stop the presses...
all that other shit doesn't matter, you know,
Donnie Darko, Final Four, Lakers on tv today...
all of it's just goddamned crap & distraction,
meant to prevent us from focusing on the important things.
A faraway friend reminded me of that this morning,
when I read this letter to that chump in the white house.

Holden Caulfield's got nothin' on this kid...       3.31 watched this film on Friday nite, while relaxing at chez d'monkey, and thought, hmmmmm, pretty cool, but since I was tired perhaps I wasn't being too critical, so being an early riser in general, I watched it again on Saturday morning. I like this film, like it a lot, sure it wears its adolescent heart on its sleeve, but that's OK, I was reminded of a brief email exchange I had w/pal on Friday, something about being seventeen. I won't go into the details of the exchange but it has something to do (i think) with why I like the movie so much. Not sure how I overlooked it while in the theatres, and it's got a bit of an interesting history, all things you can find out about yourowndamnself if you're interested, but I'm happy to suggest it for your viewing pleasure. A damn good cast, a couple of familiar faces contributing very good performances, an interesting soundtrack (if you've got your vcr or dvd player hooked up thru your stereo, or maybe you have luxury Hi-Fi surround set up, well, be worth the trouble when viewing Donnie Darko), all in all, yah, it comes highly recommended by yourstruly.

well...       Duhhuhhhhh     3.30 Drilling Could Hurt Wildlife repeat headline here Jeffrey Dahmer dolls upset victims' families your source for news on Action Figures Come on, they make a thoughtful gift!

okay, so it's 3:15 friday Am...     3.29 and it doesn't appear that restful slumber is manifesting itself, so jessferdahalibut: Get Your Voltr on 8.5 brought to our attention by the fine mind behind The Ultimate Insult later that same day ohhhhhhh....   are we done yet? okay, tonite, yourstruly's taking it EZ... & btw, from the NYT, watching movies w/B. Sonnenfeld & he's picked a good one: Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove

time: 11:05 PM
Destination: SFO
Task at hand: Pick up Brother K,
returning from E. Coast trip,
deliver him safely to Santa Rosa
then deliver myowndamnself safely back
to Albany house in time for (perhaps)
couple of add'l hours shut eye & then, the j-o-b...
friday's gonna be a L O N G   day.
while we at it and 'fore we forget:
kudos to fine gang at Berkeley's Youth Radio
have a fine weekend yourowndarnselves...

Kwaleti Ilektranek Gernelizm...     3.28 s'good to know the employment of California High School grads continues unabated... there's always fun to be had hereabouts... isn't there? Fun is Hard to Find yesssss, we know sumbuddy out dere sayink "Hard is Fun to Find".... bonus chewy linky goodness! great resource for film societies, Canyon Cinema, champions of Indy film; we should all pay better attention to our health, the Berkeley Wellness Letter a $28 subscription makes a nice gift, so give one to yourowndarnself...

late breaking link flash:
last sunday yourstruly began a post w/mention
of reading J. Goldberg's New Yorker piece,
The Great Terror;
kudos to Al Jensen who located the N.Y.'er link &
shares it with all of us at American Samizdat
Yay Al! datz da spirit!

quickly now, vite vite...     3.27 you all know how we love this stuff... Beauty Equals Truth & jessferdahalibut... the Daily Bleed for today

obviously, we couldn't avoid commenting...     3.26 Magic considers running for Mayor of L.A. Yo, Earvin! remember that talk show? & we've been amiss in noting this, but iDLE seems to have left the building...

booga booga!
hi there gurlz and boyz,
be kinda quiet hereabouts over next couple of days,
('course we say that & as soon as we get to the j-o-b
we likely find something worth squawking about...)
so for now, head on over & read some notable quotes that
Craig of BookNotes has provided us
and we'll catch up with all of you later on...

