Photo essay of the day

Slideshow here.

The essay is derived from two parades from Brooklyn's West Indian Days celebration. Each year people from the Caribbean publicly celebrate their culture through a series of events in and around their community. These events present outsiders with small windows into those cultures. Many more than can be presented in a 30 picture photo essay.

Doomed, doomed I tells ya

I like Obama. I think he's a fine man. I'll go much farther than that and say I think he is the best we can possibly hope for. No other man or woman possessing his intelligence decency and wisdom could possibly become president. Thoroughly understanding the issues, being open minded, respecting people and their different views, forgiving one's enemies; these are the attributes of an exceptional person. Add to all that the fact that someone with those admirable characteristics was able to get elected and it's hard to see how a better hope than Obama could come along.

Unfortunately, the very attributes that make Obama such a fine human being make him a weak president. Once he established beyond any reasonable doubt that one could oppose him with impunity, the game was lost. The politician's greatest desire is to avoid pain and anything they do is going to hurt some way, some how. So their calculation is always what will hurt least. Supporting Obama will get a shitload of calls and emails from a bunch of ignorant fucking lunatics. They'll probably come scream at you at public events. Opposing Obama costs you nothing. You may even get rewarded. No strings attached. What's a poor apparatchik to do? No, to succeed as president, Obama needs make those who oppose him, particularly those in his own party, feel pain. He has to be a ruthless asshole that doesn't give a fuck about someone else's point of view beyond figuring out how to bend it to his own. Can he do that? Can he do it without becoming somebody else? One of them? I'm guessing no.

But ultimately, I don't think it really matters what Obama does. In the "tides of history" vs "great leader" debate, I'm 90 percent or so on the side of "tides of history" theory of predicting the future. Right now it looks like the tide is washing in an era of stupidity and violence. We are a thoroughly corrupt oligarchy drifting rapidly totalitarian. The media ranges from stupidly irresponsible to consciously ultra-partisan. More and more people are effectively brainwashed. Not only are they ignorant of the facts, they are angrily averse to knowing them. They'll believe what they're told by their leaders, no matter how outrageous and their leaders are telling them democracy and rule of law are not legitimate, Those, and other socialist ideas (such as education, to name just one) are, in fact, dire threats to national security, to Amercan's children, all things good and God Almighty.

Were Obama to consult poor chuckling, I'd advise him to give a big speech on the Mall detailing just exactly how and why our political system is irreparably broken, then resign and emigrate to France in order to devote all his energy to writing. He'd probably accomplish much more that way than by turning into a ruthless asshole. But you never know. I can see how one might argue that he give being a ruthless asshole a chance, then if that doesn't work out go with the expat option.

Hindsight

In retrospect, it became obvious that Obama would fail miserably as president when he pushed the Senate democrats to let Joe Lieberman keep his committee chairmanship. That act sent the message loud and clear that not only could people oppose him on this or that issue; they could kick him in the nuts, stab him in the back, bitch slap his wife--whatever-- and he wouldn't do a damn thing about it (except maybe try to suck up to them even more).

Pictures of the day

Picture of the day

Picture of the day

A forest

I need some text here to separate the photo above from the one below. So I'll just type something here. Anything. It doesn't matter. Just to take up space. It would simply ooze. Like toxic sludge through the neural pathways. No. No politics. Best not to write about it. Sure, it would take up some space, but it would also take up space in my head, and possibly yours. No. No, We don't want that. Best not to think about it, eh? Think about something else. Look at the pretty forest. Sure is pretty. I like pretty forests.

See, this post looks better already. That space sure helps. A second paragraph is nice as well. One line should be enough, though it probably would look better with two. No, now that I'm looking at it, I think three lines are definitely called for. You say I have four? Damn.

Picture of the day

Before we get to the daily neighborhood report, we have an important personnel announcement. chuckling on-line magazine's photo editor has taken a leave of absence and will be replaced by a new guy that likes pictures of flowers. After the incredibly tranquil trip to Quebec, we feel it's best to look at pretty shapes and colors in an undisturbing kind of way. Enough of that black and white shit. Eh?

