Buddha In The Beerglass

Happy News Year!

2011-12-29T20:14:00.006-05:00

Well another year draws to a close and what a year it was. Bin Laden dead, Gaddafi dead, Kim Jong-il dead. Maggie Thatcher still alive.

It's not fair!

"The Devil looks after his own" as my Grandad used to say. Of course he used to say it to my Granny as she went off to Mass and left him to open his first home brew of the day and start his long daily recital of shouting at the telly. He's dead and now it's my turn and I'll do my shouting on here.

I'm glad I got this blog up and running again but as you get older it becomes harder to come up with stuff you want to actually share with people. There is nothing worse than the kind of blog that goes on and on about the life of your kids or how you fixed your toilet, I strive to entertain and the banality of everyday life is only entertaining when you see it going horribly wrong on "[Insert country here] 's Funniest Home Videos".

"Oh look! Grandad's got his willy stuck in the electrical outlet again!"

"That's SHOCKING!".

Cue applaud from cross-eyed brain-dead looking audience.

I've been reading the usual raft of articles looking back over the big events of the year and it struck me that although this has been a momentous year in current affairs it has been a god awful year in journalism. Everyone has been going on about the Arab Spring, Libya, Obama, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Rupert Murdoch (and James), the Occupy movement, economic recession, unemployment, etc. No-one has said anything about the biggest story of the year.

Cheetah died.

And yet Maggie Thatcher still lives!

Again. I say NOT FAIR!

Here's to a happy and prosperous 2012 to all my friends and enemies. Slainte Mhath!

The next evolutionary step.

2011-11-11T18:55:00.009-05:00

I was sitting on the PATH train when I think I identified the next evolutionary step. I was minding my own business and staring at people the way blind people do when they realize they can stare at people and people don't think they can see anything. Usually I do this to women with big boobs but this time I was absently staring at a Dad and his teenaged son who were sitting opposite me.

The teenager was playing with a hand-held games console and was disconnected from the outside world by the headphones in his ears. The Dad was on his phone answering emails and typing away furiously. These two people were together but they weren't really together.

It struck me then that I see this everywhere but just don't really pay any attention to it. Actually not only do I see it everywhere, I also DO it everywhere and so does my wife and so does my child. We are also together but not really together as one of us is usually buried into the little screen of some electronic device.

There have been a million articles written on how these things are destroying our attention span and how they are overwhelming us with information so I'm not going to regurgitate any of that, I am more interested in the evolutionary aspect of the phenomenon.

Everyone thinks "evolution" specifically refers to the Ascent of Man and of course it does, but if you'll notice the 4th figure in the Ascent of Man is carrying a spear. Evolution is as much about cultural changes and the tools that cause those cultural changes as it is about the extra vertebra and opposing thumbs.

For example: It is said that early man was lactose intolerant until he learned how to farm cattle and therefore developed the gene that allowed him to drink milk without shooting diarrhea halfway up the cave wall. Based on this it is a fairly safe assumption that loin cloths were not known for their absorbent properties and that early cavemen probably smelled like Charlie Sheen after a week long bender, consequently early man's sense of smell was not nearly as sensitive as ours is today.

It is with these thoughts in mind that I realized that the tools which will help the human race to our next evolutionary step are these little hand held devices.

In 50 generations from now we will communicate via text, email and chatrooms. We will forget how to speak so we will physically evolve in a way where we are born without voice boxes. We will develop languages based around the acronym that would seem alien and gibberish to us if we saw it today.

Our eyes will grow large but our eyesight will grow poor from straining at the little screeens. We will look (and probably move like) those nocturnal sloths that David Attenborough is always chasing through the jungle at very low speeds.

We will go completely deaf due to overuse of headphones and eventually our ears will just seal up and disappear due to lack of use. This will give us an entirely round cranium and we will start to resemble a very large eyed version of Charlie Brown.

We will get fat through lack of exercise to the point where our offspring are just born fat, blind and deaf. On the upside our fingers will grow shorter and move at lightning fast speeds as typing is the only way we can communicate.

In short we will be huge nocturnal eyed blobs with stubby lightning fast fingers, a big round head and no ears!

Personally I can't wait. I'm already halfway there!

A Country Song for Bruce Cantley.

2011-11-03T21:50:00.003-04:00

I spent my last 5 dollars on PBR,

In a Williamsburg, Brooklyn Hipster Dive bar.

The fairy lights on the ceiling couldn’t mask how I was feeling

as I looked at you in your faux-working class glory,

Drinking crap 5 dollar beer and telling your stories.

You were talking about Oasis’ split and Noel

but when you went to the jukebox you played Billy Joel.

You think it’s ironic to play something shit, Tears for Fears,

Debbie Gibson or some other 80’s hit.

You wear pre-ripped skinny jeans which

slowly cut off the blood flow

right to your balls

and that extra small t-shirt

from Williamsburg Music hall.

Your politics lean just a little to the left

And you hate that the rich are engaging in theft.

You’d Occupy Wall Street but not right now

Because Daddy’s portfolio is still a cash cow.

You play with your iPad and Droid

get a corporate electronic erection.

But with Joe-90 glasses on your face

that huge beard and that acned complexion.

The ladies will hardly swoon.

It’s a safe bet to say

you won’t be making trust fund babies anytime soon.

The Caterpillar branded trucker hat that you wear on your head

was made for you by a kid in China who’s probably now dead.

But thank god for your shriveled balls and your girlfriend’s cavernous vagina

You’ll never be able breed and the human race’ll be finer.

The recession is here and 5 dollars for crap beer

Is just fucking stupid to me but thanks to you

and your whole yuppie crew

My drinking days are through

Because you can’t get drunk

And you won’t get far,

When you spend your last 5 dollars on PBR,

In a Williamsburg, Brooklyn Hipster Dive bar.

Let's Occupy Existence.

2011-10-11T19:56:00.008-04:00

I've been trying to figure out why I am not more engaged with the Occupy Wall Street protests beyond reposting and commenting on stuff online. In my student days I was a member of the Student Union and went to anti-apartheid marches, anti-poll tax rallies and anti-student loan protests. Later I was a member of the Labor Party (campaigning for Tony fucking Blair of all people), and when I worked at the BBC, a member of BECTU (Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union).

Now I am sitting here clicking on a mouse, sharing information and helping push the message for a movement that I can't quite decide how I feel about. I know they have the right ideas and I admire their tenacity and use of the media but something is bothering me and I can't quite work out what it is.

There are various manifestos posted on line, and also various people who say there should be no manifesto at all. This is part of my problem I think. There needs to be some kind of concrete manifesto, even if it is an entirely idealist one that will never be realized. They are after all fighting against a system that is built on an illusion, the illusion of worth. That dollar bill or euro note in your hand is just a piece of paper until it is notarized, then it instantly becomes valuable. Why? Illusions.

It sounds silly but when you have major party candidates running for President on a platform of zero taxes or abolishing the federal reserve then you have to start thinking. Illusion.

Start getting some concrete ideas and aims. Stop acting like a bunch of directionless hippies. Abbie Hoffman might have been a fun guy but I doubt he really changed anything significant in the cultural zeitgeist so stop trying to be him.

At this point I think I should add that I hope my own observations in all of this are completely wrong. I will be very happy if they are and this movement actually does coalesce into some kind of viable revolution.

The hippy analogy is one that the press will obviously continue to overuse and I don't wish to add to that particular pile-on so let me make this argument.

The real social change in the 60's came about by grassroots community organizing by people like the SDS and the Black Panthers. They went into the schools, they started soup kitchens and built community centers. Almost every activist I have met who is still involved in politics got involved at a grassroots level like that and they are the people, through hard work and patience and tenacity, that have affected real change, not a group of photogenic flower children.

It disturbs me that the Occupy Wall Street movement did not start until the destruction of the banks and corporations and other non-democratic organizations spread to the middle class. Those same people have been enslaving and ripping off working class people in every country in the world for decades, why was there no real outrage until the property bubble burst, college fees skyrocketed and unemployment reached 10%?

If you've read any Naomi Klien or even more mainstream writers like Paul Krugman then you'll know that the economic destruction reaped on the working classes is not an accident. It has been a very deliberate and slow erosion of human rights in the name of profit. They've been screaming that message from the rooftops for years but no-one seemed to care. Again, it was the loss of the middle class dream that spurred the Occupy Wall Street people into action.

I'm Scottish and I'm aware we tend to be over obsessed with class struggle and again I hope I am wrong and I hope this movement serves as a catalyst for the kids involved to go on to much greater things and to stay involved in politics at a grassroots level after the occupation is over. That may be the real revolution.

Contradicting the Irish in Me.

2011-10-03T19:37:00.020-04:00

A couple of weeks ago I found myself standing on 238th Street in the Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale looking up 128 steps. At the top of the steps was An Beal Boct Cafe, a great Irish pub that pours a fantastic pint of Guinness (one of the best in NYC in my opinion), and at the bottom of the stairs was me. In between us lay my total lack of fitness and a little motivation that was only driven by the thought of that creamy pint at the top of the concrete beanstalk.

I didn't count the steps but I know it was 128 since at least 3 people that I talked to later in the day took the pains to point out that there are 128 of them and they climb the damn things everyday.

"128 feckers I tell you!".

After about 40 or 50 steps I was starting to get out of breath. It may have been altitude sickness, after all I rarely go north of 14th street, but more likely it was just a condition known as "Fat Bastarditis". I sat down on the steps for a rest and turned around to enjoy the view of the 2 lithe 20-somethings striding up the steps 2 at a time, and who overtook me with a look like I was a dog log that they couldn't be bothered wiping off their shoe.

Slightly offended and therefore freshly motivated, I rose slowly to my feet wheezing like a 90-year old emphysema patient and started mournfully plodding up the stairs again. By this time I was doing a pretty good impersonation of a gasping fish floundering for water and I could see an angelic pint of Guinness beckoning me ever onwards.

Reaching the top I expected a guy to be standing there with a tinfoil blanket and a medal that says "Congratulations you came 9000th in the New York Marathon" but alas there was only more hill. A hundred yards up the road I could see the sign for An Beal Boct and instant alcoholic redemption.

Dragging my bloated corpse in the door I collapsed down at the bar and instantly remembered why I had put myself through this. An Beal Boct is a great bar and probably the closest thing that New York City has to a genuine craic.

Within 10 minutes I was deep in conversation with John the barman and a union carpenter named Tommy who had just finished working a 19 hour day and was having a hard time just focusing on the horizon.

The bar itself is one of those places that feels lived-in. It is only 20 or so years old (which is nothing by proper Irish bar standards) but it smells older. The varnish, Guinness, pre-smoking ban nicotine and ammonia mix together with years of discarded skin cells and blood and guts to make that smell. It is a combination that is unique and I love it. It's also rare, especially in America.

A good craic is always free flowing and can veer off anytwhere. After a bit of yapping about carpentry, obsessive compulsive disorder and the homeless people who live in the Amtrak tunnels of the Westside of Manhattan I bring up the subject of the stairs.

"There's 128 of them" Tommy and John say at the same time.

"When I was a kid I used to ride down them on a beer tray in the winter. Beats any sledding hill in the Bronx" John added.

The conversation moved from there to the Beatles, then to Irish history and Scottish history and the differences between the two. It was a lovely spontaneous bee-bop like flow and I was sorry I had to end it but I had to head back down the stairs to meet a friend.

I said my goodbyes, promising to be back (it's true, despite the stairs I will be back there to see Andy Irvine perform on Oct 13th). My belly now swelled by a quick 5 pints of Guinness, I walked out to the top of the stairs and tried to imagine riding down them on a beer tray but my bum started to hurt at the mere thought so I started my descent on foot.

At the bottom of the stairs I stopped in an old man bar called The Punch Bowl. There was nobody in there except one old Father Jack look-alike at the bar and the barman himself who looked like he hadn't seen the sun in several centuries.

"Arrghhyeedass" said the old guy at the bar.

I'd no idea what he said so I just told him I just came down the stairs from An Beal Boct.

"There's 128 of them" the barman said.

"Thanks, I know".

"Arrrgtyyyrrfuck" said the old man.

"Oh really? What makes you say that?" I said, still having no idea what he was talking about.

"Fuckarrrrgggeiisss". He then started laughing, either that or he was having some kind of fit. He was drooling big lines of spit down his chin and waggling his tongue from side to side.

I made up my mind to quicly finish my beer and hit the road. After An Beal Boct the Guinness in the Punch Bowl was utilitarian at best. At this point I met up with my friend Greg and we headed downtown to a pub called Connolly's in Times Square to see an Irish-American band called Shillelagh Law.

Connolly's is a borderline "Plastic Paddy" joint. Plastic Paddy meaning a celebration of all things stereotypically Irish, shamrocks, Guinness, James Joyce quotes on the wall, etc, etc.

However, I'd say it's borderline since it's kind of been around long enough to actually have some substance, unlike other bars in the neighborhood with names like "Lansdowne Road" and "Kevin St James". It's also home to the band Black 47 who's lead singer wrote a highly enjoyable book called "Green Suede Shoes" and who were known as an activist band during the days of the struggles.

This is where things start to get murky. There are plenty of things I love about Irish culture, and there are actually plenty of things I love about American culture too, but combine the two and it seems to bring out some of the worst people imaginable.

The struggles for me were always left leaning. The Father of the struggles, and indeed the person who the bar is named for, James Connolly said: "The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave".

Pretty fucking forward thinking for Ireland in 1912 I'd say.

So Shillelagh Law come on and they are pretty good, in fact I'd say musically they are excellent. You can tell they are all really great trad players in their own right but at some point The Pogues and East Coast Irish culture invaded their bloodstream to create this new smorgasbord of music.

I'm watching a group of kids down the front who may or may not be underage and they are really getting into it, slam dancing and moshing to these old jigs and reels mixed into a punk ethos and it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy to see them appreciating tunes which in some cases are hundreds of years old (albeit with new Yankee lyrics).

About halfway through the set the fiddle player dedicates a song to some local trade union and everybody applauds and I'm thinking Connolly again: "Without the power of the Industrial Union behind it, Democracy can only enter the State as the victim enters the gullet of the Serpent".

But then after one song which the band dedicated to a fire fighter who died on 9/11, the young kids started chanting "USA, USA, USA!". I was momentarily dumbfounded, then perplexed as I thought this mindless patriotic bullshit only exists on the right and weren't they just applauding a trade union song 10 minutes ago?

Patriotism is like an alien life form to me, I see it but I don't understand it. I call myself a 90-minute patriot. When the game is over and Scotland have inevitably lost at football, I take off the jersey and rejoin Planet Earth. My country is just as shitty as your country and vice versa. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The firefighter didn't give his life because he was an American, he gave his life because he was a firefighter and he cared about human beings regardless of where they were from.

It soured my night and I left wondering about those young kids. They have a great chance to appreciate something which is old and progressive at the same time. That music Shillelagh Law were playing couldn't have come directly from Ireland. It needed to be blended with the cultures in Boston and New York and the other Irish enclaves of the East Coast. At the same time, the politics have become regressive and Irish-Americans seem to have lost sight of the persecution their forefathers worked to escape from.

I finished my Guinness and we headed home passing the Connolly quote on the wall that reads:

"Just as it is true that a stream cannot rise above its source, so it is true that a national literature cannot rise above the moral level of the social conditions of the people from whom it derives its inspiration". - James Connolly.

Welcome to the Terrordome

2011-09-11T06:52:00.012-04:00

As I write this it is 10 years to the day that some religious nutters killed 3000 people a few blocks from where I am sitting. I remember the day very clearly (as does anyone who was in New York that day) but I am not going to talk about that, I've done it here before and the time has come to move on.

The only thing that makes this year any different from the last 9 is that it falls on a multiple of 5. Oh and the Iraq Body Count now stands at 111,937. That is approximately 37.31 times 9/11. Note, that is only Iraq. I didn't include the dead in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen or anywhere else that has been bombed to smithereens in the last decade. Iraq Body Count also only includes verifiable civilian deaths, the real number is probably a lot higher.

A lot of friends have been posting updates on Facebook along the lines of "Never Forget", I personally have no problem with that but lets stop living in the past and take a look at the present and the future.

This future is being presented to me right now outside the front door. Cops and men with machine guns behind barricades everywhere. It reminds me of my first visit to Belfast in the late 1980's except that this is no occupying force, this is our very own elected representatives doing it for "our safety".

Sure, I don't doubt that there are nutters out there who would like nothing better than to blow something up today but how is that any different from yesterday or next Tuesday. If those fuckers really want to do it they will, you can flood Downtown Manhattan with all the cops and army personnel you want and they'll probably blow something up in Pittsburgh.

Once you come to this realization then you understand that the cops and army folk all around you with their big guns are only there to provide the illusion of security. Sometimes it is an illusion that doesn't even make sense, over the course of the last week I have seen army guys with M-16 machine guns standing around inside crowded train stations. What the hell good are those guns in an enclosed and crowded space? They aren't any good, it's just an illusion.

I don't want this to come off as an anti-authoritarian post, it's not. I am well aware of the fact that many of the people who lost their lives that day were police and firemen who rushed into the building to try and save others. The cops and the firemen are not the problems here, the politicians are. Hell, the first responders aren't even invited to today's ceremony.

Bloomberg, Guilliani, Dubya, Obama and all the rest of the politicians just want their photo opportunity and a chance to cry crocodile tears. They need to do this to justify all the wars and people they have killed since that day. I hate to sound so cynical but it really bothers me and after 10 years it has the appearance of nothing but taking advantage of other people's grief.

They say the world became a more dangerous place on September 12th 2001, I call bullshit, it's no more dangerous than it was on September 10th 2001. The only thing that changed was our perception, finally our foreign policies came home to roost and we didn't like it.

The Injustices of the Kindergarten Experience.

2011-09-05T20:26:00.006-04:00

It's the last day of summer and tomorrow my daughter will start kindergarten. It seems like only yesterday that she was still learning to walk so it's a little shocking to my poor time-lapsed brain that 5 years have passed since she was born and I don't even remember changing my underpants let alone the whole "Oh shit, here comes school" thing.

Kindergarten aka "Primary 1" to the Scots reading this is really the point where your memory actually starts to kick in and you start retaining stuff. She will see and do stuff this year that she will remember for the rest of her life, at least that was the way it was for me.

Primary 1 for me was when I learned that sometimes the world can be very unfair and that justice is definitely subjective to the whims of a probably half-drunk mad catholic teacher.

It all started in the playground where my friend Paul Clark started a "pile-on". This is where a kid grabs another kid that they either do not like, or just enjoy bullying, and wrestles them to the ground. At which point a third kid will scream "pile-on" and everybody will jump on top of the two kids on the ground.

It's a stupid thing to do really as the bully is quite often just as badly crushed as the original target and the amount of bodies with flailing legs and arms will easily take out some of those already loose baby-teeth.

Anyway so Paul starts a pile-on and I'm having nothing to do with it but this girl Patricia Rafferty comes barging into me and I fall into the pile of bodies somewhere in the middle. Some kids are screaming, more kids are laughing and I am just trying to wriggle free as I wanted nothing to do with this.

Unfortunately, just as I wriggle free and stand up, Mrs MacDonald the Primary 1 teacher comes running out the classroom screaming blue bloody murder at us. She knows the drill, the bodies towards the bottom of the pile are the perpetrators and the person on the very bottom is the victim.

I figure I am going to be alright as I see her wade into the bodies and start pulling people out. She grabs Paul Clark by the ear and pulls him to his feet, then to my horror, she starts making a beeline for me and grabs me by the ear too before dragging us both to the headmasters office.

I protest: "Miss, Miss, I didnae have anyhing to dae wae it! Ah was only standing by and I goat knocked intae the pile".

"Likely story McGrath. I saw you climbing out from under the pile of bodies" she said.

I realized then that if I had just waited it out I would have been in the anonymous group of arms and limbs and I would not have been singled out. Instead I had scampered out and caught her attention.

"I wisnae Miss, honest ah wisnae!".

She dragged us both by the ear down the long corridor towards the headmasters office and made us sit outside on these two big leather chairs while she went inside and spoke to Mr Budis, the long suffering head master.

Directly opposite the headmasters office was the staff room where the teachers took their break and where my Mum, a teacher of the Primary 5 class, was sitting. I prayed to Jesus, the Pope and all the "black babies" I'd ever given money to help me now. If my Mum came out the staff room while I was sitting there I was dead for sure.

Paul was sitting alongside me sniffing and crying and saying "Ah dinnae want to go in there, he's goannie belt us" and I was sitting sniffing and crying and saying "Ah wantae git in there before ma mam comes out the staff room and kills me dead right where I'm sitting".

In the end we both didn't get our wishes. Just as Mr Budis opened his door and beckoned us in, the staff room door opened and my Mum walked out from a gigantic cloud of cigarette smoke just to see the back of me going into the office.

She said "Just a minute" and turned me round to check it was me, then she said "I'll talk to you later" in that tone of voice that really means "You're dead!". At that point I knew anything Mr Budis did was going to be easy to deal with compared to what waited at home.

Mr Budis said "Come in boys and stand against the wall".

We walked inside and stood where we were told. Mrs MacDonald stood in the back of the room giving us the evil eye. She was obviously enjoying herself.

"Put your hands out, one on top of the other" he said, then he reached into the drawer of his desk and pulled out his leather strap.

"Waaaaah!" Paul cried and started shaking before anything had even happened. I didn't cry because I was now getting furious. I hadn't had anything to do with the pile-on, nothing at all, I knew this was a serious injustice.

"HANDS OUT IN FRONT OF YOU!" Mr Budis shouted. We meekly put our hands out in front.

Mr Budis swung the strap at Paul first and Paul's self-preservation instinct made him pull his hands back so the strap missed entirely. "HANDS OUT NOW!" Budis screamed and brought the strap down a second time, this time it made contact with Paul's hand and he screamed in pain.

"OKAY, YOUR TURN" he said to me. I stood there fuming but kept my hands out. He brought the strap down and it stung like mad but I was so angry at the injustice I managed to suppress my yelp and only my eyes teared up.

This went on 5 more times and almost every time Paul pulled his hand away whilst I just stood there and took it. I managed to get through all "Six of the belt" without crying and I felt good at not having given them the satisfaction.

It definitely hurt physically but it hurt much much more mentally. For the first time I learned that justice is not always fair and the good guy does not always win. A pretty depressing thing to find out when you are 5 years old.

My anger lasted for the rest of the day and I guess I was still angry when my Mum finished teaching and came to take me home. She asked me what had happened and I told her the whole story, the CORRECT version, and that I'd had nothing to do with the pile-on. There must have been something about my tone of voice because to my amazement she believed me and marched me back into school where she confronted Mrs MacDonald over her version of events. I was left to sit outside the classroom and I could hear them arguing inside, two colleagues arguing not just Mother to Teacher. After 10 minutes Mrs MacDonald came outside and apoligized to me. She said she had talked to Paul Clark and he'd told her I had nothing to do with it. I knew she hadn't, she'd only been talking to my Mum and Mum had straightened her out.

I went home in the car that night with mixed emotions. I was completely baffled and annoyed and upset that things do not always work out the same way they do at the end of children's comics with the good guy winning, but at the same time I was very proud of myself for not crying when I was getting belted and even more proud of my Mum for sticking up for me.

She was a good lady. Thanks Mum.

* As a post-script to this, it just came back to me that I was at my Mum's funeral and an old lady came up to me in the Church. She said "You must be David" and I said "Yes" but I had no idea who she was. She said "I'm Mrs MacDonald, I was your Primary 1 teacher".

Fucking. hell, the old bat must have making sure Mum was actually dead.

In a consumerist paradise, everything is compromised.

2011-09-01T11:58:00.007-04:00

This morning I had to buy myself a new ipod charger so I took a stroll along Church St past all the little shopfronts that sell knock-off versions of products. Eventually I found one selling the charger I needed for $10. Deal! I took it home, plugged it in and it worked perfectly. A real Apple charger would have cost me twice the price at least.

After my ipod was charged up I started looking at this thing and I immediately felt bad that I had bought a knocked off version. Who knows who made this thing and what kind of conditions they had to work under. Also, who knows where the money goes? Criminal gangs? Religious nutters? It could only be bad.

But then I started thinking about Foxconn, the Chinese company who manufacture Apple products among other things. This is the REAL product. The one with the logo on the side of it and people are still dying to get it to your big box store shelf.

Which one is worse? I can't decide. Sure the criminal gangs who are probably running the knock-offs have other horrible things going on, prostitution, human trafficking and general religious fucknuttery. Sounds bad right?

It does, but when you start looking at these people from a moral standpoint and you realize that they have no morals, then you feel you should contrast it with a company that is supposed to provide decent working conditions, a living wage and working hours that won't make you jump out the fucking window.

The company is supposed to have morals. They have to be held to a different standard than a criminal gang. It's the same way governments and the rule of law are supposed to be held to a different standard than terrorists - Governments don't kill civilians on purpose, terrorists do.

Companies unfortunately use the same excuse that governments do when it comes to this sort of stuff. We didn't know, it was our contractor, we'll get them to end the offensive practices immediately, etc, etc. It applies to Foxconn as it applies to Blackwater and the CEO or President doesn't know anything about it.

It's all rubbish of course.

So as a consumer how do you live with yourself when you start thinking about this stuff? I do try to consume as little as possible but admittedly I do own branded products and I do like some branded products over others (Apple - insert free Ipad 2 here). I just don't like my products to have blood on them.

Nothing to see here, move along.

2011-08-31T20:39:00.011-04:00

Well after being on a roll and posting a bunch of stuff in the space of two weeks, I've hit another dry spot. Mostly it is because I've been working 12-hour days for the last three weeks and by the time I get home all I want to do is fall face down on the couch like a giant blubbery invertebrate.

I'd also probably blame it on the fact that when you work 12-hour days, life tends to get very one-dimensional and boring. You wake up, you go to work, you drink a cup of coffee, you scratch your head and your balls and decide you need a shit and then you go home. You then repeat this formula until you suffer a bald-spot, raw balls and an anal prolapse.

It was at some point last week, just shortly before I was considering scratching my head and taking a jobby that the earthquake hit. A few days after that, sometime between the morning coffee and a deadening conversation with the bus driver, Michael Bloomberg came on the telly and said we should all prepare to die because there was a really big fucking swirly thing in the sky and the weathermen said it was heading straight for New York City. Hello Hurricane Irene.

The earthquake was definitely an interesting experience since it was my first. Yes, I never even knew I had it but I lost my earthquake virginity.

I work in the 2nd floor a beautiful old art deco building built in 1930. Solid stone and definitely not the kind of thing that will fall down easily. It is for that reason that when the building started to shake it was doubly disturbing. If I worked in some new crappy paper-mache construction I could understand the shaking but I work in the Robert Mitchum of buildings; old and hard as fuck.

The first few seconds felt just like a big truck going past, we all kind of looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders. Then a wave came through, literally a wave, there was a trough and a crest of shaking power and you could feel it. At that point every sphincter in the room collectively tightened, kind of like they do whenever the Pope is around.

What the fuck....

Some of the people who were here were in the same room on 9/11 when the World Trade Center came down and as it is only a few blocks away I think that was the first thought in everybody's mind. Another attack....

We switched on the TV (kind of ironic considering I am a TV broadcast engineer) and immediately every channel was full of earthquake this and earthquake that. There was a palatable sense of relief around the room that it was at least safe to step outside however also a sense of disbelief since those kind of things never happen in New York.

