End of the Beginning

It is with no small amount of dread that I make the announcement today that my wonderful wife and I are officially parents to five teenagers. There'll be no further "pre-teen" hedging necessary: it's all-out war.

Our youngest, our cutest, our nicest, too - the last upon whose shoulders any remaining hopes were pinned - she is now Thirteen. It's all downhill from here.

Happy birthday Cheech - not that you'll ever tear your arse away from "World of Warcraft" long enough to hear it.

Heckuva Job

From CNN, via the estimable Josh Marshal, NewDonkey, and myriad others:

BROWN TO START EMERGENCY PLANNING CONSULTANCY BUSINESS

Thursday, November 24, 2005; Posted: 9:01 p.m. EST (02:01 GMT)

DENVER, Colorado (AP) -- Former FEMA Director Michael Brown, heavily criticized for his agency's slow response to Hurricane Katrina, is starting a disaster preparedness consulting firm to help clients avoid the sort of errors that cost him his job.

"If I can help people focus on preparedness, how to be better prepared in their homes and better prepared in their businesses -- because that goes straight to the bottom line -- then I hope I can help the country in some way," Brown told the Rocky Mountain News for its Thursday editions.

What is not entirely clear in this report is that the "Disasters" to be managed and prepared are not natural catastrophes, as one is supposed to think, but people: disasters like Mr. Brown himself who have been put in charge of something important, for which they are congenitally determined to fuck up.

Contrary to popular opinion, I believe that Mr Brown is emanently qualified for this position - but that in itself ought to disqualify him. Of far worse implication for his prospects, however, must surely be the implicit denial of his target customer? The last thing any of them could do is admit that they are what they are.

Stuffed

Where you been? What you at?

Busy. Even today - up wi'the craws, runnin' aroond like a blue-ersed flea, digging through boxes, piles of boxes, digging for kitchenwares - pots, pans, utensils, knives, cutlery holders - all the stuff and crap we've had boxed since the summer, waiting for that damned kitchen to be rebuilt. "Tidy" has never been our family's middle name, but this summer we have excelled even ourselves, have managed, one way or another, to block every conceivable clearline path to anwhere. I've been throughout like some poor gimpy Ridinghood, muttering obscenities, forced into the forest at every turn.

Almost there now: almost; ba-hair close. Just a wee bit marble tiling to finish; and a backsplash around the counter and behind the new cooker. And baseboards - skirting we call it in britain - around our new-tiled living room. We can't put the books back yet, not until then, else we'd have to shift the fully-laden cases to fit the boards. Waiting, still, for a tiny brass part we need to finish installing the bath-tub: our reason for not having finished in there a month ago.

Piles of boxes, piles of delay - one delay after another, one part begetting another, buggering-up the order of things. Bath-tub weighs a ton - well, 240lb - and me with my bad back. Didn't want to put the toilet back, install the new sink or cabinetry, not 'till the tub was squared away. Damned thing is too heavy and too tightly-packed into that narrow room, and awkward and difficult to get at and get intae with a wrench. Didn't want to finish the room 'till the tub was squared away, and couldn't do that without that stupid brass part that still isnae here. Did it anyway - had to - finished the restroom crampit-be-damned: Guests. Who could not climb our stairs to the other.

But the kitchen? It's been waiting for three weeks. Couldn't tile it until the cabinets went in, but the cabinets went in at the end of September, the tile on the floor at the end of October. All we wanted, really, was our cooker back - eating take-out every night is draining when there's five hungry, angry teens to keep stuffed. But before the cooker, the dishwasher - all our plates and silverware and pots and pans and crap, all that boxed but steeped in plasterdust still. All of that needed cleaning before anyone could use it. No cooker without dishwasher. No dishwasher without sink, and plumbing. Shiny new stainless steel sink and faucetry, all set to go in you'd think? No cooker without dishwasher; no dishwasher without sink; no sink without the marble worktop. Sheesh - worktops add around two inches height - or heighth, as Pops calls it - two inches all to the floor-standing cabinets. Plywood, wonderboard, cement, tile: all to be cut and shaped and cursed to oblivion before it can be laid. Tedious work, and time-consuming. So: no cooker.

Until last week: Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! - cut and shape and fit the tile; cement and grout has to dry; sink goes in the next two days, holes cut-out but no clamps long enough to hold it in place. More delay. Sink goes in, then washer - yaaaaay! - and lastly in a flourish, our cooker.

