A Quick One

Just a quick one, Parishioners.

I

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE !!!

moving.

Thankfully,

I am not alone.

"This is the last summer I do moving. I'm going back to my old job."

***

Also

Only The Onion could do this:

bad news for the economy...


lerevdr on Sun 28-Aug-2005 @ 22:05 e.s.t [permalink]
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 The Profits of Fear

With the 60th anniversary

of the slaughter

of Hiroshima

and

Nagasaki

still fresh in memory

this is an interesting article;

heading for the laundromat ... my cell phone rings ... the inventor of the neutron bomb is on the line...

in both content

and approach

and it is worth some consideration.

Take especial note of Chapter 4, entitled "What's a Neutron?"

It also contains this:

Cohen concluded that neutron bombs would be built only if the United States got itself into a conventional war that imposed an intolerable financial burden while creating unacceptable casualties among American troops.

Sound familiar?


I found it on Boing Boing

lerevdr on Fri 26-Aug-2005 @ 23:27 e.s.t [permalink]
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 Ecumenical

Beloved Parishioners,

Mr Kottke informs me
that something is amiss.

Inspired by Kent Hovind's $250,000 prize for evidence of evolution,

Boing Boing is offering
a $250,000 prize to anyone providing "empirical evidence
which proves that Jesus is not the son of

the Flying Spaghetti Monster".



I'll throw another $250,000 into the pot.

Only in America, eh?


lerevdr on Thu 25-Aug-2005 @ 19:45 e.s.t [permalink]
[2 Comments]

 A Rocket to Nowhere

Fuck this cold
fuck this cold
FUCK this cold!!!!!

it's meant to be either seven days
or one week, isn't it?

Anyhow, one Very Bright Thing is Idle Words

I love this guy – you may have seen him here before.


This time he has an incisive examination of the shuttle disasters.

(and Daphne loves Niles & Niles loves Daphne & Frasier doesn't get his fucking filthy hypocritical hands in my Ros; 'tssgwan be a relaxing night...)

this is very very Goo
(I mean it, "Tish)
and has photos.

Here are some bits:

confined to base, not allowed to play with its spacecraft friends

With 28 launches to go, probability tells us that the chance of losing another orbiter before the program's scheduled retirement is about 50-50. But past experience suggests that NASA will continue flying these things until one of them blows up again (note that suspicious four-year gap in manned flight capability right around the time the Shuttle is supposed to retire). This seems like as good a time as any to ask: why are we doing this?

no jet engines and the glide characteristics of a brick

risking capture of a fuel tank by the wily Cubans

The final Shuttle design, incorporating all of the budgetary and Air Force design constraints, was impressive but not particularly useful. Very soon after the start of the program, it became clear that Shuttle launches would not be routine events, that it would cost a great deal of money to repair each orbiter after its trip to space, and that estimates of launch cost and frequency had been wildly optimistic. At the same time, the Air Force proved unable to get the Vandenberg base ready for use, negating much of the reason for the extensive Shuttle redesign. After the Challenger explosion, the Vandenberg base was quietly mothballed. Not once did the Shuttle fly a mission to polar orbit.

Having failed at its stated goal, the Shuttle program proved adept at finding changing rationales for its existence.

When the Cold War fizzled out towards the end of the eighties, NASA rebranded the Shuttle as a way of jump-starting the leap of capitalism from the Earth's surface to outer space, offering a variety of heavily subsidized research platforms for the private sector (which proved remarkably resistant to the allure of a manufacturing environment where raw materials cost $40,000/kg). And it stressed the scientific value of manned space flight, with each Shuttle mission now bespangled in a dazzling assortment of scientific experiments, like so many talismans against budget reduction. Suddenly it seemed you could not change your socks in space without doing valuable scientific research that would contribute directly to improving the lives of the American taxpayer.

AND THIS IS NOT JUST THE AMERICAN TAXPAYER!!!

This period of Shuttle-as-cancer-cure found its apotheosis in the brilliantly cynical return of John Glenn to space.

THIS IS BRILLIANT!!!

This period of Shuttle-as-cancer-cure found its apotheosis in the brilliantly cynical return of John Glenn to space. While legislators had been accelerated to orbital velocity before, Glenn was both a Senator and a sixties space hero, making him an ideal public relations cargo. Naturally, the slightest hint that the Senator had been launched into space for reasons other than the urgent demands of medical science was indignantly dismissed by the mission planners. At the now-usual cost of around a billion dollars 6 , STS-95 spent ten days engaged in the following experiments:
Sent cockroaches up to see how microgravity would affect their growth at various stages of their life cycle

Studied a "space rose" to see what kinds of essential oils it would produce in weightless environment. (in a triumph of technology transfer, this was later developed into a perfume).
At the suggestion of elementary school children, monitored everyday objects such as soap, crayons, and string to see whether their inertial mass would change in a weightless environment. Preliminary results suggest that Newton was right.
Monitored the growth of fish eggs and rice plants in space (orbital sushi?)
Tested new space appliances, including a space camcorder and space freezer
Checked to see whether melatonin would make the crew sleepy (it did not)

In essence, each 'pure science' Shuttle science mission consists of several dozen automated experiments alongside an enormous, irrelevant, repeated experiment in keeping a group of primates alive and healthy outside the atmosphere.

