Fetid pools mark the 'new America'

The sub-prime loans crisis reaches 2 million foreclosures and goes legal as the Feds start laying charges on those whose claim was to be a “Proud sponsor of the American Dream.” Enron déjà vu.

So what does a fetid swimming pool explosion in LA have to do with panicked people queuing outside British banks? Read on:

Timothy Eagan /New York Times: The Pools of Riverside County

Look closer and you think you’re staring into a ghost exurb – empty homes left to bankers. This is the new America, Southern California’s affordable edge city, drowning in a sea of debt. In the Inland Empire, the eastern-most suburbs of Los Angeles, one out of every 43 households is facing foreclosure proceedings.

Peek behind the palm trees and there you see the most shocking sight: abandoned swimming pools, fetid and green, left to the elements and choked with algae.

Thousands of people have walked away without even draining the water. Mosquito control agents now patrol these murky pools, treating them with pesticides to keep disease-carrying larvae from forming.

“With the skyrocketing foreclosure rate, the problem is compounding daily,” said Jared Dever, a spokesman for the government district that monitors insect breeding grounds. He said about 2,000 abandoned swimming pools would have to be treated in just one part of Riverside County.

• More

Still no wiser? Let John Bird and John Fortune explain what the hell is going on, Without going into any detail at all. It's far too boring:

I like 'enhanced'. I'd buy anything if it said 'enhanced'.

More about "the ingenuity of the markets":

That's not silly, that's a sophisticated banking system in operation.

More movie clips? That's all there is, folks

Continuing my rummaging through Google Video Search, I actually found clips from all my list, bar one (a few were unpostable).

However, some of them aren't exactly inflictable or foul up a potential viewing of the movie . Like the ones for Distant Voices, Still Lives - a Terrence Davies movie which never fails to make me cry but seeing a clip would just ruin your day.

Or the one I couldn't find a clip for, Derek Jarman's Blue, described thus by IMDB: 'Against a plain, unchanging blue screen, a densely interwoven soundtrack of voices, sound effects and music attempt to convey a portrait of Derek Jarman's experiences with AIDS, both literally and allegorically, together with an exploration of the meanings associated with the colour blue.' Well I like it.

Or the Ciao Manhattan clips, all Edie tributes except for the uninflictable original trailer.

Or the terrible selection of bad copies of Muriel's Wedding highlights (not my pick), despite the Abba theme.

Or finding the - great - Anita Ekberg's Trevi Fountain flounce clip from La Dolce Vita but only advertising's tribute to the spectacular opening scene. Also good but not the actual film. As un-referable as most trailers, all I could find for Altman's The Player although its opening scene, which features an 8 minute tracking shot, sells the movie.

But the really popular movies do have a variety of clips, mash-ups and parodies and are ready made for clip picking/Youtube. Like one of my NSFW favourite numbers from South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut:



'It's not my fault that I'm so eeevill.. it's society ... society ...'

Or another - very safe for work but insane - number ripe for a guitar band rethrashing from Wizard of Oz:



'Witch that rhymes with bitch'?

Masses of Oz and South Park clips. And there are other findable, memorable, inflictable clips like this one of the stunning Pam Grier acting cool for a reason in Jackie Brown.


Or the happy conclusion of Beautiful Thing:





As well as insane ephemera like a surreal 1930s Wizard of Oz cartoon or the bizarre, full-length Turkish version or, from last September, the even more bizarre 'Surviving Munchkins Honored At Wizard Of Oz Screening' (some still in costume):



From my rummaging I learnt that you just can't find 'everything' yet, including with the added touch that I can't then, easily, reshow it to you. Surprising lapse in movie marketing? I think so.

NSFW: F*** Planet Earth

Very very rude and very very funny anthropomorphism in the raw.

Scary spam

Almost all my blog generated spam gets filtered out by Blogger and using a gmail account, but this one got through and certainly stopped me in my tracks.

It appears to be computer generated but it made me think of William Burroughs' cut-ups after I'd stopped thinking 'Do I know anyone in Swansea?' ('which wouldn't be the DVLA', as someone jested).

But, jeez, if this is the state of computer simulation and AI be afraid ...

From: chris miller
Date: 25 Jan 2008 20:30
Subject: webmaster for me, my name is Canning
To: paulcanning1(at)gmail.com

Hi Paul,
My name is Canning, i am a 54yr old,well built, proffessional lady,at present living in the Swansea Marina.Unfortunately, at the present time, i am in the position of being unloved,so,
in order to bring name to the attention of as many interested people as possible,and hopefully encourage a number of individuals to become special friends of mine,i have decided to look
around for that 'special person' whom i know will take the greatest pleasure in promoting me to all and sundry.
Would you possibly be interested?
Just so there is no misunderstanding, i am sorry, but i will be unable to pay you,but i know i will be able to cover any out of pocket expenses you may incur.
Hope to hear from you.
Regards,
Canning

• More on such spam
• The text also reminds me of 'variety star' Count Arthur Strong
  

The State of the Ridicule

Classic Jon Stewart on Bush.

