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dear george
Hello again mister President, have you heard about all the commotion going on down at your little offshore concentration camp at Azkaban - oops, I mean Guantanamo Bay? Inmates attacking guards with makeshift weapons, all sorts of trouble. Next thing you know they will be playing a game of football - oops, I mean soccer - against your soldiers, putting Sylvester Stallone in goal, before escaping through a tunnel in the dressing rooms. Seriously though, George, what is the deal with this place? You've been roundly criticised for its illegal existence, for the alleged practices of torture, for holding 'illegal combatants' (ie, those who could not afford a uniform but wanted to resist your army's invasion) without trial or access to any judicial procedure for years, and there have been urgent calls from both the UN and the UK (remember them? your old buddies?) to have this camp closed down. But you don't care! "Not listening! Not listening! La la la, I can't hear you!" I want the American public to have a look at your election pledges back in 2001. Was there anything in there about setting up secret offshore concentration camps, about allowing torture if you the president think it necessary, about spying on your own citizens under the pretense of fighting terrorism (which, you know, did exist before 9/11), about going to war even if the evidence was proven flawed, just so you could spread 'democracy' and 'freedom'? Of course there wasn't. And about that war - we all know it was about oil, right? Well if so, how come the gas prices have more than doubled in the past couple of years? Oh, I see, it was about freedom, getting rid of Saddam, who was an urgent threat and was linked to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. Except, no he wasn't, and never has been. and the Iraqis are now in serious danger every single day because, yes, we've given freedom to them, and some of them have used that freedom to do whatever the hell they like - 'cos that's freedom, right? But you couldn't take a chance, could you - I mean, if Saddam ever had anything to do with terrorists (and he was after all a very bad man, we all agree about that - though I don't know how many offshore illegal concentration camps he had, I think you trump him on that one), he had to be dealt with, after there can be no dealing with anyone like that. And he did commit acts of genocide against his own people, back in the 1980s - yes, ok, with weapons that Donald Rumsfeld gave him - he was supposed to use them against Iran, though, wasn't he - so he had to be punished for his crimes. You can't just let him off, you know. Except...that's what you have done with Colonel Gadaffi. Libya has been allowed back into the fold because they have denounced Voldemort - oops, I mean, terror - and now they're your best buddies. Even though he was behind such acts as Lockerbie. A lot of people died in Lockerbie, a lot of people that were murdered, and Gadaffi was behind it, or at least openly endorsed it. It was a more recent event than Saddam gassing the Kurds. He was the most vocal of those state-sponsors of terrorism, and now he's your pal again. George, I may have terrible hay fever, but that smells really bad, you know? And now you are going after Iran. Oh, and Venezuela, just because you don't like Hugo Chavez - he's a socialist, after all, and wants the state to control Venezuela's oil, rather than the poor oil companies. And he sure as hell doesn't like you. So what do you do? Try to link him to Iran. Fabricate some link, it doesn't matter how tenuous, because the American public will buy it, especially if Faux News reports it. Meanwhile, all goes badly in Iraq, but we don't get to hear about that. That's not good for morale. It's all immigration this, immigration that, and suddenly you decide that the best way to deal with immigration, which has been going on for years, is to strengthen the borders with thousands more soldiers (those ones who haven't had their legs blown off in Iraq). Oh George, stop deflecting us away from the chaos! And George, before you go sending soldiers to Mexico and Iran or wherever, don't foget what's starting on June 1st. No, not the World Cup, that's a week later. Hurricane season. You had better make sure you know where all the helicopters are this time, George. But anyway, George, give my love to Dick and Donald your good friend, Pete |
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19.5.06 20:55 |
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the leonardo code
We went to see The Da Vinci Code at the weekend. I have never read the book; I did not want to be seen with it on the bus, sitting alongside all those other people reading it. I wanted to wait for the movie. Little did I know back then that Tom Hanks would be in the lead role. It was a good film, though; quite a few other well known faces, such as Magneto and Doctor Octopus. Magneto was especially good, as a wily old British professor living outside Paris. Paul Bettany did a very good albino Anakin, as well. Cousin Hubert, aka Leon, played a French copper with too much Catholic guilt, but then there's a law that if any film is set anywhere in France, his massive conk has to show up somewhere (Gerard Depardieu "Oh My God" used to fulfill this role). I enjoyed the reference to the simultaneous destruction of the Knights Templar on Friday 13th, 1307, the original Order 66. But on the whole, I did feel the whole investigation into the Jesus / Mary Magdalene thing