War Is Over ...

Today is Monday, 31 December 2007.



My niece, aged 37, gave me, aged 55, for the holiday, a bumpersticker: "Never Thought I'd Miss Nixon".

Amen.

And the people suffering under the military dictatorship in Burma, who we'll let stand in for all the similar: wonder why the Bush-Cheney Junta ain't hot for regime change there?

Can [of what] U say "Oyul"?

My final words for the B-C Junta: Overthrow and imprison.

Thanks to each and every one of you out there in Radio Land ... oh, Blog Land, who've read and sometimes writ back to this column.



The other day, someone asked me what my favorite Christmas movie was, and I said, Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Fortunately, the questioner was a relative, and paid no attention to my reply.



And an imaginary trailer for the flick:



And the genius Bartok:



And:



And here is my Manhattan, acid and rancid, not mine really but Jack Kerouacs, but he and i sat on the same west side of manhattan piers, drank some beers, looked out over that long sad horizon where the land flowed out so infinitely seeming to the west, and that green light glowed at the end of the dock GREEN! Go! Go! that Beatnick GO! that Gatsby Beatnick GO!

No Honour Among Thieves

Today remains Sunday, 30 December 2007.

One year ago on this date, the Bush-Cheney regime, acting through Iraqi quisling surrogates, assassinated their former ally in the war against Iran, Saddam Hussein.

No honour among thieves.

The dead tell no tales.

Your tax dollars at work.

Yo, Bo!

Today is Sunday, 30 December 2007.

More to come, but let's celebrate the birthday in 1928 of the great Bo Diddley:

Bury My Heart ...

Today is Saturday, 29 December 2007.

On this date in 1890, state-sponsored terrorists of the U.S. Army massacred several hundred Lakota at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in a grim coda to the organized conquest and extermination of Native Americans.

Boo Hoo Bhutto

Today is Friday, 28 December 2007.

One of the points in finally purchasing a laptop was that I could continue MoBing while in Seattle. Alas, I was unable to access any of those new-fangled HiFi sites, and didn’t have time to spend in Internet cafes, due to family reunion obligations.

Rats!

That said, some may consider the title of this column callous and vulgar, but consider.

I’ve just listened to that great Champion of Democracy, Condi Rice, lauding Benazir Bhutto as a fellow Champion of Democracy. Dig deep into the truths of history: B. Bhutto was as much a Champion of Democracy and the Good of the Masses as, well, :



B. Bhutto, as Musharaff, as Evita, as Peron, were political thieves and gangsters. Benazir made the classic mistake of returning once too often to pick over the carcass of a suffering people.

What puzzles me: Benazir and her husband had looted Pakistan of hundreds of millions of dollars. Why didn’t they remain in exile and live it up? And, on a purely technical level, if they chose to return and steal more, why didn’t she hire adequate professional security?

I refuse to take any pleasure in the death of even one as wicked and murderous as B. Bhutto. However, in solidarity with her millions of victims, I also refuse to mourn her.

Woof!

Today is Thursday, 20 December 2007.

More to come, I hope, as ice storm recovery continues, as well as prep of "Shock-and-Awe Seattle", and I just like this pop hit, especially since our dogs are at vet:

Farewell, Autumn

Today is Wednesday, 19 December 2007.

Autumn is almost over, as winter begins on Saturday, so, who better to usher out the season, than Edith Piaf, born on this day in 1915?



All for now. Prep continues for the MoB "shock-and-awe" expedition to Seattle for the holidays (D-Day is Friday), and our tree guy will be here shortly to discuss the 30 of 60 trees in our yard which were damaged in the ice storm.

Impeach Bush-Cheney, convict and remove.

HH Does Puppies!!!

Today is Tuesday, 18 December 2007.

I'll be comin' back at ya, with the 411 on today, the 35th anniversary of the USA/USE terror bombings of "North Vietnam", back in 1972, but, I'm still playing catch up with the ice storm here, and prep for the MoB's first out-of-town expeditionary since 1997, so how about some puppies?

Weimaraners, courtesy of William Wegman. (Full disclosure: HH/MS.HH are graced with two Weimaraners as compansions.)

More Music Rules!

Today is Monday, 17 December 2007.

An old friend sent me this:



Above, the Creedence Clearwater Revival version of the song of the great Screamin' Jay Hawkins song:



And here is Nina Simone, and no dis on the Great Jay, but ... :



And Jay sings "Old Man River":



And Paul Robeson:



And more Robeson:



One might go on forever, but let's stop for the moment here:

Homage to Arthur C. Clarke and Philip K. Dick

Today remains Sunday, 16 November 2007.

Arthur C. Clarke was born on this day in 1917.

Philip K. Dick was born on this day in 1928.

He's Baaaack!

Today is Sunday, 16 December 2007.

After the Great Oklahoma Ice Storm of 2007, electricity was restored to The Museum of the Bourgeois three hours ago, after a gap of one week less one hour.

