It's All Falling Apart Here And There

We all know that the Saudis are a nation of bastards, but we sometimes have to be reminded:

SAUDI ARABIA - PHILIPPINES Saudi Arabia, 70% of Filipino domestic workers suffer physical and psychological violence - Asia News


And if you think you local stockbroker is a nice guy, just remember that he's out for himself and his firm:
Greg Smith on Goldman Sachs: How the 'Vampire Squid' sucked the world dry | Mail Online

The Arabs are not your friends. The Wealthy are not your friends. Your friends are your family, friends and fellow church members.

At the End of His Rope

In the wake of the killing of 16 Afghans by an American soldier Hamid Karzhai has demanded a full investigation of the incident and claims that he is at the end of his rope in his dealings with the US.
We here at the Manor are of the opinion that Mr. Karzhai is talking for the international audience and is not speaking for the Afghan people.
This is evinced by the fact that about a month ago, when the soldiers in Afghanistan burned a pile of Korans the result was Afghans jumping up and down in front of every Western aimed camera they could find and burning effigies of The One in protest, but there have been no such expressions of outrage by the Afghanis over the deaths of 16 of their countrymen by an evil man. The Afghan population just doesn't care. The Taliban does the same thing. It's like the old stereotype about the Chinese: life is cheap. But to burn a book written by an illiterate merchant who misunderstood Christianity and Judaism is unacceptable.
We, in the US, the UK and NATO, are dealing with savages in Afghanistan. They are people. like the Pakistanis, the Iranians and the greater Arab world, better left alone and isolated until they throw a punch at us or our allies. They have nothing but oil to sell us. They have no culture, no inventions, no education and no religion that is worth a drop of our blood.
And despite our blood and toil to put Mr. Karzhai in power he has, because of the evil work of one man in the taking of the lives of those who his own countrymen consider worth less than a Koran, said that he is at the end of his rope in dealing with the US.
Let us hope that when the US leaves that benighted country that it is understood to Mr. Karzhai that he will be reaping the product of his sowing and that he will not be allowed back into the US to run a gas station or sweep out a machine shop. Then he will find that he will be at the end of a literal rope strung up for him by his countrymen. And we won't shed a tear.

Journalism and Actors and Lies

Recently National Public Radio did a piece about the working conditions at the factories in China that make components and assemble iPhones, iPads and iPods. The original piece was based on a monologist named Mike Daisey who claimed that he had gone to China, masqueraded as a businessman and gained access to several of the factories (he first claimed he went to ten factories and later said that he'd visited five his translator says that he visited three). In his monologue (which is the lazy man's Chautauqua talk -- all opinion of feelings dressed up as "facts"), Mr. Daisey made claims about the treatment of the workers that made it appear that some Apple products were the result of slave and child labor under the same working conditions as prevailed at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory before the fire. In other words, places that one wouldn't want one's worst enemy to work.
The result of Mr. Daisey's appearance on the original NPR program is that a hue and cry went out among the liberal and conservative users of said Apple products and a giant guilt trip among those who punch their e-mails while standing at the line at the local Whole Foods.
But then, someone tipped NPR off that Mr. Daisey's claims were not quite as truthful as originally portrayed. They did some investigation and found that there were many discrepancies between what Mr. Daisey claimed and what the translator and other investigators claimed. NPR confronted Mr. Daisey this past Saturday and he admitted that he had:
1.) Lied for the greater good.
2.) That he is not a journalist. He is an actor. Thus, he is not a liar. He is a dramatist.
Needless to say, NPR felt burned because it had been made suckers NPR admitted that it had not checked Mr. Daisey's claims as it should have. But it did not point out that one of the reasons that NPR did not fact-check as it should was because the network thought it had such a good story to slam Apple. NPR is, in its own way, as guilty as Mr. Daisey in spreading lies. But once a lie has been let loose it's hard to get back under control. It's like trying to pick up mercury with a pair of tweezers. Mr. Daisey spilled the bottle of mercury, NPR spread it around. Now NPR is running around with a pair of tweezers. Good luck. But the story has gone around the world several times.
Here's the NPR story on the retraction of the original story:

Retraction | This American Life

In somewhat the same vein, those in the entertainment culture like to claim that they are all about entertainment and have no influence on the greater culture. Other times it claims just the opposite. One the one hand movies, television and popular music, in their glorification of various forms of violence, cheap sex and drug use, are just entertainment. On the other hand the same media claim to use their influence to make people aware of bullying, breast cancer, apartheid and racism, and attempt to end those things.
Well, which is it? The entertainment media either have or do not have an influence on the cultural and the shifting of cultural norms. The answer is, both. Those who are unthinking sheep allow the media to define their behaviour. The thinking and grounded look beyond the nonsense of television and movies for their culture and look to the great thinkers of ages past for those verities that lead to the life well-lived.
But let us face the fact that most people are sheep who do not look to the Good Shepherd but instead look to the wolf in wool. And the results, since standards have fallen to those of Imperial Rome, have not been heartening. Storytelling has fallen to nagging and propaganda that is not for the good of the polis but for the acceptance and promotion of deviant behaviour and thought. Bill Sykes was not a bad man. He was an oppressed plebe who could not help but kill Nancy. Satan is just misunderstood. That type of nonsense.
A British writer has taken it upon himself to state the obvious and he hasn't gotten any joy for taking a stand:

Hollywood's cultural revolution is making gay marriage inevitable – Telegraph Blogs

When this writer was a young man back in the '70s there was a short-lived period when being homosexual was the thing to be. Most people do not remember it. A high school in Los Angeles was pretty much set aside for those student, male and female, who self-identified themselves as homosexual. Your faithful correspondent knew several young women who claimed that they were lesbians and the lovely Lady Nib was hit upon by another young woman with whom she had attended high school. Now, some good years later, almost all of those people are now parents or grandparents and they'd much rather that their former adventures in Sodom be erased from their memories. And, despite the fact that the fashion industry promotes a homophile image in its advertisements for clothing and scents, in a few years those who bought the lie will be denying that they were, for a period, homosexual. The boys will finally grow into men and the girls will grow into women. And it will happen when they hit forty years old and ask themselves, "What in the Hell have I done with my life besides shave my chest or let the hair on my legs grow out to a pelt?"

Fags Are Us

We here at the Manor, and our fore bearers and ancestors at the Manor have long known that there is really something not quite right about actors. Actors pretend to be men they are not. And they really don't have real jobs. Their "job" is to pretend. Kids pretend. Real people are real or just themselves in a way that actors seem unable to be.
Modern movie and television actors do not even have the wherewithal to memorize the shortest of Shakespeare or Jonson plays. They know no poetry. They know no plotting. They just read words, for a maximum of five minutes worth of talk from a page written by another person.
Actors seem to be in a life-long state of childhood, and thus are easily influence by those who mean the culture no good. Novelty seems to be their thing. And a sense of empathy for the "downtrodden" seems to get them going despite the the fact the "downtrodden" are destructive to the society.
Here are a couple of examples of the idiocy and absolute silliness of actors that will result in the downgrading of the populace:
Clooney and Pitt Join Star-studded Gay Play - HispanicBusiness.com

Hollywood's cultural revolution is making gay marriage inevitable – Telegraph Blogs

The society has been taken over by a minority because the society is afraid of hurting the minority's feelings.
We're all fags now.

Since When?