No-one died, no buildings fell down, some people went nuts but more people went drinking and enjoyed the moment. Then Bloomberg came on the telly, put on his best Cane Toad face and told us all to get the fuck out of New York because death was riding in on a cloud.

The collective relief of having survived an earthquake quickly dissipated and mass psychosis took over instead. Everybody headed to the supermarket and bought every packet of crisps they could get their hands on. Frozen pizzas flew off the shelves and every chocolate bar in New York City was squirreled away to a safe deposit box under the floorboards as people determined that if they were going to die, then they would die like big fat Americans.

I walked into the supermarket after work the Thursday before the hurricane was due to hit. I remember thinking "Wow, this isn't so bad, there are a lot of fruit and veg left" but then I passed through the healthy stuff to junk food area and it was completely cleaned out. I saw one guy walk past with 5 frozen pizzas in his basket, I wanted to point out that you can't really cook frozen pizza by candle-light but thought better of it.

On Friday I cleaned out my backyard of all potential flying objects, even the bowl of salsa that had been sitting outside for 3 weeks since our last party was brought inside much to the disgust of the bugs that had been eating it. The toys had to come in too the last thing I wanted to do was die by being hit on the head by a flying Dora The Explorer chair. That would be embarrassing. Almost as embarrassing as being decapitated by a flying Phil Collins album.

When the storm came on Saturday, I could be found online examining FEMA floodmaps, all of which helpfully showed that the flood plain ended two houses away from me. Not very reassuring. All I needed was for one junk food bloated American to go for a swim and my basement would be ruined!

On Saturday afternoon the winds got up and didn't stop for a full 16 hours. I'm sure I've been in windier gusts but I'd never seen anything as sustained as this, it just blew constantly and hard.

I have a giant maple tree outside the back of my house and that thing started to dance like mad. I looked out my window before going to bed and it was like the tree from Poltergeist, at any moment you felt like one of the branches was going to fly in and grab you. Needless to say we pushed the wardrobe in front of the window and went to sleep.

Next morning I almost didn't want to open my eyes, I was afraid to go downstairs in case it was flooded. In the end I actually jumped out of bed because we got a phone call from from the power company saying they were about to cut off the electricity due to flooding. I ran downstairs to make a pot of coffee before this happened and thankfully it was dry. We had a wee bit of water in the basement but nothing too serious.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for people only half-an-hour down the road.

There has been a lot of talk of government over-reacting to this storm but my gut says we were just really fucking lucky it wasn't worse. Cane toad face did the right thing.

So anyway, as you can see, I've had nothing to write about. Hopefully it stays like this.

My Selective Memories of My Dad.

2011-08-15T20:08:00.003-04:00

My Father died 30 years ago this week. I was thinking about him today and thought I should really try to sit down and write something in his memory but I wasn't sure I would know where to start.

I was 9 years old when he passed. I don't remember that much about him except that he had white hair and his face felt like sandpaper when he hugged you. He also smoked cigars, drank McEwan's Export and wore a flat cap like almost all Scottish-Irish men of his generation.

He was a radio operator in World War 2 but never saw action, instead he spent the war intercepting German radio transmissions on the Isle of Man. The story goes that he was based out of Glasgow but there was a sergeant he hated so much that he requested a transfer, he expected to be shipped off to North Africa, instead he was shipped off to Douglas. That would be the furthest he would ever travel from Glasgow outside of a silver jubilee trip him and my Mum took to Ireland in the 1970's. He was not a travelling man.

He had a law degree but became a teacher instead. I'd like to think there was some kind of moral choice involved in this where he thought that being a teacher was more important than being a lawyer but I think it is more likely he just lacked the confidence for law and the fact that there were very few Catholic Lawyers in Scotland at the time. If you didn't know the funny hand-shakes you couldn't join the club.

He worked his way up from teacher to headmaster then to head of a teacher training college in Glasgow. Along with my Mum, my Aunt, and a good number of my Brothers and Sisters, he formed what my English teacher once called "The McGrath teaching mafia" throughout Catholic schools in the West of Scotland. My English teacher learned how to be a teacher under my Dad.

When he got sick, they amputated his big toe first. I was told that he had caught his toe under the accelerator in the car. Maybe he did but I remember thinking "Why would he be driving without any shoes on?". I had no reason to doubt him. After that there were a lot of hushed discussions going around the kitchen table but no-one ever really told me what was happening.

I used to get dressed for school beside the heater hidden behind the clothes horse in the kitchen. I remember being there listening to my parents in shock when they heard on the radio that John Lennon got shot. Little did I know 8 months later my Dad would be dead too.

They made up a bed in the living room for him, an old pull down sofa that had previously been reserved for visitors. I played around that bad while the cancer ate away at him but he never once told me he was feeling too sick and to leave him in peace. He would fall asleep and I would play in the hallway outside the door.

Pretty soon he got too ill and was taken to a hospice. I didn't know the difference between a hospice and a hospital so I thought there was a chance he would still get better. He used to sit in a chair facing a big window and I would go and visit him on Sundays. He seemed to be shrinking and aging rapidly but I still didn't know what it meant.

On the day he passed away I came downstairs and saw my two sisters crying and cradling the telephone receiver between them. When I asked what was wrong they just said Dad had taken a turn for the worst. A few hours later my Mum came home and told me he'd died, I didn't understand it and asked her if it was okay if I could go out and play football.

I went over to my friend Davy's house, his Mum answered the door and asked "How's your Dad doing?".

"Oh, he died this morning" I said. She gasped and put her hand over her mouth because she knew him from Church. I just asked if Davy wanted to come out and play football. We played football all day then I went home.

I remember all of that day very clearly but I don't remember much about the funeral at all. I was at the mass but I never went to the graveside. My Uncle John took care of me and we spent some time in the shopping center where he bought me a radio controlled car that I had my eye on for a while.

He died right after school had started, I'd been back from summer holidays for a week and then had another week off for the funeral. When I went back to school everyone knew because it was Catholic school and they all went to the same church. Some kids said sorry but others teased me about my Dad being dead. I remember being upset but I don't think any of us knew what it meant.

Nothing seemed real. Surely he was coming back. I think I asked my Mum when we were going to visit Dad in the hospital again. It was only a few months later when we were on a weekend trip to St Andrews that the enormity of it hit me. I was walking down the street and just suddenly burst into uncontrollable tears. It completely came out of nowhere and it shocked the hell out of me and scared the hell out of my Mum.

Fast forward 16 years and I am working at the BBC World Service as a technical operator listening to short-wave radio broadcasts from around the world. History is repeating itself.

I am sitting in my bedsit in Reading, England. It's 3 o'clock in the morning on August 16th and I am totally shitfaced on wine. I have written some drunken gibberish about how much I miss my Dad and how my character might have been completely different if he'd been around to guide me through my teenage years.

I still have the stuff I wrote that night but I am not going to share it verbatim, I will however say that it is mostly self-pitying drunken crap. One thing that stands out is the idea that somehow life could have been very different.

I now think this is mostly unlikely, sure my younger years were pretty directionless and full of drink, drugs and unemployment, but having my Dad around would have probably just added to the resentment that is inherent in all kids that age. I'd already lost the Catholic faith by then (or it lost me) and I am sure that his old school Irish ways would have probably annoyed me.

My Mum did a good job raising me without him and a lot of the stuff I wrote that night undermines the credit she deserves.

Fast forward again to 2006 and Mum is being buried alongside him in Eastfield Cemetery, 2 months short of 25 years to the day he died. I realize I am looking at his gravestone for only the second time in my life. I saw it once a few years after he died then all the photos of him came down in our house I never saw it again until we buried Mum.

It says "Harry McGrath B.L" on it.

I ask my brother what "B.L." means and he says "Bachelor of Laws". Up to that point I had completely forgotten about the law degree and it struck me just how few memories of my Dad I actually have.

I remember one time when Me and him went out to buy morning rolls in the town of Crail in the East Neuk of Fife. We had this favorite place called "Fife Ness" that was about 3 or 4 miles out of town and we would drive there and comb the beach for stones and bits of pottery whilst we waited for the rest of the family to wake up.

This time we were out there and it was pissing rain and the car broke down. There was nothing out there except the beach and an old World War 2 airfield. We walked home in the cold wet and I think that might have been the only time I ever heard the old man curse.

And that's about it. I don't think it was because he was an unfeeling man but I don't really remember anything else. I have seen photos of me and him together and I have vague memories of the photos being taken but my brain does not allow me to remember what I was feeling or thinking at the time.

It's almost like his death was so traumatic that there were two childhoods, B.D and A.D, "Before Death" and "After Dad". Now I am a Dad myself and I wish I remembered more to try and pass something on to my daughter but I'm content with the idea that he was just a good person who raised a big family that have all done very well and who still get along together (most of the time). That is testament enough in this day and age.

Thanks Dad.

The good old days when the only thing that stopped you from getting stomped by an elephant was a poxy wee wooden fence.

Blind frustration.

2011-08-12T18:42:00.000-04:00

There was a woman on the bus screaming into her cellphone. I fall over her bag which is sticking out in the walkway. On the street a man behind me is walking so close to my heels I can hear his fingers beep beeping away as he writes another dumb text message. The scaffolding is in a slightly different place from the last time I walked past here or maybe I am just 2 feet slightly to the right. Whatever the cause is, I shoulder crash into it and cause cellphone man to throw his phone up in the air in front of him cursing: "why don't you look where you are fucking going!" before he sees the cane and scampers off sheepishly into the distance.

It's one of those days, my mind is running slow and the calculations that I need to make as a blind person are not quite up to speed with my walking. It's being overwhelmed by the incessant chattering and constant movement of people with no levels of self-awareness. I am deaf as well as blind but I keep my ipod turned on because the music helps me concentrate.

I know I should slow down but I can't and I am asking for trouble. Cars, bicycles, fire hydrants, children, dogs, gyro trucks, bollards and scaffolding had better watch out because I am coming through and immovable objects won't stop me.

I rub the area around by shoulder where I bumper car'd the scaffolding and know that it will be a nice shade of blue tomorrow. Instinctively I also reach down and rub my left shin where I walked into the open door of the dishwasher a year ago and can still see the discoloration.

Some days are just tougher than others. It's the little things that really bug me more than anything. The pen that I just put down and then can't find it. The garbage that used to be there and is now over there a mere 2 feet away. A 2 foot difference that will result in me doing a superman impersonation right into it.

At the end of June I found myself at the Clearwater Festival in Croton-on-Hudson with about 20,000 other people. It was to be a nice day, a bunch of old lefties on stage like Billy Bragg and Pete Seeger and the family alongside me. Something in my head went horribly wrong.

It was my first time in a big crowd like that in a long time, and my first time ever with an energetic 4-year old in tow. The combination of the two freaked me out no end and caused a mental meltdown.

I'll try to describe what it feels like to be me and what I can see, but to be honest I can't really do a good job at it. Usher Syndrome is very inconsistent and some days are much harder than others. It's also an evolving situation as I get a little blinder every year, every day if my brain tells me to micro-analyse it.

My vision is kind of like looking through a keyhole. There is a very defined clear area in the center surrounded by a kind of fuzzy electrical field of light where the retinal cells are dying and confused. On days when I am tired the electrical field can come in towards the center and everything gets blurry. On those days I have to take my time and try to slow down.

The first thing that happened at the festival was that my daughter kept disappearing. She wasn't really but all she had to do was move outside of the keyhole and I would have a heart attack. This is bad enough when Me and her are at our local playground but in a crowd of 20,000 people it is positively stressful. Add to this the fact it was happening every 3 minutes and my brain starts to hurt.

The next thing is just navigating through the crowd itself. My wife is a great help, as she always is, but I have to keep pulling my cane in to avoid people falling over it or worse, standing on it and snapping it. This leads to a feeling of great insecurity as the cane is always supposed to be one step ahead of you. When you pull it back the pattern in your brain gets interrupted and you are essentially stepping into the void.

I chastise myself for being weak willed but then I think about who else has to put up with this shit? Who else has to fucking think about just walking to the end of the path without having an accident? Who else isn't allowed to turn off and is constantly stressed? Sure there are people but I don't know any of them.

When I get in this mood an incredible selfishness comes over me, I just want to get the fuck out of there and usually end up wondering why I ever thought it was a good idea in the first place. This inevitably makes it hard on others around me.

I miss the old days when walking was one of the ways I could relax. I would wander aimlessly along the Thames for miles and miles, following dirt tracks or making new ones through the bracken. I loved those days but now they are long gone, the dirt path confuses my cane and I would just fall over the bracken.

I get angry when I realize I am complaining about stuff over which I have no control, but at the same time I also get angry when I bottle stuff up and don't have a way to release my feelings. None of this stuff is going to get any easier, I just need to get stronger.

A blind guy and a deaf guy walk into a bookstore....

2011-08-11T22:47:00.000-04:00

"My noime iss Brraaaduh" says the voice behind me that is attached to the hand that is tapping me on the shoulder. I turn around and see a graying man of about 70 years old.

"I see yhoou haave heeearing aiiids" he says, "Doy yooooo sign?".

"No I don't" I say then catch myself as I realize I am speaking normally to a profoundly deaf person. "No... I... Don't" I say looking straight at him and trying my best to annunciate my words so he can read my lips.

"Oimmmm soooooorry Iiiiii didn't catchhhe that" he says. "Wheere are yoooooo from?"

"ScoTT Lland" I say, trying to form the hard syllables so it makes my mouth more readable. It doesn't work and I realise this is going to be a long conversation.

Brad volunteers at The Used Book Store Cafe on Crosby Street in New York. This place has long been one of my favorite spaces in the city to just chill out and browse the excellent book selection. It is in this quiet place of people reading and working that I realise that I have a choice, I can either start shouting so Brad can (maybe) understand me, or I can grab a note pad out of my bag and start writing stuff down for him. I opt for the latter.

"I am from Scotland" I write, "but I live here now, in Jersey City".

He takes the notepad from me and writes "I've been in Scotland, I went to Edinburgh"

I write "That's good, did you like it?".

"Yeeeas I llllliiiked it veery mmmmuch" he says.

I feel slightly embarrassed that he is speaking again and louder than before. Then I catch myself and I remember how much I hate the sympathetic looks that people give me when they see me coming down the street with the cane.

Those looks that project some kind of vibe that says "Jesus look at that poor guy, I hope that shit never happens to me". Most of the time I feel like screaming "FUCK YOU I AM A FULLY FUNCTIONING HUMAN BEING" albeit not quite but I do okay. Women will often give me a little sympathetic smile, little do they know I am staring at their boobs.

I am now guilty of giving Brad that same look and I feel like shit for it. Do some disabled people look down on other disabled people and think "Thank fuck that's not me!", hell yeah but it's not right.

"Haaave yoooouuuu evver been tooo Helen Keller?"

I say "Yes, I've been to Helen Keller but she's never been to me" but he doesn't understand what I am saying and I doubt he'd get the reference. Musical references tend to be lost on profoundly deaf people and that is going to be a problem for me as I often speak in lines bastardized from songs.

I write on the pad: "Do you mean the Helen Keller Foundation in Brooklyn? If so, yes, that is where I learned to use my cane. They were very helpful".

"No, I meeeaann heer hhou house on Long Island".

I shake my head and write "Is it easy to get to?".

He then takes the pad off me and draws me a map. It doesn't make any sense at first then I realize he is drawing me a map of how to get to Penn Station on 34th Street. He writes "Empire State building" and "Madison Square Garden". It's nice that he is giving me landmarks but now I am starting to think that he thinks I can't see a damn thing and have no idea where I am. Obviously you don't get that many blind people in bookshops so he's probably got a point.

Thankfully his map ends at Penn station and he writes "Take the train to Southold".

I write "Thank You for the information. I have to go now", hoping to draw a line (literally) under the conversation and get back to blindly browsing through second-hand books.

I shake hands and head to the other side of the store where the "Religions" section and the "Feminism" section are. Two of my favorite subjects. Obviously. Anything to put a bit of distance between me and him.

So I'm there browsing through books on Catholicism and Islam when I feel a presence just behind me. I know it's Brad before I even turn around.

"Helllooooo aggg agga again".

I'm now thinking fuck he's following me. Again, he either thinks I have no idea where I am or he secretly wants to shag me then murder me (or vice versa). Either way it's not good.

"Hello again" I say in my normal voice. "I'm going downstairs now, I need to find some new books about... Sarah Palin... or something". I know he can't understand me and I'm being a dick but I just want to be left alone.

The bookstore has a kind of almost spiral staircase and I aim my cane at the top step. Just as I do this he grabs my arm to try and guide me at the exact moment I step forward and I miss the top step entirely. We both kind of slide down the banister, not quite falling but going too fast to catch up with ourselves until we reach the bottom. We stagger across the floor into one of those library racks on wheels and knock the entire top row of books out of it onto the floor. They are hardbacks and make an almighty crash that causes everyone in the bookstore to look at us.

I'm obviously embarrassed but I fall downstairs and tumble over stuff all the time so I'm not too shook up. I'm more concerned with Brad who, as well as being deaf, is about 70 years old.

"Are you okay?" I say slowly to him and he starts laughing very loudly indeed. People around the bookstore are starting to look at us like we are a slapstick double-act. While he is still laughing I pat him on the shoulder and say "goodbye".

Brad stays in my head for the rest of the day. I feel guilty for thinking bad thoughts about him and when I get home I decide to google the Helen Keller House in Long Island.

You can read about it here. He was obviously sending me there so he could murder me.

Some thoughts on the rioting Part 2.

2011-08-11T18:00:00.009-04:00

One of my friends asked the eternal question everyone asks when kids go bad: "Where are the parents?". As a parent I asked the question myself and here are some more thoughts on the events of the last week.

I would bet there were plenty of parents who did stop their kids from going out and looting, we just don't hear about those ones. The appeal for peace by the Father whose son was murdered by "looters" is one of the more heart-breaking moments of the whole event.

I hope people will remember his compassion and bravery more than anything else.

With that said, it's not a coincidence that the riots happened in places like Tottenham, then spread to Birmingham, Liverpool and other industrial towns. The one thing these places all have in common is that they were destroyed by the privatization and closure of the steel, coal-mining and ship building industries. All of these places prospered during the industrial revolution and then had the rug pulled out from under them by the blood letting of the Thatcher years. The jobs left and were never replaced.

I remember it well from growing up in Glasgow.

This means you have had 3 generations (at least) of people who exist on the margins of society. 3 generations of resentment and hopelessness. It's hard for parents to set an example to their kids if the parents themselves are driven into the dirt by their own existence. You can see this in almost any housing estate or Projects in the world, the UK is not unique.

The condemnation has been predictable and swift. They have been pulling kids as young as 11 into court and some rioters have already been jailed. They are also talking about cracking down on social media. People need to realize that this is all ultimately pointless, the governments and forces of law and order are so behind the curve on how to handle the new media that their condemnation will only lead to more resentment.

A volcanic eruption may seem like a sudden event but in fact the pressure has to build up underground for years before it explodes. This might just be the first trickle of lava breaking the surface.

Some thoughts on the riots.

2011-08-10T17:48:00.013-04:00

It's been strange watching the riots in the UK from afar. Violence in the streets just seems so un-British but obviously that is more an indicator that I have been away from home for such a long time. My impressions of Britain are stuck in 1998.

I've been following the coverage on the news closely but the most interesting thing has been the variety of opinion from friends on Facebook and Twitter. I've seen the whole spectrum from condemnation to empathy to outright encouragement. This has puzzled me as everybody seems to have taken just one viewpoint, human beings are supposed to be more complex than that.

Firstly, the rioters are mostly wrong. I say "mostly" because there is no doubt that these kids have a rightful grievance. They have been forgotten about and abandoned to the whims of poverty and the establishment that is supposed to set an example has fallen apart completely.

One hand of the establishment tells the kids that being violent is wrong and the other hand bombs entire villages off the face of the planet.

One hand tells the kids there is no money for education, no money for community projects. no money for decent housing whilst the other hand uses massive amounts of public money to bail out private industry.

Add to this the anti-democratic corporate collusion that has been exposed by wikileaks and then the phone-hacking scandal and the idea of functioning government for anyone other than the rich is completely compromised.

Also add to this pyre the religious organisations that hide pedophiles, a "free" press that supports illegal wars and austerity plans imposed on people by unelected bureaucrats and the pillars of society look like they are all conspiring against you.

Except when they want to sell you something.

A lot has been made of these kids breaking into stores and stealing clothing and electronics, etc etc. These kids are bombarded with the temptations of consumer addiction all day long, what did you think they would do?

Advertising is everywhere. It's not just two commercial channels on TV like it was when I was growing up, now it is in video games, music, movies, magazines, radio, the clothes they wear. Even previously public funded projects are "Brought to you by Barclays Bank" or "Funded by the McDonald's Corporation".

I personally find it overwhelming, I can only imagine what it is like for someone who has never known anything else. Buy buy buy. You have to keep up with the kid next door. The economy depends on you. Oh by the way, it doesn't matter if you can't afford it we'll keep trying to sell it to you anyway....

The song "Talkin about a Revolution" by Tracy Chapman came on my ipod when I was on my way into work today. There is a line in the song that goes "Poor people gonna rise up and take what's theirs. Poor people gonna rise up and get their share". I'm sure Tracy didn't intend it this way but my first thought was that poor people are gonna rise up and take what they are told should be theirs. Maybe some new trainers or a nice new flat-screen TV or an Xbox. Revolution is probably just the name of a deodorant now.

But anyway, I am getting off topic here. Kind of.

These kids need direction from somewhere. A few pool tables in a community center certainly won't do that by itself but perhaps just the very idea that they can be fully functioning members of society should be fostered and promoted. Instead of politicians harping on about the evil "hoodies" they should be talking about "untapped potential". Just a very simple change of message can sometimes make the world of difference.

And as for the kids themselves, burning down homes and stores only drives people further into poverty. People need places to live and jobs to go to. The establishment will crack down harder and this will lead to more abuse.

The kids are all wrong. Just because you are angry doesn't mean you are right.

Feeling small.

2011-07-28T18:53:00.017-04:00

The age of the planet you live on is apparently 4.54 billion years. If you are lucky then you might live for 80 of those years. Some of you will live more than that and some of you will live less than that.

I could work out the percentage of time that you have on this planet but to be honest I would rather express it this way: if 4.54 billion years could be squeezed into the 24 hours of one day, you would exist for less than the time it takes a fart to leave your bum. In fact you are not even a fraction of a fart. You are a future fart that somebody is thinking about that hasn't happened yet and will happen without anybody even noticing. The farter will not even notice.

Feeling small? I know I do.

You will live through wars, recessions, depressions, times of peace, times of prosperity, times of austerity, cultural changes, moral crusades, and endless episodes of Spongebob Squarepants.

It's very difficult to exist sometimes. Life is big and scary and you are very small and fragile. The prayer of the Breton fishermen summed this up as "O God, thy sea is so great, and my boat is so small". I'm not a religious person so I prefer to just say that on some days I can't see the forest for all the trees.

I am a news junkie, I always watched the news incessantly, now I not only watch the news but I read it on my phone and on my ipod. I can't stop and sometimes it is very hard to remember that these seemingly huge events going on around the world are actually a tiny, almost insignificant part of our existence. Do you think anyone will remember Osama Bin Laden 200 years from now? Just ask yourself how many people (other than historians) remember Felice Orsini or Sergey Nechayev. See? I'd never heard of them either.

Things that appear to be huge events can sometimes turn out to be just a blip on the radar of time. It's helpful to remember this as you watch the news and it feels like the whole world is turning to shit.

The stuff you see on the news is generally stuff you have no control over. The only thing that you have any control over at the end of the day is the stuff that is going on inside your own cranium. It's a cliche now (thanks a lot John Lennon!) but the revolution really does start in your own head.

When I used the phrase "I can't see the forest for all the trees" a few paragraphs ago I meant to try and see the big picture or to try and discern an overall pattern from a mass of detail. The big picture is actually very simple and it consists only of all the people you know, your family, your friends and members of your community.

These are the trees in your forest. Like any tree living alongside another tree, you have a minimal amount of influence over the way they grow. Your branches get intertwined but how they interact is all up to you and the other person. Again it's very helpful to remember this as you watch the news and it feels like the whole world is turning to shit.

At the risk of sounding more and more like an auld hippy, time to end this post here. Just turn off the news, go outside and say hello to your neighbors. Try and use what little influence you have positively and enjoy the domino effect. Life gets easier that way and you'll stop feeling so small.

Slainte.

The Bergen Avenue Racist (Extended Edition).

2011-07-26T20:34:00.023-04:00

I was walking down Bergen Avenue with my daughter when a voice behind me shouted: "Oi! Glasgow Celtic!". I looked down at my belly and sure enough I was wearing the shirt with the green and white hoops.

"Fuck" was the first thing that went through my head, "I hope he's not a Rangers supporter". It would be ironic to move 3000 miles away from Glasgow (where I never ever wore the shirt) and end up getting into a fight in Jersey City.

"Oi! Celtic" the man said again and started walking towards me. I knew the game was up immediately and being blind and shackled to a four year old that I couldn't very well leave on her own, I had nowhere to run. The ghost of sectarianism past was closing in.

The apparition materialized in front of me in a dark green track suit that was obviously recently purchased at the Rab C. Nesbitt boutique clothing store. It contained a pink humanoid of variable age, possibly a little older than myself. The pink humanoid was in turn shackled to a dog that could only be described as four legs and some teeth (it was a pitbull).

"Fuck me" I thought, "someone just graduated from the Glasgow School of Performance Art. Majoring in Stereotypes".

That's what I thought, but in reality I just opened my mouth and said: "Hello! Where are you from?".

"Ah'm frae Glasgow of course! I saw yer shirt! Celtic! The Bhoys!"

"Yeah to be honest I forgot I was wearing it", knowing now that since he'd called them the Bhoys and not the FENIAN CUNTS that I was at least on friendly ground. There was no immediate danger of being chibbed with a wooden chip fork.

"Whit ye doing here?" the apparition asked.

"Been here 12 years, what about yourself?".

"Ah'm just up the road, visitin a bhoy! Brang wan o' them Celtic shirts for his wee yin too. This is his dug! Is that yer daughter?" he asks having just spotted the little girl hiding behind my leg.

I wanted to say "No, it's just some kid that keeps clinging to my leg and I'm getting it surgically removed next week" but that seemed disrespectful to her so I just said "yeah".

He takes a $5 bill out of his pocket and tries to hand it to her, "How ye daein hen? Ye want some sweeties?".

Now she's on my leg like a sucker fish. And this is where I have to interrupt this story for a second and go back in time....

It was probably 1977 or thereabouts and I was on the bus on the way home from shopping in Glasgow with my Mum. It was one of those old Bluebird single-decker buses and it was a cold Saturday night. The bus was packed and filled with people and cigarette smoke (this is the good old days after all).

The bus was passing through the town of Steps, about half-way home, where the old Black and White whisky distillery was and a drunk guy got on. Since the bus was packed, my Mum made me sit on her knee so the drunk guy could sit down.

He'd just got off work from the distillery and proceeded, in a happy way, to regale my Mum with his tales of sampling the merchandise, a lot of which he had clearly sampled that very afternoon. I can still remember his face quite clearly and I can definitely still remember the smell of his breath that cut through the cigarette smoke like an exploding citrus.

