I've always believed that there are many fine things in the time-honored style of Australian secondary-school education. Personally, I'm a "product" of the rural dimension of this system, and I've always taken pleasure in pointing out what appears to me as good about my schooling in Grafton.
If you believe, like me, that it's time to put an end to the chaplaincy scam in Australian secondary schools, you might vote NO in this newspaper poll.
In any case, even if you're an ungodly heathen who doesn't happen to be a devout worshiper of Lakshmi, that's not necessarily a sufficient reason for walking around on the beach with a picture of the goddess on your brown bum, in the blasphemous style of this Aussie female:
Consequently, in a world where fundamentalist fuckwits have got around to burning anything and everything—the Koran, the Bible, the Stars and Stripes, the Twin Towers, etc—we Australians will just have to accept the idea of seeing our cherished old flag going up in flames from time to time.
Personally, I quite like the idea of a colorful image of the Hindu goddess of light twitching around in the vicinity of the wearer's arse. It symbolizes the theological concept of solar radiation passing through the anal orifice and illuminating the world. What more could you ask for? Well, I can imagine much more: an entire swimsuit collection, for males as well as females, based upon religious icons and themes. For a Christian lady, the frontal areas of a swimsuit offer ideal image space for the Holy Trinity: white-bearded God on the left tit, Jesus and his crown of thorns on the right one, and a pictorial representation of the Holy Ghost (requires a bit of artistic imagination) in the pubic region. Judaism would be relatively easy to handle in swimwear, as long as you only referred to the Creator using the four-letter Tetragrammaton, without ever daring to pronounce his name. (Swimsuits generally don't attempt to pronounce anything at all.) In the Torah, there's a hell of a lot of good visual stuff that could be exhibited on biblical swimwear. For the moment, I'm stumped when it comes to Islamic swimwear themes, for there's little of an attractive iconic nature in their religious culture. When I try to imagine something of a visual nature, the only marine image that springs into my mind is that of Osama bin Laden taking a dive into the ocean... from the deck of a US warship. But, even if we were to be shown his bathing attire, I'm not sure that anybody would want to wear similar gear.
They told me that they were thinking of selling their bed-and-breakfast business in South Africa, and setting up a guest house somewhere in Europe. So, they were keen to see what kind of possibilities existed around here. Yesterday morning, I took them along to the excellent guest house in St-Jean-en-Royans operated by Roger Dunne (a former UK cyclist) and his wife Teresa. They've done up an old water-mill on the edge of the village, and transformed it into a high-quality base for visitors who can go out bike-riding in some of the most magnificent landscapes that cyclists could ever imagine.
[Click the photo to visit the website of Roger and Teresa]
I don't intend to waste time mentioning the many stupidities that have come forth from Camping during his long and prolific existence. I'll merely describe the latest in date. The SOB [silly old bugger] is proclaiming, to all who wish to listen, that exceptional events will be taking place next May 21. There will be a great earthquake, of an intensity never known before on the planet. And truly Christian believers—including, if all goes well, the SOB himself—will be "raptured". That's fuckwit talk for flying upwards into the sky, headed for Heaven. Exactly 153 days after that initial happening, the entire universe will disappear.
Hitchens spoke of the awesome song If it be your will by Leonard Cohen. You can cut the publicity at the start.
Revelers soon took over the Place de la Bastille in Paris. Here is one of the rare surviving photos of that wonderful evening:
I myself was lost in the middle of that huge throng. People flocked there spontaneously. Ever since the French Revolution in 1789, it has been a sacred spot for the People of the Left. It was an astonishing evening. People found it hard to realize that Mitterrand, who had been defeated in several presidential elections, was finally victorious. During those first few hours, nobody worried too much about possible political problems that might lie ahead. The citizens merely bathed in the euphoria of their momentous electoral victory.
The City of Sydney is a major supporter of this prize, in particular at a financial level.
The gold medal of the Sydney Peace Foundation will be awarded to Julian Assange on 10 May 2011 in London. The citation is "for exceptional courage in pursuit of human rights". The director of the Sydney Peace Foundation, Stuart Rees, says:"By challenging centuries old practices of government secrecy and by championing people’s right to know, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange have created the potential for a new order in journalism and in the free flow of information. Instead of demonizing an Australian citizen who has broken no law, the Australian Government must stop shoring up Washington’s efforts to behave like a totalitarian state. The treatment of alleged whistleblower Bradley Manning confirms a US administration at odds with their commitment to universal human rights and intent on militaristic bullying."