I finally downloaded the Offender Locator app. I'd been putting it off because I was so afraid of what I'd see. Living in a densely populated urban area which is, one must assume from what one sees, home to a ridiculously high number of malfunctioning individuals, I figured there's be at least a hundred sex offenders within a three block radius and that I'd recognize more than a few of them. Several guys I see regularly hang out on the sidewalk and make rude sexual suggestions to female passersbye. I just saw the worst of the two a few minutes ago when I went to the fruit market to get a red onion. He was sitting on a crate between the lemons and the limes, shirt off, sacked half pint going back and forth between his crotch and his lips. The guy always has a half pint. He makes his living, such as it is, sitting in front of businesses harassing females until the owner buys him a half pint to go sit in front of someone else's business. I expected to see that guy in the offender list at the very least. But it turned out to be not that bad and I didn't recognize anybody. No one near our block and only a few in a pretty wide area.

What a world, eh?

Picture of the day

It's hard to keep up with all the changes to businesses on the commercial strip near my house. I think I mentioned that there's been a recent influx of cell phone stores. And we've always had a lot of 99 cent stores. One went out of business. Another has expanded, taking over an empty adjacent storefront. Now that I think about it, a business taking over an adjacent storefront has become a trend. T-Mobile did it, the dry cleaner and now the 99 cent store. The other trend is empty storefronts. I believe there are three now between my house and the subway. That's a first. In the past new businesses would move in as fast as possible as the old ones move out. I suspect we'll be seeing more and more empties going forward, though eventually each block may turn into a giant 99 cent or cell phone store, save each block's crappy Chinese restaurant.

Of course the big news is the prostitute bar that opened up on the corner. It used to be just another Mexican restaurant, then it morphed into an illegal nightclub, now it has become a prostitute bar like those you find in Mexican border towns. Customer's pay ten dollars to dance with scantily clad whores who will sit at their table and order buckets of beer. There's another Mexican prostitute bar down the street that has upstairs apartments where they take their clients. A van is available to shuttle them back and forth. Actual streetwalkers have started to appear between the two prostitute bars. Late night fights break out several times a week. There was apparently a concerted efforts by the whorehouse patrons to literally shit on the neighbors, or at least their sidewalks. One day last week several neighbors woke up to find fetid piles in front of their homes.

The neighbors have actively tried to close them down from the start. The neighborhood association, local politicians and the local police precinct have all been trying, though it's been mostly ineffective. Despite their efforts, and blatant law breaking on the part of the nightclub, the state liquor board gave them a license to operate until 4 am, so now they are legal, at least to serve liquor. The powers that be managed to close them down the other night on the flimsy charge of hiring unlicensed bouncers. I went to the hearing in which the city was trying to keep them shut down. The judge that was handling the case was on vacation so a temporary judge was assigned. The prosecutor was unprepared and did not know the law regarding liquor licensing. The judge said it was crazy to take away someone's property rights because of unlicensed security and liquor license violations that had since been remedied. He said he never would have closed it down in the first place. But fortunately, the Mexican whorehouse lawyer was even less competent than the prosecutor. The prosecutor asked to keep the place closed until the other judge could return and make a ruling. The judge looked at the whorehouse lawyer, clearly willing to open the place back up, but the whorehouse lawyer said nothing. The judge looked to the sky and kept the place closed until September 11.

What a world, what a world. Brooklyn.

Picture of the day

Unfortunately, rehab wasn't very rehabilitating this year. Or if so, it hasn't kicked in yet. That could be because I still have a houseguest and the traveling has continued, albeit much more close to home. Rehab failed the past two years because I took it at Burning Man. Burning Man's great, but it's not exactly what you'd call relaxing. Not the way I've done it. Don't get me wrong. I'm as in favor of consuming mass quantities and watching things burn and go boom as much as the next guy, but I don't come back from it in a Buddha-like state. On the contrary, I shake for weeks.