Couple of days to play with the new toy - toys, really, for everything is new - discover the wonders of "convection" ovens. I had so wanted the first thing I cooked to be a slap-up breakfast in the old style - ham, eggs over runny, fried tamataes, mushrooms son-of-a-biyutch haven't had a chance of breakfast for weeks with mad-rush and mad panic work rearing it's self-absorbed ugly. So it was my Wonderful, not me, who used it first and conjored-up a marvellous Sunday roast. I had to wait another day, and all I could manage was Hamburger Helper after a longlonglonglong day for a gang of ungrateful smart-mouthed whining sprogs.

So today - Thanksgiving Day - we finally, pair of us, cooked us a feast and had the family round to enjoy it.

Lots to be thankful for - lots - and I am. No desire to list them for you, no need to sound like some flouncy teary-eyed wishwash because, you know, I'm not even drunk and that would be too embarassing. Not even sure who to be thankful to, but that doesn't matter: what matters is that I am. Though times be very trying, though the weight of melancholia presses hard, it's always good to sit a little back, rip off my dark-eyed shades and wear my regulars once in a while, the ones with the rose-colored tint.

Stoking the Fire...

Ordinarily any headline run in UK tabloid The Mirror - or for that matter The Sun or The Star or in numerous other rags - any headline that runs in The Mirror would be taken with a huge dose of salt. A typical 'Mirror headline might go BIG BABS' BOOBS EXPLODE!!!!! accompanied with a picture of Barbara Bush, or more likely still, Barbara Windsor.

So, you read EXCLUSIVE: BUSH PLOT TO BOMB HIS ARAB ALLY your first reaction ought to be BOLLOCKS!!, because chances are, that's what it is.

But wait... this time it's probably different? Since it was published the UK Government has dropped a humungous ton of bricks upon the heads of british newspaper editors, and charged a former government employee under the Official Secrets Act for leaking sensitive government papers to the press.

In other words, by hammering so swiftly and so fiercely the UK Government is pretty-much confirming the veracity of the story - and it is clearly embarassed by the revelations. Although probably not too embarassed for the very same reason - using clumpity boots at a ballet does not a delicate performance make.

I offer no comment whatsoever upon the substance of the report: merely the observation that the UK Government is doing everything in its power to play this up. Smells to me like Someone, as the saying goes, is being stitched-up like a kipper.

How very, very strange?

Mange Tout!

Tonight I cooked dinner.

I'll let that sink in.

Fit to burst

I am still here, course I am: but I'm keeping my head down and my fat gob shut. Too busy to blog, as I've said, but also too angry these days: so many things in the news, my blood is just boiling. I don't write well about political issues, nor yet thoughtfully nor even coherently; and since I can't think straight enough to write of anything else at the moment, I choose to refrain from writing entirely. Thus the essential attribute of the confrontation avoidant, and one of the few things about me that drives my belovèd crazy on occasion.

Internet Down

"<chhhhhh!> ... <chhhhhhhhhh> ... Septic calling... <chhhhh> ... Septic calling... <chhhhhhhh> Don't... think... I'm going to make it... <chhhhhhh!> ... Say goodbye ... <chhhhh!>...aphne for me? <chhhhhhh!>..."

The internet is down; the internet is down: the internets are up, but mine is down. First I was dispossessed of my e-mail accounts - taken away in error by my DSL provider, who told my e-mail provider that I didn't want an account any more; now it is my entire internet connection. I still have DSL, but that leads, like the road of life, to nowhere.

This was all supposed to have been fixed yesterday: but it appears my provider is an adherent of the Fixit-Fuxit method in which a fix of one thing fuxit everywhere else.

Whatevs. There'll be no pictures out of this blog until it all gets sorted. Sorry.

The Mgt.


UPDATE: I lu-uv the IMDB!

Star-Spangled Internationale

T'S ELECTION DAY AGAIN, here in California - special election day, no less - on a ballot of eight initiatives. Not for office. This special election was cooked-up by Governor Schwarzenegger who, being merely Governor, has been unable to implement his various schemes using, you know, the tools of Governorship. He needs more power - sorry, Mo Po-wah - because he isn't just The Governor, he's The Gubernator, by God, and no poxy State Assembly or public service union should be able to stand in his way.

So Ahnold has called a Special Election.

I can't vote in today's election - of course I can't - because I'm still a damned foreigner, still an Alien. I am, however, One Year Closer to being empowered to vote, since it is days-shy of my Green Card's first birthday. One year down, two more years to go before I can apply for citizenship and finally cast-off all pretense at still being "scots" and call myself a real "scots-american". My Goddess wife will be voting today because she is a citizen, and always has been. She, I'm afraid, does not like Ahnold one tiny bit: last time she voted to not grant him any power at all. Hmmm: will she submit to his whining this time?

