Worth a Look

If you've ever wondered if all Mohammedans in the Middle East are a bunch of screaming mee-mees in search of a Mahdi, you might consider reading this: Gates of Vienna: Hot and Cold: the Extremes of War. For some reason Americans are considered by some to be the villains in Iraq while the insurgents (terrorists, patriots, holy warriors -- pick your name) kill more Iraqis daily than do the Yanks. The whole thing is akin to those misguided souls who hold Quantrell's Raiders as noble soldiers during the American Civil War.

Could It Be?

Occasionally someone will ask your faithful correspondent why he refers to Brigitte Bardot as "almost divine" since he has a marked distaste for the French and has shown no taste for blondes. The answer is simple. La Bardot is more of a concept than she is a real person. She represents a France that never existed in the same way that Penelope represents an Ithaca that never really existed. Any red blooded heterosexual man longs, along with Odysseus, to return to Penelope in the same way that La Bardot draws men who love women. Yours personally prefers women with raven black hair (as is evinced by the ever lovely Lady Nib), but La Bardot is the exception to the rule. She is the France that was French. She is the Marianne.

Now, several years after she was found guilty of "hate speech" for writing that she preferred the sound of church bells on a Sunday morning over the Islamic call to prayer everyday, or that she thinks French whores more honorable than the North African variety. the government of France has put out the word that Muslim clerics who preach anti-Western and anti-French values will be deported. If they had only listened to Marianne twenty years ago.

Check!

The other day your faithful correspondent wrote a screed about the current popularity if the inane poker game of Texas Hold 'um. I still hold to that opinion and will do so until the day the undertaker pounds the last shovelfull of dirt over my casket. It is a silly game that, without the money involved, would not be able to hold the attention of a backward ten year old for more than five minutes.

So imagine my delight when I got home from church this afternoon and saw a team chess match being televised. This particular match was between the US and Russia. The only name I recognized was that of the Grandmaster Susan Polgar, who was playing for the US. The commentary was lacking and the production values of the match left a lot to be desired, but I found it much more interesting than a bunch of cool jerks in sunglasses who should probably be selling used Vegas and Pintos instead of sitting around a poker table in Vegas making more money by lying than the average politician.

Now, to be honest, this particular program was, in a sense, a two hour infomercial for a web based company called www.chessmasterminds.com and for a Russian country western band called Bering Strait. But given the commercial intention of the match (and aren't baseball and beach volleyball commercial enterprises?) the match showed fast chess at it's best. It showed that chess was not only a mind game, but also a "mind" game.

If the program is shown in your area, check it out. I think that you'll see that a King's Indian is more interesting than a possible three of a kind.

The New Hat Feature

I have decided to add a new feature to the Bloody Nib Blog, and in order to pull it off I'll need the help of the readers.

As you may recall, last week I featured a picture of the Jenkins brothers, Roy, Dan and Fob, of Nova Scotia, wearing hats on a spring or summer's day. I'd like to add more pictures of the Men Wearing Hats to the blog. If you have any pictures of men wearing hats (and I mean everyday men wearing hats; not Roy Rogers or Charles I or Johnny Damon) please send them to the blog and I'll post them. Caps are acceptable, but proper hats are the articles of clothing desired. And if you have any photos of women wearing hats I'll post them also.

The whole idea of the top of the head has to be more than supporting hair.

Cursing Will Not Be Tolerated

Your faithful correspondent likes to consider himself a man of the earth despite being raised in a working class suburb on the West Coast of the United States. My forebearers were all from either the South or the Southern Midwest, and a whole bunch of them were sodbusters and at least one was a cowboy and farrier. To be of such lineage is akin to the British boast of being of yeoman stock.

We were taught that cursing is bad. This was probably a result of a Methodist/Baptist theological heritage. Taking the Lord's name in vain was forbidden. Using the F word and all it's permutations was forbidden. Scatological terms were barely tolerated during times of extreme stress. But scatological terms were earthy terms. They were barnyard words not used (at least at that time, in public) among the gentry, and in those days the gentry set the standard instead of the lowers as is now the case. The word "bulls**t" was not considered a curse word. It was a catch all word meaning nonsense, lies or just general worthlessness. Sometimes it meant all three at the same time.

I have, since I got out of the Navy back in the days of Zumwalt, tried to not cuss for the simple reason that cussing revealed a poverty of vocabulary. I'm not the most articulate guy in the States but I figured that I could come up with a socially acceptable maladictive word rather than using the the commonly used profanity.

The ever lovely Lady Nib, a woman of taste, delicacy and discernment, has recently informed me that I have been using profanity on this blog. The examples she has given are the words "hell" and "bulls**t" last used in the entry regarding Texas Hold 'um. In deference to my dear lady wife I will try my best to avoid the use of those words despite the fact that the latter has become such a staple of the common language as to mean something different than its constituent elements.

Multiculturalism Via the Eyegate

Some time ago your faithful correspondent wrote a creed regarding the folly of multiculturalism. The Internet cartoonists, Cox and Forkum, have pretty well made the whole point in a lot less words:Cox & Forkum: The Real Suicide Bomb.

And while writing about cartoonists, please check out Chris Muir's Day By Day. It's listed on the links on the right side of this page. Mr. Muir is as sharp as a straight razor and is just as dangerous to fuzzy thinking.

Now That's Television!

There was a time when television crime shows fell into two categories: detective shows and private detective shows. Examples of the former are Dragnet, Naked City, and Adam 12. Examples of the latter included such shows as Peter Gunn (the show with the greatest theme song in television), Seventy-Seven Sunstrip Strip and the Rockford Files. These shows, for all their age, were great television crime programs. What made them great was that they were modern morality tales. There was good and there was bad. Bad guys were bad and good guys were good and good always prevailed.

