Why, Indeed?

TheEndOfOurWorldAsWeKnewIt
LobbEverythingVille


Today, among other (important) things, Sooey says this:

"...Why are we so focused on who will pay to clean up Lac Megantic when 47 of our sister and brother human beings are dead and their deaths are a direct result of ideologically-driven decisions made by currently governing politicians?

You know, everybody complains about politicians and the decisions they make but nobody ever seems to hold them to account for them. And no, I’m not talking about two years from now at the ballot box. I’m talking about the fact that the men in office right now made a policy change that allowed industry to cut an important corner and pay just one engineer instead of two to operate its deadly accidents waiting to happen.

I mean, if governing politicians didn’t expect business owners to take advantage of the opportunity to reduce their costs, they wouldn’t have made the policy change that allowed them to do it. Cripes, one of the policy changers didn’t even take a day off between resigning his seat in Parliament and joining up with his friends in business, ferchrissakes.

I thought there was a cooling off period between making the rules and financially benefiting from them but I must be thinking of another country. The Sudan or the Virgin Islands or Switzerland..."


To which I respond....

Ya.

And.

Microbes!


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And, off-topic (but not really), who, exactly, threw the long Lobb bombs that led to the $200 million turnstiles 'round here anyway?...And who, precisely, ran the initial interference in the long march that led us all down the road to the evil demons  that we all now know as 'fare-evaders' (as opposed to poor people)?...More on that later...


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If You Can't Transfer Between A Bus And A Train...

SomeThingsAreJustSo
ObviousVille


Shouldn't, as per a comment from 'an omaly' tacked onto a solid piece by Miranda Nelson in the GStraight, the new name for the Lotuslandian public transit system be...

...TransUnLink?

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When The Going Gets Big, The Really Big Get...

...Loyal.

In the end, Charles Bukowski became more than just a self-made man.

In all kinds of ways.

One of which was that he lived long enough to see his life's work start to pay-off.

So much so that big publishers started offering him real money to write stuff.

In advance.

But that doesn't mean he forgot the folks that helped him through the lean years.

Case in point, the following is a from a letter Bukowski wrote to one publisher that came calling in February of 1993, one year before he died:

Hello Daniel Halpern:

I'm glad that 'musings' worked for you.

Update bio? Harper-Collins to issue RUN WITH THE HUNTED, a Charles Bukowski reader, April 1993. I am about 2/3rds finished with a detective novel, PULP, "dedicated to bad writing."

Thank you for the thought of doing a book of "musings". But all my work is promised John Martin and Black Sparrow Press. He was there when nobody else was, I can't forget that. On the Harper-Collins book they simply purchased rights to rerun certain portions of work already published by Black Sparrow, crediting John Martin as editor. I am glad that "musings" workd well for you and I am still honored and look forward to seeing them in Antaeus...


Helluva a guy, as well as a kinghell of an artist, I'd say.

And he turns up in the following song, written by Sean Kangataran, that I covered awhile back...

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And go read the letter in full, posted up here by the WSJ's Barbara Chai early today (which would have been Bukowski's 93rd birthday), to read about what he thought of makers of music vs. makers of literature...


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The Greatest Show (Not) On Earth

NevermindTheEagle'sLanding
RollOnOnColumbiaVille


I was 10 the summer that Apollo 11 happened.

And, like all kinds of kids everywhere, I thought that nine day mini-series was the best thing ever.

And when the big show wasn't on the television I spent most of the rest of the flight in my closet, which I had converted into a fairly decent replica of the inside of the Command Module, with faux controls and everything.

I'm pretty sure I even slept in there.

The thing is, the Command Module (CM; which is the bit that looked a cylinder with a pointy cone at one end) did not land on the moon.

Instead, it circled luna with Mike Collins in it, waiting to do the pick-up, while the other two guys went down in the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM; which was the part looked kind of like a stubby-legged spider) so that they could walk around and take pictures and stuff.

****

Anyway...