Two, maybe even three, of the measures I might have given time to, but probably would have voted against on principle. Politics and lawmaking is hard; incomparable drudgery filled with subtle traps, and no place for an unsuspecting Joe Sixpack. We elect people to do that crap for us. Using "voter initiatives" is an admission that you can't achieve your ends through regular means. So throw it to the public on the grounds they're too stupid to notice what you're really up to. In our hugely indebted State, for example, most of our budget can't be touched by our Representatives because it was voted-in by Proposition, and therefore trumps the legislature.

The ones I might have voted 'yes' for are Prop. 73, Abortion for Minors, advising parents of; Prop. 74, Teacher Employment, sacking the useless ones; and Prop 77, Redistricting, to a cabal of ex-judges the handing of. Only the last of these, really, is an issue profound enough for Voter Initiative, to my mind.

I'll save you any talk about abortion, or whether parents of minor children ought, by law, to be informed of such decisions 48-hours before they are performed.

What has come as a surprise to me, during the course of the campaigns, is the notion that California's school teachers are given tenure? This, to me, equates to "a job for life, regardless" - though the actual reality might be quite different. In calling it "tenure", however, they're asking for such misperception. Really though: what the hell are grade-school teachers doing with any kind of tenure? It's not like they're professors or somesuch, for whom teaching is incidental to the principal tasks of leading teams of researchers, writing papers, earning international renown or wads of cash for their institutions, is it? They're teachers: teachers only - in the sense they have no other responsibilities than to teach schoolchildren - and some of them, frankly, are crap at it. I don't see why they should be granted exceptional security in those positions? Not that I'm anti-teacher or anything - lord, no - but I'm not one to get all dewey-eyed at them either, as one might over nurses or firefighters or even The Filff. On the other hand, not only do teachers have to endure all our kids all day long so we don't have to, but they also have to endure the constant complaint of their overwheening parents. That to my mind, ought to be properly compensated - but with cash, not tenure.

Prop. 77 is all about Redistricting in California: about replacing the present scheme, where politicians in Sacramento are allowed to choose their own districts, no matter how squiggly or irregular those might appear on a map, replacing that scheme with a panel of retired judges who, supposedly, would perform redistricting impartially and independently. Now, if there's one thing I can't stand it's gerrymandering, and I really don't care who or why: if a state assembly can come through an election with exactly zero seats changing hands, that ain't democracy to me, that's a soviet, and a single-party state. The single party, incidentally, being The Incumbents Party, case you were wondering. So I'm all for scrapping the current system and replacing it with something wholly Impartial, up-front, above-board, and accountable. But I'm not a total idiot. I wouldn't empty that bathtub by dropping a 500lb Republican whacko into it; and though democrats in California are a lame-ass waste of space, the republicans here are lame-ass nutjob wastes of space. Besides, anyone who could put their trust any Redistricting scheme cooked-up by the party of DeLay deserves a serious enema. Poor Tom - arguing he can't receive a fair trial out there in Texas on account of him gerrymandering all the districts with courts in 'em. Boo hoo. I'd have voted 'Yes' to the idea of Redistricting changes, but could not have voted 'Yes' to this particular scheme.

MEANTIME, in the day it's taken me to stitch this post together, the Republican Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House have ordered an investigation into who squealed to the Washington Post about Cheney's little Holiday Camps out there in the former salt mines and gulags of eastern europe. Good to see they have their priorities straight: let's find who blabbed; not a word about why the United States Government is renting and employing the torture chambers of former Communists. Such a shame to see them go to waste, no? I'd bet Cheney has shares in the realty companies, and has advised his new chums how real Capitalists would mark-up the rent 5000% when the client is a government?

At least we finally have an explanation for this little imbroglio, from a month or two backaways:


"I'm not the 'Communist Old Guard'!"


Lots of bloggers seem to be gloating that, after Frist and Hastert ordered this inquiry, good old Trent Lott (or was it???) blabbed on CNN that it was probably a Republican congressperson that spilled the beans, "because Dick Cheney was just talking about that very thing to us the other day, and next thing you know it's all over the papers!"

Bloggers think this is a measure of Frist and Hastert's stupidity: to have ordered an inquiry into what has turned-out to be their Own Team.

I'm not so sure: while there is no limit, it seems, to the depth of moronity I could attribute to Dr "Diagnose-by-Video" Frist, this pair are worse sneaks even than they are bozons. I smell a stitch-up in the air, and underhanded damage being inflicted upon a presidential prospect who is not Senator Bill Frist.

We'll see. But if by some stupendous feat of chance and jiggery-pokery this very thing turns out to be true, then you know whose tin hat you read it under first...