Like the Shuttle, it has been redesigned and reduced in scope so many times that it bears no resemblance to its original conception. Launched in an oblique, low orbit that guarantees its permanent uselessness, it serves as yin to the shuttle's yang, justifying an endless stream of future Shuttle missions through the simple stratagem of being too expensive to abandon.

Over the past three years, while the manned program has been firing styrofoam out of cannons on the ground, unmanned NASA and ESA programs have been putting landers on Titan, shooting chunks of metal into an inbound comet, driving rovers around Mars and continuing to gather a variety of priceless observations from the many active unmanned orbital telescopes and space probes sprinkled through the Solar System. At the same time, the skeleton crew on the ISS has been fixing toilets, debugging laptops, changing batteries, and speaking to the occasional elementary school over ham radio

The goal cannot be to have a safe space program - rocket science is going to remain difficult and risky. But we have the right to demand that the space program have some purpose beyond trying to keep its participants alive.

the whole thang is below



lerevdr on Tue 23-Aug-2005 @ 21:43 e.s.t [Click here for more SALVATION]
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 Oscar and Ned

Troppo Armadillo has an interesting
yet characteristically humourless piece
on the similarities between Oscar Wilde and Ned Kelly.

Such a concept is ripe with humorous potential
but these guys wouldn't know that…

Hey – what about Whistler and Chopper?

Any more?


lerevdr on Sat 20-Aug-2005 @ 00:57 e.s.t [permalink]
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 The 50 Worst Hairstyles of All-Time

This is GOO!

For example:



The Super Idiot
Only an inbread [sic!] hillbilly
would try to grow a cape.

They missed The Spector, The Nolte, The Godfather (of Soul, that is, 'Tish) and The Saddam...



PS: “And then you made the magnificent Ocean's Twelve, a master work. Tell us all about that George Clooney.”

AAAaAANNNNNDDDDd

[sic!] Paul Mccartney "Someone needs to beat this guy with his new wife's wooden leg"??
This suposed to be funny? Only mentally chalenged person could write something like this thinking it's a good joke. [/sic]



Oh, after all that, it's really Turkish Nanny

that makes me smile


AAAaAANNnnnNNNDDdDdDdddDDDd

SSssSPPPPOOooOOOOOooOOOOKY Walken might save the whirl!



lerevdr on Wed 17-Aug-2005 @ 01:04 e.s.t [permalink]
[2 Comments]

 Vodka Collins

Isn't Vodka Collins a superb name for a band?

YES!

Found this wonderful piece of trivia the other day on the Nippop site:

Vodka Collins was a meteoric glam band that existed from 1971 until 1973, when they split a part over management problems. The band was in fact a supergroup of sorts, consisting of Japan-raised pop star /singer/guitarist Alan Merrill, former The Tempters drummer Hiroshi Oguchi, former Four Leaves backing band guitarist Take Yokouchi (who in Vodka Collins played bass) and Spiders guitarist Hiroshi "Monsieur" Kamayatsu. All four members were known from their previous bands, Kamayatsu perhaps the best-known. The mischievous, fun-loving character from the hugely popular "group sounds" band The Spiders, was in fact, already a bonafide superstar when he joined the group. Merrill was the younger, more fashionable one, and made the band stand out, given that he wrote and sang songs in English.

Merrill was the son of famed jazz singer Helen Merrill and Fatha Hines sax/clarinet player Aaron Sachs. Merrill literally grew up in the music business, and was playing in semi-pro rock bands in NYC at age 14. After his parents split up, Merrill moved to Japan with his mother who married a journalist stationed there. He was soon signed by the famed production company Watanabe Pro. Merrill did modeling for fashion magazines and TV acting, and in 1968 released his first solo album.

more below



lerevdr on Mon 15-Aug-2005 @ 22:21 e.s.t [Click here for more SALVATION]
[One Lonely Comment]

 Elliot Perlman

From the BBC page How To Write:

Elliot Perlman was born in Melbourne in 1964, the son of second generation Jewish Australians of East European descent.

He won his first short story competition at the age of 30.

His first novel, Three Dollars (published by Faber in the UK), won the 1998 Melbourne Age Book of the Year Award and the Betty Trask Prize.

His latest book is a collection of short stories, The Reasons I Won't Be Coming (published by Faber), which has just won Australia's Steele Rudd Award.

He's been described as "the foremost voice of the new generation of Australian writers".

Elliot currently lives in Melbourne and works as a barrister.


Work in progress
He is writing a second novel, Seven Types of Ambiguity, and the first section of this, The Emotions Are Not Skilled Workers, has been published in Granta 71.

