Overland Express

6 grand US all-in, leather, anti locks, bish-bosh, the works
Occasionally I think I'm working in the wrong part of my field. Working for an organisation at the coal face is pants when I could be working at the mid-level admin stage, blethering on about "coalitions" and using more acronyms than a NASA engineer.

I was sitting in the window-less function room of a non-descript roadside motel all day yesterday, trying to figure out how to best share information on s*bst*nce ab*se pr*v*ntion pr*gr*ms among various agencies and organisations that work with the public directly in a manner appropriate to a small and widely dispersed population like Maine's. At one point I was listening to my group brainstorm, paitiently waiting for them to get to the service delivery bit so that I could add my two pennies worth, when one of them made a very popular suggestion.

"Why don't we have a convention?" She said, adding "We could take two days, get everybody together and meet under the theme of 'Celebrating our Successes'!"

While everyone else went batshit ecstatic about the idea- "Oooh! A convention! Two days! With booths!"- I wearily began cataloging all the work I wasn't getting done while sitting pretending to actively consider whether or not we should set the convention date then the convention budget, or vice versa.

"Bear Grylls doesn't have to put up with this." I thought to myself. "I'm gasping for a ciggie and could really use a drink."

Sensing that the discussion wasn't going anywhere while the colour of the backdrop behind the keynoter's podium at the still-imaginary convention was still under deliberation, I retreated into my head for a bit to ponder a plan I had started to form while reading The Economist in the karzi before heading out that morning.

According to the business and finance section, China's domestic car makers are turning out knock-off models of popular Japanese, European and US marques at blistering speeds (100 new models were rolled out in China this year alone). Also, thanks to government subsidies brand new cars (like the fully loaded Shanghai Maple pictured above) sell for pennies on the dollar when compared with their US counterparts. They are also left hand drive. Furthermore, due to the relative affordability of brand new cars there is little in the way of a second hand market, which means I could even pick up something like this for a song (complete with ambasadorial/commissarial flags):



All I would have to then is either drive it onto a ship in Shanghai or drive it overland across Asia and Europe and then load it as cargo bound for the east coast of the US.

What I need to figure out is that with the flight to China, import/export duties, road tax, gas, and sea freight from either Shanghai to Los Angeles or Rotterdam to Boston would I still come out ahead versus the more mundane purchasing experience here in the United States? And would I be able to time my trip in order to regretfully miss the convention?

OK, One More Meme

These memes are making me vain
Whereas, I have been very busy working on an economic development project for school and;
Whereas, I have to get up early and drive north for a seminar on substance abuse prevention tomorrow that will take all day, and;
Whereas, I have to do more reading on the economic development thingie tomorrow night rather than idly blog,
Let it be known that I shall partake of another meme, this time vouchsafed to me by Mac over at Stones in the Field, to whit:

5 Little-known Facts About Yourself
5) Many people, when they first meet me, think I am from Nebraska because I "don't look British".

4) I have absolute contempt for the telephone.

3) I am 28 years older than my twin sisters.

2) I have trouble with the order of the alphabet because I changed schools, going from "N" at one to "T" at the other. I still to this day have to recite the whole thing in my head when alphabetising.

1) I have always wanted my own chimpanzee but due to pesky ethics have dogs instead.

My usual tagging thing applies; lift it by all means but I won't force it on anyone.

A Gift From the Wing-ed Rat

I'm not a huge fan of memes but every now and then I get tagged for an interesting one. This time the Caledonian human ashtray and walking Tenants Super research laboratory Flying Rodent has passed along the poser, "What ten things would you never do?"

10. I will never say never again.

It worked for Sean Connery, didn't it? He made millions from that.

9. I will never wear tie dye.

Why would I want to drape myself in a pattern that looks like egg salad in various stages of putification? Before I get clobbered around the ear, that's not to say it doesn't look good on a woman (i.e. Country Mouse's one tie-dyed t-shirt) but there is something about male physiology that doesn't mix with hippie weeds.

