This is a picture of your common garden variety gastro-intestinal virus. Every year around this time, there are maps of the danger zones for all of France. The Dordogne always seems to be a hot orange danger zone every year. Ten years of living here and I seem to have always lucked out. ....Uhhhh...not this year. There is a storm raging outside and a storm raging in my stomach. Keep away, if you know what's good for you! Maybe I will be more coherent later, Glabba blghhh kpphlyzzz............Must find Zappadan post for tonight!
Here's a piece I have been waiting all year to post. This a video of Frank Zappa conducting the Ensemble Modern in Berlin in 1992. The performances were released on the Yellow Shark CD. This piece, G-Spot Tornado was originally performed as a synthesizer piece on his Grammy Winning 1986 recording, Jazz From Hell. When the Ensemble Modern Concerts were being planned, it was the musicians who wanted to play the piece. When he wrote it, Frank considered it to be unplayable by mere humans. He came up with an orchestral score and voila! The Ensemble performs a super human feat, but perhaps the most super human part of this performance is the two dancers! This was Franks last appearance. He was dead soon after and the music and videos were released posthumously.
Today it was announced that the official Vatican discount airline service was inaugarating a new frequent flyer program. During 2008, if you fly to Lourdes or any of six other favorite pilrimage sites, on Air Vatican, you will recieve a plenary indulgence worth up to 5 years off your stay in Purgatory! Fly often enough and you will go straight to heaven! This is reassuring news to those travelers who worry about the qualifications of the Air Vatican flight staff. Flyers returning from Lourdes are warned to only bring the approved 15 ounce flight sized Lourdes Water bottles, now available at the airport gift shop, in their carry on baggage. Air Vatican still doesn't have approval for flights to and from the USA. The Federal Transportation Commission has yet to approve God as a certified copilot.
Below is a lengthy screed by a famous Evangelical Christian Fanatic who posts here occasionally, but more often posts on The Man with The Muck Rake.. In case you wondering just what do Evangeliicals really think or thought you knew what they really wanted, well, here's a direct link into the pit! Stand back, this gets rather messy. (I thought that the Baby Snakes claymation was a good way to illustrate this piece and celebrate the continuing festival of Zappadan at the same time! I'm sure Frank would have approved!)
Madame B wrote:
"Laugh in derision if you want, but most of the states are red --it's the city dwellers who tend to make the blue states blue, because they see the democratic party as making promises to their entitlement programs and their licentious lifestyles.
"A morality code based on the Bible?" you ask, as though it were a new and dangerous concept.
Whoever heard of such a thing!? Just our founding fathers in numerous writings and quotations.
Liberals think we need a nation where anyone can adopt and make babies indiscriminately without any structural accommodations or expectations for parenting and get public support --where we can partner with anyone else for sex and parenting, without all those troublesome ceremonies and laws. We want households featuring "the daddy of the week" --and "my two (or three or four) dads" --and "It takes a harem to raise a child." We want drugs made cheap and legal so all can try them without fear of the law, just like legal and unlimited alcohol and nicotine which do us so much good. We want porn made by anyone, any age, for any one. Who is to say it would be immoral? After all, I hear from the psychology community that you can raise kids who enjoy sex and want to consent with adults they want to please.
We want sex ed that distributes condoms to our minor children without our knowledge and teaches sex ed as "value free" --just so you don't make a baby or get a disease. We want to throw more money into AIDS and research without also teaching unequivocally (and chaperoning youth and young singles for) ABSTINENCE for the unmarried and monogamy for the married. Even though if we practiced that, if HIV carriers would have sex only with each other, we could eliminate AIDS within a generation or two.
Without biblical morality, we seem to want prostitution legalized and sex clubs unrestrained --despite all the public health and crime issues that surround the sex trade.
In Foreign Policy, we want to keep ourselves and our money at home --no more foreign investment to raise the level of the poverty-stricken in other lands--no more opportunities to introduce western civ to the 3rd world. No more intervention where tyrants are murdering their own people and threatening their neighbors and our safety --and also our oil supply.