Writers tip
He offers this advice for aspiring writers based on his novel-in-progress:

"There is a tendency in the middle of the writing of a novel for the writer to feel adrift, lost floating aimlessly in a rough uncharted ocean of words. You are too far from the beginning to feel the enthusiasm that set you on your way all those words ago and too far from the end to see the land of your completed tale where you may rest finally.

There are so many obstacles between you and your completed manuscript. Do not let this sense of aimlessness stop you from finishing. From my own limited experience, and of the many writers to whom I have spoken, I am convinced that this feeling is normal. While feeling it is no guarantee that your novel will be artistically, critically or commercially successful, neither is it a sure sign of failure.

When this feeling is engulfing you, remember the novels that have had the biggest effect on you as a reader. Look at those novels. Take them from your shelves. Flick through their pages. Remember the characters, settings, plots. Remember how they have made you feel. Perhaps the manuscript on which you drift aimlessly now will come to be such a book for people you have never met. Dwell on this, that this could happen. Take a deep breath and go back to your page. Perhaps there is someone who needs you to tell this story."

Three Dollars is rocking me to my core.

PS: if you go here you might want to read the book; it's a little longer & better than the "reviews".

lerevdr on Thu 11-Aug-2005 @ 22:37 e.s.t [permalink]
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 An Extraordinarily Evil Genius

There is a film out there at the moment
entitled Three Dollars

It stars the wonderful David Wenham.

I recently saw Getting Square on video
wherein aforesaid Mr Wenham
gives the whirl a lesson in acting.

'Tis a shitty film
but aforesaid Mr Wenham
shines.

SO, upon discovering the book at the local library
I borrowed it.

This is on page 34:

Nothing was more remote to us than the future and, in any event, any discussion of it seemed futile since we knew with certainty that, whatever we chose to study at university and however intensely we studied it, we would still, in the end, be the same middle-class, socially concerned, politically inactive, foreign-film-going, wine and cheese tasters.

The author, Mr Elliot Perlman,
is An Extraordinarily Evil Genius.

Australia's outstanding social novelist Times Literary Supplement
Perlman is a marvellous storyteller The Observer
A sad, angry, disconcertingly funny reflection of the way we live now Times Literary Supplement

Winner of the AGE Book of the Year Award 1998
Winner of the Betty Trask Prize (UK) 1999
Winner of the Fellowship of Australian Writers' Book of the Year Award
Shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award 1998 (what the hell could have beaten this?)

In Fair Use, Mr Perlman, I reproduce below and as a word.doc
heart-wrenching Chapter Nine in its entirety.


PS: Sixty years ago today
at 08:15
Hiroshima was murdered.

* NEVER AGAIN *



lerevdr on Mon 08-Aug-2005 @ 23:01 e.s.t [Click here for more SALVATION]
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 LEDlight

When I was a young man
I lived in a small room
in a university college.

I was in my element!

I was FREE!

I was FINALLY able to SIN!

And Sin I did -
and I did it often
and I did it well.

The Sin of Envy
was particularly strong -

the rich kids had beautiful hi-fi equipment
in 3x3 metre brick rooms...

SO I spent a summer
toiling in a mine,
saving
for my very own hi-fi system.

However,
I bought in haste
and, much more importantly,
in the absence of advice.

The fucking thing broke
bit by bit
and STILL fucking dogs me.

I learned an invaluable lesson.

Nonetheless,
initially,
'twas a thing of beauty.

I would play Steely Dan's Greatest Hits and Hurricane and Fountainbleu and Cortez the Killer and Ladies of the Road and Bat Chain Puller and Lightnin' Hopkins and Nina Simone
as loud as I dared
and lie in the dark
watching the LEDs pump from green to red -

a light show just for me.


Tonight

I recline

in The Big Red Chair
in the dark
beneath my private umbrella
and admire the LEDs of

the smoke detector
the C drive
the D drive
the monitor
the mouse (that's red, 'Tish)
the modem
the tv
the video
the surge protector
the transformer

and the comforting blue light
which reads AM 576.

And all this -

not in Joni's blue blue tv screen light
of an aged, rain-damaged B&W tv with a sloping picture

but the gentle glow
of my geriatric laptop.

Ah, nostalgia...


lerevdr on Sat 06-Aug-2005 @ 02:57 e.s.t [permalink]
[One Lonely Comment]

 Stevie Wright

Ah, Iidren,

I hardly ever watch commercial tv
and I never watch This is Your Life

but, flippan through,

tonight it's Stevie Wright!

You know, of Easybeats fame
then solo, then immortalised recently
by having an "all-star" "tribute" band
perform covers
at the ARIAs(?)
and perhaps The Big Day Out


They must think he shall die

soon.

I have an interest in this man
so I watched.

more Stevie below



lerevdr on Thu 04-Aug-2005 @ 23:38 e.s.t [Click here for more SALVATION]
[19 Comments]