8. I will never watch anything with Tom Cruise in it I haven't already paid for.

The idea of putting a portion of my earnings into his pockets makes me want to jump up and down on furniture. I had to qualify this one however so that I can still say "We were...inverted" in time with the DVD of Top Gun.

7. I will never fully understand calculus.

And I will be the poorer for it, both intellectually and financially. Damn you, computer programmers, I will never join your ranks.

6. I will never lose my taste for a good cup of tea.

A foul cup of tea, although invariably never offered by one's host, is another matter.

5. I will never eat the head of a turbot.

That's the only piece of useful advice I ever gleaned from the British TV show Minder.

4. I will never join the Elks Club.

If someone tapped me up to join the Masons I'd be in like a shot- all that nefarious skullduggery, secretive networking, and good works for charadee: I'd be mad not to. The Elks though: I see no primary social benefit to belonging to a group of people too fat for the local bowling league.

3. I will never dye my hair.

I've always wanted Elvis-black hair but having to dye my eyebrows and wear mascara to cover up my lashes would be too much maintenance.

2. I will never rule out the possibility of men carrying children to term in a bio-engineered "momb".

Someone somewhere is working on it, you know it.

1. I will never be able to grow a sustainable moustache.

Exhibit A.

Fear of rejection prevents me from tagging anyone with this but feel free to steal it.

Potentially The Headline of the Decade

From the BBC:

Lightning man's trousers ruined
You could read the rest of the story, but wouldn't you rather let your imagination loose?

Where there is discord, may we bring harmony

Happy Thatcher Day.
16 years since they pulled down our statue in the square. Crikey.

"His language is spoken in the Church and by the Advocate at the bar..."

Not William Topaz McGonagall
From my early childhood on, encouraged by my maternal grandfather, I have been in awe of the comedic talents of the late Spike Milligan. Spike's work essentially shaped my sense of humour and inculcated me with a love of the ridiculous, not least through his championing of Scotland's own William McGonagall, the man responsible for the unwittingly worst verse ever written in the English language.

Thanks to Spike, I had long marvelled at the sheer awfulness of McGonagall's poems but by my current ripe age of 33 I had begun to fear that no new work by this misguided sub-genuis would ever come to light. Fortunately, my fears were groundless, as the BBC reports:

Critics pan play by 'worst poet'
A newly-published play by a man acknowledged to be one of the world's worst poets has been savaged by literary historians. The 1886 play by Dundee poet William McGonagall will be included in a new collection of his poems.

Jack o' the Cudgel, or The Hero of a Hundred Fights, was never performed during the poet's lifetime. Dr Gerard Carruthers from Glasgow University described it as a "real bludgeoning of literature."

Dr Carruthers, a senior lecturer on Scottish literature, told the BBC's Today programme: "It's dreadful. He does cudgel the play to death. It's as bad as anything else McGonagall wrote. Typically it's all energy and no talent. You have had to stand back and admire. It's a bit like watching Ricky Gervais' character in The Office attempting to dance - he won't stop but nothing good is coming out." (the rest...)

I think I may have to try and stage a performance.

For those of you unfamiliar with McGonagall's work, a comprehensive selection can be found here. But for those of you not inclined to actively seek out bad poetry, I'd like to offer up this example of just how terrible McGonagall could be, with his tribute to Shakespeare. Truly it is a joy to behold the worst writer in the English language extoll the best:

Immortal! William Shakespeare, there's none can you excel,
You have drawn out your characters remarkably well,
Which is delightful for to see enacted upon the stage
For instance, the love-sick Romeo, or Othello, in a rage;
His writings are a treasure, which the world cannot repay,
He was the greatest poet of the past or of the present day
Also the greatest dramatist, and is worthy of the name,
I'm afraid the world shall never look upon his like again.
His tragedy of Hamlet is moral and sublime,
And for purity of language, nothing can be more fine
For instance, to hear the fair Ophelia making her moan,
At her father's grave, sad and alone....
In his beautiful play, "As You Like It," one passage is very fine,
Just for instance in fhe forest of Arden, the language is sublime,
Where Orlando speaks of his Rosilind, most lovely and divine,
And no other poet I am sure has written anything more fine;
His language is spoken in the Church and by the Advocate at the bar,
Here and there and everywhere throughout the world afar;
His writings abound with gospel truths, moral and sublime,
And I'm sure in my opinion they are surpassing fine;
In his beautiful tragedy of Othello, one passage is very fine,
Just for instance where Cassio looses his lieutenancy
... By drinking too much wine;
And in grief he exclaims, "Oh! that men should put an
Enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains."
In his great tragedy of Richard the III, one passage is very fine
Where the Duchess of York invokes the aid of the Divine
For to protect her innocent babes from the murderer's uplifted hand,
And smite him powerless, and save her babes, I'm sure 'tis really grand.
Immortal! Bard of Avon, your writings are divine,
And will live in the memories of your admirers until the end of time;
Your plays are read in family circles with wonder and delight,
While seated around the fireside on a cold winter's night.

In Other Entertainment News...

...the new audio book version of the bible was released today, featuring the voice of Samuel L. Jackson as God.

Juleshovah
All together, now:
The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men.....

Be The Bond

Damn you Cubby Broccoli, you and your successors got me again. Just when I thought I was out after the mess that was Die Another Day, you drag me back in. Casino Royale was the 9th official Bond movie I've watched in the theatre out of the 10 released since 1981 (I skipped GoldenEye then regretted breaking the streak: pennance perhaps for having gone to see the unofficial Never Say Never Again) and I loved almost every minute of it. Somehow it managed to seem grittier, realer, and yet also still completely over the top.

I confess my car is no Aston Martin DB7, but I did leave the theatre with more pressure on the gas pedal than when I arrived.

Be the Bond.

I Can't Believe I Missed This

I heard about this on Marketplace last night, just as it was drawing to a close: World Usability Day
I think I have found a new web passion.

Answers in Metric Are Acceptable

I have a question for the Canadian visitors to this blog:

Is creton delicious or disgusting?

I had never heard of the delicacy before about 20 minutes ago, at which time I saw an empty container in the dish drainer at work. Now my interest is piqued.

I have enjoyed every distinctly Canadian dish I have had the good fortune to try on my various trips to the north. Poutine, rappie pie, plank salmon, fried cod tongues: I have liked them all, and as a member of the highly non-exclusive Nova Scotian L'Ordre de Bon-Temps I feel like I should at least try everything Canadian that is brought to my attention.

But creton? Spreadable breakfast pork?

Convice me, commonwealth cousins. Chase away the squeamishness with tales of deliciousness.

Remembrance Sunday

To my family.

I May Be Prolix, But Is It Bollix?

Perhaps "90 years ago" would have been better than "Four score years ago and ten"
In the comments section of my last post, an anonymous commenter wrote:

Yawn, yawn, yawn - another verbose, opinionated and pointless rant from your incredibly high horse.

Fair play to anonymous; I'm always on the lookout for constructive feedback. I treat this blog as a scratch pad, so anonymous may have a point. Everything I post is a first draft, almost stream-of-conciousness thread and I do very little editing of myself. The trouble is how do I tell if anonymous's comment is a statement of opinion or fact? Luckily, there is such a thing as a verbosity index.

Therefore moving forward should any of my posts strike you as too wordy and in need of a little editing, you can check your instincts by using the following formula:

# of letters in the longest word in a sentence x # of words in said sentence / the square root of the smallest number of words that could have been used to convey the same concept (as defined by Washington State University's "Agribusiness: Do You Understand Economese?"
How "opinionated" and "pointless" my posts are, along with the height of my hypothetical horse, remain subjective conjectures however.*

(*That sentence is probably going to score me high, tant pis)

The Arrogance of Power is the Death of Reason

An Expert on Everything
On Thursday Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of Britain's domestic security service MI5, gave a speech in which she stated that her agency is tracking 30 distinct terrorist plots aimed at the United Kingdom. Today, Prime Minister Tony Blair said "I think [Dame Eliza is] absolutely right" in response.

