BLOG

I’m checking out a new photo sharing service offered by flickr.com. Big Chill pictures are here, stored at full-size, and in full resolution, in case anyone wants proper prints.

OK, the iBook arrived this morning. It’s slimline, sleek, stylish and fun. Blogging resumes tomorrow!

Courtney’s laptop died just before we went to the UK. We’re back, but the computer hasn’t been resurrected. I’ll be blogging again in full force (and some style) when our lovely new Mac iBook arrives in a couple of days!

The other night Courtney and I were photographing her cat, Skunk, in the hope of capturing an image worthy of mycathatesyou.com. We think we’ve achieved it. All we need now is a caption.

Use the comments system to leave your caption. I’ll give you… um… until we return to the US. That’s two weeks. Get captioning!

Listen to this, then check out Nagl’s site, where I stole the link from.

It’s nice to see Ben Folds has been keeping busy.

Even if you were for the war in Iraq, you have to admit this is definitely very shoddy behaviour. Next time someone tells me that they refuse to see Fahrenheit 9/11 because it wouldn’t be showing support for the troops (and someone I know did use this incoherent argument) I’m going to tell them about this:

Discontent in the ranks [of the US military] has also been stoked by reports that life insurance sales agents have been using compulsory financial planning sessions with raw recruits to sell them expensive policies.

An investigation by the New York Times found that many of the soldiers who signed policies had no idea what they had bought, believing that signing the documents was obligatory and that they were agreeing only to put aside savings. In fact, they had agreed to pay inflated monthly premiums for less coverage and benefits than the standard package offered by the army.

Source: The Guardian

The NYT article is here (and requires you to register with the site). Apparently the scam has been commonplace since Vietnam, but has naturally had a recent surge.

If you haven’t heard of bugmenot.com, now might be the time to try it out. Go there, type in the address of the site you want to view (but can’t be bothered to register with) hit return, and the bugmenot database will provide you with a username and password valid for that site. No need to give away your email address and other personal details. I love it.

It’s a bright summer day and as I sit by the front window of the apartment reading "The Art of Dramatic Writing" I can hear a distant trumpeter practising the opening bars of the Godfather theme. I wonder what music played at Marlon Brando’s funeral?

As you can see from this picture, the camping trip was no washout. A little thunder, a lot of insect bites, a spot of walking, plenty of good company and verdant countryside. On Saturday we ate lunch on a rocky outcrop overlooking the simply-named Lake #4. Left to right: Amie, Laura, me. Behind the camera: Courtney.

I have decided the Adirondacks are NY’s Lake District. Many of their attributes compare favourably, save the names. Lakes #1-6 are no match for the likes of Derwent Water, Grasmere and Windermere. Can you imagine Wordsworth writing a poem titled "Lines Left on a Tree Stump Overlooking Lake #4," or "For The Spot Where The Hermitage Stood on Island #6, Lake #2?"

There is no prize for identifying the Wordsworth poem I culled the title for this post from, but have a go anyway. Now I have email to do. I feel as if haven’t emailed anyone for a couple of weeks.

I passed the driving test, by the way. The instructor said I had a "touch of the cowboy" to me, and I wasn’t even wearing the hat.

A couple of friends and Courtney and I are heading off into the Adirondack mountains tomorrow. Here’s the weather forecast for the area. We’re going have lots of fun this weekend. I must remember to pack my waterproof everything.

Oh, and I’ve got my utterly redundant US driving test tomorrow too. If I fail I’ll probably die of shame before I get soaked to the skin and frazzled by lightning.

I’d sworn off these things, but… well… it’s Eddie.

Which Eddie Izzard line are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

I just saw this article on boingboing, the directory of wonderful things. I must admit that if next time I enter the US I am treated with the same unmannerly way as last time, I’ll be tempted to take similar action myself.

Of course, Mr. Miller was simply going through the metal detector. I’d like to know what he’d do when confronted by US immigration.

How squeamish is this Yahoo News report of the story? “Pants area,” indeed. What’s wrong with “groin?” And what was the “expletive” in the man’s bag?

More animal oddity at the Eastman House. There are similar horses dotted around Rochester, including one with a buffalo mane. This is the best of the bunch.

George Monbiot delivers a perceptive and persuasive article in the Guardian about a "scruffy comedian from Michigan." I think I’d like to borrow his words – because they’re more eloquent and better researched than my own – to illuminate my response to Fahrenheit 9/11.

