Saturday, August 25, 2007

[blogfocus saturday] telling it as it is

Click for the big pic

1. The capital letter loving Clare strikes a blow for all menopausal women:

Q: How many women going through the MENOPAUSE (or PMS) does it take to change a light bulb?

A: One! ONLY ONE!!!! And do you know WHY? Because no one else in this house knows HOW to change a light bulb! They don't even know that the bulb is BURNED OUT!! They would sit in the dark for THREE DAYS before they figured it out (as long as the TV and beer fridge still worked). And, once they figured it out, they wouldn't be able to find the stupid light bulbs despite the fact that they've been in the SAME CABINET for the past 17 YEARS!But if they did, by some miracle of God, actually find them, 4 DAYS LATER, the chair they dragged to stand on to change the STUPID light bulb would STILL BE IN THE SAME SPOT!!!!!

2. A most unusual student also tells it as it is:

After calling around the agencies to sign up (they'll contact me if there are any jobs), I headed down to Ludlow College. Today was the results for GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) students across the land, and it's all over the news. For the last year, down at Ludlow College, I've been doing an evening class to improve my CV. I've got my MCSE (Monkey Certificate of Secondary Education) qualifications under my belt (or rather my rosette, as monkeys don't wear belts!) already, but I've been studying for a GCSE in the Alutiiq language.

3. BobG tells it how it is on gun control:

The same goes for the Brady Campaign; they make more money by demonizing inanimate objects than pushing for better criminal control. Most firearms used in crimes are not bought from licensed dealers or gun shows; they are stolen or bought from other criminals, something which has been known to the law enforcement community for years. Of course, we can't be distracted by the facts, can we? I think I need another cup of coffee...

4. Omnium tells it how it is on the topic of sheer boredom:

In today’s Turkish Daily News (TDN) one could find an article about Hamam owners claiming that the baths and saunas in 5-star hotels do not reflect Turkish culture are going to start a campaign to promote the traditional Turkish Hamam.

That’s it.

Today’s most important story . . . for hamam owners.

And for most readers: A banal story.

So how to attract reader’s interest?

A kingdom for a headline!

5. I can't give you an abridged version of Kareno's miracle but it's amazing and you should read it. She tells it as it is and even includes a picture:

The principal asked me in a stern voice if I have insurance and the secretary kept patting my back. I was crying as if it's the end of the world or worse and only managed a nod. The caretaker got into my car and drove forward a bit, away from the pole. And that's when it happened dot dot dot

6. Martin Kelly has surprisingly sided with Neil Clark, thereby incurring the wrath of the blogosphere and here he tells it as it is:

In certainly one of the more creative if bizarre slurs I've ever been on the end of, it's been suggested that if I were an American colonist in 1776 I'd have supported slavery. But the piece de resistance must be the argument of one Conor Foley that those who hold my view are potentially liable to prosecution for war crimes. Time out, I think. There is, of course, a Third Way out of this situation - one I put forward while being accused of supporting kidnapping for ransom.

7. Shirl of Bristol tells it as it is about her bump on the head:

Heartache is that news of a bang on the forehead, a dent not a bump, is not the best way to say, "I've been feeling better lately, finding that the quiet of my days away from the computer and all things netterly, have really done me some good". If I had posted this yesterday (as said to Liz), I would have been without the new facial feature. Hope is (without jest) that I'll soon be in fine fettle again.

8. The Reactionary Snob sees some logical snags in the tagging of schoolkids and tells it as it is:

Secondly, one would presume that if the little angels realised there was a tracking device in their blazer they would just leave their blazer in the locker, or cut the tracking device out? Or, no doubt, some young Alan Sugar would make a fortune out of carrying a number of other pupils blazers in his bag as he sat in the classroom and they skive off...

At some stage there needs to be a Kizzie feature on her Darfur diaries. the only question is when.

Hope to see you Wednesday evening. Cheers.

[oily tale] beyond the pale

Another place, another oily tale

You know, I can really relate to this. It looked, on the surface, as if it was Russia flexing its muscles again, squaring up to an arrogant Germany:

Russia has cut oil supplies to Germany in the past month, its pipeline monopoly said on Friday, blaming the reduction on Russia’s number two oil producer LUKOIL.