We want to protect pristine tiny plot of land in Alaska against oil wells and production --even though over 99 per cent of us are never going to see the unblemished beauty up there. (Mining is considered ugly in the landscape to environmentalists, and some of it is --but when we traveled west as a family, we enjoyed seeing the old abandoned mines and the oil wells --it didn't destroy the beauty for us. (I know, strip mining is devastating. Some of these areas are ugly and we certainly wouldn't want them to be EVERYwhere.)
We think we can radically stop our dependence on foreign oil without oil development at home --(meanwhile we have enemies who would exploit our time of weakness in this area. We can't switch our military and economy over to alternate power overnight, can we?)
Romney was right and crystal clear on two excellent points in his speech --that religion and freedom are interdependent. Tell us, O Mudrake, about the thoroughly atheistic countries who are both prosperous and free? and safe for all religions? Even Europe's peace and prosperity are tenuous -with all the unemployed Muslim youth and gov't-dependent citizens. Europe still enjoys their Christian heritage in terms of how they used to observe traditional morality--though Germany and Italy so recently ignored Biblical morality in WWII. I still think we have greater wealth and more comforts here for the educated "middle class" than Europe does --judging by the French bloggers and what they themselves describe as meagre living conditions.
His other great point was on how we religious folk value the equal worth of every single life. We are not the ones, who, like Planned Parenthood's founder, saw abortion as a panacea to poverty--and the elimination of people who perpetuate an "under class" of poor, uneducated people whose guaranteed activity seems to be indiscriminate breeding. The more we cultivate this idea of extra-marital sex through entertainment and education, the more we handicap our people who cannot sustain marriage for the sake of children. Who also choose more and more to be child free and to have sex with their own sex.
GOP has been accused of not wanting to support poor people and their babies --but the liberals think the answer is killing them before they are born.
Neither is right. Compasion, charity and education --including religious morality--are the keys to the good life. Including conservatives' Bible-based morality, which really is a boon to REAL family planning."
Here is the most pressing reason why Mike Huckabee is not fit to be president and has to be stopped dead in the water. A lying hypocrite, yes just like the rest of them, but he's not at all beneath telling us that God wants him to be president!
I haven't published any recipes for a while and since we are in the midst of the Festival of Zappadan, I thought I'd publish some vegetable dishes that I know and frequently make. The photo above is Endives au Jambon. The vegetable I want to summon tonight is the The Endive! Endives are a form of chickory. Some types of chickory are allowed in the summer to fully grow like a lettuce. They have frizzy leaves and a pleasant bitter taste and crunch.
This variety is from Belgium and eaten in the winter. They are grown in sand and the root is forced to send up hardy shoots which are covered in sand and blanched. They develop a more sweeter taste. They are good just as a braised vegetable or raw in winter salads. We often eat endive salad with apples and walnuts with a vinagrette for lunch.
The Endive au Jambon is pretty simple. I take one or two endives per person and parboil them. Meanwhile I make a simple bechamel sauce. Extremely simple. Melt some butter in a saucepan and add some flour and cook them together until you have a shiny paste. Be careful not to burn it. Add milk until it is creamy....cook it a little to thicken it, salt, pepper and a dash of nutmeg.
Take some slices of ham and wrap them around the endives, place in a baking dish, pour in the bechamel and just cover the endives. Finish it off by a coating of grated gruyere or some kind of cheese. You could use cheddar. Pop it into the oven and let the cheese melt and brown a bit. That's it. You can praise Frank Zappa for this vegetable moment!
By the way, in case you were wondering just who were the Brain Police, this is the piece of music that started it all in 1966. To celebrate the second day of Zappadan, I am providing you with a great link to a Hungarian Zappa site full of great stuff, 365 days of the year!