could have been better handled by the Las Vegas crime lab from CSI. One thing bothered me, though. There was this whole thing about the whereabouts of Mary Magdalene's tomb, and yet nobody actually went down to Provence. Nobody even mentioned the Basilica at St Maximim-la-St-Baume, in the Var. I've been there, and saw MM's very tomb. She apparently had lived in those hills until she died. I don't blame her, either, it's a lovely place. But come on, Magneto! Come on Forrest Gump! Come on Amelie! Sort it out! And why does Dan Brown insist on the 'Da Vinci' Code? His name, as art historians everywhere know, was 'Leonardo'. His name was 'Leonardo', and he was from the town of Vinci. And another thing. All those Christian groups who are protesting the book and the film because of the strange notions of heresy and blasphemy (when someone criticizes what you believe in but you cannot be bothered to argue back) should just let it go. I heard that a priest was telling people that it was just a book, just a story, people shouldn't take it as gospel. Whether he was talking about the Da Vinci Code or the Bible was not made clear. |
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22.5.06 20:35 |
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Week Thirty-Four: End of the Season
The dramatic FA Cup final shoot-out, the tense (and ultimately rigged, in my opinion, all'italiana) race for fourth place in the Premiership, the return of Barcelona as Champions of Europe - it all passed without so much as a murmur over here. Same with the Eurovision Song Contest. Nobody cared, except maybe the one guy I met wearing a Barcelona shirt, who innocently wondered if I supported Arsenal, and received a look so foul it would have turned an M&M sour. And yet there can be no doubt about it - this week is the End of the Season: the TV Season. All the long distance shows have been running since September ('Lost', 'Gray's Anatomy', 'Desperate Housewives', to name but a few), and are all culminating in their own two-hour season finale Cup Finals. I fully intend to sing 'Abide With Me' before tomorrow's 'Lost'. I have a feeling that one will end in some sort of shoot-out as well. The American TV Season is one of the big cultural differences between Britain and the US. In the UK, a series will often last for six, maybe even eight episodes; an American show will last for over twenty. But how do you stretch twenty episodes into almost forty weeks? What they do here is they show a few new episodes, then they repeat some, then some new ones, then some repeats (pronounced re-peats, not re-peats). In this way, the suspense is, well, suspended. And it can be really irritating, not least because there appears to be little pattern of when they will show repeats and when they will show new episodes, making the series incredibly frustrating to follow. The repeats they show are equally arbitrary - they have no order, they serve no purpose, other than to rest star players. It is as if Claudio Ranieri is in charge of the TV networks (actually, I really wish he were). I have no idea what will take place during the summer. I would like to see all the different shows get together and have their own World Cup - we could see Eastenders vs Sex and the City, or at the very least a fist-fight between Jeremy Paxman and those imbeciles on ABC News10. I would pay good money for that, really good money. Who knows, this might even be one World Cup where the English actually beat the Germans. I'll settle for the real thing; though I know they will show some matches, I will be watching it for the most part on the Mexican channels (that is, when I come back form my holiday to BBC land). Speaking of which, you know the way films sometimes have different names here? Well that film 'Goal' is currently listed in theatres here with the catchy title 'Goal: The Dream Begins', while in Mexico it is listed as 'Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!'. Strange but true. |
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23.5.06 17:54 |
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or just mental
I dipped another toe into the digital universe on Monday; I bought an mp3 player. It's a blue iriver, 1GB, colour screen, only $129 (about seventy quid in old money). I've been filling it up ahead of my trip back to London, my first visit since emigration - I fly on Sunday evening. I hate the packaging these electronic items come in, though. They are always sealed in some insanely tough plastic bubble, a material that adamantium scissors would not cut through. You have to completely destroy it in order to get to the product. That wasn't the only danger. We bought it in Best Buy in Natomas, Sacramento, and while we were there there was a police shoot-out outside the Wal-Mart across the road. A few serious injuries, too; I'm not sure what it was about. That wasn't the only gun-happy criminal in Sacramento on Monday, however - the Dick Tater was in town, giving backing to local Republicans. While we were driving away from Natomas, the voice of his puppet George came on the radio, talking about the new government in Iraq: "The progress of Freedom is incremental!" he said. His government policies, on the other hand, are excremental. |
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24.5.06 20:41 |
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a dream of edinburgh's european glory
I had a wierd dream last night. Hibernian FC won the UEFA Cup, then Heart of Midlothian won the Champions League (8-3, too). That's all I remember.