But the real story then appeared:

But traders said on Friday the most recent development was linked to a trading dispute involving only LUKOIL. ”It is the same old story. LUKOIL likes having direct supply deals with refiners and doesn’t like selling all its crude to Kishilov,” said a trader with a Russian company.

Sergei Kishilov, a prominent Russian oil industry figure, has run the operations of Sunimex for over 10 years. Sunimex is a monopoly importer of Russian crude to Germany, including to the Schwedt refinery.

Leaving crude oil and looking at the psychology of individuals, if I were head of a Russian Oil Company [please contact me, boys] and there was real "stick" between myself and some jumped up fellow countryman who'd managed to gain the monopoly on oil supply, under my nose, to one of the major economies in the world and if I had to deal solely through this jackanapes instead of directly with my customers, I'd cut off his supplies too.

It's all very well saying it's childish and people in Germany will suffer and all that but this is outrageous. Not only would I not supply this person, I'd try to get all other suppliers in my country to refuse too. This Kishilov is beyond the pale.

[manifesto soon] being rewritten

All right, the "About" is now ready and pretty well tabulates what I'm about. If you want to know about me, try clicking here.

[g.h.w. bush] 1000 points of light

George Herbert Walker Bush, humanitarian and visionary

Foreword

NewsWithViews.com [a right wing Christian think tank] says:

Dr. Robert Assagioli, founder of psychosynthesis, believed it is possible to train the "will" (speaking on this at an Edgar Cayce Conference was Dr. James Windsor, vice-president of the Mental Health Association of Virginia). Assagioli was a disciple of Alice Bailey (perhaps the leading occultist for the first half of the 20th century), whose first works were published by Lucifer Publishing Company, and who emphasized the need for a "new world order" and "points of light" connected to "service."

An example of Alice Bailey's thinking, from The Externalization of the Hierarchy:

…out of the spoliation of all existing culture and civilization, the new world order must be built...

GHW Bush

David С Whitney & Robin Vaughn Whitney, The American Presidents, 9th ed., Nelson Doubleday Inc, Guild America, NY, 2001, pp 433-459, wrote of GHW Bush at the Republican Convention, August, 1988:

He celebrated the nation's complexity with a captivating poetic image, calling it "a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky." He called for a gentler nation and he said the President "must be a shrewd protector of America's interests and he must be an idealist who leads those who move for a freer and more democratic planet."

… but contrasted this appeal to the celestial elements with:

The campaign was criticized by many as being the most negative in recent memory with campaign commercials showing convicted murderers and sewer sludge.

On September 11, 1990 the President addressed a joint session of Con­gress on live television:

"Out of these troubled times, a new world order can emerge: a new era, freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, east and west, north and south, can prosper and I live in harmony." In poetic language the President said, "a hundred generations have searched for this elusive path to peace, while a thousand wars raged across the span of human endeavor.

Today that new world is struggling to be born. A world quite different from the one we've known. A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak."

George back up this last pledge with:

Each day of the war television audiences around the world viewed detailed military film of the destruction and the accuracy and effectiveness of an astounding array of computer- and laser-guided bombs and missiles which had never before been used in any military conflict.

Which was in keeping with his earlier inaugural address:

President Bush called on Americans to "make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world." He went on to say "A new breeze is blowing, and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn. The totalitarian era is passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient, lifeless tree."

He backed up his "new, refreshed world" pledge when:

He reluctantly attended the [eco] summit, but he refused to sign the biodiversity treaty. He did agree to sign a global warming agreement even though the U.S. was criticized for taking positions in the negotiations that weakened the treaty. President Bush was faulted for failing to take a leadership role in world environmental issues and was accused of undermining the summit.

George showed his concern for the needs of ordinary Americans in his domestic policy:

Beginning with the threat of war in the Persian Gulf, the price of petro­leum shot up, roiling international markets. With market instability and the approach of possible hostilities, the U.S. economy slipped into reces­sion. When the war ended so quickly, with so few casualties for Americans, there was an immediate burst of optimism and the economy slowly began to turn positive in the spring of 1991.

By summer, however, the huge national debt, the scandalous mismanagement and failure of the Savings and Loans banks, and the still high rates of interest mandated by the Federal Reserve Board brought the enthusiasm to an end.