beneath the cloud studded vault of a brilliant cerulean sky...      3.24      and plagued by distractions aplenty, well, for example, discovering the battery in the monkeymobile all out of go juice this Am, prompting pleasant walk up Solano to Peet's for the caffeine fix, a quick ride on the bus into downtown Berkeley to pick up the mail, reading Jeffrey Goldberg's piece in the New Yorker while waiting for the auto parts store to open, buying battery charger/jump starter gadget then hieing myowndamnself back to chez dumbmonkey via lovely AC Transit route 43. Car problem fixed, out for recharging ride on the freeway, fill up the tank, now time to get some groceries, then back to perform laundry and variety of other batchelor chores, oh, the fun dumbmonkey's having today cannot be measured in human terms. Oh, and now there's the Oregon and Kansas game... so, if you've been here before, and perhaps are one of the regulars, you know yourstruly enjoyed hearing Noam Chomsky speak the other evening. This fairly recent interview with him (available at Znet) will give you a pretty good idea of the essence of what we heard on Thursday, perhaps his talk that evening did contain more in particular re U.S. involvement in West Asia, our support of the repressive regimes of Turkey, Iraq & Israel, and I recall most of the latter portion of his discourse that evening centered upon the administration's intent to frighten us, continuing to create a domestic atmosphere replete w/constancy of threat from Evil Terrorists (i guess as opposed to US, the Good Terrorists) in their very successful (to date) effort of keeping any of us from focusing on their real domestic and international agendas. Oh, I already feel that I'm about to bite off a much larget hunk that I could ever be able to chew upon, but what the hell, it won't be the first time we jumped into some shit, both feet first. I mentioned my impression of the audience the other evening as primarily on the "pale end of the spectrum" and there could have been any number of reasons for that. I learned that night that tickets for the event had sold out within six hours of the announced availability, so I felt very lucky to have got my ticket in time, because, well, you know us latin types, Manana Manana, right? So, you know, that could explain the dearth of brown faces in the audience, and as for other folks of color (i keep thinking of the Captain Beefheart line, "We all colored, otherwise we wouldn't be able to see each other") well, who knows, tickets weren't all that readily available, one had to hie oneself to Cody's or one of the few other outlets. I wasn't attempting to be critical in regards to this particular observation, just mentioning my impression of that crowd of 3300 or so. now, I am going to ask for your patience & willingness to play along here, because I am going to attempt beginning something here, and leaving one of those >MORE< links to a continuation of the ramble elsewhere, well, 'cause I jnst know the kids surfing for nekkid britney & nekkid J-lo & nekkid WHATEVER will not be interested in perusing same, but for those very few others of you (damn, I hope some of you'll hang in and read along, just in case I screw things up along the way, I'll need someone out there to inform me of it). SO...         There have been several mentions of that discrepency in the ratio of White/Non-White populations in the activist community, this item by Betitia Morales made the rounds not so long ago, and while seeking out linkage to utilize in todays post, I came across this G. Parrish piece @ Eat the State. Now, let me state plainly that it is not at all my intention to point a finger at anybody/ies, nor make scurrilous claims re who's involved and who isn't and the reasons why, what I want to do is bring the issue to the fore, and perhaps encourage each one of us to look in the mirror and ask how involved we are willing to be, how far will we have to be pushed before making a commitment to invest some time, effort and attention to what is happening in this country and, more importantly, to the world we all live in. When the idea of looking into this began to manifest itself a day or so ago, I was reminded again (it's da ol'silverback in me) of old C S N & Y song, Teach Your Children, DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER- DIGRESSION AHEAD and when seeking out relevant linkage came upon this scary warning from Pastor Dick, this beautifully compact & economic depiction of the process by Shel Silverstein, alongside this somewhat optimistic but nevertheless relevant point of view, and while the latter may not be addressing in any way the issue at hand, I think that a minor case can be made for the fact that there may be more of those pale folks out there involved in any number of issues because, well, perhaps it was because their Momz & Popz, or their Granny, or Uncle Alfred or Auntie Gin were providing the example to follow. I recall, coming out of the sixties, there were any number of role models available to provide influence & inspiration to questioning minds, but now, well damn, look at who the cultural icons of the day are. Are they promoting the questioning of authority? Are any of them risking their popularity & success via any involvement in the social issues of the day. How many of them have you seen line up, wearing their flag pin, or some kind of red, white & blue ensemble as they loudly parrot the squawks & jabbers of their fellow Patriots of the War on Terror. More?