Somebody on the Twittmachine (sorry, can't remember who) pointed me towards a reverse-time-lapse of the launch of the big Saturn V rocket that hauled the then conjoined CM and LEM up into space from the perspective of the actual launch pad floor itself (which is the opposite view of things from that shown in the image above).

The movie is a really freaking amazing back-stage, nuts and bolts 'this is how the thing actually worked' -type thing that it is nothing like anything that the two Wallys (Schirra and Cronkite) and Arthur Clarke babbled on about, pretty much non-stop, on the idiot-box at the time.


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On the day of the moonwalk itself I distinctly remember something that actually had nothing to do with space....But it did have quite a bit to do with time (and what would soon become a continuum) ...It all started when the two Wally's began to pontificate on what the future would hold...And the thing distinctly rememberd?...Well, I recall being struck dumb by the realization that in the year 2000, in addition to flying cars and regular flights to Mars,  I would be 41 years old...At the time I had no trouble conceiving of winged vehicles in the driveway and/or interplanetary travel taken in an economy class seat...But... I could not even begin to fathom the possibility that I would ever be that old...Well....Ha!


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Could The Good People Who Ask You If You 'Want Fries With That'...

...Be The Ones Who Finally Stop Our Race To The Bottom?

From Josh Eidelson in Salon:

...In each (American) city, (fast food) workers are demanding a raise to $15 an hour and the chance to unionize without intimidation. With fast food jobs becoming increasingly prevalent in — and representative of — the U.S. economy, and embattled unions exploring and experimenting with tactics like those the fast food workers have taken up, their showdown has far-reaching consequences...

And it's even happening in the South.

Somehow, I figure this one could actually transcend race.

And it will be very hard for the screamers and the media maw to belittle and dismiss these folks as  'lazy, dirty rotten hippies' as was done with the members of the  Occupy movement.

OK?


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A Summer Story Song.

WhenItReallyHappens
YouRememberItForeverVille


And this story, which unfolded 32 years summers ago now, is all true.

Every last word of it.

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Everybody else, except the Whackadoodle and me, was at the Folk Festival last night...So, with thesis reading all done, I was actually sitting down to record the next Sunday Setlist when this just came pouring out...An hour later it was all written, and in another it was recorded...The story happened here....
And, for those in the know (or who are wondering about the drawl)...I didn't mean to rip-off this guy...Honest.



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Wallinville...The Assistance Of All The Assistants.

WhenTheGoingGetsTough

TheUnderlingsGetGoingVille

From yesterday's thumb-driven Twittmachine feed...

So.

If true, would this not be the ultimate in getting 'clean'.

As for the 'plural' when it comes to the mention of the assistants?

Well, how could the Senator from Potash....errrr....Saskatchewan possibly survive without a whole passel of them?

But, seriously, what justification could there possibly be more than one?

To take care of travel expenses, I mean.

Sheesh.


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This Day In Snookland...In Which Mr. Smyth Gets Tough...

...On Sparkle Ponies.

From today's Aug 13th column in The Province:

...British Columbia's accumulated debt stands at $56 billion, and the government expects it to go even higher before the natural-gas miracle makes it all disappear. According to the government's June budget update, the debt is scheduled to hit nearly $70 billion by 2016, which would then leave only 12 years for Clark to achieve a herculean task that would make even Hercules nervous.

How to sop up all that red ink? The government says it will use revenue from proposed liquefied natural gas exports to create a $100-billion "Prosperity Fund" that would wipe out the debt forever.

But how can that happen without taxing the nascent LNG sector to the hilt? And exactly how big is that tax bill going to be anyway? That's what big oil-and-gas companies want to know before they decide to invest here.

"Those details need to emerge," Andy Calitz, vice-president of Shell-led LNG Canada, told the Wall Street Journal last week.

"We need to know with certainty about the level and the stability of that (tax issue) by 2014."...


Hmmmmm....

Given that this issue was fully in play two months ago, I've just got to ask (because I'm just so sanctimonious and whiny)...

Why the heckfire wasn't this column written on May 13th?

