Eh bien… 15 January 2012
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, la vie en rose, Viva La Revolucion!.53 comments
and, why wait?
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Glitter 25 December 2011
Posted by marisacat in Divertissements, la vie en rose.30 comments
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Check out the fish crafted from rhinestones and gems in the Aquarium window. A Christmas window from Barney’s NYC | Meredith Galante/Business Insider
Fish? well, kind of a fish with some centipedal action and big, lobster-like claws at the front…
😉
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Wintering 20 November 2011
Posted by marisacat in Egypt, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Israel/AIPAC, la vie en rose, Occupy Wall Street, Pan Arab Revolt - 2011.73 comments
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Flamingos gather on the coast of Nea Kios, in Nafplio, southern Greece. Flamingos use this particular wetland as a resting place during their migration south in the winter [Evangelos Bougiotis/EPA]
Angry Arab pops up with this today:
Israeli solidarity with the Egyptian (nude) Blogger
I don’t want to send that message directly to them so I will send it here. I read that a few Israeli women stripped nude in solidarity with the Egyptian blogger who stripped nude. Why do Israelis intrude into our lives? Why do you get into areas in which you are clearly uninvited and in which you are clearly unwelcome? You are such a bothersome presence. Arabs have made it very clear that they (unlike the tyrants that you like) don’t like you and don’t want you in their midst. It is none of your business what Arabs do and don’t do. Spare us your act of solidarity when you are racists who everyday in your live you take advantage of the racist system that Zionist set up for you. We don’t need your silly and fake solidarity. You are not invited to our lives and our activities. You are such an unwanted presence. Take your solidarity and go away. And stop intruding on every aspect of our lives. After we liberate Palestine, and when you are forced to live in a system based on equality (after we subject you to the same military rule that you imposed on the Arabs inside Israel), you may engage in solidarity but even then it won’t be wanted. You really are without dignity when you know full well that Arabs don’t want to do anything with you, and you keep acting like you are invited to our parties, uprisings, lives and events.Posted by As’ad AbuKhalil at 7:26 AM
Oh No. Whooops. NO. As far as I am concerned, and not knowing preciselyWHO the women are on the Israeli side, but they may most certainly stripe nude if they wish, in sympathy, support, solidarity, identification, whatever is the motivation, with the Eqyptian blogger. Who is herself responding to repression of women under the conservative Salafi rules… and in fact in other posts Angry Arab writes of the increasing conservative Orthodox religious, on the Jewish side!, imposing separation of the sexes on public buses (women to the rear of the bus) and elsewhere.
Perhaps the Israeli women are thinking, oh I don’t know, BROADLY.
I think it is bad business to tell women what to do, what they may or may not do, to lecture them.
Everybody is allowed personal autonomy, I don’t care how politicised a situation or a country is…. if it practicises apartheid or not.
He seems a tad obsessed:
I disagree with Sara and other other feminist comrades at Nasawiyya who I so admire and support. It seems to me that there are so many other issues that women have to worry about in our region (and beyond) to be distracted by this sensational act by one person. If the issue is about sexual liberation and challenging the taboos of religion and state, I am all for it. But this is too shallow an act (and may even echo too many other Western shallow acts) to be taken seriously as a feminist act. Yes, of course, we need to denounce the various reactionary and right-wing voices of condemnation. But the pictures were also circulated for cheap titillation, which I guess is fine if people want to do that. But the feminist movement has other more important priorities to be reduced (or caricatured) by the exhibitionism of one woman (or man). Comrade Khodor (a progressive Lebanese) wrote a letter to `Alya’. I keep wanting to avoid this issue which is filling the pages in Arabic and English but I feel it keeps following me. There are so many other important issues. I am more worried about the status of Tunisian women after the victory of An-Nahdar: and about Western endorsement of misogynistic regime in the GCC countries. These are more serious threats to women and their freedoms, it seems to me.Posted by As’ad AbuKhalil at 8:26 AM
Car wash 9 November 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Democrats, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, la vie en rose, Lie Down Fall Down Dems, Occupy Wall Street, Viva La Revolucion!.62 comments
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A turtle swims through a make-shift underwater car wash, surrounded by a bright shoal of yellow tangs eager to rid him of algae that had collected on his shell. Photographer Masa Ushioda captured the sight off the coast of Kailua Kona, in Hawaii.
[Masa Ushioda/SeaPics.com/solent]
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On a related matter – I found this at IOZ,
Operation Barkarossa
Those who think I view the Occupy folks in too rosy a light may have a point, although, as with my view of the Tea Party wheezers, a positive opinion shouldn’t be taken as a wholesale endorsement. Nevertheless, I defy anyone to tell me that this isn’t fucking awesome.