American business and American consumers had built up historic levels of debt in the 1980s and were using profits and earnings to pay it down. Banks were turning very stringent in their requirements for borrowers, and citizens and businesses alike were curbing new purchases. As a result the economy again began to register negative growth and unemployment rose.

Looking back on his record, Whitney says:

The President had proven himself to be a powerful and convincing international leader. He had, largely through his own personal efforts, conceived, assembled, and effectively led an unprecedented international military coalition against a strong military dictator [… but …] despite all these successes, the American voters insisted on focusing on their own economic insecurities.

This, of course, was rather unfair on GHW, who explained to the General Assembly of the UN., February 1st, 1992 how he was "a shrewd protector of America's interests":

"... what is at stake is more than one small country. It is a big idea. A New World Order where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace, and security, freedom, and the rule of law ...

[The war in Iraq is] a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times, ... our fifth objective, - a New World Order, can emerge: a new era, freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace

... Now we can see a new world coming into view, a world in which there is a very real prospect of a New World Order. ... We are now in sight of a United Nations that performs as envisioned by its founders."

It is the sacred principles enshrined in the United Nations charter to which the American people will henceforth pledge their allegiance.

Tony Blair was clearly inspired by the same inspiration which had inspired GHW's rhetorical "sacred principles" and here was his own effort:

"At the time of the election, there will just be 1,000 days to the new millennium - 1,000 days to prepare for 1,000 years, a moment of destiny for us." [BBC feature, July 20th, 2004]

… and again in the Guardian, October 3rd, 2001:

"This is a moment to seize. The kaleidoscope has been shaken, the pieces are in flux, soon they will settle again; Before they do, let us re-order this world around us."

Forget education, the environment, the economy, the law, medicine and welfare. The most important thing for any leader to focus on, as I'm sure you're all agreed, is 1000 points of light.

A little dwelling in Belgium in a withered landscape - I'm sure certain readers understand.


Friday, August 24, 2007

[new world order] sorry this took so long

Lord Nazh reacted to this:

… let me quote from May 1st, 1776 …

and this:

…driving GHW Bush's New Order in Iraq [are you aware he had certificates issued to troops afterwards thanking them for taking part in his New World Order?*] …

and this:

… * I have a copy of this certificate and will try to find it then post it here ...

with this:

I love you James, but you need serious help :) What 'quote' from May 1st 1776 are you referring to (no link was provided)? And hurry up with the NWO cert please, as a friend of mine didn't get one (who indeed served in the war in Iraq).

The quote

It is from Adam Weishaupt (code named Spartacus) and you'll see the date in bold in the text in the hyperlink. To help out in English a little, these were their objectives:

1) Abolition of all ordered governments

2) Abolition of private property

3) Abolition of inheritance

4) Abolition of patriotism

5) Abolition of the family

6) Abolition of religion

7) Creation of a world government

There are two main objections to the Illuminati from 1776 having any significant world influence:

1] It was a society created by a small group of kooks in Bavaria, small time stuff and Weishaupt saw himself as some sort of mega leader of them;

2] They were suppressed in a general crackdown on all secret societies in 1785 and that was that.

There are a number of objections to the objections:

1] A detractor, John Robison, a professor of natural philosophy at Edinburgh University in Scotland and a member of a Freemason Lodge there, wrote “Proofs of a Conspiracy”, a copy of which was sent to George Washington, who replied that he was aware that the Illuminati were in America and that they had “diabolical tenets”.

2] The Catholic Encyclopaedia writes: When the great international convention of Freemasons was held at Wilhelmsbad (16 July to 29 August, 1782) the "Illuminated Freemasonry", which Knigge and Weishaupt now proclaimed to be the only "pure" Freemasonry, had already gained such a reputation that almost all the members of the convention clamoured for admission into the new institution.

Moreover, in 1783 the anarchistic tendencies of the order provoked public denunciations which led, in 1784, to interference on the part of the Bavarian Government. As the activity of the Illuminati still continued, four successive enactments were issued against them (22 June, 1784; 2 March, and 16 August, 1785; and 16 August, 1787), in the last of which recruiting for the order was forbidden under penalty of death.