actually would've preferred a string quartet...     3.22      okay, so yourstruly comes home from a hard day providing NumbahWun cusstomma suhviss & finds himself faced w/dilemma he hadn't fully realized was facing him: See Chomsky or watch Missouri/UCLA? Damn, talk 'bout a modern dichotomy, and well, we did the right thing, taped the game and went to see the esteemed N.C. On our way to the venue, we spotted many folk walking in the direction of the Berkeley Community Theatre (cap. 3300) and thought to ourowngruesomeself, "damn, this is just like attending a concert." and my usual reluctance to join up in mob of folks began to manifest itself, but we choked it back and made our way inside, found a seat with a good vantage point of the stage and made ourself comfortable. As we were a half hour early or so, we found ourself listening to John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band, you likely familiar with the album, you know, Power to the People and all of that, which, for some long moments there, seemed only to reinforce some of my more critical attitudes re the tenor of the evening, you know, audience of "do-gooders", largely folks on the pale end of the color spectrum, a few asians and blacks amongst the sold out crowd. One of the folks sitting near by spoke of her amazement that the engagement was sold out (matter of fact, sold out in about 6 hours) and, well my dear, if it was going to sell out anywhere, it was going to sell out in Berkeley. Truly an appreciative crowd, and a pretty mixed bag of folks, particularly in the range of ages present, which was, personally, very heartening. The sound system left something to be desired, muddy and indistinct, and on several occasions folks asked the venerable man to speak a little closer to the microphone. No new ground broken, he addressed subjects that a good many of us were already somewhat familiar with, and the closing part of his talk was centered on the "Axis of Evil" and his interpretation of that unfortunate phrase. Entertaining and edifying, we felt we made the right choice in how to spend our evening. IF, katz & kitteezz, thou hast opportunity to see the man speak somewhere nearby yourself, 'cause the man does get around, do yourself a major favor and get a ticket, it'll be worth your while. I am feeling somewhat more buoyed & optomistic after having spent the evening amongst kindred spirits, so to speak, altho I must say, and am not sure at all why this particular tune has popped into my mind this morning, jeeezz, so many of you are likely not to even recall it, or perhaps will vaguely remember the tune Chicago. Well, one might ask, what happened to all of that energy, that desire for involvement, willingness to stake out a position and make a stand. Might we see a revitalization of that, dormant for so long? Damn, I sure hope so. few words in passing re the tourney... ("what tourney?" you might ask, well, damn, time for you to leave methinks) Missouri made us proud and triumphed over UCLA, pretty decisively too, and Coach Sampson and his team made a stirring comeback in the second half of their game to eliminate Arizona (YAY!!!! Kelvin Sampson is a Great Coach) but the big news is THE DUKIES ARE OUT OF THE TOURNAMENT! not sure we'll be back here today boyz & gurlz, so just in case, Have yourselves a Fine Weekend!

something for the local folk...     3.21 fun for the entire family or call up a friend or two & go hiking okayokayokay, we going out on a limb here: Missouri over UCLA, Why?, We like Coach Quinn Snyder. here's a little tidbit re Missouri Coach K & Coach Snyder met up last year this prediction made 8AM PST the Salukis will have their hands full w/UConn, but who cares: Go You Salukis! GO! more linky goodness for locals or for visitors to the left coast: Ocean views for a small price