Using my own words once more; the best account I’ve ever read (if you know of better, please let me know) of the dirty business of fighting in wars and the propaganda machine that reports those wars back to the public is George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. In early editions of the book, chapters five and ten are analyses of the European press coverage of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 (in later editions these chapters become appendices). Orwell checked through issues of newspapers from the far left, the far right, and all those in between to discover how their versions tallied with his personal experience of fighting against the fascists as a volunteer. He discovered that almost all reports, from the communists to the fascists, and on the very far right, the Daily Mail, were complete fabrication. Interestingly, in a footnote he remarks:

I should like to make an exception of the Manchester Guardian. In connection with this book I have had to go through the files of a good many English papers. Of our larger papers, the Manchester Guardian is the only one that leaves me with an increased respect for its honesty.

On the whole, I think the editorial stance of the Guardian today bears favourable comparison, although I did notice some inconsistencies in the reporting of the first few weeks of the most recent Iraq war.

I was mildly surprised to hear that Ray Bradbury, author of classic sci-fi novel Fahrenheit 451 was furiously displeased with Michael Moore’s hijacking of his title. I’d have thought that Bradbury’s politics would have been broadly similar to those of Moore’s. The full interview is on the website of Swedish paper Dagens Nyheter, but I can’t find any complete translations, only heavily editorialised presentations of carefully selected snippets. If anyone comes across an entire translation, please let me know, as I’d be interested to read it. Certainly, Moore’s appropriation of the title is somewhat clumsy, but does this qualify him as a "horrible human?"

As I was looking for information on Spike Lee’s new movie, She Hate Me (the wonderful Chiwetel Ejiofor, who played Okwe in Dirty Pretty Things has a role) I was unfortunate enough to read the imdb review. I have a love/hate relationships with the imdb reviews. They’re like car crashes – awful, but you can’t stop looking. This particular review is glib and generalised, but not a huge offender – until the final sentence.

Although it will open after Roger Moore’s more publicized documentary, attacking the President, make time to enjoy this treasure!

Would this be Roger Moore, the man who admits “I might not be as good an actor as Sean Connery Lawrence Olivier, but I’m taller,” or Roger Moore, the political satirist and documentary maker? I love his no-nonsense interviews: “I’m aiming directly at your groin, so speak now or forever hold your peace” (20 Junkopia points awarded to the first person – Courtney excepted – who can name the movie this quote comes from).

As Dave asked so nicely in the comments, yes, Courtney and I (and a couple of friends) saw Michael “Roger” Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 and came away feeling pumped up and pissed off. It’s a documentary that aims for emotional response rather than intellectual engagement, as does all of Moore’s work (Michael’s and Roger’s too, I guess). I can’t imagine the same style being used in a European political documentary. We didn’t stay til the end of the credits, but I hope there was a bibliography on display. Even if there isn’t, Moore lists all his facts and sources on his website.

Of course, I didn’t go into the movie waiting to be convinced. I already knew that Bush is a lying, cheating liability, whose malign influence has damaged both the US and the rest of the world. He needs to be removed from office before he does further harm. But Bush isn’t the problem: he’s just the biggest symptom. There’s a lot in the USA that needs to change. Sure, tackle one issue at a time. Get rid of Dubya, but once that’s done there’s still a lot more work to do.

I don’t agree with all of Michael Moore’s politics and methods, but Fahrenheit 9/11 is important because it’s a high-profile movie which has galvanised and unified the American left. In the face of at flood of spin and obfuscation that is American political journalism this particular movie stands firm.

And I just realised my closing metaphor makes quite a good pun on the documentarist’s name.

Terror hit the formal gardens of the ex-residence of the ex-captain of industry, ex-founder of Kodak and general ex-eccentric, George Eastman this afternoon. Terrorist spores, which it is suspected had been launched from Northern Korea and lain dormant for several weeks, grew at a blistering pace into lumbering tentacled carnivo-plants. Hundreds of them hurled themselves at the walls of the Eastman House, an American institution, in an attempt to spread fear and panic in the run-up to the Presidential election. Courageous locals armed with pitchforks and weedwhackers attempted to stem the tide of vegetable viciousness, but to no avail. Many were pulled from the clashes covered in sap. At the moment it is not clear how many lives have been lost, but the final number is widely expected to be higher than the redundancies announced by Kodak earlier this year.

In the light of these events, President Bush has declared a "war on nature" which will commence with the burning and felling of dark wood trees all around the country. Responding to claims that his surname suggests he was in some way involved with the plant life insurgency, the President said "I am in no way, and never have been a vegetable, nor have I ever had relations with a vegetable. I ain’t got no magic beans, neither."

