a month without pay since February. Variants of this are happening in 22 states.
The Centre for Labour Market Studies (CLMS) in Boston says US unemployment is now 18.2pc, counting the old-fashioned way. The reason why this does not "feel" like the 1930s is that we tend to compress the chronology of the Depression. It takes time for people to deplete their savings and sink into destitution. Perhaps our greater cushion of wealth today will prevent another Grapes of Wrath, but 20m US homeowners are already in negative equity (zillow.com data). Evictions are running at a terrifying pace.
Some 342,000 homes were foreclosed in April, pushing a small army of children into a network of charity shelters. This compares to 273,000 homes lost in the entire year of 1932. Sheriffs in Michigan and Illinois are quietly refusing to toss families on to the streets, like the non-compliance of Catholic police in the Slump.
Europe is a year or so behind, but catching up fast. Unemployment has reached 18.7pc in Spain (37pc for youths), and 16.3pc in Latvia. Germany has delayed the cliff-edge effect by paying companies to keep furloughed workers through "Kurzarbeit". Germany's "Wise Men" fear that the jobless rate will jump from 3.7m to 5.1m by next year. The OECD expects unemployment to reach 57m in the rich countries by the end of next year.
This is the deadly lag effect. What is so disturbing is that governments have not even begun the spending squeeze that must come to stop their countries spiralling into a debt compound trap.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy, with a good nose for popular moods, says: "We must overhaul everything. We cannot have a system of rentiers and social dumping under globalisation. Either we have justice or we will have violence. It is a chimera to think that this crisis is just a footnote and that we can carry on as before."
The message has not reached Wall Street or the City. If bankers know what is good for them, they will take a teacher's salary for a few years until the storm passes. If they proceed with the bonuses now on the table, even as taxpayers pay for the errors of their caste, they must expect a ferocious backlash.
We are fortunate that the US has a new president enjoying a great reservoir of sympathy, and a clean-broom Congress. Other nations must limp on with carcass governments: Germany's paralysed Left-Right coalition, the burned-out relics of Japan's LDP, and Labour's death march in Britain. Some are taking precautions: Silvio Berlusconi is trying to emasculate Italy's parliament (with little protest) while the Kremlin has activated "anti-crisis" units to nip protest in the bud.
We are moving into Phase II of the Great Unwinding. It may be time to put away our texts of Keynes, Friedman, and Fisher, so useful for Phase 1, and start studying what happened to society when global unemployment went haywire in 1932."
H/t The Daily Telegraph via Scoop |
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[Jul. 8th, 2009|11:01 am] |
Prepare to have your mind well and truly fucked. Here are nearly ten minutes worth of deleted scenes from the Japanese version of the Johnny Mnemonic DVD;
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[Jul. 7th, 2009|11:54 am] |
"First of all, I can’t believe FOX is talking about this. It also does not seem to fit with the way FOX usually dismisses the left. This time the ”radical left” is taken seriously and it’s because someone is talking about violence. Glenn Beck does not address anything the book actually mentions. The quotes he selects are just spicy snippets from the concluding paragraphs of each “circle” [chapter].
I started reading The Coming Insurrection a few weeks ago. Honestly, it’ is good writing. I just have seen a lot of writings like this, and The Coming Insurrection is not very different from a lot of insurrectionary texts, from Blanqui to the present. But insurrectionist writing is satisfying to read because it’s passionate and speaks directly to the reader, it pushes the reader further, and it feels good to say you don’t give a fuck. The style of the Invisible Committee is noticeably influenced by Situationist thought and the polemic style of Jean Baudrillard. It cannot help sounding very intellectual and French and theoretical and fed up all at once. But why people are even talking about this particular text is because of the amount of secrecy that formed around it. It was not put on the internet until at least two or three years after it was written some time after the 2005 suburb riots in France. The TCI was instead passed from person to person, and the cops had no idea. Until the English copies made their way to English zine-sharing websites, which was no more than several weeks ago, few people had even read it in English.
After Julien Coupat’s arrest in connection with the NYC bicycle bombing in 2008 and the arrests made in connection with the French high-speed train sabotaging, the French government talked the book up, and is using it as evidence against the Tarnac 9 in court, and the book gained international notoriety as being some kind of seminal insurrectionary text of the times.
But also, partly because of this book more anarchists in the US have been discussing the ideas of Agamben, who has connections to the authors of “post-Situationist” anarchist journal, Ticcun, some of whom I believe lived in Tarnac where Coupat was living at the time of his arrest.