on the day of the Vernal Equinox...     3.20 and J.C. has some thoughts on this 1st day of spring buenas noches y buenos suenos... a timely reminder of the folly of nukes, i'd been looking for this link a while back when the news broke re the cheney/bush cabal's desire to flex their nukie muscle... crazy fukkin' bastids is what they are... Good Evening... introducing the Dick Nixon of Zen from the online N.Y.R.B. interview w/Michael Downing some late Pm breaking news... altho' not really news at all to most of us: Unequal Treatment in American Health Care okay, today's just being written off as a day away from the j-o-b but trying to come to terms w/some of the other responsibilities facing yourstruly, and those of you who know & love us the best already know the kind of relationship we have with "Responsibility", it isn't a pretty one, datz fo' damn sure... something wrong with this, and although the lady's heart is (no doubt) in the right place, it seems that the poor gal needs some kind of assistance with her fixation on cats, certainly not helping them in the way that they really require, altho we do wish she'd drop by our neighborhood and remove some of the kitty-catz now making themselves comfortable in our own backyard, now that the Cam-dog has vacated the premises... next up, minor mention of hoops-related items, both cadged from the local fishwrap & espied whilst leisurely enjoying a fine cuppa & perusing the pages of said fishwrap at fave Kaffeehaus this Am some reasons why they call it March Madness; Why Little Stevie Lavin can't get a break from Bruin fans. a brief aside here while yourstruly mentions his jealousy (yah, it's an ugly word, but the variety I am experiencing is a truly minor one with no taint of ill-will or antagonism) for esteemed co-worker, Eric L., who's volunteered to coach the girls basketball team at his daughter's school (more like he was drafted for the position). E. approached me seeking a bit of advice on some things, only because my own big mouth had made it sort of evident that I am ardent fan of the game, be it pro, college, men, women, kids, WHATEVER, and the best advice I could give him (because myowndamnself has never coached but kinda wish we had, yet fear putting my nalgas on the line that way) was try to make sure that the kids have fun. It is no simple trick to try to teach kids a game of any kind, and a team oriented game like basketball can get complicated, even 'tho the biggest cliche in coaching hoops is that there are only Two Plays: Oklahoma and Put The Ball In The Basket. Making his job more difficult, pal E. is in position of not knowing too much about the game, facing teams coached by some with a good deal more experience & knowledge (and losing is hard on anybody, no matter how much fun you might have, losing can seldom be described as fun, especially if it's an entire season of losing games) and sometimes youngsters can be unforgiving, no matter how good your intentions. As far as I know, these are all young girls, oh maybe 8, 9 & 10 year olds, something in that neighborhood, and the job would be much tougher coaching boys, in my estimation, 'cause they'd likely be rougher on someone who didn't know the game very well. Dammit, E., we wish you the best, and hope you don't begin castigating yourself for what you perceive as shortcomings in this rather noble effort of yours. You're unlikely to coach a winning team in your first season, especially considering the realities of your situation, so just go out & teach 'em to play hard, play fair, play as a team, and you'll be alright. back to our regularly scheduled programming... ahhh, yesterday afternoon, as I was leaving the killing floor at fishwrap classifieds, esteemed pal LD sent me note w/subject line of "out of here like a rack of ribs", & in celebration of that & whatever it means, something else cadged from the pages of the fishwrap, things to do with a pound of ribs okayokayokay, enough of this blathering on.... una cosa mas, y ya me voy-- the good Doctor Menlo hisowndamnself pointed the way to this Chomsky item; see what kind of wondeful and edumakashunel marvels await you at American Samizdat? c'mon and do yourselves and all the folks you know a favor and Send Them the Link! you got 'Blog? well, dammit, provide a link for American Samizdat there & show us your true colors! It is WAY PAST TIME to stand up and be counted. whoops, almos' forgot ourowndamnself's a pretty handy fellow, & in case you need some assist, & nobody else around but your own un-handyself, try handymanwire.com

as unmotivated as i wanna be...     3.19 blah blah blah blah blah... hey, don't waste your time here today... hie thyself to the marvelous Tony P's and lively up yourself! whilst wasting time hereabouts we found: A is for American as if life isn't already dangerous enough, whose effffin' bright idea was this mo' march madness shootin' da pill the BadJocks.com 1 on 1 Tourney tippin' da ol'red fex to G.C. again...

a fair weather Monday's afoot     3.18 after Sunday afternoon clearing... yourstruly now on the j-o-b & stopped by American Samizdat for the first of our daily fixes; an altogether different take on March Madness. we tippin' da ol'red fez in the direction of the esteemed G. Coale for the heads up & reminding us to keep the madness in perspective... M.I.T.'s Noam Chomsky is in the Bay Area, we'll see him Thursday at Berkeley Community Theatre, and in a month's time, another astute observer of our times, Gore Vidal, Herbst Theatre, April 18th, courtesy the folks at the Independence Institute oh rapture! the early spring Ralph is available

