How could she?/Wrong-way crash

George Clooney affirms he is not and will not be running for President

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor

George Clooney said today that he will not be running for the office of President of the United States, now or in the future. 

This is no surprise to us. The actor, in February, told Newsweek that he "did too many drugs" to ever seek office.  "I f***ed too many chicks and did too many drugs, and that’s the truth."

He may play a dirty presidential candidate in the upcoming drama "The Ides of March," but in real life the actor would never dream of running for office.  "I didn't live my life in the right way for politics," he said when he was approached by the California Democratic Party. 

A savvy politician, Clooney said, "would start from the beginning by saying, 'I did it all. I drank the bong water. Now let's talk about issues,'" said Clooney. "That’s gonna be my campaign slogan: 'I drank the bong water'?"

Clooney's new political thriller--Ides of March--comes out next month, with George playing a Presidential candidate who doesn't hesitate to get into the gutter.  Working on that movie did not infect him with the necessary lust, ambition, and madness to run for national office. 

"As for running for president, look, there's a guy in office right now who is smarter than almost anyone you know, who's nicer and who has more compassion than almost anyone you know. And he's having an almost impossible time governing. Why would anybody volunteer for that job?," Clooney told reporters at the Venice Film Festival, according to the Associated Press.

As you probably know, George Clooney has spent some time over the years with President Obama, and was friends with him during his years in the Senate.  He met The President last year to talk about what he saw on a trip to the Sudan.

“I have a really good job,” he said, "I have no interest."

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William Wordsworth's Ode: Intimations of Immortality

One of my favorite poems from the 19th century... /jb 

Ode: Intimations of Immortality by William Wordsworth

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.	5
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The rainbow comes and goes,	10
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;	15
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound	20
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;	25
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea	30
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;—
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy	35
Shepherd-boy!
Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,	40
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,	45
And the children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:—	50
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
—But there's a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet	55
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,	60
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come	65
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,	70
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;	75
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind,	80
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.	85
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!	90
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;	95
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long	100
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,	105
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity;	110
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—
Mighty prophet! Seer blest!	115
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a master o'er a slave,	120
A presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie;	125
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?	130
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,	135
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest—	140
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;	145
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,	150
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,	155
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,	160
To perish never:
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!	165
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,	170
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!	175
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright	180
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;	185
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,	190
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight	195
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;	200
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,	205
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. ---o0o---

Faces on the wall

Fear and Loathing in the desert

Hanny, whose blog "The Stone In The River" I follow recently excerpted this key early passage from one of my favorite Hunter S. Thompson books, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. . .

"My attorney saw the hitchhiker long before I did. 'Let's give this boy a lift,' he said, and before I could mount any argument he was stopped and this poor Okie kid was running up to the car with a big grin on his face, saying, 'Hot damn! I never rode in a convertible before!'

"'Is that right?' I said. 'Well, I guess you're about ready, eh?'

"The kid nodded eagerly as we roared off.

"'We're your friends,' said my attorney. 'We're not like the others.'

"O Christ, I thought, he's gone around the bend. 'No more of that talk,' I said sharply. 'Or I'll put the leeches on you.' He grinned, seeming to understand. Luckily, the noise in the car was so awful--between the wind and the radio and the tape machine--that the kid in the back seat couldn't hear a word we were saying. Or could he?

"How long can we maintain? I wondered. How long before one of us starts raving and jabbering at this boy? What will he think then? This same lonely desert was the last known home of the Manson family. Will he make that grim connection when my attorney starts screaming about bats and huge manta rays coming down on the car? If so--well, we'll just have to cut his head off and bury him somewhere. Because it goes without saying that we can't turn him loose. He'll report us at once to some kind of outback nazi law enforcement agency, and they'll run us down like dogs.

"Jesus! Did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me? I glanced over at my attorney, but he seemed oblivious--watching the road, driving our Great Red Shark along at a hundred and ten or so. There was no sound from the back seat."