But three years ago, I took the rehab in Quebec and that worked out quite well. Lola and I camped in a primitive campground on a fast moving river in a beautiful valley in a national park about 40 K north of Quebec city. We spent a couple days in the city, took a couple drives down the Chemin de Roy, which follows the Saint Lawrence from Quebec to Trois Riviere and I've no doubt is one of the more beautiful highways in the world. The rest of the time blissfully camping, hiking and canoeing. And the meals? Both in town and cooked over the open fire? Incroyable.

So I thought I'd replicate it this rehab. I'd recently been thinking of pursuing bliss and enlightenment and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. Then maybe taking up squash. I don't know. Anyway, I though Quebec would be a good place to get started. And I had two weeks.

Long story short: Had a great time but am probably less enlightened before I left and definitely short of more than a few brain cells. But Quebec? It's fantastic. First we camped at Parc National de la Maricie. The highlight of those days was canoeing an hour and a half to get to a three kilometer trail that brought us to a beautiful waterfall where we swam for hours. Then we went about two hundred kilometers north to Parc National de Point Taillon, which sits on a giant lake. Perhaps the highlight of the trip was when we passed through an enchanted forest on the way. I'm not one of those boorish people that goes on and on about his dreams; suffice it to say that I was having a great one when I ran off the road and woke up. And it took up right where it left off when my friend Ken was driving. Unfortunately, I woke up when he ran off the road. Much as I hated to do it, we stopped for some coffee to shake off the effect of the enchanted forest. I didn't want to kill poor little John Bob. Point Taillon is almost totally flat. Everybody bikes there, so we rented bikes and tooled around for a couple days, often stopping for rest in fields of wild blueberry (the original title of this article was "my wild blueberry paradise." I would have eaten enough, if that were possible) and eating wild raspberries from the many patches that lined the side of the road. We were about 20 meters from the beach and went to sleep each night to the sound of crashing waves. We swam in the pleasantly cool water morning, noons and night. From there we camped at Parc National de la Baie-Sainte-Marguerite on the Saguenay fiord, best known for the Beluga whales that often hang out there. A three K hike took us to the observation area, a beautiful beach where the river empties into the fiord. The hills were as high as a thousand meters and the Fiord below was equally deep. Every day clouds enveloped the hills and drifted down the fiord. On the third day the whales arrived. I watch probably fifty or sixty Beluga swim leisurely up the fiord toward an oncoming storm. The water was blue, the clouds black, the lightning almost as bright a white as the whales. The thunder rolled. The next day we took a whale watching boat out of Taddousac and saw a lot of mink whales, a few fin whales and another pod of Beluga. After that we headed down to Quebec to finish off the trip with a couple days in the city. John Bob and I managed a kayak trip that included a couple sets of type II rapids. We had a couple fantastic French meals in the old city. Then cruised the Chemin de Roy to Trois Riviere and made a dash back to NYC.

Back in the city I saw Ponyo. Ponyo is the latest movie from Studio Ghibli. Studio Ghibli movies are great. Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle and My Friend Totorro are high art. One could make an argument for Princess Mononoke. I had reservations about Ponyo because I'd read it was a G-rated movie about a little fish girl who wants to be human. But I knew it probably didn't matter what a Studio Ghibli move was about and I was right. It is a great movie. Not without its flaws, but there are two or three scenes that are possibly the two or three most incredibly beautiful animation sequences in the history of the medium. If the sequence where Ponyo chases the car on waves is not the result of artistic genius then artistic genius does not exist. There's just nothing else out there like Studio Ghibli. Hayao Miyazaki writes the story and paints the storyboards. He has total control. No one else does anything remotely similar. Perhaps other have the talent but not the means. Nevertheless.

Finally, my friend Ken is still here so I haven't quite gotten back to normal, hence the paucity and poor quality of my publishing. I've spent far more time than I like going to bars and shows in Manhattan. Our return from Quebec coincided with the departure of the French kids. I had dreaded their time here, but it worked out quite well. They were perfect house guests and I liked them very much. Between them and Quebec, this turned into a summer of French. I can actually carry on a decent conversation again for the first time in years. Of course that won't last.

Anyway, things should be getting back to normal soon. I need to finish up this year's Coney Island project, but there's still a lot of work to make that happen.

Hope this finds you well, reader. Personally, I need a fucking vacation. I wanna go to rehab, yea, yea, yea.