(assuming, of course, that the good Mr. Smyth doesn't have to get his Lotuslandian political info, and his cups of courage, from the pages of the WSJ)


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Wondering about all that was truly most sparkly and ponylicious (and also unquestioned) back in the day?....Well.....This.
And, don't know about you, but I could have sworn I heard the newly-minted Snooklandian Minister for Advanced Education tell Ms. Gretzinger that he could quite literally see fields and fields full of non-existent job training programs from his house on the MoCo this morning.

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My Evening (Ferry) Ride

AllTheWoodenWorktools
ThatFitVille


C., the two E's, their Grandma, and me went to see the Victoria HarbourCats play the Bellingham Bells down at the Royal Athletic Park last night.

And, as far as minor-league 'experiences' go, it was, overall, a little too cookie-cutter/khaki-short/casual-corporate for my liking.

But still, the kids on the field, who are all college-aged playing their first wood bat summers while preparing for a (hoped-for) shot at the pros down the line, gave the solid crowd of twenty-five hundred a good game for their 10 bucks, give or take, depending on their seat*.

And just how wide-eyed and not jaded were those kids?

Well...

After the game they all flopped down on the grass in front of their respective dugouts and watched the entire post-game fireworks show with the rest of us.

****

While littler e. and C. are going to stay over on the Island for a couple of more days, E. and I caught the 6:00pm ferry back across the water early this evening.

It was one of the old boats, the Queen of New Westminster, which I remember much more fondly than soccer game Saturday afternoons at Royal Athletic Park as a kid, and even though it was a little cloudy we set up shop and got our instruments out, up top, just behind the bulkhead on the port side.

Anyway....

About halfway through the trip a gaggle of kids from that Bellingham baseball team, who finished their 54 game season earlier in the afternoon against the HarbourCats, came up and sat down right next to us.

And that's when we saw that they really were just kids, many actually younger than E. is now, and who, just like her, will soon be heading back to school. And let me tell you, those kids were really friendly, and they gave us lots of encouragement when they got up and headed back down to their bus one last time.

All of which, I guess, is just another way of saying...

The boys and girls of summer are going fast my friends.

So give your best to all of them before they are gone (or fully grown) and the rains come back again.

OK?


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Still have a bit of tough time swallowing what the Harbourcats charge for something that is way below 'A' ball, but I get it that it is a tough go, what with those extra ferry trips and the long bus rides that the team has to pay for, both going and coming...This is something I've gotten into with one of their many number #1 fans, Tom Hawthorn, who wrote about the team (and the wood bat league they play in) as well as other, older Victoria baseball teams earlier this summer in The Tyee...By way of comparison, we went to a July 4th game in the same league down in Klamath Falls, Oregon last summer for two bucks a pop.
And ya,  just in case you were wondering, Mr. Hawthorn was at the last game of the season today with his daughter...We, instead, went to visit the other two grandparents of the E's earlier this afternoon... A good time was had by all, regardless location and/or venue.
Image At Top Of The Post....Is from years gone by... Taken out back of Martin Luther King Junior High School just up the street from our old house in Berkeley California...littler e is now 14 and Bigger E. is 20...They will still come out to play with me....Occasionally....Which, of course, means that I am a very lucky man.


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Luckily, Kerouac Never Became A Sportswriter

ThereAreAMillionWaysToGetThrough
AHitchVille


On a recent HST Friday we noted  Dr. Thompson's flip-flopping on the genius that was Jack Keroauc.

The much more venomous comments came from a young, pre-docktoral HST just after he got out of a forced hitch in the Airforce, which he managed to get through by becoming a weirdly wired sportswriting Grantland Riceian-type figure.

Or some such thing.

Kerouac himself also spent a stint in the forces.

But Kerouac's time in the Naval Reserve was much more short-lived. Miriam Kleinman tells the story in the US National Archives 'Prologue' magazine:

...Kerouac enlisted in the U.S. Navy Reserve (then called the U.S. Naval Reserve) during World War II (at the age of 21 - see image above). But he never left the United States, never saw action, and never even completed basic training.