holy boy! Go You Salukis! GO! yah babee! thinly veiled movie reference in that cheer; another upset has just taken place, the field of sixteen teams is now set. an emphatically grey, chilly, rainy sunday...     3.17 perfect kind of morning for building a fire, and making yummy brekkie speciality, this Am we've made waffles, w/blueberries & a bit of whipped cream, to go alongside our homemade latte thingie, and yessss, it's true, we may not be accomplishing a hellofalotofanything this Am, but damn, it's the weekend! Actually thought that we'd have gotten around to writing this up last night, but a power outage came along in the late Pm and when we decided to call it a night a little after 10, our neighborhood was still without power (odd to step out to the corner and look eastward across the street and see lights on there, but none on the street where chez dumbmonkey is located, or a block south, or for blocks east). Received a pleasant phone call from Brother Ken, currently on a training mission in Virginia Beach, and calling from Washington D.C., where lovely daughter Leala has joined him for a tour of Our Nation's Capitol with plans to visit Colonial Williamsburg today. The cat was let out of the bag (not that it was truly any big secret or anything, just that ourowndamnself usually pretty concerned about our own privacy & in that regard looking out for that of others); our Mystery Weblogger companion on our trip to Pt. Reyes was none other than the Mighty Girl herowndamnself, and is true we have been one another's correspondent for some time now, and after some previous attempts to introduce ourselves, finally the planets & stars were in harmony and we spent a pleasant afternoon yakking each other's ears off. Not mentioned the other day, but equally a pleasure, was to meet up with longtime pal D., entirely my fault for our not having gotten together sooner and more often, yourstruly occasionally falls prey to his lesser impulses, including those of misanthropism & that kind of general "leave me alone please, I'd rather not be bothered" sort of behavior. I hadn't fully realized how much I missed her until she was right there in front of me, and it was awfully good to be in the embrace of a dear, cherished friend who bore me no grudge and easily forgave me for those lesser behaviors. Our evening together? Well, believe it or not, we went on a tour of a supermarket nearby, part of a shopping center/mall called Pacific East Mall, which has as it's clientele and regulars a largely Asian population, of as many persuasions and strains as you can imagine, many wonderful restaurants, one where we did sit & enjoy a restorative bowl of pho, but that supermarket, Man oh Man, that is something, large live tanks of fish and shell fish, astoundingly great prices and just about anything you can think of in terms of an asian culinary speciality, be it a foodstuff, condiment or tool. C'mon out & visit, we'll take you on a guided tour! Oh My Yesssss...     the Madness is fully upon us! and the tourney has been as entertaining as it can be, well, that is only if you happen to be even the mildest kind of hoops fan, otherwise "what the hell is all this crap about, ennyway?" No use trying to explain, it's like attempting to describe just how good that broiled swordfish steak you enjoyed the other night was to someone who finds seafood of any kind altogether unappetizing, you know, different strokes for different folks. Ennyway--   let's see, Duke had the fear of elimination put into them by Notre Dame and that would've meant it was ANYBODYS championship, albeit likely Maryland's; Stanfoo got whupped by another possible contender for the National Championship; Kent State continues to play well, along with Missouri, both low seeded teams advancing to the round of 16 despite having to wear those goddamned glass slippers. Cal plays this Pm, and likely will not advance (this being writ at 12:25 PST) but we wish them the best regardless. As far as some of the other teams still competing with the rest of the field here in the second round, Go you Salukis! GO! That's the head coach of the Stanfoo Cardinal over there, picture comes from the first night of the tourney & am willing to bet he made a few more faces yesterday when Kansas took apart his team and eliminated them from further competition this season. Every coach has a different way of handling the stress, some of them are so cool, calm & collected that it's difficult to understand how they can be so self-possessed, other might throw chairs, or a tantrum or two, or look like they're about to purge themselves of the mother of all loaves, but you cannot doubt their intention, their intensity, and their focus. One loss and you are out, season's over and there's only next year to look forward to. Likely to see our selections reappear here tomorrow or so, after the carnage of the first two rounds, a healthy number of upsets have taken place (Yo! UCLA beat Cincinatti & took 2 overtimes to do it) and the field of 16 will be clear in just another few hours. No, yourstruly doesn't watch every game (they don't broacast them all, for one thing, goshdarnitall) and in between the responsibilities of batchelor housekeeping (yes, Melissa, he does clean the house now and again) we make an effort to indulge this minor vice of ours and enjoy as much of the tourney as we can, 'cause soon enough we'll be jonesing for October. Please don't assume that's the only recreational activity that your host has been indulging shamelessly in, we even managed to fit in a viewing of A.I. on DVD yesterday and am thankful that was accomplished before the power went out, oh, about 5:30 or so. So what did we think? Not as bad as we had begun to believe; our brief discussion w/clerk at video store had ourself mention something about having lowered expectations due to the botched intentions, referring to Kubrick's original inspiration based on B. Aldiss short story, and utimately little Stevie S.'s picking up the ball and running with it. Yah, see it for yourself and make up your own mind, goodness knows you could do a LOT worse in terms of selecting something to watch from the shelves these days. Also brought home Sexy Beast (we hear Ben Kingsley is tres formidable in this) and Ghost World, of which we may make some mention about later. Ourownpathetic self was inconvenienced by power outage mentioned earlier, which lasted quite some time, with power restored sometime after 10 Pm and before midnight, as we thankfully fell asleep after having been reduced (pity us at your own risk) to watching a little basketball and then a couple of televised movies on that little contraption you see in the photo at left. Alright, enough of this jabbering, with things to do, the Cal game, Ben Kingsley, & Ghost World demanding our attention for the remainder of the afternoon, we shall take our leave of you. Bon Jour, mes amis!