When he found out that my favorite teddy bear was actually a Scottie Dog, he gave me his badge from work which was a little mini Black & White logo. Or at least he tried to give me the badge, I didn't want to take it and hid my face. My Mum took it for me and when I got home it became my new favorite toy.

And now back to present day....

That memory flashes across my mind as I feel my daughter clinging to the back of my leg. "How long are you in town for?" I ask, hoping he is going to say "Ah'm away hame tomora" but instead he says: "Forever!".

"And you're living in my neighborhood?" I think to myself, I'm about to say "This town isn't big enough for the two of us" then it occurs to me that he might be on the run from the police and I decide not to pursue this line of inquiry.

"Really?" I say, trying not to sound too crest-fallen. "Well have you tried any of the pubs yet?"

"Aye, ah was in that one last night! Jerry bought me ma dinner! Dae ye know Jerry? The mayor?". He points to the Astor Bar, the mayor of Jersey City's favorite watering hole.

"Yeah I've met Jerry. Never bought me dinner though".

"Ah he was nice, he was nice. By the way, can you help me out? Ah'm trying to find a place to get ma troosers pressed. Ah was just up at thon dry cleaners over there and the boy behind they counter didnae know whit I was saying".

"Oh right..."

"Aye, it's them chinkies like. They just dinnae know how tae do it. Dae ye know whur I can find a white-owned dry cleaners?"

10 seconds later... when I was done picking my jaw up off the floor, I muttered "Ehmm I don't know but I very much doubt you'll find a white-owned dry cleaners around here, or anywhere else in Jersey City for that matter. They just don't exist".

My half-Asian daughter is still clinging to the back of my leg.

"Oh right?", he seemed mystified by this concept and I could see his brain trying to formulate some kind of emotional response. Any moment I expect the steam will start coming out of his ears.

Instead he again just tries to give the $5 to my daughter. I remember my Mum and the Scotty Dog badge and take the money for her.

"There is a dry cleaners down by my house, I doubt it is owned by white people though" I tell him and then instantly regret it as it means he'll be walking the same way as us. I try to throw a save by following it up with "But we're not going that way right now, we're off to the candy store over there to get some candy, right Sweetie?". My daughter looks unconvinced but the mention of candy has gotten her bravura up. She nods meekly and I thank the God I don't believe in.

We walk off in one direction and he walks off in the other with his wrinkly trousers and his hound of hell.

Across the street is Lee Sim's candy store, an old school joint that we love to stop in on the way home from school. We step inside and the smell of chocolate hits us immediately and opens the door to a million memories, not least the one we are in the middle of creating.

The only downside to Lee Sims is that it is quite expensive, however since we now have $5 this is not a problem and I tell my daughter to get whatever she wants.

She makes a beeline for the candy that I've always said "no" to before and comes back with a bag of chocolate coins that cost $3.99. Priced it perfectly. Unfortunately as I take out his $5 bill the anger sets in.

How dare he talk like that in front of my kid. How dare he use that racist epithet in particular in front of her. She's only 4, she doesn't need to hear that shit yet, she'll experience plenty of it later in life.

I now look at the $5 bill and it feels like blood money. It feels like by accepting it that I've also accepted his bullshit language and his disrespect. I am getting very annoyed but I have to pay for the chocolate coins.

I reach into my wallet and find another $5 bill. It is absolutely identical to the one I am holding in my hand but without the invisible blood. I use this clean bill to pay for the candy. The other bill goes into my wallet and I use it later to buy myself a beer. An Asian beer.

The 1970's redux and a 3ft tall Jesus.

2010-02-06T10:40:00.016-05:00

Back in the 70's (that's the 1970's not the 1870's) in the wee dark land of heather, whiskey, haggis and mutton dingling that I sprang forth from, there used to be a company called "Alpine Soft Drinks" that delivered soda to your house in converted milk carts. Every Thursday he'd leave bottles of whatever you ordered on your doorstep and you'd have a nice bit glass of cola with your fry up. It's no wonder the Scots lead the world in tooth decay, heart attacks and self-depreciating humor.

I also remember that you got 1 pence back from the delivery guy for every bottle you returned. You could then take this 1 pence down to your local corner store and buy a bazooka joe gum from a Pakistani guy. The gum had a little comic in it and if you collected enough wrappers you could send away for stuff like X-ray specs that would allow you to look through the bras of the laydeez. Sadly, Alpine soft drinks is long gone, the x-ray specs never worked and the Pakistani guy probably wants to kill us all now.

I've been obsessing about the 1970's lately as we seem to be entering this period of economic recession and political turmoil. People are running around freaking out and crying that the world is coming to an end but I know it isn't. We are just collectively travelling back in time to the 1970's.

Everyone is bankrupt, the poor are financially bankrupt and the rich are morally bankrupt. Al Queda is the bogeyman now, in the 1970's the PLO was the bogeyman. The only difference in this case is that the PLO had a political agenda and not a nutty religious one. Religious nutters are much worse. We have a progressive (by American standards) President, it was Carter then, it's Obama now. See, we are basically living in 1977, it's just that the religious loonies are more prevalent and the music is way way worse. Carter could dance to the Clash, Obama has to dance to Creed.

The 80's was the decade that brought us Thatcher and Reagan and the mass embracing of free market economics. When the pendulum swings it swings hard and that is my fear. If we have President Palin in 2012 then we are fucked, someone needs to check the Mayan history archives for mentions of a woman in glasses who brings about Armageddon.

"And lo the holy roller bitch did smite the earth with fire".

The 70's were a time of innocence and childhood (hence my allusion to Alpine soda in the first paragraph) that I remember fondly, certainly a lot more fondly than the 1980's, when in August 1981, my childhood ended with my Dad's death.

Oh great now I just ruined my warm fuzzy nostalgia vibe.

How the fuck did I get from delivery soda to Sarah Palin to dead Dad? My mind appears to have become a mass of random thoughts and fears that are all coming to the forefront at once and screaming for attention.

Psychologists apparently believe that humans spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about sex, food and death. The reasoning being that sex is what brings us into the world, food is what keeps us here and death is what takes us out of here. Basically it is someone with a university education explaining the phrase "cradle to the grave". I wish my mind would stick to sex, food and death because all this other shite is getting me down.

Another random thought struck me recently when I read that theaverage human height apparently grows about 1.5 inches every 100 years.

Does this mean that Julius Caesar was a midget leading legions of midgets? Does it mean that if you met Genghis Khan you might just trip over him? Does it mean Jesus was probably the same height as Hervé Villechaize?

My friend conjured up this great image of Herve on the cross on Fantasy Island shouting "It's a plane, it's a plane!".

Does it also mean that all those little crosses that Christians wear around their necks are almost life sized?

It's hard being a thinker. Nothing makes sense.

Facebook stole all my best jokes.

2010-01-02T10:20:00.009-05:00

The week that past is usually bookended by 2 serious drinking sessions plus days of soul searching in between. The soul searching days are when we sit down and we gather all our guilt about eating too much and drinking too much and say to ourselves: "I'm gonna join the gym right after New Years" or "I promise to not get so drunk next time" or "I think I'll give up wanking for a week".

The next year rolls round and we rinse and repeat ad nuaseum.

I wrote that on Jan 4th, it is now January 30th and I haven't had a single unit of alkyhol since January 2nd.

Don't worry, I am not joining the temperance society of Jersey City, I just needed a break and I feel good for it. My mid-winter blues descended in the first week following the new year like the Hindenburg landing at Lakehurt, NJ. (Sneak a peak at the cover of "Led Zepplin 1" if you don't get that reference).

I realized I had to backpedal pretty fast and work out how the hell to climb out of the deep dark funk I got thrown into, stopping the drink was a no-brainer. I started a vitamin D regimen and stayed the hell out of the pubs for a month.

Now I feel much better, almost good enough to start writing again, hence this nonsense.

It's been such a long time since I wrote anything in here that I was afraid the whole blog would have just disappeared into the digital ether by the time I came back around to it. Depression has definitely been a big factor in this lack of material, but to be honest, I used all my best jokes on facebook.

Facebook eats your up life. It grabs all your best one-liners and shares them with a very select group of people, people who are not too disgusted with your references to face fucking teddy bears and bestiality, that call themselves "friends".

It's such a weird world we live in now. The six degrees of separation has been whittled down to 2 or 3 degrees. Everybody is wired and everybody has an instant ego that they want to share with you. There is no escaping and you either embrace it or sail away to a distant shore like The Kinks "Apeman".

Of course, this blog has been 3 years of ego-dumpage and [affects David Koresh voice] YOU ARE ALL MY SUBJECTS.

Apologies for the rambling nature of this note but I have not had to string more than a sound-bite together in the last year so consistency is gonna take a while to return.

Here's to a written 2010.

Murray Street Tommy

2009-08-08T11:57:00.003-04:00

"What's that?" asks the barman.

"It's my stick" I say, "I am legally blind".

"Oh sorry, I thought it was some kind of engineering thing!".

"Well... it kind of is. I mean... I engineer my way down the street with it".

And the next thing I hear is a cackling from beside me. The kind of cackling that only 30 years of smoking unfiltered cigarettes can reduce your voice to. I turn and set eyes on Tommy for the first time and he ain't pretty.

His teeth look like piano keys and the middle-C is missing. He proffers a hand and says "I like you, you are funny fucker. What is the stick for really?"

I tell him I wasn't joking, I really am legally blind.

"What? Can you see me right now?"

"Yeah I can see about 10% of what everyone else sees. I can see your face and your horrible teeth".

"Har har... hack... cough... splutter... har har... oh fuck me!" is his reply to that one. "Jesus Christ, you can't talk to me like that, I am 67 years old!"

And I think to myself he doesn't look a day over 81 but I say "But you don't look a day over 21!"

"Oh cut the crap boy!"

This is where it starts to get disjointed. As with any good old school jakey he starts to talk in non-sequiters but at the same time always returning to the subject that made him latch on to you in the first place.

"I love my country, I love my fucking country but I fear my government!".

"Have you always felt that way" I asked him, already suspecting that I knew the answer.

"Socialists. they are all fucking socialists!".

"Don't believe everything you hear on the TV" I tell him.

"What do you do for a living boy?"

"I work in TV".

"har...har....har... hack.... hack....hack".

In the old days you used to be able to tell what a man did for a living by looking at his hands. I looked at his and apart from the well developed pint-shaped curvature of his fingers I could discern nothing so I asked.

"What do you do for a living Tommy?"

"Ah fuck, I'm 67 years old you know. I could have retired already... but... I mean... what would be the point of that? I am the chief executive of the mail room in..."

I don't catch the name of the building but I dwell on the way he spat the words chief executive like someone had paid him a great insult. Nothing like giving a shitty job a grand title to further belittle the people doing it. Especially if that person is a real straight shooter like Tommy.

I take a sip of my Guinness and I can feel his eyes burning a hole in my cheek.

"Are you REALLY blind?"

"Yes, yes, I fucking am, alright?"

"Alright, no need to get your panties in a bunch. I was just wonderin".

He rolls up his shirt sleeve and flexes his muscles saying "Can you see this?"

"Yes I can..."

"Ha! There is nothing fucking there! har...har...har...hack.... howaah.......hoowah. I am 67 years old. See that over there? That's a beer pong table. I fucking lost it last night. Those fucking yuppie brats are so fucking loud. Last night I just fucking lost it. Slapped the fucking little yuppie brat. Sent the little bastard home crying".

I laugh at this and ask the barman if this is true. Apparently it is.

"How come they didn't throw you out Tommy?"

"Ah those little shits on the bar are all scared of me... har...har...har... Are you REALLY blind? I mean is there nothing they can do?".

"Nope, right now I am fucked I am afraid. Maybe in the future with stem cell research and all that"

"I am 67 years old and I can still see...."

"Well good for you" I laugh.

"There must be something... you gotta do research. Research the shit out of everything. Don't give up! Don't give up! I am gonna write down some websites for you..."

He pulls a bit of paper from his pocket and an OTB pen and writes down the websites earthclinic.com and vitacost.com. While he is doing this I notice he is a lefty and has a really hard time holding the little OTB pen. He sees me looking.

"I don't write well. I can hardly write at all. I was in a helicopter that took a hard landing in Vietnam. Fucked up my hands".

I realized now that this was where the "pint-shaped curvature" of his fingers had come from. They had all been broken and reset badly.

"Where you from Dave?", he asks, "SCOTLAND? Well let me ask you a question. Scotland, you are independent right? I mean you are not part of what do you call it..."

"The United Kingdom?" I offer...

"Yes, yes, the United Kingdom. What do they mean when they say that?"

I tell him 3 times that the United Kingdom comprises of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland but he keeps insisting that Scotland MUST be an independent country.

"Look Tommy, I grew up there. I am telling you it is not independent. Might be again one day but right now it is not".

And with that said I proceed to give him a short history lesson on Red Clydeside then the miners strike and poll tax the general rape of Scotland by Maggie Thatcher.

"Margaret Thatcher? If I was Scottish I would have told Maggie Thatcher to go fuck herself".

"Believe me Tommy we tried. She wasn't having it".

"Are you REALLY blind?"

"Jesus Christ Tommy. What do I have to do to convince you? Fall down the fucking beer cellar?"

"Har.. har... har.... hack." etc etc.

"You CAN'T give up. Research the shit out of it. You CAN'T give up".

"I know Tommy..."

"I was a Marine... a fucking marine... I am 67 years old... YOU MUST NEVER GIVE UP. Research research research..."

"I got a good eye doctor..."

He waves his mangled hands in front of his face.

"Ah doctors... fucking doctors... what do they know? Why are you looking at me like that? I am being serious!"

"I am not looking at you like anything Tommy, I'm blind remember?"

"Har..har.....hoowah....howah....hack"

"I AM SERIOUS. YOU MUST NEVER GIVE UP".

The beginning of the end (Thank god).

2009-01-17T09:45:00.007-05:00

I promised myself I would never write about the weather. Writing about the weather is like a stand-up comic starting his performance with "A funny thing happened to me on the way to the theater...", it's boring and has been done a million times before.

Well, today, I am going to write about the weather.

Holy fucknuts it's cold outside.

Some parts of Maine are hitting 50 degrees below zero, and here in the tri-state area we are at 12 below as I type this. Last night on my way home from work it was colder than that still.

Let me try to describe what this weather feels like. It is so cold it burns. Any exposed skin feels like it is going to peel off once you have been out in it for more than 15 minutes. Your eyes tear up but the tears freeze before they leave your tear ducts. It feels like someone is pressing on your eyes and sinuses with their thumbs.

The bus took 20 minutes to come and I was dancing at the bus stop like the old dancing baby screensaver and probably looking just as creepy. So it goes....

It's the last weekend of the Bush Administration. Can you believe that? Nothing makes me feel warm and fuzzy like the thought that I will never have to put up with those evangelical loonies again anytime soon.

Unless of course my recurring nightmare comes true. On Monday night, the day before Obama's inauguration, Dick Cheney is going to roll into Washington on top of a tank and martial law will be declared "in the interests of economic security". President Dick will then declare himself president for life and the country will be partitioned into 2 areas - "Jesusland" and "Prisoncamp". Pick your place but get it right because there are no born again felons.

Hold the nightmare. Roll on Tuesday.

Here's a song for the weather and Dubya

and a song for Obama

Hello 2009

2008-12-21T09:28:00.010-05:00

Well another year drew to a close and it's time for my "State of the Bunion" address - so called because my feet are sore from tramping through another year of head-scratching-what-the-fuck?

My little one is two now, and although she is a great kid... she is still a two-year old and it seems that two-year old people exist only to ask questions and cause trouble. She moves at 100,000mph and if you take your eyes off her for a second the next thing you see will be her cleaning the cat's arse with your toothbrush.

It's like a cowboy movie all day long. We stand off, hands on hips ready to pull that pistol. She gets the glint in her eye and I say "No way... whatever you are plannning... no (fucking) way..." and off she goes to do the exact opposite of what I tell her. The (fucking) part is just said inside my head, I swear a lot inside my head these days.... (Fuck this fucking blog shit is taking too long to write)

Toothbrushes are her specialty for some reason - she'll climb up on her little stool in the bathroom and take all the toothbrushes down from the sink. These toothbrushes will then do two things - they will either disappear off the face of the earth never to be seen again for a million years or they will be used to clean the cat, the toilet bowl, or the bottom of her shoes.

You will also be subjected to hours upon hours of kiddie TV shows. These will include furry pink monsters who say things like "I love to play with balls!", a Latina girl with a pet monkey and a talking backpack, and my favorite - an octopus who is best friends with a talking flower and a penguin... and on top of that has a dog that is made out of a sausage.

It's at this point that you realize that all the drugs you did in college were actually some sort of preparation for parenthood.

"See Mum, I WASN'T wasting my life!!!!"

On some days you can try - if you feel motivated enough after your 30th episode of Petey the Paintbrush - to do something that does not involve turning on the TV.

This is pro-active and healthy. It is also incredibly hard work, especially when something like painting or Play-Doh is involved.

You will start off great. The table will be nicely laid-out and the primary colours will all exist nicely in blobs side by side. However, within about 10 minutes of trying to explain how to make a donkey out of crayola dung (the pirate version of Play-doh) or how to paint a picture of an apple, you will look up from the table and your living room will suddenly look like Jackson Pollock went on a drunken rampage.

Anyway, as I write this it is now 2009 and we are 2 weeks away from inauguration day for Barak Obama. This means two things - he will be the first African-American President, a fantastic leap forward for the US but since so much has been written about this I want to concentrate on the second thing that will happen after inauguration day and that is... THE END OF 8 YEARS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION.

Oh thank god... I never thought this day would come. I thought the Thatcher years were bad but Bush made her look like a lilly livered socialist.

On January 20th I will raise a glass and toast Barak Obama and wish him all the luck in the world (God knows he's going to need it) but I will get rip roaringly drunk in celebration of the end of the Bush years.

I can almost hear the screechy little granny voice saying "Step into the light Carol-Anne!"

It's interesting to me that I did not post anything on here prior to or immediately after the election, maybe because I was glued to the TV that whole time, but more likely because I did not want to jinx Obama's chances. Everyone knew he was going to win, we were just all too afraid to say it.

He's the text of an email I sent to some friends the day after the election:

"Well, I certainly picked a hell of a time to be living in America I can tell you. 9/11 happened 2 years after I stepped off the plane, and now 8 years later I am here for the election of the first black President. This morning, the day after the election, it still hasn't sunk in. Last night I was emotional, I was at work as the results came in so I got to see some "off-camera" stuff before it hit the airwaves and we knew it was looking good but no-one wanted to say anything in case we jinxed it.

This morning I feel drained but FUCK YES!!!! IF COULD MAKE THE WORDS ON THIS PAGE DANCE I WOULD.

Finally... finally... finally. The Bush administation is over. (Hopefully) The Conservative movement is divided and in danger of splitting right down the middle between the Jesus freaks and the Fiscal freaks. If it happens then we could banish these people back to the crazy foxholes they crawled out of. The job is not quite over yet, the seperation of Church and State has to be reinforced during this administration and the Talibangelicals should never be allowed near a high office again.

Obama ran a fantastic campaign, on top of that he is a once-in-a-generation orator who can inspire people, and has already inspired millions of people in this country to get out and vote for the first time. He is a community organiser (something that the Republicans thought fit to make fun of at their convention - how sweet it is to see them eat those words) and everything was run from the ground up and not from the top down as is so often the case. I had friends, who had never been involved in a political campaign before in their lives, riding on buses from New York City to Pennsylvania every weekend for the last few months to knock on doors and pound the pavement for Obama.

Yesterday, as I was leaving for work, I ran into my next door neighbor. She was going to the polling station with her mother to vote, her Mum is in her 90's and they had a camera with them to take photos because, as she explained to me: "When my Mother was little she knew people who had ACTUALLY been slaves, and also when my Mother was younger SHE was not allowed to vote!". It was a very touching moment to witness and was a great reminder of how far things have actually come despite the fact that we are all mired in our own cynicism.

So anyway, America... well done. I am very fond of shitting on this country (Hey! It's what I do - I like shitting on Scotland and England too) and now I have been forced to stop and think. The one thing I loved about the "American Dream" is that, even though it is mostly hyperbole, it was always open to re-interpretation and re-invention. This is one re-invention that I am proud to have been living here for and one re-invention that I am proud our daughter was alive to see (even though she will remember nothing and would have preferred Dora The Explorer for President). Every American should walk an inch taller in their shoes today.

Dave
Nov 5th 2008"

I don't think I can put it any better than that. The initial euphoria has worn off slightly and I have been pretty disappointed by his cabinet picks so far (where are the Union leaders in his economic team?) but I am still willing to give him the benefit of doubt and pray that he doesn't turn out to be Tony Blair redux.

Jan 20th here we come....

The Meltdown Festival

2008-10-11T09:12:00.007-04:00

I read with some degree of surprise, but to be honest, not that big a degree of surprise, Naomi Wolf's article on how close the Bush Administration were to declaring martial law in America if the bail-out bill had not passed. You can read it here

Naomi Wolf is not a wingnut. She is a lefty yes, but she definitely not your paranoid conspiracy freak. I'm not sure that I buy her diagnosis that the country has already undergone a coup d’état but I don't find it hard to imagine that if the wheels of the economy really had come to a screeching halt because the banks didn't get their ransom money there would have been rioting on the streets.

You are never as far away from martial law as you think you are. Take that as you will.

I am starting to sound like John Laurie in Dad's Army: "We're doomed, I tell ye!", but I do find it slightly amazing that most people are so complacent that they think everything will go back to being the same after all this dust settles.

Nothing is going to be the same. The political map has already been redrawn. The Republican Party, the champions of deregulation, are nationalizing banks faster than Fidel Castro. The Democrats can hardly believe their luck and all Barak Obama has to do now is avoid getting shot by some rightwing hate monger.

Iceland has gone from being rated #1 place in the world to live to national bankruptcy in the space of a year. The only reason America has not joined it is because it still holds some of the levers of the financial system. If the IMF and World Bank were primarily Chinese institutions we would already be finished. Unfortunately it seems we will be taking a lot of people with us.

I keep reading articles in the paper comparing this crash to the 1929 crash. I am scepticle as to how accurate these comparisons can be. In 1929 there was not internet, no instant trading of stocls, no globalized economy, none of the same strong connections that countries have now. This is going to be new.

My biggest hope for the whole mess is that things will get a little fairer for the poor of the world by the time this all settles down. The gap between rich and poor is as big now as it ever has been, its ironic that the gap will be narrowed by the rich being brought down a peg. Maybe it will breed some humility. One can only hope so.

The Plane is Going Down! Bail Out!!!! Bail Out!!!

2008-10-04T11:22:00.006-04:00

Well it seems like I just don't have the time to write like I used to, what with being the parent of a 2-year old and with the meltdown of free-market capitalism, my days are a little TOO eventful.

This week the US Government passed a bill that will bail out the banks who have been hit in the credit crisis to the tune of $700 billion dollars. You can buy a lot of jelly beans with 700 billion dollars.

For years I've been saying that America was pretty damn close to maxing out all its credit cards and now that time is here. I have to add that it couldn't have happened to a nicer country and a nicer president. He added economic bankruptcy to the moral one.

"Well done George. You done broke it!"

It's just a shame that everyone else has to suffer for the greediness of a few, and not even just everyone else in America, I mean everyone else in the world that has anything to do with America.

It's been interesting to watch how fast the politicians in this country got off their asses when the people who bankroll them told them to. If this bill had been about say... universal health care or increased spending for education it would have been going back and forth in the Senate for months. Since it was about saving the people who REALLY run the country, it was drawn up, voted on and signed into law in under a week.

Now, I am a homeowner in the middle of this mess. I obviously have a vested interest in seeing things stabilize and I'd like to obviously sell my house for more money than I paid for it 3 years ago. With that said, I have very mixed feelings about all this legislation and I'll tell you why.

For a start, bailing out banks is morally wrong. These same banks that are crying that they are going out of business are the same banks that have been making massive profits for YEARS.

They claimed that the credit market will dry up if this bill is not passed, and as we all know America runs on credit. The problem I have with this idea is that the banks used the credit excuse to basically blackmail people into getting this bill through.

Year after year the banks posted profits in the billions then all of a sudden they don't make as many billions in profit as they did the year before.

"Oh shit profits are down $30 billion this year".

Yes, that may well be true but to me the important word when they say something like that is "profit".

Just because you did not make as much money as you did last year does not mean you made a loss. You still made a profit. Of course this kind of thinking is way too logical and humanist for the modern paper tiger economy.

It seems to me that people have forgotten that we live in a very privileged place in the West, we take things like retirement and having a roof over your head for granted. We need to realize that those things are not a god given right and the majority of the people on this planet probably do not enjoy those luxuries.

Like I said, I have a vested interest, I DO own a home and I would like to see that home go up in value. However, there is a Buddhist saying that will I paraphrase that says: "When your home becomes your most prized possession it also becomes your prison".

That's the way I think of my home now. I will strive to make it a really nice and safe place to live over the years but I will be thankful for having a roof over my head and not give a fuck about how much I can sell it for. Having your family be safe and warm is much more important and is something that should be a human right for everyone not just people on Wall St.

The Revenge of Memory...

2008-08-31T08:27:00.019-04:00

There are some mornings when rolling into New York on the train is still a pleasure. This morning was one of them.

It's Sunday and the oppressive heat of Summer has lessened to a cool 65 degrees at night and 80 during the day. I get off the train at the big hole in the ground formally known as the World Trade Center and start my amble up to work.

West Broadway is one giant construction site but in this cool clear morning you can see the Empire State Building towering over Manhattan like a giant gnomon on a sundial. The fact that you can see it from this far downtown always makes me think of the album cover of "Bleeker & MacDougal" by Fred Neil.

An obscure record but a great one. No one remembers Fred Neil but everyone remembers his song "Everybody's Talkin" which was one of his and the key song on the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack. A quintessential New York City movie if ever there was one.

The Avenues act like great long wind tunnels on some mornings. On the Gulf Coast Hurricane Gustav is about to make landfall, but in New York the gentle breeze is welcome to blow out the leftover humidity from the previous days rain. Everything feels clean.

As I walk away from the hole in the ground and head North I look back and see that the hole itself is gradually disappearing. The concrete foundations are being laid for the Freedom Tower and the walls are just about ready to breach ground level. Pretty soon you will not be able to see into the place where 3000 people lost their lives. In time the building will act like a giant scab and people will heal.

I hope.

I work my way through the slalom course of scaffolding towards my building. Under the scaffold at the corner of West Broadway and Park Place a small community of homeless people is growing. It started with one guy and a shopping cart full of his lfe and now there are about 5 people. Sleeping bags and cardboard boxes filled with their physical possessions are scattered across the sidewalk.

In contrast. This is Tribeca. It's otherwise very affluent and it occurs to me that the residents pay a lot of money to make it feel like Europe. I pass the Bouley Bakery with its delicious croissants and French bread and I pass Petite D'Abrille with it's giant selection of Belgian beers and Tintin books. It reminds you that New York is still a city of immigrants, albeit posh ones in this area.

