Painting: Double Skull

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Poem: Changes 23/Splitting Apart

The mountain
Rests on the earth
An image of splitting apart

You ensure your position
By giving generously to those below
A shoal of fishes

And a large fruit still uneaten
The house
Of the inferior man splits apart.
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Is Mitt Romney The G.O.P. Guy? All This Is That calls Mitt Romney The Presidential Frontrunner.

Is Mitt Romney The Guy? From his public appearances, it looks like he's making a run. In my booklet, he's the frontrunner, despite what the conventional wisdon says about McCain. For all the reasons you've already heard. Some people say his biggest downside is that he is LDS--Mormon, a member of the Latter Day Saints. So what? The incomng majority leader is LDS. The Mormons believe in some crazy stuff. I believe in some really crazy stuff. And the rest of you all have your own jangled theology that may or may not in the long run end up being the final word on our situation. We have Mormon senators and governors--this is the next logical step.

Would I vote for Mitt Romney? You gotta be f***ing kidding me. He has taken numerous positions on issues like gay rights that I find repugnant. But he is the guy to watch. I think he's going to move toward the middle. The Republican base--which may no longer, after all, exist following the November 7 election--has nowhere else to go. John McCain, with all his curb appeal just seems to spook a lot of the faithful. Giuliani? People like him in theory, but he is a prickly fellow, and I don't think he could survive the political campaign. And, really, in the eyes of the Republicans he is just barely a Republican. . .
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Ron Jeremy, The Hedgehog

When he entered the "adult entertainment" industry, Ron Jeremy dropped his last name at his father's request. Jeremy is referred to as "the clown prince of porn" and also as "The Hedgehog" for his hirsute and massive thing.

I saw him on a TV show last week. He's a funny guy. He's and a little homely, and heavy but has appeared in thousands of shorts and movies. He is famous for certain cinematic sexual specialities, up to and including autofellatio. In a 2003 interview, however, he confessed he was no longer able to perform that particular act.

According to Jeremy, every woman is beautiful---regardless of age, race, color, creed or size.
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Collage: Another Rough Day At The White House

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President Takes Three Body Blows: Bolton Out, Rumsfeld Saves A Bullet For POTUS, And The Washington Post: Worst President Ever? He'll Drink to that!

Click Prez to enlarge

I'm sitting here chuckling over George Bush's day. If there was ever a time when The President thought of hitting the gargle again, it had to be today.

I don't usually blog "live" but this is just too good. I am in a hotel room in Newport Beach, California [1] watching Joe Scarborough on MSNBC, and reading feeds from various newspapers. Pat Buchanan just said "discipline in the White House has broken down," and "When they came for him, Rumsfeld saved the last bullet for The President."



First "someone" leaks the damaging--no, thermonuclear--Rumsfeld memo [2] directly contradicting Dubya's "stay the course" gibberish, and then he throws in the towel on John Bolton as U.N. Ambassador (he was appointed in a "recess appointment,"). Reuters said Bolton's resignation caught White House officials by surprise while they were "still searching for a way to keep him in his job." Bolton submitted his resignation Friday. Aides said Bush thought about it over the weekend before accepting. Of course, today The President unloaded on Democrats for blocking the appointment. As ever, he accepted no responsibility for appointing a skillful, but bellicose, partisan, and factionalizing delegate to the U.N.

And now, on the Scarborough Report, they are debating "Is George Bush the worst President ever?" Joe Scarborough's topic was suggested by the Washington Post Op Ed piece by Eric Foner "He's The Worst Ever."

I look forward to waking up to see just what The President has in store for us tomorrow! Is this what it's going to be like for the next two years, one month, two weeks, and six days he has left to salvage any facsimile of his laughable "legacy"? Is he on the precipice of becoming a historical laughing stock while he is still in office? Or, is that a fait accompli?
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[1] Not before I took a long walk on the beach and watched the sun set over the Pacific. After the last week in Seattle, it's kind of nice to be in t-shirt and shorts again!
[2] Needless to say, access to that memo was seriously restricted, ergo the leaker is Right Up There in The Administration. This document was classified.
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Lyrics to The Beatles All You Need Is Love

As I mentioned yesterday, I have been absorbed with the new Beatkes remix album Love. This is one of the tunes that I'd never really taken seriously before. I do now. . .



All You Need Is Love
(Lennon/McCartney)

Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.

There's nothing you can do that can't be done.
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It's easy.

There's nothing you can make that can't be made.
No one you can save that can't be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be in time
It's easy.

All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.

There's nothing you can know that isn't known.
Nothing you can see that isn't shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.
It's easy.

All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
All you need is love (all together now)
All you need is love (everybody)
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
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The Beatles "New" Album, Love, Is A Revelation

I have been listening to The Beatles "new" album, Love, almost non-stop the last four days. At least seven of the remixes are brilliant. A couple--maybe--are duds. The rest are just wonderful. If you've listened to this music for the last forty years like I have, you are struck by the shimmering fidelity of the new mixes.

