[thought for the day] walpurgis night

Just been out on our Walpurgis revels but instead of sacrificing an innocent and concerning ourselves with fertility rituals, we ate pizza. They always speak of the nun Walpurga "dying" on Feb 25th and being sainted for being a martyr on May 1st.

Usual motif on this day is "passing through the fire" and I'd like to know how exactly Walpurga died. They don't tell you. Also, on the Hotel Safari was a giant picture of a naked woman and an exchortation to join their Walpurgis Revels - surprised how open they were about it.

It's also Mayday tomorrow, actually today and "nash prazdnik" or our holiday when all sorts of marches and festivities take place in Russia but for me it's a working day.

Thought for the day?

"Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must first set yourself on fire.”

Anyone care to explain that one? And finally, some delightful people enjoying their festival.

I Feel So Sorry for Her But It´s So Funny!

Ok, La Sexta is one of six TVE (Televisión Española) owned channels, owned by the gov´t. There´s quite a bit of controversy surrounding this specific channel. I´ll leave that for another time. I´m here to focus on a specific progam: El Intermedio. It´s kind of like The Daily Show with John Stewart or The Colbert Report but much more cheeky. The host´s name is "El Gran Wyoming" (Big Wyoming). He´s left of center but doesn´t hesistate to make fun of the gov´t. Find below a video (which was originally sent to me by a friend, whom will remain nameless) where he "conducts" an interview with President Zapatero. This was a real interview that was done on Ana Rosa´s program. He basically asks about Zapatero´s sex life. When I have more time, I´ll post a translation.










He has a whole cast of other people, like Stewart and Colbert do. One of them is Usun Yoon. She´s from Utrera, a city in Andalucía (southern Spain) but was adopted. Her Spanish isn´t the best. They often send her to do interviews with people, who have trouble understanding her...too funny! She´s my favorite part of the whole program.

The Power of Powerthirst

I originally found this via Brando. My friend and I will be making a parody video of this shortly. Once it´s up, I´ll link to it! AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

I didn´t know it but a real commercial took the idea!

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

I checked out the web site, it looks genuine. Does anyone have any more info on it?

¡Puente!

That´s what we will have starting tomorrow on Mayday. For those who are not up to speed on general Spanish slang (as I´ve heard this word employed by Colombians as well, I assume it is universal and not just unique to Spain and Colombia), it is an extended weekend. For instance, if you have a holiday on Thursday (like tomorrow), you also take Friday off (even if it´s not a holiday). Therefore, Friday bridges between Thursday and the weekend. Well, we have a holiday on Friday as well. It´s the 200th anniversary of Madrid´s uprising against Napoleon´s army in 1808. As Ron Burgandy would say, "I don´t know how to tell you, I´m kind of a big deal." That´s what May 2nd would say to the rest of the holidays this year. I plan on staying here in Madrid, instead of bombing around like I´ve done for the last few weekends. This weekend plans to be exciting enough. Maybe I finally get to Ventas on Sunday and see the first bullfight since I tried going in March and it was cancelled due to rain. Yeah, people aren´t happy when they´ve paid 40€ or more for a show that doesn´t happen, ain´t that right guys?When they are upset, they throw their seat covers into the bullring.  I saw one guy get drilled in the face, at row 3.  Strangely, it costs more to sit closer to the ring, which includes getting burned by the sun!

[housekeeping] this blog almost certain to end

I intimated some days back that this blog may well cease operations near the end of May. We're talking odds here and that's what a lot of people over here have been involved in at an official level since last Thursday - estimating the odds, which change daily. The fact is - if I come a cropper then the blog does too.

I'd dearly love to tell the tale - it's a good tale which is so illogical and my official status so invidious and yet I'm not able to tell all. Unless there is a miracle, this blog will most certainly end during the last week of May, with a fortnight hiatus being the best case scenario, rated around 20%, all things factored in. 70% says it's all over.

It's a story of one man in another city setting a new law in motion which has effectively ended everything. We are, of course, fighting a rearguard action each day now but the chances are not good. Other complicating factors make it well nigh impossible.

These are the days one finds out who one's real friends are but I have no expectations on that score, only hope.

Think I'll stop here now.

[thought for the day] tuesday evening

"Goodness what beautiful diamonds!"

"Goodness had nothing to do with it."