enjoying wading thru the Chomsky tome...     3.16 that we invested in recently, and am sharing this wee nugget: the question posed to N.C.: I've often heard you end talks by saying basically,"We can't give up hope." But do you really see any hope -- for the future of democracy, or for the United States, or for the people in the Third World?       Well, I'll quote my friend Mike Albert (of Z magazine), who was listening to one of my gloomy disquisitions and said: "You know, what you're describing is an organizer's dream." And I think that's true. The country is in a state where people are disillusioned, frightened, skeptical, angry, don't trust anything, want something better, know that everything's rotten. That's a perfect place for organizers to come and say, "Okay, let's do something about it. If they can do something about it in the hills of El Salvador, we can certainly do something about it here." And I think he's right: it just depends whether you decide it's time to start doing something about it. so, sort of in a similiar vein, Jon Carroll, from the friday fishwrap. oh, by the way, the Salukis won the game. Go, you Salukis, GO!

oh yah, there's a tournament going on...
Go You Salukis!
the Zagz got zigged, USC bounced right out,
but Cal's gonna play again...
GO
You Salukis!
Go!

whooooo Hooooo! it's Friday...     3.15 the only thing better would be to be in love... oh Yah!, well, we are, alla the time, in love, but at the moment not w/anyone in particular, but we're working on it! Damn! well, this means our days are numbered... oh yah, we not gonna let up on ya! Good and Good for You! Read American Samizdat

who knows what that monkey will accomplish next...    3.14 Monkey Think, Computer Do so, yourstruly experienced a pleasant day off yesterday, the weather was agreeable albeit a bit breezy (a bit?) particularly at the coast, where we happened to decide to visit as longtime correspondent Mystery Weblogger was in S.F. housesitting for pal wisiting SXSW. Mystery Weblogger braved the local transit system allowing me to pick them up at N. Berkeley Bart, and we took long leisurely drive out to Pt. Reyes, briefly stopping in Pt. Reyes Station for something to nibble upon and a brief walk thru town. The day was quite blustery actually, particularly out there on the edge of the continent, but really a pretty nice day to make the trip thru the Marin countryside, spotting many hawks, some turkeys, a solitary llama, some horses and a mule, a number of crows, and a few other humans out for a days adventure. The stairs to the lighthouse at Pt. Reyes were closed off, which turned out to be okay by both myself and the Mystery Weblogger, bum knees and alla that... mebbe mo' later

it is our duty as a Liberty Loving primate. . . 3.13 to inform all of you visiting that we are on heightened alert:

ha ha ho ho hee hee...
i know these things are awfully silly,
lately i put big value on anything that'll
bring a smile to my face, so here's this

needink sometink a little mo' cheerful... 3.12 perhaps launch a smile on the ol' kisser, so we visited democraticunderground.com & found list of Top 10 Conservative Idiots there are fans of all persuasions... hoops fans, like ourowndamnself, Rob Zombie fans, (U know who U are...), Thai cuisine fans, oh, even the dumbmonkey has a few fans... here's something for the baseball fan out there, another fine Tony Pierce Production uh oh... good thing yourstruly's celibate... ohh yahhh, right...

feel like letting my freak flag fly

tippin' da ol'red fez inna direction of
Riley Dog
for additional flag linky-goodness
previously mentioned flag linkage

Post atomic, sporting a different look...

please, leave the monkey god out of it...       3.5 Hindus turn against symbols, Indian Mosque Destroyed a little backround on our man, Hanuman More Hanuman lore; the Six Faces of Hanuman; the Hanuman Chalisa, & that's enough monkey business for now...