In all, he lasted 10 days of boot camp before being referred first to the sick bay and then the psychiatric ward for 67 days. Kerouac's extensive medical and psychiatric evaluations produced both a large file and the conclusion that he was "unfit for service."

The qualities that made On the Road a huge success and Kerouac a powerful storyteller, guide, and literary icon are the same ones that rendered him remarkably unsuitable for the military: independence, creativity, impulsivity, sensuality, and recklessness...


And thank the goddess for all that, eh?


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Remember all this from the Vanity of Duluoz, but got onto the picture and Kleiman's story through the wonderful Open Culture blog which is worth a visit every single day.
Speaking of Jack....This.
And, just because it's Sunday....There is more than a little bit of self-interest in this one, but Paul Wells has a good piece up on the shift away from the funding of pure basic science in this country.


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Op-Eds Say The Darndest Things.

SomeLinesHitYouLikeATonOf
BricksVille


Historian Henry Yu had an excellent Op-Ed in the VSun yesterday about 23 'children playing' signs that will no longer be required along the soon-to-be car-free section of Point Grey Road.

It was an interesting piece, and it had me thinking about how much Knight Street is still neither child nor bike friendly.

And then, near the bottom of the piece, out of nowhere, came the following:

"...Democracy does not require an equal distribution of wealth among all citizens. But it does require that great wealth not become synonymous with unchecked power..."


Couldn't agree more.

In fact, it strikes me as a motto of reasonableness to aspire to in all realms, including the political.


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Another Communications Provider Just Says 'No'.

RingRingRingRing
RaffiPhoneVille


First it was Lavabit that said no to invading the privacy of it's clientele.

Then it was Silent Circle.

And now?

Well...

****

But, more seriously, Mr. Greenwald just asked Mr. Snowden, who apparently had been using Lavabit's secure Email service recently, what he thinks:

..."Ladar Levison and his team (at Lavabit) suspended the operations of their 10 year old business rather than violate the Constitutional rights of their roughly 400,000 users. The President, Congress, and the Courts have forgotten that the costs of bad policy are always borne by ordinary citizens, and it is our job to remind them that there are limits to what we will pay.

"America cannot succeed as a country where individuals like Mr. Levison have to relocate their businesses abroad to be successful. Employees and leaders at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, and the rest of our internet titans must ask themselves why they aren't fighting for our interests the same way small businesses are. The defense they have offered to this point is that they were compelled by laws they do not agree with, but one day of downtime for the coalition of their services could achieve what a hundred Lavabits could not"...

There is that, of course

But there is also the matter of how much business the big American companies will lose if run-of-the-mill users (i.e. people like you and me) decide that we don't trust our data in their clouds.

OK?


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Thanks, once again, to our friend Bob for the heads-up on the Greenwald piece in The Guardian.
Oh, and just in case someone out there is not familiar with the concept of the Bananaphone...Here it is...As a Uke Cover.

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All The Sanctimon(e)y That Fits.

ThePotKeepsCalling
Kettle(NotValleyNotRailroad)Ville


Oh boy.

Look what Norm has done...

Now.


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Who Is The Best I Ever Saw?

AllGeeksAreNotAlike
TransductionWasHimVille


There is scene in the movie 'The Right Stuff' when former test pilot Gordon Cooper (Dennis Quaid) is asked who was the best he ever saw.

At first Cooper starts to answer truthfully but after he is interrupted he grins and turns the spin back on himself.

Because, of course, by then Cooper was something that Chuck Yeager never would be.

Which was a side of spin-recycled astronautical 'spam-in-a-can'.

Anyway....

In the realm of the thing that I am lucky enough to do for a living, I can say unequivocally that the best I ever saw was a guy named Tony Pawson.

And now, very sadly (and very suddenly) he's gone.


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The Highway Of Tears...Is There A Five Percent Solution?

HowToMakeAReverseP3
WorkVille


Norman Farrell thinks there is.

And I think he might be right.

Head on over to Norm's place and see if you agree with him.


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