Of course, in real life good doesn't always prevail. In fact, considering the current lot of political characters with which we have to put up with, good rarely prevails. But we, as a society, like to believe that good prevails despite the fact that it often doesn't.

And perhaps part of the reason that good doesn't prevail has to do with the shape of crime shows on television since the seventies. At that time such people such as Steven Bochco (sp?) decided to complicate matters by portraying the corrupt cop, detective or whatever and the misunderstood criminal who is more a victim of society than just a rotten bastard without the wherewithal to get a decent job and live a law abiding life.

The result was television programs such as Hill Street Blues, NYPD and Law and Order. These, in turn gave birth to such silliness as The Practice (lawyers as heroes) and Profiler (purported to be a program about FBI criminal profilers but in actuality a show about some sort of psychic with eyes like those of a Japanese manga character) which try to look "beneath the surface" to find the truth of criminal behavior. The result is crime series that deal more with the personal problems of the investigators than the resolution of the investigation.

Crime series on television have turned into soap operas instead of morality tales. We are supposed to be more concerned about a policeman's personal life than we are about than the raping and murder of a mother of four. The crime drama has become an extended exercise in angst instead of the determination of right and wrong. And, perhaps, coincidentally, society has become obsessed with "why" instead of "what." And while we wonder why the what is given sympathy for being a poor mistreated child. It's all nonsense. A bad person is a bad person no matter his or her history. There is no person in the US who does not know that it is a bad thing to rob, rape, steal or kill.

But to get to the point, the ouvre' of the traditional crime/morality program has been pretty much abandoned by Hollywood in favor of idiotic comedies, "reality" programs, forensic soap operas (police grunt work) and "feeling" lawyer shows. It has been left to the minor Hollywood producers to make real crime shows. And those shows, up until the last five years when infomercial took over, have been shown during the late night hours between 1:00 AM and 3:00 AM.

Three example suffice:

Sweatin' Bullets was a Canadian production filmed variously in Mexico, Israel and South Africa. The program was basically of the John D. MacDonald/Mickey Spillaine type featuring a private investigator (Rob Stewart playing Nick Slaughter) based in the Florida Keys and his secretary Sylvie (Carolyne Dunn). Each week at 1:00 in the morning Nick and Sylvie walked the mean beaches of Florida to search out baddies in the name of good and for $200.00 a day. Screwed up criminals were considered criminals first and screwed up second. And at the end of the hour we saw good prevail and evil punished.

Highlander, while not technically a crime show, dealt with crime on a metaphysical level. It was one of the few television shows based on a movie that was much better than the movie. Duncan McLeod (played by Adrian Paul) was a fifteenth century Scot who finds himself immortal for some reason. He then discovers that there are other immortals and that, because of the immortal code, there will at some time in the future be only one immortal who bears all the experiences and memories of other immortals who have been killed by decapitation (immortals can only be killed by decapitation) by the last immortal. The gag of the show is that in a period of close to five hundred years McLeod runs across other immortals, some good who want nothing more than to get on with their lives, and bad, who want to take heads and gain power. McLeod becomes a sort of immortal sheriff who wants the peaceful immortals left alone and to do so, while living his life, is forced, in a way, to kill the baddies. McLeod is a man who is in search of a type of redemption. He doesn't completely understand his condition, but he feels an obligation to deal with it in a responsible manner. McLeod is the wandering hero that has been long forgotten by Hollywood.

SheSpies was a silly show, but was better than most network fare. Consider a version of Charlie's Angels with humor and smarts. The three women involved, Cassie (Natasha Hendridge), Deirdre (Kirsten Miller) and Shane (Natasha Williams) are three ex-convicts who have been, because of their various talents, been recruited by a secret government agency to battle baddies. The concept is unbelievable, but it's entertaining and, despite the T and A, has a moral grounding that the network crime programs don't have. And, at least during the first two seasons, the program was funny. I've yet to see another television program, let alone crime show, that used Gilbert and Sullivan or clever puns as part of the plot. The show fell apart entertainment-wise fell apart when it became more serious, but even then bad was bad and good was good. The only soap opera involved was who was going to get a date.

All three of the above mentioned television series were shown after midnight. They were all clever, well written and had the message that there are bad guys out there and they are bad because they want to be bad. The stuff shown before the eleven o'clock news seems to be a big Kumbaya fest. I don't know about you, but if a guy pulls a knife on me or sticks a gun in my face I think he's bad. I don't care if his mom was a rotten mom or if he lived in the projects. All I know is that he wants something that I've got and has no right to. But maybe it doesn't work that way in Hollywood.

Since We're Talking About Games...

Your faithful correspondent is old enough (or young enough depending on your age) to remember the last Backgammon boom back in the Seventies. The man for whom I worked at the time actually had a lathe hand making twelve dollars an hour (and that was pretty good jack back then) turn him a set of backgammon men from walnut and maple.

It was the introduction of the doubling cube that set off the boom. The doubling cube was a die on which was stamped the numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6. When players started a game the cube was set at 1. That meant that if the players were betting one dollar per point the winner would win one dollar for every man left on the board by the opponent. Turning the cube raised the stakes to two dollars per man and if the challenger did not accept the raise the game was over with the declining player paying the original stakes for every man on the board over the number the proposing player had on the board. If the challenged player accepted the challenge he would turn the cube to 3, meaning that he raised the stakes by a factor of three. It was a game, if played for money and with a doubling cube, resulted in the fast transfer of money.