with all the crap that we're being force fed by the major networks,
alongside the merely marginally improved cable news sources,
i find it a major relief to visit the Daily Show w/J.S.
altho' admittedly not often enough....
we watched a clip there re el residente back in the Far East,
inspiring blast from our recent past,
un-curious George goes to China

ugh... it's monday w/a vengence        3.4 so i'm asking myself this question, over and over again, why am i submitting myself to this abject mistreatment. Look at what Craig's doing; reinventing myowndamnself's exactly what i need to do: JP, Married, w/children, church going, up-standing citizen, SUV or two in the driveway, and.....     NO NO NO... what am I thinking... actually am thinking that this is a pretty damn good idea; & while I am at it, would like to thank Uncle Cranky, Stumpy, Dante & the gang at environy for sending folks our way, specifically to our meditation upon flags inspired by the Make your own Web-Flag link they discovered... hmmmmm...   can you say controversy personal note to S.J.G. of the pleppyfruitynutty log deep linkin', deep in thought, deeply in love, deep throat, deep blue sea, rapture of the deep, deep knee bends... w h a . . . ? ahhhhhh, it's all good, the deeper the better... late pm nonsense before we get outta Dodge... Berkeley, Now & Then, from the L.A. Times consider me one of those funky holdovers...

late breaking linky-ness...

related to G. Welch mention
at end of earlier post today:

G.W. @ MerleFest,
Wilkesboro, N.C.

damn-o-lay...     Road Trip!

various & sundry musings on a sunday...         3.3 greetings to all you katz & kitteez stopping by, just a few things we want to mention here in passing, not sure there's much of a point to anything hereabouts today, but who knows, maybe we'll get worked up about sometink as we go along here... got off on a riff re John Steinbeck just the other day, and in this Am's perusal of regularly visited sites, yourstruly came across this Steinbeck related item from the L.A. Times; a day or so ago, again whilst perusing bloggos favoritos, we came across the work of a generous fellow, some good sized downloadable files re American Pronunciation, & Thanks! to D.M.D of While Seated for providing access to them; cannot recall exactly what we were up to or seeking out when we came across this next item, another collection of quotations, but a nice one, in our estimation (i think we were seeking out something re the importance of listening, but i wasn't paying attention); now, ourownbadself not exactly sure who Scott Loughrey is, but there are some interesting items in this collection of his writing dealing w/media criticism & related issues (personally, it always gives me lovely frisson of happiness whenever I discover someone else with an emphatic dislike of GWB, his policies, his cronies, etc.). yesterday we enjoyed a pleasant visit with Brother Ken and family. He brought along an old pal of his who is attending a LORAN transmitter class at the Coast Guard school in Petaluma where Ken instructs. Eric, bro K's pal, will soon be transferring to the Pribilof Islands for a year long tour of duty. For those geographically challenged folks out there who don't know where the Pribilofs are, well, they're not quite at the edge of the world, but you can see it from there. Yourstruly was in the Aleutian Islands, in particular Akutan Island twice, Dutch Harbor (once, briefly) which was an experience we'll always recall fondly, particularly our second visit to Akutan, seeing the big cove on the island full of thousands of puffins upon our arrival. This link to an NOAA site has plenty of photographs of the Aleution & Pribilof Islands/environs. Interesting to discover, while seeking out linkage to add to this part of the post, that tours are available to these very remote and largely uncomfortable destinations. They are uniquely beautiful spots in the world, undergoing some worrisome changes, and I'd very happily accept another opportunity to visit them again. so we be wrapping this up here w/brief mention of nice evening spent in company of friend Lee S., whose dear mate had other plans for the evening leaving him all on his own, so he took the opportunity to visit yourstruly, and we spent a nice evening consisting of little walk, delicious take out burrito dinner from Gordo's up the street, then settling in at Chez d'Monquis to watch (yessss, again for me, but first time for Lee, although he got to see the musicians touring in the Down from the Mountain revue recently at Berkeley Community Theatre, the lucky bastid...) Down from the Mountain. Extra added linky bonus for those gluttons for punishment amongst you who've hung in here to the bitter end, Gillian Welch, from album entitled Hell Among the Yearlings, My Morphine, a perfect song, for a ('round here at least) somnambulant Sunday afternoon. ohohoh, almos' forgot, (we feelink VERY lazy hereabouts today) more extra linky goodness: No Depression s'likely we be subscribing to this one, too...