Setting aside the gravity of the alleged plots for a moment, I think the Prime Minister got it backwards. Shouldn't it be Manningham-Buller confirming that Blair is correct in his assessment, or Blair saying that based on her reputation and level of expertise he has no reason to doubt Manningham-Buller's statements? By the very nature of his job he has to be somewhat of a generalist, reliant on the advice and expertise of others. While since the attacks of September 11, 2001 all world leaders have had to develop a deeper understanding of terrorism, one would hope that the real analytical and threat assessment prowess still resides with the experts in the security services rather than inside the rather singular heads of politicians, no matter how exalted. After all, political inference of cause and effect separate from the evidence presented by the professionals in the intelligence community is one of the main reasons we are still mired in Iraq.

Again, I do not have any reason or access to information to suggest that Manningham-Buller is indulging in hyperbole, or that Tony Blair is twisting her words to fit a political end*. Those are not the arguments I am trying to make.

Rather, I am suggesting that this sequence of statements and specifically the phrasing Blair's response is indicative of the Prime Minister's broader problems with credibility. Blair is not an intelligence gatherer, nor an intelligence analyst, but instead is an intelligence consumer. Given that he only sees the finished product, his statement "I think [Dame Eliza is] absolutely right" can only be an article of informed faith. And yet he tries to give what are essentially his opinions (if you read his other quotes from his statement) as solid facts that support the conclusions of MI5.

Given that voters do not hold with their politicians dealing in nuance or deferring to unelected civil servants (except striking nurses because, you know, they are angels) I could be charitable to Blair (and to Bush, with the knots he has tied himself in by trying to appear firm and certain in the face of troublesome facts) and explain this sort of thing away as the presentational price of modern political leadership.

I could be charitable, but I won't. Instead, this is another example of the awful Blair's unfathomably deep well of self-regard. Of course he is right to tell experts that they are correct! He's Tony Blair, the smartest man in the room, and he is never wrong.

I'm more infallible than you, Benedict.
(*Although I note he did not highlight Manningham-Buller's assertion that the Iraq and Afghan wars and Britain's acquiescence in Israel's summer assault on Lebanon are only heightening the domestic terrorism threat.)

Guns Are Found to be Wrong Kaliber for Maine

Axl looks good for his age
Wedged among the election results in the Portland Press Herald yesterday:

" Guns N' Roses and state fire marshals disagree on who is to blame for the rock band's decision to call off its show at the Cumberland County Civic Center Monday night. The band, through a press release issued Tuesday, blamed the decision on a pair of overzealous state fire marshals.

Nelson Collins, supervisor of licensing and inspections at the State Fire Marshal's Office, said he was doing his job when he let band managers know performers wouldn't be allowed to drink alcohol out of bottles on stage. Collins said Guns N' Roses' management objected.

Guns N' Roses canceled its performance at the civic center at 5:30 p.m. Monday, 2� hours before the show was scheduled to begin. The decision angered fans, many of whom blamed the band's lead singer, Axl Rose, who has called off shows before. Collins and another fire marshal, Robert Cadigan, "made it impossible for the band to perform their show to the usual high standards that their fans deserve," according to a press release from the band's management agency." (The rest...)

My favorite line from the rest of the story? "He said Green Day agreed to the alcohol rule and Clay Aiken did not have a pyrotechnics show..." Clay Aitken don't need no fireworks- he's pure vocal dynamite!