At that time backgammon clubs sprang up and the names of famous people such as Lucille Ball and Hugh Hefner were attached to the game. Many books were written about playing backgammon for blood, and there were backgammon cruises, backgammon weekends and backgammon teachers running about like latter day Hoyles.

Since those days the game has fallen into the same slot that mah jong has -- a great game that has been displaced by lesser games because of money. In fact, backgammon may have fallen into an even deeper hole. Mah jong is still played enthusiastically among Asians in the US and among retirees and Jewish grandmothers. But backgammon has pretty much been forgotten except for a segment of quietly moneyed aficionados. And it's a rotten shame.

Backgammon is one of those rare games that seems to rely equally on skill and chance. A Persian king once said that the game was more like real life than chess because it wasn't all mind and wasn't like dice because one was able to use chance to one's advantage. It is a game that is capable of change according to circumstances i.e., the Navy and Marine version known as Acey-Deucey. It's easy to play and difficult to master. And maybe that's the reason it's not more popular.

Watching the Grass Grow

Unlike many of the "great houses" Castle Nib was never a hotbed of gambling. Card games, for the most part, were dedicated to pinochle, pitch, various forms of rummy and canasta. Poker, when it was played, was played during Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. The forms of poker played were the old American standard such as five card draw, seven card stud and the occasional freak game like five card no peep (or as sometimes called. five card no peek). The younger set were forced by boredom to engage in these games and we early learned to play poker. None of us was bitten by the gambling bug, but that may be because our elders showed no mercy and were no loath to take our allowances as winnings. You faithful correspondent early learned that he would much rather give a dollar to get a thing instead of give a dollar and hope for a return. Stuff was real. A hope was useful as a puff of smoke.

Having since married many years ago and having established the homestead of Bloody Nib Manor, I've rarely played poker. I like playing cards, but poker is not a game I enjoy and it's a game the attraction of which I've never understood. The only attraction I could see was the money involved. David Parlett, in his book The History of Card Games summed it up well. Poker is a game that is not played with cards. It is game played with money. The cards, at the showdown, only determine who gets the money. In other words, if poker was a true card game then a player holding a pair of twos would always lose to a player holding three treys. But, as we all know, the bluff and reading of the other players is the real game. To be short, poker is a bullshitters' game. We here at Bloody Nib Manor haven't much patience for those who sling the bovine feces, and have pretty much ignored the development of poker.

So imagine my surprise when I turned on the television one day and saw a Texas (properly pronounced Takes Us) Hold 'um tourney being televised. For a few minutes I sat in a daze wondering why anyone would watch such an inane game. Texas Hold 'um is to draw poker what tic tac toe is to nine men's morris. The whole strategy of the game is to make the other players believe that the two cards in one's hand are better than theirs by the amount one bets. It is the money that makes the game. Without the money the game is less than interesting. But, because of the money, the game has become the latest fad, and teenagers and their fathers have found common ground in the garage by lying to one another other a flop. It would be amusing if it weren't so sad. And by sad I mean the trumping of dishonesty over skill.

I could, if given the resources, make Liar's Dice, bigger than Texas Hold 'um. Liar's Dice is a bar game, usually played for drinks, that relies on the lying ability of the players. If the prize were, say five thousand dollars per throw instead of a glass of Pabst, there would be much more interest in the game than there is. Hell, given enough prize money Yahtzee could become the next big thing. There is more skill and mental evaluation in Yahtzee than there is in Texas Hold 'um. And Yahtzee, for all it's simplicity, is a game that demands more predictive ability than does Texas Hold 'um. Yahtzee, because it is a game of perfect information, i.e.. each player's hand is open to the others, it is a more open and honest game than is Texas Hold 'um.

Consider the great card games; Bridge, Whist, Euchre, Piquet, Pinochle, Pitch and Cribbage. Each of those games, while interesting in themselves, were and are often played for money. But the winning and losing of money is a reflection of one's ability to properly play cards, not lie about the value of one's hand. Piquet, probably the most interesting and most neglected card game, is close to chess in its play. But without big money involved it is an exercise for eggheads. With big money it would be a fad.

So that's where we've come. The value and interest in a game as a spectator's sport depends on the cash. The money means everything. The game means nothing. Put away your checkers and chess boards. Burn your Go and Monopoly sets. Put the backgammon in the back of the closet. Just pull out your deck of cards, stack of bills and prepare to watch the grass grow and be lied to.

Football: Evidence of Devolution

We're halfway through professional baseball season. That means that sportswriters are now writing about the upcoming football season. The latest issue of The Sporting News dedicated about a third of its pages to a "Football Preview." It was a sad thing to see. It was tantamount to seeing the coverage of a thoroughbred race being interrupted to speculate on the outcome of the novelty daschund race.

The popularity of American football in the United States has always been a mystery to me. The game has no flow. It reminds me of an old lawnmower I once owned that would run for thirty seconds and then stop, run for thirty seconds and stop, run for thirty seconds and stop. Some people like to say that football is a form of bloodless warfare and is thus the most noble of sports. If football is a form of warfare, it's the most primitive form. It is a game for men who have neither learned to use tools nor the fact that a ball, once caught,can actually be thrown again. In the latter respect, the game of rugby shows more intelligence.

The football players, in the field, are hardly recognizable as human. The average NHL goalie wears less padding. Football players on the field look more like Battlebots being controlled by ten year old boys with joysticks than humans. I've always found it interesting that football fans like to brag about how tough their heroes are while ignoring the fact that rugby players are regularly tackled and yet wear no padding.

Also, consider the behavior of football fans. Take the Oakland Raiders' Black Hole, for example. The Black Hole is a group of fans who buy seats in a bloc. They often paint their faces like skulls, wave scythes, try to intimidate opposing teams by acting like their idea of drunken pirates. Each football team has it's version of the Black Hole and the behavior of such fans really doesn't say much good about the average football fan. Football fans are cultic in a way that baseball fans aren't.