Ms. HH and HH celebrated by going out to dinner, and then returning to a re-warmed house. HH will now continue the celebration by doing laundry.

MoB knows how to PAR-TEE!

Imagine!

Today is Saturday, 8 December 2007.

John Lennon was killed on this day.

Thanks always to my friend Molly who called me with the news. I didn't have the media on and it was a perfect shock to the system.



And adding:



Where is that child now?

A few days after John Lennon died, a group of us in Tulsa gathered in downtown, a couple thousand, some folks I knew brought sound systems, and live music, and I heard a parent tell their son, "Some day, I will tell you this story, how you were too young to remember, when you were here to remember that John Lennon died".

And I suppose, we may be going into a beautiful music thing: Prokofiev:



HH may be force-feeding you beautiful music like geese:



Mrs./Ms. HH is curled up with Shelly dog, who is on the mend, and the possibility of her being serious sick, but not, is why HH, is seriously stressed, and HH is recalling the sad 70s, when, post Vietnam PTSD, he listened to this Debussy over and over, and it was a tonic and blessing, and, of course then, it was just a record, who knew of video:



When HH was very young, his parents had a Mario Lanza record, a 33 and 1.3 platter, and think about how many spinners hit that parade on KVOO, and thanks to you who know who you are, and a good sum of how HH learned to sing is Lanza.



And Butterfly:



And another Lanza:



And Turandot:

Here's Looking at You, Kid

Today is Friday, 7 December 2007.

Just a little tune, for a dear, departed friend, Va.

Happy Birthday Dave Brubeck!

Today is Thursday, 6 December 2007.

It's 4.36 Alpha Mike CDT, make that 10.36 Zulu, and Mrs. HH is annoyed that I woke her up this early, for Dave Brubeck's birthday, and I says, "I usually get up at 3.30 Alpha Mike, which is late in the day, our dogs time", and she said, "Good for you".

Happy Birthday, Dave!!!



But why is there not a solo for double bassist, the great Eugene "The Senator" Wright?

Think I'll just take the "A Train", uptown to 125th Street and 8th Avenue. Harlem. Yeah.



Then, I be shaken, not stirred:

In Memory: Mozart

Today is Wednesday, 5 December 2007.

Mozart died in poverty on this day in 1791, at the sad age of 35.

If your platters/CDs/whatever-the-hell-is-fashionable-now be not seriously large on Mozart, get up to speed:

Happy Hannukah!

Today is Tuesday, 4 December 2007.

Hanukkah begins at sunset.

This is perhaps kitsch, but I like it. Happy Hanukkah!

Bhopal to Baghdad

Today is Monday, 3 December 2007.

Before the USA/USE conquest of Iraq, the latter was hardly free of corruption. However, thanks to the incompetence of the operational execution of the Bush-Cheney regime’s voracious appetite for oil and glory, corruption is now the almost-universal rule, not the frequent exception.

Heck of a job.

Check out this article in yesterday’s The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/world/middleeast/02baghdad.html

And all that misery is on top of, e.g., 4 to 6 hours of electricity daily, on a good day. Makes it sorta hard to keep those Hot Pockets cool. Or operate Grandma’s iron lung.

Some folks say, Why don’t you do something, instead of just whining?

Pointing out evil and injustice is in itself doing something.

I refuse to put a knife to the throats of those who close their eyes to the realities of injustice and misery, in the hopes of changing their attitudes. I’ve spent almost four decades, as a practical experimental social engineer, attempting to find a strategy (not involving violence) by which to convince the citizens of the greatest empire in the history of the planet to stop looting the planet. (US are 5% of world population; US consumes 20% of everything consumed.)

I’ve failed utterly thus far, but I decline to end the attempt.
_______________________________________________________

Today is the anniversary in 1984 when a poorly-maintained Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India released a cloud of poison gas. More than 3,000 were murdered in the instant, more than 20,000 died of complications, and hundreds of thousands suffered health problems.
_______________________________________________________

Added in the evening, for the benefit of "Anonymous":

Hello to the Nuclear Age

Today is Sunday, 2 December 2007.

On this date in 1942, some 65 years ago, at approximately 3.45 in the afternoon, on the campus of the University of Chicago, a scientific team led by Nobelist Enrico Fermi initiated the first human-created self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. In less than three years, this phenomenon had been weaponized by the USA/USE, and several hundred thousand residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were dead or dying.

Thanks to the technological genius and political will of humanity outstripping humanity’s humaneity and mercy, we still live with the constant threat of extermination by hydrogen bombs within thirty minutes of any given moment.

Salud.

World AIDS Day

Today is Saturday, 1 December 2007.

Today is World AIDS Day.

In solidarity with Day Without Art, which commemorates the deaths from AIDS of artists in all media, a column does not appear.

The Museum of the Bourgeois memorializes all the dead from AIDS.

HH particularly remembers Joseph.