These measures put an end to the corporate existence of the order in Bavaria, and, as a result of the publication, in 1786, of its degrees and of other documents concerning it—for the most part of a rather compromising nature—its further extension outside Bavaria became impossible. The spread of the spirit of the Illuminati, which coincided substantially with the general teachings of the "enlightenment", especially that of France, was rather accelerated than retarded by the persecution in Bavaria.

3] Winston Churchill, in 1920, wrote: "From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, to those of Trotsky, Bela Kun, Rosa Luxembourg, and Emma Goldman, this world wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence and impossible equality, has been steadily growing.

It played a definitely recognizable role in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the nineteenth century, and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads, and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire."

4] If only for the level of detail I include this next piece as an objection, admitting freely I can't attribute it and therefore don't insist it be taken as definitive:

1785 - An Illuminati courier named Lanze is struck by lightning and killed while traveling by horseback through the town of Ratisbon. When Bavarian officials examine the contents of his saddle bags, they discover the existence of the Order of the Illuminati and find plans detailing the coming French Revolution. The Bavarian government attempts to alert the government of France of impending disaster, but the French government fails to heed this warning. Bavarian officials arrest all members of the Illuminati they can find, but Weishaupt and others have gone underground and cannot be found.

Oct. 11, 1785 - Bavarian authorities raid the home of an Illuminati member named Von Zwack. They discover Illuminati documents which show quite clearly that they plan to bring about a "universal revolution that should deal the death-blow to society...this revolution will be the work of the secret societies, and that is one of our great mysteries."

5] Another weak objection is from a woman who hides behind a pseudonym, Svali, purportedly ex-Illuminati and though it is not established, neither has it been definitively debunked in all I've so far read. She says, of Weishaupt:

Q: Is this the same Illuminati that was created by Adam Weishaupt in Germany?

A: Weishaupt did not create the Illuminati, they chose him as a figurehead and told him what to write about. The financiers, dating back to the bankers during the times of the Templar Knights who financed the early kings in Europe, created the Illuminati. Weishaupt was their "go fer", who did their bidding.

Ignoring points 4 and 5 then, safe ground appears to be that there was an organization formed in 1776 into all these ancient mysteries, they caused sufficient concern outside of Bavaria that Washington and later Churchill took their continued influence seriously, they did cease as a publicly listed body in 1785 and that a lot of their guff has been passed down through other bodies.

You'll have noticed the "financier" reference but I base my view on them on current source material, not this. I prefer to stay on safe ground.

The certificate

Click on the pic for a better view:

Here is the naval seal [click for better view] …

… and a close-up of the text …

I stand corrected on the word "troops" and realize now it was "marines officers". I understand the certificate was not distributed to all ranks but there seems sufficient detail to indicate Bush was into this stuff.

I'll do a further post looking at two of his speeches and though it won't pass the "I want it signed in triplicate and specific allegations of treason made" merchants, it is still quite indicative of the mindset of the man who took the Allies to war in Iraq, a war I didn't actually object to at the time, by the way, being then something of a neo-con.

[revelation] in the middle of the night

Watching Anakin ride off in high dudgeon to avenge the wrongs perpetrated on his mother


What do Liz, JMB, Welshcakes and Anakin Skywalker all have in common at 3.38 a.m. on the morning I have to go back to work?

Comments, snippets and incidents from all were playing on the mind, repeating themselves and making me uneasy and suddenly I woke up.

Liz had written "I'm a crappy Christian", which bothered me [by the way, check the name of her post], then later commented on my site "isn't that a coincidence" and though the topics were different, it chimed in with the way I was thinking.

The more and more moral I get on this site, the less and less Christian I actually get in my general behaviour. My fallings-away are increasing and you'd have picked up my aggressive tone in the feminism posts.

Then JMB and Welsh. Looking back at my major post on the F-ism word, I have to admit to being genuinely puzzled by their reactions. Instead of tearing me down as a Jagger or French would do, they took it personally, especially Welshcakes and that's the first time I realized how much women's rights had actually meant to these ladies at the time and maybe still even now.

So I went back and re-explored, checked each link, did some reading of the early feminists and now - what Christina Hoff-Sommers was going on about started to come home. The early writings were really about equality, rights, the ending of an oppression and the movement was equally open to campaigning for other oppressed groups as well.

