What pisses me off?

After reading it on and off for the last six years, I’ve decided that I hate the Sunday New York Times.

Every Sunday I am filled with excitement as I pick up this huge newspaper (today’s was about 4 inches thick – about the width of a paperback copy of The Hobbit!), and every Sunday I put this paper breeze block in my bag and cause my shoulder to dislocate itself.

I always think, “If it’s that fucking big it must contain everything I need to know about the world – I’m gonna be the cleverest guy who ever lived if I can just find a school gymnasium to lay the sections to make it readable!”.

Well not quite. Unlike the Sunday papers in the UK which still operate on putting a scoop on the front page and often run stories that are so good that they end up setting the news pattern for the rest of the week; the Sunday New York Times has long headlines that sometimes tell you more than the article. A sample from this morning’s paper would be “Even in Iraqi City Cited As Model, Rebuilding Efforts Are Hobbled”. Right on the front fucking page – a comma in a headline!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Alright, I know that The Times is trying to retain some old tradition of longhand headlines – that’s not my main problem with this paper. My main problem is that unless you read carefully you’ll miss the big stories. For example, did you know that there is a hunger strike going on at Guantanamo Prison right now, possibly up to 200 prisoners are starving themselves to death because of the inhuman conditions they are kept in. I happen to think this is a pretty major fucking story but where did the Times bury it? Try Page 24!

That pisses me off!

Can you keep a straight face?

Bush can! Wanker!

“When this great institution’s member states choose notorious abusers of human rights to sit on the UN Human Rights Commission, they discredit a noble effort and undermine the credibility of the whole organization…If member countries want the United Nations to be respected and effective, they should begin by making sure it is worthy of respect."

-- George W. Bush to the United Nations, September 14th 2005.

5 Questions

Ginny from the blog “A Long Way from Om” has been posting comments here for a while so I’ve been checking out her blog and discovered she has been playing a fun game so I decided to play:

The Rules
1. If you want to participate, leave a comment below asking to be interviewed.
2. I will respond by asking you five questions - each person's will be different.
3. You will update your journal/blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions


Ginny’s Questions for Dave:

1) What prompted you to leave Scotland, and have you ever had regrets?

Well I actually left Scotland for the first time in 1989 to find work. The unemployment figures were very high in Scotland then (as they still are now) but relatively low in the south of England. Firstly I lived with my Sister Anne in Milton Keynes for a while, (a new town just north of London), then I lived in Southampton and the Isle of Wight (about as far South as you can go without moving to France) and then I moved to Reading (West of London, famous for it’s rock festival and for giving us Kate Winslet!).

Crap jobs were easy to come by - I did everything from dunking German sausages in a big vat of blood and guts (for flavoring) to delivering refrigerators and washing machines, to making 300 cups of tea for old biddies in a holiday camp.

I hated all these jobs at the time but I now look back with a sense of nostalgia that makes you forget what heaving a washing machine up five flights of stairs feels like! I guess I was at an age when you feel the most freedom; don’t like the job? Well just quit!

I went back to Scotland for a few years for college but other than that I’ve always been elsewhere. I’ve actually spent almost as much time away from Scotland now as I have living there (breaks down about 17 years in Scotland, 16 years other places).

I moved to NYC in 1999 when I got married to Alma. We kind of joined the pioneers online romance and it has worked out good for us. So no, no regrets…

2) New York is portrayed as having a lot of rude people. Describe a situation in which someone was very rude to you.

It’s not justified. I love New Yorkers, they are freaky, funny and friendly. The rude ones are just the same assholes in business suits that you get anywhere. As you can see above, I lived around London for years but never actually in it! The main reason for that is that I hated the place (with the exception of Camden Town), I always thought Londoners were rude and unfriendly.

I’ve had incidents in NYC of course, I remember one guy with a serious chip on his shoulder who was screaming at me because I had bumped into him. I had barely brushed the guy and it was so slight I hardly noticed. I apologized as soon as I realized. It was at the time when my eyesight was bad but I had not yet started using a cane.

He was screaming at me and I thought he was going to swing for me so I was being pretty aggressive back. It had the potential to get really ugly but believe it or not, an old lady stepped into the breach and calmed it all down.

3) China, soon-to-be world super power, or just a wannabe?

Definite superpower, and the world will be better for it. The loss of the USSR made America too powerful, we need some balance in the world. I only wish China would work on it’s human rights record and Tibet back to Tibetans.

