UPDATE: Currently trending at 1.5 million views in one day.
One of the more beautiful and moving concerts in recent memory. Recorded in September 2006, live on location at the Palace of Charles V, in the Alhambra, Granada, Spain. Only recently made available on YouTube. It runs about one and a half hours. Placed after the jump in order to use a larger video viewer.
“The real question, John [of the Cross] suggests, is about what you are really after: Do you want ‘spirituality’, mystical experience, inner peace, or do you want God?
If you want God, then you must be prepared to let go all, absolutely all, substitute satisfactions, intellectual and emotional. You must recognize that God is so unlike whatever can be thought or pictured that, when you have got beyond the stage of self-indulgent religiosity, there will be nothing you can securely know or feel. You face a blank: and any attempt to avoid that or shy away from it is a return to playing comfortable religious games. The dark night is God’s attack on religion. If you genuinely desire union with the unspeakable love of God, then you must be prepared to have your own religious world shattered. If you think devotional practices, theological insights, even charitable actions give you some sort of purchase on God, you are still playing games. On the other hand, if you can face and accept and even rejoice in the experience of darkness, if you accept God is more than an idea which keeps your religion or philosophy or politics tidy – then you may find a way back to religion, philosophy or politics, to an engagement with them that is more creative because you are more aware of the oddity, the uncontrollable quality of the truth at the heart of all things. This is what ‘detachment’ means – not being ‘above the battle’, but being involved in such a way that you can honestly confront whatever comes to you without fear of the unknown; it is a kind of readiness for the unexpected, if that is not too much of a paradox.” -- Rowan Williams, “The Dark Night”
Strong language warning, but it's all in a good cause. Besides, you probably need this or know someone who does.
A video riff on this classic by John Hawkins:
1) Only in America could politicians talk about the greed of the rich at a $35,000 a plate campaign fund raising event.
2) Only in America could people claim that the government still discriminates against black Americans when we have a black President, a black Attorney General, and roughly 18% of the federal workforce is black.
3) Only in America could we have had the two people most responsible for our tax code, Timothy Geithner, the head of the Treasury Department and Charles Rangel who once ran the Ways and Means Committee, BOTH turn out to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes.
4) Only in America will you find people who burn the American flag and call America an "imperialist nation," but who get offended if you say they're not patriotic.
5) Only in America can we have terrorists kill people in the name of Allah and have the media primarily react by fretting that Muslims might be harmed by the backlash.
6) Only in America could someone drinking a $5 latte and texting to his friends on an iPhone 4 complain that the government allows some people to make too much money.
7) Only in America would people take rappers who brag about shooting people and selling drugs seriously when they complain the police are targeting them unfairly.
8) Only in America would we make people who want to legally become American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege while we discuss letting anyone who sneaks into the country illegally just become American citizens.
9) Only in America could the people who believe in balancing the budget and sticking by the country's Constitution be thought of as "extremists."
10) Only in America could the most vicious foes of successful conservative women be self-proclaimed feminists and the National Organization for Women.
11) Only in America could you need to present a driver's license to cash a check or buy alcohol, but not to vote.
12) Only in America can we have terrorists fly planes into our buildings and have some people’s first thought be "what did we do to make them hate us?"
13) Only in America would we think teaching kids at college is an appropriate job for communists, terrorists, and other dregs of humanity.
14) Only in America could people demand the government investigate whether the oil companies are gouging the public because the price of gas went up when for every penny of profit the oil companies make, the government tacks on roughly 24 cents’ worth of taxes.
15) Only in America could the first people asked to weigh in on the seriousness of a racial incident by the media be professional race hustlers like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Ben Jealous. In other words, it's like calling in a car dealer as a neutral source on whether or not you need to get a new car.
16) Only in America does airport security put its hands on your underwear....while you're wearing it.
17) Only in America could the government force a skating rink to have handicapped parking spots and Braille on the ATM machines.
18) Only in America could the government collect more tax dollars from the people than any nation ever has before in all of recorded history, still spend a trillion dollars more that it has per year, and complain that it doesn't have nearly enough money.
19) Only in America could the rich people who pay 86% of all income taxes be accused of not paying their "fair share" by people who don't pay any income taxes at all.
20) Only in America could the people who approve of slaughtering 25 million females babies via abortion accuse OTHER PEOPLE of waging a "war on women."
First the rant:
Then the response:
Continued...
water, water,
flesh-cord feeding
taut bundle
of woman's belly.
the brow of the child
is first to form,
while gills still
pulse in the jostled quiet.
the strong sleep
before birth hypnotizes
until shock of tongs and thrusting thighs
obliterates
the song of falling haze,
blue-red
veins, translucent
skin,
breath, heartbeat
and hunger.
tears and a sometimes
return to the quiet
stars in their cool
pond, bright blankness.
the depth
and the old remembering.
the wave
without the water.
-- Berkeley, California, 1966
[Found in an old notebook]
Rolling Stones Doom and Gloom from Trunk Animation on Vimeo.
"Through the night your face I see.
C'mon baby won't you dance with me.
Sittin' in the dirt.
