"42"

"If you don't like what you're doing, you can always pick up your needle and move to another groove!" - Timothy Leary

It has been a singularly uninteresting week for the "wry smile news." Oh, there has been the occasional quirk of the lips over this or that but, on the whole, the last 10 days have not brought much smirking or enlightened disgust. The Larry Craig business has finally died down and no, I did not find it at all entertaining. Smutty, greasily distasteful and embarrassing for Americans at large, this sad story of politics, power and prurience finally petered out amid the gradually dying hoots & catcalls of the media and his fellow sharks who cruised fishbelly-white and dead-eyed in the feeding frenzy.
"3) True or false? You could scour the planet and never find a single heterosexual man wrongly accused of a homosexual act that would plead guilty "in hopes of making it go away." ( Paul Slansky, The Huffington Post 30/08/07)

Turkey elected a new president, Abdullah Gül, who promises to uphold the tradition of laïcité in government in Turkey and not lead his country down the fundamentalist road, even though he and his party believe that is exactly what should happen to Turkey. (His wife, Hayrunisa Gül, wears the most restrictive form of veil by her own choice, so the president tells us.) Thankfully, the Turkish Army is keeping a close eye on this guy (yes, in this case the army is the good guy, go figure). They are not at all amused when someone starts down the islamization road and in the spirit of "we've done it before, we can do it again," keep their coup options open, oiled and available.

Checking up on Iraq, one sees that the Shi'ites have been killing each other on the pilgrimage route to Kerbala, the Sunnis cheer them on because it is less for them to kill, the 1001 Arabian militias are milling about on the landscape like so many disturbed anthills, etc., and George tells us that "the Surge" is working, we just need to give him more time and an endless supply of money. Um hmm. What kind of a name/label is "the Surge," anyway? It sounds like the name of a marital aide or a manoeuvre at a football game. What a festering, suppurating wound this man is on America's ass, which is precisely what he continues to show to the world as the "good" side of the USA. If you aren't weeping at this man's representation of yourself and your country, you are either dead or insane. Someday, if we all last that long, he will be another name with which to evoke an era of unparalleled greed and corruption, like Boss Tweed.

"Put another brick in my hookah, Chow Ming, and fetch me fresh silks. I've soiled myself again." Franklin Pierce, April 6, 1856 (America: The Book, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, 2004)

From tweed to tellingly tailored silk, the week also saw the 10-year anniversary of the death of the Princess of Wales. The show goes on, I suppose, but really, are we incapable of letting the lady rest in peace? I do not find the house of Windsor all that fascinating with a single exception, her maj the Queen. A bottle of gin, a smallish room with a cozy fire and two armchairs, and she might, just might, crack like a ripe melon and let it rip, which I would dearly love to hear. Her unique viewpoint is unassailable and probably worth hearing. On the other hand, given her pedigree, she may be able to drink her government under the table, rise neatly and precess out of the room, leaving Jeeves to sweep out the rubbish. We are very amused. http://www.gocomics.com/thenewadventuresofqueenvictoria/

Having CNN International as an only (televised) source of English language news, I am subjected as well to their endless blitz of the strangest travel agency/chamber of commerce advertisements I have ever seen. The glorious, civilized, technologized havens of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Serbia, Montenegro, Qatar, The New Better Shiny Republic of Nigeria, you get the idea; fantasy cities and digital havens rising in the deserts and on islands everywhere, and you, too, can participate in these Utopias if you jump on board and tell your banker, "Invest! Invest! Invest!" You have called your banker after disembarking from your Singapore Air flight ("what do you mean, '1st class, sir?' Is there another? Is it better?") to Hong Kong to help celebrate the opening of another of your investments, the We Dislocated 100,000 People Spa & Resort. At whom are all of these elitist, assumptive advertisements aimed? Surely the target audience is far too busy jetting around the globe making deals, skimming profits and limo-whisking (or better, 'coptering) from airport to hotel to airport most of the time to be watching television or, more specifically, advertisements on CNN? Are they broadcasting a kind of economic penis envy to those not rich enough to be too busy to watch this junk? Why do people think this manga-version of their Utopian future is believable or even possible? It is all sheer folly.

It is just a short entry today, as I have to call my banker, take care of some business, and catch a flight to . . . somewhere, I don't exactly remember.
Leducdor