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"Who likes white people?" - Michele Bachmann preaches to the converted; the white pride site Stormfront approves

By Jack Brummet, Tea Party Editor

It is hard to see how a speech like this (if this is what she actually said) won't immediately end Representative Michele Bachmann's twisted campaign to become President of the United States.  Not the religion; after all, every President I remember has come out in public and said with varying degrees of vehemence (and truthfulness) that not only do they believe in God, but believe Jesus Christ is their saviour. 

Interestingly enough, this video is on various blogs and websites right now, most notably on the the Stormfront.org site, the white pride/Nazi website. 

"Who likes white people?  I'm Michele Bachmann and I'm a member of Congress and I'm running for the Presidency of the United States.  I'm here to talk tonight about the Creator of the universe our lord and savior Jesus Christ.  I was born here in Iowa, I was born in Waterloo and Cedar Falls we were a church going family in Waterloo and Cedar Falls and I'm so grateful for my parents and my grandparents going back to seven generations of Iowans who were all people of faith.  I didn't have a relationship with Jesus Chris, they were right, until I was going to a prayer meeting before school at our high school."

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The Dutch Bike, Coffee & Bar's seven-person "conference bike"

By Jack Brummet, Ballard Editor

This is definitely the coolest thing I've seen (so far) today.  The Dutch Bike, Coffee & Bar, on lower Ballard Avenue (near The Walrus & The Carpenter and Walton's Fancy & Staple) is a fairly new bike, coffee, cafe, and wine joint in the old Marine Hardware shop.  They've done a fantastic job of renovating the place into a high-ceilinged, brick, loft-like space.  They installed an amazing take on steel gates--a window/door that opens up the space via a mechanical pulley system (with some of the gears, etc. coming from an old Model T).  It's a wonderful space--while I was there, quite a few people just stopped by just to take pictures. 

What knocked me out most was the seven-person "bicycle" that they call a conference bike.  Everyone is seated in a circle, and everyone pedals to power the bike.  One person is the navigator.  I would love to see it in action.  You can rent it by the hour ($75).  They also sell great looking city bicycles.  And coffee.  And tasty sounding sandwiches.  And beer and wine.

My daughter Claire is working there now as a barista:

click to enlarge

Stop by sometime and say hi, have some coffee or wine, or buy, or try a bike. 

4741 Ballard Avenue

Seattle, Wash.

www.dutchbikeco.com

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Faces No. 248 - Three-eyed mosaic

drawing and processing by jack brummet

click to enlarge

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A Pegeen White watercolor, circa mid-1980's

By Jack Brummet, Art Editor

A watercolor (about 2'x3') by Pegeen White from the mid-1980's.  I can't remember whether I bought it (I remember going to a show of hers around then), or if we traded art.  I've had it hanging on one of my walls ever since.

click to enlarge

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Alien Lore No. 213 - The disappearance of Frederick Valentich

By Jack Brummet
Paranormal/Alien Lore Editor

Thanks to Jeff Clinton for digging up this story.

On 21 October 1978, a 20-year-old pilot--Frederick Valentich--disappeared while flying his Cessna airplane near King Island, Australia.

The transcript that follows is from a program, Radio Eye, broadcast in 2008 by ABC Radio.

19:06:14 DSJ [Valentich]: Melbourne, this is Delta Sierra Juliet. Is there any known traffic below five thousand?

FS [Flight Services; Robey]: Delta Sierra Juliet, no known traffic.


DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet, I am, seems to be a large aircraft below five thousand.


19:06:44 FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, What type of aircraft is it?


DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet, I cannot affirm, it is four bright, and it seems to me like landing lights.


FS: Delta Sierra Juliet.

19:07:31 DSJ: Melbourne, this is Delta Sierra Juliet, the aircraft has just passed over me at least a thousand feet above.


FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, roger, and it is a large aircraft, confirmed?


