Must be those spine chilling, soul destroying wintery breeze and the lack of sunlight! I am getting lured into the dark site, obsessing with gothic look.

I usually have a peculiar fondness to dark lips & nails this time of the year.

My AW 2009 picks are Hysteria &  Vendetta.

COPENHAGEN. I haven’t been there since ‘65, when I fell in love both with the place itself and a Danish damsel. And polsers, of which I wolfed far too many but never quite enough.

The town is once again a scene of merriment and its name will ring, especially if Barack Obama’s schedulers have done a good job—politics is as much timing as credible empty promises and ol’ Barack’s folk do well (albeit a tad blatant).

Saving the Copenhagen bunfight by swinging Obama’s prestige behind the cause might just sway the day. If Obama can manage to commit the US to completely crippling its own limping economy the final coffins will be driven into his once great nation’s nail. Obama may yet accomplish what Bernanke and Greenspan and Geithner and Bush etc all failed to achieve. I leave his ultimate goals for you to fathom, or not; I have my own theories.

And now I introduce a new term, one that’s not original to me (but I can’t credit the source as I haven’t a clue where I swiped it). Anyway, moving on …

(a) On the one hand we have the Climate Alarmist’s term “Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW)” used interchangeably (although it shouldn’t be, if you think about it) with “Climate Change”.

(b) On the other hand we have the term I shall henceforth be using—

“Climate Variation“

—which term I’ll use to refer to the natural variation in climates global and regional; into which fit all the various ice ages and hothouse periods (each of them ‘unprecedented’, note, according to Alarmists).

An ice age as background noise? Possibly not, but it’s entirely natural.
So too is a hothouse age. Unprecedented precedents have long been set and apparently are continuing to be set, just as always.

THINK ABOUT IT
In the past (right there in the historical record, don’t take my word for it—go look, seek and ye shall find) the great coal fields of the world were laid down so ask yourself, ‘under what conditions?’ such as ‘how hot?’ and ‘for how long?’. You may be surprised.

In the past we have had higher global warming in periods when atmospheric CO2 was lower; and much colder global temperatures  (pre Al Gore’s exhalations, obviously) when atmospheric CO2 was very much higher.

And despite all the propaganda (but, oh, so very appealing!) the blasted polar teddy bears are actually thriving, they are NOT swimming around in ever increasing circles.

And if the odd glacier here and there is melting (they never mention all the ones gaining mass, do they? Funny, that) — how long does it take to melt a glacier?
And how long does it take to melt an Antarctic ice cap (Antarctica’s ice mass is actually growing overall, but they only ever mention the localised decreases) (why is that)?

So well-intentioned little people set up an artificial glacier in the street in Copenhagen to graphically illustrate melting ice … and other good people are actually buying their intent? It takes all sorts.

SUCCESS AT COPENHAGEN
a. means to many people that our politicians will have gotten together at last against a humanity-wide problem that can be solved. Yay!

b. Politicians will save us all, by milking the polluters and using the funds to recompense the innocent. Yay!

c. Natural justice will be served, the planet will cool, God’s in His/Her heavens and all is sweetness and light—

—and I am Queen of the May.

As QotM my first proclamation is:

a. any political alliance as in a. above will be temporary (until something more useful to their personal aims comes along), and/or

b. until the One World Governing Body is established (brrrrr!) to take over from all those self-interested parochial little sovereign governments currently wrecking the place

c. define the word ‘pollution’ — if you state ‘CO2 is pollution’ you need look at and understand the tie ins between photosynthesis, carbon-based life forms, commerce, and human survival. (For myself I regard politicians as pollution and challenge anyone to refute that.)

d. Likewise define ‘innocent’.

e. The planet will cool after Copenhagen? Of course it will—

—with or without Copenhagen, Kyoto, nuking our prosperity or creating world wide famines.

It will cool anyway. In fact is has been steadily cooling for a decade (but they play that one down—why is that?).

As I’ve said before, you can’t stop an idea whose time has come and even if the world were hit by an instant ice age overnight all the Caps and Trades etc would still go ahead regardless. Immense profits for the unscrupulous backed by the force of arms of their governments are being set up; the mechanisms are snibbing into place and we mere voting taxpaying victims won’t change any of it. We can’t.

So in the meantime I suggest that if you like polsers, wolf ‘em while they are still available (to the masses) and while you can still afford them. Before long meat will be the prerogative of the wealthy and/or powerful only, as will travel and things like books.

The future can be predicted by projecting the trends. It’s easy, so please, do it for yourself before it is too late — but you may have to act, sitting passively by will cease to be an option.

KISMET

In other words, what has become arguably the most influential set of evidence used to support the case that the world faces unprecedented global warming, developed, copied and promoted hundreds of times, has now been as definitively kicked into touch as was Mann’s “hockey stick” before it. Yet it is on a blind acceptance of this kind of evidence that 16,500 politicians, officials, scientists and environmental activists will be gathering in Copenhagen to discuss measures which, if adopted, would require us all in the West to cut back on our carbon dioxide emissions by anything up to 80 per cent, utterly transforming the world economy …

The Copenhagen Diagnosis?  I’d say it’s something like “the show must go on.”

“The e-mails show some of the world’s top experts decided to exclude or manipulate some research that didn’t help prove global warming exists.

1998 was the hottest year since record-keeping began…but the temperature went down the next year, and it’s only spiked a couple times since.”

Der Watergate-Skandal brachte Richard Nixon zu Fall, Monica-Gate zerstörte die Glaubwürdigkeit Bill Clintons, und jetzt also Klima-Gate – der Verdacht, dass der menschengemachte Klimawandel nicht mehr ist als nur eine Verschwörung unter Klimaforschern.

Twenty-two years ago, arena rock gods Def Leppard released one of my favorite albums of all time.  Every time I listen to Hysteria, I feel seven years old again.  I look back on those days with nothing but fond memories in my heart.  That was when most popular music was still great to listen to.

But enough of my wistful babbling.  Here’s a little something to “sweeten” your weekend:

Google Book Search bad. German Digital Library good.

Upset and suspicious about Google’s attempts to digitalize books, pictures, sculptures, notes, music and films to make them available for everybody on the Internet, the German Cabinet has just agreed on a plan to digitalize books, pictures, sculptures, notes, music and films to make them available for everybody on the Internet.

I’m not making this up, people. I wouldn’t be able to. Contrary to what you might think, Germans don’t like technology. Not unless its their own, I mean.

Culture Minister Bernd Neumann called the project a “quantum leap into the world of digital information.”

Blog responses were brilliant and very interesting. So many of you enjoyed seeing the original print-ready artwork – so there’ll be more of that later – and also requests from fans for an exhibition of that stuff has made me take the idea more seriously. What a discerning bunch DEF LEPPARD fans are. I also realised, out of all the comments and e-mails I’ve received over the last couple of weeks, more than half of them were from female fans. DEF LEPPARD have a huge fan base of women – Rock was no longer a boy’s-only territory. Sure, there were female followers of other bands in the 80’s and earlier but DEF LEPPARD’s appeal was broader and intelligent enough to include many more.

So … where were we? Oh yes – no album sleeve. ‘Animal Instinct’ had become ‘Hysteria.’ It only took a few days to convince Adrian to climb down from the parapet on the studio roof (the studio is on the top floor of a five-storey building) and to tell him we were all getting pissed off with our endless trips to the supermarket to buy him more Kleenex. He was fine in the end. The band did pay him for all his work so that was some compensation.

A few weeks before I’d met the band in Amsterdam I’d taken a photograph of a friend of mine and, as I clicked the shutter, he was distracted by a noise and turned his head very quickly to the right. The resulting portrait was one of those brilliant ‘accidents’ that often take you by surprise. If I sit down to invent an image, whatever I do is limited by – well – me. Experimenting with different techniques has always been inspirational and many of my ideas are the result of something unexpected appearing – not knowing what the outcome of an experiment will be. Engage in the ‘unknown’ and you’ll be constantly surprised.

(In-between this Def Leppard blog and the next, I’ll tell you about something that happened to me in India that totally blew me away – when I saw a natural phenomena my imagination couldn’t have invented in a million years.)

The headshot of Robert contained a double-image. Because he’d moved his head very quickly the camera, on a low shutter-speed, had recorded a full-on image of his face – but also his profile. I noticed that his left eye had moved to become his right eye in profile. There was something very disturbing about the overall feel of the photograph. It doesn’t sound like a huge step in designing the final sleeve, but it was. I had a direction to explore which I was very confident about. I still had no idea where the illustration would lead but I was very excited about the possibilities.

I also wanted something as a background which placed the head in a strange environment. I knew, by the time I got what I wanted, the head would show a primitive fear so I decided on total contrast – something futuristic. What I decided to do led me innocently into the bizarre (and hilarious) world of ‘computer graphics’.

We started here …

We have to remember it was the mid-80’s and using computers to create images was primitive to say the least. Each time-consuming (and expensive) process was so basic it was about as exciting as eating a warm lettuce sandwich. However, the end result was the thing and I was determined to learn something about the emerging digital world for the ‘Hysteria’ sleeve. I spent days drawing the design for the ‘circuit’, stretching my draughtsman’s skills to the limit with pens, ink and a drawing board. There was a company in London which professed to be on the ‘cutting edge’ of a new creative phenomena and I went to see them to explain what I wanted – to convert my drawing into something more futuristic. ‘No problem‘, they said.  I had an image in my head of the computer operator – a rather geeky character obsessed with perfection. Wrong. I returned with my artwork and met my ‘mentor’ who had just returned from an extended pub lunch (VERY extended by the look of him). He stumbled into the room, introduced himself and I followed him as he lurched off drunkenly towards the room that contained the state-of-the-art computer. The set-up was professional but resembled something put together by a lunatic inventor attempting to build a time-machine. There was a camera the size of wardrobe, TV monitors were scattered all over the room and a congestion of unrecognisable electronic instruments were connected together by miles of different coloured cables and wires. My drawing was photographed and somehow magically appeared on one of the monitors. The amazingly innovative procedure followed – we painstakingly coloured in the white areas of the circuit like children with a handful of electronic coloured pencils – ‘No that one should be blue, change that one to green, get rid of the red completely,  more yellow ...’ Eventually after several hours we had the image I wanted. The wardrobe was wheeled in front of the screen and the image was photographed. There was no way then to transfer the final image to another computer – what I was given when I left was an 8×10ins transparency of the screen we had created the image on. The pixelated texture within the circuit wasn’t designed – it was the result of photographing the TV monitor – but it was exactly what I’d hoped for.

At the same time, I worked on the the main image. When I began to sketch it out, using the eye as a focal point, the illustration began to take on a life of it’s own. I swear what appeared surprised and shocked me but wherever it came from I knew it was undeniably powerful and perfect for the sleeve. Although I still had to find a way to combine the illustration with the dazzling computer graphics (!) I showed the band the first draughts of the head and a resounding ‘THAT’S IT!’ was music to my ears. The level had been set and the required intensity of the rest of the design fell into place comparatively easily. There are so many disparate elements in the final sleeve – the head, the circuit, the demented title lettering, the band logo and the triangle – it shouldn’t really work, but it remains one of my favourites and most memorable I worked on. I completed the illustration, in coloured pencils, within two weeks and the final result was definitely not ‘laboured’. It’s worth mentioning here that historically,’Hysteria’ was the first album sleeve  to contain computer graphics.

STEPHEN MAYNARD CLARK (1960 – 1991)

It’s difficult to say much more about Def Leppard without writing about Steve Clark. The second major tragedy to befall the band was the death of their amazing lead guitarist. During the recording of ‘Hysteria’ Steve often showed up to rehearsals or recording sessions drunk. Alcoholism became a serious problem. In 1991, on a six-month leave of absence from the band, Steve was found dead at his home in London. An autopsy revealed the cause of death to be accidental – a lethal mixture of anti-depressants, painkillers and alcohol. Steve lived in London, only a few streets away from where I live in Chelsea, and we often met in a small old-fashioned but wonderful pub called ‘The Cross Keys’ – so I knew him better than the other guys in the band. I really liked him and we became close in a haphazard, occasional kind of way. Steve had a generosity of spirit and a vulnerability which was very attractive, but something deeply troubling was never far from the surface. Whenever I travelled to meet the band Steve always took the time and made the effort to look after me – the perfect gentleman, always aware of nervous or uncomfortable situations. Whenever I met him in ‘The Cross Keys’ I always felt the need to look after him. It’s hard to explain why I felt that way and, despite his reputation for heavy drinking, he was rarely out of control when I saw him. I guess I just felt the need to protect him from a world he often found terrifyingly complicated and difficult to deal with. Away from adoring fans and where he did what he loved most – play guitar – he was usually quiet, sensitive and introspective, He obviously found it difficult to reconcile the two extremes. Don’t get me wrong, he was rarely miserable or depressed – we often had evening of non-stop laughter – but there was always a nervous undercurrent of someone who could easily be thrown off-balance. What I felt with him was a responsibility to help maintain the balance. There are people in all our lives we feel privileged to meet and Steve was right up there with the best of them in mine.

Here’s a video from 1988 which shows his distinctive style and incredible talent – just brilliant.

On a lighter note, for those of you who enjoyed the ‘sketches’ and original art, and loved the new edition, I’ve created another new one using various ‘working drawings’ created on the journey to the final sleeve. Check it out at my website for more detail.

Next we move onto the joy of the single releases from ‘Hysteria’. Can’t wait.

and finally for Part Three …

Vaccine Revolt Accelerating

In this issue: “Vaccine Revolt” gathering steam. Marketing ploys and lies exposed. “Say NO” Video. Pass This On To Everyone. They REALLY Need To Know

Why The Swine Flu Vaccine Is A Con

Never before has Earth Change Report run an article in full from another editorial source. But this one is of critical importance – if you have any doubts at all (and you should) about the swine flu vaccines that are being pedaled faster than a snake can sidewind….

Vaccine revolt! Swine flu vaccine support crumbles as flimsy rationale for H1N1 shots becomes apparent.

Monday, October 12, 2009 by: Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews)–Public support for the swine flu vaccine is evaporating by the day as the rationale for the vaccine appears increasingly ludicrous to anyone paying attention.

Moms, nurses, day care workers and members of the general public are increasingly realizing that Big Pharma’s rationale for swine flu vaccination just doesn’t add up.

Recent polls conducted by the mainstream media indicate that more than fifty percent of moms are refusing to expose their children to the swine flu vaccine, and nurses and health practitioners across the US and UK are going vocal with their opposition to the vaccine.

Legal action against the FDA’s approval of the swine flu vaccine is already underway and public protests are gaining momentum in raising awareness about the primary objections to the swine flu vaccine. Intelligent, informed people everywhere are saying NO to this vaccine!

Popular support for the vaccine is crumbling by the day, and health authorities are now turning to exaggerated scare stories to try to drum up demand for their vaccines. Where scientific credibility is lacking, fear is being invoked in its place.

Why the swine flu vaccine doesn’t add up.

So why is the justification for the swine flu so flimsy?

It all comes down to these five crucial reasons being pushed by the vaccine industry… but as you’ll see below, each of these five reasons is demonstrably false!

Reason #1) The H1N1 swine flu pandemic is dangerous and deadly!

Why it’s flimsy: While the infection rate of H1N1 is currently high, the fatality rate is remarkably low. In fact, it’s no higher than a normal, seasonal flu.

Reason #2) The vaccine protects you from the virus!

Why it’s flimsy: There is absolutely no scientific evidence demonstrating that the swine flu vaccine offers real-world protection against the circulating H1N1 virus.

While there is evidence showing that it produces antibodies, as people who have studied vaccine effectiveness already know, the mere existence of vaccine-induced antibodies doesn’t directly translate into functional, real-world immunity! Vaccines are often, in effect, fabricated immunity that often don’t provide practical immune defense in the real world.

Reason #3) The vaccine is perfectly safe, even for kids!

Why it’s flimsy: This reason is truly laughable. None of these vaccines have been properly safety tested by the FDA or the drug companies.

They were approved by the FDA with a waiver, utterly bypassing the normal process of long-term safety testing that the public expects the FDA to enforce.

In fact, according to attorney Jim Turner, the FDA’s baseless approval of these swine flu vaccines is a violation of federal law. (See lawsuit filed)

Reason #4) There’s nothing else you can do to protect yourself from the swine flu (therefore you must take the vaccine shot).

Why it’s flimsy: This reason is an outright lie.

In order to sell more vaccines, the pharmaceutical industry (and all its bureaucratic cohorts at the CDC and WHO) are intentionally keeping people ignorant of far safer and more effective options such as vitamin D and anti-viral herbal remedies.

Reason #5) If you don’t take the vaccine shot, you’re being unethical by placing the shot burden on everyone else without taking it yourself.

Why it’s flimsy: Hilarious! This is marketing by guilt — trying to arm-twist people into the vaccine shot by making them feel guilty if they don’t.

The truth is that you’re being unethical if you DO get the shot because you’re financially supporting a dangerous and highly deceptive vaccine industry that’s causing tremendous harm to children, expectant mothers and other innocent vaccination victims.

Hoping to improve your health by handing money to the pharmaceutical industry through the purchase of vaccines is sort of like hoping to create world peace by writing a check to weapons manufacturers.

No good reason to get the vaccine

Is there any good reason to get the swine flu vaccine?

Not based on the current situation, no. Unless you have a strong desire to play Russian Roulette with your health, of course.

Of course, if things dramatically change, there could be increasingly strong reasons for considering a vaccine.

If the H1N1 virus mutates into a virus with a very high fatality rate, things might be different.

If the vaccine were proven safe with adequate long-term testing, that would be something working in its favor.

If the vaccines were scientifically shown to actually protect you from the virus, then that would be different, too.

But to date, none of these things are verifiably true! The vaccines haven’t been properly tested at all.

There’s no honest evidence demonstrating that they protect you from the swine flu. And the flu has such a low fatality rate, why does a vaccine matter in the first place?

Keep in mind that over 2,000 people die each year from taking aspirin. Over 100,000 Americans are killed each year from taking doctor-prescribed, FDA-approved prescription drugs.

If the people at the CDC are looking for a pandemic, they should be focusing on the pandemic of disease mongering and pharmaceutical pushing that’s taking place across the world right now in the context of the swine flu pandemic.

There is a real pandemic afoot, though… a pandemic of B.S. running rampant across America and the UK.

It’s an infectious form of pharmaceutical quackery that spreads from one person to another at the speed of propaganda. Symptoms of infection include a loss of rational thinking, swine flu hysteria and an irrational belief in symbols of authority.

What we really need in America is a vaccine that protects consumers’ brains from infectious pharmaceutical quackery.

Then again, if we actually injected people with that, the whole drug industry would collapse overnight. That’s because Big Pharma runs on propaganda.

And the propaganda we’re seeing with this swine flu vaccine push is so thick with unjustifiable speculation that it probably deserves a Nobel Peace Prize or something.

_________________________________

About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health researcher and author with a passion for teaching people how to improve their health.

He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles.

Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes.

Known as the ‘Health Ranger,’ Adams’ personal health statistics and mission statements are located at www.HealthRanger.org

______________________________

Resistance Going Global

Thankfully, some medical professionals (those without ties to Big Pharma or the World Stealth Organization (WHO) or the CDC or NHS or FDA and more) are courageously sounding the alarm about untested vaccines, there link to brain damage and paralyzing side effects and more.

Sadly, it’s unlikely that Big Pharma and the Governments that depend on their contributions to their election campaign coffers will back down gracefully – despite the obvious fact that the vaccines are not properly tested, the swine flu is far less deadly than any true ‘pandemic’ would be, and as the Health Ranger says, there is absolutely NO rationale for proceeding with mass vaccinations.

That said – don’t be surprised if the resistance movement is met with force as those who claim authority to inject toxins into children and pregnant women clamp down in their usual heavy-handed manner.

Just remember though – clamping down increases resistance.

And that’s how Americans – and others – first won their freedom from dictators.

_________________________________

“Now Click and Watch what’s happening as resistance grows in the UK.”

In case the above link does not work
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bJ7VZvFCyA

Sincerely.

Michael Knight

Editor

Subscribe To Earth Change Report

I haven’t updated any of my blogs for ages!!!!! My free spaces on the net really bore me!!!!
I used to breathe through blogging. It is one effective way to blurt it all out.
Maybe that’s one reason why I get so stressed a lot lately … There are just a lot of thoughts, information, rants and random queries rambling alltogether in my mind not far from resembling EDSA traffic. A liitle more and I would explode!
So to save myself… I blog again!

Ack! It’s that insane time of year again. Lets see.. Thanksgiving was actually good. No big huge family fight, everyone got along. Food was good. Kids were good.. Hubs actually went.. It was a first time thing.. WOW I was truly amazed. So much so that I agreed to go shopping on black friday for the first time ever with my mom and sister. Something I swore i’d never ever ever do after working in retail and being forced to work on black friday and deal with the insanity that surrounds it. Needless to say the experience was not nice. It was horrible and people suck. More about it on my other blog.. if you have the link you can find the insanity there..

Now.. I’m sick… I blame black friday. Yes i’m serious.. I normally do not get sick like this until after New Years Eve. But right now I feel like i’ve been hit by a truck. Biggest issue is sore throat and my asthma will not let me take a deep breathe. I feel like i’m not getting enough oxygen. The cold is not in my chest. My chest is not tight, i’m not coughing up anything. So my airways are probably inflamed again.

Other than that the kidlets are good. Their report cards were actually pretty good. Better than I expected. Taylor had one C which was an improvement. Cole’s grades were all good except for math. The kid is struggling so bad and I don’t know how to help him w/ math. I can’t explain it to him and make him understand. To me it just makes perfect sense. To him it doesnt. Jewel has all As.. Her entire report card was 98s. She however left her report card at school on Friday because she was convinced that she had made a bad grade. Why I dunno and why she would want to hide it was beyond me. I KNEW she hadnt made  a bad grade and when she brought it home the following week she felt silly for thinking she had done badly.

They are super excited about Christmas coming. We actually get to have a real christmas this year. Tree and all. We already put up lights around the bar we just have to get a tree now.

Anyhow… all that I still don’t get the hype about black friday. I strongly feel that when a news team shows up to record the events of black friday at Target that society has serious problems. Surely there is more important things going on in the world than people acting stupid in a store.. Right

Did you join the chaos and mass confusion that is considered Black Friday?

…on the Dubai was ‘built on sand’ metaphor?

Brooker is on fine form, voicing his suspicion that Dubai, with its giant artificial island shaped like a palm tree and skyscrapers “so tall the moon had to steer its way around them”, was just too unheimlich to last. Like something from a dream. Or a hallucination. Once Las Vegas starts to seem a comforting and predictable baseline against which to make comparisons, you know that You Are Now Entering The Uncanny Valley.

One of the comments contained the following (censoring in original):

“That’s exactly what I liked about Dubai. Tens of thousands of fat lazy stupid *******s, have put their undeservedly large life savings into constructions scams in Dubai that a child would have seen through.

Some though have been killing themselves – committing suicide. (Many out of humiliation – as they liked to rub their business ‘genius’ in peoples faces and then they just turn out to be fat worthless bastards, who never gained anything out of life, unless it was through nepotism, arselicking and backstabbing.”

I don’t know how much of the world’s cash (or, more importantly, debt) is bound up with Dubai, but the damage done to capitalism by its current faltering seems to be more ideological than anything else. Another temple of the market religion falls as a wealth-generating entity switches into hoover mode and swallows up all it spewed out, although this one has greater Ozymandias potential than most.

Thoroughly outraged by revelations about a gambling ring that has fixed or tried to rig at least 200 matches across Germany and the rest of Europe, including three in the Champions League, German football fans across the nation spontaneously took to the stadiums yesterday and began randomly beating the you-know-what out of each other.

“We demand stiffer sanctions for this match-fixing nonsense stuff immediately already,” roared one blood-soaked, club-wielding fan. “This kind of behavior is absolutely unacceptable and is just the kind of thing that could give the sport of football (some call it soccer) a bad name.”

German police said on Friday they had dismantled a gang with more than 200 suspected members operating in nine European leagues.

-

Histeria

-

Mientras ella reía, me di cuenta de que me iba enredando

en su risa y haciéndome parte de ella, hasta que sus

dientes fueron sólo estrellas casuales con talento

para la instrucción por pelotones. Era absorbido en cortos jadeos,

inhalados a cada recuperación momentánea, perdido al fin

en las oscuras cavernas de su garganta, restregado por

la ondulación de músculos no vistos. Un camarero de cierta edad,

con manos temblorosas, extendió apresuradamente

un mantel a cuadros rosas y blancos sobre la oxidada

mesa verde de hierro, diciendo: “Si la señora y

el caballero quisieran tomar el té en el jardín,

si la señora y el caballero quisieran tomar el té

en el jardín…” Decidí que si fuera posible pararle

el temblor de sus pechos, cabría recoger

algunos trozos de la tarde, y concentré mi atención

con cuidadosa sutileza en ese objetivo.

-

-

Hysteria

-

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved

in her laughter and being part of it, until her

teeth were only accidental stars with a talent

for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps,

inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally

in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by

the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter

with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading

a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty

green iron table, saying: “If the lady and

gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden,

if the lady and gentleman wish to take their

tea in the garden …” I decided that if the

shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of

the fragments of the afternoon might be collected,

and I concentrated my attention with careful

subtlety to this end.

-

-

Thomas Stearns Eliot

Histeria

De Prufrock y otras observaciones

En Poesías reunidas (1902-1962), Alianza Editorial, 2008

Traducción de José María Valverde

-

* Should LeBron play for the league minimum? Sports Illustrated makes a strong case. (via Eric Barker)

* Naomi Klein on climate debt.

* How to power your galactic empire.

* And two from this week’s New Yorker: a piece on Caster Semenya, the intersex South African runner, and “My Parents, Enid and Sal, Used to Be Porn Stars.” The piece on death hysteria in American politics, centered around Morris County, New Jersey’s Karen Ann Quinlan, is also quite good—but it’s not online.

Laura Benanti and Michael Cerveris in In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play. Photo: Max Vadukul

John Lahr, son of Bert Lahr (the Cowardly Lion and farmworker Zeke in The Wizard of Oz) and theater critic of The New Yorker, reviews a new play in this week’s issue:

In our pornographic age, it’s hard to imagine that there was a time when people were better acquainted with the continent of Africa than with their own bodies. Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play (superbly directed by Les Waters, at the Lyceum) takes us back to the corseted, alabaster eighteen-eighties, in the early days of electricity, when the vibrator was used by physicians to enhance a form of genital massage, which had been practiced for centuries as a treatment for hysteria. The procedure was thought to provide a workout for the neglected womb; it resulted in a heavy-breathing rictus, sometimes accompanied by discharge, which led to a release of tension. (Back then, “the big O” was called a “hysterical paroxysm.”)

The Dr. O in this case, Givings, well-named enough (Michael Cerveris), the play’s male lead charged, as it were, with such electro-therapeutic rounds, is rather less attentive to the needs of his patient, so to speak, wife Catherine, whose own frustrations from his uncomprehending neglect seek relief close at bedside hand:

Denied her husband’s medical expertise, Catherine, with the help of [rejuvenated patient] Mrs. Daldry, who has become an aficionado of the vibrator, breaks into his locked office; the two women take matters into their own hands, so to speak. “In this day and age, all one has to know how to do is press a button or pull a switch. I’ll hold it for you,” Catherine says, amazed that the vibrator “looks like a farming tool.” Together, they embark on the appliance of science. “They look heavenwards,” the stage directions read at the end of Act I. “The steady hum of the vibrator. Transcendent music. A curtain falls.”

…At one crucial point, Dr. Givings relents and gives his wife a proper treatment. “No, kiss me now. Kiss me and hold the instrument there, just there at the same time,” she says, embracing him passionately. “This is what I feared,” Dr. Givings says, bridling. “In a sick woman, the device restores balance, but in a healthy woman it makes you excitable and perhaps even causes some perverse kind of onanism.”

Today, the world lost one of its most influential and recognisable sportspeople, the professional golfer, Tiger Woods. Herein lies my tribute to the greatest golfer of his generation.

Tiger Woods came to fame in the mid 90s as one of the only black golf players on the professional tour, and possessing a humongous drive was regarded as instantly commercially viable to many different companies, such as Nike and General Motors, among others. He won his first major title at the age of 21, just under a year after turning professional, and he went on to win a total of 14 Majors. He even held all four majors at once, which became known as the “Tiger Slam” but not considered a true Grand Slam because he did not win them all in the same calendar year.

Tiger continued to rise throughout his golfing career, and it appeared nothing at all could stop him. But surgery on a knee that had troubled him for a few years took a lot of effort to recover from, but recover he did and landed his fourteenth major title, the US Open, in 2008. It appeared as though Woods had got back on track in his golfing life. He was a quiet individual, not one to talk about his life outside of sport, and that should be commended in today’s celebrity-driven culture where everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame. Sadly, today’s accident in his home state of Florida means that there will be no more dramatic Tiger finales, no more of those booming long drives down the fairway, no more…news just in…Tiger Woods has been released from hospital with minor cuts and bruises.

So yeah…forget the obituary.

An incredible revelation

I’ve been watching the news unfold about the E-mails and documents that were somehow pilfered (or leaked) from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) last week.  I have been reading everything that I can find on the internet about the subject, including the E-mails themselves and some of the programmer comments embedded in the CRU software.

I have been stunned.

So it appears that either a) the science behind anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is dubious, or b) the entire global warming panic has been an outright fraud perpetrated by politically-motivated scientists against an unsuspecting, and largely gullible, world population.  I tend to believe the latter.

Not only am I stunned, I’m also livid.  At the same time, however, I’m also relieved that the priests of global warming now have serious reasons to be worried…if not afraid.  And now I hope the Senate will have more reason to look at the pending cap and trade debate with more skepticism.  Given the current–and very real–economic crisis, we don’t need Congress levying additional taxes with the intent of thwarting a crisis that doesn’t even exist.

Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong

I am an AGW denier.  I have always been a denier.  I am proud of the fact that I never fell for what, in my mind at least, always came across as being specious bullshit.  I’m so, so grateful that I’m not among the millions and millions of gullible idiots who took the bait hook line and sinker.

Up until now the term “denier” has been used as a pejorative by global warming adherents to describe skeptics.  But now one is led to ask the question: Who exactly are the real deniers?  Those of us who refuse to believe alarmist prognostications of imminent climatic doom, or those who refuse to recognize and consider evidence that sits before their very eyes?  Again I say the latter.  They are the ones in a deep state of denial, after all.  But why?

Because (probably subconsciously) they simply cannot bring themselves to admit that they have been wrong all along…they cannot admit that they have allowed themselves to be duped.  They have been fooled by perhaps the most outrageous con job of all time, and they cannot bear to face up to that single, pitiful, ignominious truth.  They are sheep, pure and simple.

Case in point: Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post:

Stop hyperventilating, all you climate change deniers. The purloined e-mail correspondence published by skeptics last week — portraying some leading climate researchers as petty, vindictive and tremendously eager to make their data fit accepted theories — does not prove that global warming is a fraud.

If I’m wrong, somebody ought to tell the polar ice caps that they’re free to stop melting.

That said, the e-mail episode is more than a major embarrassment for the scientists involved. Most Americans are convinced that climate change is real — a necessary prerequisite for the kinds of huge economic and behavioral adjustments we would have to make to begin seriously limiting carbon emissions. But consensus on the nature and scope of the problem will dissipate, and fast, if experts try to obscure the fact that there’s much about the climate they still don’t know.

[Goes on to outline the UEACRU E-mail hacking scandal in some detail.]

It would be great if this were all a big misunderstanding. But we know carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and we know the planet is hotter than it was a century ago. The skeptics might have convinced each other, but so far they haven’t gotten through to the vanishing polar ice.

Yep.  There’s that “denier” word again coming from the mouth of a denier.  It doesn’t get funnier than that.  And you’ve got to love Mr. Robinson’s flippant comment about melting polar ice caps.  This is especially humorous since researchers have shown that the volume of the polar ice caps stabilized in 2007 and has  been expanding ever since.  In his opinion piece, Mr. Robinson also declares that “climate science is fiendishly hard” to study.  Well, no kidding.  But unicorn science is fiendishly hard to study, too…BECAUSE UNICORNS DON’T EXIST ANY MORE THAN ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING DOES!

Yes, it’s problematic to study something that simply isn’t there, isn’t it?

But let’s name a few of the other dupes that got sucked into believing the AGW myth, shall we?

• Barack Obama
• Just about all of the members of the Obama administration (most notably the eco-fascist Carol Browner)
• Gordon Brown
• Tony Blair
• Angela Merkel
• Nicolas Sarkozy
• The European Union
• The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• Many members of the U.S. House of Representatives
• Many members of the U.S. Senate (to include John McCain)
• ABC
• NBC (see: General Electric)
• CBS
• MSNBC (see: General Electric)
• CNN
• BBC
• PBS
• The New York Times
• The Washington Post
• The San Francisco Chronicle
• The Los Angeles Times
• Too many other U.S. newspapers to count
• Too many U.S. corporations to enumerate

I didn’t mention Al Gore because he’s among the “dupers,” not among the ”dupes.”  He’s just one of the dudes making hundreds of millions of dollars off of the global warming hysteria scam.

Actually, the list of dupes goes on and on and on and I don’t have time to list them all.  But the scariest dupes of all are the ones who are supposed to report the news and keep the public informed (see all of the television networks and newspapers above).  Most of the news sources listed above are being notoriously silent about the ClimateGate scandal.  This in itself is terribly insidious, given the fact that the Obama administration and the Democratic majority in Congress seem intent on foisting a cap and tax scheme on the American people that will greatly damage businesses in the United States and increase energy costs for all.

Yet, the mainstream media, cognizant of its humiliatingly supine complicity in an apparent world-wide con scheme, remains silent.  They are worthless now.  They have been worthless.

And now we hear that President Obama, despite the revelation of the UEACRU E-mail and document disclosure, intends to attend next month’s climate summit in Copenhagen anyway, where he intends to promise that he will commit America to reducing greenhouse gas emissions while at the same time forfeiting transferring billions of American taxpayer dollars to an apparently fraudulent international carbon blackmail tax scheme.

Good luck, Mr. Obama.  We’re watching you.

The American public is watching you.

As an aside, I wonder if Mr. Obama and his family will watch “The Day After Tomorrow” on DVD this weekend.  Maybe it will help build up his courage to travel to Denmark and betray the American people.

Note

Some of the bloggers at the Telegraph have, indeed, been covering the CRU E-mail story.  Here’s Gerald Warner:

At the more domestic level, the proposed ban on incandescent light bulbs, so supinely accepted in this servile state of Britain, is now provoking a huge backlash in America. US citizens do not like the government coming into their houses and putting their lights out. Voters may not understand the cut and thrust of climate debate at the technical level, but they know when the Man from Washington has crossed their threshold uninvited.

The term that Fox News is now applying to the Climategate e-mails is “game-changer”. For the first time, Anthropogenic Global Warming cranks are on the defensive, losing their cool and uttering desperate mantras such as “You can be sceptical, not denial.” Gee, thanks, guys. In fact we shall be whatever we want to be, without asking your permission.

Good to see a Brit taking a position on this travesty.  James Delingpole (from the same paper) has been doing superb work, too (actually, it’s been Delingbore–as some of Delingpoles’s detractors call him–who has done the yeoman’s work on this story at the Telegraph).  Well done, Sir!

Dupa cum toata lumea stie, bugetarii au avut luna asta 4 zile libere. Stiti voi… criza, politica, solutii idioate si multe altele, cu toate adunate, au facut ca noi sa luam vacanta. Mica, mica vacanta asta dar am facut lucruri “mari” in primele zile… Ce? Pai:

1. Am fost sa-mi fac analizele la sange… mi-a luat nenea doctoru’ 4 eprubete de sange… mai, mai sa lesin acolo cand am vazut cat imi ia )

2. M-am tuns… da… NU MAI AM PARUL LUNG… nu m-am tuns scurt… am fost doar sa-mi mai ia din el, si m-am trezit ca am ramas cu 1/4 din lingime. Poate inca visez… sper ( Poate pana maine creste iar… poate… ah… mi-e si frica sa ma mai uit in oglinda :| Nu ma mai tund nici de-al naibii pana la vara.

Culmea… maine mai am si excursia la targul de carte si teatru. O sa ma vada o groaza de lume cu parul asta ( Mi-e ca ma rasgandesc acum si nu mai merg… in fine… aiurea. Nu conteaza… o sa merg… sper ca o sa ma simt bine (si nu se va distra nimeni pe seama mea si a parului meu… Edy, vezi cum le dai idei!).

In rest? Plictiseala…

Si acum s-o fac pe Adelina fericita:

Welcome back to more DEF LEPPARD. Before we get to ‘Hysteria’, I’ll finish off on the ‘Pyromania’ sleeve.

Having a clear image in my head of what the cover should be was one thing, creating it was another. I’d recently met a young illustrator, Bernard Gudynas, who had impressed me with his portfolio of airbrush illustrations. They had a futuristic feel which was entirely appropriate to the album concept. We sketched out ideas, including a magnified section of the exploding building which I would build the graphic ‘sight’ around. It was demanding work for both of us to get it exactly right (‘exactly right’ is always a good aim). I had already decided the illustration should be contained within a border which smoke could pour onto – creating a further dimension to the design. The ‘sight’ itself added another – the ‘viewer’ – YOU. The sight, as a piece of graphics, may seem complicated and detailed but it had to imply a weapon much bigger than a rifle sight – a rocket launcher perhaps. Bernard’s take on the perspective – looking up at the building – created scale and dynamics. Originally the border around the illustration was white, to emphasize the black smoke, but when we tried a black border we all agreed it was more powerful.

Describing visual concepts sounds pretentious sometimes but that’s the nature of using words to describe images. (Artists are often asked to explain their visual work in words but I’ve never heard anyone ask an author to describe a novel by painting a picture.) Creating a visual image is based on intuition for the most part and decisions made in that process are not limited by the need to explain them. That’s why I love creating visuals – there are mysterious forces at work which I don’t really understand – or feel the need to.

I have been fortunate enough (I’d like to think talent played some part!) to work with some great artists who understood that intuition is vital. The ‘THAT’S IT!’ moment never comes from a long intellectual conversation – it more likely comes from an instinctive immediate reaction. There are a couple I’ll get to later, with PAUL McCARTNEY and with LED ZEPPELIN, where I was so sure which design they’d choose, I wrote on the back of it before the meeting – ‘You’ll choose this one.’ (Yes – Magic Tricks ARE an intrinsic part of presentations.)

DEF LEPPARD were a band I could rely on for instant reactions to artwork ideas. There was no pissing about. ‘Hysteria’ was a case in point. After working on the cover for close on a year, something Joe said made me abandon most of what I’d done and start again on the central image. In those days, and for such a major project, I had the luxury of time to develop ideas. Now, in the ‘I want it yesterday world’, there is often no time to consider and re-think – budgets and schedules catagorically deny it. I have turned down important work on occasion, simply because the time-frame imposed would have been hugely destructive to the creative process. I simply can’t produce half-arsed work that ultimately I’m unhappy with and almost certainly will damage reputation.

For those of you unfamiliar with DEF LEPPARD’s history, after the phenomenal success of ‘Pyromania’, (in 1984 the band were voted favourite band in the US – ahead of peers like THE ROLLING STONES and AC/DC), the next few years recording ‘Hysteria’ proved to be tragic and challenging on so many different levels. On New Years Eve,1984, Rick Allen, Def Leppard’s drummer, swerved off the road on a sharp bend near Sheffield and crashed into a drystone wall. He lost his arm. I can’t begin to imagine how Rick and the band dealt with the tragedy but what I do know is that their unswerving loyalty to their drummer and friend must have positively contributed to the the quality and impact of one of the biggest albums in rock history – ‘Hysteria’. A one-armed drummer? Surely, most bands would have considered finding a new drummer, however difficult it might be emotionally. Not DEF LEPPARD – it was not an option – they never sought a replacement.

Rick realized, after practising drumming on pillows, that he could use his legs to do some drumming previously done with his arms. He then worked with a pioneering British electronic company, Simmons, to design a customised electronic drum kit. Rick’s triumphant comeback was sealed at the 1986 Donnington ‘Monsters of Rock’ festival with a huge and  emotionally charged ovation when he was introduced by Joe Elliott.

Earlier that year the band had moved to Dublin. Robert John “Mutt” Lange, who produced ‘Pyromania’ began to work with the band on ‘Hysteria’. He retired from the project suffering from exhaustion. Pressure from their record company, clearly aware the band were on the cusp of megastardom, was intense – afraid the momentum built up by ‘Pyromania’ would be lost. Q Prime, the band’s management, in typically anarchistic but humourous style, got so pissed off by relentless requests from the record company demanding a release date, they asked me to design t-shirts for meetings which pre-empted executive questions. Working my way through my DEF LEPPARD archives of artwork (they’re huge), I came across the artwork for two of them …

I wish Lep fans could see the DL archives. All the artwork is on boards – singles, posters, tour programmes, calendars and promotional material. There is something about artwork with printer’s instruction overlays. They have an artistic value of their own, and obviously each is an original piece.

I’ve always envisaged an exhibition of the original artwork for DEF LEPPARD (the ones above are 2 of hundreds of pieces). I’m sure hardcore fans would be interested in the process that’s involved – how the work they know so well was physically created. Any ideas?

Before I began the DEF LEPPARD series of blogs I re-discovered the original sketch for the ‘Hysteria’ sleeve – created using colour pencils. So was the final artwork, but there is something about the preparatory sketch – an isolated image, not the final combination of all the elements, which is very powerful. I’ve said before that some of my favourite work is unpublished and this image is right up there with the best of them. I began a few weeks ago to publish some work on my website and I’ve recently created a Limited (there’ll only be 200) Edition of the illustration. Visit andieairfix.com to check it out.

which neatly brings us to …

Eight months into the artwork for an eagerly awaited album, I flew to Holland to meet the band where they were recording. The trip was one of the most challenging, upsetting and productive I’d ever had with the band. The working title of the album for a long time was ‘Animal Instinct’ and for months Adrian Baumgartner, an incredibly talented artist and perfectionist, had worked on the cover illustration. I showed it to Joe and he said, ‘It’s brilliant Andie, but don’t you think it looks a bit ‘laboured?’. Laboured? My heart sank. Adrian had worked with such intensity and concentration on the illustration for 5 or 6 hours a day producing about 4 square inches a month. Although the final work was astonishingly accomplished containing unbelievable detail, Joe was absolutely right – it lacked a vital spontaneity. ‘And,’ said Joe, ‘we’ve changed the title to ‘Hysteria.’ I had to start again.

On the plane back to London I gradually accepted that after months of work I had to find something more intuitive, dynamic and more fearsome. I was also dreading telling Adrian. My introspective musings, however, were constantly interrupted by Marc Lebon. At the cutting edge of photography (and outrageous behaviour) he had been shooting pictures of the band at the same time I was there. We discovered we were both coincidentally on the same plane back to London. We decided to  meet up in Amsterdam and had a crazy, extremely enjoyable night roaming around the infamous red light district – the emphasis being on the word ‘extreme’. Without going into too many details, let’s say the early morning plane had to accommodate two individuals who were smashed to high heaven. Marc, as part of our previous night’s entertainment had bought a couple of explicit porn novels and he decided halfway through the journey that he wanted to read extracts from them to me. It wouldn’t necessarily have been much of a problem except for one thing – he was sitting six rows behind me! An innocent adopted entourage of passengers were unwillingly (for the most part) subjected to an unrelenting bombardment of sexual scenarios they really didn’t want to hear over breakfast. Fortunately the flight was very short and by the time embarrassed passengers became a potential lynch mob, we landed at Heathrow and beat a hasty retreat before the police and airport authorities could act on the demands of our shocked and outraged fellow fliers.

Next time … more on ‘Hysteria’ – there’s so much …