You're Welcome

On behalf of the defunct yet still poisonous British Empire, I would like to offer a big "no problem, our pleasure" to the rest of the world for ugly emergence of tribal strife in the false construct of Kenya. Just add it to the pile of Palestine/Israel, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and many other countries and regions created out of whole cloth in a back room of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office withought thought to ethnic or regional faultlines, or deliberately buggered up by withdrawing imperial administrators.

We might even be better than the French at this blowback business. By comparison to us and Johnny Frog the Americans are real rookies at this unintended consequences malarkey.

What? Their Horse Drawn Hearse Was Broken?

Even Garth went Goth once
From the lovely BBC:

Dog-lead goths 'hounded off bus'
A goth who leads his girlfriend around with a dog lead and collar was stopped from getting on a bus amid fears for passenger safety, a bus firm confirmed.

Dani Graves, 25, and his fiancee Tasha Maltby, 19, of Dewsbury, West Yorks, claim they have been discriminated against by bus firm Arriva Yorkshire. The black-clad couple said they had been told to leave one bus and prevented from boarding another. The bus firm said safety came first, but it was investigating the complaint.

Mr Graves told BBC Look North: "We're used to strange looks, we're used to comments.

"But we didn't expect it from someone like that. They're providing a public service. We had our bus passes, we did everything that you are supposed to do to get on a bus."

Miss Maltby said she came up with the idea to wear a dog lead, and said previous boyfriends had called her a "weirdo" when she suggested it. The couple said they "loved each other to pieces" and the use of the lead was a "sign of trust".

Mr Graves said: "She's very animal like, she's kind of like a pet, as well as a partner."

He said he "does everything" for his girlfriend, including laying out clothes for her, feeding her and cleaning their house. He said: "You wouldn't expect your cat or dog to do the washing up or cleaning round the house."

Bus operator Arriva claimed other passengers could be put at risk if the bus braked sharply. Operations director for Arriva Yorkshire, Paul Adcock, said: "Arriva takes any allegation of discrimination very seriously and have interviewed the driver regarding Mr Graves' claims. Our primary concern is passenger safety and while the couple are very welcome to travel on our buses, we are asking that Miss Maltby remove her dog lead before boarding the bus.

"It could be dangerous for the couple and other passengers if a driver had to brake sharply while Miss Maltby was wearing the lead."

The company said it was writing to Mr Graves "to apologise for any distress caused by the way this matter was handled".

It is not for me to comment on the lifestyle of Miss Maltby and the wonderfully Goth-y named Mr. Graves. However, one does wonder if the whole effect of a life lived in the Neil Gaiman inspired shadows is lessened by the phrase "We had our bus passes".

To quote a once-notable bard, "Hey now, hey na na now, sing this corrosion to me." Good sleep, cat-like underlings.

Redeeming Features

Now that I am a dad I have been looking forward with dread anticipation to that seemingly far-off (but rapidly approaching) day when my child's head is filled with dreams of Boohbahs and Elmos.

Luckily, in this day and age there is youtube, the common man's antidote to the bleeps, bloops, and primary colours of today's early learning concepts:


I would like to thank my wife for finding this; it was one of the highlights of my weekend.

In Brief....

Hello!

Gosh, aren't we all busy? Why yes, yes we are. I of course am no exception to this general busy-ness trend and despite constant promises to myself and others that I will blog more and slump exhaustedly on the couch less, I am afraid I have being doing far too much of the latter. Must be the weather. And the 7 month old who is far too much fun to play with (see figure a).

Figure A- Weaselette in a sturdy bag. From the other blog.

Anyway, a few thoughts before I'm off away to the kitchen to desecrate some channa dhal with some fried prawns:

On their dashboard page, Blogger proudly says:

"We are excited to announce that Blogger is now available in three more languages: Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian!"
Right there, the key to peace in the middle east. With blogging now available in their native tongues, Israelis, Palestinians, Iranians, et al will no longer be able to see to squabble and fight as their heads will be up their own asses, like the rest of us bloggers. No katusha rockets today- all of Hamas are too busy flaming each other in the comments of a post about a random bit of gossip about Mahmoud al-Zahar's beard trimming technique. Genius.

I hope the writer's strike ends soon so that Rob Riggle can get back to work on The Daily Show and no longer has to make those unbelievably awful Budweiser commercials. I had no idea that quality copywriters had come out in sympathy with their WGA bretheren.

Finally, in their commercials, MacDonalds are now pulling a Campbells and are inserting basic unmutable facts as selling points. In the case of Micky D's, it seems that they are proud to serve "USDA inspected beef". Awesome! Their burgers are made from meat that's at least pet food grade! What they would like us to think of is "USDA Prime", but show me prime beef that you can sell a 1/4 pound of (with bun and extras) for 99c and I'll show you what you thought was rabbit was cat (a long story involving my grandmother, the butcher's shop, World War II, rationing, and the lesson to never buy game without its head on).

