Sunday, January 04, 2009

[new dawn] a hungarian rhapsody

4 a.m. in Budapest



Budapest dance ensemble


Eastern influence is strong too.

[hawaii five o] book em, danno, murder one


Hawaii Five-O, does anyone remember it?

Jack Lord had a dark side but he was certainly The Man in this police series - he'd have found Obama's vault copy birth certificate, no problems. In an act of utter prattiness, the supplier of this youtube of the famous theme song won't allow it to be posted on web pages. Click on the pic above to see and hear it.

The show was hugely popular, running for twelve seasons and much of that was down to the characterization and idiosyncrasies. For example:

Curiously, it [the Five-O department] lacked its own radio network, necessitating frequent requests by McGarrett to the Honolulu Police Department dispatchers to "Patch me through to Danno". McGarrett's tousled yet immovable hairstyle and proclivity for wearing a dark suit and tie on all possible occasions rapidly entered popular culture.

Most episodes of Hawaii Five-O ended with the arrest of criminals with McGarrett's catch phrase to Williams, "Book 'em, Danno!

The popularity of the Hawaii Five-O format spawned various police dramas on all the major television networks since its debut. Another legacy is the popularity of the Hawaii Five-O theme song, composed by Morton Stevens and later covered by surf music band The Ventures and by Radio Birdman, a punk-era band from Sydney.

In summary:

While the location, theme song, and esemble cast made "Hawaii Five-O" one of the longest running police dramas in television history, the show is also noted for its liberal use of exterior locations as "sets" throughout the entire 12 seasons, breaking the tradition of filming indoors as with the case for a typical TV series. A typical episode, on average, would have at least two-thirds of all footage shot outdoors.

Here is the Radio Birdman version of the theme:



I loved the deadpan McGarrett [Jack Lord] who reminded me of Robert Stack in some ways. Does anyone recall Stack in The Untouchables? Here he reprises and caricatures his film persona:


[serious people] and bully boy punks


A few people have asked me to continue my series of posts on life in Russia from time to time. I'd like to but not being there now, I don't have the daily incidents to draw from. This one is from what I recollect.

The essential thing to remember in Russia is that the network of family and friends is everything. It provides support systems, which the state does not provide and it also provides protection, an absolute necessity over there.

This is not to say that daily life is like that for anyone but the local gangs. Most people go about their business, going to the market, kids going to school, grandparents playing their roles. Most now have cars and the rest usually go by the now quite satisfactory bus system.

There is a golden rule that you don't go out looking for trouble but if it does come upon you, you need to have a "krisha" [roof] or two in place to help you. Krisha is an outmoded word these days and most people speak of "par' ni" or "rob' yerta" [the guys]. The thing for you to ensure is that the krisha is appropriate for the occasion.

Let me illustrate this. I was going to buy a place in a carpark not far from my home but what it did was put me on the other side of the new development block I was living in [maybe 250 000 population]. While it was safe enough to walk around the well-lit periphery of this block, it wasn't so good to go through it because of the punks.

In Russia, there are egotistical young punks dotted here and there, everywhere, who imagine themselves as hard men and use bully boy tactics which work on the majority ... and then there are the seriously hard men, known as "seriosniye lyudi". I was introduced to a few of these latter and the thing which characterized them was that they were generally softly spoken, with a sense of humour and were nice guys to know.

Only their history and physique gave them away.

The thing is that the punks generally do get away with threatening and standing over the ordinary citizen and so it's best to avoid them. If you can't or if they come to you, then you have to respond and so I asked one of my 'seriosni' acquaintances how to deal with the punk problem in that 'dvor' or yard between the main roads.

His solution was to get a carpark berth at a place which wouldn't require walking through there. If, by some unfortunate chain of circumstances, you did find yourself face to face with them, then there were certain key jargon phrases to know and say, to the effect: "Let's come back here tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. and settle the matter. You bring your people and I'll bring mine."

The absolute essential was that you did go back there the next day at 10:00 a.m. If you failed to, then you'd created a major ongoing problem for yourself. Anytime anyone saw you alone after that, they'd know they could do as they wished. So to use your krisha seemed the solution but this was a double-edged sword. My particular krishi were a bit too high powered for punks in a yard and it would have to have been a major threat to utilize them.

They knew that too because if they did act for you, then there was the standard payback required in some way. Life revolves round favours done and returned over there. So people generally tried to resolve a matter like gentlemen. However, if you were really forced into a corner, there was only one thing for it and that was to utilize your krisha with maximum prejudice and no beg pardons.