Let Every E'en Be Hallow

LESS ME, FATHER, for I have sinned. It has been fifteen days since my last confession. Clearly too long, for the Lord has seen fit to visit His terrible wit upon me:

I woke up this morning <twang> Ah say ah woo-ke up thismaw-awnin, yeah
Woke UP this morning
Ah had Senator Tre-yent Lott, Mississippi, <dan. dan. daaaah>
S-s-s-Stuck! <whoop>
Stuck awn ma heeeeee-ad. <lick type="sorrowful">

Woke up this morning; showered; looked in the mirror; saw a stranger staring back. Somehow, by some arcane malevolent magic, I find myself today with Trent Lott hair. Take a picture of Senator Lott, scribble a bloatee upon it, that's me, that is. Oddly enough the picture trick does not work the other way: take a photo of me, Bearded, scratch away the hairy chin you will not see Senator Trent Lott: you will see Peter Griffin, Family Guy, for I am of the Ass-chin, for which we have invented the smiley "<:-3)))". Shave my beard, shave away the years, and reveal one of the "fat, wheezy boys with a note from Matron", as Blackadder's General Melchitt used to say, in all his dismal glory. My wife insisted once. Only ever that One Time.

But what the nine-ringed hell is up with my hair? Where did that come from? I'm always distracted by Senatorial hair-styles whenever they appear on television: the contrived awfulness of them, that the erstwhile wise men of the Senate would spend big bucks to shape with delicate care such mundane coiffs; a symbol of the humiliation to be endured in the pursuit of power? Then here am I, stripping fingers one time only through shower-soaked hair, real hair, my hair, to arrive at that look au-naturelle that screams false calls of Syrup!

I must, however grudgingly, accept that as a man grows older so does the vibrant radicalism of his youth foul into stoney-faced conservativism. Experience sadly bears this out; but I had not expected, nor was I prepared for, any physical dimension to that transition: that in addition to the aging, the graying of the corpus there should be a blueing of it too? I mean, one's hair just should not meld that way on its own.

I like to keep my hair short and sharp - finger-wide and spikey - but my wife, bless her, She prefers it longer, about this length, at which it begins to curl and drive me crazy. Normally it would curl, that is: but not today. Today it is a shelf. My first thought is to blame the cutter, the hairdresser. You'd think a "Number Three with short spikes on top" would somehow always turn-out the same way, regardless of who cuts it? I don't think it does: oh, surely looks the same immediately afterwards, but like chaotic butterflies in China, teeny tiny variations at the cutface yield vastly different results a month or so down the road. One month it might grow long and scruffy, curled at the edges. Another it grow awkwardly top-heavy, shooting bushy outgrowths like a frightened erazorhead. This month, clearly, and rather unforgivably, it has Lotted.

Trent Lotted.

Were I a superstitious fellow - and I am - I might be drawn to a more sinister explanation. I would read into this development a creepy parallel with the novel I happen to be reading this week: for I am enmeshed in my second attempt at deciphering The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. I tried to read it once before, many years ago when the book was first published, but had to set it aside on the usual grounds of being too thick to read it; in the forlorn hope that I might make more sense of it with a couple more years under my belt? Alas, not: I remain baffled, though still manage to derive great pleasure from it.

It's two central characters are Bollywood legend Gibreel Farishta - a faithless actor renowned for playing deities in movies - and a home-loathing expatriate anglophile, Saladin Chamcha, noted voice actor, a veritable Harry Shearer whose voices are known and loved by millions but whose face is unknown. As the novel opens they are strapped in their seats, plummeting towards the english coast from 30,000 feet after their hi-jacked plane has exploded. They do not die, but rather are reborn: the one Farishta taking the attributes of an angel, an avatar of Gabriel; the other, poor Chamcha, lumped with the horns and hairy-legged cloven feet, and halitosis of Beelzebub. Although I admit of no explanation for the metaphallical significance of these metamorphoses and adventures, it nevertheless struck me they were wrong: he whom I should have thought a demon became instead an angel, and vice-versa? "All Higgelty-piggelty", as one of his marvellous indian characters might explain. There is a name for that special brand of english spoken in the Indian sub-continent, though it escapes me: something akin to "Engrish", but clearly not. It's distinguishing characteristic is the free incorporation of phrases straight out of Bertie Wooster and other PG Wodehouse creations? The kind of fruitbits those old scallywags at the Drone Club would bowl around the old wicket in the thirties, what?

No graceful decline into Harry Reid-dom for me, it would seem; but rather like the novel - perhaps because of the novel - I am become Beelzebub Lott.

Bugger. It takes me forever to finish a book.


(Look here for some more portraits)