[touch and go] the ghost returneth

Intriguing group this Touch and Go whom I posted on last December. The line-up looks like this [I can tell you now some of these links don't work]:

• Charlie Gillett
• Vanessa Lancaster
• David Lowe
• James Lynch
• Gordon Nelki

Most know the music but you'd be hard pressed to see any but Vanessa and James in concert and then only at times and mainly in Eastern Europe, which is interesting for a British group singing about Harlem.

The thing is, it was basically a David Lowe project which got out of hand and when Eastern Europe wanted them to appear as a ... well ... as a band ... they realized they'd have to actually create one.

Their best known hit was where Ms Lancaster sang:

I find you very attractive ... would you go to bed with me? The song's accompanying video feature[s her] asking the same question to various inanimate objects including an iron and a shopping trolley.

... all to Monsieur Lynch's manic trumpet work. Something quite tongue in cheek about the whole thing but the music still stands up over a decade later.

Here's a video using Life's a Beach:





In a careless moment, not so long ago, I wrote to them as to the possibility of a performance in my "home" town here, not actually expecting a reply.

Oh my goodness, I've just received a nice letter from Jim Lynch wondering what the heck I'm doing in this place and once these current "troubles" are over, I'm going to see what can be done.

Touch and Go.

[world predictions] and the fundamental interconnectedness of all things

It struck me, reading Sackerson on Marc Faber's take:

...In a real downturn, the United States (and other developed nations) would stop importing so much oil...and so much merchandise from China, which would have the consequence of reducing energy consumption by China too.

... that it really depends whom you're reading, meaning from which sector of the workplace. To listen to an economist you're lost in commodity prices, hyperinflation and the like. But come from a different angle - trade, for example, and the slant is different:

The idea that, by freeing trade, immigration and investment wealth could be optimized at low cost is a fantasy beloved only by academic economists. In reality, globalization of immigration, investment and trade each involves tradeoffs, and the tradeoffs are different, since each has different characteristics.

I ran this article past our Trade Min today and he largely accepted the take, especially:

Freedom of investment is another principle that in practice causes difficulties. The problem is that economics does not exist in a vacuum from foreign policy. In natural resources, for example, the normal ambition of most Third World governments is to seize control of any minerals discovered on their territory. Given that tendency and the existence of companies controlled or effectively controlled by governments hostile to Western interests, free foreign investment is a chimera.

In other words - autarky. Cityunslicker has an interesting comment on the downgrading of supermarket stock which also has to be considered.

The purpose of this post is not to discuss either trade or finance. It is that coming from different angles, the conclusions might well be different. There needs to be a more holistic approach when pundits punditize, methinks.

[culture gap] falling for the three card trick

Forgive me - I couldn't resist answering the comments on the last post as a separate post in itself. Certain ladies took issue with the part about girls having multiple partners and suggested males were just as bad, if not worse.

I'd say they are - far worse. There is no "no" in almost any guy's vocab.

So therefore the morality is set by the female, the nature of what relations are to be. Recently I went out with a girl and it was clearly a cultural difference. Over here, the moment the girl goes with him alone - that's a clear signal it will end up in the cot because the thought the guy would not want to does not compute in her mind or anyone else's.

Two generations ago it would be automatically assumed he'd taken only the first step and that it could either stay as a friendship or if he wanted to go the rest of the way, then it was tied in with going steady, at the very least and more usually getting engaged. There'd be no assumption she'd just "do it" there and then because there was a premium put on girls' final bargaining chip.

Even a girl having successive boyfriends is a separate issue to just automatically assuming that if you party, you automatically screw.

Take that girl [who is in the vast majority today, not knowing any other way 'cause no one's ever taught her otherwise] and put her back into the late 50s and she'd be looked at very strangely by the other girls.

Which is better - today's "free for all" or the "guy has to work for it" of that generation? I'd say that today's girl feels "empowered" that she can mete it out to whomever she likes but the 50s female had more power in that it was not automatically expected and she was held in higher esteem. It's like anything which you have to fight for to get - it's worth far more than something readily available.

The guy of that day was in her power, under her spell and if he wanted the final frontier, then he had to play her game. These days he need play no game - he gets it when he wants it with no strings. Females have effectively swallowed the feminist illusion and disempowered themselves.

And what is "it"? For a guy it's mainly the cot. For her it's increasingly just the cot too but way back then it was the whole package she got. All that this oh-so-modern idea of "who wants to marry anyway" has done is give the guys the right to dip the wick without responsibility. Hell I'm not complaining - it favours the male but if she thinks it empowers her somehow or gains her more respect in society as her own person, she's kidding herself.