Most people knew that a punk might get a result for his bullying but it didn't help much in the long run if he ended up crippled for life. Only nutters ignored silent warnings and it illustrates something which has been said many times in the last few days on the Gaza issue - ongoing violence, such as the Hamas and Hezbollah rockets, only begets violence.

It's better to come to the table in a strong position and not demand anything outrageous which could not be accepted by the other side. Then it's a case of standing by the agreement, otherwise it all starts over again.

Above all, in Russia and perhaps elsewhere too, it's best not to threaten, even obliquely. That leaves you with one of two choices - either remove yourself from the threat as far as possible [which is not weakness - it's intelligence] - or else hit hard out of the blue, when they least expect it.

There is a concept of Russia as a lawless land but that's to misconstrue it. There is a law at ground level and as long as all are au fait with the ground rules, things generally stay calm.

[blogrolls] time for an overhaul

My blogrolls have been updated but there's nothing special happening.

This blog runs a Bloghounds plus an Active Roll as the main rolls. There is also an Inactive Roll but it needs to be named better. In there are bloggers who are either not posting much or are moribund but a sense of past loyalty keeps them there. Notsaussure is an example.

In other words, this latter roll contains good people but something is a bit different about them. Certainly the prattiness of not allowing comments, expecting readers to come in merely for the wisdom, wise though it might be, is a blogrolling factor with me, not that it unduly worries them, of course.

There are people conspicuously absent from the rolls altogether and they might not all know why. Some know full well. This is a one-to-one e-mail matter, should they be interested.

In the end, there are always errors and updates needed so please don't take umbrage. It's an ongoing process.

[so it begins] the slide to ... what?


A Sunday roundup, of sorts:

1. John Trenchard shows footage of what is actually happening in Gaza today.

2. Ian Parker Joseph hits the nail on the head again:

Just read carefully the second clauses of Articles 8, 9, 10 and 11 HERE.

And as the nine hippies of Tarnac are finding, one doesn't actually have to pose a real threat to the State - it's enough for the paranoid and weak central State to believe that you might.

It's a pity Ian's comments system doesn't allow some blogs to comment as I'd like to have added to this.

3. Meanwhile, Henry North London has translated Brown's message into English. Here's a sample:

Prime Minister in Black, translation in Blue
As we look forward to this New Year, we face a challenge. A challenge of how we build a better tomorrow, today.
Hello folks, we're unfortunate to live in the time when our whole economy is based on oil which is rapidly running out but we haven't told you this yet because we are scared stiff, and we know that you would lynch us if we told you things were going to get worse even though it would be the truth.
4. Great piece from Mr. Eugenides on Scotland's first space port.

5. Finally, Blake's 7 is an analogy for our current woes, according to the Quiet Man.

Saturday, January 03, 2009

[the immortals] do they have more fun



Think about if you accidentally become immortal. This, from Douglas Adams, courtesy of the Hitchhiker project:
Wowbagger The Infinitely Prolonged was - indeed, is - one of the Universe's very small number of immortal beings.

Most of those who are born immortal instinctively know how to cope with it, but Wowbagger was not one of them. Indeed, he had come to hate them, the load of serene bastards. He had his immortaility inadvertantly thrust upon him by an unfortunate accident with an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch, and a pair of rubber bands. The precise details are not important because no one has ever managed to duplicate the exact circumstances under which it happened, and many people have ended up looking very silly, or dead, or both, trying.


To begin with it was fun, he had a ball, living dangerously, taking risks, cleaning up on high-yield long-term investments, and just generally outliving the hell out of everybody.
In the end, it was Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in at about 2:55 when you know you've taken all the baths you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the Long Dark Teatime of the Soul.

So things began to pall for him. The merry smiles he used to wear at other people's funerals began to fade. He began to despise the Universe in general, and everybody in it in particular.
This was the point at which he conceived his purpose, the thing that would drive him on, and which, as far as he could see, would drive him on forever. It was this:

He would insult the Universe.


That is, he would insult everybody in it. Individually, personally, one by one, and (this was the thing he really decided to grit his teeth over) in Alphabetical Order.


When people protested to him, as they sometimes had done, that the plan was not merely misguided but actually impossible because of the number of people being born and dying all the time, he would merely fix them with a steely look and say, "A man can dream, can't he?"


And so he had started out. He equipped a spaceship that was built to last with a computer capable of handling all the data processing involved in keeping track of the entire population of the known Universe and working out the horrifically complicated routes involved.

What would you do if you found yourself accidentally immortal? You've all the money you're ever likely to need, you've seen all the movies, you've visited all the planets. You've been altruistic to the universe. You've been a bstd. You've tried it all. The health is fine.

On the other hand, what would you do if you were mortal, you aged and the systems were beginning to break down? You've done all you're usefully going to do, the kids have grown up, your mates are all dead, you're wondering why you're hanging about.

