December 07ish Notes

my 9 year Odyssey
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Sunday, December 30, 2007 at 1:50pm | Edit Note | Delete
The first thing you'll hear is that Ulysses by James Joyce is the greatest novel ever written. It's frequently number 1 on lists of the greatest novel of the 20th Century. Upon delving into it you'll discover that it's virtually unintelligible. Joyce draws
on a vocabulary of over 30,000 words, many of them archaic and extinct to bring us the incredibly dull story of a dull man walking around an incredibly dull Dublin. We go to the washroom with the main character Bloom, we go to the store to buy meat for his breakfast, to the post office, out for lunch, to a funeral. Really not much else happens. There is a night of drinking and debauchery but Joyce's writing on the topic is virtually unintelligible. I have spent 8 years reading this book, and I have only 50 pages to go, but I'm going to wait until New Year's Day to read them because I want it to have taken 9 years, which is probably more in keeping with this piece of trash. I'm a smart guy. I understand Ulysses. I can appreciate the cleverness and the discipline required to create this yawn. That Joyce is a genius is inarguable. But is Joyce lucid, coherent? This book is more like the writings of a delusional schizophrenic than a true author. It's no surprise that no one would publish it. It blows dick. However because the positive feedback from the academic community has been so overwhelming I forced myself to go through the whole thing, with an interpretive text and a copy of The Odyssey by my side. What a waste of time. Now that I'm so near the end I've found myself questioning my own judgement. Am I the only one that hates this book. Apparently not.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1568/is_3_36/ai_n6181300
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A Robert Fisk Article on the Bhutto Assassination.
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Friday, December 28, 2007 at 7:01pm | Edit Note | Delete
Described by the New York Times as "probably the most famous foreign correspondent in Britain", Robert Fisk has over thirty years of experience in international reporting, dating from 1970s Belfast and Portugal's 1974 Carnation Revolution, the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War, and encompassing the 1979 Iranian revolution, the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, 1991 Persian Gulf War, and 2003 Invasion of Iraq. He is the world's most-decorated foreign correspondent, having received numerous awards including the British Press Awards' International Journalist of the Year award seven times. Fisk speaks good vernacular Arabic, and is one of the few Western journalists to have interviewed Osama bin Laden (three times between 1994 and 1997).

In the British journalistic tradition of the foreign correspondent, Fisk has developed a personal analysis of the foreign affairs that he covers and presents them in that light, often with trenchant criticism of the British government and its allies. Fisk is a consistent critic of what he perceives as hypocrisy in British government foreign policy. Basically what I'm saying is that this guy has street cred, and so does the paper this article appeared in, The Independent.

Robert Fisk: They don't blame al-Qa'ida. They blame Musharraf
Published: 29 December 2007

Weird, isn't it, how swiftly the narrative is laid down for us. Benazir Bhutto, the courageous leader of the Pakistan People's Party, is assassinated in Rawalpindi – attached to the very capital of Islamabad wherein ex-General Pervez Musharraf lives – and we are told by George Bush that her murderers were "extremists" and "terrorists". Well, you can't dispute that.

But the implication of the Bush comment was that Islamists were behind the assassination. It was the Taliban madmen again, the al-Qa'ida spider who struck at this lone and brave woman who had dared to call for democracy in her country.

Of course, given the childish coverage of this appalling tragedy – and however corrupt Ms Bhutto may have been, let us be under no illusions that this brave lady is indeed a true martyr – it's not surprising that the "good-versus-evil" donkey can be trotted out to explain the carnage in Rawalpindi.

Who would have imagined, watching the BBC or CNN on Thursday, that her two brothers, Murtaza and Shahnawaz, hijacked a Pakistani airliner in 1981 and flew it to Kabul where Murtaza demanded the release of political prisoners in Pakistan. Here, a military officer on the plane was murdered. There were Americans aboard the flight – which is probably why the prisoners were indeed released.

Only a few days ago – in one of the most remarkable (but typically unrecognised) scoops of the year – Tariq Ali published a brilliant dissection of Pakistan (and Bhutto) corruption in the London Review of Books, focusing on Benazir and headlined: "Daughter of the West". In fact, the article was on my desk to photocopy as its subject was being murdered in Rawalpindi.

Towards the end of this report, Tariq Ali dwelt at length on the subsequent murder of Murtaza Bhutto by police close to his home at a time when Benazir was prime minister – and at a time when Benazir was enraged at Murtaza for demanding a return to PPP values and for condemning Benazir's appointment of her own husband as minister for industry, a highly lucrative post.