…when the city of Denver insisted that Denver Occupy HAD HAD HAD to select someone to speak and meet with the mayor (no doubt some Democrat, they hold a few cities in their portfolio, snicker):
Denver Mayor Michael Hancock insisted that his city’s occupation name a leader in order “to deal with City and State officials.” And he got his wish! Occupy Denver has elected Shelby, a border collie, as its leader. Long live Shelby!
Shelby, on whose noble visage you can gaze here, was elected in a “landslide vote” on Sunday night. One of Occupy Denver’s organizers, Al Nesby, was inspired to nominate Shelby to the position after the director Michael Moore showed up one day and rubbed him the wrong way by refusing to follow general assembly rules; with Shelby, who’s three and a half, the occupation should have no such problems. Her bodyguard and closest confidante is a filmmaker named Peter John Jentsch
. . . .
Protesters have already made an official request for Shelby to meet with Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper
A lovely sense of the absurd.
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Lastly.. in a shameless act of plagiarism (on my part!)…. this wonderful graf again from IOZ on Occupy:
[T]his is why I really like this whole Occupy dealio. As one eminent blurgher said, Occupy Wall Street is no revolution. I love their absence of a program and agenda, their lack of leaders and, at least to-date, their charmed indifference to calls on all sides for them to get such things. I think that packing a tent and sitting your ass down and not moving is just great. I think it’s exactly what this country needs. I think that it is at heart and root a contemplative practice. I think those kids are transmitting the grace-waves of beneficence to the rest of humanity. I think that the very act of abjuring traditional activism is necessary and ingenious. I also think that Occupy, or something very much like it, would have inexorably occurred five years ago or ten years hence, one way or other; that this moment I so admire is both specific and inevitable. I’m jealous that I didn’t dream it up. But the thing is: someone was certain to dream it up. . . . .
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Cat 29 June 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Divertissements, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, la vie en rose.34 comments
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Photos courtesy of Eli Klein Fine Art
hmmm When I saw this write-up and gallery of a Chinese artist, Liu Bolin, who paints himself into the landscape, I thought he was a copy cat of some I had seen a couple of years ago… but going thru the gallery, it is all him. Beijing, points in Europe and now NY.
I think his earlier efforts were considerably more successful than the recent in NYC.
Maybe in some metaphysical way, you cannot obliterate NY!
I, however, showed up for the pink cats in Arles…. Les chats rosees … 😉
(Oh politics… yeah somebody did a soft shoe this morning. Of no use to anyone…)
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Garden 29 April 2010
Posted by marisacat in Divertissements, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, la vie en rose.61 comments
Wildlife in the Garden second place: Magdalena Wasiczek – Mimikra [Magdalena Wasiczek]
The legend does not say, but I think the leaf on the right is a butterfly, or moth…. [mimikra = mimicry… maybe?]
I realise I am overly grabbed by this sort of thing, as a shut-in… but these photos really are lovely. A contest of photographing the garden… the idea of garden.
Anyway, enjoy…. 😉
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In the pink 28 April 2010
Posted by marisacat in Divertissements, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, la vie en rose.82 comments
A bee prepares for landing on a blossoming cherry tree in Taipei. [Sam Yeh/AFP/Getty Images]
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I so don’t want one… 1 November 2009
Posted by marisacat in Divertissements, la vie en rose, Moscow, WAR!.76 comments
The Dartz Prombron Monaco Red Diamond Edition armoured car sells for one million euros. It has gold plated bulletproof windows, pure tungsten exhausts, speed gauges encrusted with diamonds – and seats made from whale penis leather
Picture: BARCROFT MEDIA
hmm It occurred to me though that Maria and Arnold might want one so I thought I’d google up a fast article on the item… made by a Russian firm, Russo-Baltique.. (proceed to fret, we are being outdone in the gargantuan division – I say, thanks be to someone’s god!)
If four-wheel-drives weren’t politically incorrect enough, a Russian car maker is offering one with whale penis leather trim. By RICHARD BLACKBURN.
A Russian armoured-car builder is boasting that its latest vehicle has seats covered with “whale-penis leather”.
The €1 million ($1.6 million) Dartz Prombron Monaco Red Diamond Edition armoured car has been developed by the same company, RussoBaltique, that built armoured vehicles for Tsar Nicholas, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky.
On its official website, the company says the whale-penis leather is the same as that used by Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis on the yacht Christina O.
Onassis is rumoured to have had some of the barstools on the yacht, the world’s most expensive at the time, covered in the controversial leather. . . . . .