Would you want to be immortal?

[palestine] just the facts please 4


I wonder if I might ask a question: “Do you feel accepted by your nation, your land, your peer group?” For most of you, that’s an irrelevant question, stupid even.

What would you say then to a friend of mine, a Yorkshirewoman, who moved to another town twenty odd years ago and not so long ago told me, with a touch of irony, that she was now finally accepted because the baker had waved to her for the first time ever, as he’d driven by?

Cutting closer to the chase, last year I was nominated for the American weblog awards in the UK section, largely on the strength of American and British votes but a certain lady left a comment at this site, saying: “Oh, are you a UK blogger, James?” Nice putdown.

Going way back in time, to the 4th class/year/form, I always thought I was one of the lads but one day I was bumped off top spot in our weekly class tests by a girl called Gail and I was mightily p---ed off because she’d been given help with the last test. To be honest, a tear or two crept from the eyes.

At lunch break, out I went to play football with the lads but no one was passing it to me so I just took it and tried for goal myself. Even my own supposed mate wouldn’t tell me what was wrong later but from that day forward, there was a coolness from my peers.

Now, leave aside these trivialities and look at a people who not only haven’t managed any peer acceptance in 5000 years but they’ve also put up with pogroms, oppression, putdowns and all sorts of unpleasantries – anyone know the story of Clifford Tower in York or about the Volga River pogroms?

Forever seen as foreigners and usurpers in their own homeland, taken captive and deported, they’re quite logically going to develop a jaundiced view of life, wouldn’t you think? The word that springs to mind, regarding the attitude they’re likely to develop is “intransigent”.

Unpleasant to deal with but understandable, all the same.


I’ve had two interfaces with the more extreme members of this community, one for three years and one for two weeks. In the former, one month the gentiles’ salaries were not in the bank but the Jewish ones were. Our money had been used to pay for the new chandelier in the synagogue.

In the latter case, I was staying, during the holidays, in a cottage on a hillside and a group of Jewish children passed by, singing Top 100 hits. Suddenly, a voice cried out from behind for them to stop and a man ran up, circling them like a sheepdog and exhorting them to start chanting a Hebrew song instead and so they went, all the way down to the fields below.

Most of the Jewish families I knew were just your average family, “more English than the English”, a statement which would upset them because they were English, in their eyes. This is the thing, isn’t it – non-acceptance of who they are and what they believe in? That then causes an attitude problem in them and confirms the worst suspicions of the non-Jews around them who’ve been fed a diet of hostile folklore all their lives.

Cf the Irish question.

Things stick in the memory and my father always told of how, in the war, he stood on the banks of what might have been the Jordan and on one side were the Jewish settlements, with irrigated land and crops and on the other – desert and Arabs. Blame my dad, not me, for that story. Either way, it sure affected those soldiers and they were far more pro-Israel after it.

Looking at it from the Palestinian point of view, there they were, minding their own business and doing sfa with the place, when along came dispossessed Jews from Europe and man, these people were intransigent in a big way. From 12% of the local population to some enormous number, these Jews posed an enormous threat.

For a start, there was the worldwide caliphate to consider, the goal of every intransigent Muslim and they, the Palestinians, were right in the heart of it. But a different loyalty was also tugging at them at the same time – the nature of being Arab and all it entailed, with a long and glorious past.

With the various mandates in the area, a new idea had also sprung up – that of nationhood. Iraq became Iraq, Persia and Egypt already were, the Lebanon and Syria became distinct.

So, torn all different ways and observing what, to them, were foreign powers imposing a Jewish state on them, they were likely to become intransigent. It was beyond the pale to cast an eye across this vast Arab Muslim caliphate, a source of great pride and to see this ancient blot on the landscape return – the hated Jew. And not only return but right in the prime piece of real estate they suddenly wanted.

All the time, their own holy book speaks of finding Jews hiding behind trees in the end times and killing them, along with other choice scriptures. What chance any sort of accommodation with the Jew? Parts of the Talmud are equally revealing.



The instant Israel formed, wham – virtually the whole Arab world attacked in force, once, twice, three times, even on a religious holiday. Having refused to accept the two state solution, they preferred war and in war, territory gets taken which could never have been taken in peace time.

Then they turned around and cried, “Usurper!”

The Arab leadership must shoulder a large portion of the blame for this. Yes, the life of the Palestinian is dire but look at the intransigence of Hamas, which only stirs up the intransigence of the Jews, which stirs up the intransigence of Hamas and so it goes on. Stop the rockets and see what happens, whether things become better in Gaza.