Tata,
Keep it special out there.
Weasel

Death and Taxes? You Haven't Met My Accountant.

I was chatting with some colleagues yesterday and the conversation turned to mountain lions. I mentioned that I know someone who considers being eaten by mountain lions the best of all possible ways to shuffle off this mortal coil. One of my colleagues said that he would prefer to walk off a cliff while hiking and be taken completely by surprise by the grim reaper. Each to his own I replied, adding that I had absolutely no interest in dying in a manner which would lead people to say "it was such a shock" or "at least he kept his dignity".

When I die I hope I will be ancient, in my own bed, half in the bag, and covered in crumbs from a meat pie. I want about 5 minutes warning so I can rattle off something witty and foul for my last words then its one last bite of the pie, a swig of rum, and then splat.

No "live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse" for me, thank you no. Instead, I propose we amend that trope to "live at a decent trot, die old, and leave a corpse a vulture would think twice about".

When I die, think only this of me:


And that is about as deep as my musings on metaphysics go, I'm afraid.

Live Fritos or Diet

It's been a quiet week out here in Lake Woebegone, -oops, wrong intro.

Hello chums; hope all is well. I have been inordinately tired as of late (related to the arrival of season 3 of Lost from our Netflix queue- you can't watch just one) so I haven't been posting much. This will soon change.

I did want to highlight a different New Hampshire primary narrative than the one that is doing the rounds as conventional wisdom however, as it makes a lot of sense to me and shows how once a discussion is framed it is very hard for alternative explanations to break through to public consciousness.

The CW claims that Hilary confounded the world and snatched victory from the jaws of defeat by sobbing slightly, possibly derailing the Obama campaign as she somehow captured the hearts of many and squeezed the balls of the rest destroying scientific polling in the process.

Another, less heard version suggests that the pollsters screwed up their samples on an epic scale and the Clinton machine's get-out-the-vote effort was better established in NH (after all, she's been running in effect since her husband left office and all his sleepers were still in place from 92 and Gore 00). And even with all of this, Barack Obama closed within 3 percent of the woman considered Democratic shoe-in nominee 12 months ago on the strength of only 5 days of frontrunner-hood.

Every time you hear Obama lost New Hampshire, remember that two and a half months ago he was 16% behind Clinton in opinion polls. In that time he made up 13% against the heir apparent. That's a lot of inertia, name recognition, and machine to push against, and yet he almost pulled it off.

I'm loving these races: whoever wins the Dems have the chance to send a real battle-hardened, road-tested candidate with the potential to make gender or racial history out of Denver and into November. Meanwhile Republican voters are seriously considering opting for either an old man who wants to prolong the war, a man who has changed position so many times this month alone his autobiography should be called the Mittra Sutra, and a man who believes Earth and all creation postdates the invention of beer and that the US government should be solely funded by a regressive 23% sales tax.

Seriously, if the Dems contrive to lose this one to yet another religious "national security" nut job I have already got Country Mouse to promise we're leaving.

Jon Swift, drier than a good martini

Ladies and gentlemen, I humbly offer up the funniest parody of all the learned prognostications on last week's Iowa vote, courtesy of blogging satirist Jon Swift:

Iowa caucus results explained

A Tale of Two Oldsters

From the UK, I bring news (via the BBC) of two elderly Britons, both special in their own way:

The UK's oldest emigrant has set sail for his new life in New Zealand - at the age of 102

If only Mrs Thatcher was still Prime Minister. This was the sort of thing we used to love to blame on her and her heartless minions, driving the elderly to the other sie of the world through her mean policies, etc etc.

Meanwhile, from the part of the country I hail from comes news of adventure-seeking dering do on a much smaller scale:

Disability scooter driven on A11

Stand aside, mortals. Hells Granny is coming and she doesn't see too well.

Two Thoughts on Obama

Like many people I've been inpressed with Barack Obama's presence and oratory since he burst onto the national scene in 2004 so I was heartened by his win in the Iowa caucus last night (if Bill Richardson can't win, why not back Obama?).

I have two thoughts based on his speech and the reporting around him from last night:

1) Obama has obviously read that MBA classic, Leading Change by John Kotter. "Change agent"? Classic stuff; very useful.

2) Despite the incredulous wonder of the commentariat, it's not a miracle that Obama can win intra-Democratic contests and probably national elections in the 95 to 98% white Northern states. It's going to be a miracle if he can pull it off in more diverse places like South Carolina, where history and hate are more explicitly intertwined. They are going to Harold Ford him everywhere south of the Mason-Dixon.

The grounds of the South Carolina state house, 143 years after their defeat by the North.

Caption Contest

New Year's Eve Midnight Countdown Formula

+++++= Fun.