I grab a cup of coffee and sit in Reade Park. It is only 7am but already there is a lady with an easel painting a portrait of one of the old industrial buildings that have been turned into luxury lofts. I watch her brush strokes for a few minutes and see the brick facade of the building evolve on her canvas. I am listening to Jackie Leven on my headphones and his songs take me back to Fife and remind me that I am, myself, an immigrant.

I find myself thinking about the Ceres Folk Museum. A place in a one street Fife town a few miles west of St Andrews.

The last time I visited this place was probably in the 1980's and even back then I remember thinking it was a bit crap. It was a few crofts and a few rusty old ploughs and tractors. There was a blacksmiths shop but the blacksmith was never there.

My family used to stop there a lot back in the day as it was halfway between St Andrews and our caravan site where we went every weekend in the summer. As a kid I thought it was so we could get out the car and stretch our legs, now that I look back on it, I think it was more so my Grandad could go for a pint. Maybe it was both.

I have no idea why it came back to me, I guess it was something in one of Jackie's songs. Here I am, standing in New York 28 years later, and my mind is in Fife.

I look up at the blue sky between the buildings and ask: "How did I get here?"

Black August

2008-08-30T19:03:00.003-04:00

Well it has been a particularly crap month and I am thankful it is coming to an end. Roll on September and the changing of the leaves.

Our house got broken into two weekends ago, no-one got hurt and nothing got taken but it shook everyone up. The thief tripped the alarm system but somehow still managed to get upstairs and turn the place upside down.

According to the police the alarm was tripped at 3.53 (in the afternoon) and they were there at 3.58, 5 minutes later. So either my house was ransacked by Michael Phelps, or it was ransacked by a small army of ninjas, or the police took a lot longer to get there than they claim. My money is on the latter, I guess there was a line at the donut shop.

The strange thing is that he forced open one of my windows and had to climb in right past my laptop computer but he did not take it. I can only guess that he was a junkie with a serious amount of desperation. He emptied every drawer in the house and went through all the jewelry. He even went through the pockets of my laundry, looking for money I suppose.

And he found nothing.

There was no cash in the house beyond the jar of pennies and all the jewelry is cheap costume jewelry, no-one in our house has much time for diamonds and pearls.

Maybe it was karma that he picked the only house on the street with nothing worth stealing.

So that was the first reason it has been a crappy month, hold tight, there’s more!

Two nights ago we were driving home listening to history being made, Barak Obama was on the radio accepting the nomination as the first black man to run for President. The speech was excellent and moving as his speeches always are.

Anyway so, we are listening to this and we get back to the house and are reversing into the driveway when BOOM! The back windshield exploded!

That’s right! BARACK OBAMA DESTROYED OUR CAR WITH THE POWER OF SPEECH.

We had both been so distracted by the speech that we failed to notice that we were running out of room and we reversed right into the underside of the front porch which in turn caused the back windshield to explode.

Thankfully it mostly exploded out the way and the glass flew in that direction and not at us and thank god the wean was not in the car.

And there is more…

In between these two incidents we had my Brother-in-laws wedding. All in all a really nice day but slightly tempered by the fact that our little one, who was a flower girl in the ceremony, managed to come down with a tummy virus.

We were running late and had no sooner left the house and out of nowhere she unleashes a waterfall of puke all over herself.

This led to a mad dash back to the house and a quick bath and we made the church with minutes to spare. Later that day she puked again, this time on her pretty flower girl dress, but in the evening she seemed to recover and a good time was had by all.

The problems really began the next day when I started feeling a bit queasy. By 10pm that night I was praising the god of porcelin, and for the first time in many years, puking up something other than alcohol.

It hurts when you are sober and there is actual food in there.

A night of cold sweats and more puking followed. Around 2am I was joined by my lovely wife and we started synchronized puking and shivering. The next morning we had zero energy but the baby was FEELING GREAT. She was a ball of energy.

Roll on September....

Bob Dylan in Brooklyn

2008-08-16T10:25:00.009-04:00

This week I chalked another artist off my "People to see before they die" list when I dragged my arse over to Brooklyn to see Bob Dylan play in Prospect Park.

I am a huge Dylan fan and I have no real excuse for never having seen him before other than laziness and I'd heard his live shows are awful these days. Well, it wasn't awful... but it wasn't exactly great either. It was eh... interesting.

The day started good as I got off the train in the West Village and walked down 4th Street over towards Washington Square Park. The cover of "The Freewheelin Bob Dylan" was shot on the corner of 4th and Jones Street so I played that to get myself in the mood. It sounded good.

By the time I had hiked over to Brooklyn I had work my way through Freewheelin, some Rolling Thunder bootlegs from 1975 and Blood on the Tracks. I was well in the mood for Mr Zimmerman.

About 45 minutes after my friend and I got into the park, this little guy in a black suit and a grey hat shuffled on stage with his band, sat behind the keyboard and started belting out "Rainy Day Woman 12 & 35" with it's chorus of "Everybody let's get stoned" and the crowd sang along. It was an exciting and spine chilling moment. Unfortunately that was as good as it got.

After that he proceeded to perform EVERY song in the same boogie tempo in his staccato singing voice that today resembles a man with throat cancer, a mouthful of marbles and a punctured lung. Classic songs like "Girl from the North Country" and "Blowing in the Wind" become unrecognizable until you suddenly catch a familiar line 3/4 of the way through and realize "HOLY SHIT! THAT'S MY FAVORITE SONG OF ALL TIME!".

Which is exactly what happened to me with "Masters of War".

Now, I wasn't expecting Dylan to come out with an acoustic guitar and perform the song the same way he did in the 60's, I'm not Pete Seeger with an axe or a Manchunian with a desire to shout "Judas" (although I did consider doing this for a laugh). I also admire artists who re-interpret their work so it sounds different - Neil Young has done this brilliantly many times, most recently last year when I saw him in concert and he played a solo version of "Mellow my Mind" on the banjo - I would just like the songs to be at least intelligible.

My friend, who has seen a few recent Dylan shows, was able to call out some of the song titles to me within the first few lines but for all the good it did me I might well have been listening someone singing underwater in Yiddish.

But hell, it's Bob Dylan, I give him a little bit of a free pass. The fact that I can't bring myself to hate the performance tells me he struck some kind of nerve with me, I'm just not sure what. I find myself thinking I want to see the show again to see if I understand it better the second time. Unfortunately I don't think I would.

The Olympics

2008-08-02T11:22:00.007-04:00

The Olympics start next Friday in Beijing and the slew of stories about Human Rights abuses in China has been relentless this week. It seems like having the Olympics in China is the sporting equivalent of taking a vegetarian to a steakhouse. It is just wrong.

The symbol if the 5 interlocking Olympic Rings are supposed to symbolize the unity of 5 continents. The games are supposed to be about goodwill and sportsmanship. It appears that these games will be remembered for all the wrong reasons.

It's a shame because when I was a kid I always looked forward to the Olympics, some of my fondest memories are the battles between Daley Thompson and Jurgen Hingsen in the decathlon and watching Ed Moses win the 400 meter hurdles. I still remember the outcry in the UK after Thompson won the gold medal and whistled his way through the national anthem.

It was two weeks when there was always something decent to watch on TV, it was summer and you were on the school holidays. What could be better?

Well, maybe it is just because I am getting old and jaded, but the Olympics just aren't the same. Firstly, there is the continuing drug issues, but besides that it seems that the personalities have all gone from the sports too. All the athletes are walking billboards for Nike or Adidas, I miss the old days when the news stories leading up to the games would be all about the bank manager who is going to be competing in the high dive competition, or the estate agent who qualified for the javelin. It gave you a much stronger connection t0 the athletes, made you feel like they were real people and not drug-addled supermen with swoosh logos on their chest.

Genocidal Facial Hair

2008-07-27T09:52:00.005-04:00

Another month goes by and my typing fingers are rustier than ever. I seem to be turning into the blogging equivalent of the silent guy at the end of the bar who watches TV with the sound down, occasionally grunting to the barman for another pint.

At least it was a good month. The little one turned 2 and many drinks were sunk in celebration... by the adults that is... not the kids. The kids don't get to get drunk because those mini-bar bottles are too damn expensive. She's only two but I struggle to remember a time when she was not there.

Anyway, enough prattling about the baby, who the hell wants to hear that? Radovan Karadzic was captured!! Woo-hoo! Some natty facial hair on the guy when they found him too.

Does being a genocidal maniac increase your ability to grow a full-beard? First Sadam and now Rub-a-dub.
Of course, in Sadam's case he was hiding in a hole that wasn't big enough to swing an ethnically cleansed cat.

In Karadzic's case it seems that he was a practitioner of "alternative medicine".

I had to laugh when I read that. Nothing says genocidal nutjob like "accupunture". It kind of ties in with the fact that Hitler was a vegetarian. What next? Transcendental meditation with Robert Mugabe? Yoga with Osama Bin Laden? Aromatherapy with George W. Bush?

All joking aside, it does the karmic universe the world of good every now and then to pick up the paper and see these fuckers heading for jail. If it brings peace to even just one of their victims then it would have been worth it.

Okay that's me. I'm off to order a piss-water beer and watch baseball with the sound turned down while Billy Joel warbles "Piano Man" on the jukebox and my skin gets whiter and my teeth get tanned.

The Amazonian Blues

2008-05-31T10:49:00.006-04:00

It's definitely the most memorable photograph of the week. However, in between all the nonsense being spouted on the news about "Lost Worlds" and all the living Oompa-Loompa jokes, the photo made me feel very sad.

Firstly, these people are now completely fucked. Now that they have been outed you can almost guarantee that there is some stupid TV producer somewhere who is saying: "Hey, let's lead a documentary team in to meet them! It'll be the scoop of the century!".

The organisation that took the photos claimed that they did it because they wanted to show that these people were losing their habitat to loggers, unfortunately loggers might become the least of their problems now. There will well meaning but ultimately destructive eco-tourist groups and let's not forget those Christian missionaries who will no doubt be having nightmares about the Lucifer colored body paint.

The second thing that made me sad is just stupid but still....

The photo with them aiming bows and arrows at the plane more or less confirms the permanent place that violence has in the human psyche. It is of course idealistic and complete madness for me to assume otherwise, but somehow I liked to pretend to myself that if I somehow lived in a bubble away from other human contact then I would not need weapons and we would all live at one with nature.

A stupid assumption of course, since I would starve to death very quickly or get killed by something.

It still made me feel a bit sad though and it made me think of the scene in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: Space Odyssey" where the the fore-runner of man starts clubbing the skulls. Violence is a natural survival instinct and occurs in evolution whether we like it or not. It has to.

Evolution has been very much on my mind lately as I am reading Kurt Vonnegut's "Galapagos". A great book that really makes you look differently about, not only, how we evolved as a species but also how we evolved a lot of our social rules and regulations as well.

Vonnegut really turns your perceptions of society upside down, and in a way that allows you to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. I wish there were more people on the planet like him, it would make it a much nicer place to live. So it goes......

Thoughts on Barack Obama

2008-05-24T13:15:00.006-04:00

No matter who wins the next election here in the States, the long nightmare that has been the Bush/Cheney administration is almost over and this is something that I think the ENTIRE world will rejoice at.

Well maybe not the ENTIRE world... I don't think Osama Bin Laden will be celebrating as they have been the best thing that ever happened to him.

It feels to me like can finally see light at the end of the tunnel. Even if McCain wins the White House (Which I don't think he will), compared to the Bush administration, a McCain administration will feel like a breath of fresh air.

Initially I didn't really care who the democratic nominee was but now I'm rooting for Obama. In fact I was secretly rooting for him right after I watched his victory speech in the Iowa Primary back in January but I didn't want to jinx his chances. The man is a fantastic speaker. People say speeches don't get things done and that statement in itself may be true, but speeches do inspire and inspiration gets things done.

Obama is the best bet America has of trying to normalize its relations with the rest of the world. He understands that you don't achieve anything by excluding your enemies from the negotiating table as America has done for so long. He has said that he will normalize relations with Cuba and end the ridiculous blockade that has been going on for 40 years now. He has said that he will talk to Iran and North Korea without pre-condition. This to me seems like common sense but to the GOP it is tantamount to treason. Well, [adopt sarcastic voice] their way has worked really well so far.

Voting for Obama as President will also send a message that it is actually possible to succeed in America if you are not white. This is a country that is only a few generations removed from Jim Crow, if a Black man can become president in those few generations then it could show humanity that perhaps the American democratic system does work after all, something that was definitely in doubt after Bush/Gore.

In America Obama has the potential to be this generation's FDR (a new deal program that moves the country to green technology anyone?), and in the rest of the world he has the potential to be this generation's Ghandi. I know, I know, Ghandi is a bit much, but I am pinning a hell of a lot of hopes on the poor guy, I really hope he doesn't let me down.

The world really needs someone like that right now. Please let it happen.......

Connecting with the past

2008-05-17T10:02:00.007-04:00

I've been remembering weird things lately, I think probably because I've been trying to drag myself back into a bit of a more organic existence and work on my fear and loathing issues.

What fear and loathing issues are theses? Well... where do I start?

I'm a confessed news junkie, I'm supposed to be, it's my job. Unfortunately, this means I get to see a lot of the lowest acts of humanity, unedited and uncut, definitely different to what you see on the 6 o'clock news.

This has more or less chipped away at my optimism over the years and I find it very difficult to look at ANYTHING anymore without having to question it. If you read this blog often enough you can see this in my anti-religious rants, add this to my Scottish DNA and you get the genesis of my favorite PG Wodehouse quote that adorns all my emails:

"It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine".

Anyway, getting back to memories. I heard a song called "I Can't Afford Top Care Anymore" by the Scottish band "Doll by Doll". The song is written by Jackie Leven and talks about women walking through town ringing a bell for sailors who have drowned, something that happened all too often in the fishing villages of Fife where he grew up.

It took me back to Fife as well. We used to have a holiday home in Pittenween. We would drive 2 hours from our house after work every Friday and then back again on Sunday night. Fife felt like the 3rd World compared to the relative sophistication of Glasgow. It was all farmers and fishermen.

The house was above the Cooperative store run by a nice old guy called Bill Balfour and his wife Peggy.

I specifically remember the bathroom in this house. It was a cast iron bath (which my parents hated and ripped out and replaced with a crappy shower) that had the wash hand basin directly above the bath itself. There was no waste pipe, the water drained from the sink directly into the bath. I can only assume it was designed before the advent of indoor plumbing when water was a precious thing because it certainly had no hygienic value.

Each room in the house also had a fireplace and mantle. although since my parents installed radiators none of them were used any more.

Bill Balfour managed the store and we would go in there for our 1p Fizzy Lizzy's and Refreshers. The shop was always very sparse with a lot of empty floor space and not a lot of product. There wasn't any of the overwhelming advertisements or muzak that you get in todays supermarket. It had a dusty veneer to it.

Bill was a really handy guy. In the back behind the store was a huge garage where the Coop van was kept. In the garage Bill was always building stuff, one time he built a motorbike for his nephew that had made from cannibalized parts from other bikes. He also built a bogey cart (a go kart) from some old wooden boxes and pram wheels that I would happily ride round and round the Coop yard for hours.

They say it is unhealthy to wallow in nostalgia but to be honest, I find it easier to connect with the present if I can connect with the good things in the past.

It's a good thing to do some mental spring cleaning every now and then. Turn off the telly, stop reading pananoidcrazies.com and look at some old photos. Remember how things were before the internet, ATM machines and mobile phones. Days were slower and longer and people had more time to be kind. Let's try to get back to that.

The Luggie

2008-05-17T08:28:00.011-04:00

I remember when I was a kid, there was a burn (a stream) about a 25 minute walk from our house. It was really called "The Luggie" but we would just call it "The Burn", and every weekend Me and my brother Mike would take walks down there to mess around and climb across the post-industrial waste that was left scattered around.

To get to the burn we used to have to walk across the railway tracks using this old grey metal bridge that was covered in graffiti reading "FTP" (Fuck The Pope) or "FTQ" (Fuck The Queen) alternatively. The path on the bridge was tarmac and the joints in the tarmac had this rubber tar-like substance that held them together. On hot days we would crouch down and press our initials into the goopy stuff with our fingernails.

There was also a bridge that crossed the Luggie but it was gradually stripped away by the Scottish weather and the local vandals. Pretty soon all that was left was a pipeline that had run under the bridge and that became the only way to cross the burn.

We would walk across this pipeline like it was a tightrope (in reality it was probably a foot or two wide) and to my 6 or 7 year old self this was a death defying stunt that only the likes of Evel Kinevel would have considered taking on!

Sometimes the burn would be clean and you could see minnows and sticklebacks and newts swimming around, one of these sticklebacks would eventually find their way to my other Brother's fish tank where they would end up putting a hole in the head of his goldfish when it swallowed it. I seem to remember both fish survived.

At other times it would run red with, what I presume was, industrial waste from some factory or other. It looked like rust and could have been bauxite run-off but the fact that there were still things living in there says otherwise.

One time I was down at the Luggie with a friend from school, we were probably about 11 or 12, and he was catching newts and putting them in a plastic bag that he had partially submerged under the water. This was at a time when there was a rumor going round our town that there was a bogeyman that lived in the woods who was killing children (it might have been true but I doubt it). Suddenly we heard a rustling in the woods and saw the shadow of some "big guys" (You had to watch out for "the big guys" as they would take your football or bike or beat you up) coming through. Someone shouted: "IT'S THE BOGEYMAN!" and panic erupted like a cat surprising a flock of birds.

I slipped off the rock I was standing on and fell arse backwards into the water getting soaked. My welly boots filled up like the scuppered battleships at Scapa Flow. At the same time my friend picked up the bag and threw it on the bank, there were probably about 6 or 7 newts in it. As I was struggling back to my feet, I looked over and saw my friend jump on to the bank and instead of picking up the bag and running, or throwing the newts back into the water, he stamped down on it with his boots several times crushing anything that was inside.

Later, once we had escaped the imaginary killers, I said: "What the fuck did you do that for?"

He said: "I don't know".

When I got home later that day I took off my sodden wellys and noticed, for the first time, that there were hairs growing on the back of my big toe. The water in the Luggie had been pretty red that afternoon with factory crap and I presumed that I had somehow damaged my toes and now my feet were going to turn hairy like werewolf feet. Little did I know about anything called "puberty".

Post Pope Blues

2008-04-26T11:06:00.012-04:00

The Pope came to town in his best space rocket hat last week. He apologized to the victims of sexual abuse by priests, he also swung by the UN and Ground Zero. This latter visit caused me a royal pain in the arse as I had to head home through Ground Zero half an hour before he showed up and got my bag searched 3 times on the way into the train station. He also swung by Yankee Stadium and gave mass to 60,000 people, all of whom could buy commerative postcards but could not give or sell their tickets away to friends or relatives as the original purchasers name was embedded in the barcode. Even Jesus couldn't sell these tickets.

My favorite moment of the week came when the front page of the New York Times had these two conflicting stories on it, it's hard to read so click on it to blow it up:

(* Thanks to my friend MCA for finding and saving this front page)

The Irony is almost painful. Evidentially the "ALL" in "All life is sacred" is slightly lost on the Supreme Court and President Shrub. Oh well, I don't know why I bother any more.

Just so I don't get accused of picking on one cult too much (the Catholics), I read with interest that the Rev Moon has passed the reins of the Moonie Church to his son. I read with even more interest that another one of his sons is involved in small arms manufacturing in Upstate New York. Yay! Praise Dad and Pass the Ammunition!!!!

The Talibangelicals are at it too, down in Florida lawmakers are debating a bill to introduce Christian license plates for cars. Pretty soon you'll be able to get a vanity plate that says "ILUVBIGTITS" and has a nice Crucifix alongside. It's nice to see that "the War On Good Taste" continues unabated .

Meanwhile in Texas authorities raided a Polygamous ranch and took over 400 children into care. Sometimes "Freedom of Religion" has its drawbacks....

The Raconteurs

2008-04-12T09:16:00.010-04:00

His name was Brian, an Irish-American guy from South Ozone Park in Queens. Her name was Barbara and she was from Perth Australia even though she had been in New York City for a long time. They met almost twenty years ago whilst they were on jury duty together when Brian was kicked off the jury for being drunk and they went to the pub together afterwards. They've been drinking and living the life ever since.

I was just leaving the bar to go home when Brian grabbed me.

"Hey! Are you Scottish?".

"Eh.... yes I am"

"Do you know Bobby Carlyle?"

"Eh... not personally, no. But I know who he is".

"Well, let me tell you a story......"

This turns into a tale about how he met Robert Carlyle in a bar and that led to the to the fact that he is Thomas Carlyle's great great great nephew (or something like that, I'm not sure how many "great's" to put in there). This then led to a discussion about Thomas Carlyle's Sator Resartus and it's take on religion.

Now, I've never actually read Sator Resartus (though it has been on my list of things to read for a while), but I know what it is about and the general gist of it. What amazed me here was, that this guy Brian was steaming drunk, and I mean really steaming, and he was not only able to recall the story but actually quote some of it word for word. When I am steaming I can't remember my own name never mind some philosophical text written in 1833.

I turned to Barbara and asked: "How does he remember this stuff?".

She said: "I haven't got a fucking clue!".

"Hey, let me do a poem!" said Brian, now loving that he is well and truly the center of attention.

He starts reciting an Oscar Wilde poem (there's nothing like a hearing it from a drunk Irishman) which I can't even remember the name of now (I'd only had about 3 beers at this point). It went on for a good 20 stanzas and he kept stopping at end of each stanza to emphasize some line or word.

Everytime he stopped I kept interrupting because I thought he was finished. The poem went on and on. When he was finished I felt compelled to buy him a pint and he downed half of it in one go. Barbara rolls her eyes because she is obviously sick of listening to the same Oscar Wilde poem over and over again....

I'm not sure if the Robert/Thomas Carlyle connection is true (there is no mention of it online anywhere), but it was a good story. As the saying goes: "When legend becomes fact, print the legend". (Well, I thought it was an old saying but apparently it is a quote from the 1962 film "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" which just goes to prove my point).

Why am I writing about these people? Well, to be honest, I don't really know. I guess it's a rare thing when you meet a real drunken raconteur, at least in America. It's rarer that you meet one who is so well versed in literature and history.

There is a skill to this kind of storytelling that I've always admired. I can't do it myself. If I get drunk and start telling a story I will more than likely lose my place halfway through and forget what I was talking about. It's not a coincidence that Brian was Irish (American). The oral tradition of storytelling and drunken poets and philosophers is strong in that culture.

These people are my Jesus's and Allah's and Buddhas. They have a better grip on reality because they can see how absurd it is. They appreciate great art and literature but they treat it as a thing to be shared over a beer, not some elitist crap hanging on a wall.

Speaking of elitist crap, the Pope arrives in New York next weekend. I have burned all my time off so I will be working for the whole thing. Arrrrrrgggh! Here is a New York Times article that gives you an idea of how busy I am going to be.

The busiest times in my job are always when the UN General Assembly are in town. This visit is still a week away and I see more and more new equipment being installed. It's going to be horrible............

Have you been on Vacation? No, I've been on Holiday

2008-04-05T09:40:00.010-04:00

Got back into New Jersey Wednesday night after a two-week trip to the UK. We left London in the lovely springtime sun only to be greeted at Newark airport by heavy rain and high winds.

By "greeted" I mean we flew around in circles above the pristine Blade-Runner-like post industrial landscape of the "Garden State" for two hours. It was one of those flights that makes you want to kiss the ground like the Pope once you step off the plane.

To digress for a minute; I wonder if they used to clean the bit of ground he was kissing? Does the Pope think that everywhere tastes like bleach and toothpaste?

"Bloody Hell, I've had a bit much bleach!" said the blue-lipped Pope.

Anyway, getting back to reality, it was one of those flights where the circling goes on just a bit longer than is comfortable. The point was definitely reached when you start wondering just how much fuel is in this flying coffin and plane crash scenes from Hollywood films come flooding back into your head like a bad Sting song. On top of that, just to make sure I was having the maximum amount of fun, it was also replete with sphincter dilating bouts of turbulence. The kind where the whole plane goes "Oooooooo aaaaaaaa" at the same time.

"Ooooooooo aaaaaaaa holy fu........."

Of course another problem, like I didn't have enough already, was that as soon as the seatbelt light came on and we all had to sit still for 2 hours, I started desperately needing a jobby. It was a good thing that the turbulence was asshole asphyxiating.

It was a fantastic trip though and great to see friends and family, however, the exchange rate on the dollar to the pound was a killer and I was forced to sell various organ parts so I could put petrol/gas in the car! My kidney is now in a jar at Knutsford services and my liver belongs to a bar in Glasgow (in case anyone of the jakeys should need a spare one).

It cost 120 dollars to fill the petrol tank!!! Americans have no idea how lucky they are. They are in for a serious future shock if they don't start looking at ways to get off their addiction to oil. It's going to hurt for sure.

Please God. I know I don't believe in you but hey, if I am wrong then I'll be happy to ask forgiveness. If you are vengeful and wrathful then you are not my God. Anyway, my prayer is please give us President Obama. The universe can't afford McCain or Clinton. Yours sincerely Evangelical Athiest.

There, let's see if it gets answered. Again, to all the folks who showed us great hospitality in the UK, thank you so much and come visit the United Snakes soon.

J'accuse!

2008-03-08T10:22:00.006-05:00

I accuse the New York Aquarium of gross insensitivity.

Last weekend we took the wee one to see the fishes, she always lights up when she is standing with her nose pressed against the glass watching the seahorses or the angel fish. One of her first words was "Turtle" after all, so it makes sense.

Anyway, we spend an hour or so trudging around looking at all these lovely fish, all sorts of colors, shapes and sizes. Very exciting for the kids and very relaxing for the adults, all in all, a good way to spend a day.

The problem comes when we go to the cafeteria for some lunch. Now, normally I would be whining about overpriced sandwiches and crap tea that is the the bane of tourist attractions and museum cafes the world over, but no, at the New York Aquarium they have to go one step further.

We are standing in line to get served when I glance at the menu and I'm shocked... top item on the menu..... fish and chips.

I guess it could have been worse, they could have had "Nemo chunks" and "Flipper Fingers" on there but it just seemed really strange. We'd just spent the last hour looking at these beautiful fish and now they are asking if we want to eat them.

It reminded me of a place I worked when I was about 17, this place made these big Italian sausages and I was in charge of taking these sausages down from a rack and dipping them in a big tank of blood and god-knows-what to flavor them. Every time I hung the sausages back on the rack, which was taller than I was, I would get blood all over myself. When I got on the bus to go home that night I looked like I had just slaughtered my whole family, the paper boiler-suit the place gave me was not blood-proof and it seeped through to my clothes.

Any I digress a bit, my point was that this was a really disgusting job and when lunchtime finally came I was very happy. Until, that is, I got to the cafeteria and the menu consisted of variations of the same sausages I had just been making. I can still feel the nausea that rose in my stomach now almost 20 years later.

"I know what's in these things! Why the heck would I want to eat them?" I asked.

"Because they're free" said a woman who looked like Lunch Lady Doris from The Simpsons.

"One of the perks of the job, eh?".

"You could call it that" she said as she stubbed her cigarette out on a Yorkshire pudding. "Do you want some gravy?"

I looked at the liquid that looked like it had recently inhabited the poo-chute of Porky Pig and said"No Thanks".

I walked to the office at the end of that day and quit.