Yes, I am appealing for help. After 2 days of Computer Hell, I am asking any of youu wonderful kind hearted bloginistas out there for advice. My old Canon bubble jet printer died, so being here in the absolute hinterlands, I ordered a nice new Canon PIXMA2500 from Amazon.fr. It showed up in just a few days and it sure looks nice. I have an old school original iMac that has been hot wired to run OSX 10.3.9...I had to partition the hard drive. I didn't do it, a very cool friend of mine did it in NYC and I installed the loaded hard drive here. It runs pretty good with a few burps every once in a while. Soooo.......I have been trying to install the printer driver for 2 days. I first tried off the CD, then tonight, I downloaded the drivers from the Canon web site. I go through the installation process and when I restart the computer, the printer utility tells me that there is no driver installed. It shows the printer, but after it searches for the drivers, NADA! Any hints, good wishes or encouraging words will be appreciated. I have to go now and stick the screwdriver back into my ear.
These things sneak up on you. I was so busy anticipating with bated breath that I hardly noticed that it was really true! The second annual nonstop festival of Zappadan has officially begun! To ceremoniously start things off, I have posted the original 1969 video of Peaches in Regalia! (Peaches in Regalia from the Hot Rats Album) Let the festival commence with all due pomp.... Meanwhile, all across the planet, people are calling any vegetable, worshipping together in the church of their choice....call any vegetable, call one today, call any vegetable when you get off the train, call any vegetable and the chances are good that the vegetable will respond to you...hooooo...rootahbayayagah, rootahbayayagahh, rutabaga! Thank you Frank!
Pleesh, don gemmee wrong! I love Crishmush! Rilly! I jus gotta nudda fruitcake in the mail an' I thing itz rum soaked. Dee lishuzzz, lissen, you like egg nog? No? Wazz a fug, don'choo love Crizmush? You sum kinna Commee jergoff? Hey! Commandante Agi! Hey! Lisshen, come over here I wanna show you sumthin...... Hah, Made joo look! Here, have a martooni! I love Chrizmush! I thin I have a bottle of Pina Colada mish shumwhere... Nahhhh, I musha drungit... Waazza fug?
Okay, so now we get the news that Iran has not been involved with the development of Nuclear Weaponry since 2003. When asked about this yesterday, George Bush said that it was the first he had heard of it. For the last 4 years, we have heard that Dick Cheney has been pushing for a pre-emptive strike on Iran to stop their imminent nuclear attack capability. A month ago, George Bush made a speech telling the American people that we were on the verge of World War 3 because of Iran. The NeoCon rhetoric is nonstop, casting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the modern Hitler. There are provacative military exercises in the Strates of Hormouz by our ever growing fleet. The saner heads in the Pentagon and in the State Department have constantly warned that any such action would be a monumental disaster. And we are to believe that George Bush knew nothing of the reality of Irans nuclear program? Are we to belive that it is because he gets all of his information spoon fed to him by Dick Cheney? Before the Iraq war, Cheney was personally involved on an unprecedented level cherry picking and manipulating intelligence to further the impresssion that Saddam Hussein did have weapons of mass destruction and "gasp" nuclear technology that was almost ready to be unleashed. Is this what happened this time? Are Cheney and his cabal guilty of stirring up the American public into a frenzy of hate and fear against Iran. Is Cheney guilty of trying again to drag America into a bigger disaster because if it works, it will benefit him and his corporate buddies? If this is true, then, shouldn't the nation and the world be outraged at the insane pretense of this maniacal act? Shouldn't a maniac like Cheney, who has never been right, lies blatantly and callously to manipulate reality, be behind bars and institutionalized? I can't find anything humorous to this, it makes me sick. No matter what the facts are, the lies and hate they created will live on and take on a life of it's own.