…it all seems so long ago, but we should be relieved there is continuum! Lest the firmament tear!
For those wondering just how may whales may need to be harvested to outfit the special edition, the answer is not many. The penis of the Blue Whale, for example, can grow up to 2.4 metres.
Maybe they should just ship a whole one, along with the … car. Tank. Whatever it is.
Blast off… 11 October 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, 2012 Re Election, California / Pacific Coast, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, la vie en rose, San Francisco.9 comments
US Marine Corps Major Nathan Miller flies his F/A-18 Blue Angel No.5 jet in position near Sean Tucker’s Oracle Challenger bi-plane over San Francisco Bay [AP]
Hosanna. Blasting over us since Thursday. It should end close of tomorrow. George Bush Sr, currently a famously weak pretzel but undergoing slow and subtle resuscitation, canceled the Blue Angels in ’90 due to the economy.
If only. Pity a truly wretched economy didn’t merit cancellation this year.
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Moving my own comment forward… since, you know, the so called Liberal Pols, fakes like Ob, luv to come to San Francisco/Bay Area for MONEY, but they all feel the same way about us. Fringe Loons on the loose. God knows why. We are a wide mix.
Very funny…
John Harwood on NBC evening news saying because the Pretzel retains NINETY percent approval from Dems [mmm does he?]…. he regards gays and others who complain as “the far left internet fringe”… and an aide said to Harwood, that group should “get out of their pajamas and out of their parents’ basement and into the Real World”.
It all sounds so familiar. Cheney et al are aides to Ob?
Shorter Harwood on Ob: I got my peepsheeps I don’t need you freaks.
…. what a scream!!!
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Tom Englehardt has some pointed commentary about all the blither lately on what the WH is studiously (because they are fucking students and NOT ADULTS, imo) reading to “learn” about Vietnam….
If it’s a Vietnam syllabus you’re looking for, President Obama, why not start with The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam’s brilliant dissection of the Vietnam disaster? Having covered Vietnam as a New York Times reporter, he knew a bankrupt war when he saw one. Or why not consider what an American “counterinsurgency” war really meant on the ground? Nothing will give you a more visceral sense of the destruction visited on Vietnam and the Vietnamese in those grim years than Jonathan Schell’s double-barreled classic The Real War. (Why doesn’t anyone in your administration ask Schell, who saw the worst of that war close up, for advice on our new “Vietnam moment”?)
Oh that would be too easy! Like actually looking at the early stages of collapse of the MASS plan for Health Care. Besides Schell is a weak nellie where Ob is concerned. He’d drool and stammer “Yessir!”. Useless!
And here is a big bite in the ass of the students in the WH:
Not long ago, your special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, picked up a phone in Kabul and called Stanley Karnow, who got a Pulitzer Prize for his 1983 middle-of-the-road, one-volume history of the war.
We don’t know how that consultation — in the presence of Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal — went, but Karnow did offer this comment to an AP reporter later:
“What did we learn from Vietnam? We learned that we shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Obama and everybody else seem to want to be in Afghanistan, but not I.”
March on little political chickie babies, thru the blood of others.
pass the beer… 30 July 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, 2012 Re Election, AFRICOM, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, la vie en rose.59 comments
The floating stage on Lake Constance in Bregenz as seen in Quantum of Solace. Above, the stage that appeared in the film was created for Giacomo Puccini’s opera “Tosca” in 2007… [GETTY]
… so did the boychicks look each other in the eye?
I read they were joined by Biden, who, in my opinion, IS a racist – in that classic old Pennsylvania way, with white ethnic Catholic thrown in…. Maybe, as they sweltered in what I read was a steamy Washington day, they talked of the never very successful Rose Garden, put in by Jacqueline. Planted in a less than fortuitous spot, or so rosiers say.
From Politico’s Whiteboard:
OBAMA: “I am thankful to Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley for joining me at the White House this evening for a friendly, thoughtful conversation. Even before we sat down for the beer, I learned that the two gentlemen spent some time together listening to one another, which is a testament to them. I have always believed that what brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart. I am confident that has happened here tonight, and I am hopeful that all of us are able to draw this positive lesson from this episode.”
We can consider ourselves “taught”. Thank you, Mr Obama!, we can cry in unison. (Anyone ever notice old student evals of Professor Obama surface? They did for the Unibomber, as he had taught at some university in the mists of time. But not for Obama, that I noticed.)
I think “crappy nothingness” was achieved here… and is a good take away ”lesson”. Pencils down, books closed. Carry on.
Marisacat 