Back from rehab

Yep, back from rehab. It's been nice to be away from the news. Got in at 2 am last night and did a quick scan of the usual sites. Looks like Obama's blowing it big time, huh? Apparently his strategy of saying "fuck you" to his base isn't working. Who could have predicted?

OOO

FYI, I'll be away for the next couple weeks. No posting or reading email.

A teachable moment

I'm surprised there hasn't been more comment on the lefty blogs about George Sodini, the wingnut who shot up a Pittsburgh gym full of young women, killing three. Pandagon covered it from the "nice guy" angle, but the overall effort seemed half-hearted. I understand. We know all about these people. Wingnut on a murder spree? It's like commenting on the weather. Sure is hot. Yep. The New York Times didn't even mention it.

But he fact that Sodini is an archetypical wingnut should be played for all it's worth. Sexually frustrated, bullied, Christian fruitcake, gun nut, Obama hater:

Sodini's first entry on Nov. 5, 2008, was a racist rant about President Obama and black men. The seeds of slaughter were sown in subsequent entries, where he complained about not having had a girlfriend "since 1984."

Sodini dismissed his dad as a "useless sperm donor." He raged against his "useless bully" brother. He called his mother "The Central Boss." He blasted his former pastor.

"This guy teaches (and convinced me) you can commit mass murder then still go to heaven," Sodini wrote.

Couldn't get laid for 20 years? Hell, I'm no great catch these days and women still occasionally flirt with me. That guy was in decent shape and had a job and couldn't get a date. Dude must have put off a seriously fucked up vibe. And Jesus gave him permission to kill. Now he's in heaven.

The wider audience, the regular people who don't read deep into the news, need to be introduced to these people. Mass murder is what some refer to as a "teachable moment." Oh well, it looks like there will be way too many of these teachable moments. Maybe next time a wingnut goes on a murder spree it will get the coverage it merits. Maybe tomorrow. It won't be long.

Photo of the day

Photo of the day

Photo of the day

Somewhere

Someone asked if I was sorry I didn't shoot color the other day when I saw the rainbow at the beach. Actually, I was carrying the color camera and took a few shots. But this isn't all. I have a lot of color rainbow pics. Hundreds. I take them all the time. Rainbows are part of a project I'm working on called "Puppies, Kittens, and Rainbows." The purpose of the project is to show the naysayers that puppies, kittens, and rainbows are too just so damn cute.

On an unrelated note, people have been searching for the end of the rainbow since time immemorial. As you can see, I found it in Coney Island. The end of the rainbow is in Brooklyn public housing. Who could have guessed?

Chuckling predicts a bipartisan solution for health reform

This is easy. Congress will eventually pass a health reform bill. It will be designed to transfer massive amounts of taxpayer money to health insurance companies. Given our experience with the financial sector, my guess is that the insurance companies will be given significant financial incentives to insure everybody, or at least most people, but there will be no actual requirement for them to do so. The guidelines will be voluntary. Executive compensation will be huge. Tens of millions will remain uninsured.

Then just as there are no racists in the age of Obama, and therefore no need for anti-discrimination laws; there will no longer be any need for Medicaid, or for the uninsured to visit emergency rooms, because everybody should have insurance. We'll see what form it takes, but some kind of compromise that denies millions of poor people the health care options they now have will be the makings of a bipartisan solution. The combination of windfall profits and punishing poor people will definitely appeal to the conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans who are so necessary to getting some kind, fuck all any kind, of health care legislation passed.

Photo of the day

Change you probably didn't sign up for

Seems that nowadays if a cop wrongly harasses and arrests an innocent black guy he wins a beer with the president.

Is it still too early to declare the Obama presidency a failure? To recognize Obama as the point guard for the Washington Generals? I guess, but so far the game is going according to script. The Washington Generals jump out to a big lead only to start making boneheaded turnovers, missing lay ups and turning a blind eye to the other team's egregious cheating. The Globetrotters, in this case the Republicans, close the gap and win in the end. The Generals, in this case the Democrats, cash their checks and laugh all the way to the next fundraiser.