[susannah] some sort of tribute

There are some songs special to two people and long after they've split, the songs bring back memories. In my first family, the song was Islands in the Stream, though she was nothing like Dolly Parton. A few women here ask what she looked like and when I tell them a 60s Joanna Lumley, they don't know what I'm talking about. She laughed more than Lumley but was the same height.

The second started in the forest at a campfire, a drunken affaire I nearly got killed for. Then, later, when the "other man" supposedly became "the man" through subterfuge, it never quite translated - it was always doomed. If you come across this post by some miracle, Susannah Dragica, the e-mail's accessible. You're the reason I take a pro-Serbian line on this blog.

It's much easier to say who she was like - same age, same name, same look, same height, a bit lighter than the singer in this clip, more Slavic, drove people crazy at the same time this song came out, the same way of standing and wobbling the hips, the same insincere look but razor sharp, it was a standing joke that this song below was about her and the dupe was me. Don't laugh but early Joan Collins pics looked not unlike her. There are shades of Ronnie Spector as well [especially the B&W at 1:57 of this clip].

Ramones version here.

Some more Ramones.

What the hell - some Stranglers while we're here - second song was us at the time but I'd prefer Hughy sang it - bass is great though.

Speaking of stranglers, she drove me almost to the point of suicide - a roller coaster ride of highs and lows but no calm I ever recall. If you want her equivalent in my book, it's 2:2 Nicolette.

I'd do it all over again. Wonder if she would.

Some links

Joanna Lumley

Bangles

Just one more

The ominous words

If she knew what she wants
(He'd be giving it to her)
If she knew what she needs
(He could give her that too)
If she knew what she wants
(But he can't see through her)
If she knew what she wants
He'd be giving it to her
Giving it to her

But she wants everything
(He can pretend to give her everything)
Or there's nothing she wants
(She don't want to sort it out)
He's crazy for this girl
(But she don't know what she's looking for)
If she knew what she wants
He'd be giving it to her
Giving it to her

I'd say her values are corrupted
But she's open to change
Then one day she's satisfied
And the next I'll find her crying
And it's nothing she can explain

Some have a style
That they work hard to refine
So they walk a crooked line
But she won't understand
Why anyone would have to try
To walk a line when they could fly

No sense thinking I could rehabilitate her
When she's fine, fine, fine
She's got so many ideas traveling around in her head
She doesn't need nothing from mine



One last one

[state v money] here we go again

Metzler private bank, Klaus Zumwinkel, Leonardo Del Vecchio - what do they have in common?

They're part of the raids which are seeing this sort of thing:

Christian Democrat politicians warned business leaders that irresponsible behaviour could come to threaten Germany’s “social market economy”, which merges free enterprise and the provision of welfare.

This is at first sight a puzzling thing.

Quite apart from the enrichment of state coffers, whom will this thing benefit? The ability for the state to regulate further, of course and to pour more into the EU coffers.

It won't benefit the ordinary citizen one little bit and it would be an interesting study to follow the garnered millions to their final destination. The old money appears to back the EU and the EU backs the global economy and its own enrichment within that economy. If a few unclever and expendable managers in the open sphere go to the wall, the old money has fulfilled its part of the Faustian bargain and state heat is off them.

The relationship between the usurers and the state has always been delicate and based on credit, percentages, rentals and the real agenda:

The final fall of the Templars may have started over the matter of a loan. The young Philip IV, King of France (also known as "Philip the Fair") had needed cash for his war with the English and asked the Templars for more money. They refused. The King assigned himself the right to tax the French clergy.

At dawn on Friday, October 13, 1307, scores of French Templars were simultaneously arrested by agents of King Philip, later to be tortured in locations such as the tower at Chinon, into admitting heresy in the Order.

Philip had clearly made up the accusations* and did not believe any of the Templars to have been party to such activities. In fact, he had invited Jacques de Molay to be a pall-bearer at the funeral of the King's sister on the very day before the arrests.

They're hardly likely to make that mistake again. There is the little question of the real money as well:

By the mid-1960’s was a Europe awash in serious cross-border crime, including heroin trafficking, trafficking in women, stolen art and cultural artifacts, gun-running, cigarette and liquor smuggling to avoid excise taxes, and recurrent corruption and financial scandals.

Now, with the breakdown of national borders and increased activity by an EU militsia, are those interests better protected or more vulnerable?

This thing is an internal matter of who controls the trillions. If there are two sides - the old money and state control on one side [example here]:


... and free enterprise, however corrupt, on the other, which would you support?

* There is another point of view which holds that Philip knew very well the sort of thing they got up to and as long as the money was forthcoming he'd stay shtum. He did a JFK, it seems. I trust no one seriously disputes these days the occult realm of the old rulers of Europe.

[housekeeping] there were reasons

Sorry to regular readers - birthday and sickness impinged but hope to be in operation again by Thursday.

[russia] election looming

Well, we've now been invited to participate in the election of our new president - this little note arrived on the doorstep, saying where we could go to vote and what to do should we be too infirm to go anywhere.

Date - March 2, 2008.

Might mosey on over to the polling station on the day and give you a run down on what I saw. Naturally, at the moment, my Min and all departments are in a tizz getting ready and doing the last few days campaigning, which I've pretty well stayed out of.