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24.5.06 21:01 |
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i'm leavin, on a jet plane
Just watched the Monaco Grand Prix, my nose is runny, I'm trying hard to pack my bag and I'm getting very nervous, 'cos in a couple of hours we'll be setting off to the airport, and I'll be flying back to England for the first time in eight months. I am looking forward to having trifle; this morning, we had doughnuts. But I'm still on a high from having seen X-Men 3, The Last Stand. Wow, what a movie! What an ending! I'll give nothing away, but I'll say right now, very cool. Now back to the packing and sneezing. I'll be reading Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell on the plane. |
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28.5.06 19:56 |
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there's not much glamour about the english weather
I woke up this morning, my body had no idea what time it was (and neither did my watch), but I appeared to be a) on the wrong side of the bed, and b) in Burnt Oak. So after an eight month absence, I'm back in Britain, and I gotta say, not much has changed: Eastenders' storylines are still as stupid as ever. It's nice being back, so far; great to see my family, of course. The weather is the same old London changeable weather; the news is not as bombastic, though all the talk is off stabbings here, stabbings there - I'm not sure I really want to leave the house. Maybe I won't; I have eight bottles of Pepsi Max here, what more could I need? Trifle... I have to go to Tesco's and get some trifle! (My wife, back in CA, will be jealous) |
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30.5.06 07:50 |
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Week Thirty-Five: petescully is Away
I hate airports. Some people see them as places of excitement, full of people travelling all over the globe, every continent and every country coming together in one place, huge metal birds soaring across the horizon, and all of that bollocks. In reality they are inconvenient places packed tight with tired and stressed-out travellers in inappropriate clothing for the climate, families with noisy young children who have to take up the entire row of waiting-area seats with various coats they were never going to wear, soulless security staff who have been trained in the art of humourless arrogance, and shops full of things you really don't want. Yes I know that's a glass-half-empty look at airports, but that's how I see them. I don't like them. San Francisco International was actually quite nice. Incredibly modern (lots of glass and white painted metal) with interesting displays of public art. Hardly anybody about, so there was space to breathe, and there was none of that waiting in a queue for a couple of hours to check in. I hate how airlines insist on you being two or three hours early, mainly because I do not ever want to spend any more time in an airport than I have to. It didn't take too long to get around it, either - some airports are so huge you need to take a plane to get across them. Of course, there are the travelators - which, as Seinfeld once pointed out, people often forget are actually for travelling on, not for just standing there, leisurely passing the world by, 'look at me, i'm not even walking'. Usually it is such a relief for me to get on the plane and get off the ground. Unfortunately, United Airlines employ the sardine-method to air-travel, and I was clamped into place with nothing but King Kong for entertainment, on a flight I was expected to sleep on. I didn't make the journey any worse by actually watching it, so I read a little, listened to some music, tried to sleep and failed. The air-hostesses, their baggy eyes caked in make-up and their uniforms threatening to throw stitches and release unwanted air-pressure, waddled the aisles unsmilingly offering pretzels and sodas and food with less taste than the Daily Star. I watched the map anxiously, passing over the Rocky states, past places with names like 'Big Baldy Mountain', across Canada and Greenland, over Iceland and finally into Britain. And into Heathrow, one of the world's largest (and therefore most irritating) airports. Baggage reclaim is always fun, isn't it? It's like a gamble, did my one make it, or is it in Sydney? And then you start to wish that you'd tied a ribbon to it, because everyone's bag is large and black and looks just like yours. People pile around the treadmill ready to pounce on any bag slightly resembling their own, pushing other people out of the way in fits of jetlagged desperation. And then a sigh of relief as your luggage comes out; and a smug look on your face as if to say to the others still waiting, "well, I guess I'll be off, good luck getting your bags back from Australia, suckers!" Yes, airports are really lovely places. |
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30.5.06 18:30 |
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