In a condition of peace, see if Israel continues to choke the border crossings or oppresses the Gaza residents. Let’s not you or I speculate but let’s just see what happens. Let’s see how Hamas spends its billions in aid – on Iranian weapons to wipe Israel off the face of the map or on the living conditions of their own people.

I’d say as long as those nutters are in charge, putting innocent Palestinians in the firing line for their own purposes, as with Hezbollah in the Lebanon, then the Palestinian cause will never be served.

At least Fatah offers some sort of hope for a lasting peace. At least there is a way forward for cooperation on irrigation, on food supplies, on housing, on a reasonable lifestyle.

Let it just happen.

[bloghounds] stirrings from the hearth

Bloghounds Term Report

[Cross-posted at the site, if the technically wizardry of Cherry Pie worked.]


As usual, this is a personal review and you’re welcome to post your own. The Bloghounds welcome your perspective. Comments at the site rather than here, please.

We find ourselves with eight months under our belt and where are we?

The attrition of blogs

Some say that the nature of blogging has changed; certainly there is a move by certain sections of society to restrict and register blogs but there also seems to be less blogging going on in general.

Bloghounds needs to recognize realities and the immense pressures [in blogging terms] of real life in 2009. In short, people have their own worries and less time to devote so this, in turn, makes rules about visiting other members and linking quotas unworkable.

There is also the firm principle that a blog is a voluntary, largely unpaid medium which someone maintains because he or she wants to. Therefore, he will want to visit the Dales, Wat Tylers and Dmajor bloggers, he has his own daily round and his own inner circle.

Where does that leave Bloghounds?

From a personal point of view, it seems, as I wrote once before, that BH is a brand name and as such, the principles upon which it was founded need to remain immutable, as the best trading houses in the world, the ones remaining viable and not bailed out, also do.

The line, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ applies to us. As a badge of a certain, if minor distinction, it stands for ethical principles and that has implications for new inductees. We don’t have many rules but those we do have, we stick to almost vehemently. Not to put too fine a point on it – there is a certain type of blogger we like to see wearing the Bloghounds badge and there are, sadly, some which we don’t.

This is not high-nosed but a simple statement that we are protecting the brand name.

The committee

We do seem to have settled on a skeleton committee which takes care of the nuts and bolts but I’d like to mention some in particular.

There is our technical whiz, Wolfie, who made it possible in the first place and keeps these matters going, there are the original committee members such as Andrew Allison, Welshcakes, Jams O’Donnell [current committee member], Sackerson and then there is one other to mention at this time.

This lady is the goods, a great administrator because she does it with so little fuss. To have an admin who is also so in Real Life is a coup and I’m referring here to Cherry Pie who has carved out her own little niche in the blogosphere and who crosses so many blogging boundaries.

Issues

There are two issues we’ve so far had to face.

One was the image copyright matter which we jumped on in uncharacteristic haste, followed now by our own langorous search for a new logo.

The other is the constant problem of applicants who are refused. A look at the correspondence which goes back and forth over any controversial applicant has shown a distinct pattern – unanimity amongst those who spoke and silence from the others.

We know what we want and we know what we don’t. We reserve the right to rely on our members’ voices and we go with the majority opinion. There is no undue administrative directing of opinion for the simple reason that this membership has shown itself to be impervious to undue influence. They’re big boys and girls in their own right.

Bighound

There is one mystery member who can usually be found contentedly curled up on the hearthrug. We assure members he’s been fed and watered and if you see him roaming round the premises late at night, do not be alarmed – he’s simply shifting position to get closer to the warmth.

The human members

We are the members. Having said that, recent votes and comments have shown a distinct tendency to leave it to the few and so be it. BH does not push the unattainable; it recognizes reality. If things are going in a certain direction, then that’s the direction they’re going.

If this report resembles a boring quarterly company review sent to your mailbox, then that’s a big plus in our eyes. ‘Steady as she goes and into 2009’ is where Bloghounds is currently sailing.

[arabica] music, not war





First is by Hi Fi from 1999 and the second Di-du-la. Both Russian. You know the next one:

Friday, January 02, 2009

[modern living] oh for gay paris


They do it differently in France:

Vendredi, vers 13 heures, la ministre de la Justice a accouché par césarienne d'une petite fille. C'est le premier enfant de Rachida Dati, âgée de 43 ans. Elle avait officialisé sa grossesse en septembre dernier. Depuis, la ministre a refusé de révéler le nom du père de l'enfant, ce qui a suscité de nombreuses rumeurs.

43 years old for her first child, the father unknown and she's a minister of state. And how's this for a prediction?

Anyway, back to more conservative matters, here is your business attire for 2009. Pop over to gay Paris and get yours now.