How many times have I heard a single mum [my own goddaughter is a case in point] say she wouldn't want him anyway. Why not? Because he is useless. Why is he useless? Because he has no responsibility. Why not? 'Cause he's grown up without respect for girls as there has been no premium on that.

It's a vicious circle. At least in the 50s she'd run a reasonable chance he'd not be like that in the first place although, to be fair, if she did cut the cord to him, she'd be an unmarried mother in the 50s - not a good place to be. Better for her today of course.

All this dislocation would be minimized if women had had better Feminista to follow back then. Instead of the appalling bra-burners, if they'd listened to people like Dale O'Leary, Melissa Scowcroft, Christina Hoff-Sommers, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Camille Paglia, Judith Levine, Lillian Csernica, Diane Ravitch, Katha Pollitt or Nadine Strossen - true feminists in that they would have equally got women out from behind the Hoover but at the same time had them retain their "womanness".

Instead many women chose to follow Steinem, Jagger, Callaghan, de Beauvoir, Greer, Stanton, Hanisch or Friedan who actually did enormous damage [and by the way - they were into bra-burning in the next wave]. They achieved no more as lauded Feministi than the saner feminists but instead got most men's backs up and half of the women today as well.

Pollitt and Strossen are right in saying that women are simply people in the end, just as we males are people. These women want to work with the male rather than issuing ridiculous ultimata and harbouring deep hatreds.

That's why it needs to get back to a position of sanity. That's why girls should probably follow the debate between more intelligent women, say, Katha Pollitt and Carol Gilligan instead of the Misandrists who are lost before they begin.

[reformation] just around the corner

First let's get the bad news out of the way:

Property repossessions are expected to jump almost a quarter this year. The prediction, from the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), comes as borrowers increasingly feel the pinch from higher mortgage costs and a tightening of lending criteria. At the same time, Britons have record personal unsecured debts and the cost of living is rising, stoked by soaring fuel and food prices.

... and some of its predictable fallout is stress. But stress does not completely explain this:

Two teenagers who kicked a woman to death in a park because she was dressed as a "Goth" were jailed for life on Monday, police said. They set upon the 20-year-old gap year student when she tried to stop a group of youths from attacking her boyfriend, Robert Maltby, 21. The pair were left unconscious.

This stems from something far deeper. Britain and the U.S. have always been fairly violent societies at one level - Doug & Dinsdale and Snatch illustrate that on the one hand and al Capone and multiple shootings on the other so how worse it is today is speculation.

While parents of the post-war generation espoused Christian charity, love thy neighbour and so on, as part of a new post-war package of idealistic hope to increasingly irritable sets of young Boomer ears, nevertheless the social blueprint existed and people could still quote from it.

The later Boomers and Gen X crossed the threshold which reacted against "the old values" and the baby was thrown out with the bathwater, e.g. in "open plan" education. What was seen then as new and fresh and self-empowering was actually a con trick but they weren't to know that at the time.

So while the old values were supplanted by the new materialistic hedonism and no one could foresee the catastrophe in an initially prosperous, technologically adept western society of the mid-80s, in fact the seeds of doom had been planted.

And here it is now - a whole third generation growing up unprotected by the societal values which once acted as a mild deterrent to the average person and subscribing to a bankrupt materialism increasingly out of place in a global scenario entirely at odds with the new social code. In other words, no one is equipped to cope because they have either renounced the mechanism for coping or have never learnt of it at all, except in the disparaging and scathing remarks of older people.

Two boys in the park don't like a goth - what's to stop them when their music subscribes to the "if it's female, f--k it, if you don't like it, beat it up" mentality, when they're alienated from an older society and when the only rule is the satanist "do as thy will".

Where once only a girl of a certain type would have screwed around, now two thirds have had more than one partner before marriage. Where once the exhortation not to seek one's own revenge was preached from the pulpit to sleepy congregations across the west, now the young unwashed know of no constraints - this has never been instilled in them. Nobody cares about it.

And the ones in the middle, the washed, are starting to come round to the notion that the shopping god is not all it's cracked up to be and there is no brave new world of peace, love and prosperity ahead. It was all a con.

How to come back from here?

A return to the old values will follow a global conflagration and the next generation will do it for themselves. Irrelevant whether you and I believe this or not - it's out of our hands now. Most of those reading this post will not be part of that process of picking up the pieces and forging a new society of old values.

That's for the next betrayed generation.