Two weeks ago, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was in France and met with the family of Ingrid Betancourt, the French/Colombian politician who was kidnapped by the revolutionary army FARC during her presidential campaign, 5 years ago. Mr. Chavez offered to use his connections with FARC to personally negotiate her release. Chavez, when he makes personal appearances, is able to impress the public with his charisma. The Betancourts were really encouraged by his concern and statements. President Nicolas Sarkozy, at the time, gave Mr. Chavez his support in this initiative. During his presidential campaign, Sarkozy made a lot of statements and promises regarding Ingrid Betancourt. After his election, nothing was heard from him again on this matter. Chavez went back to Venezuela and contacted the Colombians to begin the process. The next day, Colombian President, Alvaro Uribe issued a strongly worded denial of assistance to Chavez. He inferred that Mr. Chavez was only interested in undermining the Colombian Government and helping FARC in their decades long civil war with Colombia. The American hands were seen all over this as a blatant attempt to to prevent Chavez from scoring any points on this matter. Chavez, the next day, severed relationships with Colombia. Back in France, the Betancourts were crestfallen and issued a statement saying that they trusted Chavez and believed that he could really get the job done. Stranger still, on the very next day, the Colombian government issues a statement that they have conveniently just "captured" a FARC soldier who happened to have a new video tape and letter from Ingrid to her children giving the first real proof since 2003 that she was still alive. You have to ask, how many levels of manipulation are going on here? Earlier this year I wrote a piece explaining the links between FARC and the various players as well as a profile of Madame Betancourt. You have to look at the relationship of Colombia and America. You have to look at the very complex cocaine trade. You have to look at the relationship between FARC and American Corporations such as Chiquita Banana and how they have been able to do business with no problems in huge areas of FARC controlled Colombia. You have to ask, is President Sarkozy playing a double game here? Somebody has to make their move fast, because Ingrid has been living as a hostage in the jungle for 5 years now and I don't think from her letter and the tape that it can go on much longer. These cynical chess players will have lost their pawn..
Where did this come from? I have to find out if it is out on cd, because it is very new. I just ran across this on YouTube and it blew my little brain out. This is a piece by David Was, the other half of Was/Not Was, a brilliant writer and producer in his own right and one of my very favorite guitarists and all around revolutionary artists, Mr. Wayne Kramer, the lead guitarist of the MC5. Let's just say that the MC5 were extremely important to my teen years in Detroit. Kramer is a rock guitarist just as influenced by Chuck Berry as Sun Ra and Pharoah Saunders! Kramer has been collaborating with the Was Bros for years and David produced the brilliant Wayne Kramer solo record, Citizen Wayne. Kramer made an amazing series of skull splitting rock records in the 90's after a resurrection from 8 years in prison and then started to perform with the amazing Belrays from LA and Hellacopter, a Swedish Band that is inspired by the energy of 60's Detroit Revolutionary rock. He recently put together a massive tour of a band called MC5/DKT which was the surviving members of the MC5 and an ever changing cast of guests artists. They shared the bill with the eternal Sun Ra Arkestra who gave them so much inspiration in the 60's.
This piece is a meditation on the unexplained "friendly fire" death of former football star Sgt. Pat Tillman in Afghanistan and the totally bungled cover up by the Administration in their attempt to cast him as a fallen hero. Pretty damn interesting if you ask me!
The votes are in and it's unanimous, the judges and the viewers at home over whelmingly chose, Rudy "Spicey G" Giuliani as the winner of last nights thrill packed competition. So here we are back tonight, forget the issues, who cares about debates? Our challenger is Mitt "Discoboy" Romney! It looks like Spicey G has met his match, or has he? Get ready to cast your vote for your favorite dancer on tonights very special presentation of DANCING WITH THE CANDIDATES!
Our first contestants on tonights special presentations of DANCING WITH THE CANDIDATES are the exciting duo, John "flip floppin" McCain and Rudi "Spicey G" Guiliani!We want the audience at home to sit back, and get ready for some real dancing around the real issues. Our contestants have been training hard for this special moment and it's up to you, the American viewing audience to let them know who is your favorite. You can vote in the comments box in this blog. Tune in tomorrow as our next contestants dance their little hearts out for your approval rating!