I'm seeing him at 13:00 today, I'll ask how it's all going and report back to you later.

You can say what you like but the process in the last two elections [and there's no reason why not in this one] was quite stable and ordered, which in the light of Russian history is a blessing.

I went over to the polling station last time and it was just like a British election, except that names and photos of candidates were up on a huge chart and there were no canvassers outside.

You'd go in and read their blurbs why you should vote for them, you went in and voted in a curtained booth and put the paper into a letter box opening in the ballot box, away from the registration tables.

Security guards stood by the main entrance to the school chatting to each other, bored.

[pornography] or classic art?

Chloe, in Young and Jacksons

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written." [Wilde]

If you accept this premise, then does this also apply to more visible art works such as a poster in an underground station? Is it relevant whether children can see it and indeed must see it if they go on the underground?

Jams O'Donnell raises just this issue on the banning of a nude on the underground. The official line was:

"Millions of people travel on the London Underground each day and they have no choice but to view whatever adverts are posted there.

We have to take account of the full range of travellers and endeavour not to cause offence in the advertising we display," a spokesman said.

London Underground advertising is vetted by a firm called CBS Outdoor, and Venus seems to have fallen foul of the guideline that advertising should not "depict men, women or children in a sexual manner, or display nude or semi-nude figures in an overtly sexual context".

Venus, in the Royal Academy's show on the German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder

What of the famous Chloe, at Young and Jacksons, Melbourne? Technically she would only be viewed by over 18s because she's in a pub.

What of Donatello's David? Does the fact that it is one of the most famous art works ever excuse it for its pudenda?

What of the Venus de Milo? Or in literature, what of Pietro Aretino's lurid works? You'll notice I went coy on linking to his 16 postures.

You can keep your hat on.

What of this post on this blog? Has it overstepped the mark?

What of Life Drawers - are they all "pre-verts"?

Where do we draw the line? Is the line that when it draws attention to the erotic side it's questionable? I'd suggest that none of the works here are erotic but I'd also suggest that the first and last are pretty damned good.

Are we agreed that sexual acts [Aretino] are unacceptable for depiction in a public place? What of suggestion, e.g. a girl between two men in a soft drink ad?

I confess I just don't know.

[essence of life] wallace, gromit and freedom

Time to re-run the almost award-winning post from Tiberius Gracchus on two endearing characters:


Wallace and Gromit are a pair of characters that not many political bloggers post about (shame I hear you cry and indeed such cries are acknowledged), furthermore they are not a pair of characters that even the great Higham has deigned to grace with his type (even greater shame I hear you shout from the back row and its acknowledged) so I'm going to have to take up the pen and say something about how this duo, particularly in their first film, the Grand Day Out- offer a kind of defence of freedom that is very necessary to heed.

Lest you forget, and how could you, Wallace is an inventor with a mind filled with ideas, Gromit his dog is the more practical side of the duo forever shaking his head in disbelief at his master's antics (as shown above, Gromit ends up spattered with paint and used at one point as part of a work bench when Wallace has cut away the other end of the work bench). The story is basically thus- our heroes are in despair, in the midst of a bank holiday sitting with their feet up they feel the need for adventure (well Wallace does, Gromit looks quite happy!) and need a holiday, furthermore a crisis in their affairs has been realised- a crisis that involves the fact that though there is tea, though there are crackers in the house, there is no cheese, not one piece of cheese in the Fridge.

Having thought about Cheese holidays- they decide to go to the moon, they build a rocket and set off, watched by a group of rats in shades, and reach the moon without incident (though Gromit loses a tower made of cards in the process) and Wallace prepares to carve out some cheese from the moon. After a series of adventures with a robot confused by their presence whose lifetime ambition is to ski, they set off home again and the movie finishes twenty minutes after it started, with Wallace leaning back in his seat sipping a cup of tea, and Gromit fiddling with the controls, as the Robot skis up and down the craters of the moon on bits of metal it had tugged from the spacecraft.

The story really isn't the point here though- its the individuality, its the eccentricity (in England's that's a virtue)- there is a line in the Lord of the Rings when Gandalf tells Frodo that what's worth fighting for is all the absurd Bolgers and Boffins and Bagginses- that's the same sense you get from Wallace and Gromit. These two characters are crackers, they are mad, their lives revolve around inventions, cheese (particularly Wensleydale) and tea- but in some sense they are the essense of the whole of Western civilisation. Civilisation isn't just Michelangelo and Machiavelli, its Wallace and his efforts to get to the moon, its loving Wensleydale and its a dog knitting in a chair and rats with shades over their eyes, its merry eccentricity which is a value all to itself.

The absurdity of life is in many ways its essence- when we talk about freedom often we lose sight of the fact that freedom isn't just a political issue- its a personal issue as well. Put simply in a totalitarian state like North Korea, you can't live a life based on Wensleydale and tea- you can't just decide to build a rocket to go to the moon (theoretically you could in the West) and you can't be madly, loveably, endeeringly and frustratingly often eccentric.

That's the reason its important to be free- its so Wallaces and Gromits continue to flourish in our society.