There was a time when organizations such as GLAAD and PETA were considered jokes. They were like the dust in the corner of a room.
Now they are considered important organization despite the fact that GLAAD represents a bit more than 1% of the national population and that PETA actually kills about 90% of the animals they take into their shelters. The local pound does better than that.
But a loud voice, to the media, seems to equal importance or verity. It's actually a condemnation of the popular news media more than the silliness of the organizations.
Kirk Cameron, a Christian man in the acting profession, has made a statement on national television that (oh horror of horrors!) that homosexuality is unnatural. And of course, GLAAD has come out with their BB guns and the media has fallen for it.
Here's Cameron's statement. It would be shocking if it wasn't true:
GLAAD slams Kirk Cameron | Inside TV | EW.com

An Open Letter to "President" Karzai

Dear President Karzai,
Recently there was an incident that took place in your nation that caused a bit of controversy. Some members of the United States military burned some volumes of the Koran and other Islamic literature that had been used by prisoners to send coded messages to one another. The prisoners marked the literature to indicate passages or letters. From my understanding, the marking of the Koran by a reader is considered a bad thing by orthodox Muslims.
The result of the burning of the literature were a series of riots and the killings of American military personnel by Afghan soldiers. This despite the fact that the Korans had been defaced by Muslims and were, in fact, only, according to your own religious precepts, only good for burning.
And our President apologized for the burning to you and the Afghan people.
Know this. President Obama is a girl. He apologizes to every damn body. Last year he was about to apologize to the Japanese for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki until the Japanese government told him not to. An apology from Mr. Obama is worthless.
And please know this. The American people do not apologize. They just don't care. What they care about is that American soldiers have been killed by soldiers serving your government. They care that we have wasted blood and money on you country.
You are in power because of the US. You should be apologizing to us for the bad behaviour of your countrymen. If it were not for the US you would be running a liquor store in Oakland. You owe us. We don't owe you.
One day the US will leave your nation and we hope that you will stay there once the Taliban takes over. We don't want you running under our skirts like a frightened kitten. We don't want you. We don't want your countrymen. We want you to play the man. But you won't because you're a rounder, a crook and a lick-spittle of the worst sort.
Ask yourself this question: Why was Kabul more modern in the 1960s than it is now? It wasn't our fault/ It wasn't the Russians fault. It was your fault. Why should we help you against your will? You're savages by nature.
Yours,
The Bloody Nib

An Open Letter to the Syrian Rebels

Dear Syrian Rebels,
For some months you have been waging an armed rebellion against the Syrian government and you have not having very good success at overthrowing the Great Opthamologist. Your attempt to participate in the Arab Spring seems to have come a bit of a cropper.
Now, let it be known that most of us in the United States think that Mr. Assad is a man of bad character, a totalitarian and general creep of the Arab sort, and we really can't blame you for wanting to send him to Hell, or at least a sumptuous retirement on the Costa del Sol in Spain.
But your rebel army seems to be a rag tag construction despite the fact that some Syrian Army soldiers have joined your ranks. You do not seem to have the leadership nor competence to overthrow a ruthless regime.
Let it be known that we in the U.S. Wish you a bit of luck. We tend to root for the under-dog.
Several times on the radio and on television we here at the Manor have heard those among your ranks cry out, "Where is America? We need America's help to find freedom!"
Well, guess what, dudes. If you're waiting for the U.S. to help you out you're going to be waiting for a long time. A very long time. And the reason is not because we don't care about the freedom of our Arab/Muslim co-humans. The reason is simply because you stand for something that is other than freedom as we in the West know it.
On September 11, 2001 there was film of you all jumping up and down on the streets celebrating the deaths of over 3,000 Americans caused by your Muslims. You celebrated the deaths of Americans and you expect us to feel pity for you? Americans are suckers for a sad story, but we hope that we aren't that big of suckers.
Also, Egypt has shown us that once the strongman is out of power the Muslim Brotherhood moves in. Why should the United States help the Muslim Brotherhood get into power? The result of Muslim Brotherhood government is a worse persecution of Christians than under the strongman. The U.S. is an overwhelmingly Christian nation. Why should we participate in the oppression of our Christian brothers?
If you want help look to the Arab League. Look to your own. Don't look to us or Europe.
The American Civil War was waged without foreign assistance. The French revolution was accomplished without foreign assistance. Do it your own damn selves! American blood is not worth your Muslim Brotherhood dictatorship.
Yours,
The Bloody Nib

The Oscar!