Most of my perceptions as to what is really happening in America is limited to the media: The news and the internet. I read about the Presidential Election and get information from the various candidates emails and the blogs. I have a few favorites, and I hear the constant drumbeat of the polls telling us that the Republicans cannot win this time. Then I spend a few weeks in America. I speak to lots of Americans. I read editorials and how the news is not really reported, how the issues are not really discussed. Who cares what anyone really thinks? Let Bill O'Reilly and Rush spin it for you. Hey, did you hear that Kuchinich's wife was blind? No? She married him, didn't she? Do you really think that America will elect a woman president, especially if she is Hillary? How much mud could a Republican sling, if a Republican could sling mud? I think Edwards could be a great President but will the pundits ever get past his hair? A lot of Americans could vote for Obama if he's change his name and his skin color. There are a lot of Americans who deep down are sick of the Iraq War, but even deeper down are just plain afraid. Lightning strikes and the flock of sheep stampede. Nothing is certain. I have no faith in a nation that lets itself be led and lied to... This is getting to be uncomfortable, isn't it? Let's talk about the candidates favorite television shows. Guiliani could win if he would only be a contestant on Dancing With The Stars.
I got an email today from my friend The Engineer of Knowlege. In it he compared the present situation of America, rapidly sinking into a sea of debt, dragged into a mad war by a deranged leader to England and it's pursuit of an impossible goal in the 1300's. One of my favorite areas of history is the middle ages and I have read much on the Hundred Years War and the quest of the English Monarchy for the French Crown. The Engineer took the events and transposed them them to the War in Iraq and here's what happened:
The Middle Ages version:
“In the early years of the war, Edward III allied with the nobles of the Low Countries and the burghers of Flanders, but after two campaigns where nothing was achieved, the alliance fell apart in 1340. The payments of subsidies to the German princes and the costs of maintaining an army abroad dragged the English government into bankruptcy, heavily damaging Edward’s prestige. At sea, France enjoyed supremacy for some time, through the use of Genoese ships and crews. Several towns on the English coast were sacked, some repeatedly. This caused fear and disruption along the English coast.”
The Present Version:
“In the early years of the war, George W allied with the nobles of Texas Oil and the burghers the Arms’ Industry, but after two campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan where nothing was achieved, the alliance fell apart in 2006. The payments of subsidies to the Saudi princes and the costs of maintaining an army abroad dragged the American government into bankruptcy, heavily damaging George’s prestige. The re-emergence of the Russian Empire enjoyed supremacy for some time, through the use of their own oil reserves being marketed around the world along with their own military hardware sales. Several cities and towns in the U.S. were feeling the economic depression as the real-estate values and stock markets dropped drastically along with the basic value of the U.S. dollar on the world market. This caused fear and disruption with the population in the United States for many years as they tried to work out and pay off the massive debt.”
How will this play out in the history books of the future?
