October 2010 archive

Oct 29 2010

Things that go “Bump” in Japan: Happy Halloween

.

Things that go “Bump” in Japan

 

 So, this reprises (with updates) my last year’s “Halloween in Japan” post on my just-for-fun site/blog LetsJapan.Wordpress.com.  A personal story, Very Creepy art, some history and EVEN some bonus Ultraman (!).  And access to my This-Week-Only Halloween Special Photo Gallery.  Yes, more fun than a barrel of O’Donnells!

 Excerpt:

 

 “But ghosts and goblins and the creepy stories surrounding them have their own long tradition in Japan (as is the case in every culture).  Celebrated Edo Period wood block artist Hokusai (1760-1849) created a series of Kabuki-inspired “ghost story” prints around 1830, “Hyaku Monogatari”.  Above you see the print, “The Ghost of Koheiji”, based on an 1803 story-turned-kabuki-play by Santo Kyoden (poet, writer and woodblock artist).  Koheiji was betrayed and murdered by his wife.  So, naturally, he comes back from the dead to torment her and her lover by slipping under the mosquito netting around their bedding and joining and doling out horrific justice on them.”

.

 Please feel invited to visit, comment, share and if you feel your skin crawling right out the door, remember, that’s either the thought of Koheiji’s skeletal remains, in ghostly form, lurking behind the mosquito netting, or you thought of the even more terrifying image:  Sharon Angle being sworn in as a U.S. Senator!  Nooooooooo!

.

 

Oct 29 2010

Heckuva Job, Mr. Obama…

This past Wednesday “Barack Obama was a guest on The Daily Show, thereby becoming the first sitting president to appear as Jon Stewart’s guest. (In July, Obama became the first sitting president ever to appear on The View.) In the half-hour-long interview, Stewart quizzed his grizzled guest about health-care reform, the financial crisis, and the midterm elections.”

“Stewart’s most combative query concerned National Economic Council director Larry Summers-in particular, Obama’s hiring thereof. ‘We can’t expect different results with the same people,’ Stewart said, referring to Summers’s previous stint as treasury secretary under Bill Clinton. He continued, ‘Larry Summers … that seems like the exact same person.’ Obama, inadvertently quoting his imminently quotable predecessor, replied, ‘Larry Summers did a heckuva job.’ Stewart, somewhat shocked, advised him, ‘You don’t wanna use that phrase…'”

This morning at GRITtv Laura Flanders talked with journalist and Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer, who reminds that “Summers was the chief architect of Clinton-era policies that created the economic crisis in the first place, and that Obama’s appointment of him to get us out of it was never going to result in anything but more money being thrown at Wall Street.”



An Obit For Our Hopes – GRITtv, October 29, 2010

It’s no wonder that there is now so much irrepressible enthusiasm among the liberals and independents and progressives who tipped the balance in the democrats favor in 2006 and in 2008 to get out and vote for democrats in the 2010 midterm elections.

Oct 29 2010

Open Teacher

Photobucket

Oct 29 2010

A Letter from Tenacatita.

(Crossposted from The Wild Wild Left Back ground story here then this week here.)

It is good to know these people have names, have stories. Dobie. Richard. Mary Ann. John. Oscar. Emma. Isela. Barb.

I feel like they are becoming family to me. They have offered to open up their homes to me for a visit there, when they get their beach back. Hammocks and palapas, they say, no cooking or cleaning for me! HA! They must not know me too well. Stopping me from cooking and cleaning? You would have better luck stopping the tides.

I want to share a note from Dobie. I will be speaking to her soon, hopefully next Friday on WWL, as soon as their internet becomes high-speed.

At about 10 PM last night Isela (who was here on Sunday), a lawyer for

Diputado David Hernandez called to ask me if I could go to the gate

this morning because Villalobos and the governor were saying that

there was free access to the beach.

I printed out the article in the Informador with the following quote

by Villalobos,

“El acceso está dado, la gente puede entrar a la playa, pero pueden

entrar tres, cuatro o cinco turistas; si llegan 300 personas con

palos, piedras y se quieren meter, pues eso es una invasión, es una

agresión y no lo vamos a permitir”.

Las únicas condiciones para ingresar al litoral, explicó, son no

acudir bajo los efectos del alcohol, en posesión de armas o a bordo de

un vehículo, ya que en el interior del predio en cuestión no hay

estacionamientos.”

Translated says “The access is given, people can enter the beach but

3, 4 or 5 tourists can enter, if 300 people show up with shovels,

rocks and that want to go in, well, this is an invasion, it’s an

agression and we won’t allow it.

Oct 29 2010

Docudharma Times Friday October 29




Friday’s Headlines:

Jon Stewart’s ‘Daily Show’ has exploded beyond its humble late-night comedy roots

USA

Yes we can, Obama said. But can he?