Today is the Academy Awards Show celebrating the best of the motion picture industry. The word "best" in the previous sentence is, of course, subjective
But whether or not the moving pictures and actresses and actors who are awarded the little golden idols are the best in their respective fields is, in the long run, meaningless.
The Oscar ceremony is really nothing more than a back-slapping festival put on by a group of rather emotionally needy and superficial people who are really not all that sure if their trade is of any real worth to the greater society. They, like professional athletes, are paid a lot of money and adulation that children do for free, or even have to pay to do.
Ask yourself this question: Is there an awards ceremony for the best in my trade or profession? A company my have an employee of the month, or even of the year, but that Starbuck's barista is not competing with other store's, or even those in the over-priced coffee world to receive that award. Who would be truck driver of the year? Or the engineer? Or the doctor?
We, outside of the motion picture industry, slog through 50 weeks a year (allowing for a two week vacation) expecting nothing more than a paycheck and perhaps a bonus of some sort. But in the entertainment industry there are awards given every time one turns around.
A violinist studies at Julliard for four years, at least, hoping to get a paying chair at any orchestra or symphony and working up o the first chair, receives not much more than a paycheck despite the fact that he has probably spent his life since the age of seven playing the fiddle. There's no chance nor expectation of walking down the red carpet in a trick tux accompanied by a quarter dressed babe. But an actor with good cheekbones and an ability to read, in a convincing way, the words written by another person, and who has probably not studied acting in the classical manner, is adulated and fawned over for pretending to be something that he is not.
John Donne, the English poet of the 17th century, despite his misspent and rascal early life, called actors "idiot actors." And Donne knew of what he spoke. He knew personally Ben Jonson and perhaps Shakespere. His son-in-law was a famous actor at the time. And he was right. Few actors are as smart as the people they portray and even fewer are as wise.
But they are eye-candy and that's what the populace seems to want. And that's rather sad.

A Stolen Thought

What was once thought sinful or immoral eventually becomes accepted, and perhaps even mandatory.

Huh?

Back when this writer was a young apprentice the shop in which he worked held a drive for the United Way. An hour during a particular work day was set aside for the employees were given the opportunity to listen to a presentation by a flack from the United Way attempting to separate them from their hard earned long green for various "charities."
The result of the drive was that during the set aside hour the only people in the room where the presentation was given were the United Way flack and the personnel manager.
Needless to say, the personnel manager was embarrassed and asked why nobody showed up for the presentation. The reply given was usually something along the lines of, "The United Way supports organizations I don't like." The PM said, "But you can direct your contribution to a particular organization." And the machinist would answer, "That means that I gave to the organization I don't like because the money will be shifted from the undesignated money. In one way or another I'm giving to such and such charity that I don't like. I'll just give my money directly to my favorite charity and make sure that it gets to where I want it to go."
Have said this, here's this:
Huh? - hitz53's Space