Football is a thuggish game and this is reflected by the criminal records one finds when perusing the rosters of NFL teams. Every year we're entertained by stories of player X of team Y being arrested for robbery, drugs or rape. And while the same things sometime happen in MLB and the NBA, such occurrences are much more rare than they are in the NFL.

Football is an urban game and has all the art and charm of a pair of cattle cars slamming together in a stockyard. It is a game that appeals to people who want to see intermeshed gears trying to turn and waiting to see which gear is torn apart.

But if football is your game I can only say that I hope you enjoy it. I don't begrudge you watching your game of stalls and grinds. But you really might want to consider buying an ant farm and watching that instead.

Men In Hats

My dear friend, Sir Jamie of Eagle Rock, sent me this picture of his father, Roy, and his uncles taken more than a couple of years ago in Nova Scotia.

You can tell by the hats alone that the picture was taken during the late spring or during the summer.

The photo shows that, no matter how handsome a man is, a hat adds to his appearance.

"...'Cause She Always Comes Back To Me"

Back in the days when your faithful correspondent was a laddie there were four seasons. They were) in no particular order): baseball season, kite flying season, bike riding and rock fighting season, and yo-yo and spinning top season. This is not to say that we didn't play football, but our form of football was more akin to rugby than it was to college and professional football (the only sport that can make soccer look exciting). And we played, when our bikes had flat tires or our yo-yo strings were broken or there was no wind for our kites, forms of basketball such as "horse" that required skill instead of muscle or intimidation and allowed for no showboating.

Baseball season, of course, ran from April to September. Some kids went into Little League. The rest of us were content with playing ball in the street using parked cars as bases and having to interrupt the games to allow cars to drive down the street and using tennis balls instead of baseballs. We didn't need helmets or gloves. We had a stick and a ball and that was all we needed.

March, April and May were considered kite season. During those months one could run down to the local liquor store and buy a diamond shaped kite for 15 cents and a ball of string for 25 cents. Box kites cost 25 to 35 cents. During those three months there seemed to always be a kite in the sky, They weren't fighting kites or acrobatic kites. The kid who could get a box kite in the air was considered a hero. The idea of flight itself was magical. During a season one usually went through three or four kites since the kites were made of tissue and sticks and string.

Bike riding and rock fighting season went from May until September. When I speak of bike riding season I mean the fact of riding bikes for fun. not mere transportation. Rock fighting, meaning the throwing of rocks or dirt clods at the "enemy" kids really depended on the availability of rock and dirt clods and "pillboxes." Yours truly was lucky enough to live in an area were a freeway was being built, so rocks and "pillboxes" were plentiful, and the younger brother, Sir. Danny was unlucky enough to catch a rock in his mug resulting in a chipped incisor.

But the high point of the year at Nib Manor was yo-yo season, which, if memory serves correctly, ran through the winter. It was during the yo-yo season that the legendary Duncan company sent out their yo-yo men. The men, usually young though appearing old to yours truly, appeared on television, at supermarkets and schools, demonstrated the possibilities of two pieces of maple with a wooden axle and Egyptian cotton string. The yo-yo men demonstrated tricks of what at the time seemed to be almost impossible; Man on the Flying Trapeeze, Eiffel Tower, Atomic. The tricks, in memory, go on and on. And the yo-yo men made it all look so easy. Their message was that with a some practice any one could do the tricks, no matter race, gender or religion. The ever lovely Lady Nib was lucky enough to actually have a Duncan yo-yo man come to her school, while yours truly had to settle for watching the tricks on television. And despite the fact that it was the Duncan company (since sold to Flambeau) who sent out the yo-yo men, there was an assumption that a Royal yo-yo would work just as well.

The yo-yo was the way for a fat kid, a nerd kid, a brainiac kid, to show the the the mini-jocks in Little League or Pop Warner football that he wasn't a "spazz." At that less PC time a "spazz" meant spastic and thus someone who was less than physically elegant. Yo-yo eloquence was a solitary skill and thus one that was not always appreciated for what it was.

Recently your faithful correspondent saw a videotape of yo-yo tricks performed by a trio of young people using the Yomega yo-yo. It was impressive. Or to be more correct, it would have been impressive except for the fact that the yo-yoists were using ball bearing yo-yos instead of the solid axle yo-yos of old. The tricks were all the tricks used by the old Duncan men who only modified their yo-yos by waxing the wooden axles of their Imperials. Thus we see that, in a sense, as technology progresses skill regresses or remains the same.

This is not to say that the new generation of yo-yoists is lacking in skill. What it suggests is that their skill has not gone beyond those great biscuit slingers of old.

But whether or not the new generation measures up to the old, the important thing is (and was) that the yo-yo gives the loner kid the opportunity to show his or her stuff. in a physical way. The mastery of the yo-yo is, in a sense, a form of zen or the practice of Taoism; the bearing of what is and making the best of it.

Tomorrow: The idiocy of football.

A Great Dane

To be absolutely honest, Denmark is not often thought of here at Nib Manor. It's generally thought of, when thought of, as a country where people use an alphabet that utilizes odd superscripts, is the home of Lego, and produced a depressed prince with a mother fixation. There is also something about sardines. But perhaps that's Norway.

Having said that, your faithful correspondent has, for the past few years, held Denmark in higher regard than its Scandinavian and Germanic neighbors for the simple fact that the Danish population has held the idea of a United Europe in contempt. They know that they are Danes, not Europeans. If the average citizen of California thought of himself as merely an American instead of a Prunie or Yankee he would be identifying with a llama herder and Amazonian indian in the same way he identifies with a New Yorker, a Chicagoan, an Atlantan. or a Seattlite.