I once covered a Blues Traveler show* for a radio station I used to work for and the fire marshals wouldn't let people dance, and I saw town officials shut down Jefferson Starship at an outdoor festival for breaking the noise ordinance (Starship stormed off, which meant I didn't have to explain what I had done with their booze rider**) but this "no booze on stage" rule is new to me. Huh. It can be considered a small mercy however that the fire marshals didn't try and pull this at a Def Leppard or AC/DC show in Maine. As my old pal Boo (a long time observer of the Maine concert scene) often notes, "trends in Maine come and go, but DC and the Lep will never die." Pull the plug on those bands and there would have been hordes of the hockey-haired hurling kodiak cans at the State House.

(*And it sucked. As I had expected.)
(**I had forced an intern from a rival radio station to stow it in the trunk of my car, which I then slept in parked in the corner of a muddy fairground as I was too drunk to drive home.)

One Last Thing...

If Bill Clinton Ronald Reagan was the "Teflon President" because nothing seemed to stick to him, then it looks like George W. is going to go down in history as the "Astroglide President": always trying to slip and slide his way out of tight holes.

Case in point, from the official White House transcript of his "Don Rumsfeld now has cooties" press conference this afternoon and questions on changing direction in Iraq:

My point is, is that while we have been adjusting, we will continue to adjust to achieve the objective. And I believe that's what the American people want. Somehow it seeped in their conscious that my attitude was just simply "stay the course." "Stay the course" means, let's get the job done, but it doesn't mean staying stuck on a strategy or tactics that may not be working. So perhaps I need to do a better job of explaining that we're constantly adjusting. And so there's fresh perspective -- so what the American people hear today is we're constantly looking for fresh perspective."

So what was all that "Stay the course" malarkey between 2003 and September 2006 (the link gives great examples)? Examples of botched jokes a la Senator Kerry?

Damn George, you are more slippery than the underside of Mark Foley's keyboard tray.

Jumping the Gun?

At 12:55pm eastern BBC radio is reporting that George W. is going to announce the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld during his 1pm press conference.

What are the odds he wins the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the next go-around?

Not Too Shabby

I am going to demur from election comment except to note a few things.

1) I underestimated the size of the Democratic majority in the house but I maintain that the same problems will persist.

2) The awful Tax Payers Bill of Rights was doomed in Maine from the start, not because a majority of Mainers thought it was a bad idea but because lots of Mainers like to vote "no" on everything except increasing the state's debt through bond issues. When issues like TABOR are on the ballot, I'm very grateful for those Mainers who are Meaners. (Standard non-meaner/meaner conversation: "Can I have a.." "No" "But it is only.." "No" "How about a.." "No" "Why do you.." "You ain't originally from Maine, is you?" "erm..no. Damn! Now you've got me doing it!")

And finally...

3) Mike Ockenballs lost the sheriff's race! And not only lost, but came third in a three way race after he unseated the incumbent back in the GOP primary. So not only did he blow it personally, he lost it for his party. Oh happy day! Ockenballs (or to give him his real name, Ockenfels) has gone from Rockland chief to Iraq mercenary to political law enforcement candidate to unemployed. Perhaps he will perform a citizen's arrest on himself, citing indigiency. The reasons I am so happy are listed here (see? I can be a Meaner too! "No you can't, you're from away") and also because Knox County bucked its own trends and elected a Democrat and the first woman in Maine, to serve as sheriff. All hail Donna Dennison*!

Bye bye, Al Ockenfels
(*Despite the fact that one of her signs handily obscured my view of oncoming traffic as I tried to merge from the street my office sits on into the flow on Rt 1A yesterday. Not the most auspicious demonstration of public safety savvy.)

UPDATE: Congratulations to blog chum Margaret Evans Porter who won her legislative race in New Hampshire!

Happy Election Day!

As Mr. Norris reminds us (with eloquent help from Keith Olbermann) all you septics over 18 should probably go and vote today. If you don't want to vote for own piece of mind, do it for me, your friendly vote-less resident alien here. For those of you interested in midcoast Maine endorsements, my pal Rick at Arguably So is most in tune with my sentiments.

And in order to put down a marker should we need to expand on this and other stories of intimidation and fraud post election, here are the initial, still-evolving stories about glitches, hitches, and more sinister forces at work.