He does the best Bush caricature, better than Steve Bell's. And the cheer when he says 'last State of the Union' is something to behold.

Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) explains 'Why I kissed President Bush'

Stewart hacks up 'the Democrat response' hilariously too.



All round great show as he's also on form batting against historical anecdote queen, presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.

• Goodwin and other show extracts start here.

~~~~~~

One anecdote from this year to be recorded for history was Bush performing the rite of 'pass the phone' - where you go up to someone on the phone and say "tell them 'X' celebrity says 'hi'".

At the State of The Union it was Bush to the very gay Democrat congressman, elder and power broker Barney Frank:

"Tell him I said, 'Hello,' ''

Him, in this case, being Barney's Bf.

Barney rushed back over and said:

"Mr. President, by the way, the person I was talking to when you said to say hello was my boyfriend.'

"Well. I hope you said how open-minded I am,'' Frank said the president replied.

"I considered telling [the president] I wouldn't marry him,'' Frank said, "but then I thought, 'Nah.' ''

'Open-minded' must be Mary Cheney's doing and very 'State of the Union'.

'Kill me because I am from the tribe called Kenya'

Excellent post abut the worsening situation from a self-described young aspiring Kenyan diplomat:

I refuse to be labeled, hate me, burn my house and even kill me, but because I am Kenyan.

Kill me because I am Kenyan, not because of my tribe Not because of my name, please kill me because I am Kenyan

....

I chose to be proactive. We have to be proactive. I and one of my best friend are starting this movement called kill me because I am from the tribe called Kenya. He is Kenyan luo engaged to a Kenyan kikuyu girl, but first and most he is the key word is kenyan.

I am angry, really angry. Angry at myself for thinking being passive has ever changed anything. angry that this politicians, this gangs be it mungiki, taliban, kalenjin warriors and et al who want to tell us how to live, who to love and they want to dictate who to hate or kill?

I refuse yes I refuse that agenda and that is not my destiny

More


The Kenyan blogosphere makes for a series of such reads. And it's intimately connected to what's happening on the ground. It's plainly, for Kenyans, becoming the place to find news and where democracy is being fought over.

There are saboteurs, there are tribalists and there are ordinary people, like this poster, Kamau. The Mashada forum, especially, is apparently becoming the main social site for verbal battle with tribalism a big issue. This is what Kamau is reacting against.

NB: I was looking for a photo from Joseph Karoki's blog to use and this was about the mildest one. He, like the media is the rest of the 'developing' world, does carry photos of bodies. Burnt and hacked people - one shows a tin hut with a hacked to death mother and a child crying over her. Westerners never get to see these images. But it's really only by actually seeing it that you get closer to what's happening - horror - to other people. So - a warning for 'strong content'.

Best place to get a flavour if the blogosphere is the blog aggregator.

~~~~~~

Very quick postscript! Just saw the photo of the mother murdered in front of her child in the Washington Post -- anyone seen it in a UK paper? Are we that timid? And where's the offense?

Blogger's Favourite Movies

Tidying my profile link and then the profile, I noticed I could click on movies I'd favourited. This gave me the top ten of popularity, amongst Blogger users of these movies.

Clicking through was an exercise in revelation as some were far more well-known than I thought and others had interesting, not always predictable, fans.

Not in order of addition, some movies I could watch over and over

• Wizard of Oz 6,700
• Jackie Brown 2,500
• Manhattan 2,400
• South Park 2,400
• La Dolce Vita 1,600
• Muriel's Wedding 1,000
• Amarcord 1,000
  
• Blue 1,000
• Beautiful Thing 672
• Mirror 175
• Ciao Manhattan 50
• Distant Voices Still Lives 15

I also investigated clips and found out just how enormous the YouTube archive is getting, though not every thing's there and not every scene I'd pick.


Mirror
A couple of scenes from Tarkovsky's "Mirror"


Manhattan
Storica introduzione di "Manhattan", film che più di ogni altro può essere considerato capolavoro della poetica del grande regista Woody Allen. Scritto da Allen e da Marshall Brickman, accompagnato dalla storica colonna sonora di George Gershwin.


Amarcord
Trailer for Amarcord directed by Federico Fellini

Just going wider to Google Video Search brings up more gems.