But to get to the point. A man in Denmark has been jailed for not serving Frenchmen and Germans at his pizza parlor because he sees the French and German position regarding the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism as bending the knee to Islamic terrorism. Aages is one of those rare Europeans who like the US and he has paid the price for being pro-American. Check out his website to get the full story:Aages Pizza And once you've checked out his website, please send him an e-mail to let you know how much you appreciate his sacrifice.

Some Things Are...

Some things are better left alone. Take for example the fountain pen. The ballpoint pens was supposed to be an improvement for the fountain pen. The advantage was that a ballpoint could make carbon copies. The disadvantage was that the ink in ballpoints is oil based and results in smears while accepting invitations from the Queen for all night sessions of Texas Hold 'em. The porous tip pen was intended to replace the ball point. The result was mashed points for those with heavy hands. Then came the roller ball, then the gel ink pen. Both of those have ink that results in smears if one is a fast scribesman. And so, after about fifty years, the fountain pen is back because it does the simple thing. It writes in a quick drying ink and has a point-to-paper drag that makes some semblance of decent penmanship possible. One could even argue that the fountain pen was a needless, indeed deleterious, improvement on the steel (sometimes called the "dip") pen since the steel pen, during it's height, allowed the user to change the nib type and ink color with less trouble than the various "improvements." Besides, a mischievous, but charming rascal, is now unable to dip the pigtails of the girl he will marry some fifteen years later into the inkwell.

Another thing that has recently been changed is the beer tap. Properly speaking, beer in a bar, a pub or a brauhaus should be drawn from an oak keg using a wooden spigot. But modern life, being what it is i.e., sometimes pretty crappy, the pressurized aluminum keg with metal tap has gained ascendancy. The proper drawing of a pint of beer was an art. The trick was to draw a beer without getting too much of a head, but with a head. The proper drawing of a pint of Guinness was the doctorate of beer drawing. A good bartender would hand over to the customer a pint glass of the brew with a quarter inch head despite the fact that Guinness, if poured or drawn improperly, results in a glass of foam with a little stout at the bottom.

A fellow in the Great Lakes region has come up with a new spout for beer taps that makes the drawing of a proper pint as easy (perhaps easier) than drawing a Dr. Pepper. at the local 7-11. Every glass, no matter how clumsy, stupid or rushed the barkeep is the head is always between 1/4 and 3/8 an inch. I don't know if it works with Guinness. I'd be surprised if it does. But consider this: A man or woman walking into a bar for a beer has no business being rushed or being in a hurry. A bar, tavern, pub or cantina is a place to relax and loll about talking politics, baseball, playing skittles or cribbage. A beer from the keg should be a leisurely thing. A beer (including the waiting for the over-priced beer) at a ball game should be a leisurely thing if for no other reason than the fact that baseball is a leisurely game. Any guy or gal in a hurry to get a draft beer should run over to the local liquor store and pick up a can of King Cobra or Olde English 800 because that person isn't interested in beer. That person is interested in getting a buzz. The new tap spout is for the buzzers.

The new spout is to the good drawing of a beer what paint by numbers is to art.

But I've got to end this now because I have to mend my quill.

Carpetbaggers

Back during the bad old days of the post Civil War South there were Yankees who flocked to Dixie for the only purpose of fattening their purses and/or imposing their values on the states that made up the Confederacy. These men were called Carpetbaggers. The term comes from the impression that they showed up in Dixie carrying carpetbags (short term visits) as opposed to arriving with trunks (long term or permanent stays).

Several times during my machinist career I've run across what I considered the modern form of carpetbaggers; Englishmen, Mexicans, Argentinean who intended to live and work in the US until they reach retirement age, and then return to their home countries with their Social Security payments and 401(k) money. I've never thought much of such men and have never been loath to empty my pipe on their steel toed boots.

But, let's face it, there are worse. To wit, the immigrant from a Mohammedan nation who comes to the Grand Republic not only intending to maintain his or her Arabic identity, citizenship and loyalty, but intends to force the body politic to surrender itself to such heretical and unAmerican nonsense. Such a person is a carpetbagger in the worst sense of the word i.e, a form of Islamic imperialism to be forced upon a nation that is, at least nominally, Christian.

The founders of the nation were overwhelmingly professing Christians. Jews arrived on the North American continent during the late 17th century. Buddhists, Confucians and Taoists hit the west coast in the mid 19th century and Mohammedans arrived in the 19th century. Up until 2001 there was no racial/ethnic attack on the US. During WW 2 Buddhists were not rounded up and put in camps. Some Japanese, some Germans and some Italians were put in camps In each case it was the nationality of the person that dictated whether or not they'd cool their heels in an interment camp because in in the mentioned cases the United States was not being attacked or threatened by religions or sects. The US was being attacked by other nations and those interned, whether rightly or wrongly, were subjects or citizens of hostile nations.

But at least since the Iran hostage crisis the US has been attacked in one form or another by radical Islam, not any particular Islamic nation.

The 9/11 highjackers were all living the Lives of Reilly in the US. The bombers in Madrid were more than likely living better and more free lives in Spain than they were in Morocco. The London bombers would have probably pissed and moaned and whined worse than nancy boys with runs in their stockings if they had been sent back to whatever sand pile they came from. And what did this group of clowns have in common? Not nationality. Just their adherence to a heresy that the greater Christian world will put up with with contempt, but which Islamic leaders expect to become dominant in the West. Such carpetbaggers make the old post Civil War carpetbaggers look like philanthropists.

This is not to say that all Mohammedans in the US or UK are guilty of rotten behaviour. They aren't. But those who are not part of bombings, in either fact or sentiment, must make themselves known as people who value those qualities of the ideal an United States or the United Kingdom that their brothers are trying to destroy. They must, in order to gain the trust of the populace of the US and the UK, to show that they are residents of those countries because of the values of those countries, and that they are not trying to make those nations copies of the countries from which they came.

When is a Bastard Not a Bastard?

By this time we all know that some Islamic sheetheads placed and exploded bombs on several London Underground trains, and one bus.

The incidents are, of course, criminal and evil. But, of course, this is the type of thing to be expected from people who, though lacking the military power to impose their political and religious views on the West, strive to do so.

But here's the interesting thing. About fifteen years ago (maybe longer) the IRA exploded a bomb in London during the changing of the Guard ceremony. The result was, if I remember correctly, that several people and several horses were killed. One of the British newspapers, it may have been The Sun, headlined their story about the incident with the words, "Those Bastards!" Thursday's bombing resulting in the deaths of at least 49 commuters excited no where near the invective that the IRA bombings did. There were no references to the bombers as bastards, baddies or even mischievous rascals. In fact, the BBC has stopped referring to those who placed and detonated the bombs as terrorists and now refers to them as just bombers.

Certain clergymen and women of the Church of England (an institution where probably at least 60% have questionably orthodox Christian beliefs), have gone as far as to say that there is no such thing as an Islamic terrorist. There are only terrorists who say they are Mohammedans. Well, ain't that just too special? Let's just all hold hands and sing "Michael Row the Boat Ashore." Tim McVey (the Oklahoma bomber) has often been pointed at as a "Christian terrorist" despite the fact that no recognized Christian group ever preached such actions as that which he carried out. But people who take literarally the preachings of their half educated clergy of a half educated religion are given a pass because the press doesn't want to offend the sensibilities of the greater Islamic world. In other words, the standards for the behaviour of the Mohammedans are lower than that for Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, animists.

Why? Could it be because the press and politicians are afraid of the Mohammedans? If the LA Times or the NY Time or the BBC call Islamic terrorists in the West "Islamic terrorists," perhaps in those halls of journalistic "integrity" there is the possibility that a bomb may be delivered with the editors' mail. On the other hand, Christians and Jews, if insulted by the news organs, will call for boycotts, Hindus and Buddhists will protest, Taoists will shrug their shoulders and laugh. And animists will just continue to worship idols and wait for movie stars to give them some jack in exchange for "higher knowledge about Baron Samadhi."

Isn't it strange that during the IRA bombings that the IRA was referred to as "Bastards" and the Islamic terrorist haven't been referred to in the same way despite the fact that there is probably a higher percentage of Irishmen in Britain than there are Mohammedans. I can only assume that Mohammedans are the world's "special needs" children i.e., they can mess their pants, hit other kids and scream like Tasmanian Devils, while everyone else is expected to behave like a civilized person.

Our forefathers had the grit to turn back the Mohammedans at Lepanto and Vienna. Apparently we don't.

Hats

Sometime after World War II men (at least West of the Mississippi River, which is the only part of the nation along with the deep South, that is close to being America) decided to stop wearing hats in daily life. I don't know why. I can only guess that once the veterans of World War II got back from the Pacific and Europe they were pretty tired of wearing steel helmets, garrison caps and overseas caps that they didn't like, and so decided to ditch the whole hat concept in toto.

Before the Big War it was the usual thing for a man to wear a hat. It was such a part of a man's being that a man would wear a worn out hat or cap instead of going hatless. My grandfather, Sir Bill of Talequa, at one time asked my grandmother, Lady Vera, to make him a cap because his had worn out. She was a mean woman with a needle and managed to deconstruct a flat cap (now known as an eight panel newsboy's cap) and make a new cap for Sir Bill using a piece of screen door screen as the stiffener for the bill. That's how important it was in the thirties for a guy to cover his noggin.

Now we seem to have descended to the baseball type cap on the coast and, for those lucky enough to live inland, the cowboy hat. The fedora, homberg. porkpie, panama and beret have become historical curiosities.

When I was a laddie there was a book in the local library entitled Call Me Mister. The book was intended for the young man coming into adulthood. The whole idea of the book was to instruct a young man about what was expected from a young man in the matter of manner, dress and behaviour once the young man entered adulthood. It was, in effect, a guide for going from Keds to wingtips or steel toed boots. I've looked for copies of the book since then, but I have been unable to find any. In the book the matter of hats was addressed. It was assumed at the time that the book was published, that a man would wear a hat. I don't know when the book was published. I can only assume that it was released in the late forties or very early fifties. The advice that the book gave regarding the wearing of hats for men was, by today's standards, classist. Those aspiring to professional status were advised to wear hombergs, fedoras, snap brim, or alpine hats. Craftsmen were advised to wear snap brim hats or flat caps. Laborers were expected to wear flat caps or baseball type caps. Men in the service industry were advised to wear baseball type caps or variations of the overseas cap. The artistic type was directed toward the beret or felt sombrero ala Oscar Wilde. Summer wear was a little more open. Panama hats, skimmers or boaters, and snap brim straws were considered open territory for any guy. Formal wear was considered the silk hat or the fedora. Cowboy hats were for cowboys or farmers.