In a passage which may yet be applied to the aftermath of Benazir's murder, the report continues: "The fatal bullet had been fired at close range. The trap had been carefully laid, but, as is the way in Pakistan, the crudeness of the operation – false entries in police log-books, lost evidence, witnesses arrested and intimidated – a policeman killed who they feared might talk – made it obvious that the decision to execute the prime minister's brother had been taken at a very high level."

When Murtaza's 14-year-old daughter, Fatima, rang her aunt Benazir to ask why witnesses were being arrested – rather than her father's killers – she says Benazir told her: "Look, you're very young. You don't understand things." Or so Tariq Ali's exposé would have us believe. Over all this, however, looms the shocking power of Pakistan's ISI, the Inter Services Intelligence.

This vast institution – corrupt, venal and brutal – works for Musharraf.

But it also worked – and still works – for the Taliban. It also works for the Americans. In fact, it works for everybody. But it is the key which Musharraf can use to open talks with America's enemies when he feels threatened or wants to put pressure on Afghanistan or wants to appease the " extremists" and "terrorists" who so oppress George Bush. And let us remember, by the way, that Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter beheaded by his Islamist captors in Karachi, actually made his fatal appointment with his future murderers from an ISI commander's office. Ahmed Rashid's book Taliban provides riveting proof of the ISI's web of corruption and violence. Read it, and all of the above makes more sense.

But back to the official narrative. George Bush announced on Thursday he was "looking forward" to talking to his old friend Musharraf. Of course, they would talk about Benazir. They certainly would not talk about the fact that Musharraf continues to protect his old acquaintance – a certain Mr Khan – who supplied all Pakistan's nuclear secrets to Libya and Iran. No, let's not bring that bit of the "axis of evil" into this.

So, of course, we were asked to concentrate once more on all those " extremists" and "terrorists", not on the logic of questioning which many Pakistanis were feeling their way through in the aftermath of Benazir's assassination.

It doesn't, after all, take much to comprehend that the hated elections looming over Musharraf would probably be postponed indefinitely if his principal political opponent happened to be liquidated before polling day.

So let's run through this logic in the way that Inspector Ian Blair might have done in his policeman's notebook before he became the top cop in London.

Question: Who forced Benazir Bhutto to stay in London and tried to prevent her return to Pakistan? Answer: General Musharraf.

Question: Who ordered the arrest of thousands of Benazir's supporters this month? Answer: General Musharraf.

Question: Who placed Benazir under temporary house arrest this month? Answer: General Musharraf.

Question: Who declared martial law this month? Answer General Musharraf.

Question: who killed Benazir Bhutto?

Er. Yes. Well quite.

You see the problem? Yesterday, our television warriors informed us the PPP members shouting that Musharraf was a "murderer" were complaining he had not provided sufficient security for Benazir. Wrong. They were shouting this because they believe he killed her.
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Al Qaeda Kills Bhutto
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Friday, December 28, 2007 at 5:13pm | Edit Note | Delete
It's the official line from the White House, from Pervez Musharraf and from any news agency run by Rupert Murdoch et al. But that's BS. Bhutto was the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, and a heavy favorite to win the election for President of Pakistan next week. She spent most of the last 10 years living in exile. Many saw her as a great hope for true democracy in this trouble country.
Here are some facts. Musharraf is a brutal dictator. He once controlled the army and had threatened to arrest his rivals should they set foot in Pakistan. International pressure forced him to release his control of the army, and hold a free and democratic election. (A lot of this is due in no small part to the fact that the US and Pakistan are allies, and this relationship is a bit of an embarrassment to Washington). Pakistan is awash in violence right now. The citizen's want Musharraf to step down. It's obvious to them that he was behind this. The leader of the other opposition party is now boycotting the elections, saying that peace and democracy aren't possible with Musharraf in power. To anyone with an iota of awareness of events in the region, Musharraf is the only one who gains by this murder. Yet his government and Washington continue to blame Al Qaeda. Fortunately, in the event that there might be some confusion as to who exactly murdered Bhutto, she left us a message. From CTV Newsnet:

Bhutto blames Musharraf in pre-death email

Updated Fri. Dec. 28 2007 5:49 PM ET

Benazir Bhutto said in an email that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf should be held responsible for her death, a close friend said Friday.

Mark Siegel, a Washington lobbyist, said he received the email from Bhutto in October, a week after she survived an assassination attempt upon her return to Pakistan.

In the email, Bhutto said Musharraf should be held complicit in her death due to his refusal to meet safety requests she had made.