In America, we tend to put our public housing projects in our decaying inner cities. In fact, the trend in America is away from massive public housing. In France, starting in the mid 50's until the 70's, massive cities were built outside the big cities. They are called banlieus...literally lost places. They started as a utopian solution for the influx of immigrants and the poor and middle class. Gradually these places became more accessible as public transportation systems reached farther out. But for most people who live there, it is an isolated world. As most Utopian modern ideas start, they always look good on paper. Let people live there for 10 or 20 years with out government reinvestment in the maintenence of infrastructure and things fall apart. Raise a few generations of kids without adequate recreational and social services, in a country with out enough jobs for the white "French" population and you have institutionalized delinquency. Throw in a repressive police system and you have a huge festering problem. In 2005, almost exactly 2 years ago, the banlieus outside of Paris erupted in 6 nights of riots which almost brought down the Chirac government. Nicolas Sarkozy was the Interior Minister at the time and reacted by throwing gasoline on the fire with he Karcher comment. A Karcher is a high pressure water hose and he said he was going to clean the banlieus with one.. As the riots died down, there was a lot of discussion about the causes and a lot of ideas publicly bandied about by the government. 2 years later, for the most part, the ideas never got past the talking stage. For the most part, it was a holding action, a good show for the concerned public. Earlier this year, France went through a Presidential Election which was won by Sarkozy by pandering to the fears of an aging conservative base. He played to their fears of immigrants and constantly used the threat of insecurity to great advantage. By doing this, he really established his image as a repressive fascist to a big portion of the the population who are more militant. So, there you have it. A fire that was never really dealt with, a situation that is more volatile in fact. A police force arrogant with power stopping kids for no reason usually. Demanding to see papers.... It took one incident. A police car collided with a motor scooter killing two kids. Did the police try to get away with out assisting the kids? That's what the witnesses say. That's all it took. They have guns this time. There have been over 80 cops hurt in the last 2 nights. Countless cars torched, libraries, schools and businesses burnt. It's been quiet so far tonight in Paris, but the action is just starting in Toulouse. If the government thinks they can solve this by throwing more cops and CRS at the kids, they are as irreponsible as monkeys in an oil refinery with flame throwers... Because the fire this time........................
A good question! It's been 22 days since I last posted! In that period, I spent 5 days in Toledo, Ohio and then 8 days in New York City. It took me a few days to recover from Toledo alone! It was the first time I have set foot in the USA in almost 18 months. I suppose that I want to write about my impressions of The USA, but my mind is swirling. I walked through neighborhoods in Toledo and realized that the normal block had at least 7 houses with at least one American flag. Some houses had multiple flags. On one block I stopped and counted over 24 flags of various sizes, standard size, miniatures, decales...little plastic ones...I am sure i missed a few. When I was a boy in Detroit, we had a neighbor who displayed a flag every day of the year. He was regarded as the neighborhood nut case and in reality, he was. I also noticed that usually, I was the only person on the street. Nobody walks. One day I took a walk that was about 5 miles and when I got back to my sisters house, my brother in law asked me where I had gone. I told him and he said, "That's crazy! If you asked, I would have driven you!" I was happy to get to New York. There, everyone walks. The level of street noise was more than I had ever experienced in my 25 years of living there. The juxtaposition of sheer poverty and obscene displays of wealth were mind boggling. CBGB was just another place for rent on the Bowery. There was an expensive CBGB Boutique on St. Marks Place marketing the aura of something that will never happen again. I saw a Hummer fitted out like a family woody style station wagon from the 50's parked on my block in the East Village. There was more garbage on the street, but the quality was so much higher than I remembered it! One of the strangest sights was on the Bowery, as I walked past the shell of CBGB, I saw that the Bowery Mission was still there with derelicts staggering out the doors and then the next building had a red carpet and a doorman and limos...The new Bowery Hotel! I stopped in disbelief.......what's going on here? I was finally happy to get back here to La Sechere. I arrived in the midst of the strikes, not knowing if I could make it easily into Bordeaux from the airport, let alone get a train that evening to Perigueux. Finally back here, utter silence. It's hard to get started again. The picture is another friendly reminder that we are getting ready for the joyous gala celebration of Zappadan starting the 6th of December...o joy........
This is just a reminder that the feast of Zappadan is drawing closer. I posted this video in joyous anticipatation of the joyous yearly event. This piece does not actually feature Frank Zappa, it has Ringo Starr portraying a character who resembles him named Larry the Dwarf. It also features Theodore Bikel and Keith Moon as a harp playing nun and members of the London Symphony Orchestra. They are being forced to perform in this depraved farce for your enjoyment!
I leave you with this as I am about to go to the USA for 2 weeks. Discuss.....
This is a picture of your common garden variety gastro-intestinal virus. Every year around this time, there are maps of the danger zones for all of France. The Dordogne always seems to be a hot orange danger zone every year.