Tests showed unstable cement in gulf oil well before explosion

Europe

Angela Merkel struggles to win support for EU bailout rules at Brussels summit

Russia’s hungry bears dig up graves

Middle East

Iran will be back in the frame

Hezbollah urges Hariri case boycott

Asia

Hopes fade for Indonesian tsunami survivors

Afghan warlord’s private army trained in Australia

Africa

Hero of ‘Hotel Rwanda’ is declared enemy of the state

Somalia’s Shebab executes two girls for ‘spying’

Bill Clinton Urged Florida Democrat to Quit Senate Bid



By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and JEFF ZELENY

Published: October 28, 2010

WASHINGTON – Former President Bill Clinton last week almost succeeded in persuading Kendrick B. Meek, the Democratic nominee for the Senate in Florida, to drop out of the three-way race – but Mr. Meek changed his mind at the last minute, a spokesman for Mr. Clinton said Thursday evening.  

Matt McKenna, Mr. Clinton’s spokesman, said the former president had concluded that Mr. Meek’s candidacy was struggling and was urging him to drop out and endorse Charlie Crist, the state’s Republican governor, who is running for the Senate as an independent.

Oct 29 2010

Muse in the Morning

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Muse in the Morning

Time for a break from poetry…in order to create some art.



In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

–Bertrand Russell


Halloween

Oct 29 2010

We are faced with a choice

  Rep. Damon Silvers, a member of the independent Congressional Oversight Panel, asked what is probably the most important question facing America today.

 We can either have a rational resolution to the foreclosure crisis or we can preserve the capital structure of the banks. We can’t do both.

 Which should we do?

 The question doesn’t sound all that ominous, but it is. In essence we must chose between protecting the TooBigToFail Wall Street banks, or the rule of law.

 That may sound overly dramatic, and I wouldn’t blame you if that was your initial reaction, but surprisingly the choice really is that simple.

Oct 29 2010

Late Night Karaoke

Oct 29 2010

Report of My Death. Et tu, Brute



Meek speaks: reports are ‘inaccurate at best’

copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

Drama fills the airwaves.  The tragic comedy comes to life, or is theatre of the absurd.  The curtain rises.  The cast murmurs.  They say, it was first heard, or read in May 1897.  At the time, Mark Twain and his demise were the topic.  Today, The New York Times splashed the story on the front page of the paper.  Bill Clinton Tried to Get Meek to Drop Out. The former President and friend of the Meek family, “last week tried to convince Kendrick Meek, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Florida, to drop out of the race.”

Oct 29 2010

Maggots Digest MGM, Overlook Box-Office Bonanza

Jay Goffman

A gang of Wall Street maggots is currently digesting the bankrupt remnants of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but all MGM really needed to stay alive was one big hit, and there it is, right under their noses, in the board-room!

Take a look at the smug, porcine features of Jay Goffman, Skadden Arp’s restructuring specialist.

Now imagine the monster from Aliens ripping his face off!

Boffo!

But wait! It’s gets even better, because Jay is only one of three evil triplets, and in the second reel Kay Goffman is infected with an extra-terrestrial Super-Plague, and…

Pus explodes out his eye-sockets!

Then ten homeless grandmas capture Ell Goffman and skin him alive! Then they set him on fire and push him into a meat-grinder!

Kowabonga!

That’s what I call entertainment!  

Oct 29 2010

My Democratic Blowout Party 20101028

I went to the Democratic Hoedown this evening (Thursday) in Richmond, KY.  Most all of the candidates were there, and the sheriff even gave me a chicken wing.  Folks have asked me to comment on it, so we shall start with that.

I guess that it is just rural Kentucky, but it was horrible.  No people speaking, no one identifying herself or himself as a candidate.  I did see Conway and our county executive, but they did not talk, at least as long as I stayed.

Oct 29 2010

“The Debate Is Over”: Human Driven Climate Change

Global warming ‘unquestionably’ due to humans: France

AFP, Thursday, October 28th, 2010

PARIS (AFP) – Global warming exists and is unquestionably due to human activity, the French Academy of Science said in a report published Thursday and written by 120 scientists from France and abroad.

“Several independent indicators show an increase in global warming from 1975 to 2003. This increase is mainly due to the increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide,” the academy said in conclusion to the report.

“The increase in carbon dioxide, and to a lesser degree other greenhouse gases, is unquestionably due to human activity,” said the report, adopted unanimously by academy members.

The report contradicts France’s former education minister Claude Allegre, a geochemist, who published a book called “The Climatic Deception” which claimed that carbon dioxide was not linked to climate change.

The report was commissioned in April by Minister for Research Valerie Pecresse in response to hundreds of environmental scientists who complained that Allegre in particular was disparaging their work.

Allegre is a member of the Academy of Sciences and also signed off on the report.

“He has the right to evolve,” the academy’s president Jean Salencon said. Pecresse said: “The debate is over.”

more here…

Load more