Anyway, thank you NY Aquarium for dredging up that terrible memory and please take fish off the menu ASAP.

Robinson Crusoe

2008-02-16T09:50:00.010-05:00

In the spirit of getting back in touch with childhood I am currently reading "Robinson Crusoe" by Daniel Defoe. Unfortunately, also in the spirit of childhood, it is pretty clear within about 10 pages of starting this book that the version of the story you heard as a kid was edited quite significantly.

The first thing that strikes you about Robinson Crusoe is that the main character is a complete eejit. The whole first section of the book is dedicated to people telling him not to go to sea because he'd need a life-jacket to step in a puddle.

He disregards his Father's advice and sets sail. Only he doesn't set sail for the tropics, he sets sail from Hull to London and almosts gets shipwrecked off the coast of Norwich.

As if this wasn't an omen enough, a succession of world weary sailors refuse to sail with him, mainly because he is walking bad luck and his lack of care for parential advice gives them the willies.

Eventually he finds one poor sap and they sail off to the coast of Africa where he makes a wee bit of money, enough to give him a buzz and make him try again.

The next voyage is not so sucessful because he gets captured by pirates and become a slave of the Moors in Morocco. He sticks this out for a few years before escaping in a small boat with "his boy Xory".

This is when you really start to realise how edited the story was when you were a kid. His escape along the coastline of Africa is filled with references to "savages" and "negros" and of course, "his boy".

It's hard to scream racism as it is obviously a reflection of the attitudes of the time when the book was written (first published in 1719) but it makes for some uncomfortable reading.

Anyway, eventually he gets rescued by a Portugese ship and escapes to Brazil. Along the way he sells "his boy Xory" to the Portugese captain with the explicit agreement that Xory shall be set free when his 10 years of slavery are done!

Yay! Thanks a lot Mr Crusoe!!

This has all happened and the eejit isn't even marooned on the island yet. This is also as far along in book I am at the moment so I can't comment on the second half but I'm sure it will be interesting.

I did however go and look up Alexander Selkirk on wikipedia. This is the Scotsman that Defoe is supposed to have based his story on. It seems that Selkirk was a lot brighter than Defoe's character as he actually "volunteered" (not sure if that is the right word) to stay on his island as he was doubtful about the sea-worthiness of the vessel he was travelling on. Turns out he was right and the ship sank a while later with the loss of most hands.

If only Robinson had the same amount of sense.

It has reminded me of an old Scottish joke though:

A guy walks up to the bar to buy a pint. There is a guy sitting on one of the barstools doing the crossword in the newspaper.

Crossword guy looks up and says "8 letters, it means stuck on a desert island"

The other guy says "It's marooned"

First guy says "Thanks a lot, I'll have a pint of Guinness please!".

"This is England" - A blast from the past

2008-02-10T09:16:00.000-05:00

I saw a film called "This is England" yesterday. It's a film that reminded me a lot of what it felt like to grow up in 1980’s Britain. The time of Margaret Thatcher, the Falklands War, the Miners Strike, mass unemployment, union busting and... Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet.

It was a time when it felt like everyone was politically engaged, yet at the same time, there was a disconnect in out popular culture. The music sounded plastic and disposable after the homemade ethos of punk. "Wine bars" were popping up and filling with people who would soon be known as "yuppies".

To my 12-year old eyes it seemed that people in the UK were involved in all manner of politics; the working class may have been under seige from Thatcher's goons at home but people still found the time to protest apartheid in South Africa, CIA-death squads in Latin America, and also time to support the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Amnesty International. The apathy that besets society today was nowhere to be seen back then.

This film delves right into the middle of this. The main character is a little boy whose Dad died in the Falklands war and in order to fill the hole in his life he ends up joining the gang of local skinheads - a gang that is really more harmless than anything at first, skinheads were not always nazis, the movement was originally about the music and the clothes. Music that came mostly from Jamaica with first wave of West Indian immigrants to the UK. Here is an interesting breakdown of skiinhead culture.

The problems arise when “Combo”, a racist skin gets out of prison and returns to take over the gang. The innocence is gone is and the ideology of the gang changes from a bunch of ska-loving kids to a fascist mob.

At it’s heart this is a pretty straight forward coming of age movie, but, to a guy who was pretty much the same age as the main character at the time when this is set, seeing this film was like getting a postcard from the past.

Stephen Graham who plays “Combo” is absolutely incredible in his part. He is every bit as scary as Ben Kingsley was in “Sexy Beast” (another great UK movie) and the tension he creates on screen is sometimes almost unbearable to watch.

There are a few obvious rip-off scenes in the movie from “A Clockwork Orange”, so obvious in fact, that I can only think they were a deliberate tribute. Despite this however, this is a movie well worth checking out.

New year, same old shit

2008-01-27T09:09:00.001-05:00

It's been two months since I last posted and another year has passed into the giant cloud of fart gas behind me. Where did it go? I don't know! You see, I'm a poet and I didn't know it.......

It's unfortunate that I have to start the new year with a rant against the Catholic Church but they won't change so heck, why should I?

My rant this time concerns the news that the Archdiocese in Los Angeles is selling church property to pay for a $660 million settlement in a number of sex abuse cases. "So what's new?" you ask, well they only need to raise a portion of that cash because $227 million dollars is being paid by the Church's "sexual abuse insurance"!!!!

When I first read the story I had to read it twice because my brain could not quite believe what my eyes claimed to have seen. When my brain finally became convinced it just about caused me to spray coffee from my mouth all over my keyboard.

The sexual abuse insurance bit was just dropped in there like it was a completely normal thing to have. What next? Sheep-shaggers insurance?

Advertising slogan: "If you love Ewe, We love you too"

It made me wonder what kind of business would need sexual abuse insurance? I can't think of anything positive that could possibly be shopping for that kind of coverage. Can you imagine if the Nazis had holocaust insurance or the Taliban had complete-nutjobs insurance?

What kind of insurance company would offer that kind of insurance? What kind of clients are they trying to attract? Would Gary Glitter qualify? Jonathan King your premiums are late!

Anyway, there is a good article that explains more about it here

And a song......

FAITHFUL DEPARTED
(Phil Chevron)

This graveyard hides a million secrets,
The trees know more than they can tell
The ghosts of the Saints and the scholars will haunt you
In Heaven and in Hell

Rattle by the glimmer man, the boogie man the holy man
Livin' in the shadow, the shadow of the gunman
Rattled like the coppers in your greasy till,
Rattle till time stood still

Look over your shoulder hear the school bell ring;
Another day of made to measure history
I don't care if your heroes have wings,
Your terrible beauty's been torn

Faithful departed, we fickle hearted,
As you are now so once were we
Faithful departed, we the meek hearted,
With graces imparted bring flowers to thee

The girls in the kips proclaim their love for you,
When you stumbled in they knew you had a shilling or two
They cursed you on Sundays and Holy days of abstinence
When you all stayed away

When you slept there a naked light bulb hid your shame
Your shadows on the wall they took all the blame
The Scared Heart's picture compassion in his eyes
Drowned out the river sighs

Let the grass grow green over the brewery tonight
It'll never come between the darkness and the light
There is no pain that can't be eased
By the devil's Holy water and the rosary beads

You're a history book I never could write,
Poetry in paralysis too deep to recite
Dress yourself bless yourself you've won the fight,
We're gonna to celebrate tonight

We'll even climb the pillar like we always meant to,
Watch the sun rise over the strand
Close our eyes and we'll pretend,
It could somehow be the same again

I'll bury you upright so the sun doesn't blind you,
You won't have to gaze at the rain and the stars
Sleep and dream of chapels and bars
And whiskey in the jar

Faithful departed, look what you started,
An underdog's wounds aren't so easy to mend
Faithful departed, there's no broken hearted,
No more tristesse in your world without end

Flashback

2007-11-22T13:20:00.000-05:00

I may have said it before but having a kid gives you flashbacks. Childhood memories long forgotten or repressed come back when you do childhood things.

The other day I am with my daughter at the swing park behind our house, she is running around, attempting to defy the laws of physics by sliding up the slide and generally causing her own brand of harmless mayhem. I am merely there making sure she doesn’t fall down or hurt herself.

It’s then that I notice I am standing on a small hole in the ground where the pole that grounded the middle of the roundabout used to be. The roundabout is long gone and the hole is filled with rainwater now. Somewhere in the back of my mind a voice is reminding me that roundabouts are dangerous and have probably been banned by our governmental overlords.

It’s then that a memory comes flooding back to me.

I see myself , probably between the ages of 7 and 14, playing this game: You would lie down on your belly, securing your feet to something on the roundabout whilst your friends spun you as fast as they could. Another friend would then crush a coke can (or with it being in Scotland, more than likely it was an Irn Bru can) from the top down so that it looked like an ice-hockey puck. He would then kick this can underneath the fast spinning roundabout and you would have to try to reach under and grab it.

It was incredibly dangerous and incredibly stupid and the best kind of fun. Something that only a kid who believes he/she is indestructible could appreciate (don’t all kids think they are indestructible?).

There are three possible outcomes to this game: you could retrieve the can, you could lose an arm under there or you could fly off through the air like a clay pigeon and sandpaper your nose and chin along the ground.

Just to make it more interesting, I will also point out that in playgrounds in the town where I grew up, the roundabouts were made from rusted steel with (often) rotted wood bases. They were also almost inevitably covered in broken glass from the previous nights drunken teenage shenanigans, especially underneath where that golden prize awaited.

All the ingredients you need to make a really good trip to the hospital.

It’s fucking mad that more people weren’t killed or maimed. Then again, maybe they were and that is why the roundabout disappeared.

By the way I tried to find a good photo of a Scottish roundabout online and the best I could do was a Soviet one which I guess says more about the upkeep of the playgrounds in my hometown than I'd care to admit but here ya go:

Vicky Hamilton RIP

2007-11-17T12:52:00.000-05:00

The news story that broke my heart this week is that Vicky Hamilton, the Scottish teenager who went missing in 1991, has finally been found dead in England.

Ths story hit me harder than most because I was living in Falkirk at the time, a short distance from where she went missing. I was only 3 years older than she was and I remember the picture staring out from "Missing" posters in shops all over town.

I had also only left high school 3 years before, at age 16 as well, and that picture of her, forever enshrined in her school uniform, burned itself into my brain. She looked like any 1 of 100 girls I knew at school.

I watched the story as it periodically resurfaced after I had moved to England in 1994. The local paper in Falkirk would report any new leads and they would sometimes trickle south of the border to the broadsheets but as the leads died out so did the story.

Somewhere in the back of my head that picture was always there. When I first moved South and was working kitchen jobs and holiday camp jobs I would run into plenty of Scots and Welsh who had run away from home for a variety of reasons, some of whom I'm sure were listed as missing somewhere. I think a part of me hoped that maybe she was down here somewhere too. Perhaps working in a kitchen or some crappy holiday camp just like me but it wasn't to be.

Now they have found her. The last light of hope has gone out.

I am a Father of a girl myself now. Something in that fact makes the story harder still to bear. I cannot begin to imagine what her Dad is going through. I can only hope this discovery brings him some peace.

Rest in Peace Vicky.

FloriDUH

2007-11-17T09:21:00.000-05:00

Florida came and went and I survived... just.

It really is a strange place, I got off the plane at Fort Myers after flying over the manicured swamps that have been turned into alligator infested golf courses where leathery prehistoric lizards wait around to tee off and risk being eaten by the other leathery prehistoric lizards.

Having been here once before, I admit I came with a bad attitude from the start but it seemed to lift a little when we left the airport. There is something about Florida that just gets under your skin. Sure, it is a shithole filled geriatric New Yorkers and redneck bible thumping fudnockers, but when you see a blue heron standing by the side of the road only a few yards from the multi-story carpark filled with hire cars, you realise that the weather is actually quite nice and that your are standing in what was once a pristine, Garden of Eden like landscape. It's just unfortunate that Herb and Ethel decided they had to shit all over it.

The week got off to a bad start; on the way down, I suspect somewhere at 35,000 feet over South Carolina, my ear started to bubble, and not in a good way. Is a bubbling ear ever good? I don't think so.

Well anyway, by the time we landed I was deafer than Beethoven with an ear full of playdoh. Bear this in mind when I say the only reason we went to FUCKING Florida was because the Mother-in-law has a house with a pool, and now it seemed I had to keep my head out the water for a week.

I tried to swim that night but the cold water in the pool was really bothering me, then the baby decided that the pool was a place of fear and anytime anyone kicked their legs or disappeared under water she would scream... and scream and scream...

Next morning my ear was killing me so I decided to go to a walk-in doctor's office, this is despite my Mother-in-law protesting that there was no such thing. Considering the population of the island we were staying had the average age of the combat soldier being ninety... ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ninety, I found this incredibly hard to believe. A quick skooshie of the phone book brought up a walk-in doctor name almost immediately.

My friend Jeff had this to say in an email when he heard this part of the story: "Healthcare in Florida is particularly bad. Every doctor who can't get Board Certified or find a job elsewhere makes their way to Florida.And I suspect that many of them obtained their medical degree in the Islands. An HMO doctor in Hallandale once told me that you can't prevent illness. He said, "If you're gonna get sick, you're gonna get sick." He proceeded to ask me if he could cook me dinner".

The guy I ended up seeing was hilarious but I found it hard to believe he was a real doctor. Also, I think the only patients he sees are people with the clap.

He walks into his examination room and immediately says "Aha, someones been chasing those Marco Island ladies, those Marco Island ladies are NASTY!"

I haven't seen anyone under the age of 70 in the past 2 days so I've no doubt he's right if grab-a-granny is your thing, I'm slightly befuddled by this statement so I weakly say 'No doc, just a bit of an ear infection....'

He then notices my Buddha tattoo and says 'I see you have some ink!'.

I reveal the rest of the tattoo and he say says "FUCKING HELL! THAT MUST HAVE FUCKING HURT!"

I've never heard a doctor say "fuck" in the examination room before, and I never expected to before the inevitable day when someone tells me I have an incurable disease by saying "Sorry pal, I think you're fucked!". It's disconcerting. I now believe that two words doctors should never utter in the presence of the patient are "fuck" and "oops!".

It also didn't really help that he looked like Richard O'Brien from the Rocky Horror Picture Show:

Anyway, he eventually looks in my ears and tells me what I already know. I have an ear infection.

He says "I'll write you prescription, it'll be something generic so it'll be nice and cheap!". He seems to emphasise the word "cheap" a little bit too much for my liking but I guess it's better than my doctor in New York who says "Oh they don't make that generic brand anymore, here is a named brand that is twice as expensive and half as effective! Oh, and did I mention that the company that made this sent me on holiday to Aruba this year? They did! It was great!! Have a nice day!".

Next day we went to the beach and it was empty. It was the second last week of October and most of the snowbirds hadn't arrived yet, by the first week of November and the flying-v formations of 747's would be bringing the colostomy bags and oxygen tanks.

We baked in the hot sun for a while before deciding to try to get the baby to enjoy being in the ocean. Bad move....

The waves were not exactly crashing onshore but they were big enough to make a noise, she hated it. Well she hated it when Mummy went in the water and I stood on the beach with her. She would scream and scream. If Daddy went in the water and Mummy stayed on the beach she was calm and seemed to be saying "Enjoy your life in the sea Daddy!".

Later in the week anyway we took a catamaran out into the Gulf of Mexico to go shelling on a remote beach. Well, actually more like the remnants of a remote beach as two years before Hurricane Wilma made landfall on the very beach we were standing on and washed it all away. It was more of a thin sandbank.

The captain of the catamaran, Captain John, was an Ernest Hemingway look-a-like with a bad Hawaiian shirt and an annoyingly large collection of Jimmy Buffet CD's. He blew on a conch and reminded us all that gratuity is not included in the price of the trip and that if we didn't give a decent tip he would be forced to sell his first-born to a Haitian voodoo priest in return for a few kernels of magic corn.

Even allowing for Captain Cheeseball, the catamaran trip would have been great if it wasn't for the fact that it was overcast and the sea was very choppy. I sat still and kept my eyes on the horizon but it didn't really help much. I didn't puke but I wanted to most of the way out. We did get to pick up some nice shells though and add our footprints to the destruction of the Florida coastline! Herb and Ethel would be proud.

I leave you with this signpost I noticed right after I left the doctors office, somehow it just sums up the fucked-up-ness of Florida to me:

Coal-tar nightmare

2007-10-20T09:01:00.000-04:00

I was browsing in Myers of Keswick the other day (a British import store in NYC) and I came across a bar of Wright's Coal-Tar Soap. For old time's sake I had to buy it.

Coal-tar soap, for me, was one of those quintessential things growing up because I used to get excema and my Mother was convinced that coal-tar soap was a cure all for any skin ailment all the way up to leprosy. This is much the same way she was convinced that calamine lotion could do anything from soothe a Midgie bite to curing a sort throat to driving the demons from your immortal soul.

So anyway, I take my coal-tar soap home and the next morning I am taking a shower with it. The first thing I notice is that the bar looks different, I remember it being a kind of tea color but slightly clear (like Pears soap); this bar is yellow and solid like the kind of cheap soap you used to see in high school toilets.

The second thing I notice is that the soap doesn't appear to be any different from a regular bar of soap, other than the sweaty coal-miner scent that my wife says makes her want to puke. It appears that there is no significant benefit to your skin.

Weird... I remember this stuff being great.

It's then that I look at the packaging and notice that it says "Coal-tar scented soap" under the Wrights logo.

What the fuck? So I go online and find this wikipedia page where the last paragraph says: "The soap is now made by Accantia and is called Wright’s Traditional Soap. As European Union directives on cosmetics have banned the use of coal-tar in non-prescription products, the coal tar derivatives have been removed from the formula, leaving the soap somewhat like of a shadow of its former self".

Arrrrrggghhhhhh! The government is now telling you what you can wash your balls with!

I think I am starting to go mad because the more someone tells me that it is for my own good, the less I want to believe them. Especially if it involves gorvernment regulation.

The other instance this made me think of is newspaper wrapping for your fish and chips, Last time I was home in Scotland I mentioned to somebody that no chippy seems to use newspaper to wrap their chips now, it is all plain paper or a fake newspaper wrapper, I was then told that the use of newspaper to wrap chips had been banned.

Whether this is true or not I don't know but what I do know is that the newspaper gave the fish and chips a particular smell and taste that isn't there anymore. On top of that you'd have something interesting to read while you were eating your dinner. It might be the only time you ever see some drunk working class guy reading the Financial Times.

Maybe I am just getting older and coming down with a nostalgia disease, after all there was a time when my Grandad, in the absence of toilet paper, would have ripped up pages of old newspaper with a bit of string holding them together hanging next to the bog for you to wipe your arse on, and that wasn't particularly fun. However when you think logically about it, it was an early form of recycling and one that would hurt too much to go back to, okay, well maybe it will hurt if you have hemorrhoids but that's another story....

Strange Omens

2007-09-29T09:20:00.000-04:00

What kind of omens are these?

A few days ago I am at the corner shop getting a pint of milk, not my usual corner shop as I am in a hurry and don't have the time to walk the 2 extra blocks to the better shop, no, I am in the crackhead store and there is a crazy woman screaming at the poor girl behind the counter.

"5 DOLLARS, MOTHERFUCKER YOU OWE ME 5 DOLLARS!".

I avoid eye contact with the nutty person and pay for my milk and leave. I am a bit freaked out by having witnessed the confrontation in the store and I have decided to cross the road right where I stand as opposed to walking to the pedestrian crossing.

I look both ways, wait a moment for a car to pass then step out into the road. A moment later my foot lands in something squelchy. I'm thinking: "Fuck, I just stood in dogshit".

I look down. It is a dead cat.

It has been run over a few times and it's insides have exploded all over the road. There is a bit of blood on my shoe but thankfully no guts. I almost add to the poor cat's problems by puking on it right there.

Instead I give a little girly scream and start walking fast towards the house.

I am shaking as I get there, thinking: "Holy Crap, I could have stepped anywhere, it's a wide road and a few inches in any direction and I would have been blind enough to step around the cat without even noticing it! Instead I stepped right in the poor bastard!".

I start feeling like this is some kind of omen, someone is trying to tell me something, I start having visions of crows landing on telegraph poles outside the window of a person who lies in bed close to death, I start seeing plagues of locust and months of drought. I know it can't be good.

A day later I am working outside on my house, the bulb in the porch light has blown and I am trying to change it but the bolts that secure the light to the roof have rusted and it won't budge.

I'm up on the ladder trying to pry these bolts free with a pair of pliers. It's a nice day not too hot and not too cold. Eventually the rusty bolts start to move, little bit by little bit.

The first one comes off okay but the second and final one won't budge. It's getting frustrating and I am ready to take a hammer to the bastard when it eventually gives way... and the light fixture, which obviously hasn't been opened in 10 years jerks free in my hand.

I should have seen it coming but I guess in my miniature moment of triumph I must have opened my mouth just as 10 years of dead moths rained down on me.

I practically flew off the ladder, kind of like a human moth, erratically flapping my arms and spitting frantically. A lot of them had gone down inside my shirt so I tore it off like it was on fire and ran upstairs where I jumped in the shower and washed them off.

I'm standing in the bathroom thinking: "what the fuck? Is someone trying to send me a message?'. Two days and two very strange omens.

A foot full of dead cat and a mouthful of dead moths. I'm sure some biblical shit is going down here then it occurs to me what the message is.

#1. Blind folks should not cross the road anywhere other than at a pedestrian crossing.
#2. Never work overhead with your mouth open.

Life doesn't have to be this hard!

Travel woes

2007-09-22T09:23:00.000-04:00

This week I booked our flights to the flaccid cock of America... sorry, I mean Florida. $89 each way and that includes complimentary peanuts and hopefully a plane with a pair of wings and some aviation fuel. A pilot who is older than 16 and younger than 80 would be nice too.

This will be our first flight with the baby and I would be lying if I said I wasn't dreading it. I hate flying to begin with, and now we will be doing it with a wee girl who doesn't like being strapped down for any length of time. I'm sure she will be wanting to run around the plane pulling on things like the emergency door release handle just to see what it does.

"Whee whee". Whoosh.........

Oh well, I guess it will still be better than the other options which were 2 days driving in the car or the "auto train" where you drive the car onto a train. This second option initially appealed to me until I discovered it was significantly more expensive than flying and renting a car, and that it also took 25 hours to get to Tampa. YOU CAN FLY TO THE PHILLIPINES IN 25 HOURS.

Usually I actually love travelling by train and I haven't done a long train journey in a while, but now that I think about some of those journeys and where I could have gone in the same amount of time.

The train from Reading in England to Glasgow in Scotland used to take 9 hours or so. I could have gone to fucking Venezuela in 9 hours!!!

Before I had enough money for the train I used to take a bus from Southampton back to Glasgow, this bus took a good 15 hours or so. I probably could have flown to Vladivostok in that time!!

I can't really complain though since those old journeys were a lot of fun and usually involved a good amount of drinking and smoking in the days before you were banned from doing anything remotely pleasurable in public places. PLEASE REFRAIN FROM SCRATCHING YOUR ARSE, YOU MAY DISTRACT THE DRIVER! PLEASE DO NOT FLUSH THE TOILET WHILE THE BUS IS AT A STANDSTILL AS YOU MAY DEPOSIT A JOBBY IN AN ENVIRONMENTALLY SENSITIVE AREA.

So anyway, it's back to Florida we go. The home of Mickey Mouse, gun-toting rednecks, looney Christians, voter fraud and old ladies with purple hair. Oh, I can't wait.....

Tubbydreaming

2007-09-15T09:15:00.000-04:00

Sometimes it doesn't pay to be overly analytical.

This week, after I had watched my 6000th episode of the Teletubbies I started to notice that these cute aliens, or whatever the hell they are supposed to be, have continuity issues.

I noticed it first in an episode where Lala finds a guitar lying around and attempts to play it while Tinky Winky does his MC Hammer dancing impersonation (at least the Hammer trousers would look normal on a Teletubbie). Anyway, in the scene where Lala finds the guitar the sky over the Milton Keynes landscape... sorry... I mean Teletubbieland, is an overcast and dull grey. By the time the dead baby in the sun is laughing the sky is completely blue.

Now come on Children's BBC. Did you think we wouldn't notice?

The other slightly disturbing thing I have noticed is that after you get beyond about...oh... 3000 episodes in a day, the language of these multi-colored freakazoids starts to get darker. Every time a Tubby says "bye bye!" in that weird squeaky helium voice I start hearing "DIE DIE". I now have dreams where Po is standing over me holding a 12-gauge shotgun between my eyes and saying "It's time to Tubby DIE DIE!". Maybe I should stop eating so much cheese before going to sleep at night.

Oh well, I guess it's my own fault really. Somewhere along the line I lost touch with my inner-child (to quote Bill Hicks: "I saw my inner-child on the side of a milk carton") and now I view everything with suspicion.

I grew up too quick but it seems some people never grow up. Take this guy!

I had to laugh at that story. Everyone has either used or considered using the "My Granny died" excuse to get a day off work. It just doesn't seem like such an advisable idea if you are a public figure like a footballer.

I guess it is one of the trappings of celebrity that you can no longer kill off your relatives or take your kid to the dentist/doctors whenever you have a hangover. As soon as you make that first million that's it, avoid hangovers by never sobering up and you'll never have to off your granny.

Ayeeeeeeeeee.....

Recalling the days

2007-08-19T10:42:00.001-04:00

It's all been about nostalgia this week. I was down the pub last Sunday talking to some friends and we were talking about "kid's today" and how all today's music is bullshit and how spoiled youngster are, etc, etc, etc, when we realised that we have in fact turned into our parents.

The conversation moved on from that to going to school and our on upbringings. I seem to have a bunch of friends who are are "lapsed-lics" (lapsed Catholics) but when I tell them my tales of the Scottish Catholic School system it simultaneously horrifies them and makes them cry with laughter at the same time.

I was telling the story of the "Black Babies". Apparently this particular phenomenon didn't make it to the US School system... thank god!

The "Black Babies" were little cards that you got when you gave donations to the Catholic Missions in Africa.

I remember these cards very distinctly; it was always an little African child staring forlornly at the camera. They had a light blue border or a red border, a prayer on the back and a blank line under the prayer where you could write the name of your little black baby. Saints names were encouraged of course! Peter, Paul and Mary were in, Lakesha and Keyshawn were out.

Now maybe I went to a particularly fucked up school but I think I remember that the red and blue border signified how much money you donated. The blue ones were for the people who gave more than a pound, the red ones were for the cheap bastards who could only scrape together 12p.

Blue cards were to be cherished. We used to compare these little black baby cards in the playground and if we had doubles we would swap them like Panini Stickers. I'm pretty sure that you could get two red ones for a blue one but I might be making that up.

One thing I am sure of though is the reverance that was shown to these missionarys who would come into the classroom to show slides of their work in Africa (and sometimes Latin America). These guys were like returning superstars, they had given up their comfortable posts in Glasgow or Edinburgh or even Rome, to go off and help the poor. Now that I have an ex-priest friend who told me he went to the Seminary because he thought it was a good way to meet other gay men and I have to start wondering if some of these guys ended up in the missions for other reasons. You never met any missionarys from the South Pacific or South Asia. I guess those guys aren't allowed to come back, I wonder what they did.