La Dolce Vita
Anita Eckberg e Marcello Matroianni nella celebre scena della Fontana di Trevi, dal film "La dolce vita" di Fellini

Peroni's beautiful and stylish portrayal of Fellini's 1960s Italian classic La Dolce Vita. This advertisement is the colour version of Peroni's stunning La Dolce Vita commercial — a great pastiche of the opening scene but I couldn't find the original :{

'e-suicide'? Nothing new

Danny Finkelstein at The Times looks at copycat suicides, supposedly spawned by the web, and finds them part of a long tradition.

Too right. One word: Valentino, the silent screen heartthrob.

At the news of Valentino's death, two women attempted suicide in front of Polyclinic Hospital; in London a girl took poison before Rudy's inscribed photograph; an elevator boy of the Ritz in Paris was found dead on a bed covered with Valentino's photos.

While Valentino was lying in state at Campbell's Funeral Home, New York streets became the scene of a ghoulish carnival as a mob of over 100,000 fought for a last glimpse of the Great Lover

From Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon.

Kenya: where is the BBC?

Here's today's BBC Online headline:



And here's Kenya's headline:



More about the troop movements on Siasa Duni's blog and others.

Very little continuing political analysis about Kenya on the BBC's site, although this was published on Monday.



Note the author. Let's hear more from him. Keep the star reporters at home (less carbon miles for one thing).

It is right to report the violence but not when that's the whole story and the impression is left that it's solely 'tribal' or little explanation is given.

BBC Online has the vastness of scale to do way, way more to report what's happening or - at minimum - link to it. There's not even cross links to their other huge resource, the World Service, which has specialists.

I don't think their coverage lives up to their responsibilities and, given their resources, is pretty pathetic.

~~~~~

More background from the Kenyan blogosphere:

· Very interesting post about division and 'dobbing-in' to authorities in the diaspora and how Kibaki backers are using the web to, amongst other things, say that Raila Ondinga is funded by Al Qaeda.

· Never mind the BBC, the same author has no time for the efforts of Kenyan MSM:

For the rest of their lives, Kenyans will have a healthy skepticism for the media. As of January 2008, Kenya will have the largest number of healthy media critics ever known. Why? Media personalities, such as Mildred Ngesa, Catherine Kasavuli and Carole Mandi, people that Kenyans looked up to, have turned out to be fickle and unprincipled. As it strived to cheapen its stories, the Kenyan media as a whole was cheapened. They allowed Michuki (Minister and loud Kibaki backer - very like the Zimbabwean tyke, Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo) to cello-tape their mouths. They cannot call themselves journalists. It is not enough for them to come out on national TV and emotionally say that they are forming a group because “Somewhere, the story has been lost.” If the true story has been lost, then it is because they were asleep while they were supposed to be telling it. I venture to surmise, however, that the true story is alive and well, because Kenyan bloggers have come out and done the job that the Kenyan news media is supposed to do. Kenyan journalists should be ashamed of themselves. They have let Kenya down. Many people now trust Kumekucha more than they trust their regular dailies. [Kumekucha says: Kofi Annan appears to have waved his MAGIC wand and viola all Kenyans are ululating with bliss. )

Kenyans who never cared much about media personalities have had their attention rudely drawn to the fact that their newspapers and televisions might not be giving them the whole story. Circumstances have forced Kenyans to begin to ask themselves what might be written between the lines; what is not being told; what the purpose is, for what is being told. This is very healthy, because it will hopefully bring a sense of accountability to the media. Pretty soon, people will begin to ask questions. How could Ugandan soldiers venture into Kenya undetected? Why did I have to read a blog to find out about a woman whose daughter was raped in the Rift Valley?

Previous:

• Send Kenyans some love
• Wesly Ngetich
• Kenya Crisis - Online response flourishing
• Kenya bloggers postscript
• This is Web power · Kenyans need blogs

On Day One

The Better World Campaign, a coalition of groups which works to build a stronger relationship between the United States and the United Nations, is trying to raise the status of foreign policy in the US Presidential campaign with this new site.

It wants overseas contribution and will sort and sieve it to provide some real numbers, if it's taken up.

On November 4th, 2008, Americans will elect new leadership and a new direction for the United States. Help shape a new way forward -- share your thoughts, upload videos and tell the next president what to do on the first day in office to improve our standing in the world.

You can:

• Post your ideas (including videos) for the next President
• Vote on and discuss other people's ideas
• Tell the Presidential candidates (and friends and family) what you think

Mohammed Yunus, amongst others, has already contributed.

Contributions will be whittled down to the most popular in each of nine categories. They will then be presented to the newly-elected president when he or she is sworn in.

Here are some aides memoire: