"Heaven has a road, but no one travels it; Hell has no gate, but men will bore through to get there."

Sunday, January 31, 2010

The Opposition is Comatose...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/opinion/31rich.html

I think if he does what Rich says and keeps the heat on- but in a very personal no bs kind of way, people will identify w him, see him as sensible and the Repubs just like deer caught in headlights because they have skated by for years spouting their talking points and not having anyone of stature confront them w simple blunt honesty. They can't win in a conversation that sabotages their wall of righteous anger and cynical buzz words which makes them victims of their own game if you call them on it which is why they have no leader now- rhetorically or ideologically! They are also making no attempts to hide their smug nastiness a la Alito and the public has no time for that. The only way to get to the policy changes is to show fearless leadership, control the discourse and choke them with it. Like Bush hammering on and on with his war speal... every time O is in front of them, an interviewer or the camera, he should ask "And what is your plan? I'd like you to lay out the details and cost please! If you can't, then I think the people can judge who has the ideas."
DUH!?! out

Friday, January 29, 2010

Simon Keenlyside


Obscure... But Lovely

http://www.operatoday.com/content/2006/07/chausson_le_roi.php

Pelléas et Mélisande

Debussy opera... WOW

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEUjQVueBAo

Das Lied Von Der Erde/The Song of the Earth

The sun departs behind the mountains.
In all the valleys, evening descends with its cooling shadows.
O look! Like a silver boat, the moon floats on the blue sky-lake above.
I feel the fine wind wafting behind the dark spruce.
The brook sings loudly through the darkness.

The flowers stand out palely in the twilight.
The earth breathes, full of peace and sleep,and all yearning wishes to dream now.
Weary men go home, to learn in sleep forgotten happiness and youth.
The birds crouch silently in their branches.
The world is asleep!
It blows cooly in the shadows of my spruce.

I stand here and wait for my friend; I wait to bid him a last farewell.
I yearn, my friend, at your side to enjoy the beauty of this evening.
Where do you tarry? You leave me alone for so long!
I wander up and down with my lute, on paths swelling with soft grass.
O beauty! O eternal love - eternal, love-intoxicated world!

Gustav Mahler- Lorraine Hunt & Edo De Waart

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

DANGER: HYPOCRISY ALERT!

Yup...
Deep dark bad nasty shitstorm!! :-(((
And worst of all- a complete and utter vindication of Republican criticism which now validates them in their stonewalling of every needed change in policy, AND- allows them to bury him for doing exactly what they did and will do again when they take back the Congress next year!? Bizarre- his skillful campaign won on the back of true citizen reformers got swallowed by the Washington machine whole and he let his intellect lead him into the thicket of minutiae rather that implementing his revolutionary vision.
It is a real testament to temperament that leads to lack of leadership.
Worst of all, he had so much power to persuade after the election that no pandering to anybody was necessary but he fell to wheeling and dealing rather than compromise based on fighting for his first principles (if he really had them?) and he was hence robbed of any power and authority to call the demons by their names and bid them be gone! He needs to reread his New Testament and ponder peace-loving rational Jesus' approach to the money changers! Sometimes, Good needs to weild the whip and the sword and not merely the rhetoric of the teleprompter.
Amen

Rachel Maddow spoke with Biden's Economic Policy Advisor Jared Bernstein, who went over some of the details in Obama's proposed three-year spending freeze on some programs.
The response has been tepid, if not hostile.
Paul Krugman
calls the plan "appalling on every level." Says Krugman: "It’s bad long-run fiscal policy, shifting attention away from the essential need to reform health care and focusing on small change instead. And it’s a betrayal of everything Obama’s supporters thought they were working for. Just like that, Obama has embraced and validated the Republican world-view — and more specifically, he has embraced the policy ideas of the man he defeated in 2008. A correspondent writes, 'I feel like an idiot for supporting this guy.'"
Writes Bob Herbert in the NYT: "Mr. Obama may be personally very appealing, but he has positioned himself all over the political map: the anti-Iraq war candidate who escalated the war in Afghanistan; the opponent of health insurance mandates who made a mandate to buy insurance the centerpiece of his plan; the president who stocked his administration with Wall Street insiders and went to the mat for the banks and big corporations, but who is now trying to present himself as a born-again populist. Mr. Obama is in danger of being perceived as someone whose rhetoric, however skillful, cannot always be trusted. He is creating a credibility gap for himself, and if it widens much more he won’t be able to close it."
Says Maddow: "A spending freeze is like trying to put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it."

GOOEY FOR GAGA!


She's a smart cookie...

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

MUST READS-

"God of Love and Ecstacy: The Traditions of Shiva and Dionysus"- Alain Danielou

"Smash the Church, Smash the State: The Early Years of Gay Liberation"-
Tommi Avicolli Mecca"

"The Divine Androgyne"- Perusha

Johnny Weir


Brian Joubert- hot skater warmup!



A Dirty Shame


Despite the hilarity, a great John Waters commentary on the prudery and intolerance of our current America which is no laughing matter.

B A

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Monday, January 11, 2010

Building is our work: to fly with great speed to those things which make community among strangers…

Roger
Goodman

Saturday, January 9, 2010

And Not A Candle Lit-

For the whole poem, please visit my dear Roger Good-Man's blog at:

http://www.queerwitness.blogspot.com

A golden bridge between two hearts,
my Lord's and his disciple's.
Sweet lord is raised above sweet slave
by just a foot to show the Way,
but just a foot, for Lord and devotee
are but split by inches high
the one above the other.
Yet face to face,
and breath to breath,
all three eyes to all three eyes,
each looking deep in self for Self,
each searching god for God.

And then I knew that I, the slave,
my Lord I found, the one I've craved
who gives me life until my grave,
a life in Light, in pitch black room,
a Light which floods the naked One
who's lying there as if the sun, as if the Son
Transfigured was in pitch black room,
who births a slave in pitch black womb,
Ma Kali's womb, Lord Shiva's room,
God's Light so bright, it blinds my sight,
and not a candle lit.


soli Deo gloria

Friday, January 1, 2010

By Enrico Ghidelli

UP WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW


I never got into Perry before recently becoming addicted on our local Chicago oldie-but-goodie channel. After a decade of indescribable greed, sloth and tackiness, let's hope this new decade starting with 2010 will be an era of some intelligence, wit, tact, subtlety and people with enough self regard to dress well and not fear to be intellectually focused and chic like the fine trio below!
And nothing get the wheels turning like a good mystery...
Check out the extra bits below as well for some delightful added complexity.