That same weekend we ended up at a small Italian Festival in Jersey City on a 2-blcok street that has 2 massive Catholic Churches on it, one is an Italian Church and the other is a Polish Church.

You tell by the attendees at the festival that these churches obviously don't pull in the crowds like they used to, most the people there were in their 70's and the entertainment was a kind of cut price version of the 3 Tenors. Actually when we walked up one of those Tenors was singing "Danny Boy" which is about as Italian as Tracy Chapman.

I have to admit that despite my intense hatred of the Vatican, seeing the grannies dancing with a Tony Orlando look-a-like was fun. That generation had it tough, much tougher than we ever did, and maybe your faith was the only thing that kept you going. I don't agree with it but I can't say that it didn't matter.

Hell's Teeth

2007-08-19T09:31:00.000-04:00

Next week I am going to the dentist for the first time in years. Certainly it's the first time since I moved to America and even though I have dental insurance I have been warned that I should expect to get hit in the pocket, hard....

It's because of all these dire warnings of impending dental induced bankruptcy that I have avoided going to the tooth hack since I stumbled off the 737 at Newark airport in 1999. Well that, and the image of Laurence Olivier in "Marathon Man". I really am a big baby when it comes to my teeth but I can't avoid it any longer as one of my fillings came loose.

Well it was loose when I made the appointment.

This morning I bit into an onion bagel and now it is gone like the snows of last winter. I have a big hole in my front tooth and although it doesn't hurt (yet), I can't stop touching it with my tongue. Oh well, I guess I might have saved some money on the dental boat-hook, I just hope it doesn't start killing me before I get into Dr Toothy's chair.

Dr Toothy is a real dentist by the way. He's based in NYC's Chinatown and I used to walk past his office all the time and imagine this guy dressed as a clown with big floppy shoes, baggy trousers and a dentist drill. It was always more disturbing than reassuring. I guess it's all in my imagination because his commercial is actually kind of boring.

Needless to say I am still not going to Dr Toothy. My dentist's name is Lustiger, already renamed by me as "Lustybugger".

This is another annoying thing that I do, at least it's annoying to me. I pervert people's names to the point where I actually start to get their real name mixed up with the joke name. It's only a matter of time before I call the dentist "Lustybugger".

Damnit I really need to stop touching that tooth.

Asshole

2007-08-15T12:12:00.001-04:00

Up yer bum!

2007-08-15T11:07:00.000-04:00

I made a startling find yesterday when I discovered that Mr Potato Head stores all his bits and bobs up his bum. His eyes are there, his nose, his glasses and his arms too. There was even a little green hat stuck up his bum! That can't be comfortable!

I guess I am to blame for this revelation because it seems that no matter how old I get, I can't get over how amused I am by the words "Bum", "fart", "jobbie" and "poop". Those words still get a chuckle every time.

And therein lies a problem for me. I am now reading all these kids books like "Put me in the Zoo" by Robert Lopshire and they all have cute illustrations following a simple and fairly phonetic rhyme system. Every time I read one of these books I think "I can do that!".

Well I can do that... if I didn't have the problem that I am likely.. nay, compelled... to insert the words "bum, "fart" or "poop" in the narrative ("jobbie is out as I am writing for an American audience). I'm telling you it is impossible!!

"See the chickens in their coop, see the chickens covered in poop!".

"See the horse move as fast as a dart, see the horse leave brown clouds of fart"

It's a disease! I can't help it! I honestly think that 30% of my vocabulary is taken up with words for bowel movements. I am like a thesaurus of BM's.

Help!!!!!!!

A Bonfire of Insanities

2007-08-09T20:05:00.000-04:00

Yesterday a tornado touched down in New York City, my old neighborhood in Brooklyn to be precise. Over in the Dirty Shitty (as Jersey City is known), I was awakened by a huge crash of thunder right over my house and an almost simultaneous flash of lighting that went on for a lot longer than it takes for one to stay in the comfort zone.

I moved to the edge of my bed and peeked behind the curtain to see a sky that looked like something from the Wizard of Oz, all that was missing was the actual tornado and Judy Garland flying by on a bike while drinking a bottle of hooch.

I do believe that at this point I may have considered having an involuntary bowel movement but decided that would probably wake the baby so I just sat in silence watching this amazing lightning display going on right above my head. The baby slept right through the whole thing (thankfully).

It was time to get up, well it wasn't actually, it was 5.52am, I get up at 5.55am, if it wasn't for the thunder I would have had an extra 3 minutes in bed. AN EXTRA 3 MINUTES!!!! DAMN YOU MOTHER NATURE!!

I crawled out of bed and went downstairs while waterfalls streamed down every window and the air-conditioners sounded like they were under attack from the kid gangsters in Bugsy Malone armed with b.b machine guns, the rain was that heavy! I later read that we got 3 inches of rain in an hour and combined with the 5am high tide it meant that a lot of people were swimming to work.

I had an hour to wake up and get ready for my commute, I considered putting on my day-glo
speedo swimming trunks and my dark green goggles but decided to actually wear my sandals as my feet were gonna get soaked anyway.

I waited for an eternity for a bus and when I got on it was packed with people standing. There was however, one seat left and I grabbed it.

Two seconds later the guy sitting next to me punches me on the knee. Ouch!

I look at him: "What?"

"Nothing" he says.

"Okaaayyyyyy", I'm too knackered to pursue the issue so I go back to trying to wring the water out of my fat folds when he suddenly shoots up out of his seat for a second. He then relaxes and sits back down.

"Oh great" I'm thinking to myself, "I guess I now know why there was an empty seat on a busy bus, everyone else is better at spot the looney than I am".

There are too many people on the bus and I can't get out of the seat now, meanwhile he is twitching away. I was starting to wonder if maybe he was struck by lightning earlier when he starts going: "f-f-f-f-f-f-f-fuck".

He has Tourettes. Great. DAMN YOU AGAIN MOTHER NATURE! DAMN YOU ALL TO HAIL!!

This is the second time this has happened to me in the last two years, I may even have blogged about the last time before, but the last guy wasn't sitting next to me so it wasn't so bad (he was sitting in front of me saying "Mother-f-f-f-f-fucker" over and over again and shooting big gobs of spit on the back of the neck of the poor girl in front of him).

I put my IPOD on and crank up the punk rock. I manage to drown him out but he continues to kick me like an Italian defender. Thankfully it is a short bus ride... to the train station.

The station is chaos. Most of the Manhattan bound trains are suspended due to flooding and I eventually manage to squeeze onto a train that may well be bound for Aushwitz for all I know. The air conditioning is not working and I am jammed in like a toothpick that is still in the little jar with 5oo other little toothpicks.

The train crawls along at 2mph and we are all sweaty and cranky but I am happy just to get anywhere. A lot of people are staying home.

Eventually I get to the World Trade Center to scenes of people fighting over taxis as all the subways are flooded and closed. It is insane. I watch thankful that my work is only a short walk away.

You can see some pictures here. It was a mad morning............

Pub crawling in Jersey City

2007-07-11T09:33:00.001-04:00

When my friends were in Jersey City a few weeks back we spent a lot of time down the pub (as you do), specifically the pubs around my house which are all a bit scary. If it was in Glasgow these pub would be "Jakey pubs", here they are "Dive Bars". Dive bar culture is pretty hardcore, you don't order cosmopolitans in these places.

The main street by where is live is called Westside Avenue and is mostly Filipino and African-American businesses but there are few Irish bars left from the days when the hood was almost entirely Irish and Italian. After the race-riots of the late 60's (the 40th anniversary of the Newark riots was last weekend), the Irish and Italians all moved out to suburbia as part of the phenomenon known as "white flight".

As I stated before a lot of these bars are pretty scary looking and a lot of people won't go in to them but I have been in much worse places in the West of Scotland. And like the ones in the West of Scotland, the only thing rarer than women in these bars is sunlight and good beer. If you are a people watcher like me they are a fascinating guide to how NOT to live your life.

Anyway, the first bar we hit was called Mike's Place. Hidden behind a Dunkin Donuts and across from a Dairy Queen just off Westside Avenue. It has a pool table, a jukebox with a selection of classic rock (plenty of Queen and NO FUCKING Billy Joel) and the smallest beer selection in America and possibly the world. You can have your pick of Budweiser or Miller-lite, if you ask nicely your glass will be cold and it will only cost you a buck! You will also get a buy-back for every two ONE DOLLAR beers you consume. This probably explains why the bar looks like it is made from formica and leftover kitchen cabinets.

The regulars, all 3 of them (including Mike), are all really friendly even if they do bear resemblance to Fredo from The Godfather. Oh, and I would also mention that when you are playing pool, the table may seem like it is on a slope but in fact it is the whole bar that is on a slope. Put the white ball on the floor and watch it roll downhill faster than George Bush’s popularity.

Just down the street from Mike's Place is a another bar called "PF4 Friends". A confusing name that means nothing to me and seems to predate the invention of text message language by some 20 years. It occurs to me that it may have some connection to the scribblings of the artist formerly known as… the artist formally known as Prince who used to say things like “When 2 R in Love” and “I would Die 4 U” years before the cell phone industry caught on.

The clientèle consists of the barmaid from the Journal Square pub (more about that later) who obviously does her drinking here because the JSQ pub is too up-market for her and an ex-marine who is possibly the angriest man in America and bears a passing resemblance to Lemmy from Motorhead.

Beers were 3 bucks which was a shock after the communist paradise that was Mike’s Place, and again the jukebox was FUCKING Billy Joel free. Top marks for that fellas!

After that it was onto my local and in my opinion, the best bar in Jersey City, The Park Tavern. It has Guinness, Blue Moon wheat beer and a host of others on tap. The jukebox has a good selection of classic rock, Irish and country music. The whole place smells like wood, the bar tables are old wooden cable spindles turned on their side, in the winter there is a real wood fire and in the summer they have an outdoor space in the back. FUCKING Billy Joel doesn't get a look in.

The regulars are mainly Jersey City Police Department and JC Fire Department with a smattering of younger inhabitants thrown in. It's still a scary place though. If you want to come here, beware there is no sign on the door and I wasn’t able to find any reference to it online (hence the lack of a definitive address above). Just look for the place that has the old wooden shingle front that looks like it burned down some time ago.

Next it was onto City Hall.....

I say that because Jersey City has an Irish mayor and he is known for liking a drink, so much so that he answered the door naked during his election campaign and last year was arrested (and later found guilty and fined) for fighting with the police in another New Jersey town. The Astor Bar where I went next is one of the mayor's hangouts and, I suspect, where most of the important decisions regarding the city are really made.

Stepping into this place is like stepping into a time-warp. It looks like it hasn’t changed since the 1950’s and it probably hasn’t.

Frankie Valli and Tony Bennet are on the jukebox, and so are 2… FUCKING 2!!!!… FUCKING Billy Joel CD’s. That almost ruined it for me but as soon as I heard the soothing tones of Patsy Cline going walking after midnight, I figured I can live with the fish-faced wanker for now.

The regulars were loud and friendly, discussing racing at Belmont at the tops of their voices and chugging $2.50 beers. To a man, they all looked like versions of Archie Bunker, grey-haired and pink round Irish faces.

Finally it was on to the Journal Square Pub, this is the last bar before you get on the train to Manhattan. There are a lot of Scottish tans in this pub. What is that you ask? Well, a regular tanned person has tanned skin and white teeth, a Scottish tanned person has white skin and tanned teeth. The barmaid who I met earlier is very nice but jaded in a way that only someone who has been dealing with hardcore alky's for the last 20 years could be.

I do have a soft spot for this pub so I hope it survives the gentrification of Journal Square which is right around the corner, however looking at some of the regulars I just hope they survive the weekend!

Thoughts on a National Treasure

2007-07-11T08:41:00.000-04:00

Last night I went to a baseball game for only the second time in the 8 years that I have been living in tbe US and, as an outsider, I have to say I had a few thoughts on the national pastime.

The day didn’t start well as I stopped off in a bar in Manhattan while waiting my brother-in-law to get off work, the barman was an old friend of mine from another place that I didn’t know had moved.

This barman is really nice guy but has a habit of starting every sentence with the words: “Well, ever since my wife passed away….”. Not to sound insensitive but I’ve known the guy for five years and she’d already been dead for sometime before I met him. After 15 minutes of this you feel like asking this guy if he knows how to make a cocktail called a “Razor blade” or a “Bleeding wrist”. Aww please maaaan… stop!

Anyway, I digress….

We hop the 7-train out to Shea stadium and I am depressed about the ghost of a woman who I never knew and who has been dead for some time. I am also lightly buzzed and I find myself looking around for the ghost of John Rocker’s career in the faces of all those dirty queers and purple-haired-just-released-from-jail immigrant New Yorkers and see only regular people getting ready to enjoy a warm night out at the ballpark.

The sight of the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Park also cheers me up but after that it is downhill all the way from there.

My problem starts with my ticket, which was free through my brother-in-law who works for one of the corporate sponsors of the Mets, I won’t say which one but let’s just say it rhymes with “shitty wank” and they are going to have half their name inserted in the name of the new baseball stadiuim once it is built.

As a Scotsman with short arms and deep pockets, I have been culturally trained to never turn down free-stuff and this includes tickets for sports that I don’t really understand that well. In saying this however - when you hand me a couple of balloon-like things (that are apparently called “Cheerstix”) with corporate logos on them and ask me to bang them in rhythm to an old Queen song and jump up and down like a performing baboon - at that point I have to draw the line. You have better chance of getting me to eat a jar of garlic sautéed toenail clippings.

"BOOM BOOM BLAT, BOOM BOOM BLAT... We will, we will rock you.... " is coming from all around me as I have my head in my hands wishing I was back in the dead wife bar.

The section of the stadium that we were in was entirely given over to employees of the corporate sponsor, all of them still wearing their work suits and banging their cheerstix together like good little sheep. It was getting more and more depressing so I decided to get up and go for a beer. Another bad idea.

I was not expecting a beer in a ballpark to be cheap by any means but $7.50 for a plastic bottle of Miller-lite?? You’d be as well filling a glass with quarters and drinking them - at least the quarters would taste less metallic. Also, I was getting hungry so I bought some Nathan’s chicken tenders and fries, actually, what I acquired was EXACTLY 3 chicken tenders and 19 fries for the princely sum of $7.25. I know because I counted them with tears streaming down my face.

By now I am starting to see the pattern here: the blue-collar pastime that Americans are so proud of has become blue chip. Back in my seat I am shocked to notice that one of the tickers on the side of the stand is showing stock prices.

I guess that sent me to rock bottom and I catch myself and say, “Fuck this! I am here to watch the game! Let's at least TRY to enjoy myself”

The game gets set in a rhythm and I find myself getting into it like the kind of drunken transcendental mediation that old alcoholics practice when they have perfected the art of staring into space. When a mosquito opens an all-you-can-eat buffet on my arm in the 6th inning I don’t even notice.

Baseball is a strange game to an outsider. I think “game” rather than “sport” is a good way to describe it as it seems to me that the players sit on their arses for most of the time, once every 30 minutes or so they get up and swing a tree branch around a few times then sit down again. If they should happen to hit something they then huff and puff around the baselines like they are being chased by a group of one-legged hippos. When they are playing in defense it is even better! You stand around waiting for the ball to COME TO YOU! Only rarely do you actually have to go to it!

And there you have it, I found it growing on me because when I was in High School I was always the fat kid that was crap at sports. Finally we have a game that a fat kid can be good at. With good hand/eye coordination “a little extra padding” can take you a long way!

God Bless you Fat America!

Aye-ya Allah!

2007-07-04T09:39:00.000-04:00

Last week I was returning my rental car to Glasgow airport and I think I made the pretty definite statement that blind people shouldn't be allowed to drive, look what happened:

As my pants caught fire many people thought I was yelling "Allah, Allah" but I was actually yelling "Aye-ya Aye-ya.... yafuckinbastard ma troosers are on fire!"....

Oh I'm sorry, I shouldn't make a joke of this situation as it is obviously deadly serious but we live in such a fucked up world now that my sense of humor is becoming more warped as everyday events becomes more warped. In truth, the only good thing that has come out of the events in Glasgow and London last week is that no-one was killed.

It's a shame too that with the long drawn out death of Tony Blair's Premiership now over, I thought I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Gordon Brown may not be that much different but I'd be surprised if he's any worse. I already like the fact that he is talking about taking power away from the executive and putting it back into the hands of Parliament, that's a step in the right direction as far as I'm concerned.

Things on this side of the Atlantic continue their inevitable march towards a racist right wing theocracy. Last week the Supreme court rolled back one of the prime pieces of Civil Rights legislation in basically overturning Brown vs the Board of Education. You can read an interesting NY Times article here.

The court claims that the decision is based on the fact that an integrated society should embrace colorblindness as a way to continue but the fact is that America is still a very racist place (It has only been 44 years since Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have A Dream speech) and colorblindness in this society does not exist.

In the town I live in you can literally see the color line. One street in one direction and everyone is White or Asian, one street in the other direction and everyone is Black. I'm not joking when I say it is that clearly defined. As far as I am concerned last weeks Supreme Court decision will enforce that color line and increase the gap between the have and have-nots. It saddens me immensely.

Baby Music

2007-06-24T09:23:00.000-04:00

For my first Father's Day I was given two Rockabye Baby CD's. If you don't know what these things are I suggest you stay in blissful ignorance because you are not missing anything. If you want to waste 45 minutes of your life and do serious damage to your eardrums then read on.

Rockabye Baby CD's are baby styled versions of your favorite music, it can be baby Radiohead, Baby Pink Floyd, etc etc.... I got Baby Ramones and Baby Bjork given to me, the Ramones one was awful and as Bjork sounds like a baby singing in the first place it struck me as rather pointless.

It did make me think though - I am trying to influence the baby's musical tastes to match mine, is this going to be possible? I suspect not but I'll give it a damn good try in order to avoid having a house full of Jessica Simpson sound-a-likes.

When I was growing up, my Mother subjected me to howling gales of opera on a regular basis that it made everyday of my life seem like the closing scenes of Godfather III – moving in slow-mo and extremely drawn out painful death.

Fat men with lungs the size of Sicily spewed songs in Italian that seemed really complex but when you read the English translation would amount to things like:

“I love you Henrietta, let’s get married!”.

“I can’t because I need to wash my hair and I have to pick up the cat from the vet”.

I thought my Mother had put me off opera for life but then I got invited to see a show at the Met a few years back, and despite having to dress like a penguin with a pool-cue up its arse, I actually really enjoyed the spectacle. Now occasionally… very occasionally… I will put on opera music and listen to some Viking lady explain how to catch a fish with a pointy helmet.

My own musical tastes came from my older Brothers (3 of them, all older than me). Only one was still living at home when I was growing up but there was always good sounds coming out his room. Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, The Beatles, Pink Floyd could be heard behind his door as him and his friends jammed it shut to keep me out. I’d lie on the floor kicking the door with all my might listening to “Comfortably Numb” shaking the rafters of the house.

Now that I have a kid of my own I think I’ve pretty much accepted the fact that she will probably view all the stuff I like as old farts music. I'm not going down without a fight though! My hope, and prayer, is that she somehow passes over the teenybopper Britney phase and moves straight into a Goth phase. At least then I’ll be able to connect with her by playing her some of the amazingly large collection of really depressing songs I own. If she likes only shiny happy pop then I am irreversibly fucked.

More Comedy

2007-05-05T12:26:00.000-04:00

Saw a comedian called Rick Shapiro this week. All I can say is that I think the guy is the Miles Davis of comedy. It's complete stream of consciousness stuff and about 2 amazing jokes mixed in with 2 hours of surrealism. If you've ever been a fan of Miles you'll know that for every history changing album he made, there were also a buncha turkeys along the way too. The guy is too good to stop listening to though.

Shapiro played the deadbeat brother on the TV show Lucky Louie, which I think was one of the funniest things on TV in years, so I knew who he was before he came on. Nothing prepares you for this guy though. He looks (and sounds) like Lemmy from Motorhead shagged a crack-whore and this guy is their baby.

I was actually at the show to see Doug Stanhope again (see earlier post) but Stanhope gave the mic to Shapiro and two hours later I was wondering what the fuck just happened. Stanhope came back on and was pretty funny but it was hard to get Shapiro's trip out my head. I spent the 2 hours saying to myself c'mon get Stanhope back on but now 2 days later I find myself thinking about stuff Shapiro said not Stanhope.

I think my problem is that I think life is too homogenized now, sure it was annoying to be accosted by the drunk homeless guy in the street and have your ear talked off about the time he woke up in the foetal position in the shower after drinking a quart of battery acid, but at least he had a story and at least his story is unique. Life needs characters and Rick Shapiro is one of those characters.

Get on the Program

2007-05-05T08:55:00.000-04:00

*This post carries an Irony warning, if you are American and do not understand Irony, look in the dictionary, you'll find it next to "Goldy" and "Bronzy"...........

Christ, it's been almost 2 months since I last posted anything. That's the longest I've ever gone without feeling the need to vent some steam, it's a poitively George-Bush-on-vaction-while-people-die amount of time, and I'm quite proud of it! Why? Well, it means that the apathy training program I've been putting myself though recently is beggining to work. At least I think it is... ah, who cares!

It's been 2 months of DIY, baby poop and stupid television shows. This is not what I imagined myself to be doing in my mid-30's but thanks to the apathy training program... who cares!

I even went out a couple of times and drank some beer... in a bar! Imagine that! Me! Drunk! It wasn't very special, just some sugary water in a glass under a neon light. Standing alone and watching sports. The guy who won the Masters Golf said he did so because Jesus was walking the fairways with him! It was Sunday, I was in a bar, normally I would have screamed about Jesus having better things to do on a Sunday than play golf but I didn't. This was considered an essential step in the apathy training program and I am so happy I managed to pass it with flying colors.

All the big questions have gone away thanks to the apathy training program. Is there a God? What if there is a God but he has abandoned us? Who's gonna end the war? Who's gonna win "Dancing with Celebrities"? How did Madonna get so ugly? Who cuts Bob Dylan's hair?

Get on the program, I promise you'll like it.....

Comedy as a tool to educate

2007-03-17T10:49:00.000-04:00

Last week we went to see comedian Doug Stanhope doing a show that will be taped for TV. Well, that is if there is anything in his set that they can show on TV. His material was prefaced by titles like "I hate the jews" and "Fun with peadophiles and pro-lifers". It was one of the funniest and ballsy shows I've seen in years.

I should explain that the titles above are mine but they are pretty much how he framed his jokes. He smacks you in the face with an outrageous comment then he leaves you to think about the deeper ramifications. After the show my wife remarked that the guy may well be a genius.

The "I hate the Jews" routine for example was about religion and not about a people. He was making the point that all religions should be viewed with the same suspicion, and if that religion is the means by which you define yourself, then you should be viewed with equal, if not more, suspicion. He has done tons of material in the past about Christians and Muslims and Mormons and to come to New York and do this material was seriously pushing the envelope. People were laughing so hard it was nuts.

He also did a great skit on the amount of anti-depressent and ADHD drugs that people are on these days. He framed the whole idea as one big conspiracy to keep people docile and stupid. The line I'll always remember was "I shit myself when my doctor told me I had a unique and interesting personality! Fuck you! At least Black people knew when they were slaves!". It was an amazing performance.

It's very unusual that a show will affect Me and my Wife in the same way, we went to a restaurant afterwards where we dissected all the ideas that he had talked about. It was crazy but we both felt like little seeds had been planted that allowed you to think that maybe everything you know is either wrong or at least needs to be re-examined.

If Doug Stanhope comes to a town near you. DO NOT MISS HIM.

*WARNING* The following video is not safe for viewing at work, or at home for that matter......

St Paddy's

2007-03-03T11:40:00.000-05:00

This morning I was on the train sitting across from a guy who looked like Ian Paisley. I wanted to ask "Are you Ian Paisley?" but I was afraid that him shouting "Noooo!" in an enclosed train might make my ear-drums explode!

The reason I mention this is that the St Patrick's Day marching season is upon us. In New York the big parade is obviously the 17th but for all the towns surrounding NY, like Jersey City where I live, the parades are the weekend before or after. I guess this is becuase the same die-hard eejits show up at all the parades. I have a love/hate relationship with St Paddy's day. Obviously I love the drinking but I can't stand the flag waving and plastic shamrocks.

The Jersey City Parade assembles in the park behind my house and last Sunday we brought the Wee Yin up to see it. The usual gobshites were out in force accompanied by bad bagpipers and drunk policemen. I can't say it was enjoyable but it's definitely different, I guess I would compare it to the Mickey Mouse Parade on Guinness.

Speaking of Guinness, the one surreal image I'll take home with me was a vintage beer delivery truck with a guy dressed up as a pint. The old truck showed up late and the poor pint of Guinness had to hold on to the top of the truck for his dear life as they tried to catch up with the rest of the marchers. It's a good thing he wasn't drunk.

The Oscars

2007-03-01T09:36:00.000-05:00

I spent last Sunday night watching the snooze-fest that was the Oscars, a strange thing to do considering I haven't been to the cinema in over a year and have not seen a single one of the films nominated.

Because of this I think I might be going a bit soft in the head as I find myself analyzing dress styles and saying "Ooo, she's lost a lot of weight!" to the baby, who of course looks at me like a dog that has just been shown a card-trick.

What is it about this tabloid shite that gets in your head and makes you want to jump in and play with these cultural train-wrecks. Who cares if Britney Spears wants to shave her head or Anna-Nicole's tits explode? I get annoyed with myself when I find my brain-cells being used up with piffle like this! This post being another perfect example.

I saw Jennifeerr Hudson getting her best supporting actress oscar and for a second I thought "Good for her! She used to work in Burger King y'know! She was also a finalist on American Idol but never won. She sings in a gospel choir......" asd so on and on....

I can't remember my own phone number on a good day so why do I know this shite? The commentator said "Jennifer Hudson has had a meteoric rise to fame". For a moment I stared at the baby, who stared back at me, blew a raspberry and promptly went back to chewing on the remote control (which I remove the batteries from as she seems to want to watch Oprah all the time).

"Meteoric RISE"? When was the last time you saw a meteor fly UP the way? Meteors are known for their falling abilities. They are also known for burning up on the way down to Earth. Considering the situation that Britney "Asparagus" Spears has got herself into, maybe there is something in the meteor metaphor after all.

Bakerman

2007-02-20T19:40:00.000-05:00

In between babywatch and working on DIY, I'm having trouble finding the time to write these days. A lot of stuff is just passing on by, and you know what? That's just fine with me. Here's a video that I used to watch when me and my friend Tam were partial to a few Camberwell Carrots after dragging our drunken arses home through the rain and snow from the local disocteque on a Saturday night. I had this video on tape for years and I am so glad to see it resurface on youtube!

Joanna Newsom

2007-02-10T18:46:00.000-05:00

I've been listening a lot to a singing harpist named Joanna Newsom. Her music is amazing and the harp is an incredible instrument to listen to. Her singing voice however is an acquired taste and the first time I heard it I reached straight for the "off" button. I don't want to sound unkind, but this girl really sounds like Lisa Simpson when she sings. Anyway, here she is....

Diaper dreams-

2007-02-10T18:33:00.000-05:00

The astro-nut story gave me a great idea - people in America don't work hard enough - I mean I get TWO whole weeks off a year! And heck, if I get sick it comes out of my holiday time. I think that is disgraceful.... I should get NO time-off, and with my idea to increase productivity, I should get NO toilet breaks.