My dear father, Earl Bud of Carthage, has rarely worn a hat during my lifetime except for the occasional 'Gimme" cap while performing some outside task about the Bloody Nib estate. I think that after several years in the Marine Corps during World War II he'd pretty much had it with hats; tin or other. That is the only, the one and only thing, in which he has let me down. I think that hats are important for men for the following reasons:

1.) Protection from the sun. One the West Coast the sun is more an enemy than a friend. As I learned in the Navy it's not much fun to have the tops of one's ears sunburnt to the point of peeling.

2.) Identity. During the great days of machinists and craftsmen the members of that fraternity wore either fedoras or flat caps and their head wear identified them as being men who were honest workmen despite the oil and grease on their overalls.

3.) Style. Hats and caps identified a certain style. Ball caps indicated a casual style. Fedoras were a little more formal,and hombergs showed a style that most of us would not approach because the homberg wearers were so formal, or to use the vernacular, tight assed.

4.) A reflection of personality. Homberg: uptight. Fedora, snapbrim or flat cap: a regular guy. Baseball type cap: a goofball or baseball fan. Beret: a guy who's an artist or pretends he is. Cowboy hat: howdy Tex.

Some men these days complain that hats give them "hat head." "Hat head" is the fault of the barber, not the hat. George Washington, U.S. Grant and John Bunyun didn't complain about "hat head." But in those days men were men and not aspiring models for GQ.

Live8

The Live8 concerts are being performed this week and we here at Bloody Nib Manor are, well, underwhelmed. The cause, an attempt to raise money for the 'survival' of Africa, is, I suppose, one to be lauded, but there are two problems with the whole thing. Actually, there are more than two problems, but if one were enumerate the number of problems with any project Martin Luther would have been buried as a Catholic priest and Alexander the Great would be known as Alexander the Boy Kisser.

But let your faithful correspondent get to cases.

Think back (or if you're a young sprite, get in the way back machine) to the Concert for Bangladesh. If you remember, back in the 70s that particular piece of real estate was in pretty bad shape. The country had just seceded from Pakistan, the weather had caused all sorts of havoc, and India wasn't willing to offer much aid. George Harrison, by far the deepest thinking Beatle (John Lennon was a poseur of the Jim Morrison sort i.e., a neo Dadaist) although a little screwy in matters of religious faith, and by all accounts a very kind and caring man, decided to mount a concert and recording to benefit the benighted people of that South Asian nation.The result some thirty odd years later is that Bangladesh hasn't changed much. The weather hasn't been as bad as it was thirty years ago, but the condition of the populace is about where it was then.

Then there was LiveAid. LiveAid was a Geldorf project. If I remember correctly, and I may not, it was a concert for the benefit of the victims of an African nation -- Biafra, I think. The result? A bunch of money collected and not much of hit getting to the man in the street.

Then there was the We Are The World thing. I don't remember what it was a benefit for. By that time I figured that rock musicians were not the best indicators of how to solve the world's problems. The result? A snappy little tune written by Michael Jackson that was referred to in hushed tones by NPR radio hosts. Otherwise, not much.

Now we have Live8 and it is supposed to somehow raise money and focus the world's attention to the situation of the average African. Good luck, Mr. Geldorf. The money will probably do nothing but fatten the pockets of African leaders, and the world's attention will last until the television cameras are turned off. If the average African is lucky the benefit he will get from the concert will be a new stick to scratch the dirt with. Meanwhile Robert Mugabe, Nelson Mandela and company will get new Toyota Camrys.

The problem in Africa is not with wealth. Africa has great natural resources. The problem with the nations on the African continent is the leadership. Most Sub-Saharan nations are kleptococies. They aren't democracies, republics or even socialist paradises. No number of concerts is going to solve that problem. It would be like having a concert for Cuba. The problem isn't with Cuba or Cubans. It's with Fidel Castro and his cronies. But then, those in the entertainment industry, whether film, television or music, do not seem to think Castro such a bad guy and perhaps they want to bring the average African up to the level of the average Cuban so the average African can have the wherewithal to try to escape a bad situation in the same way that Cubans keep doing.

The second problem is the entertainment at Live8. Here is a list of the acts that the media presents as the big attractions: Paul McCartney, U2, Madonna, the Who, Elton John, Pink Floyd and Mick Jagger. Most of those acts hit their peak twenty years ago, at least. In McCartney's case, he really saw his best days almost forty years ago. Consider the fact that most of the people who were fans of these acts are busy trying to pay their mortgage, for their kids' soccer shoes or weddings. And to expect those between the ages of sixteen to twenty-five to get excited about this bunch would be like George Harrison putting Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney in the front of the Concert for Bangladesh. Live8 is trying to appeal to the eternal adolescent when, once real life whacks one in the head, there is no such thing as eternal adolescence except for those who never got around to working the 9 to 5. Mr. Geldorf has added some younger acts, but considering the fact that the average young person, despite a bit of disposable income, is too busy trying to pay the rent to worry about some poor guy in Africa, there's not a whole lot of cash to be found. I somehow get the feeling that the money raised from Live8 will end up in the same place that the money from the Concert for Bangladesh, LiveAid and We Are the World ended up -- in the pockets of the kleptocrats.

Mr. Geldorf hopes to influence the G8 conference to forgive debts and pour money into a hole. In short, the problem with that is that as long as one treats people like children they will behave as children. There are some people who seem to feel that Africa, despite having greater natural resources than say, India or Southeast Asia, is a land of children. It is a land of, to use a term I've used before, "little brown babies." The duty of the modern world is to give the leaders of Africa a blueprint, an instruction manual of how to take care of themselves If nothing else, the G8 countries should hand the African leaders the rule that was so successful for John Wesley and the British Methodists -- "Make as much as you can. Save as much as you can. Give as much as you can."

A Bit of a Rip Off

What's the idea behind trade paperback books?