On Letter Writing and the USPS

For some years the United States Postal Service has been the whipping boy of conservative and libertarian politicians and commentators because the Postal Service, does not only not make money through its postal fees, but because it loses money. Said Solons suggest that the USPS be either disestablished and the delivery of First Class mail be taken over by private firms along the lines of UPS or Federal Express, or that private companies be allowed to compete with the Postal Service. They will even go so far as to say that First Class Mail is outdated and has been replaced by e-mail and on line payment of bills.
Unfortunately, the check of the mail box for many of us results in junk mail, bills and magazines. Perhaps we may receive a card or two at Christmas, on our birthday or Valentine's Day. Very rarely do we receive a letter from a friend, a postcard from a relative vacationing in the Bahamas or a tome from one's grade school teacher expressing what a pleasure it was to teach one despite the fact that one remembers one's self as being an awful brat.
Instead we punch on the computer and check our e-mails for personal messages and then delete them after a while.
All these things are all rather sad. It's sad that the USPS has become a joke for unimaginative comedians and cheap shot pols when one remembers that the United States Post Office was set up by Benjamin Franklin and was for many years a department of the government. The Post Office was considered so important and the mail so sacrosanct that to interfere with the delivery of the mail was a Federal crime. The delivery of the mail was a service that was expected by the citizen to be performed by a federal agency. Now there are voices calling for the delivery of the mail to be performed by private firms with no guarantee that said mail will be delivered or tracked. And as far as cost and convenience is concerned, this writer has sent packages via both the Postal Service and United Parcel Service and he has found the USPS much easier to deal with, and cheaper, than UPS.
And one wonders, if there were competition for the USPS one's mail would be delivered to one's house into one's mailbox. Not to mention the matter of stamps or where to post letters. From how many companies would one have to buy stamps and where would one post them?
All of the above is written with the understanding that the writer is not an employee of the United States Postal Service. But he posits that the main reason that the Postal Service has declined is because of us and we are all worse off for it.
Those who have read novels written in the late 18th century, the 19th century and up to the mid 20th century are aware of how important that proper letter writing once was, and who were alive and reasoning in the 1980s remember receiving letters and post cards from friends and relatives. To receive a proper letter from a friend, whether handwritten or typed, was usually a joy that went beyond the receipt of an e-mail. And to tell the truth, it probably still does.
Think of the times back in Regency England when people used to cross write (writing the length of the page and then turning the page ninety degrees and writing over the previous writing) their letters to save money on postage, the letters sent by Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barret Browning, the shoe boxes of letters sent by one's father's or grandfathers squatting in foxholes or trenches in World War One, World War Two, Korea or Vietnam that have been saved and cherished. Can one really cherish an e-mail printed out on a printer? A proper letter, written by hand or a typewriter, placed in an envelope and sent with a stamp on the envelope is to give the recipient a part of one's self. There is, on the paper, the handwriting, even if it's only a signature, part of one's self. One offers one's bad handwriting or bad typing (or good handwriting or good typing) to the recipient in a way that e-mail cannot. E-mail, for personal correspondence, is a fake. It is electrons. It is, no matter how heartfelt, the real deal. It does not have the DNA or a real person.
One wonders if in twenty years there will be books published containing the e-mails that are made up of e-mails from American soldiers in Iraq to their sweethearts.
Writing proper letters on paper with a pen, pencil or typewriter is hard work. It makes the writer slow down and think in a way that e-mail does not. In proper letter writing one doesn't use emoticons, memes or any of most popular e-mail abbreviations like LOL or ROTFL.
E-mails are quick for quick notes to friends, but do they really replace a letter? Imagine receiving an e-mail from a friend vacationing in Japan such as "Am in Japan. Having a great time" instead of a postcard of the NHK Tower saying the same thing. Which would you rather receive?

Cheap Musical Instruments

As regular readers of this blog are aware, your faithful correspondent is an advocate of cheap musical instruments. He believes that good and enjoyable music can be made with a cheap First Act guitar and a pair of bongos as well as it can be made with a Fender Strat and a Ludwig drum set.
Be it known that this author has a $40 uke, a $70 guitar, a $7 pennywhistle and a $20 harmonica, none of which he plays well, or even competently. But he enjoys playing those instruments.
He also owns a thing called a StrumstickTM. The instrument is also known, and will be known heretofore as a stick dulcimer because the StrumstickTM is a trademarked name and the "inventor" of said "stick" is not loath to complain about other builders of stick dulcimers calling their products being called "S-sticks."
This writer has owned a "S-stick" for some years and has enjoyed fooling about with it, although he has never taken it very seriously. The tuning is usually G-D-G, which allows for a good range of songs, and the thing is usually played in a diatonic mode. It has only three strings and some people think that it is easier to play than a proper dulcimer, though yours would dispute this since the diatonic spacing of the frets make the thing easier to play on the lap than as a half guitar.
But it is a fun thing to fool around with. It actually sounds more like a banjo than it does a guitar or dulcimer. And the cost of the thing, the last time checked, is not awfully high especially if one buys one of the many stick dulcimers besides the "S-stick." In fact, the quality of the construction of the "S-stick" is lacking and feels really cheap. The neck is very narrow making it difficult to finger chords and the neck feels almost as if it were teak. Teak is a great wood, but it's not very smooth. Considering the fretting demands of a stick dulcimer one would expect that the neck be not only smooth, but slick. One can fret faster with a proper dulcimer than a "S-stick."
So if you want to have a cheap stringed instrument that is fairly easy to play you might consider the stick dulcimer, or in a bind, the "S-stick."
Here's a YouTube thing of an explanation of the "S-stick" not "S-stick" controversy:
This is NOT a Strum Stick! - YouTube