FOX News may be scared as fuck, and that’s right because they totally should be. But in reality, only a small number of people in the US are actually reading this because they consider themselves insurrectionary. And even fewer are actually taking up arms. The rest are probably FBI agents and ideologues who will never identify their own struggle against capitalism. Many, many more people are in fact reading right-wing fascists’ books like Glenn Beck’s. Perhaps the left always has an element of being more active, or visible in certain ways than the right. Or maybe the right uses that as excuse to get scared everytime the left makes itself noticeable. One thing is for certain, however, and that’s that - when this country does face an insurrectional blaze - like so many other countries we will see fascists and neo-nazi groups cooperating with political and military forces to regroup themselves as death-squads to hunt down and murder any ”leftist” they feel is a threat to their way of life."
h/t Utopia or bust |
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[Jul. 6th, 2009|11:34 pm] |
Funny . Was listening to yet another amazing Cathal Coughlan/Fatima Mansions song- Popemobile To Paraguay when what should I find online but this;
"The Vatican said Saturday it ran a deficit in 2008 as its finances and donations from across the world were hit by the global economic crisis.
The Vatican posted a budget deficit for a second straight year, though the figures improved strongly from 2007. The Holy See's 2008 deficit was around euro0.9 million ($1.28 million), compared with a loss of euro9.06 million a year earlier.
The financial report released Saturday by the Holy See's press office listed revenues of euro253.9 million and expenses for euro254.8 million.
Most of expenses went to support the activities of Pope Benedict XVI and the Holy See's offices, especially Vatican Radio and other media divisions, the report said."
h/t Americablog
On top of everything else of course, the Catholic church has to bear the added expense of paying off damages for all their pedophile priests. My heart bleeds (Not , y'know, in a literal, sort of statue of the crucifixion kinda way, y'unnerstand. I mean its kinda cool that I'm still here despite my somewhat dangerous life path, but it's not exactly a MIRACLE).
PS this was in the comments; "I heard Pope Ratzo is down to his last six altar boys" |
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[Jul. 6th, 2009|12:24 am] |
"It's good to be alive and not crappin' in a bag"- Anthony Bourdain who I just watched a repeat of on Prime doing NZ in a week. A TV Chef who's quite entertaining.
Actually it was on the news last nite or the nite b4 , apparently with the recession TV watching has gone up bigtime (while advertising $$'s have gone down). makes sense. back in the depression parties at home, musical evenings & card evenings were all the rage cos back then there was no telly. would be nice to see more of that , maybe we will given time, IE as the present situation drags on into its third, fourth, fifth year.
Personally I've got back to taking a close look at the most interesting films on the box - the generally third world sourced movies on Maori Television & there've been some excellent ones in the last wee while. The Turkish film about Gallipolli, the one tonight on a couple of Afghan teenage refugees travelling the "silk road" to the UK, the Ken Loach one about an Irish girl & a Pakistani guy getting together in Scotland, Maria Full Of Grace last nite, The Door In The Floor (OK that was about rich people in the Hamptons going nuts & tearing themselves apart, but it WAS really good. Kim Basinger was brilliant) etc etc. I've also glommed onto Mos Def who's as good & successful an actor as he is a rapper. Incredibly versatile guy & he even turned up on Letterman rapping the other week.
Otherwise it's been a bit of the locked in scenario with the mightily shithouse midwinter weather. That said the house is more comfy now than it's ever been b4 .
Other stuff;
Had a call from the eldest brother on friday. He'salways been the jock in the family & he was crowing about having just bought an ocean going canoe. I'm mildly jealous actually, since I had & thoroughly enjoyed having a canoe when I was living in Churchill St adjacent to the Avon. I used to row up & down the river quite often finding handbags & purses that had been emptied of cash & chucked in (well about a half dozen times). Unfortunately that one was covered with canvas & was at least fifty years old at a guess, so it perished & became not only not watertight but irreperable. In fact I currently have an inflatable canoe I bought from the Warehouse about two years ago , but have never so much as inflated it since it seems like too much hassle & there's Brougham St to get across to get to the nearest branch of the Heathcote. Maybe I will next spring ....or the one after.
Have finished the writing stage of Luca production. so it's closer than it was . will let yiz know when it's finished.
Have figured out places to squeeze in yet more fruit trees into my garden, to whit another Pear & a couple more apple trees. Will have to ferry them home on the scooter between my legs one at a time, but that's doable. Am currently using up the last of my Feijoas as Pizza toppers . Yummy.
Enjoyed Dave's party the other week, & am thinking seriously about going up to Welly for the october operation 8 art auction (I probably already said that b4).
That's about all I can think of at the moment. |
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ultra_151's journal