"Nothing will, god willing, happen," began the email sent to Siegel. "Just wanted you to know that, if it does ... I would hold Musharraf responsible."

Siegel, who co-wrote Bhutto's newest book "Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West," read the email to CTV Newsnet on Friday. He said he had promised to keep the message private until after her death.

On Thursday, a man charged her vehicle as it made its way through a crowd of supporters, shooting at her several times before detonating an explosive device he was wearing.

Siegel said Bhutto sent the email one week after returning to Pakistan on Oct. 18 to run in an election. Her Pakistan Peoples Party was expected to win the majority of Parliamentary seats.

A failed assassination attempt that killed 179 supporters during a celebration to mark her return prompted Bhutto to send him the message, he said.

Bhutto wrote that she had been made to feel insecure by Musharraf's "minions" and had not received the requested improvements to her security.

Siegel said she had been stopped from taking private cars with tinted windows and had not received radio jammers or four police escorts -- as she had requested.

On Newsnet, Siegel read the email, saying, "There is no way what is happening -- in terms of stopping me from taking private cars or using tinted window, or giving jammers or four police mobiles to cover all sides -- could happen without (Musharraf)."

Siegel said her request for four police escorts -- one on each side of her vehicle -- could have saved her life.

"If you saw the pictures from the assassination site yesterday, you would see if she did have those four vehicles on all sides, she would be alive today," he said.

The email was first revealed Thursday by CNN's Wolf Blitzer. Siegel had sent Blitzer the email on Oct. 26, with the condition that he not report on it until after Bhutto's death. No other journalists were sent the email, Siegel said.

-Incidentally in typical CNN form they have spun the story. Bhutto asked that Musharraf be held responsible, CNN is saying that Bhutto suggested Musharraf bear some of the responsibility. A decidedly different tone.
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Updated about 8 months ago
This Year For Sure
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Monday, December 24, 2007 at 9:51pm | Edit Note | Delete
I'm not going to disclose any dollar figures, I'm just going to say this. I spent a lot for Christmas this year. More than any other year thus far. And I think it's finally going to pay off. It meant that I couldn't get all the gifts that I wanted to get for people, but I think in the long run it will be worth it. This year I spent thousands on leghold traps for the rooftop, motion sensing cameras (and not just regular cameras, I'm talking infra-red cameras and thermal imaging devices). I have motion sensitive directional microphones placed at intervals along the rooftop. Surrounding the Christmas tree in my house I've interlaced a complex array of laser beams, and should any beam be broken I have an entire spectrum of surveillance devices that will be triggered to record. I'm going to get an image of Santa this year, and the London tabloids will be breaking down my door with offers. This is my year people.
This is system 1, although I replaced the sirens and amplifier with an IR spotlight, high speed IR camera and a low intensity taser. If I can catch him I will.
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cirque de soleil and retournez de soleil
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Sunday, December 23, 2007 at 9:21am | Edit Note | Delete
There was some high flying drama at Cirque de Soleil this week in Montreal. One of the performers, attempting a dangerous maneuver 12 meters above the stage slipped and fell. On the ground below, one of the spotters ( a man ironically named Clowney) sprang into action and caught the plummeting performer. This action saved the faller, who walked away from it all a little shaken, but completely injury free. Not so for Clowney, who suffered a broken femur and broken ankle in the incident. People are calling Clowney a hero, but he downplays his role, saying it's just his job. "I'm not Superman" he says.
Well neither is the acrobat, Yannick Blackburn, who in addition to not being able to fly, is also apparently unable to hit the platforms he tries to jump to. People are saying that Clowney's a hero. But no one is saying that Blackburn is a klutz and a dumbass, and I think that they should be.
On a brighter note, literally, yesterday was the winter solstice, which means that the days will start getting longer again. w00t!
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Struggling to Make Sense of it All
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Saturday, December 22, 2007 at 12:01pm | Edit Note | Delete
I haven't written anything here in a while, and for those of you to whom my posts are a lifeline and a conduit to the outside world, well all I can say is, I'm sorry. I've had my own row to hoe lately, my own burden to bear. Over the past week or so my entire world has been turned upside down, and I'm desperately trying to find meaning and purpose again. A recent and cataclysmic event has torn the world out from under me, as I'm sure it has done for many of you. I'm talking of course about the announcement that Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant.
Right now I'm just going through the motions and trying to put on a brave face for my kids so that I don't ruin Christmas, but inside I'm a cyclone of torment, confusion and disillusionment. Until today there was no hope whatsoever, and I couldn't bring myself to approach the computer. The last scrap of rumor I heard was that the father of this child may not in fact be little Jamie Lynn's ex as was first suspected. It's more likely that Lil' Romeo, rapper and son of Master P is the cogenitor in this at once grand and devastating conception.
Today though, I have hope. For today I've discovered that someone has stepped forward, to take America and the world by the hand and guide us through this difficult time. I think only history will be able to truly gauge the enormous contribution this figure is going to make as people around the globe try to find meaning in this odd and unusual time. Do I have to say her name? DO I HAVE TO SPEAK HER NAME!? I'm of course talking about Lisa Whelchel aka Blair Warner from the 80s sitcom Facts of Life.