Courtney and I finally visited the Eastman House today. It’s very good. Cameras from all eras including one that looked like a cannon and some lovely Leicas; a world travel themed photograph exhibit with some great snaps by Robert Doisneau and Martin Parr in particular; the formal gardens, which are currently in full bloom; and the house, a good quantity of which is preserved almost exactly as it was when George Eastman was alive. I swear the man was slightly eccentric. Anyone who regards this as suitable decor for a conservatory is a couple of banana trees short of a plantation.

And we rounded it all off with a screening of The Ghost and Mrs Muir, a Joseph Mankiewicz melodrama with a stirring soundtrack from Bernard Hermann, in which the ghost of an old sea captain (Rex Harrison) dictates a book of memoirs called "Blood and Swash" to a young widow (Gene Tierney). Marvellous.

The pictures of the Hopf family Independence Day turkey-fry are now online. I’ve given them their own gallery in the photos section. Click here to have a look at the scariest method of cooking a large bird I’ve ever seen.

Before we cooked the bird I convinced Courtney’s sister Maggie that the turkey wasn’t fully defrosted and that because hot oil and water don’t mix there was a good chance the turkey fryer would launch it, like a ball of flame, at the house. I’m proud to report she was genuinely worried that her home was minutes away from burning down.

Of course, deep fried turkey wasn’t the only bizarre food consumed this July 4th. Kelvin had some kind of multicoloured bagel monstrosity – for breakfast, no less.

…and very compelling. Nagl, over at Falling Sky points the way to some fantastic Polish movie posters. From the look of this one for David Cronenberg’s the Fly, the artist who created it saw the same things in the film as I did. There’s a really sexy one for Dirty Dancing too, sexier than the actual movie by about 20° C.

I decided the old design of the weblog was starting to creak a bit – it was nearly two years old, dang it! So I tinkered a bit today. I hope it all works well and looks good. If you spot any problems, let me know.

The comments will now be handled nice and elegantly by Blogger, so to comment on posts in the future, click on "comments." I’ll be disabling the old comments system in a couple of weeks, so don’t click "respond" to leave comments. OK?

Just a quick post to keep things bubbling while I work on the turkey frying pictures. Another Park Ave shot, the house across the road has dollar bills glued to the pavement (sidewalk) out front. I’ve not seen a single person fooled in six months.

The official period of mourning is now over, but everything was still at half-mast on Friday when Courtney and I visited the Port of Rochester Ferry Terminal. Everything that looks like a flag, at least. While checking the place out we caught sight of this:

I can just about understand a large number of Americans wanting to mourn Ronald Reagan, the ketchup-loving ones especially, but I’m doubtful that Canadians give two hoots that the old fool kicked the bucket.

Then again, the Maple Leaf appears to be flying at somewhat less than half-mast. Perhaps there’s some law which dictates that no flag of a foreign nation on US soil is permitted to fly higher than the Stars and Stripes. I wouldn’t be surprised.

…that people do to celebrate American Independence Day, this deserves some kind of prize. Courtney’s parents have decided to investigate the worrying trend that is sweeping the States: the deep-fried turkey. I am terrified at the prospect. What next? Deep-fried cow?

What’s wrong with a nice bit of battered haddock?

Worst thing is, if the turkey isn’t properly defrosted the deep fryer will launch it into orbit, or so I’m told. I’ll try to get pictures.

During my last visit back to the Shire, Dom noted that I had changed from being plain-and-simple “Liam” to “Porky Liam.” Much as I like the idea of this as my superhero alter-ego, I don’t fancy it as my normal human state.

There are plenty of things to blame my spare tyre on: American sized portions and the fact that as a child I had to clear my plate before leaving the table; the cold, cold winter; the six months forced unemployment that kept me indoors. Oh, there are many sad, pallid, bloated excuses I can make for my increasing girth, none of which cut the mustard – or my weight.

Courtney has noticed a similar ballooning around her waistline, which started with my arrival and her switch away from a toast-only diet. Now, with the arrival of summer, and the moderate certainty we’ll be able to leave the house without getting snowed on, she has decided we’re to start running off the fat. Tonight I expect we’ll raid the wardrobe to find a semblance of a jogging outfit for me. I don’t do sports clothing, so the results should be interesting, and probably bloggable.

But right now it’s time for lunch. A 14″ Italian sub sandwich with lettuce, black olives, Swiss cheese, spicy mustard and hot peppers from Wegmans should just about sort me out…

I took the camera out today on a little image-harvesting session. As Courtney and I are leaving the environs of Park Avenue and Rochester for good at the end of July, I thought I’d get a few snaps of the places that make the street for me. Here’s my favourite piece of street art. Book-nerd cool!