Baby won't you dance with meeeeee..... Yeah!"
1962-2012. What a long strange trip it has been. First studio record in seven years. Crank the speakers. They've. Still. Got. It.
Undecided Voter: someone who parades their stupidity as proof of their morality. -- David Burge @iowahawkblog
The DRUDGE REPORT 2012 reveals this afternoon: TV RATINGS FOR VP DEBATE DOWN -27% FROM '08...
FOXNEWS 10,019,827
CBS 8,308,421
ABC 8,287,610
NBC 7,851,757
MSNBC 4,378,671
CNN 4,145,951
What does it mean? It means two things. First, Sarah Palin is a babe and without her many don't care to dial in on 90 minutes of an old geezer with bad plugs and windshield glare teeth grunting around an ernest young fellow with a predilection for putting a rutting rhino to sleep with a single spreadsheet. Absent a close race it just wasn't appointment television. The race, in case you haven't been paying attention, is no longer close.
The ratings confirm this. The drooping Veep debate ratings mean that, by and large, everyone that is really going to vote has decided who they are voting for and doesn't need to "evaluate" the Veep selections. They are irrelevant to the main business of 2012. After all, it is not called "The Vice-Presidential Election."
Yes, yes, we know all about these "undecided voters," but -- seriously -- fuck all five of them especially the four living in DC. Nobody, but nobody, is really undecided now.
Right now, today, I know, you know, we know and they know. Everybody knows. And the truth is that there are more, many more, of us in 2012 than there were in 2008. And we are all going to the polls whereas many of them are not. I know that they all say that they are, but you know how deeply and compulsively they lie so why would we believe them about this.
Our army appeared from out of nowhere back in 2010 and our army has only gotten bigger since then. It's not a standing army. We don't like standing armies. But it is an army and it knows that, come November, it has to march on the polls and eradicate this disease that has been infecting the body politic. It knows that November is the time to do it and elections are the way to do it.
If the army couldn't do it that way it would have to burn the disease out and nobody wants that. Not even Joe Biden and his rollicking sidekick. Especially not them.
Relax. We got this.
Enough of this clown car election. Let's remember here what really matters.
And, oh yes, in case you've forgotten what these Guys are all about....
Continued...With this endorsement I know, finally and without a single scintilla of a doubt, that we got this thing.... and I'm putting her forward for Ambassatrix to the Bahamas.
Hello Kitty by Shepard Fairey
Hello Kitty, Hello Art! Book Release & Art Show at Known Gallery
Yes, sometimes once great civilizations deserve a swift kick in the backside to drive them over the cliff of history and down, down, down to dusty death on the ash heap of burned out cultures. I'd be sorry to see Real Housewives of New Jersey replaced by Real Asian Housewives of New Jersey, but a society's gotta know its limitations.
Art books celebrating Hello Kitty with a cover by that slimeball who stole the AP image for his Obama Hope poster are only a start; only a blurred milepost on the road of our steep decline. Here are other powerful arguments for the forced seppuku of "Our Town," all found at the same source on the same afternoon.
Telling the truth about terror:"Our way of life is under attack. We've only killed all the slow and stupid ones." An important speech. A very important speech.
Lara Logan 2012 BGA Annual Luncheon Keynote Speech - YouTube
Lara Logan's 2012 BGA Annual Luncheon Keynote Speech:
“I chose this subject because, one, I can’t stand, that there is a major lie being propagated . . . The lie is that America’s military might has tamed the Taliban. There is this narrative coming out of Washington for the last two years,” Logan said. It is driven in part by “Taliban apologists,” who claim “they are just the poor moderate, gentler, kinder Taliban,” she added sarcastically. “It’s such nonsense!” She made a passionate case that our government is downplaying the strength of our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as a rationale of getting us out of the longest war. We have been lulled into believing that the perils are in the past: “You’re not listening to what the people who are fighting you say about this fight. In your arrogance, you think you write the script.” Our enemies are writing the story, she suggests, and there’s no happy ending for us.
Some excerpts:
"Your deadliest enemies on the Afghan battlefield have completely freedom of movement inside Pakistan with the blessing of the Pakistanis. And every commander that's sat in your shoes has had to try and build a relationship and go through the same motions time and time again. And the effect on the battlefield remains exactly the same: American soldiers continue to die because of the support Pakistan gives to America's enemies.
[...] Continued...
Oregon farmer wins Half Moon Bay pumpkin contest
Danika Starr, 9, sits with her father's winning pumpkin at the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival Weigh-off contest in Half Moon Bay, Calif., Monday, Oct. 8, 2012. The pumpkin weighed 1,775 pounds, making it a new California record. Starr wins six dollars for each pound, which equals $10,650.
It's a horror. A horror. The only good thing to be said is that it has been chopped off its feeding tube and can no longer consume small house pets. I know about this. I know it well from the time when I too raised, ignorant of the horror, my own giant pumpkin back in another time in a world well lost.....
Click Me and Grow Big
The Pumpkin that Ate My Backyard
It began as a $1.49 seedling at Home Depot which I bought for my step-son to plant.