It used to be that trade paperbacks were published as alternatives to hardcover books. They were intended to be books of lasting value with content of lasting value. Usual trade paperback publications included books by Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald and Wolfe, among others serious authors. The cost of trades was about double that of mass market paperbacks, but they were books one was likely to read several times over the course of ten or more years. Most new popular novels and potboilers went straight from hardback to mass market. Most mysteries and detective novels were usually first published in mass paperback. Let's face it; most books published in any given year aren't worth reading more than once.

It's infuriating to go to the bookstore and find a book that is of mild interest and which one is perhaps willing to spend six or seven dollars to give a look at and find that the damn thing costs fifteen dollars in trade paperback. Today I went to the bookstore and found Maigret novels that were published fifteen years ago in mass paperback for three dollars apiece now being sold in trade paperback format for fourteen dollars. There was a series of detective novels written by a Russian that feature stories that have plots approaching those of Saturday morning movie serials being pawned off for fifteen bucks. I even saw one book of about 180 pages where the margins of the pages were one inch wide and the spacing between the lines was double -- a lot of white space.

Trade paperbacks are a scam perpetrated by the publishers, and you can be pretty sure that the author isn't pocketing the extra six bucks. Raymond Chandler isn't around to pick up the extra cash. Neither is Georges Simeon. But their books, which in mass market format fit nicely into one's jacket pocket, are now published as trades, cost more, and only fit in a briefcase.

Somebody is making some serious cash out of this deal, and it sure isn't me and it sure isn't you.

I'm not one for calling for boycotts, but I'm about to call for a boycott of trade paperbacks simply because the damn things cost too much for what one gets. Is anyone with me on this?

Critics Are Not Editors (Or Are They?)

Another book about Hillary Clinton released to the hungry public last week. This particular tome The Truth About Hillary, by a man named Ed Klein, is supposed to be causing a bit of a dust up among the Hillarites because of some claims in the book that show the junior Sinister, I mean Senator, from New York in an unflattering light. Some in the Republican camp are in a tizzy about the book because, while they may appreciate the implication that our dear Hill is the re-incarnation of Lady Macbeth, they feel that the book goes too much for the personal instead of the ideological and personal revelations about Ms. Rodham may backfire and create sympathy for the poor thing. Well, I suppose Mr. Klein just can't please anybody.

We've not read Mr. Klein's book here at Bloody Nib Manor and we have no plans to do so. The reason is not because of the advertised content of the book. It is simply because Hillary Clinton is uninteresting. In fact, she's downright boring. Even the excerpts from her auto-hagiography showed her to be just another pol on the make. She's come up with no great ideas, written no great works of literature or music, experienced no great adventures, had no great affairs and has not had the honesty to be either a great criminal of the Jesse James type nor the ruthlessness to be a great manipulator behind the throne such as Livia, wife of Augustus Caesar. She's just a politician who learned the lessons from her dog-eared copy of Machiavelli For Dummies a little better than most of her fellows.

But I digress. This week on a nationally syndicated radio program hosted by Michael Medved there was an interview of Mr. Klein regarding his book. During the interviews Mr. Klein stated something that puts the whole thing in perspective. He stated that he is not a political writer and that he is, for the most part, an entertainment reporter. Ergo, Mr. Klein was writing about Mrs. Clinton as a personality or celebrity. Or should I write, a Personality or a Celebrity? Mr. Medved, who is as close to being a front man for the Useless Party (remember, Republicans are useless and Democrats are dangerous) as one can get without being named Karl Rove, took Mr. Klein to task for not writing more about Madame Hillary's political and ideological positions, her constant habits of dissimulation and duplicitous behavior, as well as her overwhelming ambition and hubris. Mr. Medved then went on and told Mr. Klein what Mr. Klein should have put into the book and what he should have left out. After a few minutes I wasn't sure if I was listening to an interview of an author whose book was already taking up space at the local emporium or if I was eavesdropping on a book editor advising a writer on how to improve the manuscript. But then, Mr. Medved is one of those who feels that Mr. Klein's book will be red meat for the Party of Dean when Bill's wife decides to make her grab for the brass ring, so there is a possibility that he is working two edges -- the book's crummy and perhaps he can kill its sales before it becomes a popular controversy. The book is not the book that Mr. Medved wanted to see. So instead of taking the book as it is he attacks the book, not according to what it is, but according to what he wants it to be.

What the hell is that all about? I've seen the same thing occur in movie reviews. The reviewer will write something to the effect of, "Gigli (just to pick a title out of the air) is not the movie it could have been. If the male lead had been a steel worker instead of a stockbroker and the heroine had been a debutante instead of a porn actress and the director had been Fritz Lange working from a script by William Faulkner instead of Alan Smithee working from his own script, this could have been a watchable, perhaps even enjoyable, film." It's like reviewing a KFC restaurant and complaining that the chicken wings would be a lot better if they came from pigs.

By the time a book is published and in the bookstores, or the first review copy of a movie has been shown in a theater, it's too late for reviewers and critics to start saying what the products should have been. They have to, in fairness to the writer, the movie-maker and the public, address what is. If they want to rewrite the product, do it on their own time. Don't waste the public's time trying play Mr. Potato Head with someone else's spud. Just criticize, for better or worse, the tater as it is.

Finally, a last word about Miz Hillary. Don't be surprised if they (you know -- "those guys") start floating Billary's names as potential replacements for Sandra Day O'Connor as Supreme Court Justice. I would not be surprised if she snuggled up to the ex-Prez this evening imagining herself achieving the governmental hat trick; sinister (dammit! I mean senator), Supreme Court justice and elected president in 2008. It's an impossibility of course, but hyper-Rotarians have strange dreams.