My favorites are Octopus's Garden, a Drive My Car/The Word/What You're Doing medley/remix, the brilliant acoustic and strings version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps, and the amazing backwards version of Sun King--Gnik Nus--which sounds like a Beatles song, but one you'd never heard. I couldn't even tell what they had actually done in the remix of All You Need Is Love, but I heard it like I never had before. I'd always dismissed the tune as hippy-dippy pop psychology. It's a brilliant lyric and a sensitive performance by John Lennon (just as he was getting into heavy vocal processing and screaming). It's a great song, after all.

Buy this record! It's only $10 at Amazon right now. Or better yet, spend a few bucks more and buy it from your local indie music shop.

Beatles albums on CDs never sounded like this. There is gold in those multitracks, and they cry out to be remastered. In one way I hope they never do it, because I really don't want to replace my complete Beatles collection. In the meantime, we have these new versions by George Martin and his son Giles.

Track listing:

1. Because
2. Get Back
3. Glass Onion
4. Eleanor Rigby/Julia (Transition)
5. I Am The Walrus
6. I Want To Hold Your Hand
7. Drive My Car/The Word/What You're Doing
8. Gnik Nus
9. Something/Blue Jay Way (Transition)
10. Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite!/I Want You (She's So Heavy)/Helter Skelter
11. Help!
12. Blackbird/Yesterday
13. Strawberry Fields Forever
14. Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows
15. Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds
16. Octopus's Garden
17. Lady Madonna
18. Here Comes The Sun/The Inner Light (Transition)
19. Come Together/Dear Prudence/Cry Baby Cry (Transition)
20. Revolution
21. Back In The U.S.S.R.
22. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
23. A Day In The Life
24. Hey Jude
25. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
26. All You Need Is Love
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The Michael Richards a/k/a Kramer Video

I never actually heard this before today. I'd read the transcript and apology, and written about it here and here. Pathetic.


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Seattle Horse Sex Film Is Selected For Sundance!

click the horse to enlarge


Long time reader, friend, and New Yorker, Pete, left a comment on the I-Ching poem I wrote yesterday:

Jack, Check out this article in the Seattle Times as I know it is a subject you have been following: What a coincidence given the subject of your post! "
Enjoy,

Pete

Thanks for pointing this out Pete! When I looked at my blog stats today, I was surprised to see that fifty people arrived at all this is that, looking for more info on the horse sex case and film. Now, ever since I wrote those posts, several people a day arrive, spelunking for more beasiality info and news. But fifty? I wondered if the whole world had gone loco. I suspected something was in the news. And then, as Pete points out, I wrote this poem involving a horse last night. The horse sex case is back in the news, and with it, Googlers looking for the five or six posts I wrote on that sordid subject.

As it turns out, the Seattle Times reported today that Sundance has chosen the Seattle documentary on the notorious horse-sex murder case as an entry in the 2007 documentary competition. The film, by Robinson Devor, is one of 16 documentaries to be screened at the next festival. Devor has previously appeared at Sundance with his films Police Beat and The Woman Chaser.

Earlier posts on all this is that on the Enumclaw case:

Further ruminations on Enumclaw
Horsin' around: update on Enumclaw
Another shocking revelation
Beastiality in south King County
The final horse/beastiality update
Enumclaw Story To Become A Movie
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Poem: Changes 22/Grace

1
It is favorable to undertake
The small matters
Where your acts

Give someone a leg up,
Unfurrows their brow,
And puts a smile on their face.

2
You lend grace to your toes,
Leave the carriage
And walk.

Your mirth
Lends grace
To the beard on your chin.

3
The white pony
Gallops over the hill
As if she had wings,

Like Shadowfax or Pegasus
Racing toward the fire
On the mountain.
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President Bush loses his cool with the Senator elect from Virginia, Jim Webb

The Hill Dot Com reported yesterday that President Bush has gotten off to a very rocky start with the Senator Elect from Virginia, Jim Webb. Webb, you probably remember, is the Senator who recently stomped George Allen and pushed the Democrats into the majority in the Senate.

Webb, campaigned, using the Iraq war as a cudgel, wearing his son’s old combat boots. Here he was, President Bush, face to face with the guy who had relentlessly bitch-slapped him the entire campaign, and in the end, brought the entire flimsy house of cards down around The President's shoulders.

At a White House party for newly elected lawmakers shortly after the election, POTUS asked Jim Webb how his son, a Marine stationed in Iraq was doing.

An unidentified friend was told by Webb that he had responded that "he really wanted to see his son brought back home."

“I didn’t ask you that, I asked how he’s doing,” Bush retorted, according to the source.

Webb was reportedly so angry that he considered smacking the President. If he had, of course, you would already know about this story. “Jim did have a conversation with Bush at that dinner,” according to Webb’s spokeswoman Kristian Denny Todd. “Basically, he asked about Jim’s son, Jim expressed the fact that he wanted to have him home.”

Todd would not disclose the rest of the story: "It was a private conversation.”

Tony Snow (a/k/a The White House Press Secretary) said after the November election that "Bush wants to go back to the Texas model. He's always reached out. He's been trying over the last couple of years with limited success." And now that he is desperate to make that bipartisan election, this is what we get.

"Let the revels begin."
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