When Actresses Go Bad

Sometimes one, while watching a motion picture, will see an actress that one sees some promise as a proper actress in. And often one is disappointed in that said actress decides that she would rather be a "Star" instead of an actress.
This is a short post about the two Kates - Kate Winslet and Kate Beckinsale. One decided to become an actress and the other decided to become a "Star."
Both women entered the motion picture industry at about the same time. Beckinsale perhaps a bit earlier. The first time this writer became aware of Beckinsale was when she co-starred in a movie version of Much Ado About Nothing. Your faithful correspondent first saw Winslet in Beautiful Creatures. And he hoped that both women would go on to become skilled and real actresses.
Beckinsale went on to star in Cold Comfort Farm, Emma and The Last Days of Disco. All three films, while not art films, were movies that demanded acting skills. Winslet went on to star in Titanic and was in danger of becoming a "star", but she seems to have come to her senses and has deigned to go into movies that were examples of acting and writing instead of special effects. Meanwhile Beckinsale has gone into a series of vampire/werewolf themed action pictures and the result has been that, while she's been pulling down a bit of coin, has not shown that she has any acting chops anymore. She'll occasionally co-star in a bit quieter movie, but she's the co-star and is not asked to do much than support another actor. A walking stick could do that.
It's a sad thing to see a woman of such talent as Kate Beckinsale fall to the "action star" bit. In a few years she'll be too old to be an action star and she'll have a hard time finding a job as a middle-age actress. She'll always be thought of by the casting directors as the lanky Limey carrying a sword.

Men In Hats

After a bit of an absence it is time for another Men in Hats feature.
Having in the past covered the majority of types of hats worn in the United States and Europe it has become time to travel farther afield. For this edition we travel south of the border to Mexico to take a look at the sombrero, or as it is more properly know in Latin America and Spain, the sombrero mexicano.
Properly speaking, sombrero in Spanish means "hat." "Hat" meaning a head covering with a proper brim going around the crown of the hat and not a cap with just a bill in the front (or back or side if one is into the hip-hop nonsense).
The sombrero descends from the Spanish "grandee" hat -- a felt hat with a straight flat crown and a fairly large flat brim. One sees picadors in bullfights wearing such hats. The native Mexicans changed the hat to something with a much larger curled brim and a sugar-loaf type crown.
There are various styles of the hat ranging from the woven straw or reed hat, usually worn in the southern parts of Mexico, to the heavy felt and straw spangled charro version worn by Mexican vaqueros and frontera singers to the chaparral, in which the back of the brim is almost folded up flat against the crown somewhat like a bi-corn.
The most practical variation is the straw/reed type. It is fairly light, gives plenty of shade and the tall crown allows the heat of the head to escape.
Nowadays the hats are worn by country people and vaqueros and singers. At one time the Mexican Federal police wore them as part of their uniforms. And of course, Mexican revolutionaries wore them.
Who should wear a sombrero? A Mexican rural person, a Mexican cowboy, a Mexican country singer, and anyone on the beach on a hot day.