In short, it was sane. This accorded with my student memories and the things we were up in arms about in those days.

Now I went over the other, later guff I've recently read on F-ism, like: "all men are rapists" and the like and suddenly the penny dropped about what had gone down in the women's movement. It had been hijacked. The thing I was railing against was not the same thing my lady friends were fondly remembering. Different other animal, in fact.

Contrast these two statements:

1] This movement has been around for a long time, since before the turn of the twentieth century, when its sole purpose was to get the vote for women. Over the years it has evolved to deal with other pressing concerns for women. [JMB]

2] the very 'institution of sexual intercourse' where male and female each play a well-defined role will disappear. Humanity could finally revert to its natural polymorphously perverse sexuality" [Alison Jagger]

Totally different - one the injured and measured cry for equality and the other - something far more sinister - in its own words, the ending of sexual intercourse between male and female and a "return" to the "polymorphously perverse sexuality " of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Now as a Christian, I immediately recognize this for what it is and don't for one second blame Alison Jagger. Grievance and anger allowed her to write such dangerous tripe. It has zero to do with women's rights and everything to do with the ravings of my implacable enemy, which includes and let me quote from May 1st, 1776:

1) Abolition of all ordered governments

2) Abolition of private property

3) Abolition of inheritance

4) Abolition of patriotism

5) Abolition of the family

6) Abolition of religion

7) Creation of a world government

In other words, the same force driving the new-feudalism on, driving GHW Bush's New Order in Iraq [are you aware he had certificates issued to troops afterwards thanking them for taking part in his New World Order?*], driving the pagan, drug fueled nightclub scene [and don't tell me it's not because I was part of it until four years ago], driving on the disintegration of society today.

It's insane and it's possessed, knowing no debate or reason.

It's the same force driving credit and the debt economy to frightening levels and driving us to war, it's the hijacking of Pomo which Cassandra writes about and in the very word "driving" lies its insanity. Think about when you were last so angry you didn't stop until you had struck back and said something hurtful to the other. But your momentary satisfaction turned to ashes and that was to the satisfaction of someone else.

Think about Anakin Skywalker [and no - I haven't taken leave of my mind].

That scene [in the pic above] where he learnt that some evil bods were holding his mother hostage in a desert village on Tatooine and maltreating her, he rushes there, holds his dying mother, then loses his rag completely and razes the village to the sand - men, women and children all put to the sword [echoes of Sudan?]

I'm speaking here, people, of how real evil [and you call it what you will - an entity, a dark side of our own nature, what you will] plays on our genuine grievances [e.g. inequality for women] and invites us to do our worst.

It "suggests" certain embellishments so that instead of equal rights, we now have the call for indiscriminate intercourse with men, women and children, under the banner "freedom for the oppressed" and as part of that, 650 campuses are forced to watch academic staff parading around as giant vaginas - it's the betrayal of the trust by the young in the decency of the old. It's all of this and more.

It's the values of a society turned on its head.

Therefore the women's movement becomes the misandry movement, therefore the gay movement becomes the paedophile movement and always, always, the direction is downwards to depravity, never the other way to decency and all the while the rhetoric speaks of "new dawns", "new reawakenings", "man taking his place in his new destiny" and so on.

Blairite, Broonian and Cameronite type vague postulatings, in other words.

Beneath the rhetoric, the real agenda - 3000 new crimes on the statute books, laws of breaking and entering on suspicion [are you aware of the R.I.P. Act?], iris scans, summary detention at airports, rampant cross-border sex slavery [how?], refusal to deal firmly with any moral issue in the society but allowing the real crazies to hold forth with impunity under the banner "freedom of speech".

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what happened to the women's movement, the gay movement, Islam, post modernism and all the other originally legitimate grievances - they were hijacked by the cynically "perverted", in Jagger's own terms.

This nearly drove a wedge between my lady friends and myself except that the ladies didn't allow it to happen, which I call a triumph for human common sense and sanity.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're speaking here of the insanity of evil, pure and simple. Nothing more, nothing less. It's now rampant, we're in the middle of it and we're all marching off, someway down the track, to another needlessly induced and meaningless crisis, followed by war.

And Johnson said, remember:

Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.