"I'm very passionate about wanting to speak out on behalf of this young girl," Whelchel tells ABC News. "She is a role model, but it's not her responsibility to be a role model. That's so much pressure on a 16-year-old."

"I'm so proud of her for stepping up and being courageous and taking responsibility for her choices, and I believe she's being a good role model – a good role model in that situation, to choose to have the baby, and I am supportive of her in that situation," said Whelchel. Yes Lisa Whelchel, who's fame was once restricted to the likeable portrayal of an otherwise shallow and self obsessed teen in an elite boarding school is finally stepping into her own as the moral compass for troubled teens everywhere.
Perhaps there's hope for us still, as a people, as a culture, as a planet. With Lisa Whelchel pointing the way, perhaps I can get up out of bed today. Perhaps I can see a child playing and smile again rather than fret for their future and the future of humanity. I think we all need to take a moment out of our day, and thank Lisa Whelchel for showing us that sometimes you just take the good you take the bad you take them all and there you have the facts of life. And I know that I need to thank her, because for this man, for whom the world never seems to be living up to my dreams, Lisa Whelchel has saved Christmas.
You got the future in the palm of your hands
the facts of life is all about you.
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My Favorite Christmas Story
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Monday, December 17, 2007 at 11:17am | Edit Note | Delete
Justin Trudeau has my favorite Christmas story of all time. Sadly, it was delivered as a eulogy at Pierre Trudeau's funeral. Here it is.

"I was about six years old when I went on my first official trip. I was going with my father and my grandpa Sinclair up to the North Pole.

It was a very glamorous destination. But the best thing about it is that I was going to be spending lots of time with my dad because in Ottawa he just worked so hard.

One day, we were in Alert, Canada's northernmost point, a scientific military installation that seemed to consist entirely of low shed-like buildings and warehouses.

Let's be honest. I was six. There were no brothers around to play with and I was getting a little bored because dad still somehow had a lot of work to do.

I remember a frozen, windswept Arctic afternoon when I was bundled up into a Jeep and hustled out on a special top-secret mission. I figured I was finally going to be let in on the reason of this high-security Arctic base.

I was exactly right. We drove slowly through and past the buildings, all of them very grey and windy. We rounded a corner and came upon a red one. We stopped. I got out of the Jeep and started to crunch across towards the front door. I was told, no, to the window.

So I clamboured over the snowbank, was boosted up to the window, rubbed my sleeve against the frosty glass to see inside and as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw a figure, hunched over one of many worktables that seemed very cluttered. He was wearing a red suit with that furry white trim.

And that's when I understood just how powerful and wonderful my father was."
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The Art of Haggis Hunting
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Sunday, December 16, 2007 at 2:24pm | Edit Note | Delete
PART 1. THE ART OF HAGGIS HUNTING

A strange and eerie sound drifts slowly down the glen, uisge beatha! uisge beatha! The sun is peeping over the horizon but none can feel the warm rays through the swirling mist. The men are huddled by the traditional "siggah" rock, chanting and taking turns at the cask with the warm golden water of life.

Suddenly, a tracker appears on the heathery slope and calls "haggi! haggi!" In a flash, the men are up and running, spreading out in the ancient hunting pattern which each had learned as a boy. Catching a wild haggis, in these days of scarcity, would make a living legend of the team involved.

The most difficult part of the ancient art of haggis hunting is actually locating the beast and then chasing it in the right direction. The haggis has evolved to be just a bit faster than the fittest man and more sure footed than a mountain goat. It runs along the hillside using it’s two long legs and 2 short legs to maximum advantage. Once it slips through the hunting line it can be gone into the gorse in a flash. The hunters must keep behind and on the uphill side so that the haggis is gradually driven down to lower ground. This can take over three hours, but once the critter is down on the glen floor the advantage swings quickly in favor of the hunters – because of its uneven legs the haggis can only run in circles when on flat ground.