Every worker in America should be given NASA standard diapers and a diaper disposal unit should be placed at the exit of every office. For the bosses we could have some kind of self-cleaning diaper, of course it will come in an aged-executive style leather with combination locks to protect those company secrets.

Think about it - when you are young and your careers teacher asks: "What do you want to be when you grow up little Tommy?".

"I want to be an astronaut!!!!!!"

"Well, good news Tommy! You don't have to be an astronaut to wear one of these anymore".
[Careers teacher pats himself on the diaper inflated bum and laughs!]

No one likes my ideas anymore... for example, when will they believe me when I say I think Anna Nicole-Smith was the spokesperson for our generation? If we had only listened to her, maybe we could have stopped the war in Iraq and the genocide in Darfur. Now she is dead, like John Lennon and Malcolm X. Damn, what chances did we miss???

Life is just plain weird

2007-02-06T21:19:00.000-05:00

The idea that astronauts will train for years only to have learn to crap in a nappy as part of their job was the thought that made me spray my morning coffee over the pages of the New York Times.

It concerns this story obviously. A fairly straightforward crime of passion that has unfortunately been shoved to the front page by a nappy! I mean, if she was just a "Hell hath no fury like a woman spurned" story then this story would never have made it out of the Fartville Sentinel.

It's a strange story all in all but it's the nappy that really gets me. Did she really need to save the 3 minutes it would take to go to the bathroom in order to go nutso on the poor lady she assaulted. It's one thing to be pepper-sprayed in the face, it's quite another thing to be pepper-sprayed by a nappy wearing astronaut who smells like poop. Also, it makes me wonder what the inside of the space shuttle smells like after these guys have been couped up in it for 3 weeks. Also what if you accidentally let go of the (now full) nappy under weightless conditions? I think we should be renaming it "The Space Shittle".

"I've been pooped up in the Space Shittle for 3 weeks". Nice.......

Stupid.

2007-02-03T16:47:00.000-05:00

I get into work and I log on to google to search for something, I don't even remember what now, and the cookie for google has saved the previous search done by one of my co-workers. Now, if this search item was "Kylie Minogue's arse" then I could understand that, but what do you make of this? The search was, and I kid you not, I cut and pasted this right from the search engine... the search was "999 minutes equals how many hours"....

Are you messing with me unnamed co-worker? To say the least, this is a pretty simple calculation to make. Unless of course you are not quite sure how many minutes there are in an hour, which judging on this evidence wouldn't surprise me! Honestly, I wonder how some people manage to get out of bed in the morning without setting their slippers on fire!!!!

Accents

2007-01-27T13:29:00.000-05:00

I was listening to the BBC World Service the other day and they were interviewing a guy from Newcastle, a "Geordie" as they are called, or a "Scotsman with his brains kicked in" as Jackie Leven calls them.

I always had a hard time understanding a thick Geordie accent, and I know I haven't heard one in a while, but this guy might as well have been speaking Punjabi. I could not understand ONE SINGLE WORD.

I've been away from the UK for 8 years now and I guess I've lost the ear for it, but it amazes me how such a small country can have such an amazing array of accents and ways of speaking. In the States, with the exception of the Deep South, you pretty much can't tell the difference between a person from New Jersey and a person from Minnesota, a distance of 1200 miles. In Scotland, you can tell immediately whether a person is from Glasgow or Edinburgh, a distance of 45 miles. Go another 20 miles North of Edinburgh into Fife and you are in another accent zone altogether.

I miss the small idiosyncrasies about living in the UK; the fact that some places offer you salt and vinegar on your chips while others, just down the road, are salt and sauce. This doesn't sound like much but it keeps life interesting and has the effect of staving off the homogeneous existence that is being forced on us all by Mainstreet USA/UK.

It's been a while

2007-01-20T09:00:00.000-05:00

I hate cell phones. I really really hate them. I have one for "emergency purposes" but as we found out during 9/11 and the blackout, in a real emergency the damn things don't work.

I have a 200 minutes a month plan and probably use about 25 minutes. I spend more time doing text messages than I do speaking. It's not because I prefer text messages, it's because I do not need to pollute the air with my voice.

How many times have you heard some guy next to you on the train calling to say "Yeah Honey, I'll be home in 5 minutes", or "I'm on the train".

My response to these statements is: "Good for fucking you!".

If you are going to be home in 5 minutes, surely your wife/husband could wait that extra 5 minutes to see you without unduly wondering where the hell you've got to. Just GET THERE for feck's sake and stop wasting time on the phone!

And yes, you are "on the train". So what! Does this validate you screaming that information in my ear? I'm on the train too and since you cannot be heard over the background noise, you have to honk like Pavarotti on helium! It's annoying and no-one gains anything from the precious oxygen you just used up.

I know I am starting to sound like Victor Meldrew here but it really does seem to me that life does not have to be like this. It is becoming impossible to switch off. I can now check my work email from home and at least half of those calls on my cell will be job related - often when I am on my way home or on the weekend.

I look around at the people on the train in the morning and every face I see has an unhealthy grey pallor to it. They just got on the train, cell phones are open, PDA's are being punched, minutes for the meeting at 9am are being read. I feel sad for these people. I feel sad for me that I am sharing a rush hour train with them!

On the home front the Wee Yin has reached 6 months and is babbling, blowing raspberries and sitting up on her own. It's great to watch her develop, she is getting strong and will already grip your fingers and stand up on her own (albeit in a kind of Shakira-like bum shaking style). This weekend she is taking her first swim class.

I just finished watching the documentary "Friend of God" by Alexandra Pelosi, the daughter of the new Democratic speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. It is a film about the lives of the evangelical Americans and the parallel world that they live in.

You'd think that Pelosi's family background would paint her as a female Michael Moore but she has managed to make a remarkably balanced film and how you view it will depend on the belief of the viewer. As I am that viewer in this case, I gotta say these people scare the living shite out of me, they make the Catholic Church look like a bunch of wimps in the nutty-for-Christ category.

The film includes Christian pro-wrestling, a drive-thru Church, Christian rock concerts and Christian stand-up comics. If you get a chance to catch this film try and see it.

The Urge To Surge

2007-01-11T17:39:00.000-05:00

Greg Palast is one of the few people in the media who makes any sense to me. Below is an email he sent to his mailing list today:

WAIST DEEP IN THE BIG MUDDY
by Greg Palast
Thursday, January 11, 2007

George W. Bush has an urge to surge. Like every junkie, he asks for just one more fix: let him inject just 21,000 more troops and that will win the war.

Been there. Done that. In 1965, Tom Paxton sang,

Lyndon Johnson told the nation
Have no fear of escalation.
I am trying everyone to please.
Though it isn't really war,
We're sending 50,000 more
To help save Vietnam from the Vietnamese.

Four decades later, Bush is asking us to save Iraq from the Iraqis.

There's always a problem with giving a junkie another fix. It can only make things worse. Our maximum leader says that unless he gets to mainline another 21,000 troops, "Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons," and terrorists "would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people."

Excuse me, but didn't we hear that same promise in 2003? Nearly four years ago, on the eve of invasion, this same George Bush promised, "The terrorist threat to America and the world will be diminished the moment that Saddam Hussein is disarmed."

Instead of diminishing the threat from terrorists, Bush now admits, "Al Qaeda has a home base in Anbar province" -- something inconceivable under Saddam's rule.

Four years ago, Bush promised us, "When the dictator has departed, [Iraq] can set an example to all the Middle East of a vital and peaceful and self-governing nation." Just send in the 82d Airborne and, lickety-split, we'd have, "A new Iraq that is prosperous and free."

Well, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Here's my question: Who asked the waiter to deliver this dish? Who asked for the 21,000 soldiers?

We know the US military didn't ask for the 21,000 troops. (Outgoing commander General George Casey called for a troop reduction.)

We know the Iraqi government didn't ask for the 21,000 troops. (Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is reportedly unhappy about a visible increase in foreign occupiers).

So who wants the occupation to continue? The answer is in Riyadh. When the King of Saudi Arabia hauled Dick Cheney before his throne on Thanksgiving weekend, the keeper of America's oil laid down the law to Veep: the US will not withdraw from Iraq.

According to Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi who signals to the US government the commands and diktats of the House of Saud, the Saudis are concerned that a US pull-out will leave their Sunni brothers in Iraq to be slaughtered by Shia militias. More important, the Saudis will not tolerate a Shia-majority government in Iraq controlled by the Shia mullahs of Iran. A Shia combine would threaten Saudi Arabia's hegemony in the OPEC oil cartel.

In other words, it's about the oil.

So what's the solution? What's my plan? How do we get out of Iraq? Answer: the same way we got out of 'Nam. In ships.

But can we just watch from the ship rail as Shia slaughter Sunnis in Baghdad, Sunnis murder Shia in Anbar, Kurds "cleanse" Kirkuk of Turkmen and so on in a sickening daisy-chain of ethnic atrocities?

No. There's a real alternative. And it isn't more troops, George.

Let's imagine that somehow we could rip away the strings that allow Cheney and Rove and Abdullah to control our puppet president and he somehow, like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, suddenly grew a brain. His speech last night would have sounded like this:

"My fellow Americans. Iraq is going to hell in a handbag. So the whole shebang doesn't collapse into mayhem and madness, we need to send in 21,000 more troops. So I've just wired King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and told him to send them.

"My missive to the monarch reads: Dear Abdullah. It's time your 16,000 princelings got out of their Rolls Royces and formed the core of an Islamic Peacekeeping Force to prevent mass murder in Iraq. The American people are tired of you using the 82d Airborne as your private mercenary army. It seems like the Saudi military's marching song is, 'Onward Christian Soldiers.'

"Well, King Ab, we're out of here. We're folding tents and loading the wagons. For four years now, Saudis have been secretly funding the berserkers in the Iraqi 'insurgency' while the Iranians are backing the crazies in the militias. Well, we're telling you and the Persians: you're going to have to stop using your checkbooks to fund a proxy war and instead start keeping the peace. It's time you put your own tushies in the line of fire for a change."

"If the African Union nations, poor as they are, can maintain a peacekeeping force to stop killings in Sudan and Senegal, you Saudis, with all the military toys we've sold you, can certainly join with your Muslim brothers in Jordan, Iran and Turkey to take responsibility for your region's peace.

"And when you get to Fallujah, don't forget to drop us a postcard."

Well, that's my fantasy. But instead, War Junkie George will get his fix of another 21,000 American soldiers.

It reminds me far too chillingly of a Pete Seeger tune written when LBJ was saving Vietnam from Vietnamese. It was based on the true story of a US platoon in training, wading into the rising Mississippi, whose commander order them to keep going, deeper and deeper -- until they drowned.

We're waste deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.

Blown away by "The Road to Peace"

2007-01-02T22:53:00.000-05:00

I haven't heard any new songs in ages that literally make me fall out of my seat and hit the rewind button just to check that I heard that right. "The Road to Peace" by Tom Waits is the first one in a while You can hear it here.

Tom Waits "Orphans" is the best album released last year by a mile. Forget the crock of crap that was "Modern Times" by Bob Dylan which is being paraded by every newspaper as the best album of the year. In my opinion it was a crap Dylan album and a passable honky-tonk album that, if it had been made by Merle Haggard, we'd have probably ignored it (and I like Merle Haggard). Because it is by Dylan, and because we need the "Hard-Rain's a gonna fall" Dylan now more than ever, "Modern Times" landed in my CD player like a unwelcome turd in my beer.

Ain't no cure for the Christmas time blues

2007-01-02T21:40:00.000-05:00

It was a quiet Christmas and New Year as the relatives on this side of the pond are not big on drinking and I am not big on being drunk around sober people. Yes, we all agreed to go the lobotomy route and feed the kids toys while the adults talk DIY (men) and kids (women). This sounds like a horrible generalisation but thats how it really seemed to me and I guess it is a mark of how much my life has changed in the last 12 months that I don't care anymore. Now that I am a home owner I'll talk drywall and power tools with the best of them. Christ.... please shoot me!!!!!

It was all downhill from there I'm afraid. Our ginger cat TT has been sick for a while and in the last two weeks of the year he started leaking water into his abdomen and became horribly bloated. We took him to the vet but they could not find out what the problem was, he just got sicker and we made the decision to have him put to sleep on December 30th. He didn't make it.

My wife found him the night before face down in the basement. She thought he was already dead but when she called my name to come down, he moved his head so she wrapped him in a blanket and brought him upstairs. She held him as he swallowed a few times and took a couple of last gasps for air and died with both me and her stroking him. It was heartbreaking and strange. He must have been down in the basement for a while but somehow found the strength to see us for one last time.

I don't mind admitting I cried. He was an old cat (we think he was about 12 or 13, we inherited him from a friend who found him as a stray, we had him for 7 years) and no doubt his time had come. He came into our life when our friend took a trip to Australia and asked us to look after his two cats, X-10 and Momo.

X-10 is a terrible name for a cat, especially one with an outgoing personality like he had, so his name kind of morphed into Mr Ten, then Mr T, then TT. Most cats I've ever owned were stand-offish and cold, TT was a true gentleman and a dreadful cat in that he was really crap at things that cats do like jumping and hunting. I once saw a cockroach run right across his belly while he just watched it run under the cooker. In his older days he would sit in my back garden and stare at the squirrels less than a foot away. The squirrels destroyed our veggie garden this year so needless to say we were not very encouraging of this behaviour.

When you came home from work TT would come running to greet you, if you were arguing he would come and check on you, he just seemed to genuinely care about people and things and I'm glad I knew the little guy. Rest in Peace little cat.

TT (1994?? - 2006)

In a year when my Mum passed away and our daughter was born. I do not need anymore drama. Good riddance 2006, bring on a quieter 2007.

Taking a cab to Jesus

2006-12-19T21:01:00.000-05:00

My cab driver last night was from Egypt and was a member of the Coptic Orthodox Church. How do I know this? Well, because I spent 20 minutes inside his cab being bombarded by a plea to accept Jesus as my saviour.

It started innocently enough, all he did was ask me if I was going to church on Christmas and I replied "No, I don't believe in God". Apparently the English to Arabic translation of this statement is "I want to believe in God, please spend the next 20 minutes telling me about the glory of Christ".

It was turning into a very loooong cab ride so I decided to start answering his questions with questions of my own: "Why are you Christian and not Muslim like most people in Egypt?". The apparent English to Arabic translation of this statement was "Tell me why you hate Muhammad", which is what he preceded to do for five more minutes. His story involved an 85 year old woman being ripped apart between two camels (honestly, I couldn't make this up if I tried) which he claimed to have witnessed, apparently she was a Christian lady and had therefore signed her own death warrant.

Now, I don't know if the story was true or not, I certainly hope not, but what he failed to understand about me was that I don't believe in Muhammad either and he could have been talking about a Nightmare on Elm Street movie for all I knew.

I started babbling the lyrics to the song "God" by John Lennon in the back seat:

I don't believe in magic
I don't believe in I-ching
I don't believe in Bible
I don't believe in tarot
I don't believe in Hitler
I don't believe in Jesus
I don't believe in Kennedy
I don't believe in Buddha
I don't believe in Mantra
I don't believe in Gita
I don't believe in Yoga
I don't believe in kings
I don't believe in Elvis
I don't believe in Zimmerman
I don't believe in Beatles
I just believe in me
Yoko and me
And that's reality

The first lines in the song above are " God is a concept by which we measure our pain". 20 minutes in a Jersey City cab and my head was pounding. Jersey City cabs are disgusting and they are nearly always falling apart, they have defective steering and half of them don't have seat belts. Again, I wish I was making this up, but I have to say that if there is one place where I am not going to achieve a religious epiphany, it's in the back of a Jersey City Cab. The only conversion happening in this cab was the smell from the catalytic conversion. Happy Christmas y'all.

Gunning for the blind.

2006-12-12T20:02:00.000-05:00

Apparently the State of Texas is about to pass a law that will allow blind people to hunt animals with a gun that has a laser sight. Laser sights are apparently currently banned in hunting circles as they can make an animal freeze when they spot it.

This report throws up a number of questions for me. Firstly, do we really need blind people running around with guns when we already have Dick Cheney? What kind of blind person would get pleasure out of killing something they cannot see? If you get pleasure from firing a gun then fair enough - I have heard that gun owners get turned on by a swift thump on the shoulder - but hey, surely you can fire that gun at an inanimate object. George Bush lives in Texas, fire it at him.

Secondly, if you are already in this place where you really really need to blow some poor defenseless animal's brains out, why do you care if it is moving or not? Will you feel guilty if Bambi takes the bullet sitting down? Don't worry about your karma, it has already run over your dogma. I hope you all get your laser sights and then accidentally shine them right into the pupils of the "sighted" helper.

Wake me up before you go go!

2006-12-05T20:24:00.000-05:00

The Wee Yin likes to fight sleep as long as she can but I am getting better at calming her and making her relax and drift off into slumber without too much fuss.

Unfortunately, I am also getting better at putting her down in her bed or chair then immediately afterwards I'll sit down on the couch on the loudest noise-making baby toy you've ever heard.

This will happen to me almost everytime. The house can be spotlessly clean and I will alway check before sitting down but unbeknownst to me, lurking under one cushion will be the "Fisher-Price Klaxxon wake-the-baby-toy" and I will literally throw myself onto it in order to make the loudest possible noise!

This is followed by a wimper from the Wee Yin, she makes a face and moves her head from side to side but does not wake up. Phew!! Got away with it!!

She will only wake a minute later when I pick up the "Fisher-Price Klaxxon" without turning it off first and set the whole "Old McDonald Had A Farm" as performed by Napalm Death and the New York Symphony Orchesta off all over again.

Seriously, you cannot move in my house without sitting or standing on something that makes a noise. I have come home late at night when everyone is sleeping and all is quiet only to set off a virtual eardrum splitting symphony of "Frere Jaques", "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Old McDonald" all at the same time.

The English version of "Frere Jacques" is of course:

Are you sleeping, are you sleeping?
Brother John, Brother John?
Morning bells are ringing,
morning bells are ringing
Ding Ding Dong, Ding Ding Dong.

SLEEPING? NOT ANY MORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

God said: "Let there be Spending".

2006-12-02T14:28:00.000-05:00

Thank God for Walmart. Or should that be "Thank Walmart for God!". It seems that after years of politcal correctness gone mad Wallmart has decided that it is okay to call "Christmas"... well, "Christmas".

No more Happy Holidays! The war against Christmas is over. The commercialization of Christ has won and we can all be happy for it. I am thinking of starting a company that prints bumper stickers that say "What would Jesus Buy?".

Forget Hanukkah and Kwanzaa which fall around the same time and fit nicely under the "Happy Holidays" umbrella. Forget the fact that Christmas was originally a pagan holiday! Just get out and spend, spend, spend, knowing that every dollar you give to your big-box retailer will get you one step closer to eternal happiness! Rejoice!!!

Offensive to Scots

2006-11-25T22:33:00.000-05:00

I saw my friend Sean for the first time in months and he was telling me about the haloween party they had in the bar he owns.

"I was looking for you" said Sean. "I wanted to borrow your kilt".

I looked at him and pulled my best squinty face and said "Why did you want to borrow my kilt? You can't just dress up as a Scotsman on haloween y'know! Ye have to be a bit more original than that!".

Well...

It turns out he dressed up as a post-drunk driving Mel Gibson complete with Scottish kilt, Jewish yarmulkie and a bottle of tequila.

I had to laugh.

"Only thing was..." said Sean, "A lot of people said it was offensive to Jewish people but my wife is Jewish and she okayed it".

"JEWISH PEOPLE!! It's fucking offensive to Scottish people Sean!!!!!" I said jokingly.

If I didn't think he'd enjoy it, I'd say Mel Gibson should be crucified for making Braveheart.

The Joys of Fatherhood

2006-11-22T17:54:00.000-05:00

The Wee Yin likes to pretend she is flying. I pick her up and hold her above my head and she smiles and giggles down at me like Peter Pan in Pampers. This morning, shortly after she woke up, I was helping her fly from the bed to the changing table for a quick nappy refit when we stopped halfway there and I held her above my head and looked up at her.

In retrospect I really think I saw it coming, but like a salmon swimming upstream, I pressed on ahead regardless. Wee Yin was smiling as she hovered directly above me in an open mouthed wide smile, however, slowly but surely she opened her mouth wider. At this point I think the message reached my brain that all was not well. The next thing I know. a raging tsunami of milk erupted from her windpipe and poured all down my head and face, enveloping me in all its warm trickly glory.

I try not to swear in front of the baby but this elected a very loud "Fucking Hell!".

What a way to start your day! 5 minutes later she was playing with her "Baby Einstien" toys while I drank coffee and stunk like sour milk. The joys of Fatherhood!

Why I am depressed about the election.

2006-11-12T10:08:00.000-05:00

The elections are over and the beginning of the end has arrived for George W. Bush or has it? Don't get me wrong, nothing makes me happier than watching that slimy creep squirm as a good dose of reality is delivered to his doorstep - it's about time, it's only taken 6 years and 650,000 dead in Iraq for people to finally see what a murderous little brat he is.

As comforting as this idea is, it is unfortunately not true. 50% of the country is still willing to vote for warmongering, socially conservative candidates. The one victory which the Dems toasted more than the others was claiming the scalp of Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania. This guy was offensive to just about everybody to the left of Hitler but Bob Casey, the guy the Dems replaced him with is an anti-woman's rights and anti-Gay rights. What is really scary is that, in order to defeat Hitler you must offer Mussolini as your candidate.

There are still some reasonable people in the Democratic party, but just like their counterparts in the Labour Party in the UK, they will marginalized so that the right-wing agenda is their selling credentials for the 2008 election. This is another thing that worries me, if the Democrats have to move right in order to get elected then how far right will the Republican Party go in order to appear different? I thought Bush was as bad as it gets, but if you follow this logic then I would not be surprised to see it get worse.

I'm trying hard not make this post sound too depressing - so I will say that the one thing I have found heartening about this election is that people are willing to forget party lines and consider voting with the opposition (even if the opposition is a watered down version of the government). If this trend continues we will perhaps have a group of people who are willing to forget about the big two parties and vote for a party that might actually change things instead of continuing the status quo. Wether that party is the Green Party or the Nazi party is the fight that we have to look to now. I still vote in the UK, not the USA, but I can easily say now that I will never vote for any of the big 2 parties ever again. I voted for Tony Blair because I was sick of Thatcher/Major and look where that got me.

Pub/Baby ratio

2006-10-28T13:39:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I've had time to post. Babies tend to have a negative effect on your idle time and even when the wee yin is sleeping you are trying to catch up on other crap like laundry and washing the dishes.

My first visitor since the birth of the wee yin arrived in from the UK last week and for the first time I was really tested on the pub/baby time ratio. I think I managed to keep a fairly even split (though my wife might not agree), but still ended a weeks worth of craziness feeling like, in the words of Bob Dylan, "One too many mornings and a thousand miles behind".

My friend was in town for Alice Donut's 20th Anniversary show. Alice Donut are an East Village, NYC, psycedelic punk band from the late-80's. They have also been my favorite band since I was about 18 and it was a bit of a shock to realise that they had been together for 20 years.

It was a fantastic show - great tunes, strange instruments (trombone, banjo) and transvestites. What more do you want?

It was also a great example of how the internet can be used to break down the barrier between the band and the audience. A few rabid fans like myself had arranged to meet in a bar before the show only to have the two guitarists from the band themselves show up. It was a very cool thing to do considering some fans had come from as far away as Holland and England. The other band members also made themselves very available to the audience, hanging out and chatting after the show.

For a band who once sang:

I've got a jackson pollack tatoo on my ass.
Video priest screaming out high mass.
Sick little schoolgirls rolling round on my floor.
Jehovah's witness knocking at my door.
Rednecks sucking life from a can.
Naked women magazines making me a man.
Big blond bush, schizophrenic tits.
I come prematurely and I dont give a shit.

They are all lovely folks and hell, normal too!!!! Thanks Donut folks for a great time.

Get Connected

2006-10-28T13:12:00.000-04:00

I look at all the people wearing IPOD's on the train on the way into work and feel disconnected. I am wearing one myself and, if I wanted to, I could probably go through the whole day wearing a pair of headphones on and never speak to anyone.

It might just be the change of seasons and city-living getting to me but I increasingly find myself disconnected like this. The days of having a conversation with a stranger on the train or bus are well and truly over. If you can even find a person without headphones in their ears, the chances are that if you open your mouth and say "Hello!", they will look at you like you just crapped in their coffee.

It makes me sad and I have been making more of an effort to open my mouth and talk. Pleasantness never killed anyone and if you find me annoying then I hope that somehow, somewhere in the back of your mind, you will find it quite refreshing that someone said "Nice day isn't it?" to you this morning without making you wonder "What the fuck does this person want?".

On a related note, the claim to fame of the new Microsoft mp3 player "Zune", is that you can share music wirelessly with another user sitting close by. This is an interesting concept as it allows you to communicate without actually communicating. A modern day version of tribes using drum beats to communicate.

It's killing one of the things I love because I think A wonder of music is that once you find the scene/genre that you like, it will connect you with others like you. Your own tribe if you like. You can dance with them, you can talk to them, you can drink with them, you can have sex with them, you can marry them, you can have babies with them, you can build a lasting and meaningful relationship.

You can't do any of these things with a wireless mp3 player.

Staying on the connected note: we recently upgraded the phone line in our house and put in a phone system with additional wireless handsets, however, in case of a power cut we have kept one physically connected corded phone.

I find myself being drawn to this phone more as it forces me to stand in one place and actually listen to what the other person is saying as opposed to wandering around the house doing other things while talking wirelessly. I also feel that by holding onto this old receiver I am somehow connected to the person at the other end of it, like a soup can with a giant bit of string connecting it to another soup can thousands of miles away. Whatever happened to the old soup can phones??? Do kids still make those or do we all have "Playskool" electronic communications systems?

Listen to me, I sound like an old fogey... well in my day..........

Politics of Perversion

2006-10-07T15:22:00.000-04:00

So it took a bunch of dirty emails by Mark Foley, the co-chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children Caucus to a bunch of 17-year old boys, to destabilze the Republican Party in this country. Not a war that is costing an estimated $100,000 every 20 minutes, not an estimated 50,000 civilian deaths in Iraq, not to mention military deaths on all sides. Not the useless Democratic Party.

Nope, not in America... what we really needed was "Maf54" asking "how my favorite young stud doing?".

I find myself wondering, of course Mark Foley is a big hypocrite, but I find myself asking, if he was sending dirty text messages to 17-year old GIRLS, would the country be as up in arms as it is? Who is the hypocrite then?

In the eyes of the media, sending dirty emails to girls will make you a dirty old man, sending them to boys makes you a perv. I say sending 17 year old kids off to die in an illegal war makes you a perv. I saw an ad on the side of a bus the other day that had a picture of a Marine on the battlefield and the caption "Just think of it as a school uniform". Now that's perverted. "Dying to Learn" would be my caption.

Oh well I guess I should just be glad the the Dumbya boat is finally sinking....

Irish aye.......

2006-10-06T22:17:00.000-04:00

Last night I dragged my tired arse out to see Irish singer Damien Dempsey playing at the Knitting Factory bar. I really, really wanted to like this guy, and granted, I did like HIM, he's a good laugh and a great songwriter, but his voice... oh god, it's like a a man with three noses singing underwater! Sometimes, you really want to like someone's music and sometimes it just doesn't happen.