And whilst we're on quotes, the one which Poirot delivered to Mlle de Bellefort, as the latter was seeking revenge on her erstwhile friend for wrongs done to her:

"Mademoiselle, I beseech you, do not do as you are doing."

"Leave dear Linnet alone, you mean?"

"It is deeper than that. Do not open your heart to evil."

Her lips fell apart. A look of bewilderment came into her eyes.

Poirot continued, gravely. "Because if you do - evil will come. Yes, very surely evil will come. It will enter in and make its home within you and after a little while it will no longer be possible to drive it out."

Jacqueline stared at him. Her glance seemed to waver, to flicker uncertainly. She said, "I - I don't know." Then she cried out defiantly: "You can't stop me!"

"No," said Hercule Poirot, "I cannot stop you." His voice was sad.


After the killing is finally over [for the nonce], stepping back to survey the handiwork


* I have a copy of this certificate and will try to find it then post it here.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

[thursday quiz] quotes about age

This time - hints about the personages who said them [in brackets]:

1] The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom. [Sage of Baltimore]

2] To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am. [Park Bench Statesman]

3] With age comes the inner, the higher life. Who would be forever young, to dwell always in externals? [first women's rights convention]

4] I can't get old; I'm working. As long as you're working, you stay young. [Gracie Allen]

5] It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The reverse is true. As one grows older, one climbs with surprising strides. [Amantine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin]

6] Sure I'm for helping elderly people. I'm going to be one myself some day. [Jimmy Carter]

7] A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time. [The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table]

8] I am not young enough to know everything. [All art is quite useless.]

9] He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden. [Aristocles]

10] I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly find - at the age of fifty, say - that a whole new life has opened before you … [Mary Westmacott]

And this is them:

[Agatha Christie 1890 - 1976]

(H. L. Mencken 1880 - 1956)

(George Burns 1896 - 1996)

(Oscar Wilde 1854 - 1900)

(Bernard M. Baruch 1870 - 1965)

[Lillian Carter, in her 80s]

(Oliver Wendell Holmes 1809 - 1894)

(Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1815 - 1902)

(George Sand 1804 - 1876)

(Plato 427 BC - 347 BC, The Republic)

Answers here.

[which craft] design considerations

There is no other water based experience to match this - these are the royalty of the high seas. Click on the photo for a better view.

I thought this might be of interest to a minority of you and even if only one is interested, it will have been worth it. The downside is that it is long but it does explain the thinking which finally produced the design I produced. Anyway, let's try it.

When choosing a water craft, one must decide between:

1] Sail, with at most a putt-putt motor for emergencies;

2] Power, with or without a sail option.

You might love this craft but do you have a spare $20 million?

This article presupposes you've chosen "sail". Your next choices are predicated on:

1] a compromise between purpose, cost and size;

2] hull configuration;

3] sailplan.

All other details come later. Click here to follow this dilemma of choices.


The joy of sailing - the fresh air, the speed, the whoosh of nature, the fun of deciding where to go, the freedom.

[live crane blogging] passion in metal

This is the closest I could get to the look of the place over the road. Now imagine a second building and second crane, not so far away and I'm much closer to the action than this.

I 've written before of the ballet of cranes and how the giant triangualized arms sweep through the air at twentieth storey level but I've never seen what I just saw a few moments ago.

Two cranes making love to one another.

In public.

13:32 The male red crane is tending to one new house and the female gold crane is tending to another, slightly shorter building, a short distance away.

13:41 Both coil in their cables and Red [the taller, thicker crane] brings his gantry tip to the pointy crown of Goldie and massages her on the peak.

13:45 Clearly enjoying it, she swings her own golden gantry round and starts rubbing cables against Red's flanks.

13:52 They pull apart for a breather and to reposition themselves then Red moves the head of his gantry to the foot of Goldie's and she brings her head round to his end and locked together in an embrace, the cables whir.

13:58 I start writing this.

14:12 My mate phones and I read him this so far. But wait - things are changing - Goldie has now swung up and over Red's gantry and has lowered hers right near the control hut near the centre.

14:18 My mate tells me I need another woman.

The photos I found of cranes are not all that beautiful but the ones across the road here are something else. I'm going to ask my [other] mate tomorrow to take some shots of them and I'll post them for your delectation. We'll try to catch them in mid-act.