As soon as the hunters see a haggis circling in this fashion they surround it, and bring up the cask for celebratory refreshment. Within about twenty minutes the haggis can be found lying flat out through dizziness and exhaustion. Soon after that the men are usually found lying flat out around the haggis, with an empty cask rolling amongst them!

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The Evolution of the Haggis
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Sunday, December 16, 2007 at 2:00pm | Edit Note | Delete
The Evolution of the Haggis

It is a little known fact that the Haggis is derived from the legendary pigmy sheep endemic to the upper slopes of the Hills of Lethargy where they were bred by the micra-hating, wicked Witch of the North.

Ovina microscopus as it should be known was remarkable in that it had two distinct sub-species.

Ovina microscopus horologus grazed the hills moving clockwise with the sun. Over the centuries it had evolved left legs longer than right providing better lateral stability on the steep slopes.

Ovina microscopus cacchanda on the other hand circumgrazed the slopes in the opposite direction and not surprisingly (except to TOGs* to whom everything comes as a novel surprise) evolved left legs shorter than right.

These two ssp's ( as they say in all the best biologically erudite journals ) did not interbreed because of a cunning pre-coital isolating mechanism ( or the "headache syndrome" as it has become known.) Any male finding himself gazing into the deep limpid eye pools of a ewe of the opposite ssp and deciding that his "luck was in", would find to his horror that, as he repositioned himself in order to partake of the ectasie d'amour, his legs no longer fitted the slope and he was falling headlong onto the heaped boulders at the bottom of the hill which were about to administer the headache discussed earlier in this over-rambling example of bad sentence stucture. ( and you thought I meant .. )

But all is not doom and gloom dear reader. Occasionally a small boulder of just the right size would, by pure fortune, be serendipidously Q located , enabling to the future birth of little woolly hybrid lambettes. The laws of genetics determined however that these had either:-

a): Front legs shorter than back condemning them to climbing the mountain where they collected as a ring around the summit. Here they remained for the short time that elapsed before being subject to the ministrations of a high calibre hunting rifle loosed off from the upstairs window of a nearby castle by an elderly Greek ex-sailor complaining about the "slittiness of their eyes".

or

b): Front legs longer than back which forced them down to the lower slopes where the fore-to-aft tilt of their bodies tended to grind away those parts of the anatomy required for the production of future lambettes......... and so the line perished.

or even

c): Long legs at opposite corners, (strange, but rare) with whose continual and inexhaustible rocking motion made them difficult targets for hunters and highly sought after bedmates. And it is indeed from these that the modern day Haggis is evolved.
Haggis Country

The Natural History of the Haggis.

The Haggis was once widespread throughout the British Isles until displaced by the rabbit introduced by the Romans. It is rumoured that Julius Caesar, the well known partygoer, had intended to set up a "Bunny Club" but Signora Caesar had other ideas.

Rabbits, in their natural Spanish habitat, lived amongst loose rocks but because of the strong Peseta were able to push the price of burrows way beyond the means of the local Haggisses who were thus rendered homeless and migrated back to far Caledonia.
(Not a lot of people know that!)
(Even fewer Care. Ed.)

It is rumoured to this day that the Little folk of Eirrann still keep the Haggis as a domestic pet. Although some authorities have it that Haggis milk (or something like that....... there was a ceilidh band banging away when O'Shaunessy told me the other night in Flannigan's Bar) is the special ingredient that puts the E into whiskey.

The wild Haggis is now a very timid beast and is seldom seen if it sees you first.
It will however respond to the mating call of another Haggis. Herein lies the secret of good Haggis hunting.
"Oh where tell me where

Has that @#$~*

Haggis gone?"
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Animals I've eaten
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Sunday, December 16, 2007 at 1:04pm | Edit Note | Delete
Here is a list of most of the animals I've eaten, although I'm sure I've missed a few.
Moose
Deer
Cow
Chicken
Sheep
Buffalo
Crab
Lobster
Mussel
Shrimp
Scallop
Frog
Pig
Wild Boar
Eel
cod
whitefish
snapper
pollock
snail
Tuna
Basa
Sea Bass
Shark
Halibut
Salmon
Haddock
Octopus
Ostrich
Sole
Squid
Pheasant
Turkey
Yellowtail
Mackerel
Oyster
Clam
Alligator
Crawdad
Flying Fish Egg
Rabbit
Jackfish
Pickerel
Trout
Perch
Tilapia
Haggis
grouper
anchovy
sturgeon
goose
duck