I tend to think everything goes in cycles. The Chinese were one of the first superpowers, they gave humanity the printing press, gunpowder, the Great Wall, and MSG (only joking!). China will rise as the ass falls out of America and it goes back to being the frontier backwater that it is.

4) What clubs/activities/sports were you involved in as a child, and what did you like most?

I was the kind of kid who would deliberately forget his sneakers so he could avoid doing physical ed or sports. I still have a dislike of locker room machismo when I go to the gym. I do like watching football though and have declared myself a Glasgow Celtic supporter since moving to NYC.

5) In your opinion, what is the best thing the Bush administration has done?

Jesus, a hard question! I would normally say NADA! NOTHING GOOD HAS COME FROM THIS ADMINISTRATION!!!! However when I thought about it, I guess they have exposed the American press corp. for being the rightwing, groveling cowards that they are. No more harping about “The Liberal Media” agenda - every major news organization has been exposed as either rightwing propaganda or as too cowardly to publish the truth.

The British press aren’t that much better but at least they still question the motives of the government (even if it costs you your job like the BBC in the David Kelly affair).That is why bloggers are doing such a good job.

Here are some of the blogs I use for news:

Crooks and Liars
The Left Coaster

and the big guys....

Michael Moore
Greg Palast

9-11-2005

I'm sitting here at work on September 11th, it's 8.29AM. 4 years ago, 17 minutes from now the first plane hit the Towers. My job is 4 blocks north of Ground Zero and I just thought that I have to express some sadness about the things that happened that day and a lot of things that happened since.

I was lucky, I did not work here four years ago, I was at home in Brooklyn when the attacks happened. As I walked from the subway to my building this morning I could see many people whose family and friends were not so lucky. Many of them were carrying pictures of their loved ones walked down Church Street to once again go listen to the names of everyone lost - seeking an impossible closure to their grief.

There are 2,749 names on the list to be read out this morning but no-one really remembers that there were probably a few more victims that day. Firstly, like every other large building the USA there were a number of undocumented workers. The invisible people who clean the toilets and man the newspaper stand. Imagine knowing that you lost someone on 9-11 but you could not come forward for fear of being deported.

I also remember at the time that the Village Voice ran an article on a number of homeless people who were never seen again after the Towers fell. They deserve to be remembered every bit as much as the bankers from Fiduciary or the FDNY personnel.

I'd also like to remember the victims of the wars that George Bush has pursued since 9-11 gave him carte blanche to go on a killing spree. You can keep up to date with the war in Iraq at Iraq Body Count where we have almost reached 28,000 civillians. Add to that the number of people killed in Afghanistan and the number of coalition troops killed and you are easily passing 30,000.

The Bush Family is Sick and Depraved

On the heels of the president's "What, me worry?" response to the death, destruction and dislocation that followed upon Hurricane Katrina comes the news of his mother's Labor Day visit with hurricane evacuees at the Astrodome in Houston.

Commenting on the facilities that have been set up for the evacuees -- cots crammed side-by-side in a huge stadium where the lights never go out and the sound of sobbing children never completely ceases -- former First Lady Barbara Bush concluded that the poor people of New Orleans had lucked out.

"Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them," Mrs. Bush told American Public Media's "Marketplace" program, before returning to her multi-million dollar Houston home.

The next step is obviously Pat Robertson stepping up to tell us that God had instructed Haliburton to build an ark that was big enough to carry all the billionaires. After all, to him, New Orleans was a den of iniquity filled with godless sodomites. Jesus sent the flood to show us that the rich are indeed the chosen ones….

Aaaarrrrgggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!! Evil Fucks!

The Bushes Help The People of New Orleans

More ink

I started the shading on my Buddha tattoo last week, “tebori” style. This is when the artist does not use a machine but hand-pokes the design with two needles. It’s a Japanese traditional style and it is very time consuming but very detailed.

I was nervous when I first entered Shinji’s studio as I had heard that it was a lot more painful than the electric needle - other people I’d been talking to over the previous 3 weeks since my last session were looking at me like I was mad and these were people WITH tattoos!!!

Incidentally, before I start I don’t know if I introduced Shinji Horizakura who is doing my piece. You can see more of his work here and you can read a bit more about tebori here. Shinji was a member of the Horitoshi family.