Dream
I dream of those lips
of that soft pure voice
Above all, I remember you
And that night beside you
I dream, I weep in sorrow
In my heart, spring has gone
In my life, I await tomorrow
Kneeling, gazing at the sea
I shared the world with you
But you did not wish to join me
I would have sung in victory
Far away from you, I still find you
close to me, and I dream of you
I would have sung, it was your song
The song of you and me
I am so weary now that
I ask the heavens to let me die
on a summit, where I would be facing you
where I would awake from this dream
If you die, then take me with you
Tomorrow morning, in the French city of Rouen, two women—a French member of parliament, Valérie Fourneyon, mayoress of Rouen, and New Zealand's ambassador to France, Rosemary Banks—will be coming together for a strange ceremony. The lady from the Antipodes will be taking custody of the tattooed head of an anonymous Maori warrior that has been reposing for 136 years in the local museum of natural history.
Is there some kind of "moral logic" in returning such objects to their land of origin, New Zealand? Personally, I fail to appreciate why this is being done. These mummified hunks of DNA don't "belong" to today's indigenous population of New Zealand in any objective sense whatsoever. It's not as if the victims were abducted recently, and the absence of their bodily remains were preventing their Antipodean descendants from attenuating their grief. And, if anybody were to suggest that a moko head in some far-flung corner of the world contained an ethereal spirit (not to be confused with the head's DNA) that was yearning to return to the company of its descendants in New Zealand, I would be tempted to reply: "How sad. Too bad."
We see Dominique Strauss-Kahn—current president of the IMF [International Monetary Fund]—and his wife Anne Sinclair about to step into a Porsche driven by their friend Ramzi Khiroun. This photo was taken on 28 April 2011 in front of the Parisian residence of the Strauss-Kahn couple, who have been living in Washington over the last three and a half years.
Michel Colucci, known to everybody as Coluche, was an inimitable French comedian who died in a motor-cycle accident, a quarter of a century ago (at a time when I was out in Western Australia).
He rose to fame instantaneously, on the evening of 19 May 1974, an hour or so after Valéry Giscard d'Estaing won the presidential election. TV viewers were awaiting the reactions of the defeated candidate, François Mitterrand, who was running late. To prevent viewers from becoming impatient, the TV host called upon a little-known 29-year-old stand-up comic, Coluche. His drawn-out sketch, L'histoire d'un mec (Story of a bloke), not only filled in time, but literally went down in history. Coluche lived just the street from my place in Paris, and I used to see him regularly seated outside his favorite bistrot with his fellow-comedians from the nearby Café de la Gare.
This is great news for those of us who've grown accustomed, over the years, to the excellent software tool called FreeHand, which I mentioned in my article of October 2010 entitled First, find an old Mac [display]. A lobby group named Free FreeHand has been set up, in the hope of preventing the Adobe corporation from allowing the tool to become extinct.
Well, this organization has actually filed an antitrust lawsuit against Adobe, in the northern district of California.
Onlookers who use neither FreeHand nor Illustrator—that's to say, people who never need to create sophisticated computer graphics—are likely to imagine this conflict as a storm in a teacup. But that would be a big mistake. It's a showdown between an arrogant monopolistic corporation and its customers, past, present and maybe future. Adobe decided unilaterally that it would be better (for Adobe, that is) if there were only one product, Illustrator. So, the corporation has been blithely suggesting to FreeHand enthusiasts that they drop their familiar drawing tool and change to Illustrator. Now, this is often an unrealistic suggestion, because you simply cannot obtain identical results with the two products, and people don't want to be faced with the task of redoing in Illustrator—supposing this were feasible—all the stuff they've mastered in FreeHand.
The ballad entitled And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda was written in 1971 by Eric Bogle, a Scotsman who had emigrated to Australia in 1969. I heard it soon after, and often used to sing it, late of an evening, accompanying myself on the guitar, at Le Petit Gavroche in the Marais district of Paris. The Joan Baez version dates from 2008.
I would imagine that the Izel was a navy brig. (The expression Breizh Izel designates the westernmost territory known as Lower Brittany, where Breton was the only language used by the local folk.) Today, a descendant of the sailor lives out in Australia [genealogical website], and he still has relatives in the region of Plouha, on the northern coast of Brittany. The story of this Breton sailor was brought to my attention by my son, whose house is located on the clifftops, just up the lane from the ancestral home of Guillaume Le Queniat.