He planted it, as heedless 9-year-old boys will, in an obscure corner of a sandy bed under some ice-plants. It seemed to me at the time that the pumpkin was going to have a short and shady life.
But then, after about a month, it seemed to suddely clamber across my terrace. Then it strangled the corn plants. That gave it HUNGER and it ate the chair. When it approached the deck it lunged, fell back and sprouted this "fruit" of the vine.
Now the pumpkin is trying to invade my neighbor`s yard. Last night I heard them outside calling plaintively for their new puppy to come back in, "Sloopy! Little Sloopy! Sloopy, come!"
But answer came there none.
At 15,584 views. Worth millions.
You load 16 tons of bullshit and whadda ya get? Washington Tops List of America's Richest Cities: D.C. area residents have a median household income of $86,680, well above the national average of $50,502.
Finally there's hope for snoring women who "hate their necks."
Elsewhere Sultan Knish notes that speech and religions are hardly free in America, but the ability to get other people pay for your birth control and provide a space for your gay wedding are doing well.
Continued...
"Our generation are the victims of the 'May '68ers' who wanted to liberate themselves from tradition, from knowledge and authority in education. But they only accomplished to liberate themselves from their own responsibilities."
Continued..."Real rootin' tootin' rainfall here.... I luuuve it!"
Simple truths from a simple mind:
"Over the weekend, Snoop Dogg (who, the media conveniently forgot had changed his name to Snoop Lion when he discovered that he was the reincarnation of Bob Marley, even though Bob Marley died in 1981, and Snoop was actually born ten years before that) posted a list of ten reasons why he would vote for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney." -- Everyone still hates dancing horses. :: Naked DC
This is the Amazon Election Heat Map 2012. Click it out for a state by state interactive experience.
It would seem that, in reading tastes at the very least, this Fall is a landslide for red.
Maddow: You started anchoring at what time?
Matthews: Early, just before the first debate started. I had to sit down with a napkin from dinner in my lap. I knew I would see Obama soon and I was to aroused to stand up.
Maddow: You listened. Then something shook you, didn't it? Was it a nightmare? What was it?
Matthews: I heard a strange garble.
Maddow: What was it?
Matthews: It was... stuttering. Some kind of stuttering, like a moron's babble... but it wasn't Republican. It was like somebody blowing through a Flexstraw into a drool cup.
Maddow: What did you do?
Matthews: I went limp, flaccid, tingleless. I crept up into debate chamber. I was so scared to look inside, but I had to.
Maddow: And what did you see, Chris? What did you see?
Matthews: Obama. Obama was blathering.
Maddow: He was blathering at the podium?
Matthews: And voters were vomiting.
Maddow: And you ran away with him. You eloped with him at last?
Matthews: First I tried to free him. I... I opened the gate to his podium, but he wouldn't run. He just stood there, confused, a stuttering clusterfuck. He wouldn't run.
Maddow: But you could and you did, didn't you?
Matthews: Yes. I took Him. Held Him very very close to me, and I ran away as fast as I could.
Maddow: Where were you going, Chris?
Matthews: I don't know. I didn't have any food, any water and it was very cold, very cold. I thought, I thought if I could save just Him, but... He was so heavy. So heavy. I didn't get more than a few miles when the Network's car picked me up. The Network was so angry it sent me to live at Al Gore's station. I never saw MSNBC again.
Maddow: What became of your lamby-pie partner, Clarice?
Matthews: They killed him.
Illo and inspiration from Morgan
You may recall many of the Obamtrons in the MSM mocking Clint Eastwood's "empty chair" bit at the Republican Convention. I certainly do. And yet, and yet.... that "empty chair" seems to have had legs.
UPDATE: Elsewhere....
In these hard times men are forced to take all sorts of degrading jobs such as this one:
HT: Joan
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- Tired of Bronco Bamma and Mitt Romney
- LOREENA McKENNITT - Nights From The Alhambra: The Complete Concert
- Or Do You Want God?
- R-Rated Internet Writing Lesson. Hey, Y R U Not Paying Attention?
- Only In America
- Rant and Response: Sorry, Richard, There's No Such Thing as a Happy Period
- Birth
- "Doom & Gloom:" Ladies and Gentlemen, After 50 (Fifty) Years, The Rolling Stones!
- It's Over. Romney's the Next President. Obama is Toasted as Brown as a Benghazi Safehouse.
- Something Wonderful: Titanium / Pavane (Piano/Cello Cover) - David Guetta / Faure
- OK, 2012 Is a Lock: "Why I'm Voting for Mitt Romney... OK, Where Was I?"
- Goodbye Kitty: Why It Won't Be a Total Loss If Western Civilization Ceases to Exist
- "The Taliban Are Losing" and Other Lies the Administration Tells as Exposed by Lara Logan
- Pumpkin Horrors
- Something Wonderful: There Are Two Paths
- In Other News...
- Something Wonderful: "A Declaration of War" - From the Youth of France
- Wait for It
- A Credit to His Party: Snoop Dog's Voting Criteria
- Sunday Funnies: SNL vs. MSNBC