the secret life of chips...         3.2 we think of them as comfort food

time & tides wait for no monkey     3.1 hokay! seems like springtime has actually been here for a bit now, this fact made manifest to me last weekend, particularly waking to the sound of mockingbirds singing, back in the neighborhood environs, as sure a harbinger of spring as any. There have been any number of things we wanted to get around to mentioning here of late & admittedly, with procrastination being our strong suit, we kept finding ways to avoid getting 'round to it, so now, no getting away from it, then, without further ado, here we go. Haven't got quite the same habit these days, altho it is true, yourstruly is a voracious reader, but oncet upon a time our habit was when coming across a work by an author that inspired our curiousity to a large degree, we'd seek out everything possible by and/or about the author and engage in marathon aquisition of knowledge re Author & the work of same. CJ over at BookNotes has recently mentioned John Steinbeck and (we blame our habit of procrastination) ourowndamnself had been intending to address the issue of Steinbeck's Centenary, as he is one of those authors that inspired that exhaustive search & reading marathon sort of activity mentioned earlier. Hereabouts, well, we are not far from "Steinbeck Country", and along w/that link, here follow a few more, also largely from the local fishwrap: a little bit about Lonesome Harry; J. Steinbeck & film adaptations of his work; Doc Ricketts & John Steinbeck; that "no good Johnny Steinbeck" now lionized in Salinas. they used to say the same about jp in ept, "that no good johnny p." so...       what else's been going on you may be asking? came across mention of article in March issue of Gourmet magazine written by Michael Chabon that, well, describes the wonderful place that Berkeley, California is. The specific mention was from Leah Garchik's column of 2.26; here briefly, excerpt from the column: "Nowhere else is the individual encumbered with a greater burden of shame and communal disapproval. . . . Passersby feel empowered -- indeed, they feel duty bound -- to criticize your parking technique, your failure to sort your recycling into brown paper and white, your resource-hogging four-wheel-drive vehicle, your use of a pinch collar to keep your dog from straining at the leash. . . . "This ongoing floating opera of public disapproval," writes Chabon, is performed by "a populace predisposed to kvetching and to the wearing of the default Berkeley facial expression, the suspicious frown. . . . And yet I declare, unreservedly and with all my heart, that I love Berkeley, California." now, ourowndamnself may disagree w/Pulitzer Prize Winner Chabon on many specifics mentioned in his piece, but all in all, i too Love Berkeley with All of My Heart and am thankful to have been afforded the opportunity to "grow up" here, 'cause yourstruly would not be the same fellow at all had he stayed in the west Texas town of El Paso. l'Marquis was not at all the least bit interested in watching the Grammys, but was definitely pleased that the music & musicians responsible for the soundtrack to the Coen Bros' Brother, Where Art Thou film received the recognition & awards that evening. Again, and in fact we pleaded w/you to do so way back in November, get yourself a copy of the concert, it's available on tape & DVD, and enjoy the entire show. Brother K made a bunch of nice MP3 files of some of the performances at the Grammys that night, here's a link to EmmyLou, Gillian, Allison, Ralph, et al, doing it nicely. BIG congrats to T-Bone Burnett, Producer of the Year. Right On!!! and while we're on the subject of music, i want to express my thanks to K.C. Pat for sending along his indescribably delicious Xmas CD 2001. Ourownbadself has been contemplating doing something similiar, even with Pat's raising the bar so high, i mean, take a look at the work involved on the webpages that accompany the CD and tell me this is not a labor of love. Pat, sincerest THANKS, we promise to keep a surprise or two heading your way in K.C. just please keep me on your CD distribution list. and i'd be way off base if i didn't stop and thank those of you who kept faith w/us over the last couple of months, staying in touch via email & the occasional little surprise in the mail, it made a big difference in our ability to maintain our equilibrium & some degree of balance in these tricky times. am hoping i get the opportunity to thank some of you in person later this year, so be forewarned. well, damn, i think that's enough for now, don't you? uh, actually, No. here's just one more thing, 'cause we thinks the world of you, we do...

behold the mania that inspired February '02