Meanwhile, if you are still undecided let me offer up this ad that might help sway you:

Crunching Tackle

The housewives of Bogota used stake their housekeeping money on whether Carlos's carpet matched the drapes
From the near-omniscient BBC news website:

"Protest over 'naked' footballers
A football team's 50-year tradition of getting changed in the street has led to a complaint from a woman about the sight of bare bottoms from her window. The team, Skelton FC near York, does not have changing rooms so players have to get changed in their cars. Club secretary Scott Birkley* said the men struggled to change inside the cars and did sometimes flash their bottoms.

The parish council said it was not taking the complaint seriously but it had plans to build some changing rooms. Councillor Sue Robinson said: "It's the first complaint of its kind. The woman looked out of her window the Sunday before last and said she saw a naked man and she didn't think it was very nice."

Mr Berkley* said the players had no choice but to get changed on the street. "We have to park our cars on the road because we don't have a car park and then we just try to be discreet and get changed in our cars. Obviously it's quite difficult to do everything in the car so we have to sometimes stand out and maybe on the odd occasion you do flash your bottom."

Mrs Robinson said the complaint had proved a talking point in the village

"There's been an awful lot of comments, mainly 'she should be so lucky on a Sunday morning!'.

"This lady has done us a tremendous favour because we have got so much publicity out of this and we just hope somebody will come forward and help us." Mrs Robinson said proposals for the new changing rooms have been given planning permission and it was now a case of raising the £60,000 needed for the work."

I am relieved that the BBC showed restraint in their reporting and didn't use easily misconstrued phrases such as "banging their balls about of a Sunday morning", "Thumping one against the woodwork", and "Enjoying a traditional post match meal of meat and two veg". I am also glad they did not write that "Grown men are waving their penises and waggling their buttocks at an aghast woman in Skelton, Yorkshire."

(*The BBC might also want to check with this chap how he spells his name. Stop sending the youth trainees to do the nudity stories.)

Happy Bonfire Night!

It's Bonfire night- erm- tonight! The linked Wikipedia article above is fairly explanatory, although I'm baffled by the concept of "bonfire toffee". Either my family were too cheap to ever buy me any (hmmm) or I only ever attended spectacularly crap bonfire parties (which I doubt, as growing up on RAF camps the fireworks were great because they used to set off all the expired signal flares as well as the commerical rockets). And given the origins of the festival ( and the fact that the centrepiece of the evening is still burning a Catholic militant reactionary in effigy) isn't the image below just the cutest bit of Protestant bigotry this side of Ian Paisley's tattoo of Daffy Duck shouting "the Pope is the antichrist"?


As the accompanying text says; "Download this image as native Adobe Illustrator file, which means it won't break up, no matter what size you make it. That's real important if you're making a banner to go across the high street."

If you'll excuse me, I'm off to get a long roll of paper, some bailing twine, and a cherry picker. "A banner to go across the high street"? Are they out of their minds?

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot.

Dance Little Sister

Terence Trent Darby looking all pissed off and that because he don't have my bangin' moves
I have been rather consumed by politics recently and as a consequence there has been a fair amount of harrumphing on the pages of Wisdom Weasel and rather less of the joie de vivre for which I am known in several lands. This being Friday and with the sun shining down upon my little corner of Maine holding off the winter gloom for a few more hours, I thought I would inject a little funk into proceedings courtesy of a splendid little web tool passed along by the lovely Country Mouse.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Weasel and Country Mouse dancing to the Scissor Sisters (be patient; it takes about 30 seconds to load).

And if that don't get yer juices flowing, here's blog/real life chums Mondale and Listmaker doing the same.

Should you want to make your own, follow this link. There are other costumes and hairstyles available, but I think the pink leotard is hard to beat.

Update: Earlier I noted that "the sun (is) shining down upon my little corner of Maine holding off the winter gloom for a few more hours". It is now snowing. Ever so lightly, swirling and not settling, but the first snow of the season nonetheless.