He is a quiet and unassuming guy and I noticed in the first session that once he gets down to work, he does not get distracted by anything going on around him - a true artist.

Anyway, he takes two needles out of an unopened pack (to show they are new and sterilized), they look weirdly like a pointy pair knitting needles. I’m pretty nervous by this point but he reassures me “You’re going to like it!”.

He stretches the skin around the starting point and starts poking away. I was expecting to flinch at least but I couldn’t believe it - it hurt a lot less than the electric needle.

It’s a hard feeling to describe - there is definitely a burning sensation - you can feel him picking away at your skin like a madman with tweezers - also there is kind of a feeling of relief like someone pulling off dead skin with a pumice-stone.

In short, I liked it, that was until he reached the back of my arm and close to the armpit where I assume there are a lot of nerve endings - here it hurt like hell and I had to concentrate really hard not to cry out.

Meditation on the causes of Suffering is one of the teachings in Buddhism, well in this case the causes of suffering was a small Japanese man jabbing me repeatedly with oversized toothpicks!
I picked a point in the distance and meditated on it, thinking about nothing just waiting to feel the next needle going in. I breathed out when he finished a section and in when he was starting a new section. The whole thing was rhythmic and pretty soon I found myself oblivious to the pain and spaced out.

Suddenly he cleaned off excess ink and blood with what I assume was an anti-bacterial solution - all I know is it was seriously cold and it made me jump back to reality.

Finished for today. Two hours up already!

The pain subsides to a burning sensation and you get a pleasant buzz off of it. When I sit up I feel high and I am smiling involuntarily.

TEBORI SHADING

Meditate on this you Fucking Fuck!

I found this interesting snippet in the NY Post (worst Paper on the East Coast) - Yeah I know that rhymes, it's a quote from a Public Enemy song. Anyway I never read the Post except when I find it lying around at work and I can't find my gun.

Nice to know that this paper, which supports Bush's policy of "Intelligent design" thinks that David Lynch is mad for trying to make the world a better place. We can all agree that trying to make the world a better place is just complete madness right?

Anyway in case you forgot, here is a quote from David Lynch's "Blue Velvet", I can't believe we are talking about the same guy here but all kudos to hi,....

Frank Booth: "I'll send you a love letter! Straight from my heart, fucker! You know what a love letter is? It's a bullet from a fucking gun, fucker! You receive a love letter from me, you're fucked forever! You understand, fuck? I'll send you straight to hell, fucker!".


NY Post July 21, 2005

IF you think Tom Cruise is wild about Scientology and Madonna is crazy about Kabbalah, eccentric filmmaker David Lynch is about to give both of them a run for their money.

Tomorrow, the Oscar-nominated director of such graphically violent movies as "Blue Velvet" and "Mulholland Drive" is announcing the formation of the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace.

Lynch has been a devotee of transcendental meditation and its founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, for 32 years. The foundation he'll launch with his own money will fund schools to set up transcendental meditation (or "TM") classes and pay for research on the effects of the yoga technique on the "brain and body." Lynch hopes to raise $7 billion within a year.

"This is not a pretend thing," Lynch told PAGE SIX's Steve Garbarino. "Our government spends seven times that on killing, calling it defending, and making machinery and technology to kill human beings in the name of peace."

Despite "hating speaking in public," Lynch, 59, says he decided "to stop being quiet" about his passion for the 47-year-old Hindu chanting technique after observing the sad state of education in U.S. schools.

Today's students "are even more stressed out. Their schools are hellholes," he goes on. "They're getting pathetic educations. They're not going forward with full decks of cards."

Students who meditate, he says, "will start shining like a bright, shiny penny, and their anxieties will go away. By diving within, they will attain a field of pure consciousness, pure bliss, creativity, intelligence, dynamic peace. You enliven the field, and every day it gets better. Negativity recedes."

Lynch eventually hopes to organize "peace-creating super groups of 8,000 meditators" around the globe, all chanting simultaneously. Why 8,000? "It's the size of the square root of one percent of the world's population."

Quick to point out that "TM" is not a "religion" of "clones" but a "mental technique to dive within," he'll only say of Scientology and Kabbalah, "I don't know enough about either to comment. People believe in what they believe in, and that's a beautiful thing."

Happily, Lynch hasn't given up his day job: He's working on his next flick, "Inland Empire," starring Laura Dern.