There are a dozen or so visible plants, and I've started to clean up the ground around some of them:
Meanwhile, the walnut trees of Gamone have donned themselves in colorful leaves, as if to welcome the warmness.
Sometimes, I think of my humble walnuts, not as trees, but as clockwork machines. They obey the seasons precisely, minutely, as if they were programmed… which, of course, they are, like everything else in the Cosmos.
Their hues are tender and fleeting, like the warm phantom of Spring that has deigned to move over Gamone. They are old, too, my Gamone walnut trees… like me. I love and respect them.
They're a little reluctant, however, to let the wide world know that this relationship exists. They're modest. Maybe they themselves are not quite sure yet that it's a genuine love affair. Don't forget that even Kate and William spent a decade together before taking the big step. Meanwhile, Fitzroy has been edging cautiously his big wet tongue into the vicinity of Fanette's tender pale snout, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if actual contacts had already been made.
These days, at Gamone, whenever I admire the marvelously mobile ears of my donkeys, I think of the mayor Cattalini in the Antipodes. Why didn't human evolution pick up this trick? With directional ears, we would know what people are saying behind our backs. As for my donkeys, the reason why they're preoccupied by what's going on behind them can be summed up in a single word: Fitzroy.
My smart dog is a cruel and cunning little bastard, who seems to have decided that those dumb donkeys need to know who's the boss at Gamone. And his technique of persuasion consists of darting in at dog speed and nipping gently the donkeys behind their rear legs, a little like leaving a business card. Fitzroy's business is simple, straightforward: "I've arrived at Gamone, I'm the new chief, the Boss, and you donkey folk had better understand it!" With the arrival of the warm weather, the Boss resides nightly in a luxuriant leafy straw-based outdoor residence that looks a little like a giant bird's nest.
Meanwhile, I'm happy to see that, for the second year, little tits (Mésanges) have made Gamone their nesting base.
Birds, still attached to our place, were darting in and out of the tree box this afternoon. Apparently, Gamone is a good address.
In case you didn't recognize the girl with an octopus on her head, it's Princess Beatrice. Judging from his leer, the gentleman in uniform is visibly charmed by the azure curves of Princess Eugenie. Then there was that crazy ecclesiastical fellow who turned cartwheels in the abbey."You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
— Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
And here's a real-life image of Alice:
I cannot end this evocation of yesterday's visions of Wonderland without reiterating the entire kingdom's fascination for the fabulous Formula I chassis of Pippa Middleton, which merits inspection from every possible angle: a triumph of the very best in British engineering. Admirers might visit the Pippa Middleton Ass Appreciation Society [facebook].
If I'm not mistaken, Shakespeare evoked a British monarch who once cried out: "An arse! an arse! my kingdom for an arse!"
The French have always been convinced that the English are a funny lot. Even in the context of English wedding clothes, however, the flamboyant appearance of this lady was sufficiently spectacular to attract the attention of the French photographer. Besides, I love the puzzled expression of the lady in orange in the lower left corner.
It appears to be Kate Moss. And she seems to have mislaid her wedding gown. But what the fuck is it all about?
David Hicks—the Australian who was imprisoned and tortured in the US concentration camp of Guantanamo—is now assisted by a group of supporters who are contributing greatly to his healing process.
Click the banner to access the Guantanamo file of Hicks, made available by WikiLeaks. In the wake of the release of this data, Hicks and his supporters published a critical statement. Click the following banner to access a presentation by Jeffrey Kaye, in The Public Record, of this statement by the Hicks group:
Here's an extract of the book, Guantanamo: My Journey, published by David Hicks in 2010:
I awoke on a concrete slab with the sun in my face. I looked around and saw that I was in a cage made out of cyclone fencing, the same as the boundary fence around my old primary school. Internal fences divided the cage into ten enclosures, and I was in one of the corner-end cells. Around me, I saw five other concrete slabs with what looked like bird cages constructed on top. A fence covered in green shadecloth and topped with rolls of razor wire was wrapped around these six concrete slabs, able to house sixty unfortunate human beings. Hanging on the inside of this fence were signs saying, ''If you attempt escape, you will be shot'', complete with a featureless person with a target for a head.
It has been suggested that these two men might have been Apple employees field-testing an early iPhone prototype.