DSJ: Er-unknown, due to the speed it's travelling, is there any air force aircraft in the vicinity?


FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, no known aircraft in the vicinity.


19:08:18 DSJ: Melbourne, it's approaching now from due east towards me.


FS: Delta Sierra Juliet.


19:08:41 DSJ: (open microphone for two seconds.)


19:08:48 DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet, it seems to me that he's playing some sort of game, he's flying over me two, three times at speeds I could not identify.


FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, roger, what is your actual level?


DSJ: My level is four and a half thousand, four five zero zero.


FS: Delta Sierra Juliet and you confirm you cannot identify the aircraft?


DSJ: Affirmative.


FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, roger, stand by.


19:09:27 DSJ: Melbourne, Delta Sierra Juliet, it's not an aircraft it is (open microphone for two seconds).


19:09:42 FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, can you describe the - er - aircraft?


DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet, as it's flying past it's a long shape (open microphone for three seconds) cannot identify more than it has such speed (open microphone for three seconds). It's before me right now Melbourne.


19:10 FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, roger and how large would the - er - object be?


19:10:19 DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet, Melbourne, it seems like it's chasing me.[20] What I'm doing right now is orbiting and the thing is just orbiting on top of me also. It's got a green light and sort of metallic like, it's all shiny on the outside.


FS: Delta Sierra Juliet


19:10:46 DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet (open microphone for three seconds) It's just vanished.


FS: Delta Sierra Juliet.


19:11:00 DSJ: Melbourne, would you know what kind of aircraft I've got? Is it a military aircraft?


FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, Confirm the - er ~ aircraft just vanished.


DSJ: Say again.


FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, is the aircraft still with you?


DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet; it's (open microphone for two seconds) now approaching from the south-west.


FS: Delta Sierra Juliet


19:11:50 DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet, the engine is rough-idling. I've got it set at twenty three twenty-four and the thing is (coughing).


FS: Delta Sierra Juliet, roger, what are your intentions?


DSJ: My intentions are - ah - to go to King Island - ah - Melbourne. That strange aircraft is hovering on top of me again (open microphone for two seconds). It is hovering and (open microphone for one second) it's not an aircraft.


FS: Delta Sierra Juliet.


19:12:28 DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet. Melbourne (open microphone for seventeen seconds).

[ed's note: during that seventeen seconds, you can hear metallic sounds, and a sort of scraping.  Then the transmission went dead.]

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The Hells Angels Trademark

By Mona Goldwater
Social Mores Editor

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Who knew?  The Hells Angels (yes, there is no apostrophe) have not only trademarked their name, but periodically send out cease and desist orders to mainly clothing manufacturers to prevent losing their trademark.

Sonny Barger (the long time leader of the Oakland Angels and a focus of Hunter Thompson's Hells Angels book) told a reporter not long ago that back in the day if someone stole their colors, they would go out and stomp him.  Now, he said, they use lawyers instead, because what are they going to do, beat up the doorman at Time-Warner?

In March 2007, the Hells Angels filed suit against Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group alleging that the film entitled Wild Hogs used both the name and distinctive logo of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Corporation without permission

  SliceofNYC's photostream - This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

In October 2010, the Hells Angels filed a lawsuit against Alexander McQueen for "misusing its trademark winged death heads symbol" in several items from its Autumn/Winter 2010 collection. The lawsuit was also aimed at Saks Fifth Avenue and Zappos.com, which stock the jacquard box dress and knuckle duster ring which bear the symbol which is protected by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office since at least 1948.  The suit was settled out of court.

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Alien Lore No. 212 - The UFO Welcoming Center

Welcome To Planet Earth from Mikey Livingston on Vimeo.

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Governor Rick Perry Presidential Campaign Poster

click to enlarge - poster by Jack Brummet

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Faces No. 247 - Just Married!

Drawings by Jack Brummet

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Faces No. 246 - The clinic waiting room

Drawings by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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