I've been through this a few times over the years - with music and books. I must have started the book "Zen and the art of Motorcycle maintenance" about 5 times, I really want to like and understand this book but the only zen-like state I get into after about 3 chapters is sleep. I could fall asleep standing on hot coals with a burning rolled-up newspaper stuck up my bum while reading this book!!

Same goes for "On The Road" by Kerouac, "The Naked Lunch" by William Burroughs and the follow up to "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller(probably one of my all time favorite books), which was so boring I can't even remember what it was called now!!!

All of these books have either been recommended to me by people with impeccable taste, or the authors have written other things I loved, and all of these books sit on my shelf taunting me year after year to pick them up and fail once again at chapter 5.

Musically it's the same story - Damien Dempsey is highly recommended by one of my musical heroes Christy Moore, and is also a mate of Shane McGowan from The Pogues, who, in my opinion, is the best songwriter since Bob Dylan. Damiem Dempsey plays Irish folk music with a social conscious, and usually I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff.

The crowd was filled with young, working class Irish New Yorkers, spilling into Manhattan from Yonkers, Riverdale, Bayridge and Woodside. All the Irish enclaves in the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn.

They were my kind of crowd - drunk and rowdy - so much so that the bar badly "misunderestimated" (to borrow a word from Dumbya) the amount of people who would be at this show and only had one barmaid working. Dempsey sells out 2000 seat venues in Ireland, yet here he was in a pub that held 200 tops. Needless to say those 200 seemed to be ordering pint upon pint of Guinness and all at the same time from the poor barmaid.

I stayed for about an hour of his set, got in my four pints, and headed home by 11. God, what a different life you lead after you have a baby! I've worked out that four pints is my "pint of no return". I can still go home and deal with crying Wee Yin reasonably well at that stage, anymore than four pints and I might as well stay out and get hammered (something I haven't done in months).

I think I am learning to reprogram myself and that's a good thing. Last week I went to see the great Canadian punk band "Nomeansno", a bunch of old farts who can still really kick up a helluva noise. Again I managed to limit myself to 4 pints then off home to bed.

This is all the more amazing for the fact that I ran into the two guitarists and the drummer from my all time favorite band Alice Donut at the show and we got talking about all sorts of shite but mainly babies. It was the day the punks rockers stopped taking acid and started talking about babies. Quite weird.

I'm glad I do my drinking in NYC

2006-09-28T19:18:00.000-04:00

Wed Mar 22, 6:05 PM ET

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - Texas has begun sending undercover agents into bars to arrest drinkers for being drunk, a spokeswoman for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission said on Wednesday.

The first sting operation was conducted recently in a Dallas suburb where agents infiltrated 36 bars and arrested 30 people for public intoxication, said the commission’s Carolyn Beck.

Being in a bar does not exempt one from the state laws against public drunkenness, Beck said.

The goal, she said, was to detain drunks before they leave a bar and go do something dangerous like drive a car.
“We feel that the only way we’re going to get at the drunk driving problem and the problem of people hurting each other while drunk is by crackdowns like this,” she said.

“There are a lot of dangerous and stupid things people do when they’re intoxicated, other than get behind the wheel of a car,” Beck said. “People walk out into traffic and get run over, people jump off of balconies trying to reach a swimming pool and miss.”

She said the sting operations would continue throughout the state.

When The President Talks To God

2006-09-26T23:55:00.000-04:00

This is "Bright Eyes". Looks like he really wants to be a young Bob Dylan but I guess that's a good thing! How the heck did he managed to get this song on Network TV though?

Buddha ON a Beerglass

2006-09-25T14:31:00.000-04:00

The Buddha tats are finished, and have been for months. Just never got round to putting pics up so here they are. It took about 15 hours in 5 sessions. The handpoke shading takes forever but like everything that takes forever, it was worth it. The pictures don't really do it justice as Shinji's shading has minute detail and really close up, it looks like a watercolor painting.

The Japanese letters are the symbols for the Amitabha Buddha.

Eat your Veggies

2006-09-23T18:32:00.000-04:00

Unlike some, I am always talking about how the media is so right-wing and so on and so on, well for once I find myself agreeing with a conservative TV watchdog about this liberal monstrosity! Apparently NBC is censoring all references to God from a kids show called "Veggietales".

Well, I never......

If your kids can't learn about Jesus from a talking cucumber then who can they learn from??? I say let the asparagus of freedom ring!!!! Didn't the Easter Bunny lay chocolate eggs in the bible too Mummy? I'm so confused!

Improving the Karmic Universe

2006-09-23T13:22:00.000-04:00

I had an idea on how to improve American Idol (Pop Idol in the UK) - we run the competition as usual but rejected contestants are tarred and feathered then beaten by dwarves in vinyl mini-skirts armed with cricket bats.

Eventually we pick our winner but instead of giving them a recording contract or whatever the fuck they win, we surgically remove the winner's vocal chords and transplant them in their bumhole. They are then forced to sing the national anthem at every major sports event for the rest of their lives.

It sounds dreadfully negative and violent doesn't it? Well actually, I'd argue that we are, in a way, doing our bit to improve the state of the karmic universe.

National Anthems would sound embarrasing and would be done away with. As a result of this we will destroy rabid patriotism and "my country's better than your country" vibes everywhere. Wars will end and we would never have to listen to any of those boring songs like "God Save The Queen" and "The Star Spangled Banner" ever again. We can replace them with farting baby videos like the one below and the sun will shine like never before.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

2006-09-15T22:07:00.000-04:00

The Wee Yin will not sleep in her cot - she will only sleep if she is in the bed with Mum and Dad. As much as we love this, we have been trying to get her to go down in her own bed so other people can put her to sleep if we are not there. It's harder than you think!

We have tried a bunch of different methods but everyone meets the same reaction - she will lie sleeping and relaxed for about 5 minutes then the hands will start to move like John Travolta shooting for the disco lights in Saturday Night Fever. Seconds later her eyes will start moving and her mouth will start to grimace like her bed is made out of broken glass (it's not)... next thing you know the screaming starts and you shoot out of your own bed like you just discovered George Dubya naked under your covers. It's a helluva way to start a night!

We have concluded that she loves our body heat - it is the only thing it can really be as her basinet (cot) is physically bolted onto the side of our bed and she gets to feel all the movement we make in there as well.

Oh the joys of parenthood!...........

Crikey!

2006-09-15T20:23:00.000-04:00

I know I am a bit late with this post as he has been dead for about a week - but I have been busy getting myself in trouble in some of the online forums I frequent over the human formally known as Steve Irwin, a.k.a The Crocodile Hunter.

It started on my hometown list, the jclist (Jersey City), when I posted that Steve Irwin was in a way just proving Darwin right after all these years and that the "survival of the fittest" applies greatly in this case. My basic argument about this guy - and let me point out before I start, that I in no way wanted him dead - was that, in a way he was like a gazelle that decided it was going to taunt lions for a living. He had to come to grief eventually.

I then got in trouble for asking wether people wanted to see the footage of his death (I don't). because in my opinion the kind of people who watched the show secretly wanted to see him getting bitten or injured, in the same way that some people watch motor racing just to see if anyone crashes.

Christ! The amount of abuse I got for that comment was unbelieveable! Apparently there is no-one out there that rubbernecks! If that's the case why does the highway slow down on the opposite side from an accident?

So I stand corrected! Everyone watched The Crocodile Hunter for the educational value alone. This would explain why it was so popular not like those boring old David Attenborough documentaries!!! In case you can't tell... I'm being sarcastic here.

To me, and I did sometimes watch the show but mainly to see if he was going to do something stupid and get bitten, the Crocodile Hunter was educational but dumbed down educational. He could tell you all sorts of facts and figures but all you will remember is how close the animal came to biting his balls off. Shame really.....

On the subject of dumbed down, I've also been following the story of Mike Judge's new film Idiocracy, here is a clip from the NY Times about it:

From NY Times:

Shying Away From Degeneracy
By DAN MITCHELL
Published: September 9, 2006

THE new film “Idiocracy” sounds like a sure winner. It was directed by Mike Judge, creator of the animated TV series “Beavis and Butt-head” and “King of the Hill,” and director of the sleeper movie hit “Office Space.” It stars Luke Wilson. It has received good reviews from the few critics who, despite the efforts of 20th Century Fox, have been able to see it.

So why did Fox, after sitting on the movie for two years before releasing it Sept. 1, decide not to market the film, opting instead to open it quietly in only 130 theaters and then quickly send it to video? Judging by the online reaction, there are at least two possible reasons.

The first is that the film is simply too stark a critique of American culture, or even that it is a cautionary tale about low-intelligence dysgenics (essentially, overbreeding among the stupid). The movie depicts a future in which everyone has become so dense and culturally lowbrow that Mr. Wilson’s character — an average guy from the present day who travels by accident hundreds of years forward in time — is a relative genius. Why, asks David Weigel on Reason magazine’s Hit and Run blog (reason.com), do “movies that exploit dumbed-down American culture get wide releases while a comedy making light of that, by the creator of ‘Beavis and Butt-head,’ is getting canned?”

He points to another blogger, Ilkka Kokkarinen, who writes that the implications of the movie’s theme — flatulence jokes aside — “are so immensely serious that it is simply unimaginable that any studio boss would take the slightest chance of becoming the next Mel Gibson over the idea that society of stupid people is worse than a society of smart people." (sixteenvolts.blogspot.com) Populists — defenders of the little guy — would not stand for it, Mr. Kokkarinen says.

Others theorize that Fox disowned the film because it makes fun not only of Fox News — the studio’s sister division — but also of Starbucks, Fuddruckers and other companies that may advertise with one or more media outlets of Fox’s owner, the News Corporation.

The blog FishBowlLA quotes Luke Thompson, a movie reviewer for E! Online, as saying, “some of the sponsors may well have been unhappy with the way their products are placed, and made some phone calls to higher-ups” (mediabistro.com).

A Fox spokeswoman told The Austin American-Statesman that the studio’s handling of the movie was “an executive decision from the chairman,” and would not elaborate.

September 11th 2006

2006-09-09T19:39:00.000-04:00

The baby has started smiling and it is great to watch her slowly gain control of her body. She smiled when I kissed her as I was leaving to go to work this morning. It made my day! However I'm not sure she meant it as she immediately followed up that smile by clenching her fist and proceeded to punch herself in the face!

The 5th anniversary of 9/11 is fast approaching and every morning as I get off the train at Ground Zero I am noticing more and more TV satellite trucks parked across the street. Today they were holding a rally for the 9/11 first responders who are sick and dying from the toxic dust they inhaled cleaning up the WTC site. The City of New York has shamed itself in pretending these people don't exist and the federal Government were the ones who said the air was good enough to breathe so where do the loyal members of NYPD and FDNY turn? Nowhere left but to fight it out in the media. I watched the speakers for a while, all dolled up for the TV cameras and I felt pretty sick myself.

It's such a shame, 9/11 will be remembered as a seminal event in the history of the world but it seems like the generation that actually lived through it has learned nothing - other than the fact that our leaders are lying murderers and cheats.

It feels strange to be in NYC on September 11th. The day is really burned into your mind and you remember strange things. I remember how blue the sky was, the smell of airline fuel drifting across NY harbor to Brooklyn, miles away from the site. I remember Abdul, our Lebanese next door neighbor standing on his porch with his son. He was horrified. His kids played on the street outside our house all the time. After 9/11 the kids were never allowed out on their own again.

I listened to the song "Radio Baghdad" by Patti Smith today. This song says it all to me.
.

Suffer not Your neighbor's affliction
Suffer not Your neighbor's paralysis
But extend your hand Extend your hand
Lest you vanish in the city And be but a trace
Just a vanished ghost And your legacy
All the things you knew Science, mathematics, thought
Severely weakened Like irrigation systems
In the tired veins forming From the Tigris and Euphrates
In the realm of peace All the world revolved
All the world revolved Around a perfect circle
City of Baghdad City of scholars
Empirical humble Center of the world
City in ashes City of Baghdad
City of Baghdad Abrasive aloof

Oh, in Mesopotamia Aloofness ran deep
Deep in the veins of the great rivers
That form the base Of Eden
And the tree The tree of knowledge
Held up its arms To the sky
All the branches of knowledge All the branches of knowledge
Cradling Cradling
Civilization In the realm of peace
All the world revolved Around a perfect circle
Oh Baghdad Center of the world
City of ashes With its great mosques
Erupting from the mouth of god Rising from the ashes like
a speckled bird Splayed against the mosaic sky
Oh, clouds around We created the zero
But we mean nothing to you You would believe
That we are just some mystical tale We are just a swollen belly
That gave birth to Sinbad, Scheherazade We gave birth
Oh, oh, to the zero The perfect number
We invented the zero And we mean nothing to you
Our children run through the streets
And you sent your flames Your shooting stars
Shock and awe Shock and awe
Like some, some Imagined warrior production
Twenty-first century No chivalry involved
No Bushido

Oh, the code of the West Long gone
Never been Where does it lie?
You came, you came Through the west
Annihilated a people And you come to us
But we are older than you You come you wanna
You wanna come and rob the cradle
Of civilization And you read yet you read
You read Genesis You read of the tree
You read of the tree Beget by god
That raised its branches into the sky Every branch of knowledge
Of the cradle of civilization

Of the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates
Oh, in Mesopotamia Aloofness ran deep
The face of Eve turning What sky did she see
What garden beneath her feet The one you drill
You drill Pulling the blood of the earth
Little droplets of oil for bracelets Little jewels
Sapphires You make bracelets
Round your own world We are weeping tears
Rubies We offer them to you
We are just Your Arabian nightmare
We invented the zero But we mean nothing to you
Your Arabian nightmare

City of stars City of scholarship
Science City of ideas
City of light City
City of ashes That the great Caliph
Walked through His naked feet formed a circle
And they built a city A perfect city of Baghdad
In the realm of peace And all the world revolved
And they invented And they mean nothing to you
Nothing to you Nothing

Go to sleep Go to sleep my child
Go to sleep And I'll sing you a lullaby
A lullaby for our city A lullaby of Baghdad
Go to sleep Sleep my child
Sleep Sleep...
Run Run...

You sent your lights Your bombs
You sent them down on our city Shock and awe
Like some crazy t.v. show

They're robbing the cradle of civilization
They're robbing the cradle of civilization
They're robbing the cradle of civilization

Suffer not The paralysis of your neighbor
Suffer not But extend your hand

"Radio Bagdad" by Patti Smith

Darwin's Nightmare Redux

2006-09-01T14:52:00.000-04:00

Well a couple of weeks ago I wrote about the documentary "Darwin's Nightmare", read the original post here. This morning at 5.41AM someone posted this comment:

Anonymous said...

NO

what is said in the documentary is no true..

Just try to check out this website

http://www.darwinsnightmare.net you will see the truth.

So I checked out the link and it is a website devoted to refuting the claims in the documentary. Wow! Does this film bother someone so much that they are trawling the net for every little comment made about it just to make sure we get another point of view? I am a blogger with an actual readership of about 10 fucking people for god's sake!

Boy, did you just make me feel important!!!

When I googled the website itself, apparently it was set up by the government of Tanzania to make us feel like we have been lied to. Well just for the sake of argument I suggest that in the spirit of healthy discourse I recommend once again that you see this film because if someone has hired some poor bugger to sit at a computer all day refuting every two-bit blogger like myself who liked the movie, then there must be something to it after all.

A Moan

2006-08-30T12:39:00.000-04:00

The summer ended abruptly. Hurricane Ernesto rolled into the Gulf of Mexico and has been pushing rain our way ever since. The skies are overcast and so is my mood. The birth of the Wee Yin has been a good distraction from real life for a while but yesterday I spilled a cup of tea on my desk and real life came flooding back.

I feel like I haven't had the time to mourn my Mum. It's been one thing after an other. Now the cat's arse is bunged up again and looks like he is on his 9th-and-a-half life. He makes a horrible groaning noise everytime he lies down, the kind of noise that only a sick animal can make. What a week!

This has all contributed to a feeling of loss and mortality that has kicked in big time. I wonder what is next!

And when you sleep at night
Dreaming of the pretty things
Don't be too surprised
When the telephone rings

I'll be sitting here
Waiting for the other shoe to drop
I'll be sitting here
Waiting for the other shoe to drop

The Eels - "The Other Shoe"

My job feels like a dead end but I've worked in TV production for 12 years now in one form or another and I don't really feel like I know anything else. I go home and turn on CNN and see some news story I helped them get and I feel like I am working for the enemy.

On September 11th I am going back to my eye doctor for my yearly check-up. A convenient date. Let's see what percentage of eyesight I've lost this year! I'm expecting to be in the single figures (last year I could see 13% of what normal people see), if I am above 7% then I'll be happy. I think they changed the font on my favorite music magazine but I am finding it really hard to read unless I sit directly under a lamp.

It breaks my heart that I will never be able to take the baby out on my own - every walk has to be chaperoned as I cannot push a pram and use my cane at the same time. I'd use an over-sholder carrier but I don't trust myself not to walk into something or miss a step and fall, something I do nearly everyday. When my wife goes back to work we are going to be stuck inside. It sucks......

Just in case you misheard!

2006-08-30T09:20:00.000-04:00

SAY WHAT?

Q: What did Iraq have to do with that?

A: What did Iraq have to do with what?

Q: The attack on the World Trade Center?

A: Nothing.

-- President Bush, at a recent press conference

Strange Commute

2006-08-23T16:26:00.000-04:00

Musician David Byrne has his own blog that is always good for an enlightening read. Recently he wrote about a documentary he saw called Jesus Camp, you can read his thoughts here.

I haven't seen this film but it is likely I will as I love documentaries and I love sideshow freaks and bearded-lacy type carnys so Jesus Camp should be right up my alley!

I got off work at midnight last night and took the train back to Jersey City where I pick up a cab from the PATH Station to my house as it is too late and not safe to walk.

Taking a cab in Jersey City is an experience, I won't say it's a good or bad experience, just an experience. Most of the drivers are Arabic and it's like rocking the casbah as soon as you step up to the taxi rank.

4 guys will run up to you and try to get you to get in their car. Once you agree a price you will likely find yourself sharing the cab with 2 or 3 other people, all with their own prices and destinations. I used to find it stressful but I am used to it now and I know some of the drivers so I tend to ride with the same guys if I can.

Last night I was riding in the cab with a driver I'd riden with a couple of times before. Usually he's okay but last night he insisted on driving and eating pizza at the same time. He was waving all over the road and screaming at people in arabic. 5 minutes into the ride he stops in the middle of the street, opens the drivers door and proceeds to take a pee against the wall 6 feet away from the taxi, in full view of myself and a girl who was sitting in the back seat.

2 minutes later we are again hurtling one-handed down Bergen Avenue when two obese ladies with broomsticks waddle into the middle of the road and shake their brooms at our taxi. I can only assume he peed on their cat or something.

It was a strange ride!

By the way, did you know: A nutrition study conducted by Barry Popkin, of the Department of Nutrition and Economics at the University of North Carolina, has determined that the number of overweight or obese people in the world outnumber the starving, with approximately 800 million starving/near starving and 1.3 billion overweight people.

Horrifying isn't it?

Darwin's Nightmare

2006-08-22T23:16:00.000-04:00

No, this not going to be another post with me ranting on and on about the cro-mags in the anti-evolution movement - rather it is a post about a documentary that everybody should be told to sit down and watch if they want to understand a little bit more about the shit that human beings are capable of doing to others.

Darwin's Nightmare starts off as a documentary about Nile perch killing off the native fishes of Lake Victoria in Tanzania. It slowly evolves into a documentary about the injustices of globalization, the horrifying poverty and disease in Africa, and illegal arms smuggling.

There is no narrator in the film, the people who appear tell their own stories. They come across as tragic but at the same time tenacious and brave. It now appears that their bravery may be costing them as the government of Tanzania is harrasing them for appearing in the film.

Please try to see this documentary if you can. You'll never look at your fish fillets in quite the same way ever again.

Lalabambino

2006-08-19T16:24:00.000-04:00

This morning the wee yin woke me up with her crying while Mum was in the shower. I picked her up and immediately laid my hand on a wet patch halfway up her back! Somehow she managed to create a jobbie geyser that squirted out the top of her nappy and and reached for the stars!

It's a lovely way to start the day... I don't think. It's funny, but I always thought I'd be completely disgusted by a scenario like this! However for some reason, when it is your own baby you don't mind. I had to laugh and get on with cleaning her up.

We went to a restaurant on Thursday and bambino slept right through the meal, much to our surprise! It was interesting to watch the reactions of other diners in the place, they would sit at a table next to us then when they notice the wee yin, they move away to outside screeching distance. I remember how much I used to hate sitting next to a screaming kid in a restuarant, now I am on the other side of the fence. Oh how life is funny sometimes........

Jesus and the Spiders from Mars

2006-08-19T16:17:00.000-04:00

I've become quite obsessed with the idea that if Jesus comes back he will look like Ziggy Stardust (as mentioned in a previous post). We put so much emphasis on appearance and the way people look that I wonder what the reactions of the Christian hordes would be if the messiah had red spiky hair and wore a glitter suit with silver platform shoes. I doubt they'd like it.

The Apostles could be The Spiders from Mars. Jammin Good with John and Peter!

There is no reason for this post I just think it is a funny idea....

The "Greatest Generation"

2006-08-12T15:08:00.000-04:00

We have two cats and they have definitely been feeling the effects of suddenly being relegated to the 2nd division in attention now that the baby is here. One of the cats has reacted by following me everywhere and jumping on me at every opportunity. The other cat has unfortunately reacted by getting really constipated and that resulted in me taking him to the vet for a kitty enema. No I am not joking....

Four enemas later and an overnight stay and nothing is coming out. This morning I had to go over to the vets office and approve an anastestia as they are going to remove the jobbies by hand. Again, I wish I was joking but I'm not.

Unfortunately this has made me think of my Grandad who may well have been the prototype for Mike Myers Scottish Dad in "So I Married an Axe Murderer". Grandad would stand outside the toilet door, you'd see his outline through the frosted glass, and shout: "Dae ye want a corkscrew in there?".

He was also prone to using rhyming slang for toilet visits that I still use to this day.

"I'm off for a Lillin Gish", meaning "I'm off for a pish!" (a pee). He'd also alternatly go for a "Pearl White", a shite (shit). What the connection between bowel movements and stars of the silent screen is I am not sure. Another thing he'd say is "Ah'm aff to see a man aboot a dug!", which indicated that he was off to the toilet.

I guess in a weird way I am keeping these phrases alive even though my Mum hated them. If I teach them to my kid then they are safe for at least another generation!!!!

Another guy I've been thinking about lately is my Dad, he will be 25 years dead next week! 25 years, I can hardly believe it!

I had a sudden flash of him last week as I was reading a book called "Docherty" by William McIllvanney. There is a scene is the book where the Son and the Father are squaring up to each other and you think the Father is going to strike the Son but instead he leans over and tears off a strip of paper off of the newspaper the son is reading and uses it to light his pipe from the coal fire.

This is something my Dad used to let me do. He smoked cigars and he would have me tear off a corner of the newspaper and roll it up. I would then light it on an electric bar fire and light his cigar for him! An open flame on electric bar fire!!!!! Jesus, that cannot have been safe! The bottom of the fire was covered in little bits of burnt newspaper. I'm amazed we didn't burn the house down!

M.A.N What Idiots!

2006-08-09T18:12:00.000-04:00

Well the world is on the brink of disaster and still there are people out there who think that we owe our decline, not to neo-conservative politics, but to NOISY-ROCK'N ROLL MUSIC.

Mothers Against Noise believe that noisy music promotes:

Rebellion
Violence
Nihilism (belief in nothing)
Escapism
Drugs / Alcoholism
Sexual Perversion, Self-Mutilation
Dissonant / Offensive Sound
The Occult
Anti-God / Anti-Authority
Cult-like Organization, Terrorism

Anyway, all I have to say is I agree. It does promote all of the above and hell, that's great! With the world being run by people who care more about making money than saving lives, and a religious armageddon being planned by nutty folks in DC, I think escapisim should be our #1 concern right now!

All those people who watch "Fear Factor" and "America's Got Talent" instead of watching civilians being blown to bits on the news, should be taken out and shot!

Damn those Escapists and Nihilists! Thanks to you the fabric of our society is coming apart at the seams! Don't you know the price we are all paying for your pathetic existence!! Thanks Mothers Against Noise! Without you I'd still be braindead and enjoying my life instead of being actively involved in the creation of a new silent utopia!!!!

Oh God...

2006-08-04T19:38:00.000-04:00

If you need and excuse to get angrier than you are already about the indiscriminate slaughter in the Middle East, you need look no further than the American evangelical movement.

It seems that the deaths of women and children are bringing us one step closer to the return of Jesus (this time to be played by David Hasslehoff). The end times are here folks, don't bother stocking up on the food or hiding in the cellar - it won't do you any good!

Take your protien pills and put your helmet on, the (C)rapture is upon us and all the Christians (except Mel Gibson who I predict will convert to Judaism shortly before his next movie "Mad Mav") will float off to heaven like a blow-up doll caught in an upsurge of hot air.

In order for the rapture to happen, from what I can gather, we need Israel and Hezbollah to blow the crap out of civilians in order for the Iranians to get seriously involved. Once they are involved, the USA and Israel will start blowing the crap out of Iran but the Iranians will be saved by a one-world army led by Russia and the European Union.

At this point a European Anti-Christ will rule the world for 3 and a half years before Jesus decides enough is enough and returns to Earth in a puff of smoke like Ziggy Stardust. He'll then save all the Christians and a few Jews who are given the chance to convert. The rest of us are up chocolate creek without a popsicle stick!

He also opens a Starbucks in Miami and makes a dirty video with Paris Hilton but that comes later.

No I am not making this up, well okay, he doesn't shag Paris Hilton, but people really do believe the other shite, you can read about it here.

If the loss of innocent lives wasn't so tragic and if the President of the country with all the bombs wasn't one of these armageddon-fixated freaks, then we could all have a good laugh! Unfortunately this is not the case.

George Bush sent his support to a recent conference of Christian-Zionists who gathered in Washington to support Israel with the expressed belief that they are helping us all towards paradise. Oh God....

First Week Home

2006-07-28T21:42:00.000-04:00

Suddenly we were three. We got home last Saturday and realised that somehow nothing will ever look the same in our house again. What was once a cool little Buddha statue is now a potential choking hazard! I know I am getting ahead of myself here, Ailish won't be picking anything up for a while, but it's true your entire existence on this planet has taken on a new flavor.

I've become an orphan and a parent in the space of two months - I don't think that life will ever become anymore emotional than this - I am finally well and truly grown-up with real shite to worry about! Who cares about the price of Guinness or the new release by Johnny Cash now! (Yes, I know he's dead so don't point it out!).

I'm sure it will settle down but in the first week your head kind of explodes with new parent anxieties - one morning in the hospital when the baby was brought back from the nursery she was sound asleep, so much so that I leaned right in to check she was still breathing! 5 minutes later I caught Alma doing exactly the same thing and we had a good laugh!

My Brother said "You spend an our trying to get them to sleep then you wake them up 10 minutes later to make sure they are okay". Yeah, it's going to take some getting used to......